Speaker 1: Deborah, with her thirty years of being an entrepreneur and
Speaker 1: creating over seven companies, knows exactly what it means to
Speaker 1: accept the mission. When you make that decision, when you
Speaker 1: accept the mission to become a solopreneur, to take yourself
Speaker 1: and your talents to market, then you embrace a life
Speaker 1: of not only unlimited possibilities, but also the unknown. It's
Speaker 1: an elixir of fear and bravery that only someone who's
Speaker 1: taken the leap really understands. On our show, deb digs
Speaker 1: deep with her guests to highlight what you the listener
Speaker 1: wants to know, the stories, the whys, and the hows
Speaker 1: to navigate the journey to success. Get ready to hear
Speaker 1: from some of the most incredible mission takers from Generation
Speaker 1: Z to boomers. So sit up, perk up, and get
Speaker 1: ready to be blown away. Now here is your host,
Speaker 1: Deborah Drummond.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to another incredible episode. As you know,
Speaker 2: I always tell you you're something I'm.
Speaker 3: Telling y'all from somehow, and today let me see you
Speaker 3: are the most entertained. You are the most entertained podcast
Speaker 3: audience today.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited to bring Darren Darnbara to the show today,
Speaker 2: and I think he might have a few words to
Speaker 2: say about media, maybe a little bit about entertainment.
Speaker 3: But we're gonna have a great time together.
Speaker 2: And if you have landed on Mission Accepted today because
Speaker 2: you thought that sounded like a great title, by the way,
Speaker 2: you're gonna find out how Darren decided.
Speaker 3: To take on the mission and why he stays on
Speaker 3: the mission.
Speaker 2: That's where the good stories come from, is when someone
Speaker 2: decides I'm going to do something and they think the
Speaker 2: big bravery comes in making that decision, and then the
Speaker 2: journey gets fun and it also gets funky and most
Speaker 2: of the time my listeners, thank you so much. You
Speaker 2: share and post and comment and you really tell me
Speaker 2: what you need and I love how.
Speaker 3: You are sharing.
Speaker 2: And as you know, we are also going global and
Speaker 2: doing some really cool live shows and you'll see all that.
Speaker 2: But anyways, that being said, thank you for being here today, Darren,
Speaker 2: and welcome to Mission Accepted podcast.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be
Speaker 4: with you here.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely so.
Speaker 2: Darren, why don't you tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: what you do and share with us a little bit
Speaker 2: about how you decided to do it.
Speaker 3: I was looking at your things this morning, and I.
Speaker 2: Didn't quite catch the story or maybe your story, of
Speaker 2: how you ended up doing what you're doing.
Speaker 5: Well, that's interesting because sometimes I don't even know what
Speaker 5: I do, and I find it hard to explain. But
Speaker 5: there's because traditionally we would explain what we do as
Speaker 5: being out our job or our career. Mind shifted in
Speaker 5: a few different directions, but also kept consistent in the
Speaker 5: main things that I do, which is from a young age,
Speaker 5: I've always been an actor, and from a young age,
Speaker 5: I've always been very interested in business and entrepreneurship, and
Speaker 5: I've managed to somehow do them both concurrently at the
Speaker 5: same time throughout my life. And now, you know, being
Speaker 5: twenty five years older than that that teenage boy, I
Speaker 5: see that I have consistently done that and it's not
Speaker 5: really flipped and flopped, but I've managed to keep both
Speaker 5: of those tracks running. And I used to struggle with
Speaker 5: that part of it, feeling like shouldn't I focus on
Speaker 5: one thing or the other. And actually I'm now very
Speaker 5: comfortable knowing that I like both, I'm good at both.
Speaker 4: That's fine.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that you know, when people used to
Speaker 2: we we've had that conversation and people like, you know,
Speaker 2: if you just do one thing, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: for a lot of creatives, and I know I am one.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of creatives that come on the show.
Speaker 2: Let's face it, whatever industry you're on, that you're or in,
Speaker 2: that you are creating, whether it's accounting or whether it's
Speaker 2: on the screen like you've done.
Speaker 3: I always tell people I'm a creative. I'm a creative.
Speaker 2: I happen to create businesses or I happen to create
Speaker 2: my company, or I happen to create.
Speaker 3: But it's the creative mind.
Speaker 2: I mean, someone called me an lentrepreneur and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll take it if you that's great. There's a title
Speaker 2: for people do more than one thing at one time.
Speaker 3: But I think that if you have.
Speaker 2: A mission and your mission, you can have one mission
Speaker 2: and do it many different ways.
Speaker 3: But I too.
Speaker 2: Struggled a little bit with hey, maybe if you just
Speaker 2: focused on one thing, And I'm like, but I'm a
Speaker 2: creative and my brain doesn't work that way, and my.
Speaker 3: Job is to be satisfied in my soul.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to do just one thing and
Speaker 2: feel a yearning over here and I talked about it
Speaker 2: actually on a summit earlier this morning. They were talking
Speaker 2: to me about business, and I said, you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of people used to do a full time job
Speaker 2: and a part time job, and a lot of times
Speaker 2: their part time job was more fun, and they wanted
Speaker 2: their part time job to be their full time job.
Speaker 2: And now we have this world of entrepreneurship where side
Speaker 2: gigs are turning into their full time gigs.
Speaker 3: And why can't you have pleasure from two things?
Speaker 5: Well, and the interesting thing about what you just said,
Speaker 5: there is no one really does one thing. Even if
Speaker 5: you have one career and one salary and one job,
Speaker 5: you still have your off time, You still have your
Speaker 5: you still have your your weekends and your vacations and
Speaker 5: things like that, your family.
