You Don't Need a Bull to Sell One
You Don't Need a Bull to Sell One
By Nic Nelson - Head Softball Coach - Lake Land College
Because of the success I have had in coaching, people are surprised to find out that I did not play sports in college. In fact, I was an Animal Science major and went to college on a livestock judging scholarship.
After graduating from Illinois State University, I taught high school agriculture and coached girl’s softball and volleyball teams. I then went to Lake Land College where I taught Animal Science and coached the livestock judging team. But what I really wanted to do was to manage a purebred Angus cattle farm. So in 1980, I quit teaching to become the manager of a small Angus farm in northern Illinois. If you look at any successful business or, for that matter, any sports team, I have found you will find one core element which leads to their success. In the purebred livestock industry that core element is sales. If you cannot sell your product, it does not matter how good it is. If you do not have the ability to sell your bull and cows for a profit, you will not be in the cattle business very long. Selling is one thing I became very good at while working at Engelbrecht Angus Farms.
Now here is a little lesson in animal science: the gestation of a cow is 9 months. In the Midwest most farmers like to start calving in March when the weather is good. So you do the math, if you would like to have your cows calve in March, then May 15th is the start to your breeding season. Every year, the first day it rains is around May 15th, and it is too wet for farmers to work in the field. We would start getting calls from farmers looking for a bull to turn out to pasture with their cows. One morning around 6 A.M., I was at the farm getting ready to start the day when I received a phone call from a farmer looking for a bull. I told him I had two. One cost $1,500 and the other was $2,500. He asked if he could come over and take a look. I said sure, but I had a meeting and would not be available until after lunch. I asked if he could make it around 1:00. He said no problem and would see me after dinner (for those of you from the city that means lunch). After hanging up I went out and hooked up our truck to the cattle trailer. Sid, the young man that was working for me at the time, asked what I was doing, to which I replied, "I need to go find a bull". See - in reality we did not have any bulls left to sell, but I knew this: the farmer was going to buy a bull that day, and I was going to make sure it was from us, because the one thing I had learned in my years in the cattle business was the concept of repeat customers. If the customer is happy with the bull he bought from you, you would be the first person he would call the next time he needed a bull.
So off I went to find a bull to buy. Now, there were several places I could have gone, but what I did was drive about an hour away to one of our customers who bought breeding stock from us. Now you need to realize that selling a breeding bulls in central Illinois is not the easiest thing to do. So when I showed up at Dave's place and asked if he had any bulls to sell, needless to say, he was excited. See, he was just getting started in the purebred business and had not yet developed a reputation for high quality bulls for high dollars. I told him I was out of bulls and needed to buy one to have around to sell. He had 12 bulls ranging in price from $850 to $1,500, most of which came from breeding stock we had sold him, so they were our genetics, which was very good.
After visiting for a little bit (something you do as part of the sales game when dealing with ranchers and farmers), we got down to conducting business, and I bought a bull for $850, loaded him up and headed back to the farm. After lunch the farmer who had called earlier that morning looking for a bull showed up. As he got out of his truck I walked over and told him that he was going to be mad. I know I had told you I had two bulls for sale but another farmer had come and just left with the $1,500 bull, so all I had left was the $2,500 bull. I continued the sale saying, "So this is what I’m willing to do. If you like the $2,500 bull I will take $500 off and you can have him for $2,000." Which is what he did and everybody was happy. I made a sale, the farmer got the bull he wanted, and Dave, my customer who bought breeding stock from us, made some money. But more importantly that farmer came two more times over the years to buy from us again.
By now you are asking yourself what, if anything, does this have to do with softball? It is all about obstacles. I could have easily let the obstacle of not having any bulls to sell get in the way of making money but instead I figured out how to overcome my obstacle of not having a bull to sell and make money for the farm which made my boss happy.
