the bossbabe podcast - 183. Beat Society's Timeline + Create Your Own Story with Adhrucia Apana

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

Highlights What it takes to forge unique career path  Why Adhrucia Apana’s life-changing health diagnosis shifted her trajectory  How to reframe your failures as gifts  The difference between chasing timelines vs. creating your own The real, behind the scenes of building Curiosity Entertainment  Adhrucia Apana is not chasing timelines or trapped by “what if” scenarios. She’s too busy creating impactful stories that will change the world.   Getting there was no fairytale. Her 20’s were rocked by a diagnosis that forced her to become the protagonist of her own life and ditch societal expectations.   Tune in to hear how her unique upbringing and shocking diagnosis actually paved the way for her own radical self-acceptance. Plus – she’s sharing why she believes media is the secret for epic transformation. Links: Soul CBD   Use code BOSSBABE15 for 15% off Olive & June   Use code BOSSBABE for 20% off  Audible The Startup Wife Follow: BossBabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty Adhrucia Apana: @adhrucia Curiosity Entertainment: curiosity-entertainment.com

If you believe in manifestation and law of abundance and the idea that our thought patterns create our reality, then by association, the idea that I might not be capable of do think that all these things are fed to us. And I think that it does create some of the issues that we face as we grow older. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, the place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak and learning how to bounce it off. I'm Danielle Canty, co-founder and president of Boss Babe. I'm one of your co-hosts for this week's episode. Now I'm doing this intro on my own today because between traveling to New York City and Natalie finding her way back to the UK for the first time in three years, it was pretty much new and impossible for us to find a time to do this intro together. So I'm doing it from my hotel in New York and bonus points if you can hear the

horns and sirens in the background of this. So I'm having an amazing time. This place has such a cool energy. For those of you who have never visited New York, it's literally a must. It's so cool. And I know loads of you have also been following Natalie's journey back to the UK. So if you haven't peaked her stories so far at I am Natalie, go check her out as she's being reunited with her family over the next couple of weeks. It's really beautiful to see and kind of making me a little bit homesick, but there we are. So on today's episode, I just wanted to give you a little bit of an outline of what we're discussing because we had Adrusha Appana on who is an executive producer and co-founder of the production company Curiosity Entertainment and a GP of Curiosity Media Finances. And it's her mission to focus

on stories that really impact and inspire through commercial content. And that also challenges cultural norms and focuses on shifting the Hollywood marketplace towards being actually more reflective of the global economy that we live in. So you know that Nat and I just had to have one here and for those of you who are curious about the entertainment industry, for me it wasn't something I knew a lot about, this is an absolutely great lesson too. It's really, really insightful. And it also helps you understand the power of storytelling, not just on the big screen, but actually how it applies to everyday marketing and how we can influence people's decisions through the power of story.

So it's a really, really amazing lesson. I just, she gives all the behind the scenes details and also how she got into it, which was really, really insightful. So before we dive into the episode, I also just wanted to tell you about our sponsor, because if you've been hanging around the podcast for a little while, you'll know two things. One, I'm a self-proclaimed self-care guru. And secondly, I'm kind of obsessed with our sponsors, Soul CBD. And honestly, I've been in this month of traveling. I've been to Napa. I've come to New York. I've got a few other trips planned. And I'm so, so grateful for being able to travel.

And it also really takes this toll on me. So I know that a self-care ritual and routine has been the number one thing that has centered me and continues to center me through this travel. So I want to kind of tell you a bit about some of the things that I've been doing over the last couple of months to really kind of like settle in my self-care routine wherever I am. So at least once a week, I've been making a cup of tea. You know, I love tea, right? I'm British, of course, with my source CBD tinctures added to it. So I absolutely love having a hot tea at the end of the day and just adding some of my soul CBD tinctures along that, along with that, just to really help me like settle down. I'll also, if I'm really, really stressed, have another cup of tea and a hot bath, turn my phone on ever play mode, put my notifications

off and just have that kind of tight, like that alone time, you know, and I've actually been adding, this is one of my new favorite products. They never, they didn't used to have this product, but they've had it recently. The Soul CBD bath bombs, you guys, they are so good for that extra bit of relaxation and the combo of the Soul CBD and the tea in the bath. I'm telling you now, it is like a recipe for pure relaxation. It's a total game changer. And when I say I sleep like a baby, I really do sleep like a baby. I'm normally like a seven and a half hour type chick, but this one, I can clock nine hours if I'm really lucky. So I'm linking everything in the show notes below, and you can use the code BOSSBABE15 to get 15% off your order when you get my go-to Salsi B products for

