Paul Ramirez: Welcome to another Western Ag Life Voices Podcast, where we celebrate the people that make up the rich fabric of the Western lifestyle. Please do us a favor and thank the sponsors, because without them, we couldn't bring you these free podcasts. Well, hello, Western Ag Life listeners. This is Paul Ramirez with the Western Ag Life podcast, and I got two fine gentlemen along with me this morning. We're going to go over, these are the creators and initiators of the league of their own auctioneer contest, and they've been through their battles. We had an episode, if you want to go back and watch that. We went over each of the battles that were going to take place. This is a new concept in the auction industry, where head-to-head battles, and then they're coming into a finals. And so... They have had their nine battles and they've come through a People's Choice Award where they've elected to bring in a couple other individuals that were in the contest that didn't ⁓ proceed through their battle. However, they are going to be in the contest. So we're going to get right to that. And so first thing I want to do is just give a little kudos to ⁓ my sponsor here. You guys drink our buckle coffee. Remember, that's the original cowboy coffee. Best coffee in the whole wide world telling you. Once you drink it, it's really, really hard to drink anything else. So I want to give kudos to them. And you can buy our buckles coffee direct from their website at our buckles coffee.com. You can also buy it at Whole Foods and you can also order hard buckles coffee from Amazon. So drink our buckles coffee. Well, good morning, you guys. What's going on this morning in Chaco, Oklahoma? Got a little rain last night or yesterday. So we're a little better move than what it was before So getting a little pond water. That's what we's after Absolutely. So ladies gentlemen who those of you that are listening here that don't see the video we have ⁓ Brian Marlin on and Sam stampers on here and they are the creators of the league of their own auctioneer concept a contest which is a new concept in the auction industry and so they've had their battles we're gonna go through that a little bit and so I just want to get started. know you guys are super busy and we're going to be there. Uh, geez, what week from today, right? That's right. Hey man, I'll be there in person. Excited room lined out there too. Brian says he's going to let me sleep there in the front porch. So I know we'll be there. So yeah. Well, you guys, you've been through nine battles. Contestants. So tell us how that, what, what was your take on that? It went by a lot faster than what we imagined. We're sitting here after nine weeks, and it feels like we just started, you know. But, man, it's been a blast. Some of the finest auctioneers in the world have come through the last nine weeks. And I tell you what, they've showed up and showed out for us each and every week. And we've sold cattle high as a tree through here. And a of these guys have come down here, and they've sold humps and lumps and horns and everything that they hadn't seen. A lot of them guys from the north. And they've had a lot of fun doing it. so it's been a blast and our customers have loved it. The communities loved it. It's just been a great deal. Amen. what, know, why don't you, Brian, why don't you just explain to some of our listeners that may be listening for the very first time and find out, you know, across this contest. Tell them a little bit about what your thoughts were and why you guys, the inception of this contest, the structure. Yeah, we just wanted to do a contest, something a little different that had never been done before. And we come up with this structure, doing head-to-head battles and doing a random draw, kind of like they do in the rodeo world, placing these guys against each other. And it's been really unique. Some of the matchups, I've heard it from few of the guys, say, you you could have picked these guys to match up any better than what we did. place some world champions against world champions and some top gunners that are coming up through the ranks against some of these older guys. And it's just been really a way to showcase true price discovery as far as the catalogs there. think we've got, or had, 19 of the top gunners in the world come right through Chacota, Oklahoma. And what's so unique about it is, take Chacota, I mean, it's just a small barn here in Northeastern Oklahoma. We average probably 500 cattle a week. through this whole deal. so when you say that to a lot of these guys, they're kind of shocked on how you could have operated a sale, you know, and had an auction contest, but it gave each of these guys at least two, two and a half hours a piece to showcase their ability. So you kind of got a true feeling of what them guys were about. And the neat thing was they got to sit down there and not just sell six, seven, eight graphs. I mean, they got to sell for an extended amount of time. And then all through the sale, sold right feeder cattle and then into the butcher cows and then also bred cows and take home cows, right? Yeah, and that's what one of the deals that as we've seen as we went through this contest, you take a guy that might have done really well his first hour, then come in a second hour or just the opposite. The longer they sell, the more relaxed they got, kind of the more true. you know, sound on what they actually sound like. lot of them guys, you know, get amped up in some of these contests and seven or eight drafts, they really don't have time to relax and sit in there and go to work. so this kind of allows them guys to do that. And that's kind of what we were chasing. We were chasing a laid back atmosphere where they could showcase their ability. And I'm sure you guys came to that kind of conclusion there that, you know, they sorted themselves off eventually, right? After a few hours of work. Yeah, I mean it was close. I mean a of these and that's the deal. I mean that was the biggest change that we