Billboard Insider will run a series of interviews with out of home executive Billy Tolson, the President of Fairmount Outdoor. Today Billy talks about starting as a child actor and transitioning to out of home.
Billy, you were a child actor
My story is pretty simple. I was in a play with my mom when I was nine years old, and I met someone there who was a working actor doing commercials. I started asking him a million questions about how it all worked.
Growing up in Dallas, there was actually a ton of commercial work because Texas was a right-to-work state. So I went home and begged my parents to take me to an agent. It took about six months to convince them because they didn’t think I was serious. Eventually, they relented, and once they did, I was pretty focused on it.
I booked my very first audition, and from there it just took off. I ended up doing more than 40 national commercials and made a career out of acting for about 12 years. Eventually, I left acting behind and went to film school at UT Austin.
What was it like playing the young Chuck Norris on Walker Texas Ranger
He actually handpicked me for the role. Nice guy — he was always very genial, really professional. I credit him with a major course correction in my life. I was just weeks away from being sent out of state to a military boarding school, which I was absolutely dreading, when my agent called to tell me I had a two-year commitment on the show. That changed everything. It meant I could stay home in Dallas, close to my friends, and I got to work on an exciting TV set for a few seasons.
How did you get into out of home?
I’m second-generation out-of-home. My father, Ray Tolson, was a raw-land developer in Dallas. He had a real nose for dirt and sort of fell into his first billboard after buying a shopping center that happened to have an existing sign on it. From there, he started building his own signs in 1984 and also built a few with Doug Perry and Doug Ralston.
After film school, my father encouraged me to get a law degree—just to have a little more ammunition—so I did. I focused on contracts, real estate and intellectual property, which ended up being a pretty natural transition into the family business.
When my father passed away 18 years ago, I took over Fairmount Outdoor. Our family portfolio is based in Dallas—mostly legacy structures, some of which we’ve converted to digital over the years. And then I went off and started building signs around Texas and working on Wallscapes in California under my own shingle, Reata Outdoor.
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