yourself. So the tinctures, the bath bombs, and all the other delights that are in there. So bottom line is, if you're looking for a sign to prioritize your self-care, this is it. Go to mysoulcbd.com forward slash boss babe, grab your CBD products and have some quiet time to rest and recharge because it really, really is important. Then just wait and see how credible you feel afterwards. All right. I promise you're going to love it. And with that, let's dive in. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited that we finally have you on. No, thank you for having me. So diving straight in for anyone that's not familiar with you, will you give us a quick description of who you are and what you do? Sure. My name is Adrusha Apana, and I am a producer, executive producer, and a filmmaker. I make film and television, and I have a company called Curiosity Entertainment with two partners, as well as a company called Curiosity Media Finance, which is a finance company that finances

against the international marketplace in film and TV. And Curiosity Entertainment is a finance company that finances against the international marketplace in film and TV. And Curiosity Entertainment is a development and creative company. We make film and TV for the streamers. We make film and TV for our own independent financing. We make film and TV for the studios. And yeah, at the core, I'm just a storyteller. I love that. And I can't wait to dive into storytelling because we need help.

We need help with that but I want to just take you back maybe even to childhood when did you know this was the kind of career path you wanted yeah I have an interesting story so I actually grew up acting singing and dancing and I grew up between multiple countries. I spent a lot of time in India when I was a child. And because I spent a lot of time on the opposite side of the world, and we did a lot of service work specifically with Mother Teresa's charity, Sisters of Charity, I was working with kids who looked like me, who had the same dreams as me, but who had nothing. And they all wanted the same things that I wanted. And the reason that they dreamed so big was because of the books that they read, the comic books that they read, and the film and TV that they watched,

the music they listened to. So I think when you're really young and you get exposed to that dichotomy of two different worlds, you start looking for ways to associate and like understand your surroundings. And storytelling became this thing for me. It was a love language that I felt transcended both socioeconomic boundaries as well as cultural boundaries. And it was at the core of my family. And so it became very important to me. And I grew up then singing, acting, dancing. That was the only place I really felt outgoing and wasn't a very shy, introverted person. And I broke my knee when I was 15.

I was going to be in musical theater until then. I had a very bad break. They said I was going to walk again without limping. Had to be pulled out of school and do eight hours of therapy a day. And when I was done, I was growing up in Ohio and I'd always thought of my strength being like a child still at that time as being a triple threat because there was a lot of typecasting in Ohio. And so it was always like the understudy or because we never did Aladdin. And so I didn't have the confidence to go into it without my triple threat, without

my dancing abilities. And I'd rehabbed them, but they weren't what they used to be. And so I got kind of Russian roulette my college applications and ended up with a full ride to business school. And so I took a 10-year walkabout, and I went into business, but I was still obsessed with this idea of storytelling. So I went into strategy for brands because I thought that was the closest thing I could do in the advertising space first that was storytelling for brands and it was somehow related to what I wanted to do. The long and the short was that that career led me to understand that I couldn't get storytelling out of my DNA. I wanted to do this so badly. And I actually, at 25, after graduating college a year early and moving out to

LA, I got diagnosed with something called an auditory processing disorder. It's a learning disability I'd had since I was a kid. They didn't catch it. They didn't catch it in school. They didn't catch it until I was 25 and I'd come out to LA, thought I had depression, couldn't figure out what was going on with me, had gone through all kinds of different diagnosis, trying to figure out what was wrong, got misdiagnosed at 25 with ADD, and then knew that that was not right. It was not sitting well with me and went searching for a solution. And I went to a party and this kid who was hanging out was like, you're on Adderall, aren't you? And I was like, no, I'm not. Cause I was such a goody two shoes.

I'd never, I never drank much at that time. I never did any type of drugs. And I was like, no, I'm not. And he's like, yes, you are. He was like, listen, I went to this place. It's called the Drake Institute. And they took me off it. It's the best thing I ever did. And so I decided the next day to call the Drake Institute because I was just so desperate for a solution. And when I went in, they did an actual map of my brain. And they realized that I didn't have ADD at all, that I had had something issue with my working memory called an auditory processing disorder. It was one of the reasons why I was so drawn to music and arts is because I had this dialogue that I learned differently. And really the truth was until I was 25 and this was fixed, I couldn't learn through lectures or

through auditory unless it was musically inclined or unless I was hyper-focused. And so I had to take a full stop in my career at 25 and take a year off to go through treatment. It was supposed to be a year and a half immersive treatment on bio and neurofeedback and ended up finishing it in six months. But it was the first time in my career because I had been ahead of everyone. I had been running and I had been winning and I had left school early and I'd got the best job. And all of a sudden I had to stop everything. And I had gone to a college program with 25 kids, all full scholarship, all very high achievers. And sometimes when you get on that, that rat race of a, of a wheel or the wheel or the rat wheel, right, and you're just running, it's really hard to understand or to take assessment of like what you're running towards.

