You most likely acknowledge Adrian Grenier’s face from his function as Vincent Chase from Entourage or reverse Anne Hathaway because the loyal boyfriend within the everlasting The Satan Wears Prada. However you won’t acknowledge him as an investor, entrepreneur, and farmer.
After rising disillusioned with the glare of Hollywood lights, Grenier gave all of it as much as construct a legacy that might maintain after the cameras lower and accolades ended.
In 2019, alongside his co-CEO and founder Bia Carminati, Grenier launched DuContra Ventures, which brings buyers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders collectively to create a yield past cash.
DuContra has invested in 20 companies throughout finance, well being, water, and meals verticals. In 2022, Grenier got here again in entrance of the digital camera and launched Earth Velocity Media, a nature-based way of life model that celebrates the ability of group and self-reliance.
His new outlook on enterprise and life begins early every morning when he wakes up at dawn to cope with hen s***.
Working From the Pack
Sporting a sweat-soaked linen shirt and a large wicker hat, Greiner adjusts his iPhone to get the appropriate angle.
In the present day, on his farm on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, no assistants rush round with up to date schedules, no make-up artists contact up his brow, and no DPs direct him to hit the appropriate mark. On this scorching scorching day, Grenier hits document alone together with his million-dollar smile beaming on the lens.
Within the video, he explains how he’s constructing the muse of his first-ever hen run. The challenge is a part of Grenier’s unending checklist of duties for managing his acres of Hill Nation farmland.
“These chickens deserve a run, and now they’ve acquired it,” Grenier says to the digital camera as a purple nightfall shrouds the hardly seen enclosure.
Greiner purchased his first plot of farmland in 2016 and has been increasing it since. His spouse, Jordan Greiner, named the farm “Kintsugi” after the Japanese methodology of repairing damaged pottery with gold.
Greiner’s favourite spot on the farm is a seat in his vegetable backyard. “It’s only a nice little chair that after I’m sweating an excessive amount of, I simply kick my ft up and sit below the palm tree,” Grenier says.
Grenier is busier than ever—however a distinct sort of busy than what he grew accustomed to in present enterprise.
For greater than twenty years, he paid his dues within the Hollywood leisure machine as an actor, producer, and director. However over the previous 5 years, Greiner’s IMDb profile has grown sparse.
That’s attributable to a radical change in his way of life.
The shift began virtually a decade in the past when Entourage, HBO’s raunchy buddy-comedy, wrapped its ultimate season. Grenier performed the lead character, Vincent Chase, alongside an ensemble solid that acquired a number of Emmy nominations. Fittingly, the plot of Entourage facilities round Chase, a rising film star, and the antics of his pack of power-hungry minions.
Identical to his character, Grenier struggled to match the tempo required by stardom, which included touring throughout the globe, events, occasions, and paparazzi. Even shifting behind the digital camera as a producer and director didn’t quell the pressures of working in an business that feeds the now and persistently asks, “What have you ever carried out for me currently?”
“As children, we are usually just a little bit myopic and laser concentrate on … standing—discovering your home in society and climbing the ranks socially and making a living,” Grenier says.
“I wished to breathe daily.”
In 2016, Grenier purchased a 1967 Crimson Dale camper on Craigslist and drove 1,300 miles from Los Angeles to Austin. He purchased a small plot of land on the town’s outskirts and parked his trailer with a plan to dwell off the land. Then, for a 12 months, he skilled what he calls the “darkish evening of the soul.” The 12 months turned a collection of private {and professional} introspections specializing in slowing down and connecting with the earth. He emerged from that 12 months a distinct individual.
Greiner’s retreat from Hollywood was distinctive for somebody with a syndicated hit present and a number of movies rewatched by loyal followers. However don’t let the charming playboy nature of his most iconic function idiot you. Greiner’s all the time been a insurgent.
Promoting Swill and Failing Slowly
Grenier calls himself a through-and-through New Yorker. Regardless that he was born in New Mexico and spent most of his profession in Los Angeles, he credit the Huge Apple for his youth as an artist.
“I spent a few years as a punk insurgent in New York, taking part in in bands, making indie movies, doing every little thing that I might to not earn money, like every little thing in my energy to do the alternative of making a living,” Grenier says. “And I used to be massively profitable in that [laughs].”
