Full transcript: Cara Santana on London Real
6:49 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Cara Santana, a Hollywood actress, fashion writer and creator of the Glam app, described as uber for hair, nails and makeup. In Hollywood, you’re currently starring in the Massachusetts witch trial series Salem. In 2015, you created the Glam app, which delivers bespoke beauty experts to users on demand.
7:19 London is now the 25th location for the app and your first international market. In 2014, your interest in politics took you to Botswana as an ambassador for UNICEF, Cara, welcome to London Real.
7:30 Cara Santana: That was quite the introduction. Right? I mean, you know, it’s tricky because you get interviewed by people in Hollywood and you do a lot of great press.
7:38 So, you know, I never know if I’m going to be as good as those intros. That was the best intro I’ve ever had. I think I should just specialize in just doing that.
7:46 Brian Rose: Yeah. Can you come around with me and introduce me?
7:48 Cara Santana: Just the intro app. Maybe I could just do that.
7:50 Brian Rose: You know, I really want to hear about you as a business person. And I’ve got a lot of questions about what it’s like to work in Hollywood and make it in that business. We’re far removed from that, even though we have our own little media mini empire here.
8:02 But first, I wanted to know, what does London feel like? You know, when you land on that plane flying, you know, 10 hours or 12 hours from LA and you get here and you think, I’m going to London, what are like some of the first things that come to your brain?
8:15 Cara Santana: You know, I love London. My boyfriend and I have been coming here, you know, multiple times a year for probably about the last five years with a great friend base. The thing I love about London is it’s culturally diverse.
8:27 There’s such a beautiful historic feel, but it’s also very modern and cosmopolitan. And I love that about London. It really is the best of both worlds, merging in one beautiful location.
8:39 Brian Rose: Fashion. I mean, you know fashion well. You blog about fashion.
8:43 I mean, the glam app is specifically about fashion, but of course it’s about looks. What does it feel like when you kind of walk around London? I mean, not just in the runway shows, I’m sure you’ve been to, but just when you see the way women dress or men dress, how does it feel?
8:59 Cara Santana: Well, London’s had a very long history with fashion, from the punk days to the 60s mod, to sort of the East London street style. It’s very eclectic, very diverse.
9:09 I love it. You can’t really go wrong here, you know. There’s just so many sort of interesting stylistic and aesthetic looks that I like to play with, whether it’s, you know, dressing sort of quintessentially proper, as you would expect sort of the royals to, or if you’re in East London and you’re enjoying the street style, or that vintage sort of flavor that it has. I mean, it’s a really interesting and creative way to sort of explore your look and your personal style.
9:38 Brian Rose: And how would you say it differs from, say, Paris, Milan, as we kind of get into the continent?
9:45 Cara Santana: Yeah, I mean, I would say sort of there’s such a distinct sort of English feel. Whereas I think, you know, Paris and Milan, every city really has its unique sort of aesthetic. And what I love about London, as it is so culturally diverse, you see a lot of sort of distinct styles sort of merging together. I think that’s what really separates it.
10:11 You know, Parisian chic is sort of one thing. And sort of when I think about the Milanese, I think of the bright and the bold and the Italian flavor. And I think London is just sort of its own melting pot of street style and punk mixed with mod and sort of that classic sort of proper taste, which I think is indicative of the city.
10:35 Brian Rose: Good summary. Thanks.
10:37 You know, London, it’s been traditionally like a really big trade port. And so I think you’re right. It’s got so many different cultures that have moved through. Whereas I think places like Paris and Milan, they’ve managed to kind of hold on to more of like their country’s fashion identity. Whereas here, you’re right, everything kind of cruises through.
10:54 But you have to remember like in the 17th century, 18th century, like the new money in Britain would like wear suits and try to dress up kind of like what used to be for royal and for money people. And so the whole idea of a man wearing a suit here, I think kind of came about when they were trying to just get this dress on. And so for me, I’m from San Diego. Like I grew up wearing shorts like every day. And so for me, the city’s changed me a little bit.
11:18 In the last few years, I’m starting to put suits on and wearing them. And I’m like, OK, I kind of like this.
11:24 Cara Santana: And so I think that’s totally true. I mean, I live in Los Angeles, so I’m definitely a SoCal kind of gal. And if you’ve seen me in Los Angeles, I’m probably wearing cut offs and a t-shirt and heels.
11:35 But when I travel, I certainly like to sort of assimilate organically into whatever the cultural, you know, feel is. So whether it’s New York or London, Paris, Milan, whatever that may be, I definitely like to like absorb the taste and the culture. And the first way to do that is sort of through fashion and food.
11:56 Brian Rose: Will you dress a little different when you go out in L.A. after you’ve made an international trip?
12:03 Will your friends say, what is that?
12:05 Cara Santana: No, I don’t think so. I leave it where I’m at, for sure. I’ve been rocking the waistcoats lately. I like it.
12:11 Brian Rose: Very dapper. It’s very English.
12:13 Cara Santana: Yeah, it kind of works. Yeah, I’m going to go with it for now.
12:17 Brian Rose: You should. Yeah, thank you. You know, I want to get into why you would jump in and be the CEO of a tech startup, because that’s a whole nother.
12:26 Sometimes, you know, recipe for hurts, you know, because it’s a very hard job and I want to find out about that because I get to interview a lot of CEOs and founders of tech companies. But first, I just want to find out for people that don’t know, I mean, I’ve watched you in Salem and I know you grew up in El Paso, Texas, and then moved to L.A. You know, and I remember you’ve talked about, you know, hard work and you were like, I knocked on every door until someone gave you a shout.
12:49 It was all about perseverance. There’s no gray story. You trained hard. You went after what you wanted. You know, for people that don’t know, what is it like to kind of make it in Hollywood or to get on a series or just to be in the acting business?
13:01 Cara Santana: Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, you use the term making it, and I don’t necessarily feel like I’ve quote-unquote made it, which I think is a positive thing. You never want to peak when you’re 30. I think there’s only one way to go and that’s down. So I hope I never sort of reach that peak and I’m always sort of striving for more.
13:20 But certainly, the entertainment industry, similar to sort of any entrepreneurial endeavor in the tech industry and startups, there’s a lot of rejection. I think there’s probably more failure than there is success, not to sound bleak, but it’s certainly a competitive environment. It’s very subjective. You know, it’s not linear. If you think, you know, my mom’s a lawyer.
13:46 You go to school. You take the LSAT after you get your bachelor’s and you get a law degree and then you go to a firm and you start working and it’s very linear. Acting’s not like that. There’s no sort of test that you take. There’s no sort of pathway to getting the job.
