Action

I’m not really sure how it happened, but I get quite a few people contact me for advice.  Not just about cattle either.  I have a few that are chronic callers.  They call me A LOT, and never do anything.  They never buy any cattle to get started.  They never pull the trigger to start that great business idea they have.  They just call me and run idea of the week by me.  Some numbers are programed into my phone so I know not to answer.

I asked one of them this question this last weekend.  “Do you ever just get tired of talking about it?”  I got a bit of awkward  silence.

Seriously people, at what time to you just get sick and tired of talking about it.  When I was a kid all I wanted to do was ride bulls and raise cattle.  I didn’t just talk about it, I went and did it.   The world we live in is about action.  Thing is, if you know where you are going, and prove you can get things done, the world has a way of making a path to your door.  If all you do is talk about it the world has a way of beating you down.

I have many ideas why people probably never get started.  I’ll discuss three here

First is the fear of success.  That’s right.  Some people have been broke for so long they just can’t imagine anything else.  Success would push them out of their comfort zone.  Having success first means you will have to finish things you start.  You will have to become a person of action.  This will bring new responsibilities.  When you begin to make money and build equity your current group of broke thinking friends will push you out of their group.  New opportunities will come your way, and at first that is weird.

Second is the fear of failure.  I don’t need to spend much time here.  We all know this fear.  These are the guys in the coffee shops I have blogged about before.  The ones that sit there and brag about how their life could have turned out different if they took that one shot.  I guess there must be some value in having the opportunity to tell that story.  Maybe we all heard them tell is so many times, or we hear it from loved ones like grandparents or our parents that we have concluded that is where the bar is set?  Just yesterday I was driving down the road and I was thinking of how I used to make fun of mediocre, and found myself wishing people would at least strive to be mediocre today.  Yes I think we’ve sunk that far.  After reading everybody’s thankful lists on Facebook, and seeing/hearing about the black Friday chaos, yes we have become a society of degenerates.

Third.  We do not love small.  I wish I had a nickel for every time I told someone to keep working that job in town, and go buy twenty head of cattle to get started.  Live off your job and reinvest profits from the cattle to expand your herd, only to have that person scoff at me.  “I can’t make a living off 20 head.”   I sat at a town hall meeting this summer with our Congressman and heard a kid in his early 20’s tell our rep what a joke the beginning farmer programs are.  He can’t get enough money to buy land and machinery, and make a decent living.  I gave that kid an earful.  (talking like that makes you a kid.  His classmates that came from nothing had to join the armed forces.  We call them men/women)  If we gave this kid $1,000,000 to start a farming operation, my guess is he’d be out of business in 10 years, and probably declare bankruptcy on 1.5 million.   If he can’t make it work as a small part time gig, what the hell makes him think he can make it full time?  I started with 20 head.  Built up from there.  It took 10 years to become a full time occupation for me.  Big operations don’t just happen over night for most of us.  They start small, and grow.  Think about it.  It took your parents/grandparents a lifetime to get to where they are.

If and when you decide to try you will have failures, and successes.  That is ok.  We all need to get our nose bloodied once in a while.

Let It Burn

Last week I gave a speech about the economic impact an operation like mine has.  I went through some old pictures from when I started feeding cattle.  It really brought back some old memories.   It brought up a couple questions.  One, why did my girlfriend go through all that with me, and then agree to marry me?  Question two.  Would I go through it again?

Right now because of the drought many people are going through some rough times.  Those late nights where the worry keeps you up might be a good time to brainstorm on how to better manage for drought and any other adverse conditions.  And yes you could prepare better.  If you had done a good job prepping,  you wouldn’t be staying up at night.  This is something I know about.

Shortly after I started farming and raising cattle full time, we were hit with a drought.  It  caused a lot of anxiety and sleepless nights.  I was quickly faced with the reality that I was going to need to supplement my income.  Supplementing my income off and on was a regular occurrence in the beginning for me.   I tripped and fell on my face, which usually landed in a shit sandwich, more times than I care to admit to.  That’s life, and a lot of it was brought on by my own stupidity.

As I was putting the power point together for my speech I remembered all the tough times.  They made me who I am today.  Until about a year and a half ago I was not comfortable talking about it.

At the back door to our house I have a chair that I sit down in to take my boots off.  Some of the most important stuff that ever happened in my business happened in that chair.  I never realized it until last week.  I would come home after a really bad day.  Culling some cows due to drought.  Back in the days when I had a registered herd, lightning killed the “great bull calf that was going to get me discovered”.  Or my train wreck calves I blogged about before.  And I also mentioned in a previous blog there are family issues.  I remember baling hay on a patch that should have given me 70 bales and all I got was 13.

