In this episode of Straight Talk with NDFB, hosts Emmery Mehlhoff and Alisha Nord visit with Doug Ferguson who owns a stocker/backgrounding operation in SE Nebraska and is the author of Doug's Market Intel. Doug teaches a cattle marketing school focused on helping people become Master Marketers in the cattle industry.
In this episode we talk about:
Interested in learning more about being a master marketer in the cattle industry? Check out:
Mr Cattlemaster blog https://mrcattlemaster.com
Information on Sell/Buy Marketing Schools: https://mrcattlemaster.com/marketing-school/
Doug Ferguson, BEEF Magazine https://www.beefmagazine.com/author/doug-ferguson
Doug’s Market Intel, Farm Progress https://www.farmprogress.com/series/doug-s-market-intel
Find him on X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/mrcattlemaster?lang=en
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Mr-CattleMaster-100068903720827/
Learn about NDFB at https://ndfb.org
Contact host Emmery Mehlhoff at emmery@ndfb.org
In this episode of Straight Talk with NDFB, hosts Emmery Mehlhoff and Alisha Nord visit with Doug Ferguson who owns a stocker/backgrounding operation in SE Nebraska and is the author of Doug's Market Intel. Doug teaches a cattle marketing school focused on helping people become Master Marketers in the cattle industry.
In this episode we talk about:
Interested in learning more about being a master marketer in the cattle industry? Check out:
Mr Cattlemaster blog https://mrcattlemaster.com
Information on Sell/Buy Marketing Schools: https://mrcattlemaster.com/marketing-school/
Doug Ferguson, BEEF Magazine https://www.beefmagazine.com/author/doug-ferguson
Doug’s Market Intel, Farm Progress https://www.farmprogress.com/series/doug-s-market-intel
Find him on X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/mrcattlemaster?lang=en
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Mr-CattleMaster-100068903720827/
Learn about NDFB at https://ndfb.org
Contact host Emmery Mehlhoff at emmery@ndfb.org
[Straight Talk theme music]
[00:12] Emmery: Welcome to Straight talk with NDFB. I am your host, Emmery Mehlhoff...
[00:17] Alisha: And Alisha Nord.
[00:18] Emmery: We are your Farm Bureau duo bringing you your competitive edge. Doug Ferguson joins us for this episode of Straight great Talk with NDFB. Doug owns a stocker backgrounding operation in southeast Nebraska. He teaches a cattle marketing school focused on helping people become master marketers in the cattle industry. He also writes a blog called Doug's Marketing Intel, published by Farm Progress and Beef magazine. In this episode, we talk about an overview of sell by marketing, how to make money with cows every year, and how your mindset affects your profitability. Join us for this episode.
[00:58] Straight Talk stinger
[1:01] Emmery: Today we have Doug Ferguson on. How are you today, Doug?
[01:04] Doug Ferguson: Good, Emmery. How are you?
[01:06] Emmery: Good. I have also my co host Alisha here, who grew up on an Angus ranch in Minnesota, so she's joining me. So why don't we just get started? Go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background. And I believe you built a ranch from the ground up. Is that right?
[01:23] Doug: I don't know if I'd necessarily call it a ranch maybe just quite yet, but, yeah, I did start my cattle operation from scratch. I had a pretty conventional upbringing, just like any other kid. Grew up commercial cow-calf, dry land, row crops. Did the 4-H thing, and everybody told me I needed to go to college, and college really wasn't a good fit for me. I did drop out. I had a good traveling partner back when I used to ride bulls. And so when I quit riding bulls, his dad called me. They had a small feed yard up in northwest Iowa, and he asked if I'd start buying cattle for him, which, yeah, that's that's a pretty good gig. You get to sit there and spend somebody else's money, get paid a commission check, drink coffee and tell lies to the other cattle buyers. I mean, sign me up, right? But excuse me. One of their requirements was I had to read this marketing blog that was written by Ann Barnhardt back at that time, and that's how I kind of really fell into Sell/Buy Marketing. And I had been buying some cattle for myself before then, but it was the material that was in the Sell/Buy Marketing that I learned is what allowed me to really start my operation from scratch and then blow that up into a full time occupation.