14:00 It’s sort of all very much a subjective thing and I think that can be, for the wrong person, incredibly arduous and cumbersome. Anything for the right person. It’s fun and exciting and interesting and you never know where life’s going to take you. It takes a certain, I think, personality. And I love the arts.
14:22 I love creating and I think it was a very natural career path. I always knew I wanted to be an actress. I loved the idea of stepping outside of myself and inventing another person’s world and really creating someone from the ground up. I love writing and I love reading and so it was a very natural progression, but it’s certainly not an easy field to be in and takes a certain type of person, I think, to really persevere through it. So it toughens you up.
14:52 Brian Rose: It makes startups look easy, maybe.
14:54 Cara Santana: You know, no, startups are hard and I think if I had any idea what I was getting into, maybe I wouldn’t have done it.
15:01 Brian Rose: Same with acting, maybe.
15:03 Cara Santana: I think so. Yeah, I think there’s a level of naivete that works in your favor because you don’t really know what you’re getting into.
15:11 When I was five years old and I knew I wanted to be an actress and I sort of knew that only because I loved playing make-believe in my house and then my parents put me into a theater camp and I loved the idea of finding a person and making that person my own and through that I realized, oh, I wanted to be an actress. And this was, you know, in the 1990s so it wasn’t like fame and celebrity and the exposure that now we relate to, you know, acting in the acting world. It wasn’t something that I was conscious of.
15:45 It really was a love of creativity and a love of self-expression that really drove me to taking that path. Had I been aware of all of it, maybe I would have taken a path that was easier but for better or for worse, I didn’t. But like you said, it’s very competitive and so it just toughens you up to where you have to deal with rejection and just, I guess you have to really love it to kind of keep coming back and keep coming back. And that’s the thing, it’s really about that art.
16:11 It’s really about that creativity. It’s really about that outlet that I think really separates sort of an artist from maybe, you know, some of the other aspects of the entertainment industry. And so, yeah, I think you have to really love it or else, why in God’s name would you do it? This is one of the hardest, it’s not brain surgery but it’s hard, you know, it’s not an easy path for sure.
16:34 Brian Rose: Because it’s so, it’s not obvious how to succeed, right?
16:37 Cara Santana: Like you said, there’s no linear path. And there’s no, there’s no rule book. I mean, look at society right now and the public figures for which we pay the most attention to. I mean, there’s, it’s such a broad spectrum and they’ve all had such different backgrounds and none of them share a similarity other than the fact that they have created such a draw of attention to them. So, yeah, there’s no, you know, you can’t go to Harvard, get a degree in acting and make it.
17:07 It doesn’t work like that, so.
17:08 Brian Rose: We were talking earlier about the Steve Jobs commencement speech and how he said, you know, there’s a lot of the dots in life and when looking back, then you can connect. Yeah, you can never connect the dots looking forward but you always can looking back. Right. If you look at some of those dots in your life, what were some of those?
17:24 Was moving to LA one of those? Was it like the first movie role was one of those?
17:30 Cara Santana: Well, it’s kind of a dark dotted line but I’m actually 10 years sober. And so when I was 18 years old, I had a pretty dark sort of past when it came to drugs and alcohol. And I think it was very painful for my parents not really understanding sort of what led me to that space and how I would get out of it.
17:53 But looking back, I feel like it was really sort of the crux of my love of getting out of myself and finding another person which took me to the path of being an actress. And so looking forward from that point of addiction and sobriety, no one knew where this was going to take me. But looking back, I say, oh, wow, that really shaped the foundation of who I am in a very positive way. I would never have changed that no matter how dark it was or how painful it was and I’m a better person for it.
18:28 And I think that that’s probably the biggest sort of cornerstone of my 30-year life that I would say informed sort of that quote for me and why I love it so much.
18:37 Brian Rose: Yeah, that comes up a lot on this show and I’ve talked about my own issues there. I come around when I was 30. And when I read about you kind of when you were 18, when you had that crisis, I was thinking like, good for her, she got that over with. And now you’re like, okay, now I can kind of focus on the rest of my life because some people, me included, took me until I was 30 to deal with that.
18:59 And usually, and I’m curious of your thoughts on this, but usually when you have a kind of near-death experience with substances, it’s because you don’t like the person you are and you kind of want to get away from them. For me, it was, I think, all the pressures I put on myself. But I was curious.
19:20 Cara Santana: Yeah, it’s certainly escapism at its finest. I mean, you don’t alter your sensibilities from the neck up, as we say, if you are really comfortable as who you are.
19:31 So I think when I look back before my quote-unquote using began, as a child, I was always looking to escape, whether it was playing make-believe in my bedroom, whether it was theater class, acting school, writing, whatever it was. And the older I got, the more powerful that substance needed to be until I was really able to, in recovery, absorb sort of the feelings and emotions that I had. And I always like to say, you know, I think there’s sort of this stigma around addiction that is sort of stereotypical of what an addict or an alcoholic may or may not look like.
20:10 So I always like to say, my parents have been married 38 years. I had a fabulous upbringing, a quintessential really, and I still suffered from this disease. And so it’s not a result of childhood. It’s not a result of nurture. It’s just really, in my belief, a disease that I suffered from, and it wasn’t until I was able to get into sobriety and deal with the sort of mental effects of that insecurity that I was able to be free of drugs and alcohol and live a sober lifestyle and absorb sort of the emotions that were compelling me to use.
20:46 Brian Rose: And what did you learn about yourself, like in that period?
20:51 Cara Santana: You know, I learned, what did I learn? That’s such a great question, so profound, too. I really want to think about my answer. I mean, I think I learned that self-acceptance is the number one thing, that as humans, we’re naturally insecure.
21:09 You don’t know a person on this planet that doesn’t doubt themselves, question themselves, have fears, have insecurities about themselves, the choices that they’re making, their career, finance, whatever it may be, and that I’m human just as everyone else is, and I have to be able to process those things in, and it starts with me. You know, I think we as a society tend to look outside of ourselves when there’s a problem, what you did, what he did, what she did, what society did, the institution did, but really it’s not ask what they can change, it’s what you can change, you know, off of John F. Kennedy’s sort of play on his words, but it’s really about sort of taking a look inside and internalizing those feelings instead of making it the responsibility of the people or the world around you.
21:58 My mom always says, you can never control how a person is going to act, you can only control how you react. So that’s something I think that I’ve learned to use when I come up with conflict or doubt or insecurity, because it does happen.