So here is the thing I want those of you who are struggling to think about.  I sat in that chair and cried.   That’s right.  I am admitting to the whole world.  I came home and cried.  And I mean like a little girl.  I cried so hard for so long I made a puddle on the floor.  I had, had it.  Life was too hard.  This cattle thing was to hard.  The deck was stacked against me.  All I ever wanted to do was raise cattle and it was to damn hard.  I was crying to quit.  Or so I thought.

My wife (girlfriend at the time) made supper for me.  I didn’t eat any of it.  We didn’t talk much on those nights.  Neither one of us slept much on those nights, even though she really didn’t have much of an idea what was keeping her up.

The next morning I made coffee, and laced up my boots once again and headed out the door.  I was to stupid to quit.  I was too stubborn to quit.  I was too proud to quit.  I WANTED IT TOO BADLY TO QUIT.

Last week I realized I wasn’t sitting in that chair crying to quit.  I was crying to keep going.  I was in pain.  My wife was in pain.  We spent numerous nights feeling that pain burn.  We didn’t know what else to do but let it burn.  If I had quit during those times, we would still be in pain.

Here’s the thing.  Pain is temporary.  If you press on it will go away.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe next year.  If you quit, it will stay.  So for those of you who are in pain right now, keep going.  You are already feeling the burn.  GET A REWARD FROM IT!

I wanted it too badly.  Raising cattle was all I  could ever think of since I was a little kid.  That and bullriding.  That is a long time to be focused on something, especially when you are young.  I will blog about focus in the future.  I also had a lot of desire, which I also will blog about in the future.  I will say this, desire is the starting point for all achievement.

So you are in the cattle biz.  You are struggling from this drought.  EMBRACE IT!  That’s right.  Embrace it.  Road blocks, challenges, set backs are there for a reason.  This is something I know a lot about.  The reason is to weed out the weak.  The posers.  The ones who don’t really want it that damn bad.

Have you ever listened to an interview with some rock star?  They ask him about his early days.  What shaped his career.  What was the motivation behind a certain hit song.  You seem to hear some story about living in some rat infested building with some junkie for a roommate.  Losing a best friend,  or something.  I’m telling you they let it burn.  They cried to keep going.  I talk to lots of successful business owners, and they all talk about their struggles from the early days.  Before they made it to the point of critical mass.  And I tell you they all have a passion you can see in their face when they talk of those struggles.

So if you are struggling from this drought.  CRY!  LET IT BURN!  Think about where you are and where you want to go.  Cry to keep going.  I’ll tell you something about this world we live in.  She has a funny way of making room for people that know where they are going.

Rope Skippers

It almost never seems to fail.  I talk to a ton of people who want to start their own business.  And as you could guess most of them are people wanting to get into raising cattle.  So many of them fall into a category that I call “Rope Skippers”

Rope Skippers talk like they are smart.  They know all the latest market info.  They know the trends.  And by gosh they can predict where the market is headed.

So why do I call them Rope Skippers?  Well, imagine a couple girls on a playground with a jump rope.  They twirl that rope round and round.  You can time it perfectly.  You can hear the snap, snap, snap, noise every time it slaps against the ground.  So now the Rope Skipper just needs to jump in, and,  start skipping rope.  Only they don’t.  Because the next time around will be a better time to jump in.  So they patiently stand there trying to time it the next time the rope comes around to jump in.   Only they don’t get in that time either.

I did not do that.  I just went into a sale barn one day and bought a few claves.  I went to another auction the next day and bought a few more.  When I sold those cattle I bought, I turned around the very next day and started buying the next group.  This worked out great for me because I was never victim to where the market was going.  I sold and bought back in the same market, allowing me to take advantage of the price spreads between weight groups at that very moment in time.   I know people that will sell cattle and wait a few weeks or months to buy back.  Only to have the market go up, killing their margin, wasting time, and not to mention it is kinda hard to make money without inventory. No one can time the market.  If they could that person would be very very rich.

So what usually happens to the rope skippers is the two girls twirling the rope get fed up waiting and leave.  We have a word for what happens to rope skippers…NOTHING

Yesterday a young fella I have been trying to mentor called me and told me he quit his J O B and started his own deal.  After years of skipping rope the bum finally did it.  He told me that in his first month his take home pay was four times as much as what he was making at his old job.  I really wasn’t surprised, but when you take that huge leap it is a big deal.  I’m proud of him for trying.  Time will tell if he really makes it or not.  Thing is, so what if he fails this time.  That only means next time he gets to start over a bit smarter.  NOTHING, is no longer happening to him.  He is making SOMETHING, happen.  So I decided to tell him last night what pressure really is.  I will share that with you another time.

Until then quit being a Rope Skipper, unless it is in the gym.