Speaker 4: No one does one thing all the time.
Speaker 5: And I think if you're entrepreneurially minded, you you have
Speaker 5: a lack of that desire to have one job, and
Speaker 5: you usually do enjoy what you do, so actually your
Speaker 5: leisure time becomes your work time, and they all intermingle.
Speaker 5: But it's it's really sort of a bit disingenuous to
Speaker 5: set for anyone to say they do one thing. We
Speaker 5: all go to the gym or hang out or watch
Speaker 5: TV or sleep or you know, all these different different
Speaker 5: areas of your life. And I think an entrepreneur just
Speaker 5: masters those different areas and compartmentalizes them or not depending
Speaker 5: on how good they are, and does all those things
Speaker 5: concurrently in the same way most people do different areas
Speaker 5: of their life concurrently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, well said, Well said, Well, you know, great observation.
Speaker 3: I know that. Let's talk a little bit more.
Speaker 2: So. You talked about being an actor or from a teenager.
Speaker 2: I mean, let's talk about that because you said, I
Speaker 2: know that you act. Obviously I was watching you this morning.
Speaker 2: It was amazing. And also, you have this company that's
Speaker 2: kind of been the same vein and you say that
Speaker 2: you've been entrepreneurial, you know, pretty consistently in both Has
Speaker 2: it always been the same or have you been Did
Speaker 2: you have something entrepreneurial that wasn't necessarily in your industry?
Speaker 3: Maybe tell us a little backstory.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I did have various entrepreneurial pursuits that I would
Speaker 5: say they've always been industry adjacent looking back, and at
Speaker 5: the time some of them didn't feel But when I
Speaker 5: look at the whole picture where I'm from, the I'm
Speaker 5: from a small town in North London. Having a career
Speaker 5: as an actor, which is what I was interested in
Speaker 5: when I was you know, school, early teens. I realized
Speaker 5: it's something I was good at in the same way
Speaker 5: that many people do, just through doing it at school
Speaker 5: or on their weekend extracurricular kind of things. But it
Speaker 5: never felt like a viable career. It's, you know, I'm
Speaker 5: a product of that negative talk that you get around
Speaker 5: things that you want to do that no one ever
Speaker 5: makes it, or it's tough, all those things, and so
Speaker 5: in my head I always needed a backup plan, or
Speaker 5: not even a backup plan, just another thing to do
Speaker 5: at the same time, and studying was one of them.
Speaker 5: And I got my you know, my qualifications, and then
Speaker 5: went to college and all these things, but all at
Speaker 5: the same time, I was always acting, and I started
Speaker 5: doing local amateur dramatics like many people do. The shift
Speaker 5: happened when I was actually asked to be in oh.
Speaker 5: I was given the opportunity to be a background artist
Speaker 5: and a commercial that my head teacher at school knew
Speaker 5: the producer of, and he knew that me and my
Speaker 5: friend were like the actor kids at school were always
Speaker 5: in all the school shows, and he gave us the
Speaker 5: afternoon off to go because he thought it'd be a
Speaker 5: great experience. And that really sort of changed my perspective
Speaker 5: because it was a professional set. We were just you know,
Speaker 5: showing up to be in the background. I was think
Speaker 5: I was like fourteen fifteen. But the lead guy in it,
Speaker 5: who was also the same age as me, he had
Speaker 5: his own TV show. He was a legitimate TV star
Speaker 5: that we watched as kids. It was the sort of
Speaker 5: show you would watch when you get home from school.
Speaker 5: So he was a teenage hero. And we found out
Speaker 5: from talking to him and so that he lived in
Speaker 5: our area, and so we started hanging out with him
Speaker 5: as a friend, just playing on our bios things like that,
Speaker 5: and through him, I learned about agents. I learned about
Speaker 5: acting classes in the evening because he was even though
Speaker 5: he's our age, he had an agent. He was on
Speaker 5: TV and he took us to his class one evening
Speaker 5: that was run by his agent. And that changed my
Speaker 5: perspective because I was in a room of several people
Speaker 5: that I'd seen on television and I got up and
Speaker 5: acted with them, and I was like, Wow, this is
Speaker 5: something you can do as a career, not that I
Speaker 5: didn't know that, it just wasn't.
Speaker 4: In my immediate realm.
Speaker 5: And then through that I got representation with a different
Speaker 5: agent that run an acting class. I had two editions booked.
Speaker 5: My second one, which was a Dr Pepper commercial, got
Speaker 5: paid a lot of money for it at the age
Speaker 5: of sixteen, and that really not like a crazy amount
Speaker 5: of money, but way more than what your regular part
Speaker 5: time job was paying. I was on a professional set
Speaker 5: in a professional studio around other actors, a professional and
Speaker 5: I was like, Wow, actually this could be a career.
Speaker 5: And then my perspective shifted into it being a viable career,
Speaker 5: but still a tough one where I know I'm not
Speaker 5: going to make a consistent income all those things. And
Speaker 5: for a perspective, yes, I booked the second audition professional
Speaker 5: audition I did. It was another forty before I booked
Speaker 5: the next job, So that was beginner's luck in a way,
Speaker 5: and that sort of set the path for me thinking
Speaker 5: I need another career to go alongside of it.
Speaker 4: And what I remember deciding.