22:12 Brian Rose: Life on life’s terms, right? Yeah. And was that accelerated, being like, were you in Hollywood at the time and, you know, a teenager in Hollywood rolling with certain crews, was it kind of accelerated to get to that point and was maybe that a good thing?
22:27 Cara Santana: You know, I don’t know. It’s such a good question. I would never really blame it on one thing or not. I mean, I just think I always had that ism inside of me and, you know, I was 18, that’s sort of the climax of it and I was new to Los Angeles and I certainly felt stress and I certainly felt pressure and I certainly wanted to escape, but fundamentally it was always there. And so maybe it did expediate the process of both my using and then consequently my sobriety.
23:01 Maybe it didn’t. I don’t really know the answer to that. I just know that I’m grateful for my sobriety and I’m grateful that I got it when I did, but certainly there’s no clear-cut path and I know people of all ages who got sober at different times but I believe you get sober when you need to be sober, when you’re willing to do so.
23:19 Brian Rose: Yeah, definitely. I just had Matt Willis in here.
23:22 He was kind of a rock star for the band Busted and McBusted and he was telling me about his own issues and he was like, but it took him years and he was just like, Brian, I went to rehab and I didn’t really want to go and then I didn’t want to go and then I didn’t want to go and finally there was a point where he was just like my daughter and my wife and I’m showing up here and then finally he’s like, I chose to stop.
23:46 Cara Santana: And I think that’s a similar sort of sentiment that you hear in recovery and certainly was for me. I mean, I wasn’t going to stop until I was ready to stop and it wasn’t until I had that near fatal incidence that I wanted to be clean.
23:59 I did not want to live that life. I didn’t want to do that to myself or the people around me and it scared me. It scared me straight. So certainly you have to be ready and willing to get there.
24:12 Brian Rose: Did opportunities open up?
24:14 Was life easier after that when you’re not trying to fight against yourself and did you see things just kind of happen?
24:21 Cara Santana: You know, I don’t know if life is easier because life is always challenging and I’ve certainly had great success over and I’ve had failures, you know, sober. But I think that the thing that was really different was my ability to handle and process those successes and failures and instead of it being an extreme high and a great low, everything is just sort of like even, you know, you take the good with the bad, there’s success, there’s failure, there’s duality in life and I’m able to handle that in a much more almost sort of systematic way and process things that I think sort of the average person is able to do.
25:00 And I think when you’re suffering from any sort of mental illness, you have to find a sense of normalcy because the way that your brain processes things is just inherently different than someone who doesn’t suffer from mental illness.
25:13 Brian Rose: What does it take to be a successful actress on a TV set like, you know, Salem or on a movie set? Like, I’m sure you’re surrounded by some people that are very good at what they do. You see people that are good at what they do.
25:26 If there are like one or two or three things where you’re like, you know, it really takes this, more than say this.
25:34 Cara Santana: I think a willingness to learn is number one. You know, acting is a collaborative art form whether it’s collaborating with the people you’re working with, your actors, fellow actors, the director, a writer, costumes. I mean, production does not function with one person alone. And let me qualify this by saying I don’t even consider myself as a successful quote-unquote actor.
26:00 I feel like I am at the bottom of the totem pole with so much to learn and I sincerely hope I always feel that way because the minute that you think that you are greater than the project or you are greater than the sum of the parts is when you have, you know, shot yourself in the foot. So I think a willingness to learn and to stay open is the first thing. I think the second thing is extreme work ethic. I mean, 12-hour days, 14-hour days, sometimes in extreme heat, extreme cold, nights, days.
26:36 I mean, you never know what your production is going to entail. And staying diligent and hungry and focused, I think, is the second key. And I think humility is the third. And staying humble and, you know, available to the people around you would be third. And fourth would be a tough skin because it’s not for the faint of heart.
27:01 Brian Rose: How so, like, on the set or with directors or with fans and haters?
27:05 Cara Santana: Well, no, let’s talk about this role on Salem. I auditioned for the role. They wanted a Native American Indian. I’m not Native American.
27:13 I fought for the role. I really wanted to play this character. I thought it was super cool. I auditioned for the role in English. I book it.
27:20 I fly literally the next day to Shreveport, Louisiana, which is where we film, within 12 hours. I get there and they say, oh, by the way, we’re changing the character from English-speaking to Algonquian-speaking, so we hope you can learn Algonquian. I mean, I’ve never, you know, I didn’t even know what Algonquian was, let alone… What is it? How to speak it.
27:41 It’s just a Native American language. Okay. And the Native American community is incredibly private and protective of their heritage, especially when it comes to cinema and how they’ve been portrayed in media. So there’s not, like, you can’t YouTube, like, how to speak in Algonquian and, like, put your phones on and learn it, like you can with other languages. So we had to bring in a translator.
28:04 You can’t write phonetically Algonquian because it’s all symbols. So you have to, like, translate it. It’s incredibly difficult. So I had to learn Algonquian. My character’s naked for the majority of the show, which consists of about three hours of red body paint a day with eyes drawn onto me, extensions in my hair.
28:27 So there’s a lot of stuff going on. So that is the thick skin. It’s not like you show up, you get your hair and your makeup done, and life’s just so easy. I mean, there’s a lot of work that goes into really bringing a genuine and authentic character to life and a great responsibility that most actors feel when they are portraying a character, especially a character that has a history to it. And so you have to be thick-skinned and ready to put in the work.
28:58 And I think if you think you’re going to get to Los Angeles and become an actor, an actress without hard work, you’re probably in for a rude awakening. Most people have no idea how many hours, days, months it takes to produce 10 seconds on screen, right? They just see you in the big glamor opening shot, and you’ve got the smoking things, but they don’t realize that that day, a bunch of things went wrong. The weeks you took to learn the language, that take you probably weren’t even happy with.
29:28 You liked the other take. Someone had just done this. This has just done this. Are you an actor? No.
29:33 Brian Rose: Do you understand it so well? I’m just guessing.
29:35 Cara Santana: No, you totally understand it. You’re absolutely right. Absolutely right.
29:38 Brian Rose: And did you learn more about Native American culture in America? I’ve just seen the Revenants, which is kind of fascinating because DiCaprio speaks in a Native tongue, and there was a documentary done about it. And again, like you said, I believe the Native American population have really been probably exploited and portrayed wrong in Hollywood since the days of John Wayne Westerns. And even you could argue, you know, dances with wolves was maybe wrong in some ways, although maybe it progressed in many ways.
30:05 Did you find like a different connection? Did you learn things you didn’t know before?