[02:44] Emmery: Let's just jump straight into what is Sell/Buy Marketing.
[02:48] Doug: Sell/Buy Marketing. If I was to give it the very short elevator speech, it is a real time cash flow reckoning. And to kind of explain that maybe in a little better detail, it's real time. So we're only dealing with today. So we look at the price relationships today, and we compare different classes, different weights of cattle to each other, and we figure out what we can sell and then buy back and it is the buyback that is crucial because it's the replacement is what allows us to capture our profit. So this works really simple when I explain it that way. Like with stockers or a feedlot type situation, if you are in a closed herd cow calf operation, your buyback is the calf that the cow will give birth to next.
[03:44] Emmery: My husband Caleb went to your school. He came back and explained the sell/buy and price relationships and all that to me, but I really didn't get a grasp on it until he explained it similar to a grocery store. So a grocery store has inventory and they know like a jar of mayonnaise, and then they make the money on the buyback. So when they buy back that jar of mayonnaise that they sold, that's when they make their profit. Is that a good way of capturing?
[04:15] Doug: Yep. You capture margin when you replace back in your inventory. It's interesting you bring up the grocery store. JCPenney did this years and years ago, back when he started his stores. And Sam Walton actually worked for JCPenney for a while. And Walmart does the same thing today, only they don't call it Sell/Buy Marketing. They call it like VMI for vendor management inventory. And so Walmart knows what they can sell the product for, so they tell their vendors, you're going to restock it at this price, which is really kind of neat. Walmart being as big as they are, they get to tell somebody, this is what you're going to sell it to us for. But as cattle people, we're price takers, we don't necessarily have that kind of leverage.
[05:04] Emmery: What are you looking at? If you're a producer and you're looking at possibly getting into this Sell/Buy Marketing, what is the first thing that you need to know?
[05:13] Doug: My ridiculous answer to that would be first you need to go through a sell/buy marketing class, and a good one. You're probably leaning more towards like, if I'm in an auction, what would I look for? The very first thing I will mention is it has to be something that you can handle. If you have a feed yard with highway guardrail fences, those kind of fences typically tend to be a little higher off the ground. Bawling three weights are not going to work for you. Crawl right under that fence and disappear into the neighbor's cornfield. If you have a neighbor with lusty libidinous bulls and he doesn't know how to fix a fence, you might want to run steers instead of heifers. So we got to take some of those things into consideration. And do you want to be in stockers? Do you want to be in cow calf? And when it comes to the stocker deal, I really like to look for cattle that I can add value to. You know, the first animal that pops into my mind would be feeder bulls. And it's kind of interesting here in southeast Nebraska where I live, we used to not see very many feeder bulls and now we're seeing an increase of them, seems almost like yearly. And I think that could be because producers are getting older. Some of the younger guys have full-time jobs, so just nobody's taking the time to put a "cheerio" on them at birth or that kind of deal. And some of it's going to be cultural. I've been buying a lot of cattle out of Tennessee and we've been getting a lot of feeder bulls on those loads. You know, if you go up into Dakotas, western Nebraska, if you have feeder bulls, you're probably a lousy rancher because that should have been taken care of at branding time. So that's going to be kind of more of a cultural and geographical thing, you know, I look for things that I can add value to, even on the cows. I will look for breeding stock that I can add value to the quickest.
[07:15] Emmery: Can you go into a little more by what you mean by add value?