I've been running so fast and I've been running towards something I didn't even want. And that year when I had to take off for treatment, which was pretty, it was a pretty intensive period of my life and really did a reset on a lot of things because I was changing the way I thought, right? I realized that I still hadn't got this thing out of me. And so when I went back to Ohio, I started working again in brand and in strategy. And I was determined, though, to somehow integrate content because I knew I needed to do this storytelling. And so I had put Sweat Equity into a bar-restaurant nightclub group, and I started creating a cooking show around our restaurant and around the restaurant scene in Cincinnati. And I had done it just to try to get more people interested in the restaurants that we did. But it became a thing that I hosted and I was producing and I was editing

and Fox local saw it and they were like, what are you doing? Like, you should come and do entertainment segments for us. And I was like, yeah, sure. They're like, you produce, right? And I'm like, yeah. And they were like, you could, you could do live segments, right? I was like, yeah, of course. And I will never forget like that first day I was standing on, standing in this, our like town square and there was a live band behind me. They put a year piece in there and they were like, okay, ready? Go. And you could barely hear like the newsroom at all. And literally they were like, I just started speaking. I was so scared. I was so scared. And when I was done, he was like, you did fantastic. You're going to do the rest of the summer. And so I did their radio pieces and I did their bits for

TV and I did their live. And I had a friend, Amy, from a company called Barking Fish Entertainment. She was doing a documentary. I started learning from her. And I was now in this beautiful period of my life where I was doing all these things, still working for brands, creating this content, and was hustling in any way I could, but didn't know how all the pieces were going to come together. I had figured it out, though. Like, I wanted to somehow be a development producer. Didn't know how I was going to get there.

And a gentleman named Rick Shermer, who ran a company called Partners Hub here in Los Angeles, he came through Cincinnati because it's the home of all the major brands. And he sat the cross-section of content and brand. And he was doing a work trip and he was introduced to me. And he looked at all the things I was doing and he was like, what do you want to be doing? And I knew the answer, but I also knew that Rick had probably had an opportunity to get me back out to Los Angeles. And so I said to him, I want to be the ideas person. And he said, I don't know what that means, but whenever you're ready, come back out to LA and I'll give you a job. And Rick was doing these really targeted marketing campaigns using what he called influencer marketing back then,

but it was not influencers in terms of Instagram, et cetera. It was more so like targeted focus groups of consumers, religion bloggers, mommy bloggers, people who love horror. And he was doing these branded campaigns where he basically used these influencers to push, use guerrilla marketing and push the word out much like influencers do today for all of Mark Burnett's productions and for horror films like The Grudge, but then also for clients like Walmart and Chick-fil-A. And I came out to work at that cross-section between film and TV and brand. And when Partners Hub decided to move on and close their shop and move back to

Colorado, not close their shop, but move back to Colorado, I was like, okay, this is it. And with all the greenness and the gumption of the world, I was like, I'm going to be a development producer. And I tell you those first two stories just to say that like breaking my knee and overcoming the auditory processing disorder, these were both incredibly low points where like everything that I thought was mine was taken from me and I had to rebuild. And I think it's really important to share those like dips in my story because part of my journey to becoming who I am today as an entrepreneur was losing my fear of failing. And first it was in a very physical way with breaking my knee. Like

I was going to be a dancer. It was going to be in musical theater. And now this dream was taken away from me. And I had to rebuild this idea along with my like physical ability. And then with the auditory processing issue, it was like the reality that I knew to be mine, how I learned, what my behaviors were. They were all based upon this deficiency I'd had my entire life. And so I had to restate like what are my goals? What are my ambitions? What parts of this personality are actually mine and what were created because of this issue I had? And that, again, was a intense, like, period of losing fear around all these things that we had

coming out of college. I only have this much time before I need to get married. I need to get a better job. I need to own a house. I need to, all these things were in my head coming out of college and like going into the system. And because I had to take that break, I had to get rid of all these like ideas and the fear around these assessments that we place on our life. Sorry. No, this is amazing. I think it's just great to hear that background. Excuse my ignorance. I will just want to ask you a question though. You spoke around like the diagnosis of having this auditory processing disorder as, you know, like you say, having something taken away from you and realizing that your reality was perhaps like different to how others are experiencing do you feel now looking back was that actually

