SAE Visit Record

1. Student Name: Payton (P.J.) Nichols

2. Date of Visit: March 14, 2020

3. Parents’/Guardians’ in Attendance: Lance & Adele Nichols

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4. Site of SAE Visit:  Home  School  Lab  Work Site Other

5. SAE Description:
P.J. works for her family’s company, Nichols Auctioneers. The company handles a variety of clients
and markets their services for livestock, benefit, equipment, and estate auctions. In this SAE, P.J. is
primarily responsible for checking-in buyers and handling sales transactions at check-out. She also
helps call bids.

6. Program Area:
This SAE falls under the Agricultural Sales – Paid Placement category.

7. Current Progress with Records:

This spring, P.J. applied for her State FFA Degree, which made it past the District XII review process.
I encouraged her to continue adding to her records over the course of the next year, as I believe she
will have a competitive Proficiency Award application if she so chooses to pursue one.

8. Student Goals for SAE:

P.J. greatly enjoys agricultural sales, not only as an SAE, but also as her Career Development Event.
Although her future plans are uncertain at the moment, she credits a tremendous amount of the soft
skills she has developed to her work with her family’s business. Upon asking her how she would like
to see her SAE improve in the next year, she mentioned that better communication among family
members would be helpful. Apparently, her grandfather has scheduled some of their past auctions
without first consulting with everyone in the family and, as a result, P.J. has missed auctions due to
other commitments such as swimming meets, track meets, and FFA events. The joys and discomforts
of agricultural life most certainly extend to relatives, and she would like to help establish a better line
of communication moving forward.

9. Parents’/Guardians’ Wishes for the Student:

Although I was unable to visit with her parents much during the visit (as they were both busy with the
day’s auction work), I have visited with her parents on multiple occasions from parent-teacher
conferences to hired hand auction (which they volunteered their auctioning services at) to a car-ride
back from DIA after National FFA Convention last fall. Lance is a former State FFA President for
Colorado, and P.J. is eager to follow in his footsteps by running for a State FFA Officer position after
high school. Her parents are very supportive of this endeavor. Additionally, they are proud to have
their daughter as an active member of the family business, and it is readily apparent that her work ethic
and charismatic attitude are qualities that they are quite proud of.

10. Teacher Observations:

 P.J. is very proud of her the business her family has built. Auctioneering has molded as part of her
identity, I would say, because she holds her family’s association with the industry in very high regard.
This extends beyond what I observed in the visit, but P.J. is never afraid to be herself. From the
outside-looking-in, it appears that she has a tremendous amount of self-confidence and does not worry
about what other people think (in a good way, as that could be interpreted as a negative quality). One
of my favorite moments from the visit was watching P.J. interact with folks checking-in to get their
bidder numbers. In particular, there was one gentleman she assisted who did not speak very much
English. This language barrier made communication difficult, but P.J. was exceptionally well-
composed throughout the entire customer service experience. She was able to successfully file his
buyer information into their online database and send him on his way with a bidder’s card. I made a
point of sharing with her how impressed I was with how she handled that situation.

11. Picture(s):