My college coaching career started at Heartland Community College in Normal, IL. In 2007, when then Coach Shae Wesley asked me to be her assistant and help her start the new softball program there. We had no field, equipment or one single player. Our first obstacle was to convince 17 players that Heartland was the place they needed to be. I remember on recruiting visits walking to the end of one of our buildings and pointing to a cornfield and saying, "See there, see that cornfield? That is where we are going to build the nicest softball stadium that you will never play on. But if you come here, you can bet that we will make sure you will get everything you need to win."
Coach Wesley and I look to my Elite Softball program I ran to find players. These were players I knew, girls of great character, work ethic, with a quest for knowledge and discovery and looking for a home to play. I believed in my cattle genetics and I believed in my Elite Softball program. Just like Dave, my customer I bought the bull from, all came with their own obstacles. They all wanted to play NCAA D1 softball and for whatever reason and none of them were getting recruited very hard. Coach Wesley was a great coach, and I either made or owned most of the equipment we needed. Oh, I forgot to tell you we did not have a gym either, so we got them all memberships to a local gym where they could work out. Every day I would find different fields for us to practice and play on. These players were hard nose tough girls that got hurt diving, running into fences, or each other, to catch balls. So there was someone hurt all the time. At one point we only had nine kids healthy enough to play; another obstacle, so we picked up one of our Heartland soccer players and added her to the team.
Talk about obstacles, we had them all, but even through all those obstacles, Heartland College, in its very first year to ever have a softball program, came in 3rd at the 2008 NJCAA D2 National tournament.
The very next year, that same team with four new players we recruited, went on to become the National Champions. That was even after the obstacle of our All-American pitcher and starting catcher leaving after one year to move on and play at NCAA Division 1 schools.
We have the option to choose to let obstacles stand in our way or choose passion, hard work and a challenge. Yes, each of those players wanted to play NCAA Division 1 ball somewhere but nobody was calling. Coach Wesley and I would have liked to have been the coaches at Arizona, but those jobs were not open and others did not hire us. So Heartland was the answer for all of us. This is where we were going to make it or not. So we all chose passion, hard work and a challenge and it paid off in a big way for each one of us. In the end, most of those players from those two teams went on to sign NCAA Division 1 contracts to play on. Coach Wesley is now the Head Softball Coach at Appalachian State University, an NCAA Division 1 program in North Carolina.
When you really look at obstacles is what makes life rewarding and fun, the bigger the obstacles to overcome, the greater the reward. And boy what great stories do we have to tell about our Heartland experience.
Now I'm the Head Coach at Lake Land College and that is all I do, deal with obstacles. The first obstacle is dealing with the title of Junior College. Now where do you see junior in any college name. All two year institutions have the name of either Community College, or just College. There is no college anywhere with junior in its name, and you need to realize we do not think we are junior to anybody. (Yes, I'm a little touchy about that one.)
As I talk about obstacles I want you to remember my customer Dave who I bought the bull from. He had an obstacle of being new to the business and not yet having developed a reputation to be able to sell high quality bulls for high dollar. Over the years he keeps improving his heard and getting better, and today he is one of the top Angus breeders in the Midwest. It is the same for players who attend two year colleges who all are dealing with their own obstacles whatever it might be, too small, too heavy, too slow, not strong enough, overcome an injury, improve their academics (Just so you know LLC has been selected an Academic All-American team for 7 years in a row.), afraid to go to a big school, does not know what they want major in, did not get the 4 year offer they wanted, need to improve softball skills or the biggest reason, they just got over-looked. There are a ton of reasons why players go play for a two year college. What these players are not willing to do is settle for anything less than the goal of playing at a four year college. They refuse to listen to others that say they are not good enough, or what I like to say, "Not smart enough to realize it can't be done," which I think is a good thing. What they are doing is tackling their own individual obstacle(s) head on, in hopes of reaching their final goal of playing at an NCAA Division one program.