a gift in many ways like do you think you would be where you are today if you didn't have that do you know what I'm saying all my failures it's a low point but actually is it a low point, but actually, is it a low point? All my quote unquote failures have been gifts. I would not be who I am today and I would not have made it this far in the industry I'm in today if it hadn't been for both of those accidents. new course of really paying attention to what it was that I wanted internally without the noise of what the societal imprint of others had put on me prior to that. And in addition, I think when you have periods in your life where you fail that hard and it's kind of out of your control, right? Something you have that is a given is taken away from you and then you have to figure out. It makes this idea of, you want to challenge me? You want to take something away from me? Go for it. I've already lived this journey. I've already

fought back from nothing. Yeah, it's made you stronger so whatever it is that you you could do i know that i've done harder i know that i've done and faced harder is better way to put it i know that faced harder right and i think that it takes a some of that like almost disconnect from reality to really push to like to the levels of success that you two and that all the female entrepreneurs that we know have reached because people will look at you and say you're crazy. People will look at you and say, oh, that's not a secure job.

Oh, that's not a secure career path. Oh, that's not a great 10-year plan, whatever that is. But you have to almost have a disassociation with the opinion of others because you have that much belief in yourself. And that auditory issue and overcoming it created a blinding belief in myself within me. And what were your symptoms of that? Because I'm really curious, like, you know, you had this diagnosis, but I also you know you are a magnificent storyteller and your understanding of seeing how other people tell their stories is also a gift like you read

something like wow this is an amazing story and I want to go on and tell this story to more people so I'm curious what the connection between that auditory processing disorder and your you know just right at the very beginning of the story, you were saying about going to India and having those like fantasies as children and those dreams and stories that you were reading. Is there a connection between the two with the symptoms and how you're experiencing story at that time? Possibly. You know, we can't usually get an auditory processing disorder either from like hitting your head when you're a kid and you still

have a soft or from a bad ear infection yeah like what is it it's a or from a bad ear infection and you know I had both so it's very hard to tell like where a kid or a child gets an auditory processing disorder and I am not an auditory doctor nor an expert in that space so just want to clarify but this is my experience that I'm sharing. So it's possible because essentially if I was not hyper-focused, I would miss like consonants, but it was so minute that it caused many traffic jams in your brain. So reading became really my window to the world. And the combination of that and spending a lot of time in India, my mom has a plantation home that's in the middle of nowhere with coffee plants and pepper plants. And we would spend a lot of our summers there just away from all the things that we here in America had as kids. And imagination needs room to breathe. And I think that the combination of spending time in other places

of the world and a lot of time on our own, having to amuse ourselves as children, both me and my sister, as well as the auditory issue, which meant that I needed to turn to reading and that my ideas came from written word versus from what I was taking in on the outside. I think that probably played into it a little bit. And music, for sure. Music is one of my ultimate passions and is such a big part of storytelling, as you guys know and as all filmmakers know. And that connection to music, it uses a different part of your brain. So I was, I like would sing my, I was an AP English and I would sing all my vocabulary words to memorize them. Like I had a very like different relationship with music because of it, that it was probably

affected by the auditory issue. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data creating pages collecting payment all the things so much simpler one of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible.

I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. What I really like is how you talk about not necessarily getting into the specific career path you wanted to be in and in the entertainment industry till you were what 26 27 when you decided to be a producer I was actually um I'm still 26 or 27 but I was actually 28 29 when I came back to Los Angeles so and I think that's really interesting to touch on because I think for a lot of people listening there's often that whole narrative of oh well I didn't go into that after college or I didn't study at a college have

I missed the boat do I need to have been doing this for a decade before I can even make it a career path but it's it just goes to show you know a lot of successful people got there because they just focused on putting one foot in front of the other and following things that felt good and moving away from things that felt bad and it sounds like that's what you did and then in your later 20s, you started to feel like, oh, actually, I know what I want to do and move towards that. Was that scary to make that decision and kind of go into an industry that, you know, a lot of people want to go into, but it time thing. Yeah. And then I'll get into just entering into the film industry. Because this auditory issue happened at 25 and there was a disassociation, I have to emphasize how career and timeline focused I was prior to 25. Less so on marriage and kids and that side, but on success and what I should have by age 25. Again, I was in a social group of very, very entrepreneur-minded and very

high achievers. And I, at 25, when this issue happened to me, had been in my head running at lightning speed alongside them. And so I, at 25, actually, my experience is that I disassociated with time. It was for me to understand I need to take a year off and I need to reestablish what I want out of life meant a certain disassociation with time. So age stopped being a thing. I stopped marking things by age. If you ask me, I forget how old I am. 25. I literally disassociated with age and the ideas around it. I feel like I am younger, look younger, feel younger because of it. When I look at like a lot of my, my peers and like people, because I just don't think about it anymore. I would love us to

