Do business better

Chris

Barron: Hey everybody, before we get going on this podcast, I just want to let you know that we are going to be sharing part of the 19 Minutes episode here on the Ag View Pitch. And the reason we're doing that is kind of give you a little bit of a flavor for what we do and where that goes. And so we're going to play the first part of that here on the Ag View Pitch so you can get a, get a taste of that. Our guest is Damian Mason. We're talking about doing business better. So if you get a chance here to, to listen to this and are interested in signing up for 19 Minutes, we'll have that in the show notes here. But just wanted to give a little introduction to this, and, uh, um, enjoy. Thanks. Welcome everybody to another episode of 19 Minutes. We are heading into 2024, and so the first guest of this year on the 9th of January is Damian Mason. Damian, how's it going?

Damian

Mason: I'm doing well, thanks for having me.

Chris

Barron: Well, it's great to have you on here. So the one of the first things, uh, as I told you offline that I want to do is I want to introduce kind of your platform, some of the things you do. You've worked with us in our conference. I think as we head into 2025, we're looking at— we're going to pull your excellence again in terms of information and wisdom and, and also want to promote for you the Business of Agriculture podcast, which I was a guest on here. I think you've done a couple of podcasts since then as we record this. You just— I just was watching one today that you did with Joe Vaklovic and a lot of our listeners on 19 Minutes listen to Joe. So if, if you haven't heard the conversation that Damian and Joe Vaclovic did together on The Business of Agriculture, definitely go back and take a look at that or reach out to us.

And, and, and I can have Mac put a, put a link to that as well. But that was a great conversation you guys had on, on marketing and, and keeping it real. So really appreciate that. But Damian, today what I want to talk to you about is a book that Shay always teases me about because I always kind of rave about it a little bit. And it's, it's called Do Business Better. It's a book that you wrote. When did you write that book?

Damian

Mason: 4 years ago. It came out in 2019, actually 5 years ago now that we're heading into 2024. And I wrote it. I was actually— I just pulled up my desk copy and I know you're— we're video only, but I'm holding it up right now because I hadn't actually handled that book for several months and you told me you want to talk about it. So I just pulled up— I keep a copy here at my desk so I can reference stuff for things like this and You know, I just was glancing at the introduction while you were going on, and I, I opened up by saying I wrote this for you, the business owner, the small business person, the entrepreneur. And, you know, a lot of your folks are obviously in agriculture, and sometimes farm people don't think of themselves as small business people. In fact, they're, they're small to mid-sized business people.

And it's, it's an interesting thing because when you talk business person to business person, like before we hit the record button, I just talked to you about being motivated. I just talked to you about, uh, keeping the creativity going, you know, those kinds of things that— no offense, but the person that has a normal job doesn't go through that. They— I mean, they really don't. The person has a normal job. What's that?

Chris

Barron: They want their check.

Damian

Mason: Yeah, right. And so it's, it's an interesting thing. So yeah, it's, it's, it was purposefully written to the small biz, biz-minded entrepreneur, self-employed, and you know, gig employee, whatever that should be right now. And that's, that's where it was all about. It's kind of almost somewhere between a celebration and also an instruction thing. And you're, you're right, she gives you a hard time about it. You know, it's, it's not, it's not Harvard MBA kind of stuff. But then again, most things in small business and mid-sized businesses are not Harvard MBA stuff. And frankly, a lot of Harvard MBA people would struggle doing what you and I do. They're pretty good at sitting in boardrooms and large corporations and nodding their head, but I'm not sure they could actually get up and knock two coconuts together to get a dollar to fall out. And that's what I do every day.

And so that's what you do every day.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I always tell my, my kids, spending money is like pouring water into sand and, and making money is like trying to get the water back out of the sand. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's a lot harder than, you know, it's pretty easy to spend money. It's easy to you know, to look at other people and create an opinion. And a lot of times it just, it's just so different. And that's what I love about the book and some of the things that you have in here. And like I said, I encourage people to, to— where do they get it actually? And then I'm going to start going into this.