[07:20] Doug: So there's different ways we can add value and one would be monetary value and that would be something as simple as castrating that feeder bull, buying the bawling calves that aren't weaned, weaning them, buying small groups, commingling making load lot bunches on the breeding stock. It could be calving the cow, selling the pair, or buying wet bag cows that are open and rebreeding them. And then there's the value of gain. And that is if the market is paying us to put weight on. And the way we determine that is the value of the gain. What that weight gain is worth has to be higher than what it's costing us to feed the weight on.
[08:03] Emmery: So for example, if you're taking a group of three weights and bringing them up to the next weight class, you want the amount of feed and the amount of yardage, all the costs in there to be less than what you could sell them for at the next weight class.
[08:20] Doug: It's not the sell price, it's the difference of what that value of gain is between the two weights. To go total math nerd on you here, if you were to take the gross price, the dollars per head of the next weight class and subtract the gross price of the weight class that you just bought, which you mentioned, the three weights. So that four weight gross price minus the three weight gross price divided by the weight gain. So let's just say it's 100 pounds. And so if those gross dollars are $150 difference in those gross prices divided by 100 pounds, you got a value of gain of $1.50. So as long as your cost of gain is below that, it will pay you to feed that weight on.
[09:11] Alisha: So I'm going to ask a question, kind of bringing it down to a different level. Well, this is Alisha, by the way, and thank you for joining us. So growing up, I was on a row crop and had cattle. And something very common when you come from that is you always hear you need to be on a diversified ranch to make money, or you will only make a profit every three years out of ten years in the cow calf operation. So what are your thoughts? Do you believe it is possible to profit consistently every year in the cattle industry without having another side business to support that operation?
[09:48] Doug: Not only do I believe it, I live it. You unpack a couple of things there, Alisha and I talk about this at great length in my schools, especially on the first day. You mentioned a cow calf guy making a profit three years out of ten. And that's a statistic that we hear over and over and over and over again. That eventually creeps into our subconscious mind through auto suggestion, which is just repeating something to ourselves numerous times. And once that reaches our subconscious level, it's almost like it gets set as an autopilot. And then without us even thinking about it, we will actually try to hit that target. And what happens is people will self-sabotage. So let's just take a year like right now. I mean, cattle producers should be making really good money just simply based off the inflationary value of the critters this year. So then your accountant tells you, oh, you should go buy a deduction. So then you go to the green paint store and buy a really fancy overpriced piece of equipment, and next year that high priced piece of equipment has a really expensive breakdown. So you might show a small profit this year, but then while you fix that piece of green paint next year, you're going to have a loss that self-sabotage happens that easily. So there's the thing about statistics.
And the other thing you mentioned is I heard the word diversified in there and I was taught the same thing. You have to have the crops and the cattle, and you make money on the cattle in the years, you're not making money on the crops. And in the other years, the opposite is true. And the reason I don't like that is there again, it becomes a set target. You're planning on one of them failing, and when you plan on one of them failing, guess what? One's going to fail. The best mentor that I ever had would actually talk about multiple sources of income. And that's kind of what I look for. So I try not to use the word diversified. I will use that MSI; multiple sources of income. The crops and the cattle should both be making money consistently every year. Otherwise, why have one of them?
[12:08] Alisha: That's really great advice and a very interesting perspective because I do think that self-sabotage is very prevalent, and it's something that you don't really think about until you sit and actually think about it. So I was on your website or blog and so that's where I saw the Law of Attraction and found that very interesting in how you think mentally and the type of attitude you have can actually affect how you make decisions. Is there anything as far as like the Law of Attraction that you want to go into and how that correlates to marketing in general?