30:11 Cara Santana: Yeah, absolutely, and definitely a greater appreciation for the culture in general. And I certainly saw, you know, to say I saw a sense of humanity that I didn’t see before would imply that I didn’t see humanity in the Native American people before, but I certainly just wasn’t aware of the extraordinary craftsmanship of these people and cultural advancements. And, you know, we were talking about fashion earlier and sort of, you know, they were really the pioneers of fashion and creating clothing out of necessity and art out of necessity and, you know, these languages that they created so that they could speak to one another.
30:57 I mean, really, when you look at the history, it is so powerful and so extraordinary that only, you know, my greatest respect to the Native American people.
31:08 Brian Rose: Do you get hate for not being Native American?
31:11 Cara Santana: You know, I’ve been really fortunate that we, that was certainly a concern, and it was certainly more a concern of the networks than it was of mine, because I’m an actor, so give me a job and I’m gonna give you my 100% best effort at portraying that character in the most authentic and genuine form.
31:32 But certainly, you know, the network and the studio were concerned that that would be a potential backlash. I was very fortunate that we didn’t get that criticism. The person who played my father, Ralph Truijillo, is Native American, and his cousin’s from the Algonquian Indian tribe, and so I think he brought a great gravitas to the role, and it was very well received, which I’m very happy about. And I was, you know, a small cog in that, so I’m glad that we came out of it with the positive feedback.
32:13 Brian Rose: And will that series continue?
32:14 Cara Santana: Yeah, we’re shooting season three as we speak.
32:16 Brian Rose: Okay, and you’re down in Louisiana?
32:18 Cara Santana: I actually haven’t gone back yet, but I will be.
32:20 Brian Rose: Okay, and then you get painted up for the day and you gotta be naked, which might sound cool, but it probably isn’t cool after a while.
32:26 Cara Santana: No, it’s the worst. Sex scenes on camera aren’t cool either. The worst. I mean, Shane, who I play opposite of, I’ve been a friend of mine for years, knows my boyfriend really well, so at least there’s a sense of, like, comfort and safety that’s there, but they’re terrible. I mean, they’re just awful.
32:44 I mean, it is literally the least favorite part of that and the face paint and the body paint, but it’s so awful. There’s like 40 grown men standing around watching you pretend like you’re having sex. It’s so awkward.
33:02 Brian Rose: That’s hard work. What is your dream role as an actor?
33:06 Is it kind of that really big movie where you have the key part? Is it something you write and produce, or is it that series that, you know, you can kind of make your own? I mean, I’m just curious, like, for you when you think, like, you know, in a couple years from now, this is what I’d like to do. What is that?
33:24 Cara Santana: Such a good question.
33:25 I mean, I think it’s ever-evolving right now. I actually, it took me about five years, but I’ve written a movie based on my experience in addiction and sobriety. It’s semi-autobiographical. It takes place in New York City in three decades, following six people’s independent lives who’s all kind of connect at the end. And it’s based on my experience and experience of people that I’ve become sober with and experience of people that I know.
33:54 And so I’m, right now, that’s my dream role, is producing that and acting in it and seeing the full-processed, you know, culminate in a feature film.
34:03 Brian Rose: We’ve seen, like, with Angelina Jolie, she said that she almost kind of prefers being behind the camera now and being the director. And she’s kind of like, the acting doesn’t get her as excited as it used to be. Do you think that, for that movie you’re talking about, would you star in it or would you be part of it?
34:22 Cara Santana: No, yeah, I would star in it, but I wouldn’t direct it. And I think, you know, when you look at someone like, you know, Angelina Jolie, in my humble opinion, I mean, we talked about peaking, you know. And I’m not surprised that someone with her career success feels like now the next logical progression to sort of strive and begin to learn and grow, as I was talking about my acting career, would be directing. Because that’s unfamiliar territory. And when you’re a creative person, when you’re an artistic person, you never want to stop learning.
34:55 You never want to start creating. And she’s had such incredible success, and she has the highest honor that we give in our industry, an Academy Award. And so I’m not surprised that now she’s taking a turn in the arts to sort of behind the camera and creating and helming productions. So I think that’s great.
35:13 Brian Rose: Tell me about Los Angeles.
35:14 Explain this town to me. I’m from San Diego, but when I go to LA, I never feel comfortable there. I just feel like I don’t get what’s going on. Last time I stayed at a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, and even there, it was magnified even more because it’s a little crazy, but I always feel like there’s this kind of a celebrity factor and the people that aren’t celebrities and aren’t, and obviously it’s a Hollywood town. And for me, it makes me anxious.
35:35 Cara Santana: Oh, no.
35:36 Brian Rose: But like, I know some people like it. What’s your relationship like with LA? Do you understand how I feel?
35:43 Cara Santana: You know, no, it makes me, it disappoints me that my town gives you that sentiment.
35:49 I love Los Angeles, but I think I love Los Angeles because I have great friends. Some of them are in the entertainment industry. Some of them are not. I have a great group of people around me. I have, you know, hobbies and interests outside of entertainment.
36:09 I have a life that is not sort of under the scope of the entertainment world, and I think if you sort of let that go, it’s all make-believe anyway, you know? It’s a bunch of people pretending. If you let that go and you enjoy the beach and the mountains and the shopping and the culture and the museums and the art, you can sort of delineate the entertainment industry. It’s such a small aspect of Hollywood. You know, there’s so much more to the city, and so I think if you let go of all that, you can have a better relationship with Los Angeles.
36:41 I hope that for you. It’s an incredible city. Yeah. And if you’re an actor, you have to be there. There’s really no way around it.
36:47 You know, I have friends who live in New York. I have friends who live in London. I have friends who live in the South that are actors and actresses, but I think if you want to start out and you really want to build a career, yeah, you need to be in the heart of it.
37:03 Brian Rose: Right, and moving to LA was a quintessential step in your career. You had to go.
37:08 Cara Santana: Well, I just wanted to. Okay. You know, I really wanted to. I mean, it was the town of Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren and all of these iconic figures, and I loved their work, and I, you know, I wanted to be there, and I made a PowerPoint presentation and I was 14 years old to convince my parents to let me go to boarding school for the performing arts outside of Los Angeles.
37:33 Brian Rose: Do you still have that?
37:34 You should post that.
37:35 Cara Santana: I’m sure my mom does. And sure enough, they let me, and so I wanted to be there, and I think maybe that’s why I have such a positive relationship with it. It was a desire. It wasn’t forced.
37:46 Brian Rose: And you went at 14?
37:47 Cara Santana: I went at 16.
37:48 Brian Rose: Okay. 15 turning 16. You pitched them at 14?
37:51 Cara Santana: Yeah.
37:51 Brian Rose: Okay, and you went there. Did they move with you?
