Susan Dakil sits behind a desk for a reason. While she’s aware her husband, Louis, could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo, she’s convinced she couldn’t sell a postage stamp to her own mother if she needed one.
But — and she won’t hesitate with this response — Susan can sit at a desk, crunch numbers, and perform the necessary detail-oriented tasks needed to run a successful business. In this case, she’s played a key role in helping Dakil Auctioneers, Inc. grow from an 8-by-10 home office in the 1980s to a 28,000-square-foot facility on 22 acres in Oklahoma City.
If Louis is the auction incubator and face of the company, Susan is the finisher. She closes auctions, handles paperwork, prepares checks, completes payroll, and deals with basic accounting all in a day’s work. Oh, and she oversees Dakil’s oil and gas auctions by using decades worth of experience as a petroleum landman.
“She’s the heart and soul of our company. She’s the coordinator, office manager, bookkeeper, and administrator,” Louis says. “She does almost everything a CEO would do in any organization. She’s an asset that’s irreplaceable.”
From the day they met back in 1981, Susan noticed Louis’ kind heart, passion for life, and a strong determination to succeed. They are all qualities that led to a successful marriage and a successful business partnership.
“He’s out selling and I’m behind the scenes. That’s what makes it work,” she says. “He would never want to sit behind a desk and just work with figures and numbers, and I don’t have that outgoing personality in sales.”
There’s one important caveat to note. A position behind the scenes doesn’t diminish their importance or value. Susan’s role is clear beyond her knowledge of oil and gas auctions and the auction business itself.
What Louis can appreciate is how much she’s sacrificed. You won’t find many people in your corner who will drop everything in a moment’s notice just to lend a helping hand.
“She’s always there. Behind every great person, there’s someone behind them,” Louis says. “Being behind doesn’t mean you’re lost or hidden. It doesn’t diminish the importance.”
As tangible evidence of her value, Louis has received inquiries on several occasions from prospective employers looking to bring Susan on board. He even recalled one time at a party when someone wanted Louis to inform Susan they were interested in hiring her. His message: She’s not available.
Throughout the years, Susan’s brought balance and objectivity to the company, whether with her strong judgment skills or ability to ask questions. Her business acumen helped Louis learn basic etiquette and how to interact with business people. These traits helped reinforce Louis’ skills and gave him the confidence he needed to move forward during hard times.
“Two heads are always better than one. A chain is stronger with more links,” he says. “She was influential in how we proceeded in trying to expand and grow our business.”
The auction field wasn’t an initial calling for the Dakils. Susan spent time in the oil and gas business as a landman, while Louis had experience in the pipeline and cattle industry, working for a clothing distributor, and for the grocery chain Safeway.
As part of swift economical changes, they both lost their jobs when Penn Square Bank crashed in 1982. There they were, sitting at home unemployed after just recently getting married.
Louis was always interested in starting his own business, and he had a calling to the auction industry. So they ran with it.
“I’ve always said, when God closes a door, he’ll at least open a window,” Susan says. “We jumped through that window head first.”
So they went to work, fully committing to a joint venture they were unsure where it’d lead them. A daily routine soon followed. Louis would leave the house and perform cold calls with bankers, attorneys, or anyone who had a need for an auction. He’d return home with a stack of business cards, and Susan would type out thank you letters.
On the busiest of days, she’d sit at their kitchen table and crank out as many as 15 letters using a borrowed typewriter. They’d drop the letters off that night at the post office so their recipients would have them first thing in the morning. This went on for years, resulting in thousands of thank you letters.
“There was no fallback option. We were all in. We had to succeed,” she says. “It was either that or close it out and try to find whatever job you could find. You couldn’t beg, borrow, or steal a landman job at that point. We had to do it.”
The auction industry wasn’t totally foreign to Susan. Her father had a trucking company that transported cattle, so she was familiar with cattle auctions, and her mother worked as a clerk for livestock auctions in Woodward, Oklahoma. But she’d be lying if, as a child, she ever envisioned having an auction company.
The leads slowly trickled in, and Louis and Susan found their footing after a few years, settling into a new house where they turned an extra room into an office with two desks. It was a far cry from working at the table during a time when they questioned if they’d make it.