[12:47] Doug: Oh, gosh, I could tell you stories for hours on that. But listen, we hear a lot about attitude. Somebody's got a good attitude, bad attitude, but we never really get into what it is. And when this was explained to me from a mentor that I had, he explained that an attitude is a combination of your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. And basically it's your thoughts that control your actions. Your actions are what gets you your results. So it all kind of starts with those thoughts. And I give several stories in my marketing schools. I'll give you one example of self-sabotage. But I was in this bull riding winter series years ago, like seriously half a lifetime ago, and I was in first place in those standings. Snd I'd ridden every bullet pen from top to bottom. Everybody knows I'm going to walk into that finals and win that thing. But then on the Monday of the finals, I have this thought pops in my head and it said, this would be really embarrassing if you screwed this up. Now, I had only got bucked off one bull all winter, but I got bucked off the first two at the finals. And I really believe, looking back on it now, it was because I was entertaining that thought that, "Oh my gosh, this will be so embarrassing if you screw up." That became my dominant thought. That's what I was thinking about. That's what happened. That Law of Attraction, that law of self-sabotage can work that easily. And this Law of Attraction doesn't care if you're thinking and trying to attract good things to yourself or negative things to yourself, it will deliver either one just as readily.
[14:29] Emmery: That is, I think, something that farmers and ranchers are almost the most guilty of. Is it's hard to find sometimes a more negative group than the group of ranchers or farmers meeting whenever they meet up, whenever they have time, is just talking about basically that victim mentality. And it's so easy to blame everything else. Like there's the weather, there's the markets. But really that idea of ownership and controlling your attitude, controlling your thoughts and how that is most likely a very overlooked first principle in being successful and being profitable at something.
[15:09] Doug:There's a lot of truth to what you just said. Sometimes sale barns can be the most negative environment you'll ever walk into, and especially if the market's going down. For that reason, a lot of times I don't hang out with other cattle buyers before sales. I kind of like to overhear what some of them are talking about, maybe in the cafe, because if I hear what they're talking about, I know what they're thinking. That environment can really drag you down and it can put you let's just go with the hippie term here and call it a bad vibration. There have been people that have gone through my marketing schools that have called me later and talked about it. And one of the ways that we've kind of found to work around that and stay out of that negative mindset is listen to podcasts on the way to a sale on your phone, whatever. Find some of these great motivational speakers or just something that's uplifting and then it gets them in that right headspace before they go to an auction.
[16:07] Alisha: So Doug, I have two questions for you, and I'll just start off with one. So do you have any advice for young adults that are just going to start off with college? And I know you said college wasn't your route, and so if you have other thoughts and opinions on to give to young adults that college isn't for them either, what is the most important thing to learn before going home to the ranch? Or knowledge seeking for those that they want to come back, but they know they need to gain some knowledge and experience. What kind of advice do you have for those?
[16:41] Doug: Wow, again, that's another one. I could go on for hours. That's kind of a time period in your life where we're trying to figure things out, figure out who we are. For some people, college is probably the way to go. For some of us, like me, it was not. And so just being able to know and understand that about yourself is probably a big step. Now, here's the thing, and I kind of share this with some of the middle school, high school age students that I get a chance to talk to in front of, is find something that you're interested in and study that. Learn a skill and get very good at it, and then you can monetize that later. So I don't care if it's raising cattle, if it's welding, anything like that. I mean, there's so many things that people can do. Now, you also mentioned going back to the family farm. I would be the fifth generation on our family's farm, but we have not crossed that bridge yet, and I'm in my mid 40s. If you think it's hard starting from scratch, try farming with family. I mean, that's tough. That is very tough.
One thing I would suggest to a young person is go get some work experience away from that family farm and do something on your own. And the reason I say that is because if you go back home too soon without accomplishing anything, you're going to be daddy's little boy or daddy's little girl, and you have no respect and nobody will take you seriously. And the other thing is you have to learn how to be able to make decisions. Because I've seen so many of these family operations where the old monarch makes all the decisions until the day he's 6ft under. And then you have adult children that are 50, 60 years old, never made a decision, and now they can't function without him. So having some of those and the other one that I always got to throw in here, guys, be careful who you marry. Find somebody that supports you, whether you're a believer or not. The Bible warns about having a negative spouse. I couldn't imagine trying to do this job with all the pressure and the stress that comes along with it some days and then have somebody nagging at you about it at the end of the day.