Damian

Mason: Do Business Better is still available on Amazon. I've got a few, I got a few copies sitting around here. I've sold out of my inventory. So I guess for a handful of copies they can contact me, DamianMason.com, or then if they want to buy bulk, they can go to Amazon. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, by the way, I want to point out that what you just said, one thing about business, and I went and watched the Wyoming Cowboys play the Toledo Rockets in a bowl game the other day here. I live in Arizona half the time, so I was down at the Tucson for the Arizona Bowl and there was a big drive and someone said, man, they made it look easy. I said, I think that running your business, business and football have this thing in common when it's flowing. It seems easy. And what you do then is you forget how hard it is other times. Like they get to the red zone and all of a sudden it gets hard.

And I think that sometimes about business, you talk about making money versus spending money. I look at it sometimes, Chris, and you've been there as well, where you think, man, this is easy. And when you go through a difficult quarter or year, you know, half, whatever it should be, you're like, damn. I wish I had remembered how hard this can be. Like when things are flowing, it just seems like, yeah, whatever, you know, accounts receivable. Yeah, I'm owed $100,000. Big deal. And then you get into that tight time and you're like, damn, I'm owed $400. Where's that check? You know, it's, it's, it's a very different thing, but it's kind of like that. Like, yeah, we're getting, we're picking up 20 yards, things are flowing and all of a sudden, oh, we can't even, we can't even move the ball.

Chris

Barron: Same thing. And that's where you find out how good you are in business, because you either rise to the occasion or you don't. I always go back to basketball and you go to March Madness, kind of to tie on to what you're saying. You know, you'll, you'll bring— you put two teams together and, and, you know, one team's going to be, you know, is favored by, you know, 15 points. And it's— and it's a— it's a one-point game. It's a two-point game all, all the way through the whole thing, all the way to the very end. And that, you know, the other team's not supposed to be as good as— how are they doing that? You know, well, when they show up, they, they show up to play the game. They show up ready. And I think that's, you know, just to tack on to what you say, I agree 100%. I mean, it's, it's all about how, how we, how we, uh, show up for the game.

So what I want to do, unless you had another comment— I can see, I can see the wheels turning or the gears turning there. Um, So what I want to do is I'm going to point out the 4 things that I'm pulling out of your book so that everybody kind of has a platform or an introduction to that. One of the things you talk about is Get Better, and you have a little story behind that. But I think it's important that people understand why I want— why we want to touch on Get Better. The other one is basically the 4 traits of entrepreneurship. And that's what really, as farmers, I always argue we are business people who just happen to farm. I mean, you're a business person and you happen to do whatever is, whatever industry you're in, you know, risk tolerance, drive, resilience, and vision.

Those are kind of 4 really key things that I think, you know, even people can jot those things down as you kind of talk through these. The next one is treat time like money. And I want to hit on that one. And I've got some comments on that one. And then the last one is no money or you'll have no money.. And so that's something that we preach all the time at Ag View Solutions. And so with that said, let's start with get better. How do we get better in 2024, Damian?

Damian

Mason: Yeah. So here we are recording this right at the new year and everybody's setting New Year's resolutions. And it's kind of like you want— you want to tell people, like the people that want to lose weight, I lost 3 pounds yesterday. It's a, it's a long-term thing. And once you change your head around this, that it's, it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. It is constant improvement. It is. Yeah. It's not about how much weight you can lose between now and tomorrow. It's for between now and next year at this time. It's all that same kind of thing. When I look at getting better, I set up— gosh, it has been about maybe 5 or 6 years ago— I set goals every year and you do as well. Personal, financial, and business are my 3 categories. I've been doing it for 30 years. Personal, financial, business are my 3 categories.

And when I look at my personal goals, you know, anybody that's ever been in a long-term relationship, I make sure that I prioritize that. And I realize that there's, there's probably challenges of living with Damian Mason. So I look about getting better. I look at how I can be a better husband, how I can be a better guy, how I can be better in my relationships, how I can do those kind of things. Look at your getting better. You look at it as what, what What thing can I do, um, that is— people always think they gotta do like some major, major thing, you know. And again, if you look at it as the marathon that it is, long term, if you can just do a little thing better each day, if you can improve on that thing each day. So I talk about getting better. Like, I came up in comedy, and you talked about my book here, and I referenced some different things in that book about comedy.