Speaker 5: At an early age is it had to be something flexible,
Speaker 5: because I knew I wanted to make myself available for
Speaker 5: this career and I very quickly saw people lose opportunities
Speaker 5: because they couldn't get the day off work or because
Speaker 5: they were you know, had these other obligations. So I
Speaker 5: decided I needed entrepreneurship because it's the only thing that
Speaker 5: I can call the shot song. And that's where when
Speaker 5: I started to look for things that were at bareminghim
Speaker 5: contract work. It's not like I've never had a regular job,
Speaker 5: but it would always be on a contract basis where
Speaker 5: I would decide each day if I was saying yes
Speaker 5: or no to that job. Or it'll be things that
Speaker 5: were commission based, so I could decide how hard I
Speaker 5: worked at it or not, and I would reap the
Speaker 5: rewards based upon my effort. And then that sort of
Speaker 5: led into various entrepreneurial endeavors. And when we get back
Speaker 5: to that thing of have they always been entertainment related
Speaker 5: kind of one of the first sort of quote unquote
Speaker 5: businesses I ran was a nightclub promotion company where we
Speaker 5: would promote nightclub nights, you know, getting people to come
Speaker 5: to your event. Classic, but I was doing the sort
Speaker 5: of celebrity clubs, the ones that you couldn't get into
Speaker 5: but you could if you knew the right person, and
Speaker 5: they were structured as a business. You know, we had
Speaker 5: targets to hear and clients and all those things. But
Speaker 5: it's caused entertainment adjacent because what those nightclubs really wanted
Speaker 5: from me was my actor friends, my model friends to
Speaker 5: come to their club. And then I also ran from
Speaker 5: doing a lot of brand ambassador work, which is kind
Speaker 5: of the promotional staff, the modeling that you do exhibitions,
Speaker 5: pretty people handing out free things. I did a lot
Speaker 5: of that work in between the acting work which many
Speaker 5: many actors do, many models do that because it's flexible.
Speaker 5: And that was my first successful company really that I
Speaker 5: built around that industry, which was getting actors that were
Speaker 5: not working work in another industry that was adjacent to
Speaker 5: what they were doing and used their skills. And so
Speaker 5: I built a company called Stuck for Staff, which was
Speaker 5: a software as a service platform SaaS business as they're
Speaker 5: now called, which we didn't know that was called it
Speaker 5: then because there weren't many subscription businesses out there. This
Speaker 5: is back in the early two thousands. I did this
Speaker 5: and it was you know, it's a recruitment platform which
Speaker 5: matched people in a marketplace that they now call it
Speaker 5: off staff that work in that industry, and we end
Speaker 5: up having the largest database of those staff in the
Speaker 5: country for sure, but probably the world.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: Well, and we might as well lead right into what
Speaker 2: you're doing now, yeah, because it sounds similar, but not,
Speaker 2: why don't we share with the audience what it is
Speaker 2: that you're doing now?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So right now.
Speaker 5: I started a company called wheel Audition, and it's been
Speaker 5: running for about nine years now. What Wheel Audition is
Speaker 5: is a platform, a marketplace, a SaaS business, a subscription
Speaker 5: as a service business see the theme here, that helps
Speaker 5: actors find scene partners to do their auditions.
Speaker 4: It's very very niche.
Speaker 5: My last business is also very niche, but this one
Speaker 5: operates on a similar model. Really, it's a similar structure.
Speaker 5: And one of the reasons I like these types of
Speaker 5: business is they're technically infinitely scalable depending on how many
Speaker 5: customers you can reach. And so when we had the
Speaker 5: idea for the problem, which was how to actors find
Speaker 5: someone to read their lines with, it made sense to
Speaker 5: me to apply that old business model that I built, which,
Speaker 5: by the way, we rebuilt from scratch. It's not a
Speaker 5: technology you could really apply, but the concepts I applied
Speaker 5: over I deal with different people and that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: But the concept we applied over which is an international
Speaker 5: marketplace of people wanting to help each other out on demand.
Speaker 5: So what we audition is is basically like an Uber
Speaker 5: for actors, but through video chat. So when you need
Speaker 5: an actor, you log on and you pick someone that's
Speaker 5: available right now to come on a video chat like
Speaker 5: we're doing now to help you read your scripts. And
Speaker 5: what you're getting is a professional, qualified, reviewed actor that
Speaker 5: understands the business that can help you out. And if
Speaker 5: you're not in the acting world, if you're not in entertainment,
Speaker 5: you might say, well, why is that necessary. Well, there's
Speaker 5: been a few shifts in recent years. Acting has largely
Speaker 5: gone from an in person audition process where you go
Speaker 5: to an appointment in an office like you've seen Joey
Speaker 5: from Friends do, and wait in line and go for
Speaker 5: your appointment and read with the person in the office.
Speaker 5: Has largely gone into a system where you tape yourself
Speaker 5: on your iPhone or your camera and you send it in,
Speaker 5: which means you no longer have the other person who
Speaker 5: would be the casting director or the casting's assistant, and
Speaker 5: that created a burden on the actor to not only
Speaker 5: have to set up their lights and their camera and everything,
Speaker 5: but also have somebody there to read with them. Do
Speaker 5: the other line, what most people end up doing was
Speaker 5: asking their roommate, asking their girlfriend, asking their mum. And
Speaker 5: that's not the best person for the job. It's it works,
Speaker 5: but it's not the best person. And so I was
Speaker 5: looking at well, I was having that issue, and I
Speaker 5: lived in Hollywood. I lived in an apartment building of
Speaker 5: about thirty to forty apartments where probably half of them
Speaker 5: were actors. I know loads of people in Hollywood, and
Speaker 5: I still found it tough to find someone to do
Speaker 5: that with me at the time I needed, you know,
Speaker 5: a convenient time for me. And so I was like,
Speaker 5: if I'm having this problem where I live in the
Speaker 5: most actor centric place in the world, in the middle
Speaker 5: of a city that every second person is an actor,
Speaker 5: what is someone in Nebraska feeling, What is somebody in
Speaker 5: Indonesia or in a smaller island feeling.