37:55 Cara Santana: No. Okay.
37:56 Cara Santana: Which is totally insane, and when I think about it now, if I had a 15-year-old daughter, there is no way that I would say, sure, go to Los Angeles. I don’t know what my parents were thinking, and by the way, they’re so conservative. If you were to ask them, they probably said they had a mental lapse in total judgment, but yeah.
38:12 Brian Rose: You have a great relationship with your parents.
38:15 Cara Santana: I do.
38:15 Brian Rose: Your mom’s here in London.
38:17 Cara Santana: Yeah.
38:17 Brian Rose: You’re texting your dad today. How important is that for someone to have, either a young person or in general, just that really strong relationship with your parents?
38:26 Cara Santana: You know, I definitely wouldn’t judge anybody else’s experience, but it’s incredibly important to me.
38:32 My parents are role models to me. They’re both very different. They come from completely opposite backgrounds, and they’ve come together to form this union, and I am so respectful of that and appreciative of the life that they gave me. My mom’s a Russian Jew. My dad’s an Italian Catholic.
38:55 My father grew up with absolutely nothing. My mother grew up sort of with a lot, but my mother’s father was an immigrant from Russia who, you know, became the chief executive officer of Johnson Space Center, which is part of NASA and incredible work ethic. So having that familial connection to me is incredibly important, and they’ve been so supportive of me, and the fact that I sort of, we call it, took an alternative lifestyle. You know, my mom’s a lawyer. My dad worked for the government.
39:32 He’s now retired. My brother’s a real estate agent. My uncles and aunts are all attorneys, and I, you know, work in the arts. So I think, you know, that bond is just, it means everything to me. And I’m very grateful for it.
39:47 But I don’t think that, you know, if you don’t have that relationship, that you’re somehow less. It just works for me.
39:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, I now have a good relationship with my father and mother, but I didn’t always, but now I treasure it. And as I get older and they get older, I just treasure that they’re there, and, like, I can still call them and get advice. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a time machine.
40:07 I can, like, FaceTime my dad in San Diego, and I can ask him questions, and I’m like, you know, in 10 years I might not be able to.
40:14 Cara Santana: Yeah. Well, I was at FaceTiming my dad. My mom’s out here and with me in London, and my dad’s back in New York, and we were like, oh, let’s call dad. So we went to FaceTime, and of course he’s, you know, almost 70, so he doesn’t answer the FaceTime.
40:28 Calls us from the landline, and was like, my phone was doing the weirdest thing. We were trying to FaceTime him. He’s like, what’s that? Oh, goodness. Yeah, there you go.
40:37 Brian Rose: Yeah. Generation, right?
40:38 Cara Santana: Totally.
40:39 Brian Rose: Let’s talk about business. You would have a very interesting story, regardless of any apps in your life, but you chose last year to get an app in your life.
40:48 Okay. You know, I speak to entrepreneurs all the time, and it is a tough journey and a long road, and it’s, I think actually your acting background probably helps you a lot in business, but I’m curious, what was the genesis of the idea for you, and then what made you actually do it, because a lot of people have an idea for an app. You’ve probably heard this from thousands of people, and yet there’s so much more to an app. I mean, you have people in locations all around the world, including London.
41:14 Yeah. So, tell us about the Glam app story.
41:17 Cara Santana: So insane. Pure insanity is what drove me to create the app. No.
41:21 I was doing press for Salem, the show that I’m on, and there was an event that was not covered by the publicity team of Salem, and when you go to an event, you as an actress, you hire a stylist, and you hire a glam team, which consists of hair, makeup, and nails, and typically the production or the network or the studio pays for this as a part of the package for promoting the project, and this particular event was not on the approved list, and they weren’t going to cover the glam, and these fees are incredibly expensive, starting at like $1,500. It’s not cheap. Wow.
42:04 Just to get you set up for that event. Yes. Okay. Okay. It’s not…
42:09 Brian Rose: $1,500? Yeah. Okay. It’s not cheap. I’m learning.
42:14 Cara Santana: Yes, and I was like, well, shoot, what are my options? You know, pay out of pocket, which I’m an actress. You know, I’m a struggling actress. You know, I got a mortgage to pay. I can’t just be, you know, frivolously spending $1,500.
42:25 I can go to a makeup counter, which isn’t cheap, or I can do it myself, which is not going to turn out good. I’m not a hair and makeup artist. And I started thinking about sort of the everyday woman and what that experience must be like for them. And I thought, gosh, surely there is a way for consumers of beauty and providers of beauty to come together in an equally advantageous format to have services. And I started thinking about the Uber model, which has been so successful, giving, you know, the everyday person this luxurious way to travel sort of that has usually been reserved for the rich or the famous or the elite, the royals.
43:13 And I thought, there’s a way to do this. And I’m going to do it. And then it was sheer insanity after that. And I, you know, I called up my friend Joey Maloof, who does my hair and makeup a lot. And I said, in order to make this work, I need to legitimize it by bringing on someone who really understands the beauty market and what it is to be a freelance hair, makeup or nail stylist.
43:37 Will you come on board, be the creative director, have the creative vision of this and really work with me with the stylists in mind as I work from a consumer perspective to build out this app. And he said, sure, it sounds like a great idea. We found a great company out of Boston called Infantry to help design and, you know, build the app, which took us several months. And I think I had the idea in October. And in February, we launched Los Angeles.
44:10 Brian Rose: That’s a year ago.
44:11 Cara Santana: Yeah, we’re a year old.
44:13 Brian Rose: Okay. Did you have financing?
44:15 Cara Santana: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
44:17 Brian Rose: Okay.
44:17 Cara Santana: We have financing.
44:19 Brian Rose: Like Angel financing? Mm-hmm. Okay.
44:22 Brian Rose: And that was LA in February. How did that go? And where is that nonsense?
44:29 Cara Santana: So, again, it’s sheer insanity. I decided that I wanted to sort of take the Jeff Bezos approach, which was sort of scale ability and create sort of a brand name that was reliable, but also scalable and that you knew whether you were in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, London, Dallas, Phoenix.
44:58 I really wanted to brand the name so that we could really solidify ourselves as the number one beauty app because I knew that the culture right now of these on-demand apps, whether it’s food delivery, travel, convenience is really on demand and everyone is looking for a way to simplify life. And I knew if I didn’t scale quickly that someone else could or would. So, I had the idea of doing a 25-city launch within the first year, which consisted of about two cities a month, with the exception of Los Angeles and New York, which took a month each.
45:40 And sure enough, we’re now in 25 locations.
45:43 Brian Rose: That’s a big expansion.