Last year a four year college was passing through Mattoon on their way to Florida for their spring trip. They called to see if they could stop and use our field to practice on. I was excited to be able to accommodate them. I told the coach we would be finished with our practice at 3:30, and they could have it at that time. Well, always the salesman, I made sure that we ran late with our practice. Why? Because I wanted that coach to see our team practice in hopes that they might like one of my players and recruit them. When they finished their practice it was easy to see they were not very good, and if they would have been interested in any of our players I do not think, in fact I know, none of our players would have been interested in that school. They had a player on their team who played on the same summer team as one of our players.
As they were talking to each other, their player was telling her how impressed she was with our team and our practice and said she wished she was on a team as good as ours. Our player said to her that she should have come here to play. In which she responded that there was no way she would go to a Jr. College (There's that word again). I do not understand that thinking. I knew this player and knew if she would have went the two year route she would have made it to a winning four year program.
What was her obstacle? Pride, because she thought it was beneath her to attend a "Junior College". Instead she was willing to play at a losing program just to say she played at a four year school. Does that make her a bad person? No, not at all, she was just willing to settle for less and was happy with it. My player, on the other hand, wanted more and was not going to let any obstacle get in the way of her goal to play at the NCAA D1 level. She worked hard to overcome her obstacle, which was not academic in fact she was a pre-med major with a 4.0 GPA. Her obstacle was BFS, getting her body bigger, faster and stronger. She worked hard on becoming a better hitter. By going the two year route she was able to play all the time and work on her weaknesses. Many times players, like her, at four schools do not get that opportunity and end up not playing much or quitting. That player is now starting at an NCAA D1 winning program in New York.
Obstacles are as big or little as we make them. As I had mentioned I used to teach high school agriculture and not just at any high school, but at the smallest high school in Illinois. It was Bellflower High School where we only had 52 students in the entire school. One of my students was a young man named Steve Giertz. Steve was a member of my livestock judging team that finished third at the National FFA Livestock Judging Contest in Kansas City. He was smart, but a mischievous kid; you know the type always getting into trouble but in interesting, fun and unique ways. Steve is just turned 50 (although I still think of him as the 16 year mischievous kid), and a very successful famer and livestock breeder near the Quad Cities up northwest Illinois. Last week, another one of my former Bellflower students stopped by my office at Lake Land to inform me that Steve had a terrible farm accident in June and lost a leg. Talk about obstacles. It had been years since I had seen or even talked to Steve, so I decided to give him a call to see how he was doing and let him know that I was thinking of him.
Honestly, I was a little scared about the call. I did not know what to expect. Was he going to be down, bitter or just mad at the world? What happened was one of the most upbeat, enjoyable and uplifting conversations I have ever had with anybody. It had been three months since the accident and the day before I called he was able to stand up for the first time with the aid of a prosthetic. He said that the only obstacle he was facing was trying to decide on whether to go with the $500 peg leg or the $50,000 computerized prosthetic. He thought a peg leg would be cool (In reality I think he just wanted to become a pirate and talk in a funny accent.). As we talked our conversation switched to sports, he talked with pride of his son who is playing college baseball. He also mentioned that he followed our team and had heard of our success and asked how my LLC Softball team was going to be this year. He then told me he was on the school board of a Catholic High School across the river in Iowa and that they had a really good softball team that had a player I should be recruiting. After 20 or 30 minutes I realized I had called him to pump him up, but instead we spent most the time laughing about old high school stories, a $500 peg leg and him trying to help a softball player get a college scholarship.
Steve had every right to be bitter and mad at the world, but instead chose the passion for life, hard work and challenge instead of giving in to the obstacles of losing a leg. By the way, we are recruiting that player now.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to do and be a part of, many amazing things in my life. When I look back at all those opportunities they all came with great obstacles and that is what made them so amazing. At practice the other day I was talking to my players about obstacles and I told them this, "The one wish I have for each of you is that you would never become so smart to realize it cannot be done. So the next time you do not think you have the right equipment, a good enough field, the nice looking uniform, not being recruited by a big school, or feeling like you don't have a leg to stand on, remember, “You don't need a bull to sell one.”
