Alright. Welcome. Once again, we're gonna start this one more time. Welcome to the We Live It podcast here live from the Atlanta room at Cooper's Barbecue in downtown historic Stockyards. Thank you all for joining us today.

Welcoming back Casey Mabry, the cohost here. And then we have a special guest, Margo, today that's over our purebred division for live ag. I'm gonna kind of touch in some of her stuff and what her and Blake got going on, what they've been doing, what they got coming up and what next spring's kind of looking like. But first we want to kind of visit a hogs, hog season back in full swing and, and all that. Then you just got back and your daughter just got back from National FFA Convention where some spectacular things happened.

Let's kind of give us a recap of that. That's pretty neat.

Yeah. So my wife and I were able to and take the girls, our our other two girls up there with us to national FFA convention in Indianapolis and and their whole FFA chapter up there. So my daughter, Reese, had participated in the agriscience fair, which is they there's about, I think, six divisions and about four or five different categories where they break those kids into different groups. They do a science fair project, so they gotta go do a whole research project, put a poster board together, give a presentation, qualify through state, and then go to the national convention. And so, yeah, she won the nationals in the food products and food processing.

And so what she did, obviously she got a couple of meat head parents, so she was able to take beef eye around steaks. She came up with a project herself, so she thought the, you know, looking at rib eye steaks and how expensive they were. She's like, why can't we tenderize beef iron around steaks? So she took a beef seasoning, tenderized it, and then did went to Tarleton State University and did some tenderness testing down there on those and saw that this one product, that's got papain in it, which is from papayas, tenderize that those beef high round steaks. So she's pumped up.

It was really cool to watch. I mean,

for me as a person, as

a dad, to watch her because I still think she's like a little kid. She got up in front of and spoke in front of all

these people. It was awesome. So Well, that's good, man. That's awesome. It's it's awesome to see these kiddos go out and and and turn into young leaders and and be able to stand up in front of that kind of crowd and give a speech like that.

It's just, it's phenomenal to be able to see that. That's why we're in this industry and that's why we love it so much is because of the way we can grow our kids up and raise them and they're able to go out and do that and they're able develop those talents and then go out in the real world and make a living by doing it. That's why we love our industry so much because it creates that kind of worth ethic.

Yeah, no, it's a good deal for

sure. So Margo, how's

You're calling me special.

You are. Well, I am. We're not gonna go. Yeah. We're on we're live.

So we can't. Okay. But how's how's everything going? The Purebred world looks like, I mean, our livestock partners and the division y'all have that you and Blake are I taking mean, it's been wild.

The sales have absolutely been wild. We have I'm a little shocked we're on a year into this. I feel like we're five years in. I feel like I've aged five years. I feel like I have put five years of work, but we are a little over a year into this, and this is I didn't quite expect to be where we're at right now.

It's really cool. It's beyond belief, but we've had a great fall. The sales are in

Sales

across the border are just awesome right now, And it's really it's really fun to go, and you've been I've been in a lot of these sales for years. Clearly, I had I was in it prior to this. But you sit at these sales, and you're so excited at the end when they're when they're grossing, what they're grossing and they're averaging what they're averaging, and you know the work that your people It put into is so rewarding to be happy for them, like, and to know how ecstatic they are. Not every sale is, is going to be, like I've said at sales where they're like, what can we do better? Like sales now are like, everybody's-

Yeah, pat each other on their back.

Yeah, their expectations and everything just seems to be rolling. So, and as far as the technology and where we're at with LiveAg, like we're we've we've embraced it fully and and we're there. So I'm pretty I am really confident of what it looks like this for the rest of this fall and our last thirty days have been a little bit nonstop. I think I've think I've been home like three days. So

Yeah. So are you getting like like, how much more time do you guys have left in the season?

Believe it or not, we're we're booked through mid December.

Oh, wow.

Pretty full. Like, there is there is stuff going on, and and that's pretty pretty norm. Sometimes you do slow down around the holidays, Christmas, and then you you gear right back up. But we're looking into spring. We're we're excited about what our spring schedule is bringing.

Our retention rate is great. I really think our clients are starting to see why we're here and why we did what we did. And, I'm pretty proud of that. Awesome.

And to talk about your team and, and that team you've put up and assembled around you is, that team is second to none. Mean, tend to their business, they're great people, relationship people, and they love and they have a passion for what they do. So kind of, you know, talk about the team and that's why we are, and we understand that here a lot, that's why we are so successful is the people we surround ourselves with. Like me and Jason surround ourselves with you and Blake on that side, and then y'all have built you a team under y'all that's second to none also that just keeps it, I mean, and it's steadily growing. We're steadily adding younger ones and we're steadily adding books of business and it's just phenomenal.

Kind of

our reps. First of all, they're my extended family. I get a little passionate about them and I get very protective of them and I, they are, they turn into your friends and they turn into your best friends and they're just an extension. But we have reps from, I mean, we're across the board. We're all the way from Alabama to Utah right now.

