It is strange to not be bombarded with campaign ads all day.  What a welcome change. Some people like change, yet I’d venture to guess most of us do not. 

I begin all my marketing schools with what some people have called the psychology lesson or mindset portion. I did this because I knew from the beginning that some people would struggle with the idea of some of the changes they would have to make in their day-to-day thinking when implementing legit sell/buy marketing. I have two goals for including this material in my schools: The first is to help them realize how to change a paradigm; And second is I am giving them a warning that when they do start changing paradigms the old one will put up a fight and the inner voice will be talking to them.

Change

A paradigm is a habitual thinking pattern, which in turn controls 95 percent of our behavior without us even realizing it.  Sounds an awful lot like “because that’s what we’ve always done it?” This is the reason most of us hate change.

All of nature’s living things are in perfect harmony with the environment they live in. Without any management they have enough sense to not have their babies in snowbanks. When things in their environment do change, they adapt or die, and this could lead to evolution. Human beings are the only ones who are not in tune with their environment, mostly because we created a system in which we operate.

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Things around us will change. We have a choice to change along with it or not. Some people tell us they have 50 years of experience when really, they have two years of experience repeated 25 times each. The only reason they have that second years’ experience is because they were forced to change how they do things or quit.

New ideas

In my schools I use Elon Musk as an example of change. I just can’t think of anyone better to use as an example because he is constantly changing paradigms. He is always entertaining and coming up with new ideas to program his mind to operate at a higher level. This is what the super successful people in the world do, chase new ideas and make them their new paradigm to perform at a higher level. This leads to the two most frequent reasons we hear that people attend our marketing schools: First they are curious and wonder if it will help them do a better job, and second, some realize what they are doing isn’t working and they need new ideas.

Now that the election is over some people are relieved with who won, and some are upset.  The ones that are upset are fearful their lives will change and become more difficult, while the opposite holds true for those who are happy with the results. Either way there will be some changes, we all know this.

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Bedros Keuilian mentioned this on a bonus podcast he released this week.  If Kamala had won he would have to get more creative with his business to work around the challenges she would have put forth, in order to remain as profitable and maintain the standard of living for himself and his employees. Whereas with Trump winning he foresees restrictions being eased and he will be able to expand his business easier and be able to give his team some raises.  Either way there was going to be a change.

What I heard is he realized there was going to have to be a work around either way.  I wrote on here recently that I’ve earned money ever since I started buying cattle no matter who what in the White House. The responsibility falls on the person running the business.

It's about the decisions made

 I am amazed at how many people feel like they have no control over their lives because of the results of the election.  No matter who the president of the United States is we will still remain the president and CEO of our own businesses. It is the decisions we make that will affect our success. These people are willing to just give up all control and responsibility of their lives, which is the worst thing they can do.  If they stick with this idea struggle is guaranteed.

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After most schools the folks that were there are usually excited about being in the cattle business and are ready to get home and figure out how they can begin to implement legit sell/buy marketing. But every once in a while, there may be a person who is still hung up on the thought of a market crash, even though I had shown them how sell/buy will get them through it.  In fact, I have noticed sell/buy works even better during a crash.

Earlier this year it settled in that these people always refer back to the years of 2008 and 2015. It hit me they are dealing with market trauma. Since this realization I have been studying and working on putting something together to help people through this. With sell/buy marketing we remain in control of our operations and are not at the mercy of the markets when these crashes happen.

Management changes

Some people out there will tell others that sell/buy is all about math and that change in management is not necessary.  This is why the failure rate is so high amongst the people who listen to them. There is a change in management with sell/buy.  No one can see it if they drive by that operation because the change is between the ears.

We can see a change in management when someone implements a new grazing system. Maybe they continuously grazed for decades and then all the sudden they are using pigtails and poly wires and are moving the cattle on a regular basis.  There was a change in management before we see the physical changes, it happened between the operator’s ears.

To say there is no change in management is delusional because the Law of Perputual Transmutation says that everything exists twice. First on the spiritual plane where we are only entertaining it with our imagination, then it manifests itself on the physical plane when we figure out how to implement it and get the desired results we are after.

This is what we are really after. When we chase new ideas and try to use them to replace an old existing paradigm we are seeking a greater and fuller expansion of ourselves.  We create or disintegrate or put differently we get better or we get worse but we do not stay the same.

It's about the mindset

When I started teaching this mindset material I did it to help people understand and battle through some of the self-talk they would face. Now with somewhere between 8 and 900 people having attended a school and the conversations I have had with some of them and the feedback I have gotten I understand the material even better myself and have come to realize I am guiding them into some big changes.

I hear this all the time that I changed their lives. While that is a great thing to hear, I only made them aware of things and shared new ideas.  They are the ones who changed their lives because they made a choice to take control of their business, they did the work and because of that they got the results. And all that started with an irrevocable committed decision.

The opinions of Doug Ferguson are not necessarily those of beefproducer.com, beefmagazine.com or Farm Progress.