Because of the success I have had in coaching, people are surprised to find out that I did not play sports in college. In fact, I was an Animal Science major and went to college on a livestock judging scholarship.
After graduating from Illinois State University, I taught high school agriculture and coached girl’s softball and volleyball teams. I then went to Lake Land College where I taught Animal Science and coached the livestock judging team. But what I really wanted to do was to manage a purebred Angus cattle farm. So in 1980, I quit teaching to become the manager of a small Angus farm in northern Illinois. If you look at any successful business or, for that matter, any sports team, I have found you will find one core element which leads to their success. In the purebred livestock industry that core element is sales. If you cannot sell your product, it does not matter how good it is. If you do not have the ability to sell your bull and cows for a profit, you will not be in the cattle business very long. Selling is one thing I became very good at while working at Engelbrecht Angus Farms.
Now here is a little lesson in animal science: the gestation of a cow is 9 months. In the Midwest most farmers like to start calving in March when the weather is good. So you do the math, if you would like to have your cows calve in March, then May 15th is the start to your breeding season. Every year, the first day it rains is around May 15th, and it is too wet for farmers to work in the field. We would start getting calls from farmers looking for a bull to turn out to pasture with their cows. One morning around 6 A.M., I was at the farm getting ready to start the day when I received a phone call from a farmer looking for a bull. I told him I had two. One cost $1,500 and the other was $2,500. He asked if he could come over and take a look. I said sure, but I had a meeting and would not be available until after lunch. I asked if he could make it around 1:00. He said no problem and would see me after dinner (for those of you from the city that means lunch). After hanging up I went out and hooked up our truck to the cattle trailer. Sid, the young man that was working for me at the time, asked what I was doing, to which I replied, "I need to go find a bull". See - in reality we did not have any bulls left to sell, but I knew this: the farmer was going to buy a bull that day, and I was going to make sure it was from us, because the one thing I had learned in my years in the cattle business was the concept of repeat customers. If the customer is happy with the bull he bought from you, you would be the first person he would call the next time he needed a bull.
So off I went to find a bull to buy. Now, there were several places I could have gone, but what I did was drive about an hour away to one of our customers who bought breeding stock from us. Now you need to realize that selling a breeding bulls in central Illinois is not the easiest thing to do. So when I showed up at Dave's place and asked if he had any bulls to sell, needless to say, he was excited. See, he was just getting started in the purebred business and had not yet developed a reputation for high quality bulls for high dollars. I told him I was out of bulls and needed to buy one to have around to sell. He had 12 bulls ranging in price from $850 to $1,500, most of which came from breeding stock we had sold him, so they were our genetics, which was very good.
After visiting for a little bit (something you do as part of the sales game when dealing with ranchers and farmers), we got down to conducting business, and I bought a bull for $850, loaded him up and headed back to the farm. After lunch the farmer who had called earlier that morning looking for a bull showed up. As he got out of his truck I walked over and told him that he was going to be mad. I know I had told you I had two bulls for sale but another farmer had come and just left with the $1,500 bull, so all I had left was the $2,500 bull. I continued the sale saying, "So this is what I’m willing to do. If you like the $2,500 bull I will take $500 off and you can have him for $2,000." Which is what he did and everybody was happy. I made a sale, the farmer got the bull he wanted, and Dave, my customer who bought breeding stock from us, made some money. But more importantly that farmer came two more times over the years to buy from us again.
By now you are asking yourself what, if anything, does this have to do with softball? It is all about obstacles. I could have easily let the obstacle of not having any bulls to sell get in the way of making money but instead I figured out how to overcome my obstacle of not having a bull to sell and make money for the farm which made my boss happy.