45:45 Cara Santana: It was very aggressive.
45:47 Brian Rose: Very aggressive. Is that your style?
45:50 Cara Santana: Well, I think going back to being an addict, we live very extreme lifestyles. So, you can’t always connect with us looking forward but looking back, you know, I have sort of that extremist component where I’m like all in, you know. It’s either like super hot or super cold. And I just sort of dove in feet first, both feet first. It was aggressive, but I think if you’re going to do something, obviously you want to do it effectively.
46:21 But I felt part of that effectiveness was being able to broaden our reach quicker than most. And it’s paid off.
46:29 Brian Rose: Roughly how many stylists do you have that would work for the Glam app in, say, L.A. or New York or even total?
46:37 Cara Santana: Total, we have 2,500.
46:39 Brian Rose: Okay, all right. You know, it’s fascinating this idea because it’s easy to look at an Uber and say I want to do what they do. But obviously there’s so much logistics involved in what Uber does. People don’t even realize sometimes. I went to Edinburgh in Scotland like last year and I was like there’s no Uber.
46:53 Why not? Uber should be ubiquitous. But I’ve interviewed the head of Uber in London and they’re like we have to send people to the city and they have to do all these things. And so people forget that it’s not just the app. Marketing.
47:05 Yeah, marketing and you’ve got to set up infrastructure locally. Absolutely. And so when I go to L.A. I hit the Uber app and I know I’m going to get a service, which is why you’re trying to deliver a great service. TaskRabbit is another company that comes to mind and it’s rolling out in different cities and provides certain a marketplace for things to get done and get done well.
47:23 And they came to London about a year and a half ago and we interviewed them as well. And they had a hard time at first but now they’re doing really well. And that’s for people to come and clean and do maintenance things, things like that. Similar to what you’re doing. But you really need to provide people, you know, they just need to know that if I’m going to the GLAM app in L.A.
47:38 And if I’m flying to London, I can get a consistent great service. And that’s your job and that’s hard to do, right?
47:47 Cara Santana: Yeah, and I think part of what was so fundamentally intrinsic to our concept was for me having someone who understood beauty, the beauty industry and beauty professionals, which is why I think Joey is such a great partner. We always laugh because we’re literally the opposite. I mean, literally we are, if he is day, I am night.
48:12 You know, if he is sun, I am moon. I mean, we are polar opposites. It’s amazing that we work together as well as we do and we really work great together. Maybe it is because we are so different. His strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa.
48:28 And why we are able to give such great service is because he vets these stylists himself. I mean, this is a guy who’s made a career in 10 years from Detroit, Michigan, which you do not think of as the beauty capital of the world, to doing hair and makeup for Rachel’s Own, Nicole Ritchie, Jessica Alba, Molly Sims. I mean, you name it. He’s Daphne Guinness. I mean, he’s an iconic hair and makeup artist.
48:56 And he really understands the quality. He understands the artistry and he understands what these artists need to be successful in a freelance capacity. And so we vet these stylists. We are ensuring on his level and on my name that these artists are of the caliber that we approve. We have a three-tiered system so that everyone has a place, whether you’re a year out of beauty school, whether you have two to five years of experience or over five years of experience, there’s a place for you.
49:30 And for the consumer, there’s a different pay scale. So if you’re booking, you know, a beauty school graduate, you’re going to pay a little bit more of a reasonable rate, and you’re going to get someone who’s hungry, who’s just out of beauty school, who can give you and will give you the best blow drive that they possibly can. And if you want to spend a little more, you can get someone with a little bit more experience. But there’s something for everyone.
49:55 Nothing’s over 75 pounds, flash $100, depending on where you are. So we think we’ve created a model where everyone can get a service. Stylists can grow their brand and build their career and work for themselves, and no one’s breaking the bank. And you know that you’re going to get quality because you’ve got the ultimate consumer and the ultimate provider sort of helming the ship of the glam app.
50:17 Brian Rose: And the ultimate micromanager.
50:19 You’re just like me.
50:20 Cara Santana: Oh, gosh.
50:20 Brian Rose: Before we roll tape here, I’m checking all the audios. I’m like, turn this off, turn this off. And I’m like, are we going to start soon?
50:26 Just trying to… Exactly. Yeah.
50:28 Brian Rose: So tell me, you have a finger in everything.
50:32 Cara Santana: My staff, I think they cringe every time I call.
50:35 I literally will… I mean, if I’m not in the office, typically in the office, but if I’m on location or traveling or working outside of the office, I’m literally calling it, you know, 15 times a day. I’m at the time change right now. I’ve literally been emailing people at 4 a.m., I don’t care, being like, oh, I saw this. What does this mean?
50:53 Why is this happening? Did that appointment get filled? Did you see the rating on this person? Give that person a free service. Check in with that stylist.
50:59 See how it went. They’re like, Kara, we have all of the appointments come through mobily, so the stylists see the appointments. As we see the appointments, we get an SMS to our phone. And there was like two days where no appointments were coming through on my phone. And I was like, oh, my God, what is going on?
51:19 There’s no appointments. What is happening? And I call the office and my director of operations is like, I took you off of Twillo because you’re driving me nuts. Because I would be like, did that appointment get filled? I’m on the portal.
51:30 OK, I changed that stylist out with that person. I want to give that. They’re like, Kara, let us do our job. But you know what? Listen, I trust my team.
51:39 I have a great team. But it’s my baby. And I want to make sure that everything’s running the way I want it to run, for better or for worse. Everyone says, at the GLAM app office, there’s no right way or wrong way. There’s just Kara’s way.
51:52 It’s kind of true.
51:53 Brian Rose: And I get that. I mean, I did the same thing when I started this business up. And every great startup does that. But every great startup finds a way to transition to that role.
52:02 Cara Santana: Listen, I mean, I think I have a great team that I delegate a tremendous responsibility for. But at the end of the day, I take responsibility for anything and everything that needs improvement. And so I have to be aware of everything that’s going on. And I take zero responsibility for everything that goes well. That is a testament to everyone working for me.
52:29 But any failures that we have, that’s my responsibility. And I take that quality of service incredibly significantly. And I take it to heart. And I want to make sure that every review is five stars. If it’s a four star, I want to know why.
52:47 If there’s a one star, we got an issue. And anywhere in between, I need answers for. And I want to make sure that clients are happy. And I want to make sure stylists are happy. And I want to have an ear to the customer and an ear to the stylist and know what they need and how we can grow the company in a way that everyone is happy with.
53:07 Brian Rose: Do you have time for acting?