I wasn't a trained comedian. I was a farm boy. Uh, I was a funny farm boy. I was the youngest in a big family. I was kind of a funny kid. I was kind of clever, kind of witty, but I wasn't a trained comedian. I looked at this thing that most people sort of like, oh yeah, I'm a comedian, I think it's kind of a joke. Well, you tell jokes, but you're— if you treat it like a business, which I did, I looked at how I could improve the act. And I think if you looked at your business the way a person that aspires in comedy— I'm talking about the ones that actually turn it into a career, because most do not, most never never get past open mic night. Most, most people never get past, you know, doing it for yucks. The person that turns it into a career— Chris, what I did was I would tape myself and I would go and watch that tape. And so I talk about getting better.

I would look at how can I take that, whatever, when you started out, 10-minute set, and make it tighter. Uh, you know, Seinfeld talks about tightening it up. Um, some people in comedy talk about efficiency. Seinfeld talks about making it more efficient, which means more laughs per minute. I talk about compressing. How can I take a 4-minute bit or a 3-minute story and turn it into a 1.5-minute bit and retain the laughs? So when you look at it this way about getting better, I always think, what thing are you doing now that if you looked at it from your customer's perspective, if you looked at it from an outsider's perspective, if you broke down the tape like football teams do or like good comedians do, break down the tape, go and watch yourself, listen to yourself and say, damn, that 40 seconds right there sucked. How can I get rid of that 40 seconds that sucks?

How can I get rid of it and improve it? And that's— it takes a lot of, you know, like the motivational wackos, oh, don't be so self-critical. Well, if you're not self-critical, how the hell are you ever going to improve? So I look at it as self-criticism. Yes, it might be— it might look like you're being too harsh on yourself sometimes, but how are you ever going to get better? My wife said, Damon, you've only been golfing for 3 years. You expect yourself to be better than bogey in only 3 years of golf? Almost nobody is better than bogey, even if they've been golfing for their whole life. She says, you have too high of expectations. And I said, and that's why you have a winter home in Arizona, because I set high expectations.

Chris

Barron: Right, right. And, you know, you said personal, financial, and business. And so, you know, that's, that's really a lot about the, about the business, about doing that better and getting better. I relate that a lot to, you know, on the farmer side of things, just taking that analogy and looking at yourself quarterly and saying, okay, how are we doing as a business? How's, you know, what's cash flow look like? What's, what's going on in the operation? How's, how are the employees, how are the family members working together, especially if it's a family business, you know, and, and how is the production, how's the financials? Any other comments on, on, on getting better before we go to the next layer?

Damian

Mason: Well, you just talked about the 3 goals. Let's go to financial. That's what a lot of people obviously always think about, some money, and they get enamored with, oh, you know, that person has millions of dollars, whatever that thing should be. There's only one number on a balance sheet that matters. You as well as anybody know that when you go and work with your clients, only one number on the balance sheet that really matters is the bottom line. It's the net worth. Well, to get that, you need all those other numbers working right. You need to control the expenses. You need the liabilities to be less than the, than the, you know, the, the assets. You need the P&L statement to have the revenue coming in. So I look at it as a marathon, not a sprint. I've said that a couple of times now, and that's in everything.

You're— you go— when I was in comedy, the next gig isn't going to be the best that I've ever done, but it needs to be better than the one I just did yesterday. And, you know, we need to take that 3 minutes that only got 4 laughs, and tomorrow let's turn it into 2 minutes and 20 seconds and retain the 4 laughs. In other words, how can we keep squeezing more out of our productivity? And I think if you look at it as the gradations— tomorrow improve by this much on this thing there's probably about 6 or 8 different things that you and I are still— before we hit record— are still working on ourselves. And we're in our mid-50s. And so, so I would say the tough part is the patience factor. Mrs. Mason says you're not very patient at all. I said, no, I have high expectations, but I'm patient in that I understand that it's not going to be a 100% improvement the next time.

It's going to be a gradation. It's going to be a 1% improvement, a 2% improvement each time. And I think that if you have the patience on the improvement, you'll you know, realizing that you're in this for the long haul, I think is the big picture because most people get discouraged whether it's weight loss, balance sheet, whatever that thing should be.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. And that's a great point because tolerance as you go through these, these challenging times up and down agriculture, just like any other business, it's not unique. It's just all businesses go up and down. And so you got to be able to, to manage the, the differences from, from one year to the next.

Damian

Mason: So, and Chris, I said patience. I'm probably the most impatient person you'll ever meet, but I, but I can look at my business for 30 years and realize that this thing won't happen like that. Yes, I have high expectations, but I realize that the better part of it, the improvement part. But the thing is, when you don't pressure yourself at all, when you don't expect, you expect the needle to move at all. So expect it to move 20%. If it moves 10%, you're still going in the right direction.

