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
Evolution, you know, 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 specialized. 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 would you like to occupy a position on my personal staff? You know, whatever. Innuendo jokes and this kind of thing.
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. Do you realize how damn degrading that is, what you just said?
You're funny, but you're actually kind of smart. Yeah. So growth away from that was such that I guess it was maybe a little bit of personal pride and also shelf life. I don't know. Don't you all have that experience where the person is up there and they're still clinging on to what they started their career doing? Oh, yeah. And you have a little bit of...
Somewhere between empathy and then also sympathy and then also now disgust.
Rodgers. Right. Yeah. Rodgers.
And you don't want to be that person that was – Unwilling or worse yet, unable to hang up the cleats. And so I guess I looked at it as growth. Then I became the ag comedy guy. And that's a hell of a change from being a political comedian to being a guy that does ag.
So if I go to Corey's, you know, Hogan Meyer seed sales meeting and I'm funny and I make a couple of points about ag and I'm funny and funny and funny. That's a pretty big, you know.
sea change from doing political comedy which you know there's another thing you talk about growth I knew that political comedy had a shelf life because it was me dressed up as Bill Clinton what people probably didn't realize is I needed to get out of political comedy altogether because look around there's so much of a chasm between this side or that side and there's so much hostility so getting out of comedy was really also I got I talk about in one of my business books you get typecast
You know, you get typecast. And I've used this on stage before to illustrate something. I'm like, put up a picture of Larry the Cable Guy. Yep. Raise your hand if you don't know who this is. And then everybody, you know, nobody raises their hand. I said, pretty funny. Yeah. Name him. Larry the Cable Guy. Yep.
If Larry the Cable Guy comes in here and wants to give you advice on investing, you laugh just at the very thought of it. Yeah. He's completely typecast. Yeah. I was in danger of being typecast as the guy who was Bill Clinton impersonator comedian for So I had to make a pretty big sea change to go and do that.
And then I didn't want to be, oh, he's also now the ag comedy guy because I'm like, I got pretty well one-trick ponied before. I don't want to be one-trick ponied into that. So that's why I started in 2012, made a concerted effort, be like, yeah, I'm funny, but also we're going to make these points about the future of agriculture. What? Yeah. I read the Wall Street every day.
I've read hundreds of business books, and I've got a degree in agricultural economics. We're going to talk about some issues in this industry as well as be funny. That was really me not forcing it on to any clients but selling it, and that's where the growth came because I guess I've been conditioned – trained and now scared of ever looking like you're going to get treated as the one-trick pony.
A little bit. I mean, you know, growing up out on the farm, we didn't like have HBO or anything. I watched Carol Burnett show variety shows where, uh, when the seventies, uh, and I always thought I could do that or Saturday night live or Benny Hill, you know, Benny Hill reruns on the independent channel out of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
And when I'm, you know, 14 years old and you can only watch it during the summer because it came on at 10 o'clock at night and God knows you couldn't stay up until 10 30 during the school year. Um, So, I mean, I always was inspired by that kind of thing. Certainly, I never was taken to a club or saw much in the way of speakers or humorists or anything.
We'd go to ag meetings, but it was like the local equipment dealership to give you a ham sandwich. And they'd play a video about the latest Case IH tractor or something like that. The motivation was creativity and compensation. And I think that's the part that if you're a farm person, you pride yourself on your work ethic.
Maybe some farm people give themselves more credit for work ethic than they really deserve. But I never was afraid of the work. And I was more concerned if I stayed with this corporation, compensation and advance would be more predicated on my ability to politic. Versus my ability to perform. And that obviously is, I'm sure, a very common lament among anybody in corporate.
So the compensation and the creativity was the driving force to quit and do this. Yeah, as far as looking at people... I think there's some really good performers out there, and there's some that aren't.
Obviously, Larry the Cable Guy, the problem is I looked at that, and when he got his rise, when I was already making the adjustment to not be Bill Clinton anymore, and I'm like, and that dude's going to have the same problem as me. Graham with another comma in the earnings, probably. Sure, maybe. Hopefully. I don't know. Yeah.
Talking about Shaquille O'Neal, any of these people, now you can say, oh, he wouldn't have had to do anything. He wouldn't have. Okay, you just take his Orlando Magic revenue, and then it was a Laker, and then he was somewhere else in between. I don't remember. Was he a Houston?
Showing 41–60 of 125 · page 3 of 7
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