We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brandon Keeton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brandon below.
Brandon, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
A difficult childhood. Dad was not the best and Mom did her best. I then joined the Marine Corps and faced challenges, both physical and mental I didn’t know I was capable of overcoming…until I did. After a while, proving people wrong became the way I live my life. It also helps that over time, I have learned when to listen to myself and when to listen to others.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I had a scholarship for Acting coming our of high school but I didn’t take it. I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1992.
I served 21 years in the Marine Corps, then 10 years as a small business owner. Now I make movies! It might seem like the oddest route to different careers but if you’ve lived it, like I have, one thing led to the other in a very smooth transition from one career to the next.
While in the Marine Corps, I was a boxer for 18 years. Being that I knew how to handle myself pretty well, every unit I went to made me the “Close Combat” Instructor guy. So when I got out, I opened a small business in the Martial Arts industry.
After five years of owning my own school, I was a self made millionaire and found myself doing my own commercials. After a few years of doing my own commercials, I thought I’d give Acting another try. Six months later I was Executive Producing and having a role in, my first feature film “Turbo Cola”, which won Best Indie Film of the Year for 2023.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Anyone can learn certain skills. Anyone can learn how to play an instrument. Anyone can learn how to dance. Anyone can learn how to sell something. How well you do them is based on your work ethic and of course, a natural proclivity to doing it, but they can all be learned.
Also, everyone has a talent for something. Once you find it, run with it.
What’s most important is being dumb! Yup! I said it! Be a BIG freakin’ dummy! Being too dumb to know when to quit, even when the rest of the world tells you “no, don’t do that” and betting on yourself, is where the real magic happens!
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Over the past four years of being in the entertainment industry, I have made a little “tribe” of people I like working with. In order to work with me, you gotta leave the ego at the door. You are NOT special. You are NOT better than anyone else. Everyone is there to do a good job telling the best story that they can. Having an ego means that you aren’t collaborative and can’t take “no” for an answer. While the MArine Corps taught me to be able to work with ANYONE, this is not the service. If I’m Producing or Directing, I have a choice to work with you or not.
Feel free to look me up on IMDbPro!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @brandonscottkeeton
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandon.keeton.37/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mythirdact
Image Credits
Turbo Cola: Dawn Fields
Calls: Sophia Cantu
Stories: Dawn Fields
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