Chris

Barron: Right, right. Awesome. So let's go to the next thing. Number 2 I had, which is essentially the, the, the entrepreneurial success traits. Essentially, there's 4 of them: risk tolerance, drive, resilience, and vision. Take it however you want. You can, you can cover all 4 one at a time, or you can, or you can combine them. I mean, I, I want to, I want to hear your, your take on this and, and how this should be taken from producers and things they could take home for 2024 as they move forward.

Damian

Mason: Yeah. So we're talking to agricultural people right now and there's this conception that— or maybe a misconception that, oh boy, you have so much risk. Well, the reality is this is one of the few businesses, maybe the only business that I can think of where the United States Department of Agriculture is going to subsidize an insurance policy to guarantee you revenue that makes you at least break even. And people sometimes don't like it when I say that. Well, go to the dry cleaners down here where I take my shirts in Paradise Valley, Arizona. There's no policy. Paid for by the government that will guarantee them revenue to break even. So the risk thing is more real to the dry cleaner in Paradise Valley than it is to the farmer. And they don't like to hear that. They don't like to admit that.

Does the farmer have $5 million of machinery tied up in a tool shed and the dry cleaner only has rent and, you know, a couple of employees? Yes. But the risk tolerance is greater for the general contractor out here building houses than it is for the farmer. But the point is, if you have no tolerance for risk, you probably shouldn't be in business for yourself, period. Because that, that thing, when everybody asks me, oh, Damian, you've been running your business for 30 years, I've got this idea. And I would say, great, I love your idea. Can you go— can you go to bed at night if you haven't made any money for the last 60 days? No, I got this idea. I'm like, your idea is beautiful, wonderful. But what about the ability to stomach risk? And that's, that's a real thing. You know, it's the stress, as you and I both know. And there are people that stress is perceived.

You know, a long time ago, I remember saying that I'm like, how does a nun die of a heart attack? What stress does she have? And a doctor said, remember, stress is perceived. It's different for every person. Elon Musk level of risk tolerance versus yours versus, you know, the person that has a government job and sits in a cubicle every day. Very different. So I think about risk tolerance and the fact that it's, it's it's personal to you. And also, I think it's very important to be able to understand what your level of risk acceptance is. Um, and there's certain people that are in the wrong position, and you can tell that's a big part of it right there. Yeah. So that's the risk tolerance angle on it.

Chris

Barron: I want to interrupt you on the risk tolerance one real quick there. Um, one thing I would say, just, just to, to make it so we don't have too many producers pissed off from the standpoint of, of the insurance. What I would say is, is in a high percentage of the time, the insurance will keep guys close to break even. But I would argue that just from what I'm seeing, it's going to depend on what the spring price is. And then it's different for the livestock and some of the, you know, the vegetable growers and stuff. They don't have insurance. So it is right for— it is different for some of the operations. So depending on who's listening to this, you know, there, there are variance, you know, varying degrees of risk that's out there. And, and like last year, I would agree with you 100%.

You know, most of the people listening to this would have been able to guarantee themselves a break-even. In 2024, it's going to be a little tougher, probably because likely the spring price is going to be low enough that it's going to— what it does is it keeps you in business, it keeps you from going broke. I mean, because you know, you could, you could literally go broke in a couple of years if you didn't have that, that safety net. So, so yeah, I agree with you 100%. I just want to clarify that a little bit.

Damian

Mason: Yeah. Well, we know there are people— I work in ag, you work in ag, you know, the person who listens to this, I'm an ag guy, but in no way being disrespectful, but I'm telling you, the dry cleaner, the general contractor that are down the street here, they don't, they don't have any insurance policy that guarantees revenue.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. No, I agree 100%.

Damian

Mason: So they're arguably much more tolerant of risk than the people in agriculture. The next thing you talked about then was drive. You know, we pride ourselves on work ethic in agriculture. If you are not driven, you're going to struggle running your own business. And I also think we should put a little asterisk next to the drive part. There's working hard and working smart. There's also talking about work. You know, people are famous for putting on their dirty Carhartts and driving around the truck all day and then talk about hard day's work. Come on. My brother, who's no longer with us, was very defensive of my career. And he'd come by and visit me at my farm in Indiana and drink beer. And he'd say, yeah, you know, I was talking to so-and-so. He's like, these people don't respect what you do. They don't get it. Like, they— your brother goes around and talks for a living.

