Q:Be.Do.

10/6/06: Post 1.013

Before I found my path as a fundraising auctioneer I worked in the wonderful world of liquidations. A client that did live and online auctions convinced me to leave my marketing consultancy behind and brought me in-house to run their interactive marketing. The company was relatively small, and it was a requirement that almost the entire staff drop everything and go work the larger live auctions. I worked as a spotter at my first live auction; I truly enjoyed the atmosphere and wanted more.

Within a few months I began looking for an opportunity to work my way into the live auction side of the business. My big break came with the fall of Wine.com. The project was massive, more than a million bottles of wine in a warehouse in Napa. It was far beyond the scope of anything we’d done before – we were technology liquidators not wine auctioneers – but in the wonderful world of liquidations it is not what you know but what you can convince people you know. Me and a my cohort in the interactive division, Joel, got pulled into this project like never before. Joel managed to convince the Napa Valley Airport to let us rent out one of their hangars for the auction, and we were off and running.

The live auction crew was a very tight group. They were happy to have us along for the ride, and were all too happy to show us the ropes. One of the biggest perks of our job was, according to these guys, the ability to expense meals back to the client while out on the job. Gleefully they took us over to the Chardonnay Club for lunch, to show us how much you could spend on a cheeseburger and fries without ordering any booze. It was a short drive from the auction site, and had that much justifiability to it as a lunch spot. But if we’d all been paying our own way not one of us would have picked this place. These guys were Burger King and KFC when it was on their own dime. I prefer to follow the locals to their favorite deli.

The Wine.com liquidation had all of the challenges one could have hoped for, and more. I managed to parlay my experience there into becoming an auctioneer for my then company, but I didn’t last long in liquidations. Long enough to discover that world was not for me, but the world of auctioneering is. Long enough to discover that what I do in this world makes a difference to me, and making a difference is one of the best job perks I’ve found in fundraising.

The morning of Friday, October 6, 2006 I’m up early, driving from the Lodge at Sonoma to Napa through a cold, wet fog. I’m on my way to the 20th Annual BR Cohn Fall Music Festival & Celebrity Golf Classic – on my way to the golf classic, portion of the weekend. This would be the third year I’ve done the BR Cohn Concert auctions, and the second year I’ve done the Golf Tournament auction. After last year’s event they asked me why I never played the golf tournament, and “Because I suck” wasn’t an answer I was willing to put out there they got me signed up for the tournament in 2006.

I’ve been practicing all year, looking forward to my first ball golf tournament. My game is nowhere near spectacular, and my handicap is somewhere near 40, but I was looking forward to having fun and meeting some of the bidders for the event that night. I had directions to the golf course, but it wasn’t until I was headed East from the Napa Airport on Highway 12 that it dawned on me…that Chardonnay Club!

I laughed outloud at the wonderful ways in which life works. I didn’t recognize the clubhouse, but it had been a long time ago – five years. I marveled at how much life can change in five years, and how thankful I was to be where I am on this journey. As I grabbed my bag and headed for the driving range I saw the crew from VH1 Classic setting up to cover the day. Ah, the sacrifices of the fundraising auctioneer…