Speaker 4: Who do they ask?
Speaker 5: And so that's how the system was born, is let's
Speaker 5: connect actors around the world to help each other out
Speaker 5: through this marketplace.
Speaker 2: I love that story for many reasons. One is we
Speaker 2: hear over and over again. You know, find a solution
Speaker 2: to a problem that exists, and many people miss opportunities
Speaker 2: unless it's really a part of their inner world. And
Speaker 2: then the concern is, yeah, it's my problem, it's my
Speaker 2: industry's problem. Is it big enough? Is it scalable? And
Speaker 2: how do you scale? So, I mean that's a whole
Speaker 2: other conversation.
Speaker 5: Which, well I can answer those questions really quickly. We
Speaker 5: often get asked, well, sorry, I hear the statement, I
Speaker 5: can't believe no one thought of this before, right, And
Speaker 5: there's it's interesting when someone says that to me because
Speaker 5: first the usually I say, you know, we've been doing
Speaker 5: it for nine years.
Speaker 4: They're like, wow, no I didn't.
Speaker 5: So firstly they they think it's newer than it is. Secondly,
Speaker 5: why did no one think of it before? Because you
Speaker 5: imagine the skill set it needs to build an e
Speaker 5: commerce platform like this, and the desire and the drive,
Speaker 5: but to also know the problem exists at an intricate
Speaker 5: level and understand the market you're talking to. Not many
Speaker 5: people fit that mold that can do both of those things,
Speaker 5: and here's there are that want to So there would
Speaker 5: be many people thinking, oh, I wish there was something
Speaker 5: like this and wouldn't do it. There'd be many people
Speaker 5: with a skill set, they wouldn't even know the problem existed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then.
Speaker 5: If you take the few that have both those skill sets,
Speaker 5: the desire and the drive and the hard work it
Speaker 5: takes to launch, that takes most people out. So you're
Speaker 5: niching on your niche. And then the other part of like,
Speaker 5: you know, find a solution to a problem. I do
Speaker 5: agree that's one of the best ways of business. But
Speaker 5: all of the businesses I've run, especially this one and
Speaker 5: the last one, I was fixing problem that people didn't
Speaker 5: even know they had. And that is part of the
Speaker 5: struggle of a new business and also the challenge and
Speaker 5: the exciting thing. And so you'll hear a lot of
Speaker 5: business advice out there that will say to you, you know,
Speaker 5: make sure you go out of market, test your product
Speaker 5: before you build anything before ask people do they want it.
Speaker 5: If I'd have asked people if they wanted this, they
Speaker 5: would have probably said no because to them, their dad
Speaker 5: or their boyfriend is good enough. They don't know they
Speaker 5: need a different solution. And then there's a bunch of
Speaker 5: people beyond that that they their problem wasn't Who do
Speaker 5: I get to read their problem was I need more auditions.
Speaker 5: So they're coming from a place of scarcity anyway, So
Speaker 5: someone saying hey, if this existed, would you use this?
Speaker 5: They come from a place where I don't even have
Speaker 5: enough auditions to think about that. But I want that
Speaker 5: person to be part of my business four years later
Speaker 5: when they are in a place where they need that.
Speaker 5: And so really with this business, we had to just
Speaker 5: be confident build it. It's one of those build it
Speaker 5: and they will come. And I always loved that quote.
Speaker 5: I don't know if this is a true quote or
Speaker 5: it's one of those internet memes that goes around, but
Speaker 5: I like it regardless. Apparently Henry Forward said if I'd
Speaker 5: have asked the people what they wanted, they would have
Speaker 5: said a faster horse.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they didn't know they needed a car.
Speaker 2: And I think that's with a lot of businesses. You
Speaker 2: don't know you need it, You don't know you need it,
Speaker 2: You don't know you need it.
Speaker 3: Till it's there.
Speaker 2: And you could probably walk around your kitchen alone the
Speaker 2: things that you produce or find things that you use,
Speaker 2: and we don't think when I'm using this kitchen tool,
Speaker 2: I'm stealing do you know what I mean, Like the
Speaker 2: first person to think of a potato piller, like Wells
Speaker 2: with the knife.
Speaker 4: That's with the knife, right, Why do you need a
Speaker 4: specific thing?
Speaker 2: Yes, but until someone nailed it down and then you know,
Speaker 2: my goodness, like the story of the woman who made
Speaker 2: white out right, just a teacher looking to create something
Speaker 2: to cover mistakes. And you know, Scots knows. I'm sure
Speaker 2: her bank account is of plenty. I would just say,
Speaker 2: it's it's not knowing.
Speaker 5: I met the person whose grandfather created cat size.
Speaker 4: You know, there's little things in the in.
Speaker 5: The road that light up the reflective stock business. And
Speaker 5: it's like you wouldn't wake up one day and think,
Speaker 5: oh my gosh, I wish there was some reflective studs
Speaker 5: in the road so I could see where I was going.
Speaker 5: No one asked for that, you know, nod everywhere in
Speaker 5: the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, And it's.
Speaker 2: Taking that idea, and for some of us that are creative,
Speaker 2: it's deciding which idea.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like this project that we're in right now, I go,
Speaker 2: look at it was divine. It was No one sits
Speaker 2: around a table and goes, you know.
Speaker 3: Let's do this.
