Staying Focused

Hello my name is Gary Shotton and I’m so happy that you’re with me here with “Inspiring Better Business” that’s what we want to do we want to help you make money we want to help you to start businesses and today I’m going to talk about staying focused. I’m telling you when you get into business there’s an opportunity to start drifting off what you originally intended to do. If you don’t have a clear vision, a clear written plan, something that still allows you to change I’m not saying you get stuck with something that’s not working but a lot of times people have something that’s working and then they jump over into something else that actually takes them away from their core their core values not their values even their core product and soon they find themselves off into we call it left field or off into another area and that’s well not where they were supposed to be anyway I was pleased to hear someone tell me about the founder of Amazon you would know worldwide that amazon.com is now the leading retail selling machine it’s a huge machine it’s making its inroads it’s making an effect against every major supplier of goods now around the world at least in the United States they’re able to deliver things next day in some regions and zones they’re able to deliver the same day you can order it like 10 o’clock in the morning and it’ll be delivered at 4 o’clock the same day that’s amazing and now how would you compete with that well how would you how did they get there I think I’m saying the founders name right when I say Jeff Bezos he seemed to the founder the visionary and they’re expanding all the time but he was asked this question what’s the next new thing what’s the next gadget or gimm gimmick or what’s what’s on the horizon and he answered it real simple he said in essence I don’t even think of about that I think about my core customer I think about what do they want and if you can narrow it down to three things he narrowed it down to these three things he said I know that my customer wants to buy a variety they want to choose they want to have access to not just the one thing I have but they want to have be able to choose they want to have a very good price and they want it very quickly delivered to them because we’re now in a movement of now generations we’re thinking faster than ever before so he’s thinking about variety price and quick delivery so now these other things that are will feed that or cause that to happen are now the new things maybe it’s a new drone or maybe it’s a new way of delivering by truck or whatever they decide to do and but they’re always focused on variety price and quick delivery now I happen to be looking at my – business lives I’ve had two basic ownerships the first was a 17 year period when I owned a trucking company and specific it wasn’t just a trucking company it was moving and storage of furniture where we were in hundreds and hundreds of homes loading up everything from the Ted kids toys to everything that was in the kitchen to what was in the Attic and we moved it from location a where typically the family moved to a new city or a new house inside the same city – location B and I got to look at the things that they they wanted and you know it was real close real consistent with what mr. Beddoes had had described they wanted good care of their goods I mean we’re moving there sometimes and it takes not sometimes they’re special things like a picture or a special thing that can’t be even repaired or fixed that we want to be careful with it they want a good price they are not going to just pay anything and everything in this competition and number three they wanted to know what the schedule was so many times we’d have to look at the end each month when we’re packing up seems like everybody was changing homes in the last three days of the month or the last weekend and that caused us some problems because we didn’t have enough capacity always on those last three or four days and during the middle of the month we would have extra people and so we had to work and we didn’t do a great job on this I’m looking back some 25 years ago and I’m thinking man I wish I could have done it over a little bit different but we did the best we could to have a good care of their product we did the best we could to give them a great price give them a variety of prices options and we gave them the best ability to be there on time on schedule and they could plan their day around us being there as scheduled so let’s talk about this company owned right now we have about 60 employees now we do machining heavy metal turning a welding and you know my customers I have three big customers that make up a significant amount of my work in my business and they have really focused on us as a supplier and I know what they want I know the three things from them I know that they want in this case they want us to be able to complete the entire part the ability to bring a part in to their facility and that’s assembled and it’s ready to use that in the past we just did machining but we started adding welding we started adding grinding we are to add at a paint booth we had a sandblasting we added we added the ability to cut all kinds of gears because I knew what my customer wanted I didn’t try to go for the most elaborate thing try to look for something new but I fought and found what they wanted and I filled that they want a fair price well everybody wants a fair price and number three they went on time delivery you see our parts go to them and they make an assembly some kind of an assembly and if our parts are not there on time we shut down their entire operation at least the part that requires our parts so those three things are our focus I’m not looking for the next new thing in fact we kind of got our feet planted Mike by my workers kind of laugh at me but they say why don’t we why do we steep doing this other stuff we’re not trying to do anything new or different we’re just trying to supply those three things the extended service added value for this customer that which included welding was one of the big things now you know what this next week we’re gonna add robotics to that because we didn’t look to go out for robotics but it’s a natural thing the focus is on meeting our customers need price on-time delivery but a complete part coming back to them ready to use in the past they didn’t have that now I just hope this is helpful to you look at your business don’t try to expand in fact on this robotic thing I’m trying to keep it as simple as we possibly can they’re making all kinds of proposals they’re gonna be the arms and things are gonna move and around hold it slow down we want the simplest thing that we can get and then we’ll grow into that we can grow if we stay focused I hope these are helpful to you I hope you can gain financially and your businesses are or we’re here to help “Inspire Better Business”. Thank You!!