stay on this topic for a second. We'll go back in a second because I truly believe a lot of people listening to this podcast will relate so hard to what you're saying because our audience is full of ambitious women. I was exactly the same as you. Like, oh my goodness, I'm behind if I've not done this by 22, behind if I've not done this by 23. And I was like chasing this timeline. And sometimes I wonder if, and I don't know, I'm not a guy, but I sometimes wonder if because as women, we have this biological clock and we're trying to fill so much before maybe we have children and do so much in our career and get established before we have children maybe by the time we're 30 because goodness if we have children past 30 I mean obviously I'm past 30 but it's like there's

this pressure that occurs in your 20s well I feel like I'm on the in the timeline I'm very married to my timeline and I'm in my 20s so and I wonder if it's an age thing because I'm I'm like that and so I like to hear another perspective because I'm like god I just feel like there's this timeline and I have to do that like I really feel the pressure of that I you had a situation that removed you disassociated you from the timeline I my divorce disassociated me from my timeline I've noticed that with with you i'm like refusing to count my date my birthday anymore like i'm like if i can't because if you i read this book once that spoke around the attachment the western society has to age and our milestones that we put

on ourselves whereas like a lot of of other cultures, they don't necessarily track age like we do. So therefore they don't say, oh, when I'm 70, I can't possibly be climbing that mountain. I can't, like if you think of Western, like we have an idea of what we're going to look like when we're 30, when we're 40, when we're 50, when we're 60, when we're 70. But if you actually let go of age and you let your telomeres you know or just let your body run with it and feel into how young you feel do you actually accomplish more in those later years because your body isn't attached to oh my goodness I'm 40 now I must be having those near aches you know I think so I think that like I come from the school of thought

that I just think that we um even biologically set ourself up for failure with some of these conversations. If you believe in manifestation and law of abundance and the idea that like our thought patterns create our reality, then by association, like the idea that like I might not be capable of having kids or that my, all these things are fed to us. I'm not, I'm not saying that there isn't like biology to some instances and whatnot, but I do think that all these things are fed to us. And I think that it does create some of the issues that we face as we grow older because stress and pressure and like the thought mechanics affect biology that's been proven in science and my disassociation was in my 20s and it just never it never came back and i think i think that we do a disservice to humans in general by labeling ages and even discussing it. We don't discuss it in my family.

Like, my mom has always been about that. I never really got it when I was growing up, but now I understand it. My sisters have both spent time figuring out how old my parents are. I like to just not think about it. And I just think that it's a healthier way to approach life. Like I am not my age. I am not my race. I am not the fact that I am female. Like I am a human and I am a living, you know, changing organism. And I reserve the right to change. And I reserve the right to change my mind. And I reserve the right to change. And I reserve the right to change

my mind. And I reserve the right to not be seen in the box that like you choose to see me in. And it's one of the biggest challenges I had to overcome, especially to your next question of becoming and moving into this career of being a filmmaker. Because when I worked in brand and when I worked in strategy, like that was like defining who you were as a career was a big part of it because you were branding yourself like this is who I am and these are the specific things I do. And it's always felt to me from childhood like titles were boxes. Yeah. And that I once I said like this is who I am, that others would not let me

change. And so part of my journey, like my ultimate definition of success since I was a child and as an adult, creating a place where I could, or creating a life, sorry, creating a life where I could create with freedom. Because when I was a child and I was in dance and music and I was in art, I felt like I couldn't fully, and I grew up, you know, without YouTube. So like, I felt like I could fully couldn't do those things because I still needed to study and you still need to figure out a way to make money. I still needed to figure out a way to make a like a lifestyle. I couldn't just get lost for, for, you know, hours and music. And some people, you know, live privileged lives and they can do that,. I couldn't just get lost for hours in music. And some people live privileged lives and they can do that, but I couldn't do it because we had all these other

things we had to do. And that irked me. It irked me that I could be so passionate about something, but I might not know how to make money from it or how to build a future with it that would be stable or secure or traditional. So I couldn't put everything into it. And so I set out on a journey, especially post auditory, my auditory processing disorder being healed, et cetera, to how do I just create a world where I can create with freedom and where my money and my passion are aligned, but not dependent on each other. I love that. And do you know what I'm also just thinking as you're saying that? I wonder how that's changing now for children in the eras of YouTube and content creation. Oh, yeah.