However ultimately, a hungry stomach motivated Grenier to maneuver. So he shipped out to the West Coast, the place he rapidly began getting roles in films, on TV, and even an look in a Britney Spears music video. Then in 2004, he was solid within the Mark Wahlberg-produced HBO present Entourage, reworking his rebellious repute into bona fide stardom.
Appearing success allowed him to commit to private tasks between capturing seasons of Entourage and have movies. The tasks included beginning Reckless Productions, which produces documentaries round social change, and advanced into dabbling in entrepreneurship and investing, notably within the tech area.
Grenier started investing in small tasks based totally on private connections with founders. A lot of them failed, and he discovered the hazard of naive commitments.
“I used to be in it extra for the concepts, and I used to be simply swayed by the imaginative and prescient of the founder,” Grenier says. “As a inventive individual, when somebody tells me a narrative, my mind lights up, and I can think about it, and I seduce myself. I’m virtually complicit with the founder in making me imagine within the factor versus being extra skeptical and poking holes.”
Ultimately, Grenier acquired the itch to get his arms soiled with entrepreneurship. As an alternative of investing in an thought, he wished to construct a enterprise from scratch.
In 2012, he co-founded a microbrewery known as Churchkey Can Firm.
“I keep in mind my agent known as me, and he’s like, ‘Oh, you bastard, you’re going to be a billionaire from beer, not appearing,’” Grenier says. “Everybody beloved this firm.”
Churchkey introduced again the flat-top tin beer cans popularized within the mid-Twentieth century.
“They have been principally oil cans that have been robust. You couldn’t squeeze them, and also you needed to crack them open,” Grenier says. “And so we had this outdated hipster kind of nostalgia.”
The beer was marketed as a premium product with a microbrewed, triple-hopped, filtered pilsner contained in the throwback cans.
Grenier rapidly discovered that beginning a enterprise—notably within the aggressive beverage area—is tough. “The beer beverage enterprise … is a pennies recreation,” he says.
“You’ve acquired to promote a whole lot of this swill to make any cash.”
Accordingly, the primary downside Churchkey confronted was pricing. In an effort to faucet into nostalgia, the microbrewery backed itself right into a nook, competing in opposition to the biggest breweries in America that had bought the identical flat-top beer cans half a century in the past. However Churchkey’s break-even six-pack worth couldn’t compete with a similar-tasting pilsner from business behemoths like Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, or MillerCoors.
“The true, basic cause why it didn’t work was we had some canning issues as a result of we have been primarily reinventing the can as a result of the entire of the beverage business had moved towards standardization round aluminum keep tabs,” Grenier says. “It simply was cost-prohibitive contemplating our margins and the beer business.”
Regardless that Churchkey had regional reputation within the Pacific Northwest and have become a best-seller at Complete Meals, it wasn’t sufficient to maintain the enterprise afloat.
“I feel I misplaced 10 kilos when that enterprise went below,” Grenier jokes. “In order that’s how a lot enjoyable weight I had gained.”
Grenier says Churchkey taught him concerning the hazard of “gradual failure.”
“Once you fail quick, you be taught, and then you definately adapt. However [for] these of us that refuse to fail, we don’t wish to fail, so we maintain on to failure.”
He describes the sensation of gradual failure like hitting all-time low, sliding, and scraping your face on the stone.
“It took us like two years to lastly settle for that it was over. I didn’t take it properly. I didn’t wish to fail,” Grenier says. “You would preserve pouring cash into it and borrowing cash and making an attempt to save lots of face, salvage a dream, however you may lengthen agony.”
By means of his experiences with Churchkey and different failed ventures just like the app Popcorn, Grenier realized that he wanted to be extra cynical when approaching enterprise concepts.
“You’ve acquired to be taught to poke holes and kill your darlings, and there’s a distinction between an ideal thought and an ideal enterprise.”
After a bleak break into entrepreneurship, Grenier discovered himself parking a retro trailer on a patch of land in Texas. He’d left his outdated life, and he was about to remodel into a distinct sort of artist and entrepreneur.
A Rebellious Ally
After twenty years in Hollywood, dabbling in investing and seeing the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, Greiner discovered that the vicious nature of his life wasn’t sustainable.