heard from most these guys is you know going forward next year and we're going to implement it instead of having a you know yes or no vote on seven different judges, one being the clerk. Next year it'll be based more on a point system where at end of the day instead of showing a 6-1 loss or a 6-1 win or a 7-0 vote it's going to show a 102 to 84. So it's going to be a little more less of a sting for these guys when they're sticking themselves out there in a head to head battle. So that's kind of one thing we're trying to do that I think will be a positive change going forward. Yeah, for sure. Well, let's go ahead and get to it. So we went to week one. Here was your one week one champ. Andrew's a good hand. He's a guy that's been in the top 10 the last three or four years and up in Kansas there. Young man that just come in and did an extremely good job. And he'd been in the top 10, like I said, last three or four years. And he would be a front runner to be right there at the top to win the world championship this year, the WLAC. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I think he handles himself really well. You know, I judged him last year in the world, in the LMA, livestock marketing world. And he's just a class act guy, handles himself really well. And of course, pretty darn good auctioneer too. Yes, sir. All right, we're going to go to week two. Week two's winner. Yeah, this is a guy, man, we look forward to this matchup, you know, from when we drew it. And I tell you what, this man right here did not disappoint. He came in here and, just 10 minutes into the sale, it felt like he'd been selling here for 10 years. I mean, he just acclimated right to the setup and to the catalogue we had. And just, man, he just fit right in. And it just felt like he'd been here for years and years, and he'd been here for 10 minutes. And I feel like that's anywhere he's he would go, he would fit in the same, just a very versatile auctioneer out there, professional and classy as they come. Joe Don't Go. And certainly he has experience level that, you know, some of the guys, mean, he's probably been a champ longer than some of these guys you have in this contest have been alive. So yeah, absolutely. brought, he brought, he definitely brought it. ⁓ He was a class act and of course he's a consummate professional that you would want to buy in the microphone. Our week three winner, ⁓ Jared Miller. It's not going to be a week three winner in the contest. won the contest, however, he's not going to be, he's not coming to the finals, correct? Yeah, that is, you want to go ahead. That's one thing I do want to make known that Jared had come to us right after he had won a couple weeks out after that and knew that he had kind of committed to a bull sell and that was a first time customer. As a man, I hate to put you all in a bad, bad position, but I really need to do this. I mean, know, there's there's I wanted Jared in it. I wanted Charlie Cummins in it and Charlie told us what he lost. He said I'm gonna take the bullsail. I've got a guy that's going to fill in for me. So I mean, I knew we weren't going to get Charlie if he got beat. So it was just one of them deals. But Jared Miller is a very, very classy guy, a past world champion and someone that did an excellent job and beat one of the top gunners in the whole whole contest. So I mean, I hated he couldn't come to the finals, but That was another reason why I'm glad we had the people's choice to slide another guy in in the end. Sure. All right. Now we're going to week four, right? And our week four winner, no other than Justin Dodson. This man right here, I mentioned class a while ago. This is a, this professional and classy of a gentleman as you're going to find out here behind the microphone and just stepped in here and again, just messed right in and sold some cattle. There that day that it just blow your socks off how high some cattle got that day and then him and Jason both You know done an excellent job, but it's Justin He was operating that day and he had he had to put on the gas pedal right here And it showed and looking forward to having him back Chelsea these cattle in the finals here on the 11th He'll do an excellent job for sure talk about consummate professional and experience. I mean those are things and he handles himself Doesn't matter what contest he's in. He's always floats himself right there up into the top of that and it doesn't matter what judges or what format he's usually Somewhere there up in the top and so yeah class class act week five winner young gun young gun blind lots, you know kind of got a voice of his own and someone lives right up here in Edna, Kansas and kind of watched him grow up and actually out I was selling the day he got out of auctioneering school and in Billings and come down to Benito, Oklahoma and Mike is dead. He's one of the main buyers there was and ⁓ they allowed the blame to get up there. And I mean, this kid just he blossomed in a hurry and every contest he's ever been in, he's been right there at the top. And I mean, just ⁓ another classy individual got a voice like no other. And as far as sitting there all day and smooth as silk, this young man right here can roll now. He's good. