When Richard and I were listening to the audio of all the Bud Williams Marketing and Stockmanship Schools we attended for stories to include in “Smile and Mean it, the Bud and Eunice Williams Story,” we heard Dad say this during the 2012 Bud Summit in Coffeyville, Kansas. Most ranchers believe there are two different methods of marketing: what everyone already does (buy-sell) and then sell-buy marketing. Dad explains that’s just not the case!
Everybody who has anything to do with livestock is already doing the Livestock Marketing just like I say. The whole industry is doing the marketing just like I say. They just don’t know they are. Since they don’t know they are, they’re just screwing it up.
You can’t sell anything without buying something; and you can’t buy anything without selling something. So, we are already doing these things. The only thing is, we cannot make ourselves realize this because we only think of buying and then selling.
Every time you buy animals, you must sell something in order to buy those animals. They already sold and then bought. Every time we sell an animal, we buy something. When you take animals to the sale and sell them, you buy money. I’m almost sure you do, or I doubt you would take them there. Because, if you take them to the sale and don’t get anything in return, you will probably stop doing that.
If you sell them to a private party, I’m almost sure they give you money in return. So, we already sell-buy. If anybody can show me a situation where you don’t, I would like to see it. I don’t know of any, and I’ve been studying this for a long time.
So, we already sell-buy. It’s just that we have it in our mind we buy-sell, and we don’t want to let loose of that. We don’t want to admit we already do it, and all we have to do is improve on it. But, you can’t improve on something you don’t believe you do. That’s where the problem is.
You don’t have to switch over to anything. All you have to do is realize you are already doing it and just improve the way you are doing it.
Don’t look at Proper Livestock Marketing as, “We have to make a change.” We don’t have to change anything except our thinking. That’s all. Nothing else.
If you’d like to learn more about Proper Livestock Marketing, you can attend one of our schools or buy the book, “Proper Livestock Marketing 101.”