[19:07] Alisha: So I don't think my dad will listen to this podcast, so I'm going to go a little personal here. So my brother did go to college, but came immediately back to the family farm. And is farming and ranching with my dad right now. And those words couldn't be truer to me. And it's a struggle. I see their battles every day, the power struggle. And my dad making those decisions. And my brother, he just turned 30 now. He's created a family of his own. He has his second baby on the way and wanting to take over. But my dad is still the decision maker, and he is the one that makes those decisions. And it's very hard for my brother because he's wanting to, but there's definitely that power struggle. And my dad was kind of like, "Hey, if you want to do this, you need to come back." And so he did not go work for anybody else. He does not have any other job experience. And now my brother and I are close, and so we have those conversations of "What do I do? I feel like I'm constantly fighting with Dad over everything."
And so maybe let's go to that age range of they came right back to the family farm or ranch. They're 35 to 50 years old, and they don't have that experience in the marketing. And now they feel like they're very left behind and they also aren't getting to make any decisions. Do you have any advice of how to overcome that or different ways to do things to kind of mesh those differences? It's such a hard one, but that one hits home for me.
[20:48] Doug: I really wish I had something, just some kind of an epiphany or something to share with you, but I don't. Once you've gone down that road, I mean, you're down that road. So about the only thing that really pops into my mind is, is there some way that you can create your own niche? You could do something and start something on your own, on the side that doesn't compete or interfere with that family operation and grow that. But man, I got to tell you guys, I've sat in front of some of these classrooms and I see some of these father-son duos or some of them come with their mom, the kid, just the math. They get it. They light up. That light bulb comes on. They have that breakthrough moment. They're sitting there, they're scratching numbers, they're on their phone, they're comparing what they have in their inventory at home to the local cattle market. Oh, I could do these trades. We could make this money. And the old man's just sitting there, leaning back in his chair with these arms folded across his chest. And some days I'm just like, man, I'm glad I'm not in that car ride home. And I just wish I had something to tell you guys. But that's about the best I can do is try to come up with something you can do on your own. And that's going to be another tough like you said, two kids, then you're working full time. It's a lot.
[22:17] Alisha: Yeah. And then you feel kind of stuck because it's like you're already back full time. So you feel like you can't leave because your dad's number-one hired person and if you leave now, that throws in a whole new curveball of different things. But I like that advice of maybe trying to do something on the side that doesn't compete or interfere. That way you are in control of that. And then maybe that shows Dad or Uncle or Grandpa that you are competent and capable of kind of running your own side business. So maybe that gives them a little more incentive to try to let you take over and make some more decisions. It's just such a slow process, I feel like in the farming and ranching community because it is always done this way. This is how everybody's done it, this is how we've done it and it's worked out okay. It may not be always successful, but it's worked. And so I feel like they feel glued to something when it's worked. It may be not be successful or it hasn't failed, but it's worked. So why stray from that? And I think that's a really hard thing to break is something that's been so long-term that any changes can seem very scary when in reality it's not.
[23:34] Doug: Oh, yeah, you bring up a good point and then you start talking about change and things like that being scary. In agriculture especially, you start talking about the family operations. I mean, you got to use the word legacy and you got to use the word tradition, all that kind of factors in here. And I would like to sit here and tell you this and only time will tell if I actually follow through on it, but I would like to think that I'm at the beginning of a new tradition of not having traditions and trying to experiment and do some of those different things be adaptable. I'm the guy that absolutely hates technology. I resist it in any way that I can. I will resist it. But yet I walk around with a mini computer that has a mini TV in my shirt pocket, and here I am with earbuds talking into a microphone, looking at a computer screen like, you have no idea how uncomfortable this is for me. But we got to embrace those kinds of things. There's no getting around it.
[24:39] Alisha: Another question that I have. So lots of online bidding/buying going on since we're talking about technology. So with this higher cattle market, do you see more scams being prevalent and a higher risk for buyers with the market right now?
