The long grind

It seems as if I opened a can of worms and the worms are scattering. For the last week I have been receiving dozens of phone calls a day, and almost as many emails and texts. More and more people are wanting to learn legit sell/buy marketing, and others need answers to fix problems the cozeners led them into.

We have announced dates for marketing schools in 2025. The first one is in Beatrice, Nebraska. Feb. 18-19. There are other dates set already, and we will be adding more in other locations. We got some exciting things in the works. Marketing Schools – Mr Cattlemaster

On Nov.19, I will be speaking on a Zoom webinar that is free. To register Webinar Registration - Zoom

I have to start with this. A participant in last week’s school messaged me this week and told me how he sat in his local sale barn and wrote down weights and prices so he could begin to train his brain to see relationships. I recommend doing this to every class I teach because you will learn a ton on valuable things in this environment and this is the original simulator and the only cost is the milage to get there.

Rate of gain

Anyway, this guy shared some awesome relationships he spotted and he shared one with me that had a Return on the Gain (ROG), which is the ratio of dollars to pounds on a trade, that was $19! In 20 years of doing sell/buy trades and the hundreds of thousands of cattle squares I have ran. I have never seen one with a ROG that high! Some of the cozener types try to tell us that the cattle square won’t work on quick trades, or trades with little weight difference. Not only have I proved them wrong for decades but now a “wet behind the ears” rookie proved it too! Now that he’s witnessed it in real life and spotted it, he has it locked in his brain and owns it forever.

Related: Beef export and import update

As the popularity and interest of sell/buy marketing spreads some people are spreading misinformation about it. I suppose this is normal. People have been reaching out to me questioning some of what they are hearing and I agreed to accept the task of proving some of these myths wrong. I will be sharing that information on this column throughout the rest of the year.

Autosuggestion

In my schools I talk about the power of autosuggestion, which is a suggestion to yourself, from yourself. We autosuggest all day long. In the autosuggestion example I use in my schools I show how myths become accepted as truth. The smart people in Denver tell us that cow/calf operations only make a profit 3 years out of 10. We reject this idea at first because our target is to be profitable 10 out of 10. We hear our buddies repeat it and even agree with it. We all know how the day goes, a lot of the time our hands are busy, but our mind is not, and we think about this 3 of 10 thing.

Related: Cattle marketing: It’s about making the right decisions

This repetition of thought gets picked up by our subconscious mind (SCM), which does not have the ability to reject an idea. It can only accept what is suppressed into it from our conscious mind. When the idea enters the SCM it becomes a paradigm. Paradigms control 95 percent of our behavior without us realizing it. For this reason, once the idea of 3/10 reaches the SCM it will manifest itself in our results.

Rationalization

As the decade passes, we begin to make excuses for the years we didn’t make a profit. “It’s the packer’s fault.” “I had to destock and then rebuild due to the drought.” “It wasn’t my fault the blizzard killed my baby calves.” This is rationalizing, which is rationing lies to the mind. This is self-sabotage, and we are really good at it. While the conscious mind still entertains the idea of 10/10, the SCM is programmed for 3/10 and it is the inner voice that gives us the rationalization. This is why I say to be careful of what you consume, because what you consume consumes you.

Related: Derrell Peel: Fall cattle market update

Chatter has value

We all make fun of the coffee shop crowd. I have plenty of examples of how I listened to the coffee shop talk and then went out and did the exact opposite of what they were talking about. This contrary thinking has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. Their chatter does have some value. What I wonder is how many people have come to the realization that many, not all, podcasts have become the modern-day coffee shop? Their value doesn’t lie where many people think it does. The same thing goes for social media.

Environment vs. DNA

I have mentioned it here before that our environment has more to do with who we are than our DNA. These are the people we spend the most time with, the things we listen to, the material we read. We all have heard that and believe that we are an average of those things. A few years ago, I kicked some people out of my inner circle and a short time later I experienced quantum leap results. I have challenged others who were struggling or repeating the same mistake over and over again to stop giving attention to this person or another and just focus on the legit sell/buy material I present them with for six months and see what happens. When they report back to me 6 to 12 months later they are amazed at how much their results improved.

Today we all want to stay connected to one another. We have a phone in our pocket and we will just call someone with a simple question instead of taking a few minutes or even weeks to think about it and come to our own conclusion. We get on social media and ask a question and wait a short period of time to read the responses we get. We want internet chat groups to feel connected to others who are “like us. ” Most people want, yet think they need this compassion.

The long road

When I learned legit sell/buy we didn’t have that. Cell service was spotty, and we had dial up internet. We didn’t have social media, YouTube or Google. I firmly believe this is why I became the best at sell/buy. I was isolated from the myths of the outside. This situation makes people feel lonely. This is compression, which makes us better. I was in that compression for almost 10 years. I was studying and implementing sell/buy. I was learning and having the “ah ha” moments and getting better each time. Some people think I came out of nowhere and blew up quickly, that is a false assumption this has been a long grind.

And you know what? I love the grind. It makes me better. This is why when people call me to shed light on the no depreciation theory, forecasting, cashflow and gross margin I take it on because it makes me a better marketer and a better teacher.

I have started posting some motivational mindset memes on the Mr. CattleMaster Facebook page on Mondays. Some get a fair amount of likes. I posted one that said “The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination.” It got very few likes. To me this was a great social experiment that proves people hate the grind, they want the answer given to them, instead of working on themselves to understand it.

Dismantling the myths

Like I said I will be dismantling some of the myths out there and shedding light on some common problems people have run into in the coming weeks.

This week the Value of Gain (VOG) is signaling this is a weight gain business. There are some relationships that exist that are not profitable. For example, heavy weight feeder steers are over-valued to fats, while lighter weight steers are a good buy against fats. There is a bit of a trough where VOG drops below Cost of Gain (COG) in the middle of the weight spectrum.

The markets

This week feeder bulls were up to 55 back. Unweaned calves under 550 pounds may have been only slightly discounted. Over that weight the discount gets steep in a hurry. Seven weights that were not weaned can quickly take a hit of 20 back.

The opinions of Doug Ferguson are not necessarily those of beefproducer.com , beefmagazine.com or Farm Progress .