And I think that's cool and that's amazing. And we're bringing new reps on. I absolutely adore the ones we have, but they've done sales. We Live Ag in in the first year has been able to do sales from New York to Florida to Montana. Like, we've covered the country.

We're here. Like, my favorite part about my team is everybody on it lives it. And I know that's so cliche. And I know, like, we as a team are like, we live it, but we do. Like, but that's why we're good at what we do is because we get it.

Yeah. Not only do your team go do sales and help other producers, they raise them themselves and they have sales themselves. Majority of them have some kind of production sale their self that they do and they raise for it and it's the family thing. And it's not like they're just going out there and being techs. They- And

you know the stress. Like the stress of planning a production sale is like planning a family wedding every year over and over again. It's miserable. Like I literally am like, oh, I feel so bad for you. Like I show up sale day and like, you know that they've worked.

I mean, you worked so hard to get a catalog out and then you worked to get the catalog ready and you're already focusing on next year's sale. Like there's just so much that goes into it. I like, I feel a little guilty some days. I show up on sale day. Yeah.

Like

We got a couple coming up this week, this weekend, I think. And then what's your, what's your month, your December schedule look like and kind of what's, what's, what's you got

Exciting, in front of exciting start to December. We're going to do a little bit of a Montana, presence, and I'm really excited about, just getting just going and just being part of, that it's a little bit of a sale around there at the start. We're going to follow-up. We're going to get into, we have a few sales in Vegas like so our December essentially the first three weeks. And then we have a couple bull sales there at the very December.

So what sales you got in Vegas? Maybe I need to go out there.

Yeah, I think you should.

I tried to put my name in that and they just kicked it right to the side. Mean, that's what that's what I think. Yeah, that's some great stuff. Yeah, all right. Perfect.

Yeah.

Sounds good. Book us over that one.

I love it. But yeah, so we are and then we're gonna roll right in to January. Bull sale season's gonna start right up there in February. I do wanna encourage people that if somebody from LiveAg hasn't called and talked to them and they wanna talk to us, call us. We'd love to come to a farm visit.

We'd love to come meet you and show you what we can do for you. LiveAg has so many parts that were built for the customer and built for the client. And everything we do, the whole company, it was focused on the client. What's their best interest? What can we do more for them at the end of the day?

Yeah. No. You guys have been doing a tremendous job. And I mean, the purebred side of it is pretty far away from, you know, what I do personally, you know, every day and day in and day out. But, you know, I've engaged with your guys quite a bit over the last six months or so.

And people are pretty excited about what live ag has to offer on the purebred side for sure. Like some of my bigger ranching guys, I've got some guys that buy a bunch of bulls and I've got some guys that are selling some bulls. You guys have perked a lot of those guys' interests for sure.

So in order to contact you, it's margo@liveag.com. Right? And then you can just go to liveag.com and get on our website and search our Purebrier Partners and there's emails there get ahold of all of them. I encourage you-

If don't want to book with us, call us. We have stuff to offer.

Yeah, mean, we're building a program for badges and stuff. We're in the process of building that so we can advertise. Even if you don't sell with us guys, I mean, we're doing it for our customer base and your customer base. We want your business, don't get me wrong, but in order for us to better serve our commercial clients, we want y'all to send us your logos, mean, get with Margo and Blake. If you'll send us your logos and we're selling cattle that are out of your bulls, we're going to market that.

I mean, like I said, we want your business, but you don't have to do business for us to market your customer and our customer's cattle. I mean, we're not going to nickel and dime you to death and sit here and charge you at the wazoo to get your badge on the screen. So if you want that done, reach out to Mario and Blake. Like I said, you don't have to be a customer of ours. We'd love to do it.

We want to take care of our commercial clients as well. And that just shows and showcases what they've done in their genetics and what they're doing to better their herds. That's what we're all here for. I mean, an industry, we're here to showcase the genetics that you're raising and that they're going out there and purchasing and making this beef industry better. So, I mean, we want to help in all aspects of it.

And we want the business, don't get me wrong, but we don't have to have the business to showcase your good genetics.

Yeah, it's pretty easy just to put somebody's logo in the deal.

I mean, there's nothing And to

know, promotion and all that stuff. Obviously, I mean, the way I've always taken it, mean, if you're doing stuff for people and you don't have to necessarily do it, people are gonna, they're gonna go, they're gonna do business with whoever they're gonna.

And that's perfectly fine, but at the end of the day, we have obligations to our commercial clients as well to showcase their cattle and what they've done for their genetics. Why should we have to tax the purebred guys to do that when we're not going to do it? I mean, guys, want to showcase our customers' cattle. If they're doing business with y'all and they're doing business with us, let's get your badges in here and let's get them posted and we'll get them up. We're in the process of building that data bank right now.

So just want to throw that out there.