[24:59] Doug: It seems like we always hear about some kind of pyramid scheme or ghost scheme or something like mean, it's not new, but as far as, what do I want to call it, the Rafter brothers bidding you up online. I mean, they do that sitting in the sale barn. I've kind of given a guy here to a local auction a hard time a couple of years ago. He's bidding against the trash can. All you got to do is turn around, look over your shoulder, you realize nobody was standing there. So, I mean, there's different ways that those things take place, and it's nothing new. I think one thing about technology and some of these scams is we hear about them a lot quicker, and we hear about them in different parts of the country where before maybe we wouldn't have. And probably one big thing about that is you got to learn how to defend yourself. And sometimes that comes just from looking around and is there somebody over there bidding? And sometimes if there's a lot of internet activity at a sale, I'll just stop bidding and say, okay, let's let the internet buy one and see what number it goes on. When I say that, I'm very familiar. I mean, I've spent a lot of time in these sale barns, so I know a lot of different people's buyer number. So I will recognize the buyer number and it's kind of like, okay, well, yeah, that's so and so's buyer number, he decided to stay home and bid at home. I know those things. So then that gives me the confidence, yep, that there is somebody on that other in bidding, if that's kind of what you were going towards.
[26:32] Alisha Nord: Yeah, you just hear of online scammers for everything, anything and everything under the sun. And so I didn't know with higher cattle markets right now, if that's going to be more prevalent with online scams and kind of how to watch for that. And then one other question that I had. I don't know if this number is accurate. You probably know better about the U.S. cow herd, but I believe is it down around 3% from last year? Do you see these numbers still decreasing or do you feel like our numbers need to increase. What do you feel about the U.S. population for cowherd numbers?
[27:10] Doug Ferguson: This is one of those deals we could get into a lot of discussion about beef demand and things like that. We kept hearing for all these years that we're going to have to feed all these billions of people by what, 2050, I think was the year they were throwing around? And I probably got to preface this first. I love conspiracy theories just because the circular argument that goes around, around and you can either prove or disprove. So I love reading these conspiracy theories on the Internet.
But how many people have died during this COVID thing? And you're hearing about complications from the COVID vaccine and those kind of things, I probably ought to take that to the next step. So the Internet conspiracy theories are talking about population control. Well, right there we just blew the whole 2050 thing all to pieces. But that's what we've been taught for all these years. We're going to have to feed all these people. So if you're asking about the general population, you get into a much bigger... let's just say that goes way above my level of intelligence. But what I do see is you hear about beef demand all the time, and we've always got record high demand. I think up until now, I think the last one I've seen, beef demand was down, which doesn't really surprise me because the last time I was at a grocery store, beef tongue was like $9 a pound, and you could buy the little pork loin cutlets for less than $2 a pound. I mean, that's very hard for us to compete with. But here we are still competing.
I've seen numbers on imports reaching record new levels, which if our domestic inventory of cattle is down, I mean, it's got to come from somewhere, right? So that would suggest that then we could rebuild the domestic herd and the demand would be there to support it. And watching some of the female sales for the last ten months, there has not been any demand really to rebuild the cow herd, except in maybe some of the western states. But I watched some female sales here in the Central Plains regions, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and those female sales got a heck of a price boost, and that price stayed very steady regardless of age. So I think we're starting to see a hint at the demand that could possibly come going into these winter months. Now, as far as if you're asking about the accuracy of what the domestic herd numbers really are, I don't know if I trust the USDA a whole lot, but they just did a cattle census not too long ago when they paid us all those dollars per head during the COVID shutdown. That's what I call that was the cattle census when we all signed up to get that CFAP money. So I would say they probably got a pretty good grasp on it.
[30:11] Emmery: They've been trying to get that number for years and who knew we would be bought so cheap?
[30:15] Doug But yeah, right.