“I all the time felt dangerous for these enterprise individuals who have been so cutthroat and have been battling it out within the boardroom as a result of I really feel like there’d be little or no belief,” Grenier says. “As a result of whenever you’re swimming with sharks, and also you’re a shark, that’s simply the life you’ve constructed.”
In Austin, Grenier was rising a shark-free life.
He acquired concerned in environmental work, serving to begin Lonely Whale, a nonprofit group that strives to stop plastic waste from getting into the earth’s oceans. On panels and press junkets, he’d focus his dialog on the setting, self-empowerment, and earth-empowerment. In 2018, Grenier’s advocacy earned him the title of United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, a place he holds in the present day.
In the meantime, his trailer way of life had remodeled right into a farm way of life. Grenier had completely moved to the Lone Star State and hoped to share his imaginative and prescient for a collaborative group centered on the land. And he wished his investments to mirror the aim of his day-to-day life.
That’s when Bia Carminati turned the collaborator Grenier wanted.
“She reached out to me just a few years in the past as a result of she has a household workplace the place she represents folks of affect with a world or a public presence, and he or she needs to assist them align their investments with their values—which, in fact, I used to be good for,” Grenier says.
Whereas Grenier transitioned to his earth-centered life in Austin, he and Carminati continued growing their relationship, which ultimately led to the launch of DuContra Ventures in 2019. “DuContra” comes from the Portuguese phrase which means “insurgent” or “in opposition or distinction to.” The corporate blends influence investing with transformative experiences and private growth.
The partnership has allowed Greiner to pursue the tasks he loves whereas defending his admitted whimsy for human-centered tales.
“She helped me formalize my ragtag arbitrary shoot-from-the-hip investments and make it into a proper enterprise thesis that we might really elevate cash in opposition to,” Grenier says.
When Grenier and Carminati meet with potential enterprise companions, they concentrate on the human earlier than the enterprise.
“You meet the human earlier than you make the deal, versus a whole lot of instances it’s the deal in any respect prices,” Grenier says. “I’ve acknowledged over time that there’s good cash, after which there’s simple cash, after which there’s heart-centered cash.”
He describes heart-centered cash as investing in folks dedicated to long-term progress in comparison with simple cash, which is fickle.
“Simple cash is commonly very harmful cash as a result of it all the time involves chunk you within the a**,” Grenier says.
“Simple cash is commonly very harmful cash as a result of it all the time involves chunk you within the a**,”
Whereas the enterprise aspect of Grenier’s life turned balanced, his want to inform tales he’d cast as a reckless artist in New York by no means left him. In 2022, he launched Earth Velocity Media, which chronicles his quest for self-improvement whereas highlighting subjects centered on bettering the world.
“I’ve a platform that kind of spans popular culture and fashionable tradition,” Grenier says. “So I believed, ‘Effectively, hey, I might perhaps bridge the hole between these two worlds and make one thing extraordinarily accessible and fashionable and open.’ … I discovered the maturity sufficient to carry all of it into kind of resonance the place I can now make investments […], and I can actually concentrate on the large image, which is mission-aligned imaginative and prescient and values.”
“I can actually concentrate on the large image, which is mission-aligned imaginative and prescient and values.”
Earth Velocity’s content material is streaming on YouTube and Instagram. It consists of interviews with thought leaders reminiscent of Dr. Zach Bush, founding father of Farmer’s Footprint, Queen Diambi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and writer Simon Sinek. Grenier additionally options the companies he’s invested in, together with Coronary heart Water, Producers Market, and World Tree. The episode subjects middle on a separate challenge dealing with the earth, reminiscent of vitamin independence or regeneration, all set on location at his homestead in Texas.
All through his profession, Grenier has all the time returned to his intuition to go in opposition to the norm. Even within the face of worldwide stardom, he reached for a distinct life, a distinct velocity—one which elevates his creative and entrepreneurial imaginative and prescient.
“I didn’t wish to be so fast-paced and all the time on the go with out taking time to actually soak up my life on the planet and see how I could be of service to somebody,” Grenier says. “Like [a] ‘get up and odor the roses’ sort perspective. However this time, I’m really rising roses.”
The publish Adrian Grenier Turned His Again on Hollywood to Develop Earth-Centric Companies appeared first on Foundr.