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, class class act for sure. All right, our week six winner, Dakota Davis. Dakota, ball cap. I talked about earlier, this guy right here, I call him a chameleon. He can fit in anywhere he goes. He can sell cattle down in Arcadia, Florida if he wants to, or he can go to Billings, Montana and sell them up there. This is as versatile of an auctioneer as you can get. And it showed here this about that day that he was here. And ⁓ looking forward to ⁓ the finals with him. And it's like saying we'll have a diversified set of cattle. You know, these guys that are going to come back for that final three, if he's lucky enough to be one of them, we're going to sell him from a butcher cow to a video lot. So it's going to allow these guys to really show off their versatility. And that's something this guy really is an example of right here. And so looking forward to that from Dakota. If you go back and watch, the head-to-head battle with Dakota and Lynn, Dakota changes his chain about three times that. early that day he was blowing and going and then when he got into the cow cell he kind of slowed down and when he's talking about being a chameleon this young man right here I worked for him every Thursday and every Wednesday before we changed sell days but as far as knowing true price discovery the knowledge and the value of what one's worth and taking care of a cell barn in general this young man right here has taught me so much in the auctioneering world right here he's good man. Amen, amen. We're going week seven another young gun. Yeah, this boy right here, I didn't know how he was gonna weather the storm. He drew in tough, he drew in against Kenny Wilcox, the world champion and Kenny's as good as there is. But Jase coming from Billings, he did an excellent job. I didn't know if he'd know value, so what's some of these, you know, these long horn cross and then Humphrey Bramers and we kind of laughed about it. But Jase just blended in there and did an extremely good job and sit down and being the international champion. I've been in the top 10 numerous times. He's a front runner again to try to win the world this year, but he's a good guy. Comes from good blood lines. His dad, Ty, was a world champion. Grandpa, know, mean, he's the real deal right here now. Yeah, he's blue blood for sure. Yep. He'll be a contender there next week for Darnshire. All right, then one more seasoned veteran here. Yeah, Russell stepped in here and this guy just, he felt relaxed the whole time. He was sitting in here and not many of these guys has really just felt uptight, you know, but this guy just sat down there and I'm talking about just rolled to him and you never felt any nerves come up in his mind. And I tell you what, we talked about knowing value. He set some cattle in behind the money, but it did not take him long to get to where he was going. And so he kind of operated a little bit different than most of these guys had when they came in here, but it really worked for him and came away with a big win and looking forward to having him back as well. So just to shoot up a contender right here. And really thinking back of all the guys we've talked about so far, I don't know how you bet against any of them. This is one of them right here. just, he's got an excellent chance. ⁓ yeah. I really, ⁓ fortunately that day I was able to watch a lot of that contest. Yeah, he really set them down there and he really went to him, got after it. Excellent. And he's excellent season doctor here. Of course, the world champion auction here too. Speaking of world champion auction here, we're going to bring in the winner of the last contest. Number nine there. ⁓ You guys had a little battle trying to get him to show up. Yeah. Yeah. Kyle layman, ⁓ had a little trouble kind of getting someone. told Kyle he was kind of a must've been a bad cat because two other guys opted to cannot come. But now at this time, either of these other guys not being able to show up a Jacobs world champion and 23 won it in Florida. If I remember right, uh, I knew he would sit in well in this contest. He, uh, he sells from Tennessee, Houston, selling them one at a time. And, uh, man, this guy can just, he's, he is, he's just a good, hand. I mean, that classy, classy guy. Yeah. Really easy to listen to too. Yes. Yes. Excited to see him back. All right. So that was, uh, those were our battle winners. And then you guys had a people's choice. Explain that a little bit about how that worked, Yeah, I mean, in the beginning, we had nine weeks, nine winners. That was our original plan. We draw back, put them all in a pot, and the nine consolation guys would get voted in. The guy with the highest amount of votes would come in as your tenth guy in the finals. It just so happened with the bullseye deal with Jared and Charlie, we ended up taking two guys. So... We had some guys that opted not to come back and so I think we had four guys to vote on. Two of them ended up, we took Andy Boehmoster, he had the highest amount of votes. And then Kenny Wilcox, world champion, would have been the last guy. He was second in the people's votes. So both of them guys got through the people's choice and that completed our top 10 for our finals. Amen. So next ⁓ week from tomorrow, we'll be battling it out right there in Chacoa, Oklahoma. Tell us a little bit what's going to happen next Friday. Let's go ahead and start next Friday there and with your banquet. And once you give us a little bit of the lay of the land on what's going to play out there. Yeah, yeah, you bet. So 10 o'clock there on Friday, we're actually going to go ahead and have a regular sale and we'll sell all the kids and yearlings that are not consigned for Saturday. Kind of free up some pin space there. We will roll all the cows over to Saturday. So all the butcher cows, all the bread cows and everything that comes in on Friday, we'll roll over to that Saturday sale there. Finish up there. We'll probably be done by one or two o'clock here on Friday. And we'll fast forward going into the ⁓ banquet. We're going to start at six o'clock and we'll have dinner there for everybody. And we've sold a lot of tickets and a lot of guys coming there for that deal. We'll have a live band and. and we'll sell a cow cud after we draw for order and draw for our pots as well. So there's going to be a lot of entertainment there that night and it'll be fun and a lot of familiar faces and it's just going to be an exciting night. Amen. let's talk. So we've got Friday night done. Let's talk about Saturday. What's going to happen there Saturday? How's that going to start out and play out? We've got one of the biggest days that we'll have ever had here at Chacota. We've had bigger sales, but we've never had sales with this many cattle of this much quality. We're going to