53:09 Cara Santana: Yeah. I don’t sleep. I always tell my team, I’d rather you ask for forgiveness as opposed to permission.
53:17 Brian Rose: Ooh, I’m the opposite.
53:19 Cara Santana: I know you are, but I’m just saying I’m going to throw that one out there.
53:22 Brian Rose: And I’m the one that I take full responsibility for any mistakes because the buck stops with me. But at the same time, I realize that, yeah, 20% of the time, they’re going to do something that’s not going to be great. But the other time, I’m going to empower them to bring these great solutions that I would have never thought of. And one of my mentors taught me to do that.
53:37 And I was like, no, no, it’s the other way. And he’s like, no, no, it’s actually this way. And it comes from a very megalomaniac control freak guy. But he said, you’ve got to empower those people. Otherwise, you won’t be able to scale the way you want.
53:47 So I’ll just leave that nugget with you.
53:49 Cara Santana: Thank you.
53:50 Brian Rose: Devil’s advocate question. I come in and I’m like, Kara, I want to invest in your Series A, Series B. I want to give you a $10 million check.
53:58 Obviously, you know, your partner’s very versed in makeup. Obviously, you are very involved in the business. But there’s no tech knowledge here. I need you to hire someone who’s done this before at Amazon, at Uber, at TaskRabbit. What do you say to that?
54:12 Cara Santana: You know, I think we would have to cross that bridge when we came to it. You know, I don’t purport to know all the answers. And I certainly think you have to be in a situation before you can judge the situation. We have people who work for the company that certainly have tech experience and tech knowledge. But as far as the CEO, I don’t have any.
54:38 But listen, I want to do what’s best for the business. And my ego is not that big. So if that was the best thing to do at that point in time, I would do it.
54:52 Brian Rose: Twenty-five cities. That’s a great next speed.
54:56 Like, I know I’ve spoken with a lot of companies. That’s a crazy speed. What’s next? You’re going into the continent of Europe, I believe. Why is it so important to go international?
55:05 Again, I mentioned TaskRabbit. Again, they stayed in the U.S., I think, until 20-some cities. But then they did come to London because they realized it was important. But for you, why go international? And where else are you headed?
55:15 Cara Santana: Yeah, so this next year, we’re really focusing on marketing and creating sort of an impenetrable glam app for center 25 cities. We have cities that do extremely well. I’m talking 100 appointments a day that do really, really, really well. And then we have smaller cities that people are warming up to this idea of in-home, on-demand beauty experiences. And so we really want to firm up those cities that are, you know, struggling is a bit harsh of a term, but that needs some love.
55:56 We want to give them the TLC that they deserve before we continue to expand. Ultimately, 2017, we will be looking to bridge out in Europe, Paris, Milan. We’re looking at doing some sort of pop-up, so to speak, in those cities to sort of test the waters. It’s my form of beta testing, you know, on the ground floor and see whether or not these cities would take it on at this point in time the way that Los Angeles, New York, and London, and Miami, and Dallas have.
56:27 And then, you know, eventually, we want to be in every city where there is a consumer and a provider. I want every woman, everywhere, to be able to experience convenient, in-home, affordable luxury beauty services. That’s really what I want. And then I think the last sort of, you know, cog in the apex pie would be, you know, acquisition. So that’s sort of where I stand.
56:55 Brian Rose: What’s different about doing business in London than, say, a U.S. city?
57:00 Cara Santana: You know, every city is different, even, you know, out late in New York, the clientele is different, the structure of the city is different, the way the artists work. I mean, even, I think of New York versus Boston, completely different. You know, New York, Mondays and Wednesdays are big days.
57:21 Boston, it’s Saturdays. You know, Vegas, it’s Fridays. So every city, or Thursdays and Fridays, so every city brings sort of a unique experience and position. And I think the thing that’s very interesting about London is the women. You know, the women are diverse and cosmopolitan.
57:48 They know what they like. They’re busy. They are, you know, formidable. They are not, you know, what I think of the L.A. market.
57:59 It’s very, you know, Hollywood and sort of casual and, like, so-cal vibe. And London definitely doesn’t have that. I mean, these are women who are going somewhere. It’s high society. It’s, you know, the way that they look is important.
58:13 And, you know, they don’t want to mess around, and we want to provide them with an experience that they’ll enjoy. And I think we do that. When I think of London, I think of luxury. And I think it certainly fits for the woman here.
58:25 Brian Rose: Plus, who wants to walk around in this weather?
58:28 Cara Santana: You know what I mean? It’s like…
58:29 Brian Rose: Oh, right, to go somewhere, you mean. You’re right.
58:31 Cara Santana: You’re going to walk to get your hair done.
58:33 You’re going to get your hair blown out. You’re going to walk outside. It’s going to be rainy. It’s going to frizz up. It’s going to get wet.
58:38 You’re going to have to, you know, get home. The traffic’s insane. So it’s like, let someone come to you, and then you only have to worry about getting in the Uber to get to the event.
58:47 Brian Rose: Amen to that. See, I didn’t know about all these problems.
58:50 Cara Santana: It’s all natural.
58:51 Brian Rose: Yeah, I agree. What was I going to ask you? Have you found that your personal profile really helps the company a lot, more so than you thought, or less so than you thought?
59:00 Cara Santana: Such a great argument, which I have all the time with people.
59:03 All the time. There are, you know, how many successful Fortune 500 companies with how many anonymous CEOs, founders, and presidents? A ton. I don’t put that much stock in myself. However, there is, I think, a security and a safety to people when they can identify a company based on the sum of its parts.
59:37 So when people look at Joey Maloof or they recognize Cara Santana and they can draw a connection between the products that they’re buying and the people creating that product, I think it helps. So I certainly am happy to use my name and likeness to promote the company and get people comfortable with the idea of changing their beauty experiences from salon to in-home.
1:00:15 Brian Rose: Love it. I always ask people to come here just a few questions about really kind of like the success secrets.
1:00:26 And I was wondering really about your daily habits. Like, are there things that you make sure you do, like the first thing when you wake up, whether it’s training, I know you begin to gratitude, or just ways to kind of get your mind ready for whatever acting challenge or even a business challenge that might happen. These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more.
1:01:01 Now back to the rest of the show. There’s a lot of people watching that are entrepreneurs or they want to be entrepreneurs, and there’s this media bias in tech sometimes because you see the Bezoses, you see the Ubers, and it’s like you see these, they call them the survivorship bias. So someone that did this and created the app and made a billion dollars and everyone’s like, I will do that. And I’m wondering if you get people that ask you all the time, they’re like, Kara, I’m going to do this app like you, and I’m going to do this.
