I'm looking forward to seeing the auction report for Bassett, NE.  I heard there were some mighty frisky goings-on there today.  Like 8-weights at $108 or some such?  Actually, I'm not the least bit surprised.  We had worked our way back to being within $50 per head or so of profitability in the feeding sector.  Well, we can't have that!  REAL men lose $100 per head, right?  It's getting to be a badge of honor.  Either that or a badge of monumental incompetence.  Hmmm.  I can't quite get my head around which one it is . . . so confused.

I'm not kidding when I suggest that feedlots are becoming sensitized to these enormous losses.  It has been going on for so long that our lazy, uneducated, "self-esteem" culture is allowing it to be accepted - even in the allegedly "conservative" cattle culture.  Back in the day, if huge losses were incurred, whoever was in charge of marketing would get their head handed to them on a platter.  At the very least they would get a good, sound butt-chewing from someone that would spur them to get their act together.  These days, we aren't allowed to tell anyone that they are anything less than completely wonderful.  We're not allowed to give anyone a "failing grade".  We aren't allowed to even SUGGEST that MAYBE someone is incompetent and not qualified to walk the neighbor's dog, much less run a feedyard. 

This slavery to "self-esteem" is killing us.  Here's the deal.  If you suck at your job - and I mean REALLY suck - you shouldn't have particularly high self-esteem.  You should feel bad.  This is called "conscientiousness".  Conscientiousness is what drives people - or should I say USED to drive people - to improvement and eventually excellence.  Feedlot owner/managers?  You hearing me?  I'm talking to you.  Eye to eye, man to man.  Well, sort of.

I put a quote from Aristotle on the cover of the Bud Williams Marketing School workbook.  It goes like this:

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.  We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather, we have those because we have acted rightly.  We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."

If you lose money on cattle year in and year out and choose to do nothing to rectify that situation, if you drive a feedlot into insolvency through your own unnecessary ignorance and sloth, you're not a "winner", and you're not a "victim".  Anyone who says you are is lying to you.  Never forget, a friendly, back-slapping, grinning, patronizing liar is still a liar. 

Forecasters are killing the North American Cattle Industry.
"Global warming" is a complete fraud designed to advance the cause of socialism and enslave humanity.
Abortion is the murder of an innocent human being and is never justified under any circumstance whatsoever.
Every human being is a question, to which the ONLY answer is Jesus Christ.

Ann Barnhardt
Barnhardt Capital Management, Inc.
www.Barnhardt.biz
888-799-4577
Ann@Barnhardt.biz

Bud Williams Marketing, Inc.
www.BudWilliamsMarketing.com
877-799-4577
Ann@BudWilliamsMarketing.com