To that creative freedom with a financial reward almost straight away. You've got five-year-olds posting stuff on YouTube making money right now. Like I can play games and get paid. So it's interesting how this actual journey is going to evolve and how it's going to impact creative industries too. I'm obsessed with this and like looking into it because I think there's two things when you do your research to look at.

Like there's access. And I always say like, if I was a kid growing up today with YouTube, I'd be such a different kid. I would have like, you know, cause I was a really introverted kid. I would have just like made film. I have home videos. I was making films and putting on plays. Like I would have just done that. Right. And I would have just put my music out in the world and all these things. But to your point of journey, to your point of how did my past struggles affect me, how your past struggles have affected to you, there is an element of hard work that was very much embedded in many of us of our age, right? Because we didn't have access. So to get access,

you must work hard. You must put in this extra work. And so I don't know the answer, but the question is, I think that you're looking at is really like, how has that access changed motivation? Yeah. And I've seen both sides. I've seen kids who have really utilized it and are mind-blowing. Hunter Kowald is one. I don't know if you guys have been watching him. He's an engineer student who he created that hoverboard that goes like 60 or 100 meters in the air. And he also self-automated his car.

He just had access to all this information. He wanted to become Logan Paul's videographer on top of all that. And one day just decided to like go find Logan and like prove that he could be his videographer. He just like sees things that he wants to do. And he's like, I'm going to go. He sings, he plays guitar, like perfect example of that. Right. But then you you see I've definitely talked to little kids who are like oh I want to be the next Logan Paul and I'm like did you did you videotape anything today no I gotta get the right camera I gotta get the right so it's like the question is really where does motivation come from and how has it affected today's youth? Yeah. And also the second layer to that is studies have proven

once you get paid for doing something that you enjoy, you often lose motivation for doing it in the first place. Have you seen that study? So that's also interesting. Okay. Well, let's get back on topic. And that's actually, so when we get into talking about my company, I've actually worked very hard to make sure that I set up structures so that exactly that doesn't happen to me in the storytelling process, because you bring up a really great point and it is an issue. And that was part of this journey of like, how do I create a world where I can just create with freedom? Yeah. Firstly, talk a little bit about what you have built and those structures you've put in place for yourself to be able to be in a position where you're not losing motivation because

you're getting paid for it. So now the company or the company that I own called Curiosity Entertainment, I have two divisions to it. There's a company called Curiosity Media Finance. It is the financing entity, and we finance against—we follow an old independent model of distribution where we finance against foreign rights. What that means is when we look at a project, we are trying to understand what value or what support it gets in the foreign marketplace so we can offset some of our risk. And then we put in equity to gap the rest to a sale to the domestic marketplace. So that's one company. And then the second company is Curiosity Entertainment, and that is my creative company. And I have a partner at Curiosity Entertainment as well. And we create and develop content both, yes, for our independent financing and help produce some of it, but also we develop and create content

for the television marketplace, for the streamers, and for the studios. So that makes sense. So you've built this and what kind of structures have you put in place then so that you feel like you're continuously doing what you love and you're not getting to that place where you're like, oh, I'm sick of storytelling. I'm bored of this now. Because I think this is the thing that a lot of particularly creators get into is like, okay, I am doing this because I love it. I'm starting this YouTube channel. I'm starting this Instagram account. Or even let's say sportsman.

I'm starting to play soccer. I'm starting to play football because I love it and I'm passionate about it. And then you introduce, oh, here's a monetary value to what you do. And then all of a sudden it becomes a job. And like I said, research has shown that actually your motivation to do it then actually decreases with getting paid, which is really kind of crazy, but it happens. So like, what are the structures that you've put in place to protect that love of storytelling that you speak so passionately about? Part of my journey was coming into film and television. I decided to make, to go into the finance side of film and TV. It was a decision. I had actually come back to LA and I'd been picked up by Wilhelmina as talent and I was ready to go down a development producer talent route. But I had learned something from all

the different industries that I'd worked in that straddled creative as well as business. And that was that there was always a disconnect between the creatives and the financing side of a business. And there was always disruption and dissonance between the conversations. And that's where a lot of creative went to die. And at the end of the day, the control of the decisions was always in the hands of the financiers, whether that be a brand, whether that be an actual financier, right? The financing got the final say. And so when I moved back to LA, I have a full business background. I'd worked in acquisition financing. I'd worked in brand strategy. I knew that side, but I had been brought in, yes, by Rick and Partners Hub. But then right after that had closed up, I'd gotten picked up as talent because of all the work I'd

been doing back home. And I had this idea, like the greenest naivety of the world. I was like, I'm going to be a development producer. And I had gone to town to the people that I knew. I was like, I want to be a development producer. How do I do this? And I got these answers for them. One of the guys who I won't name was working for a very big director. And he was like, oh, hon, you should have started 10 years ago in the mailroom. You can't just get into development producing. And another friend was like, bring us all the contacts. We can't pay you. We can't give you commission. But you can come just bring us all the contacts you have and the financing contacts you have. And neither of these things sounded like great situations. And I remember leaving those meetings just dejected and being like, wow, I'm going to have to start all over again. That's what I was wondering, like coming in when you've had a different career. Is it like that?