Absolutely. I think one of my favorite things that you've ever said to us when you very first started this company and you, I think it might have been the first speech you ever gave to like our whole team together and it's worry about your customer. Like we'll be fine, worry about your customer. And I couldn't agree, like that's why we live it. It's why we're here is we care about our customers.

Customer first.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, anything else you want to talk about? Oh, we didn't need to talk about the boots, but we'll leave that for next time. Those boots are slick. I'm gonna

put them back in the suitcase.

Those pretty cool right there. But anything else we want to touch on before we go here? Got a little over 8,000 head to cattle to sell today. We started at 11:00 here in the Leno Room at Cooper's. So let's kind of do a little don't know if we want to do a market report or what do you want us?

And you want us Yeah.

So the market's been pretty wild here lately, right, Tom? Yes. Yeah. So we let's talk about that here for a minute. I think it's important.

I would tell you this. This is what I'm gonna start off with. Watching any kind of social media out there that's out there, this industry right now, we should be circling our wagons and trying to figure out how to do business together, and try to promote the industry. There's lots of people that are out there going out and trying to in fight in this industry, right? So whatever, whatever side of this industry you're on, what we don't need to do is start going out there and talking trash on the other side of the industry.

So, and what I directly mean about that is talking about how bad the packer is or talking about how bad one segment of this industry is. And so, I I I just don't like, the negative things that we have going on in our industry right now. So, it doesn't, shed good light on our industry. It doesn't bring upon, good things. It creates more tension out there, and we are we are people in this industry that all have common common, you know, goals.

Right? Yeah. At the end of the day. And so, obviously, there's some things going on politically in our industry that we don't like. I mean, I'm not a big government fan, right?

And so I don't want a whole bunch of government involvement in our industry. And it looks like there's some people in our industry that do want more government involvement. And know, so anyway, putting that all aside, I'm not going to try to get all soapbox y on that, but I think it's something that's very, very important from a market standpoint. All of those negative things are having a direct impact on our market today. So obviously grocery store prices and a lot of the things that are going on, Ty, you and I touched about this on a podcast earlier in the, you know, in the in the year, maybe in the summer about, you know, lots of lots of attention around beef prices and how high beef prices are.

Regardless if you think they're high or not, there's definitely a lot of attention on that. This government involvement we've seen here lately with the government shutdown and the SNAP benefits, that is having a negative impact on us. Okay? I started looking at the data. In 2019, we had $50,000,000,000 in SNAP benefits in this country, so that's food stamps, right?

Today, it's a $100,000,000,000. All of those dollars have to be spent at retail, so a lot of those dollars go spent on beef. If something happens with our SNAP benefits, so that's what the market's trading right now. So there's been life. You go watch the news and you're watching that, they're highlighting all that stuff.

So again, I'm not a predictor on that. I'm not an economist. We mess with futures and we're probably not even really that great at that. So I'm not even gonna go down that path. But I'll tell you what's going on in the market.

So we've seen a little bit of a setback here most recently. So we put our highs in, you know, on fed cattle there at the, you know, 3.45 area and feeder cattle around 3.75 when you're talking about the index. We've seen that market setback. We've seen a tremendous amount of volatility in the market here recently. I'm gonna tell you that what we probably need to do is just calm down here for a minute.

Right? So whether if you're buying cattle and you're somebody that needs to buy cattle, continue to buy cattle. Don't listen to other people out there and just, you know, whether you're gonna not do it or jump in or whatever. If you're trying to outguess this thing in a volatile time period, you're probably gonna get yourself in a bond. So I do think the market's probably gonna calm down here.

We do have a supply demand scenario that hasn't changed. Numbers are still tight. There's obviously lots of discussions around if we're gonna open the border or not. There's lots of discussions around if we're gonna bring in, you know, beef from other countries. The thing about bringing in beef from other countries, we always bring in beef from other countries.

Always do it. So again, let supply and demand fundamentals work out. If beef's high, we're going to import it from somewhere else that's cheaper. Whenever ours is cheap, we're gonna export it to somewhere else that's more expensive. That's called like kind of a trade balance there as far as that goes.

So again, just be confident, continue to operate your business like you operate your business, and that's where my suggestion would be. But markets are a little bit softer here this morning, but again, they were up the limit there on Monday. So we could see that change by the time we end this deal here in just a few seconds. Yeah, that's crazy.

Thanks for the market update. Margo, thanks for being on with us. Appreciate everything. I want to tell everybody out there, liveag.com. If you want to look up Margo and her team, email Margo direct at margolive ag dot com and get in touch and let's get the ball rolling on whether you just want to send in a logo so we can get our commercial customers in your program or if you want to book a sale, we'd love to book a sale.

We'd love to come visit and just tell you what we have to offer. We're there, we're here for y'all, whatever y'all need we got you. So thank you everybody for joining in. Don't forget, hit like and subscribe and all the buttons, all the buttons, just hit the buttons, whatever buttons out there, thumbs up, however you want to do it. So thank you all for joining us and we live it and God bless.

Bye.