“You had to work hard to see where it would take you. You prayed every month. I always had a fear there would never be another auction and that we couldn’t get one. But one auction will always get you another one,” Susan says. “Day by day, we were living auction to auction. Nobody really knew how unnerving it was. It’s something you have to experience on your own.”
Ask Susan about helping build a business at a time when it was predominantly male-driven industry, and she won’t bat an eye. Long before that, she shattered professional barriers as a petroleum landman with Sabine Production Company (now Sabine Oil & Gas).
She started as an administrative assistant and got her first taste of the business when her boss would walk in, hand her a contract, and ask how they could get out of it. She’d sift through the documents and provide guidance on how to proceed.
Then, when a petroleum landman transferred to Louisiana, Susan’s boss asked if she wanted to be a landman on a temporary basis. She received a quick crash course and, soon enough, was reading farm-ins, farm-outs, leases, and plotting well information. The temporary assignment led to a full-time role.
“I was in a field that was 99% men,” she recalls. “I broke into an area where very few women got into.”
There are different types of landmen. Field landmen appear at courthouses, run titles, and give ownership reports on who owns minerals. An in-house landman, which Susan worked as, negotiated deals with other companies.
These skills came in handy when the Dakils opened their auction business in 1983. At the time, many small independent oil properties were closing. Susan combed through mountains of paperwork and files to figure out what that debtor owned. Then they’d sell it.
“A lot of what I sell isn’t an oil company or one entity. Mostly what I sell with the trustees is an individual will file for bankruptcy,” she says. “When they do, they may have inherited family mineral interests. They’re producing, so they’re auctioned off.”
Nowadays, we work with the United States Bankruptcy Court and Trustees to sell royalties and mineral interests to the public. Susan helps put together two oil and gas auctions a year. Oil and gas auctions are time consuming, mainly due to the time associated with putting a brochure together that lists all the necessary information. She compiles information such as decimal interest, what the person owns, the operator, the income, and the correct legal description.
The biggest oil and gas auction came in 2018 when we auctioned off St. Gregory University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Susan spent months putting together a brochure that featured information on 801 properties. The school had oil and gas holdings with a projected value of more than $2 million. The auction brought in more than $10 million, plus funds from an auction held on campus that featured school equipment.
The St. Gregory sale was one of the biggest auctions we’ve put on here at Dakil. We’ve come a long way since our earlier days.
The business started as a three-person operation. Louis served as the auctioneer and ringman (spotter), Susan was the cashier, and her mother was the clerk. Their first auction came at a storage unit company in July in 100-degree weather. The concrete building had no air conditioning, no fan, and only a front door for ventilation.
They auctioned off patio furniture at the second sale. Susan’s sister-in-law provided assistance as the cashier and a few friends served as ringmen. The auction lasted so long that Louis went 12 hours without taking a break. He lost his voice, which led to a trip to see an ear, nose and throat specialist.
“The vocal cords stretched beyond their limit. He felt he had to do it all. Now he’s much smarter and wiser,” Susan jokes.
As for more recent auctions, Susan pointed to the Oklahoma State Treasurer sale. This just so happened to be one of our most interesting auctions of 2019. As you can imagine, the elements found in safety deposit boxes vary across the spectrum.
The auction featured items such as gold coins, coin collections, stamp collections, watches, silverware, perfume bottles, sports memorabilia, and a doctor’s bag from the late 1800s/early 1900s with OB-GYN tools to deliver a baby.
Susan needs to go deep into the memory bank for this one, but she fondly remembers the uniqueness of the historic Skirvin Hotel auction in downtown Oklahoma City. Consider anything a large hotel would have to auction off, plus more. The items ranged from restaurant and bar equipment to bedroom furniture.
“People were buying wine openers and paying $100 for ice buckets that had Skirvin on it. It was a collectible item,” Susan says.
Now Dakil Auctioneers specializes in real estate, commercial and industrial equipment, machine shops, heavy equipment, etc.
Considering selling some items yourself and want to learn more about what Dakil has to offer? Contact us today, or call directly at (405) 751-6179. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to speed with the latest trends in the auction industry. To see when our next auction takes place, view our upcoming auctions schedule page.
