We were lucky to catch up with KEIDA MASCARO recently and have shared our conversation below.

KEIDA, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.

I was very lucky to have hippie parents, who were cultured and curious, and instilled a strong interest in the arts, reading, music, and food. I grew up eating home-cooked food every day. I also had very creative grandparents who decorated their house with wonderful recreations of Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and Modigliani. my grandfather used to make everything out of wood that he collected in the trash bins at his local lumberyard. I spent my first five years in a house that was built in the late 1700s in upstate New York, a house so that all of the interior doors were latched. All the walls were wood panel, pine tongue and groove. my grandfather rebuilt that house when he bought it in 1950. I was really lucky to spend so much time as an early child around art and culture. We we also fresh off the boat from Europe in the early 1900s, so I had a relatively ethnic childhood that I never realize until I was older had such a positive impact on my life. Lastly, my parents always made my brothers and I play an instrument if we wanted to play sports. I wanted to play the trombone, unfortunately, my mother made me play violin, which I was horrible at. But it gave me a deep love for classical music. That was one of the best things that my parents made us do growing up.

KEIDA, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got into my industry because of a deep sense of adventure. My goal at this point my life is to live a life that cannot be defined by the person writing the epitaph on my gravestone. I avoid big plans. I try to go towards what interest me in any given moment. I let my propensity towards addictive and obsessive focus everything that I do. I stopped fighting myself. I would never tell anyone at this point in my life what they should be doing, I avoid giving any heart advice these days because there’s so many factors in life that determine what path we end up on. But I will say this, I always wanted to be a pirate or an American Indian on the plains. Always interested in a life of adventure over a life of comfort. I never wanted to watch the movie, I wanted to be in the movie. I’m pretty happy with where I am at this point my life.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

For reasons that we don’t have enough time to cover, let me just say that I love fighting. I thrive off of conflict. I love to compete, it’s just in my blood. However, I have learned the hard way that this Genghis Khan mentality does not work well in an industry where you need to be social. I’ve had to learn how to not be combative, replacing that urge with the mindset of having no adversaries, finding a way to be peaceful with everyone. That is very hard to do because some people are a big pain, some people are very tough to deal with especially in a city like Los Angeles. So what that requires me to do to achieve peace is analyze every person who I have a relationship with. I need to determine overtime how close I can get to that person and keep harmony. Because harmony is the goal. When I was younger, I thought the project or the idea was the most important thing, now, I firmly believe that long-term relationship, so the most important thing, and that ideas and projects are a distant second.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

The most important thing, when dealing with other people you are working with, is to make sure that you were encouraging their natural instincts, and making sure to support them by showing them how important they are. I firmly believe that this softer approach is the way to go. No one wants to be told what to do. But if you’re able to direct someone towards what you need them to do by encouraging their natural ability, so that they feel supported rather than directed, I think that is what gives me the most success out of people. Also, making sure to acknowledge when they do something right or great. Once someone believes in their own intuition , and you show them your support, their confidence goes up and they start really shining.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://keidamascaro.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keidamascaro/
• Other: https://linktr.ee/keidamascarocomedy

Image Credits
@keidamascaro @acerophotos @benfrenchpics