Speaker 2: It was it was something that we you know, I heard,
Speaker 2: I died, it came to me and then it unfolded
Speaker 2: on its own. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: your So let's talk a little bit about your acting life. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I think people find that they're drawn to the
Speaker 2: entertainment industry.
Speaker 3: They want to know about the industry.
Speaker 2: But then when you get to hear someone who's actually
Speaker 2: in it, thank you for sharing that you had that
Speaker 2: audition and then you didn't have another one, you know,
Speaker 2: for forty it didn't hit and all the miss or
Speaker 2: maybe half truth or maybe they are true about your industry.
Speaker 2: How long have you been would you say you've been
Speaker 2: professionally acting since you're doctor Pepper?
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I've been professionally acting sin since sixteen.
Speaker 5: And my qualification of professional acting every single year i've
Speaker 5: earned money from acting, Yeah since then. That's my personal
Speaker 5: definition of professional is that you get paid for it.
Speaker 5: I know there's various definitions. Some people think of professional
Speaker 5: attitude is enough. That's not my definition. My definition is
Speaker 5: someone hiring me to be an actor. Has there been
Speaker 5: slower years and busy years, yes, but consistently every single
Speaker 5: tax returners that acting and come on it. So I
Speaker 5: consider my self a full time, minded professional actor.
Speaker 2: Well, I was watching you this morning and it was amazing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm a sucker for an Irish accent anytime.
Speaker 3: I probably watched.
Speaker 4: This interview in Irish. Then yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: Share with us maybe something about your acting that was
Speaker 2: a magical moment for you. I whether it's a magical
Speaker 2: moment or something that was a bit of a surprise,
Speaker 2: you know. I think that there's these promises if you
Speaker 2: work hard, you'll make it through, or if you keep going,
Speaker 2: you'll make it through, and then there's then there's moments
Speaker 2: that even surprise ourselves.
Speaker 3: I've had moments in my business.
Speaker 2: Where I was like, oh, I didn't see that one coming,
Speaker 2: but that was amazing and it didn't have to be grand,
Speaker 2: and it didn't have to be, you know, the highlight of.
Speaker 3: My whole, you know, ten twenty thirty year career.
Speaker 2: But it was a moment that I was like, I
Speaker 2: mean I remember in one of my companies it was
Speaker 2: really about it was fine to be on stage, and
Speaker 2: I've been on stage, but there was someone in my
Speaker 2: team that really wanted to walk across the stage and
Speaker 2: I remember just the smile inside when she finally got
Speaker 2: news that her name was going to be called and
Speaker 2: it just was a magical moment for me, or meeting
Speaker 2: someone that I never ever ever, you know, I grew
Speaker 2: up listening to a band called Headpens and I'm a
Speaker 2: big Janis Joplin fan, and she was Jarby Mills was the.
Speaker 3: Janis Joplin of Canada.
Speaker 2: And just having her in my living room and having
Speaker 2: that conversation, and then last week and just you know,
Speaker 2: going up and giving her a book and having a
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen minute conversation on a porch as she
Speaker 2: was heading back to the studio. Like those magical moments
Speaker 2: that you can't see. Is there anything that for you?
Speaker 2: Is Like I didn't see that one coming, but yeah.
Speaker 5: That's you know, for the acting industry, I'm finding it
Speaker 5: hard to find one of those because I feel like
Speaker 5: my career has been pretty consistent and pretty underwhelming in
Speaker 5: that sense. You hear a lot of people about that
Speaker 5: one job that change their life. Like I know, like
Speaker 5: a friend of mine, he was a pretty consistent actor,
Speaker 5: but the job that changed his life was The Walking
Speaker 5: Dead and he became a top character on that and
Speaker 5: I remember him literally his Instagram post was my last
Speaker 5: day before my my life is going to change and
Speaker 5: I didn't even know. He wasn't allowed to talk about it,
Speaker 5: but that was his post, and then the next day
Speaker 5: he got announced as this new character.
Speaker 4: I haven't had one those moments.
Speaker 5: It's been pretty consistent normal. All I can share is
Speaker 5: it's a journey. It's a long journey. I've stayed in it.
Speaker 5: I've stayed consistent. Nothing's really sort of stood out as
Speaker 5: this magical moment. Even when I moved to America. It
Speaker 5: wasn't like an America called for me in Hollywood, bought
Speaker 5: me here. I went through a process of getting a visa,
Speaker 5: two year process of setting that up and then moving
Speaker 5: over and re establishing myself here and having to like
Speaker 5: do the grant work again. So there's no little, popped
Speaker 5: off magical moment. On the other side of the entrepreneurial side,
Speaker 5: I've had some, you know, and listen, I've met I've
Speaker 5: met different celebrities, and I've had worked with some heroes
Speaker 5: of mine and stuff like that. But nothing's been like that,
Speaker 5: Oh wow. On the entrepreneur side, I've definitely had some
Speaker 5: of those moments, you know, And this is a lovely
Speaker 5: example of when you come from a place of giving
Speaker 5: true value, and when you come from a place of
Speaker 5: genuine interest, then some interesting things happen. My hero growing
Speaker 5: up was not footballer. I wasn't into football. Kind of
Speaker 5: was obsessed with Mariah Carey, but we'll leave that one
Speaker 5: for another time, but not even in the way that
Speaker 5: people are obsessed.
Speaker 3: With No No, No.
Speaker 5: No TV stars or pop stars. Who I was kind
Speaker 5: of mildly obsessed with with Richard Branson. I loved his story,
Speaker 5: I read his books. I always thought, you know, this
Speaker 5: guy's a hero. I want to and I think one
Speaker 5: of the things that appealed to me about him was
Speaker 5: he does lots of things.