Is it like having to start all over again? That's that was the feeling I had right after taking those meetings. I remember just sitting I was waiting for a taxi because that's what we did back. This is the first year of Uber. I was waiting for a taxi and I was like man there's got to be a way to hack this system. And I was like, come on, Adrusha, what is it that you know about this industry? There's got to be an easier way to get in. And the one thing I knew was this fact there's always a gap between these two spaces in every industry. And so I decided then to take one for the team and go into the thing I hated the most. My mom always wanted me to go into, to go into the financing side of film and TV, because my thought process was if I can understand the economics into which I'm creating content, and if I can control the

money, I can then create whatever I want. And I had a really like big come to Jesus moment with me or come to, I'm spiritual, but come to the universe moment where I was sitting and I was like, okay, what is it that you love so much about entertaining and entertainment and the music and the film and the TV and the camera, all these things, what is it? And the answer came to me really clearly that I love the storytelling. That was what I needed to do for the rest of my life no matter what and so when I thought of my life and I thought of like my 80 year old self I was like what's gonna make you happy when you're like 80 years old because modeling or acting or like all these things

have time stamps on them and I was like I want to be able to still sell a story when I'm like 80 like still have relevance be able to sell a story. And so to create longevity, I decided to go into the financing side, which I hated. And I spent the next, the next years, like fully immersed in that side of film and TV so that I could understand all the different marketplaces, all the different structures, how you sell to a studio, how you sell to a streamer, how streamers run around them, but as they were growing, coming in, how you sell in the marketplace, what is hot, like what, what the numbers look like. And I'm not a number.

I didn't like the numbers. I became a numbers person. And the reason I tell that part of my story, I know we were going to do the lead in before, but the reason I tell it from my story is because then when I went to structure my own company, I was able to meet financing needs of my financial partner in terms of, okay, we're going to finance film and television where we can offset 50 to 60% with soft money from our tax credits for filming in whatever region you film as well as from pre-sales, right? But that is only a certain type of commercial content that you can get those kind of pre-sales values. It has to be driven by an A-list star or an A-list director that has

value in these marketplaces, which are traditionally sometimes white men, white, you know, women who, these big stars. And so it's a very specific type of content, right? And we are going to finance against this because this is what is financially safe. This is what is available to us in the market to do and still make money on. But how do we now disrupt that structure to create these pockets for diversity initiatives and things that we want since we understand what we have to hit

to make the money back? And so that was one half of the company. And then how do I as a creative still write stories that I'm just super passionate about without having to think about all these pieces and be able to get them into the world? And part of it was learning all these things about the economics because now when I create, I understand like, oh, if I set this same story in England, I would be able to get money out of an English television anchor or an English broadcaster that'll help me offset some

of this risk that I have to do. If I set this story in, if I want to do this story about a little Indian girl who discovers like her path, I could set it in England and then I could make sure that like I bring it back to America and that way the money can come out of both places. So you understand how to structure a story. And then separately, I separated the creative side of the company so that I could also create content for streamers and for studios. Financing against streamers or studios is not the same risk profile. And so it's very hard to do that with financing, but I can get paid for making movies and structuring movies that go into the commercial marketplace. And then

when I write an original idea, I have less pressure to make the money off of that. Do you know what, from listening to you and not from a film background, but from a business background, I think what you're describing is really important for all founders because you are describing what a lot of founders miss is that when you start a business, any business, you have to understand every single component and the different languages that different departments speak to join them together to grow it. And Natalie and I will joke around. We've done every single freaking job in this business. There is not a language that we cannot speak. And as you grow a business and you bring those people in who are better than you, and they speak that one language better than you, that's worth a lot. But ultimately as a founder and as a CEO or as a president or someone who is actively growing something, I think what you've just described there is making sure you might have to go and do the job that you freaking hate doing,

but you need to understand how it works so that you can make this department, speak with this department and actually grow the damn thing. And I think that's really powerful for a lot of people listening. I had a mentor in college who was the head of Cintas Corporation. And that was one of the things that he taught us. He would make his employees do everything who were going to be C-suite execs, everything from drive the truck to work in the manufacturing plant.