My college coaching career started at Heartland Community College in Normal, IL. In 2007, when then Coach Shae Wesley asked me to be her assistant and help her start the new softball program there. We had no field, equipment or one single player. Our first obstacle was to convince 17 players that Heartland was the place they needed to be. I remember on recruiting visits walking to the end of one of our buildings and pointing to a cornfield and saying, "See there, see that cornfield? That is where we are going to build the nicest softball stadium that you will never play on. But if you come here, you can bet that we will make sure you will get everything you need to win."
Coach Wesley and I look to my Elite Softball program I ran to find players. These were players I knew, girls of great character, work ethic, with a quest for knowledge and discovery and looking for a home to play. I believed in my cattle genetics and I believed in my Elite Softball program. Just like Dave, my customer I bought the bull from, all came with their own obstacles. They all wanted to play NCAA D1 softball and for whatever reason and none of them were getting recruited very hard. Coach Wesley was a great coach, and I either made or owned most of the equipment we needed. Oh, I forgot to tell you we did not have a gym either, so we got them all memberships to a local gym where they could work out. Every day I would find different fields for us to practice and play on. These players were hard nose tough girls that got hurt diving, running into fences, or each other, to catch balls. So there was someone hurt all the time. At one point we only had nine kids healthy enough to play; another obstacle, so we picked up one of our Heartland soccer players and added her to the team.
Talk about obstacles, we had them all, but even through all those obstacles, Heartland College, in its very first year to ever have a softball program, came in 3rd at the 2008 NJCAA D2 National tournament.
The very next year, that same team with four new players we recruited, went on to become the National Champions. That was even after the obstacle of our All-American pitcher and starting catcher leaving after one year to move on and play at NCAA Division 1 schools.
We have the option to choose to let obstacles stand in our way or choose passion, hard work and a challenge. Yes, each of those players wanted to play NCAA Division 1 ball somewhere but nobody was calling. Coach Wesley and I would have liked to have been the coaches at Arizona, but those jobs were not open and others did not hire us. So Heartland was the answer for all of us. This is where we were going to make it or not. So we all chose passion, hard work and a challenge and it paid off in a big way for each one of us. In the end, most of those players from those two teams went on to sign NCAA Division 1 contracts to play on. Coach Wesley is now the Head Softball Coach at Appalachian State University, an NCAA Division 1 program in North Carolina.
When you really look at obstacles is what makes life rewarding and fun, the bigger the obstacles to overcome, the greater the reward. And boy what great stories do we have to tell about our Heartland experience.
Now I'm the Head Coach at Lake Land College and that is all I do, deal with obstacles. The first obstacle is dealing with the title of Junior College. Now where do you see junior in any college name. All two year institutions have the name of either Community College, or just College. There is no college anywhere with junior in its name, and you need to realize we do not think we are junior to anybody. (Yes, I'm a little touchy about that one.)
As I talk about obstacles I want you to remember my customer Dave who I bought the bull from. He had an obstacle of being new to the business and not yet having developed a reputation to be able to sell high quality bulls for high dollar. Over the years he keeps improving his heard and getting better, and today he is one of the top Angus breeders in the Midwest. It is the same for players who attend two year colleges who all are dealing with their own obstacles whatever it might be, too small, too heavy, too slow, not strong enough, overcome an injury, improve their academics (Just so you know LLC has been selected an Academic All-American team for 7 years in a row.), afraid to go to a big school, does not know what they want major in, did not get the 4 year offer they wanted, need to improve softball skills or the biggest reason, they just got over-looked. There are a ton of reasons why players go play for a two year college. What these players are not willing to do is settle for anything less than the goal of playing at a four year college. They refuse to listen to others that say they are not good enough, or what I like to say, "Not smart enough to realize it can't be done," which I think is a good thing. What they are doing is tackling their own individual obstacle(s) head on, in hopes of reaching their final goal of playing at an NCAA Division one program.