Speaker 4: No one put him in a box.
Speaker 5: And I would get that criticism from you, well, well,
Speaker 5: you want to be an actor, you want to be
Speaker 5: a graphic because at one point I want to be
Speaker 5: a graphic designs like I can do both.
Speaker 4: I mean graphic design, it's acting. What's wrong with you?
Speaker 5: And people are like, oh, yeah, you've got to focus
Speaker 5: on this so you'll never make it.
Speaker 4: And I've thought this.
Speaker 5: Guy does he does planes, he does trains, he does
Speaker 5: mobile phones, he does records, and no one's telling him
Speaker 5: what to do.
Speaker 4: But of course he's already there.
Speaker 5: In my little teenage brain, I guess like, if you
Speaker 5: hadn't asked me back then, I don't know if i'd
Speaker 5: have said this, but I probably secretly thought I'm.
Speaker 4: Going to meet him one day. One day I'll meet him.
Speaker 5: This is how I met him in Hollywood, opposite the
Speaker 5: where the Chinese Theater where the oscars or the Codec
Speaker 5: Theater where the Oscars are held, the famous Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Speaker 5: I got a tap on my shoulder and he said,
Speaker 5: are you Darren, And I turned around and said, yes,
Speaker 5: Richard Branson.
Speaker 4: He's like, this is the best party of it ever been.
Speaker 4: To thank you. That was a magical moment.
Speaker 3: That is a magical moment.
Speaker 5: And because I thought at some point I'll meet him,
Speaker 5: but that I would never expected it to.
Speaker 4: Be in that way.
Speaker 5: And a little later on that evening, his driver told
Speaker 5: me that he'd said the same thing to him, so
Speaker 5: I knew its genuine and the context of that. I
Speaker 5: want to tell you the story of how that came
Speaker 5: to be, because that's the interesting part. I moved to
Speaker 5: la as I explained that you know, done all the
Speaker 5: research and all the plans and got gone through the
Speaker 5: very legal immigration process, which is tough, even from someone
Speaker 5: from England. You have to go for a bunch of
Speaker 5: hoops to get here and be able to work here.
Speaker 5: And I was only allowed to work as an actor.
Speaker 5: That was what my condition was. So I came here,
Speaker 5: and you know, you have to kind of start your
Speaker 5: career again a little bit. You've got to get known.
Speaker 5: I had an agent and stuff, but you know, you've
Speaker 5: got to get the auditions. And remember I told you
Speaker 5: I was running events at nightclubs. I was obviously not
Speaker 5: going to do that here because that's a different job.
Speaker 5: But I thought, well, I want to keep those skills up,
Speaker 5: so I really would like to do it in some way.
Speaker 5: So I volunteered for charities to give them my knowledge.
Speaker 5: That was going to be my plan to volunteer. And
Speaker 5: then I was going to an event in Beverly Hills
Speaker 5: and I was meeting my friend there and she told
Speaker 5: me roughly where it was, but hadn't told me exactly
Speaker 5: the address. And so I come into this little street
Speaker 5: of a few little shops and I see what looked
Speaker 5: like an event going on in in a jewelry store
Speaker 5: and I'm thinking that that's my sphere. And there's a
Speaker 5: man on the door in a suit and a clipboard
Speaker 5: and I walked up and he said, you hear the event.
Speaker 5: I was like yeah, and he's like, come on in, Okay,
Speaker 5: come on in. So my friends text me where are you?
Speaker 5: And I'm like, I'm inside the advantage that I don't
Speaker 5: see you, and I'm stood there. By this point, I've
Speaker 5: been and the free glass champagne and I'm thinking this
Speaker 5: is awesome. I've been in LA for like three weeks
Speaker 5: and I'm like, I'm at a party in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 4: I have a free glass champagne. Life's already good.
Speaker 5: And whilst I'm texting my friend trying to figure out
Speaker 5: where she is, this lady gets up on stage, an
Speaker 5: elderly lady, and she starts talking about something and everyone
Speaker 5: turns to look and she's I couldn't quite figure out
Speaker 5: what she's talking about. She starts talking about Morocco and these,
Speaker 5: you know, the Berber people, and she kept saying, and
Speaker 5: my son built this hotel there, and I said, you know,
Speaker 5: we've really got to sell the local products in the store.
Speaker 5: And he's like, well, mommy, I don't have the space,
Speaker 5: and she's like, Richard, listen, you're going to do this.
Speaker 5: I'm going to make and she goes one thing is
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter if your son's a billionaire, doesn't matter
Speaker 5: if he's the biggest businessman in the world. He listens
Speaker 5: to his mother. And I was like, oh, my god,
Speaker 5: that's Richard Branson's mom. And I was like, ah, because
Speaker 5: I've read about her. I've read his description of her
Speaker 5: voice and manner everything, and I was like, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: So now I'm in this private event. Branson's mum's on
Speaker 5: stage talking and I finally get the gist that she's
Speaker 5: galvanizing a charity event.
Speaker 4: And this was like the announcement of the.
Speaker 5: Charity event they're going to do in order to raise
Speaker 5: money for the local people in the area of where
Speaker 5: he built his latest hotel. And I was like that
Speaker 5: and it was kind of it was very captivating, empowering story.
Speaker 5: So after the she got down off the little stage,
Speaker 5: I walked straight over and said, Hey, that was amazing.
Speaker 5: How can I help? And she said, oh, you want
Speaker 5: to help, go and speak to that man over there,
Speaker 5: and that man was the sort of chair of the charity.