And his words, when he explained that to us, really stuck with me. So I will constantly take exposure in any part of my industry so I can understand all the pieces of the whole I think as an entrepreneur I think as a leader understanding all the pieces and roles to make up the whole of whatever it is you're trying to do whatever industry you're trying to accomplish something in it is is a competitive advantage so i know we're kind of like wrapping up and i have like one final question you know you just spoke about what you want to accomplish in an industry okay what do you with your companies want to accomplish in the entertainment industry so we're for curiosity is a story first company

i think more than anything we want to create great stories that affect humans at a resonance level. So that story that helps you get through a breakup, that story that helps you get through depression, that story that opens your eyes to a different way of thinking, that story that really just elevates from the gut up. Media, in my opinion, because my exposure and my time in India when I was a child and what imprint that left on me, I believe media is one of the last ways to execute change on a large scale.

And I think that change begins at a resonance level. And so we have to be mindful of what content we are putting in the world and how it affects people because a little kid in Malaysia will sneak into a movie theater and watch Superman and he'll think that he can do anything. And that's the difference. It's conscious content, hey? It's conscious content. Yeah.

I mean, that's really powerful. I actually hadn't thought about it like that. But you're right. Media is the last thing to change. And when we're in that relaxed state and we're absorbing in an entertainment fashion, some of those stories, if we think about the stories that we read as children or watched on television or film and the ones we watched in early adulthood and even into fully grown adults, those things that we consume, we're impressionable. And sometimes we don't even realize that we are. Oh yeah, they change your life. Those things change your life.

We all remember our first breakup and watching Sex and the City until we could get off on the couch. We all remember, you know, the first time that we saw a princess movie or a wedding. Or The Lion King. The Lion King. We all remember. We all remember these moments and they change who we are in the future. And content is very special in that way. And so it's a responsibility.

Being a storyteller is a responsibility. and it's one I take pretty seriously. And what I really love about where we're at in the world right now is that storytelling isn't just reserved for, you know, white guys who have all the funding in Hollywood. All of us as creators have the power to change people's lives with our stories by social media and I just think that's so powerful storytelling is just becoming a lot easier to access and I love that and I love the way the world's going you know I was just looking at some stats the other day and like think about you know where you got your content from 10 years ago and why you got your stories from 10 years ago versus now and it's incredible to see that we're listening to creators and influencers just as much as we're listening to the big movies and I love

that yeah the creator and influencer marketplace has you know really created an opportunity for new ways for our industry to find something that we like to call known IP which is basically stories with audience and it's beautiful because now stories come in from all across the world and even books and blogs and and whatnot they're able to grow an audience from all across the world in a very different way. And so you really get to see these beautiful pockets of like, what actually drives humans and excites them versus what we used to have, which was a filtered pocket based on the industry. Now, you know, anything can go viral and you could have a story that's very out of the box. And it makes the job of filmmakers easier because that's something that still drives numbers in our industry, this idea of known IP.

It makes it easier for us to make room for these stories that couldn't be told before. And so I think that the influencer marketplace is just something that not all filmmakers really revere or find incredibly important, but I think it's incredibly important to the changing marketplace because it is an audience builder and it is a loud audience. I know. I love that. Well, Adusha, this has been so incredible to hear your story as well. I'm hooked. I love how many stories you weave through this. Really, really was amazing. Where can everyone find out more about you and what you're up to?

Sure. I mean, I have my Instagram and it's just at Adrusha, A-D-H-R-U-C-I-A. And then we have a website as well. It's www.curiosity-entertainment.com. Our first announcements will come out in the next couple of months here because of the pandemic. We had a hold on our content, but we're entering the year with a great television show created by Mark Williams, who created Ozarks and a TV show by Kevin Fox, who is, of course, famous for Law & Order SVU and Lie to Me

and Raising Canaan, which is right now on Starz. And our first film that will be announced is Nimrod Antal's next movie. He is the director of Predators. It's got Laurence Fishburne in it already, and we're casting the other two roles. A lot of recasting and restructuring because of the pandemic, but it was a beautiful year because I got to do nothing but develop and write. And I don't think I would have gotten that period of time of just no pressure, no need to deliver anything. The space to create.

The space to create. And we created some really beautiful things. I know. I was super excited really beautiful things and I I'm excited for all this post-pandemic content it's gonna be good oh it's definitely gonna be good I can't wait idle idle hands will create beautiful magic I cannot wait well thank you so much. Thank you for having me, guys. If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you subscribed and left us a review. Let us know what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and who you'd like to see appear on the show. As a special thanks, we'll send you a copy of our Boss Babe 25. Now, this is an awesome resource. It's the 25

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