[30:18] Alisha: But one other question that I have that I feel like is pretty relevant to our listeners, the difference between raising cattle and marketing cattle. I feel like a lot of ranchers, they're very good at their breeding program, feeding, taking care of the cattle, doing all of that. But then when it comes to marketing, again, coming into that subconscious that, well, I should just naturally be good at marketing because I raise cattle when in reality raising cattle and marketing cattle to be profitable, I feel like, and maybe you have a different opinion, I feel like are two very different things. And so sometimes I wonder if as cattle producers, we need to take a step back and say, "Okay, I'm good at raising the cattle, but I need to maybe go learn or take a class or go back to school for a little bit to learn how to actually market my cattle correctly." What are your thoughts and feelings on that?
[31:19] Doug: Oh, I think you hit the nail right on the head. This cattle deal is what, like an $80 billion, $100 billion per year industry? And there is gobs of money, I mean, just piles and piles of money left on the table. Because when it comes to marketing, we have no idea what we're doing. Now, that doesn't mean that we're stupid. It just means we haven't taken the time to educate ourselves on how to do a good job marketing cattle. Just like you mentioned the other things of Animal Husbandry. We can start throwing range science in there. I'm seeing a lot more on regenerative agriculture here lately, so that tells me people are investing in education to learn those things. But what good does it do you if you're doing all these great things at home on the ranch and then you just load the cattle up, take them town, drop them off the sale barn and say, "Here you go." I mean, really, that's what some of these people do. They just... "Gosh, I hope this works out! I hope it's a good day."
There's a big difference between hoping and being confident. I mean, big difference, and I'm real big on this word awareness. And awareness is particular knowledge of a certain subject. So just raise your level of awareness and then you'll become more confident. So we mentioned earlier the value of gain and I'm going to pick on ten-weight feeder cattle right now. A ten-weight animal isn't bringing a whole maybe $50 ahead more than a nine-weight. You cannot feed that 100 pounds on for $50. So when you fed that last 100 pounds on that animal to make him weigh over 1000 and then you sell him, you just subsidized the buyer and we greatly appreciate it. I mean, don't get me wrong. I love it when people do that. But you didn't capitalize on your resources as well as you could have. That feed, which is very expensive right now, was just given away through the weight gain. I mean, you seriously legit gave it away. And that would be one way you would do it on the stocker side. On the cow-calf side, it would look like chasing weaning weights. So if you're the cow calf operation that strips and ships your calves and you're chasing these big weaning weights and you sell six-weight steers off the cow, and a five-weight is bringing just as many dollars per head as that six-weight there again, you put 100 pounds on for free. And this time of year, I will buy more six-weights and four-weights than I do five-weights for that very reason.
[34:00] Emmery: Caleb, my husband, went to your school, I think I mentioned that already, earlier this year. And we've already utilized one or two trades and have made money doing them, and it's been very valuable for our operation. Can you tell us a little bit about your school and when it's available and where it's going to be at? I believe you have two coming up this coming spring.
[34:26] Doug: Yeah, we just locked those dates down here just a few days ago, but we've got one on February 6 and 7th, and then our next one is on April 2nd and 3rd. And both of those will be held in Beatrice, Nebraska. In fact, most of my schools will be held in Beatrice. That's where we live. And being parents with an active young daughter like we are, it's kind of hard to get away and do schools in other places. We'll talk in the schools. One thing that really kind of caught me off guard is I've added what it's kind of just been dubbed the psychology lesson. And the thing that caught me off guard is how popular that has been. I get more positive feedback on the mindset aspect that I've included in my schools. We'll talk about inventory management. I call it the inventory pyramid now, and it includes people, cattle, feed and money and the value of those things to each other and how to utilize them. And then I will get into a lot of math on the second day where we will talk about stockker trades, fat-to-feeder trades, breeding stock trades, those kinds of things. There's a lot of that on the second day.