Speaker 5: So I went over and spoke to this guy Tim
Speaker 5: and said, I'm new in town.
Speaker 4: I love to help. How can I help?
Speaker 5: So come to this meeting next week. And by the
Speaker 5: meeting next week, I joined the committee of this charity
Speaker 5: which was doing a massive gala four or five weeks later.
Speaker 5: There I was saying hello to Charlie Staran, to George
Speaker 5: you always have performer, And Richard Branson comes into the
Speaker 5: event on horseback. And I'd contributed a significant amount to
Speaker 5: that the planning of that event, and I bought in
Speaker 5: all my resources and all my advice. And that's why
Speaker 5: Richard came over. He found me and said thank you,
Speaker 5: which which is, you know, testament to him. There was
Speaker 5: a big committee and he didn't need to pick me
Speaker 5: out that personally either. So and that to me is
Speaker 5: a great entrepreneur, you know. And it's funny because over
Speaker 5: the next couple of years I bumped into him at
Speaker 5: an airport in the in the line where you put
Speaker 5: your stuff through security. I had a private lunch with him.
Speaker 5: Through another entrepreneurs group, I insected with a guy like
Speaker 5: four or five times in.
Speaker 4: The next two years.
Speaker 5: It's been a very interesting I guess you can call
Speaker 5: it manifesting in some way. But yeah, that's the magical moment.
Speaker 5: And so I'm going to like wrap this little story
Speaker 5: up with the piece of advice. Sometimes people ask me,
Speaker 5: what's the best bit of advice anyone's ever given you,
Speaker 5: and it's it was the most simple but sort of profound.
Speaker 5: I was at this dinner of ten to twelve top entrepreneurs.
Speaker 5: I had put the logistics of the event together. The
Speaker 5: guy that's arranging it wasn't from La needed to find
Speaker 5: a good venue. He wanted a private dining room with
Speaker 5: a back entrance sort of secret, and all these things.
Speaker 5: I said, I know a few plays, let me make
Speaker 5: some calls. We set up this lunch and I was
Speaker 5: sort of expecting Richard Branson not to be there. He
Speaker 5: told this guy told you, that's like, I don't think
Speaker 5: he's he's going to you know, it sounds a bit
Speaker 5: far fetched. And at twelve o'clock he walks in with
Speaker 5: Sharon Stone and the ten other people. Was No Lee
Speaker 5: from Monster Cable that then went on to do Beats
Speaker 5: by dre It was Steve Celeine, the race car driver
Speaker 5: that does the Ford Selene. It's like people at the
Speaker 5: top of their game. Eric Roberts was there and we
Speaker 5: had this lunch and we all got to ask Richard
Speaker 5: Branson a question and he, you know, I remember Steve
Speaker 5: Selene talking about electric cars and and there was this
Speaker 5: long drawn out conversation that was fascinating, but it's very illustrious.
Speaker 5: Got to me and my question was I get criticized
Speaker 5: for doing too many things. I'm an actor, I run
Speaker 5: a business. I find that criticism. You do a lot
Speaker 5: of things. When is the right time? And I was
Speaker 5: going through a point where I was thinking I might
Speaker 5: want to stop one of my businesses and I wasn't sure.
Speaker 5: And I said to him, when is the right time
Speaker 5: to put something down that you're working on? And he
Speaker 5: sat there and he took a pause, and the room
Speaker 5: was silent, and I'm thinking, you're going to say something.
Speaker 5: Do you want me to follow up the question? And
Speaker 5: he really considered it, and then he gave me an
Speaker 5: answer that I thought I felt cheated on. And it
Speaker 5: wasn't until probably a couple of weeks later. I was like, no,
Speaker 5: that was profound.
Speaker 4: His answer was, when it stops being fun, who's next?
Speaker 4: And I do that's all.
Speaker 5: We've just heard this lustrious answer for the last guy,
Speaker 5: but his the length of time he considered it, I
Speaker 5: was like, those words are very thoughtful, and it's very
Speaker 5: on brand for him. And you know what, He's right,
Speaker 5: Why am I doing something if it's not fun? There's
Speaker 5: many ways to make money, there's many ways.
Speaker 4: To advance your career.
Speaker 5: What And I was like, Wow, that is profound, actually,
Speaker 5: and I take that statement with me in everything I
Speaker 5: do now.
Speaker 4: I use it to influence decisions.
Speaker 5: I tell it to other people because you know, not
Speaker 5: everything has to be fun one hundred percent all of
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 4: Right, we know that.
Speaker 5: But if you look at the whole big picture and
Speaker 5: you go, am I enjoying this? You know over a
Speaker 5: period the answer is no that versus yes. Of course
Speaker 5: there's fluctuation, but if the general answer is no, get
Speaker 5: on with something else, that's too short.
Speaker 3: I love that. I love that. It.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of a similar question to asked someone
Speaker 2: that I had great respect for in business, when I
Speaker 2: was trying to dance between two and I was on
Speaker 2: a trade of event in one company and there was
Speaker 2: an issue going on with the other and I was
Speaker 2: just at a brink.
Speaker 4: He goes, love the one you're with I love the
Speaker 4: one you're with.
Speaker 3: Love the one you're with. I was there in that business.
Speaker 2: He's like, it'll you know, it'll be fine.
Speaker 3: I love that story. I love that story.
Speaker 2: Look, I know it's time to wrap up, and we
Speaker 2: could talk and we will talk and will we do
Speaker 2: lots of talking with There's a couple of things that
Speaker 2: I know that you got going on that I would.
Speaker 3: Love to share with their audience.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Please.
