21,000 volunteers, 21,000 stories
Pushing the beef: For the rodeo's Big Boy club, steering customers is a badge of honor
Aaron Potier is accustomed to the attention that his RodeoHouston badges of honor draw. People stop him all the time to grab his photo and chat him up about his role on the Steer Auction Committee. They're drawn by the cloth lavalier adorned with his committee badge, his commemorative badges for members who have died, his Big Boy badge and more.
This native Houstonian had always had friends involved in the rodeo and he started playing at the urban cowboy role two decades ago. But it wasn't until 1996 that he took the step of joining the Steer Auction Committee.
Today, he is a proud member of the committee's Big Boy club, meaning that for five consecutive years he has sold $20,000 worth of beef. (If that sounds like a lot, consider committee member Alan Kent, who has garnered $100,000 in sales for five years in a row. Now that's some hamburger.)
For this veteran of selling lots for the Steer Auction, it's been more play than hard work as over the years Potier has developed a loyal group of buyers. The initial effort was in rounding up folks with the money and the commitment to keep making purchases year after year. "The steer is representative of the donation you are making to the rodeo," he explained.
"For me, it's given me a lot of friends over the years, friends that you wouldn't otherwise meet," Potier continued. But his real motivation for serving on a rodeo committee "is knowing that people will have the money to pay for the ever-rising cost of going to college. The motivation is to help kids."
Potier understands the need saying that he didn't get a chance to finish his studies at the University of Texas because of financial considerations. And he's OK, he says somewhat reluctantly, with the fact that most of the RodeoHouston scholarship recipients head to Texas A&M rather than UT, where his loyalties lie.
"You can talk to five different people out here from five different backgrounds and ask them why they're here, but every answer will include the education aspect," he said.
When not working on Steer Auction Committee projects, Potier is an independent contractor with Orion Payment System.