[35:48] Emmery: Is it a two day school then?
[35:50] Doug: Yeah, it's two day school. I'd say it's fairly intense. I try to keep it fast-paced, but we limit class size to 40 people, and I feel like 40 is a good number because it still allows for questions and we can have a little bit of discussion. I've done other schools where we've had over 60, and that was too many. It's like there's no way we're getting out of here at 5 o'clock with that many people asking questions, and it gets to be a long day. So we limit class size to 40, and it seems to work really well.
[36:21] Emmery: I think that's a great tool for, like, Alisha mentioned, the young person who may not be interested in college getting started at something like that, or somebody who might be in a family farm where there's room for a little bit of innovation. I think we really stop to think about it, the statistics are saying, I'm only profitable three years out of ten. And you're looking at that and you're subsidizing your cattle operation with crops or off-farm job or whatever it is, you really start looking at that. That should really cause a lot of listeners to listen up and think, "Hey, maybe there's something that we can do differently here." And I think you and your school are a great start to look at what those options might be.
[37:03] Doug: Thank you. I appreciate that. I just want to touch on one thing. You probably noticed I get very picky about words, but you mentioned statistics. Statistics just tell you what a group of people are thinking. It doesn't have to have anything to do with you, but you have to take the initiative and make sure you're different.
[37:22] Alisha: One other thing is you also write articles for is it Beef Magazine? So how do people stay up to date with viewing that, or is there a subscription? Or what's the best way to kind of stay up to date on what your weekly thoughts are?
[37:33] Doug: Yeah, they call it Doug's Market Intel. I think it's on Farm Progress's website. It's on Beef Magazine's website. You know, I'm not a big social media person, but a lot of people rely on that. So we do have a Mr. Cattle Master Facebook page, and we'll link those on there every Friday once Beef Magazine and Farm Progress update the link for that every week. And I know some know they'll follow me on Twitter or Facebook just for an easier place to find that article every Friday, but it's called Doug's Market Intel.
[38:08] Alisha: And then while we're wrapping up here, depending on where they're at in their life, whether they're 18 or 50, what are your one or two biggest tips or words of advice to give our viewers who are maybe struggling with anything and everything to do with just cattle marketing in general? And I know that's a loaded question for you.
[38:29] Doug: No, actually, I'm trying to think of a second one because you said two. But I got to tell you, the first one is just you got to believe in yourself. One thing I've kind of said in a private discussion with another guy that he absolutely loved is I mentioned that ranching will never be easy. Raising cattle will never be easy. There's always the numerous challenges that are out there, but it should be simple. And I think that's one big thing we tend to overcomplicate things, but I spend so much time just trying to get people to believe in themselves, and it kind of comes back to that self image, that self-sabotage, those negative thoughts that are always bouncing around inside of our heads. I don't mean to make this reduce it all the way down to the ridiculous, but we had guys with an eigth grade education, were able to build a business and provide for a family. Now we've got people with MBAs and PhDs corkscrewing operations into the ground. We got to learn the right things.
[39:35] Alisha: That's so true. And I think that's kind of a great place to wrap up and who's ever listening, kind of wherever you're at in your operation to just kind of sit back and think that no matter what situation you are in or where you're at in your life, that you can always make a change. If you really want it, you can just make a change. Whether it seems hard, but if you can get into that mental state of I want to be better, I want to change things, I want to be profitable, I want to learn that you can and it's more in that mindset.
[40:07] Emmery: Awesome. Well, thanks again, Doug, for joining us today, and really excited to hear from I know at least one listener who's already signed up for your school, so I'm looking forward to hearing how that goes, and I really appreciate your time today.
[40:20] Doug: I appreciate it, guys. This was fun. Thank you.
[40:25] Emmery: You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. To learn more about how to become a master marketer in the cattle industry, visit mrcattlemaster.com. You can contact Alisha and I @ndfb.org or email myself at emmery@ndfb.org.