He's like, you don't think what Damien does is work? You don't think writing books, producing podcasts, traveling around the country, giving speeches, reading, researching, doing the travel. Running the business. You don't think that's work? So remember that work is work. And that's what something my brother said all the time. From your perspective, uh, you know, is it digging ditches? No, but work is work, and we should always be respectful of that. But when you talk about the drive, there are people that are best suited to go and get, uh, a job that they, you know, put in the amount of time they have to put in to get their paycheck. And there are other people that if you don't have— if you don't have the push, you're probably not going to make it. So there's risk tolerance, there's drive. Then we talked about, uh, Vision, and we talked about resilience. I can go with vision.

A friend of mine, uh, told me once, he's like, I— he said, I think if you don't have the drive, obviously vision doesn't matter. You can sit there and envision what your future is going to look like, but if you don't have the get off your ass and go, it ain't gonna matter. But at some point, do you want to be working and taking on risk and then Wonder what it's all for. And so you and I talked before you hit the record button. I don't have children. I've never had this idea that I'm going to create some massive amount of, you know, holdings to give over to the next generation. Frankly, I think that erodes their drive to do so. So my vision is what I want the business to look like, what I want my life to look like, what I want my wife and I's day to look like when I go down the road. You got to say, okay, we have a lot of people in ag. Obviously, your people are listening.

This are ag people. They are very much about pushing things off to the next generation. But then you want to kind of caution them, don't lose you in the vision. Don't, don't lose you in that vision that you want so much for Junior that you lose you in it. And I think that's really important that we're out here doing all this work to keep you in what that future looks like. What is my life going to look like? What am I going to do? What is, what is my day going to look like 1 year, 5 years, 10 years from now? What is happiness? You know, people like to say that, I just want to be happy. And I wrote in my book, I said, well, so does my dog. You know, let's get a little bit more substantive. I just want to be happy. Well, that's an easy— that's a cop-out. What does happiness look like? Fulfillment. And so one of my big things we talk about goals is I look at what's fulfilling.

What is fulfilling? The older I get, it's not just about making money. It's what thing feeds you.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and to, to expand on that a bit, you know, the vision portion of that too is getting everybody communicating and on the same page. A lot of the operators that are listening to this are multi-generational businesses that, that have multiple family members at various ages. They have business partners at various ages, all at different stages of life with maybe slightly different visions or goals, but if they could get together and communicate, set their core values, set out, you know, what is— where are we going, what is our vision together. They can each have their own individual, but, you know, sometimes I think businesses, um, you know, have that lack of vision and not everybody pulls a rope in the same direction, and eventually it kind of falls apart. So just something to be careful of, I think.

Damian

Mason: There's, there's— it's difficult to share vision. We, we know people, and I talked about it in that book that you've referenced a number of times here, that I bought properties that nobody saw what I saw. My wife and I are pretty good about it. I saw that with my career. You know, I quit my job in 1994 to be a Bill Clinton impersonator, and I had people that laughed and made a mockery of it, like, what the hell, you do what? But I had the vision. It wasn't that it wasn't that one gig. It was where the thing was going. And I wanted to— my big goal was to be creative and be compensated for my own work ethic. That was my overriding thing 30 years ago. And so you can say, well, that doesn't sound a lot like vision. Well, it does. I want to feed my head and I want to feed my pocketbook. And I want it to be based on my creativity and my work ethic. So the vision moves also.

You know, you had before you hit record, what you, what you think and what you— because if you've gotten, you've gotten to some level of your goal accomplishment and attainment already at age 57, you're, you're altering the, or modifying, I should say. It's, it's, it's, it's modifying a little bit, which is good.

Chris

Barron: Yep. That's awesome. I think we all need to stay focused on that. Hopefully you enjoyed that. That gives you a little bit of a flavor for what 19 Minutes is. The conversation continues on 19 Minutes., and it's a great, uh, conversation where we go into a lot more details and information. It's great conversation. So if you're interested in that, you can go into the show notes and get signed up for 19 Minutes. And there's a lot of other episodes on there too. There's over 35 episodes on there that once you sign up, you have access to all of those as well. So hope you enjoy. Thank you.