Speaker 2: One is you've got you've got you've got something going
Speaker 2: up for an Emmy right now. Why don't you share
Speaker 2: what that is so we can double down and support
Speaker 2: what that looks like.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: I believe that the nominations come out tomorrow, actually on
Speaker 5: the seventeenth, that you like. So, I was in a
Speaker 5: project called Raser. It's a dystopian sci fi series available
Speaker 5: on Garla Film, which is a streaming platform. It was
Speaker 5: in the consideration for the Emmys. And so we'll find
Speaker 5: out tomorrow if we're nominated.
Speaker 4: Wow, And if we are, then great.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm a TV Academy member, I'm an Emmy member,
Speaker 5: so I go to the Emmys each year. It would
Speaker 5: be really lovely to be in a project that is nominated.
Speaker 5: So by the time this podcast comes out, we'll know if.
Speaker 4: We are or we're not.
Speaker 5: But either way, the viewers can watch that on Garla
Speaker 5: Film if you google Garla Film ga La and then
Speaker 5: you'll see that project. Razer Okay and I have a
Speaker 5: new film coming out on September twenty seventh in theatres
Speaker 5: nationwide called Abrupt Show and it's a puppet horror movie
Speaker 5: with Jordan Peel and Hannah Melee and James Masters. It's
Speaker 5: going to be a very unique, interesting horror. It's like
Speaker 5: nothing you've seen before. The trailers up, so if you
Speaker 5: google abruptio A b r U p t io you'll.
Speaker 4: See the trailer.
Speaker 5: It's wild, and I really mean like, it's like nothing
Speaker 5: you've ever seen. It's a very unique concept. It's a
Speaker 5: movie that's made with lifelike, life sized puppets. They look
Speaker 5: like people, they act like people, but their puppets.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to see how that's done would be interesting to.
Speaker 5: Watch, right exactly exactly because you know, you used to
Speaker 5: you know, puppets like Jim Henson and Crag of Rock
Speaker 5: and then you used to animation. But this is sort
Speaker 5: of a blender too. It's like the Uncanny Valley. They
Speaker 5: really they look like people enough, but just not quite
Speaker 5: And so that's really interesting project and that actually took,
Speaker 5: you know, quite a few years to finish and come out,
Speaker 5: so that's really exciting. And I have another project which
Speaker 5: one of my favorite roles today. It's called River of
Speaker 5: Grass and it will be premiering at the Holly Shorts Festival.
Speaker 5: The fame as Chinese Theater full circle back to that venue,
Speaker 5: and that'll be premieering in the next few weeks there
Speaker 5: and we'll be doing the film festival circule with that.
Speaker 4: So that's some exciting stuff.
Speaker 5: And then through my company, we also just launched a podcast,
Speaker 5: We Audition Show, taking a leaf out of your books, So.
Speaker 3: So tell us where where we can find that show.
Speaker 5: The We Audition Show is on all the platforms that
Speaker 5: you find podcasts, Spotify, Apple podcasts, YouTube as well, and
Speaker 5: on we audition, dot com, slash show. And I would
Speaker 5: say if your listeners are interested in the journey of
Speaker 5: actors and creatives, it seems like they are, then that's
Speaker 5: a really good place for us. We really drill down
Speaker 5: into what makes those actors careers successful and the things
Speaker 5: you need to do in order to be a success
Speaker 5: in the entertainment business.
Speaker 3: That's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I have one last question for you, and
Speaker 2: it take take take us off topic a lot of
Speaker 2: it when people ask me how I've been an entrepreneur
Speaker 2: for so long or how I've gotten through life, and
Speaker 2: I don't know how you've gotten through life. You know,
Speaker 2: what is your one thing that you like? It's my baseline.
Speaker 2: It makes everything okay. It's like the biggest band aid
Speaker 2: ice cream you know, in the world for me, and
Speaker 2: that's music.
Speaker 3: I literally I just don't know what I mean.
Speaker 2: There's just not a day in my life that I
Speaker 2: don't listen to a lot of music. If I remember
Speaker 2: late for a meeting there it's because I'm listening to
Speaker 2: a new band.
Speaker 4: I'll just be completely right.
Speaker 3: So my question to you is.
Speaker 2: You've a radio station calls you someone you don't know
Speaker 2: and says, you know what you have one? Two backstage
Speaker 2: pass tickets to the concert of your choice, a concert
Speaker 2: you've never been to before. Who's the band that you
Speaker 2: would want to backstage passes to go see that you've
Speaker 2: never had an opportunity to see yet?
Speaker 4: Oh, I mean, do I have a time machine? It
Speaker 4: would be the Beatles.
Speaker 3: Beatles.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 5: I did see Paul mcconne, which was great, but the Beatles, Beetles.
Speaker 3: Good answer, good answer.
Speaker 2: Well, look, thank you so much for sharing your stories
Speaker 2: today were amazing.
Speaker 3: It's such a pleasure to meet you. I know that
Speaker 3: I will be seeing you in LA when we go
Speaker 3: down there to be getting out the book.
Speaker 4: And Ocean doing his thing, and absolutely.
Speaker 3: Let us know when the package arrives.
Speaker 2: But until then, I hope you're well, and audience, as
Speaker 2: you're listening, if you want to be sitting where Darren
Speaker 2: is and you want to be telling us your stories and.
Speaker 3: Your passion and your profit, non profit, whatever it is
Speaker 3: that you're doing, then we would love to support to you.
Speaker 3: You'd love to have your commission and captain, And until then, Darren,
Speaker 3: thank you and audience, you're amazing. While I'm being by
Speaker 3: right
Speaker 4: Now, thank you so much for having