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You most likely acknowledge Adrian Grenier’s face from his position as Vincent Chase from Entourage or reverse Anne Hathaway because the loyal boyfriend within the everlasting The Satan Wears Prada. However you may not 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 may maintain after the cameras lower and accolades ended.
In 2019, alongside his co-CEO and founder Bia Carminati, Grenier launched DuContra Ventures, which brings traders, 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 digicam and launched Earth Pace Media, a nature-based way of life model that celebrates the facility of neighborhood and self-reliance.
His new outlook on enterprise and life begins early every morning when he wakes up at dawn to take care of hen s***.
Working From the Pack
Carrying a sweat-soaked linen shirt and a large wicker hat, Greiner adjusts his iPhone to get the correct angle.
As we speak, 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 correct mark. On this scorching sizzling day, Grenier hits document alone along 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 undertaking 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 digicam 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 technique 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 beneath the palm tree,” Grenier says.
Grenier is busier than ever—however a distinct kind of busy than what he grew accustomed to in present enterprise.
For greater than 20 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 nearly a decade in the past when Entourage, HBO’s raunchy buddy-comedy, wrapped its remaining 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.
Similar 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 digicam as a producer and director didn’t quell the pressures of working in an trade that feeds the now and persistently asks, “What have you ever carried out for me currently?”
“As children, we are usually slightly bit myopic and laser deal with … standing—discovering your home in society and climbing the ranks socially and making a living,” Grenier says.
“I needed to breathe daily.”
In 2016, Grenier purchased a 1967 Pink 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 night time of the soul.” The 12 months turned a sequence 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 position idiot you. Greiner’s all the time been a insurgent.
Promoting Swill and Failing Slowly
Grenier calls himself a through-and-through New Yorker. Although he was born in New Mexico and spent most of his profession in Los Angeles, he credit the Large 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 all the pieces that I may to not generate profits, like all the pieces in my energy to do the other of making a living,” Grenier says. “And I used to be vastly profitable in that [laughs].”
However finally, a hungry stomach motivated Grenier to maneuver. So he shipped out to the West Coast, the place he rapidly began getting roles in motion pictures, 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, remodeling his rebellious status into bona fide stardom.
Appearing success allowed him to commit to non-public initiatives between taking pictures seasons of Entourage and have movies. The initiatives included beginning Reckless Productions, which produces documentaries round social change, and advanced into dabbling in entrepreneurship and investing, significantly within the tech area.
Grenier started investing in small initiatives based on private connections with founders. A lot of them failed, and he realized 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 artistic individual, when somebody tells me a narrative, my mind lights up, and I can think about it, and I seduce myself. I’m nearly complicit with the founder in making me consider within the factor versus being extra skeptical and poking holes.”
Ultimately, Grenier acquired the itch to get his palms soiled with entrepreneurship. As an alternative of investing in an thought, he needed 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 cherished this firm.”
Churchkey introduced again the flat-top tin beer cans popularized within the mid-Twentieth century.
“They had been principally oil cans that had been robust. You couldn’t squeeze them, and also you needed to crack them open,” Grenier says. “And so we had this previous 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 realized that beginning a enterprise—significantly within the aggressive beverage area—is difficult. “The beer beverage enterprise … is a pennies sport,” he says.
“You’ve acquired to promote quite a 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 towards 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 value couldn’t compete with a similar-tasting pilsner from trade behemoths like Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, or MillerCoors.
“The actual, elementary purpose why it didn’t work was we had some canning issues as a result of we had been basically reinventing the can as a result of the entire of the beverage trade had moved towards standardization round aluminum keep tabs,” Grenier says. “It simply was cost-prohibitive contemplating our margins and the beer trade.”
Although Churchkey had regional recognition within the Pacific Northwest and have become a best-seller at Entire Meals, it wasn’t sufficient to maintain the enterprise afloat.
“I believe I misplaced 10 kilos when that enterprise went beneath,” Grenier jokes. “In order that’s how a lot enjoyable weight I had gained.”
Grenier says Churchkey taught him in regards to the hazard of “gradual failure.”
“Once you fail quick, you study, and then you definately adapt. However [for] these of us that refuse to fail, we don’t need 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 need to fail,” Grenier says. “You might hold pouring cash into it and borrowing cash and making an attempt to save lots of face, salvage a dream, however you could possibly extend 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 study to poke holes and kill your darlings, and there’s a distinction between a fantastic thought and a fantastic 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 previous life, and he was about to rework into a distinct kind of artist and entrepreneur.
A Rebellious Ally
After 20 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 had been so cutthroat and had 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 neighborhood that strives to forestall plastic waste from coming 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 right this moment.
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 neighborhood centered on the land. And he needed his investments to replicate the aim of his day-to-day life.
That’s when Bia Carminati turned the collaborator Grenier wanted.
“She reached out to me a number of years in the past as a result of she has a household workplace the place she represents individuals of affect with a worldwide or a public presence, and he or she desires to assist them align their investments with their values—which, after all, I used to be excellent for,” Grenier says.
Whereas Grenier transitioned to his earth-centered life in Austin, he and Carminati continued creating their relationship, which finally led to the launch of DuContra Ventures in 2019. “DuContra” comes from the Portuguese phrase meaning “insurgent” or “in opposition or distinction to.” The corporate blends affect investing with transformative experiences and private improvement.
The partnership has allowed Greiner to pursue the initiatives 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 may truly elevate cash towards,” Grenier says.
When Grenier and Carminati meet with potential enterprise companions, they deal with the human earlier than the enterprise.
“You meet the human earlier than you make the deal, versus quite a lot of occasions it’s the deal in any respect prices,” Grenier says. “I’ve acknowledged through the years 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 individuals dedicated to long-term development in comparison with simple cash, which is fickle.
“Straightforward cash is usually very harmful cash as a result of it all the time involves chunk you within the a**,” Grenier says.
“Straightforward cash is usually 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 Pace 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, ‘Nicely, hey, I may perhaps bridge the hole between these two worlds and make one thing extraordinarily accessible and fashionable and open.’ … I discovered the maturity sufficient to deliver all of it into kind of resonance the place I can now make investments […], and I can actually deal with the large image, which is mission-aligned imaginative and prescient and values.”
“I can actually deal with the large image, which is mission-aligned imaginative and prescient and values.”
Earth Pace’s content material is streaming on YouTube and Instagram. It consists of interviews with thought leaders similar to Dr. Zach Bush, founding father of Farmer’s Footprint, Queen Diambi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and creator 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 problem going through the earth, similar to 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 towards the norm. Even within the face of world stardom, he reached for a distinct life, a distinct pace—one which elevates his inventive and entrepreneurial imaginative and prescient.
“I didn’t need to be so fast-paced and all the time on the go with out taking time to actually absorb 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’ kind perspective. However this time, I’m truly rising roses.”
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