Last year a four year college was passing through Mattoon on their way to Florida for their spring trip. They called to see if they could stop and use our field to practice on. I was excited to be able to accommodate them. I told the coach we would be finished with our practice at 3:30, and they could have it at that time. Well, always the salesman, I made sure that we ran late with our practice. Why? Because I wanted that coach to see our team practice in hopes that they might like one of my players and recruit them. When they finished their practice it was easy to see they were not very good, and if they would have been interested in any of our players I do not think, in fact I know, none of our players would have been interested in that school. They had a player on their team who played on the same summer team as one of our players.
As they were talking to each other, their player was telling her how impressed she was with our team and our practice and said she wished she was on a team as good as ours. Our player said to her that she should have come here to play. In which she responded that there was no way she would go to a Jr. College (There's that word again). I do not understand that thinking. I knew this player and knew if she would have went the two year route she would have made it to a winning four year program.
What was her obstacle? Pride, because she thought it was beneath her to attend a "Junior College". Instead she was willing to play at a losing program just to say she played at a four year school. Does that make her a bad person? No, not at all, she was just willing to settle for less and was happy with it. My player, on the other hand, wanted more and was not going to let any obstacle get in the way of her goal to play at the NCAA D1 level. She worked hard to overcome her obstacle, which was not academic in fact she was a pre-med major with a 4.0 GPA. Her obstacle was BFS, getting her body bigger, faster and stronger. She worked hard on becoming a better hitter. By going the two year route she was able to play all the time and work on her weaknesses. Many times players, like her, at four schools do not get that opportunity and end up not playing much or quitting. That player is now starting at an NCAA D1 winning program in New York.
Obstacles are as big or little as we make them. As I had mentioned I used to teach high school agriculture and not just at any high school, but at the smallest high school in Illinois. It was Bellflower High School where we only had 52 students in the entire school. One of my students was a young man named Steve Giertz. Steve was a member of my livestock judging team that finished third at the National FFA Livestock Judging Contest in Kansas City. He was smart, but a mischievous kid; you know the type always getting into trouble but in interesting, fun and unique ways. Steve is just turned 50 (although I still think of him as the 16 year mischievous kid), and a very successful famer and livestock breeder near the Quad Cities up northwest Illinois. Last week, another one of my former Bellflower students stopped by my office at Lake Land to inform me that Steve had a terrible farm accident in June and lost a leg. Talk about obstacles. It had been years since I had seen or even talked to Steve, so I decided to give him a call to see how he was doing and let him know that I was thinking of him.
Honestly, I was a little scared about the call. I did not know what to expect. Was he going to be down, bitter or just mad at the world? What happened was one of the most upbeat, enjoyable and uplifting conversations I have ever had with anybody. It had been three months since the accident and the day before I called he was able to stand up for the first time with the aid of a prosthetic. He said that the only obstacle he was facing was trying to decide on whether to go with the $500 peg leg or the $50,000 computerized prosthetic. He thought a peg leg would be cool (In reality I think he just wanted to become a pirate and talk in a funny accent.). As we talked our conversation switched to sports, he talked with pride of his son who is playing college baseball. He also mentioned that he followed our team and had heard of our success and asked how my LLC Softball team was going to be this year. He then told me he was on the school board of a Catholic High School across the river in Iowa and that they had a really good softball team that had a player I should be recruiting. After 20 or 30 minutes I realized I had called him to pump him up, but instead we spent most the time laughing about old high school stories, a $500 peg leg and him trying to help a softball player get a college scholarship.
Steve had every right to be bitter and mad at the world, but instead chose the passion for life, hard work and challenge instead of giving in to the obstacles of losing a leg. By the way, we are recruiting that player now.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to do and be a part of, many amazing things in my life. When I look back at all those opportunities they all came with great obstacles and that is what made them so amazing. At practice the other day I was talking to my players about obstacles and I told them this, "The one wish I have for each of you is that you would never become so smart to realize it cannot be done. So the next time you do not think you have the right equipment, a good enough field, the nice looking uniform, not being recruited by a big school, or feeling like you don't have a leg to stand on, remember, “You don't need a bull to sell one.”
