Next Generation

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton. I hope you’re enjoying these videos, I hope you will listen to more than one. I hope you’re in a position to apply these teachings, and today I’m going to talk about the next generation. I’ve been in some 40 countries around the world and in many many cities in the United States and inside many businesses, and the kind of target that we’re wanting to effect is normally a family-owned business. Not always, but many times it’s a family-owned business, and many times there’s the husband and then there’s wife and then there’s two, three, four, or five kids that somehow are helping in the business. So inevitably we come into the question what happens in the next generation with your business. Now you’re going to have to decide the details. I’m just going to share some of my experience, and hope you can gain from it and come up with your own conclusion, okay? Now, it’s fair to say that I was raised in that situation. My dad started from scratch with a tractor, farming other people’s land and over a period of 20 years. Then, started buying land after 20 years, and after 40 years of farming in the state of Colorado, had a substantial very respectable and you would be envious of the amount of acres we farmed and the number of cattle we had as a family, but dad was the boss. And that’s fine, but there’s five of us kids, and fortunately for me when it came time for me to go to college, that was a given whether I carried on in the farming or not. I graduated from college and I knew my parents were anticipating me to come back and be a part of the farm operation, even though I went to engineering school. But here’s the fortunate thing, it happened to be one of these slides in the economy, and my dad’s not an emotional dad, he’s not one that was all kissy and huggy, and we didn’t cry over things. In fact, in probably all of my life I’ve only seen two times a small tear would come and form and ran down to about there on his cheek. That’s about as emotional as my dad ever got. Here was one of those times. I’m graduating from college and the economy, and the farming, and ranching business went to the bottom. It dived to the end. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to pull it out, or if he was going to go bankrupt. So he said, Gary you better pursue other avenues because I don’t even know if there’s going to be a farm. After, I went on my other direction, I’m off. I’m not going to be the next generation, and frankly that wasn’t a fit for me. My kids okay, so I have them from ages six to when they’re 25, in that range. I own a trucking company with moving and storage business. We’re moving furniture. It’s an ugly job. It’s an ugly business. They help me. They move furniture sweaty, packing. You know what they all said? I’m- they were up front- I am not going to continue in your business dad, forget it. We knew that up front. Fine. For me, the business is just an object. I don’t fall in love with the business. Now, I own a machine shop. I’ve owned it ten years. Fortunately, my children are all out of the house, out of under my protection, out of under my involvement for more than 15 years now. They’ve already gone on their own course. They are all doing well on their own businesses. They’re not interested in following in dad’s shoes. That’s fine, but you’re maybe in a different situation, because many many many times the dad, the parents, are pressuring, anticipating, talking, pushing their kids to stay in the same business, the same calling as dad and mom. They’ve built this empire, why wouldn’t you take over? I’m telling you that could be a big mistake. It could be the right thing, but you got to look past that. You’ve got to decide is this what is best for my family? Is this the calling my child’s in? I hope my friend Mark, he will probably do one of these videos. So, I’m going to tell a little of his story, and you’ll never know what happened. But his dad, I knew his dad, he was in the insurance business. He passed away quite prematurely, about ten years ago, three boys. He testified and told me that all three boys were anticipated, and I’ll use the word pushed to take over the insurance business, to be in the insurance business. One of those three never ever wanted, he wanted to be a coach, and right now he’s coaching at a high school, or college level ,just what he wanted to do. This same person, I call him Mark, I hope you hear from him, he has done a wonderful job, way better job than I ever did, in having his kids take these profile tests. Multiple profile tests and he’s letting them experiencing and experimenting to find out what do you want to do? Do you like cooking? Do you like sports? What are you good at? That’s where we want to let our kids go in the next generation. Not press them, push them, force them, manipulate them, that the only thing they can do is follow dad in his footsteps. It’s not a healthy thing. Guess what’s going to happen? You’re going to die sometime. They’re going to sell this thing anyway about a year after you’re dead anyway. So why are you pushing so hard? If they don’t want to do it, let them be their own identity, let them pursue, and of course if they’re interested in it, and it’s something that’s logical. One of my other friends will let his kids go out and find the real real world, and found out it wasn’t quite so good out there. And, they happen to have a plumbing business in town, and when the son came back, he was excited to be working at Dad’s business. It became his business. I hope this has helped. You might forward this to someone that this applies to in general. We hope to help business around the world. We hope that you would share these videos, that’s the only advertisement we have is you sharing to other people that this was helpful. Hope it was, thank you.