Damian Mason
speaker
125 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Damian Mason’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
You evolve in your career, and I looked at it as, yeah, how about the guy that speaks that is a former comedian and can still be funny? And also, because there's another thing that happens with comedy, people don't think you're smart. My comedy actor was very smart. I used to dress up as Bill Clinton. I was a Bill Clinton impersonator.
Put on fat padding, makeup, gray hair, and come in and talk like Bill Clinton. Hey, how you doing? How'd you like to occupy a position on my personal staff? You know, whatever. Innuendo jokes and this kind of thing. Hey, Monica. The thing is, I would get done doing a show, guys, and then people would come up there and post their pictures. That's something we always did.
And they'd say, you know, you're really funny, but you're actually kind of smart. Yeah. I'm like, do you realize how damn degrading that is, what you just said?
Well, I know you, and it seems to me your podcast probably is about the same age as mine. So going before that, I began the Business of Agriculture show. I'm in my eighth year, maybe close to starting my ninth, 380 episodes. And I knew about you guys. You knew about me. And it's a small fraternity. I... I find it interesting that people sometimes get competitive. I keep things generally friendly.
There's a few people that have been real dicks to me in this space, and so I reciprocate accordingly. Well, when you work in agriculture, you've got to realize there's a pretty small sorority out here, man. You keep pissing in the stream, eventually you're going to be one downstream yourself. So I think it's important to not do that. To your audience, my name is Damian Mason.
Some of them might know me from the Business of Agriculture show. Again, it's been out now for 380 episodes, and we release it every Monday, so it's an every weekly show. I speak at agricultural events. That's sort of the— the ship that drove the fleet for a long time. I'm a farm kid from Northeastern Indiana.
I was raised on a basic Midwestern dairy farm of its era who milked 60 cows and farmed some Five or 600 acres of mostly rented ground. Didn't come from a very well-off farming background. My dad actually was raised on other people's farms milking cows as a herdsman's son. So that's the deal. I live in Huntington.
I live a couple miles from where I was raised on a farm that I bought almost 20 years ago. My wife and I renovated it. I actually do own the homeland now since my mom died. And I've got about 300 acres that I own in Indiana. I live in Arizona half the year, which I do not like winter, although I travel to winter.
We're all three looking out the window right now in Kansas City where they had 11 inches of snow and it's still hovering around below 20 right now. So I speak at agricultural meetings. I produce the Business of Agriculture show. And I also work for a group called Extreme Ag. And that's been for about three and a half years now. I produce Cutting the Curve podcast for them.
I show up at events for them like Commodity Classics.
field days that they each have we work with corporate entities doing trials etc and educational information for farmers so keep pretty busy i also have a thing called the business of ag success group every other week on a friday me and about two dozen ag professionals get together for a network i bring on sponsor i bring on i'm sorry guests and we talk about issues impacting agriculture so that's kind of what goes on in my life how do you have time to do it all yeah
Yeah, you know, you guys produce one of these shows, and there's a lot of people, and we all know this, you've already survived it. It's the old thing about most small businesses fail within five years. I don't think most of them fail. I think they just give up. They say, this is a lot of work, so they just stop.
Everybody and their sister, you know, when the whole podcasting thing came about, you know, the dude and two of his stoner buddies would sit in the basement and say, dude, we should have our podcast. And they're good for three. Yeah. And then after the sixth one's like, they're just sitting there, and they don't have an outline. They don't have an actual topic.
They aren't familiar with telling a story. And so they suck. So I treat it like a business. The good thing about a background in show business is I've always treated this as what other people see as humor, entertainment, oh, kind of a lark. I ran it as a business. So when I quit Corporate America in 1994 to be a comedian, which is how I got in to start,
Purdue Agricultural Economics from the farm, from the farm to Purdue, from Purdue to corporate, not in ag because in 1992 there was no jobs because we're coming out of the bad 80s. I'm a little older than you guys. Then worked in corporate, and then I quit. less than two years into my corporate career to become a political comedian. And everybody thought, oh, that's really cute.
That's really neat. 25-year-old kid's going to become a political comedian. You know you won't make it. Oh, hell, nobody really makes it. Oh, you're doing open mic nights. Oh, you're doing $100 gigs. Well, good luck. Call us when you need your job back. That's kind of how it went. And I say, no, fuck you. I'm not going to allow it. I'm going to treat this as a business.
And so you do $100 gigs until you can do $300 gigs. And you do $300 gigs until you're doing $500 gigs. And then always worked at creating the act and putting the show together. And go back to your room afterward and sit down. It's 930 at night. You're sweating. You just walked off stage. You're in front of a crowd. Everybody was drunk. You hadn't had a drop.
You finally have your first beer at 930 at night. You start writing down notes. That bit I did about the Great Wall of China sure works. I've always treated it like a business. I treat this like a business. I treat speaking in front of an agricultural audience, and Corey's been in one of my audiences, as a business. Yeah, it's a show. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, we want it to be laughing and all that.
They don't need to treat it like a business. They're the audience. Right. I need to treat it like a business. And that's, I think, the important thing, whether it's creating a podcast or an act on a stage. Yeah. First off, running it like a business and also treating it like a product. This is a product. Farm for Profit is a product. Yeah. And it's a product that you want to be consumed. Yeah.
And you want it to be sponsorable. Mm-hmm. And you want it to have value. And as long as you always look at yourself as a product, he's Corey. He's a farmer. But in this regard, he's a product that teamed up with Tanner. And the other delay.
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