1:01:33 And do you ever have to sit people down and give us some advice and say, you know what, there’s a lot more than just something you downloaded from the app store behind this?
1:01:41 Cara Santana: No one is coming to me for advice.
1:01:43 Brian Rose: Come on, I don’t believe that.
1:01:44 Cara Santana: No one is coming to me for advice. If anything, it’s what do you know, how could you possibly think that you’re going to make this successful?
1:01:51 You’re a woman, you’re an actress, you don’t have a college degree, you don’t work in tech, you don’t work in business. How in God’s name do you think you’re going to make this successful? So I think I suffer from the other. Really? No one’s asking me for it.
1:02:05 Brian Rose: Okay, so let me then say, for people that are asking, a lot of people say, I have an idea and I have an app, and then I’m going to be a billionaire. You know, what do you tell them? Because obviously you work very hard at this.
1:02:17 Cara Santana: I wouldn’t focus, what I would tell them is I wouldn’t focus on the end result. You know, you don’t, I mean, listen, you have to have a trajectory for yourself.
1:02:25 But it can’t be the reward of a billion dollars. I mean, it’s so intangible really. What is it that you’re trying to create? Is there a need? How do you fill that need?
1:02:40 How do you create awareness of that need? Those are the things that I would be focused on. Making something that is needed in this world. That is what you should be focused on. And then I think hard work and dedication, like believe in yourself and you’ve got to balance optimism and fear and, you know, a healthy dose of pragmatism and, you know, keep everything balanced.
1:03:11 Brian Rose: You just listed off a lot of things you don’t have. But like, I always talk about…
1:03:14 Cara Santana: But what don’t I have?
1:03:15 Brian Rose: Well, you said like, I’m not in tech. I don’t have a college degree.
1:03:17 I’m a woman. I’m an actress.
1:03:18 Cara Santana: Oh, totally. I thought you were talking about the optimism, pragmatism.
1:03:22 Brian Rose: Oh, no.
1:03:22 But I mean, you know, I always talk about intellectual property. We all have IP, intellectual property that we don’t know we have. And so if you look at a lot of successful companies in the day, it’s because someone had a real passion for a problem, they experienced the problem, and then they went and solved it in a meticulous way. And like, that’s what you’re doing, you know. And you know, it came from a pain point.
1:03:42 You obviously passionately want to solve this pain point. You don’t want to deliver a bad experience. You go to these cities. You know what it’s like. And I think that’s what great businesses are built on.
1:03:51 And I often compare ourselves to the BBC. When I started off, I used to have a tagline, London Real, putting the BBC out of business. And some people actually got offended by that, which I thought was maybe telling. But I think when it comes to like sitting down and having real conversations with people, that I think we’re better than the BBC, because it’s what I love to do. And I think if people are really passionate about something and they are passionate about doing it the best way possible and not passionate about the money and the exit, that I think it’s very probable they will be successful.
1:04:20 So that’s what I tell people. And when I see you doing this, I feel like that’s real. And I think that’s what makes great businesses.
1:04:28 Cara Santana: Well, thank you.
1:04:29 Brian Rose: There you go.
1:04:30 Brian Rose: I always ask everyone at the end here a question. I’m going to ask you as well. If you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Cara and give that young woman a bit of advice, she would have been sober in LA. What would you tell her?
1:04:50 Cara Santana: What are you waiting for?
1:04:52 I think there is, especially in your 20s, when we tend to put off things that are important for things that are fun. Or I certainly was like, whatever, I’m 20. Literally, I would be like, oh, I didn’t get that job. It’s fine. I’m 20.
1:05:15 I don’t have to go to that audition. There will be another one tomorrow. I look back at my 20-year-old self and I don’t even recognize who I am. But I would say to her, like, what are you waiting for? If you have an idea, if you have a dream, if you have a passion, go for it.
1:05:30 Go for it hard. We’re here for a finite time, like you said, so why not make the most of it? And tomorrow is not guaranteed. Knock on wood. That’s not wood.
1:05:40 Metal. Best advice you’ve ever received in your life could be in the arts or in business or just in life.
1:05:49 Cara Santana: The best advice you’ve ever received is be careful. Your greatest strength can be your biggest detriment. So everything in that portion.
1:06:00 Brian Rose: Okay. What’s your greatest strength?
1:06:06 Cara Santana: My greatest strength. I think I am very ambitious. Relentless.
1:06:15 You know what? That’s what I was going to change it to. I’m relentless. But in excess, I can be stubborn. I can be bullheaded.
1:06:24 So I think you have to be careful. You have to, like, know when to, like, give up the battle.
1:06:30 Brian Rose: And to the 20-year-old that’s watching us right now, someone in the world who wants to be an actor or be a business person, entrepreneur, doesn’t know where to start.
1:06:40 Cara Santana: They’re really the same thing.
1:06:41 Brian Rose: Very well said, and I never saw that before.
1:06:44 And I think acting’s even harder than being an entrepreneur, but I just realized that talking to you.
1:06:49 Cara Santana: Well, that’s because you’re an entrepreneur.
1:06:51 Brian Rose: Maybe, yeah. What advice do you give to them? They don’t know where to start, they don’t know what to do, but they think they want to be this thing.
1:06:58 Cara Santana: Something I never really put value on when I was younger, but education. And that can be theater school, an acting class, reading a Stanislavski, a Meisner, or an Udehagen book. Like, learn the thing you want to be good in, right? Like, learn the craft. If you want to be an entrepreneur, what is it that you want to start or build or conceive?
1:07:26 And learn as much about it as you can. Just educate yourself. Knowledge is power. It’s a cliche quote, but it is for a reason.
1:07:37 Brian Rose: Kara, thanks for coming here.
1:07:39 Cara Santana: Thanks.
1:07:39 Brian Rose: I suffer from a media bias sometimes, and I do this for a living. I interview like 300 plus people. But sometimes I’ll look at them and I’ll be like, I just don’t know what I’m going to talk to that person about. You are a fascinating person, and I’m so glad that you came and talked to me.
1:07:53 I know it was short notice. And the Glam app, I see great things for this in the future.
1:07:57 Cara Santana: Thank you for having me.
1:07:58 Brian Rose: Yeah, I wish you all the best. I can’t wait to read, like, the TechCrunch article that talks about your next financing.
1:08:04 And because, yeah, you obviously are very passionate about delivering this one thing, and I think it’s going to be great.
1:08:19 Cara Santana: Thank you.
1:08:21 Brian Rose: So as we say in London Real, it’s about the journey. I wish you all on yours and all the best. Thank you.