sell some some pears and some red cows that are just as nice as you're going to see anywhere in the country. Got some lot of northern style red heifers and some cows and pears and also got some video lots that we're going to kind of work on that day as well. But before we get started with the sale 10 o'clock, Mr Bubba Rutherford is going to come in and he'll have sermon for us. We're going to have a little church service here before we get kicked off for the competition. So that's something that's going to be pretty neat. I know Bubba, came up and judged one of the weeks for us. I don't remember which week that was, but man, he came up and what a good man he is and had a lot of kind words for us. it was, you know, we're both ways. We're big fans of his. And so we asked him to come back up here and be a part of this. give us like say a short sermon there for get kicked off. I think I think everybody will enjoy that. And and then so so Brian a little different. Why don't you explain this a little different than the head to heads? This you are going to have a matrix or there's going to be a judging criteria that the judges and then there's going to be a calculation of scores. Yes, so forth. They'll get these top three right. You're going to bring three back. Yeah, well each one of them have a scorecard very similar. A lot of these contests. We'll have six judges in house and then the clerk will still be judging also. We so yeah, it'll be a matrix of different categories and we're going to try to keep it as simple as we can. But yeah, we'll score each one of them will throw the high end the low out so it's going to be more of an average of what the middle kind of middle scores are to make it as fair as possible. And then and then we're going to come back with the top three and we're to let them guys. The first round we're to let them sell about 20, 25 drafts apiece. And then when they come back on the top three, we're going to let them hopefully sell about 30 minutes apiece, a couple of loads of video cattle to kind of really showcase their skills from a butcher cow to a bread cow to then a load lot of yearlings. So that's kind of what we're chasing. Hey man, so and then you'll have, you're going to, there'll be three, three winners. You to about the prizes and the money and. Yeah, pay out $50,000, $25,000 is going to be to the top man, 15 and 10 for second and third. And so we'll 50,000 paying out. I believe it's the largest payout in any contest up to this point. So we're really excited about that. And something else to note too, you know, all these weeks that these guys have came, we've already paid out $13,500. through this process. We paid each of these guys, if they was lucky enough to win, paid them $1,000. And the guys that did not win, we paid them $500 for coming. So we've already paid out $13,500. And, ⁓ it's a total payout of up over $63,000. know, we're fortunate to be able to ⁓ acquire the funds to do this. And we've got a lot of people to thank. for that and there's been one of them sitting here beside me. This man's worked his tail off right here getting the dollars gathered up and then we put it all towards the pot, you know, and every dollar that we've raised is going right into this competition. So it's been good and a lot of dollars can be handed out still yet. Amen. Yeah, that's going to be exciting. I'm looking forward to it. Well, I'm going to let you guys go because I know you got plenty to do in this next week. And so, yeah, just ⁓ want to I want to give you guys a tip of the hat there. I know I put on an auctioneer contest. It's an arduous undertaking and you're only going to make a couple people happy, unfortunately. But that's not why you're doing it anyways. You're doing it for the whole in which I think you guys are doing a fantastic job. I'm excited. You want to talk a little bit about what you maybe kind of got going, Brian, there for next year and what's going to Yeah, Friday night we're going to break the news to everybody on kind of You know, I'd say you need to check in, next year we're running the field. There's going be 66 guys. Uh, we're going to travel to 33 barns across the nation. Uh, you're going to spill all the base. Yeah. Yeah. Hold back with everyone. know I put you on the spot for the final. It's going to be good, but, it's guys, it's, it's going to be a big, payout. I mean, we're chasing big dreams. say, yeah. And you guys are doing them. Yep. What was your guys's, uh, you know, I mean you guys had, what was your slogan there? Build it and they'll come, huh? Yeah, they're coming. They're coming. That's it. The biggest problem we have right now is trying to sort through and figure out who we're going to get. And we've got a game plan on that next Friday night. You'll hear that kind of what we're going to do to allow everybody to have a shot at getting in. So it'll be good. Amen. And then too, it's something that we're reminiscing we didn't talk about here is that it's going to be broadcasted, right? All day long. And you're going to broadcast the finals too? Yes. I broadcast it through our Facebook there on Facebook live there and also through DV options and sign in and get approved on DV options too. If you're going to be watching the sale, you're more than welcome to buy some cattle through DV and watch the sale at the same time. Like I said, we've got just a ton of really, really nice consignments of cattle. At the end of the day, that's going to be the main goal. Next Saturday is making these customers proud. and selling cattle as high as we can. know all these auctioneers coming will do so. But at the end of the day, that's what we're after is achieving true price discovery on these consignments that we got coming. And it's going to be fun. Hey, man. Hey, I'm let you guys go. I'll see you next Thursday or so. And so I'm looking forward to it. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to wrap this up. We've been on this morning here with the league of their own initiators there, Brian Marlin and Sam Stamper.