World Wide College of Auctioneering — Des Moines, IA
What a time in Des Moines, Iowa this March. Eight straight days of 110% effort and firehose-style learning — thoroughly doused in information, examples, and industry knowledge from people at the absolute forefront of the auction world. But was the World Wide College of Auctioneering worth it? Let me affirm with a resounding yes, and then some. I plainly told Mr. Mike Jones he could very well charge more for the quality of education on offer. Those of you looking forward to attending may not love that suggestion, but I can only offer my experience to make the case.
In today's world, higher education runs on timelines measured in semesters and years. I dare any prospective college student to find an accredited course for a semester that won't cost $2,000 in books and tuition without financial aid in play. The cash price on college has gotten out of hand, and people pay for decades for an education that all too often falls short of useful in the rapidly morphing modern business landscape. I'd much rather take that same investment and put it toward an education that is right on the cutting edge — with multiple world-class instructors through the classroom in just over a week.
Bid calling was a through line, as it should be. An auction school that sends graduates out with slow tongues and slow minds isn't paying proper homage to the rich history of rapid counters before us. Craig Meier has one of the most brilliant minds I've encountered when it comes to the structure, rhythm, and tone of a chant. He could meet absolutely everyone — every rhythm, every filler — and find a way to help them improve. I ought to know something about it; I spent four years giving livestock reasons at the collegiate level, which shares a striking similarity to building a chant. Getting inside the framework of a set structure and making it unique, engaging, and genuinely pleasant to hear is no small task. But as much progress as was made getting cleaner, smoother, and more composed on the mic, the business-side learning may have outpaced even that.
No one wants to walk into a hotel ballroom where someone is screaming "MAKE MORE MONEY FAST!" You best take your wallet and run. But at the Drury in Des Moines, the hook may be set on bid calling, but the real gold nugget is learning how to actually make a dollar with a talented tongue — in a manner that isn't outlawed in all but the most open-minded Nevada counties. For instance, I'm writing this post into a website built with the help of AI, on a hosting platform I navigated with AI assistance. Ten days ago I had never touched an AI program beyond asking it to make a cartoon of a photo of my wife and me. From one 90-minute class, I walked away with the tools to open an entirely new skill set. All I had to add was sweat equity, skin in the game, and a willingness to tap keys into the late hours after the day job.
The other classes were more of the same — packed with useful reference material, legal and financial cautions and rules of engagement, and truly entertaining real-world examples of success and failure that tend to stick far better than anything from a textbook. All valuable. But the two things I haven't mentioned yet are where the real gravy lives.
First: contacts. People write how-to guides and pontificate endlessly about the best way to network. The result is often the justly maligned LinkedIn post about a "serendipitous" encounter that somehow highlighted every positive attribute and latest credential of the author. At auction school, though, almost everyone in the room either has a fond memory of an auction they always dreamed of calling themselves, or is already in the business and trying to get sharper. You suffer together, work together, celebrate together, and improve together. It's a clean, air-conditioned version of a boot camp — and that shared effort creates an organic, genuine camaraderie. It sorts like-minded people together, and the phone numbers and goodwill exchanged are neither forced nor a facade. Finding genuine people is something many would pay dearly for. But just by putting in the work in the middle of an intensive course, you find them naturally. And if you're the kind of person willing to see the ride through and give it your very best, they'll find you too.
Second: motivation. People say it doesn't exist — that it's unreliable, that it's just you making decisions. But after a decade of taking every job I could land to keep shoes on little feet and a dry roof overhead, I had quietly forgotten what it felt like to get genuinely excited about something I'm passionate about. I was in a rut, and not in possession of four-wheel drive, much less anyone to help pop me out. But ruts, like law in Dodge City, just don't go at the World Wide College of Auctioneering. You either get with the program or step aside — and the coaching is simply too good to make stepping aside feel like a reasonable option. That magic of encouragement paired with the expectation of greater things pulls the best out of people, from pee-wee wrestlers up to Super Bowl MVP's. And for eight days, it lived in that Drury Inn.
The fear, of course, is getting your hopes up — as we jaded grown-ups like to say — only to crash and stall out. But the great thing about having had your nose bonked repeatedly by life is that you learn to harden that old snozzle and plow ahead anyway. Because often, you simply have to. So here I am, working away with no sure thing promised. But if the express rider pulls up with a spent horse, hanging dead tired off the saddle — I aim to be promptly mounted and ready to carry the mail.
Thank you to all who taught, encouraged, and supported. I can't wait to see what's in store.