CEO, Founder, entrepreneur and author, as well as resident expert in all things brand and purposeful storytelling, is Darrell. Having started out as an award winning art director he is now a consummate business man, thought leader and director of three companies.

Outside of work Darrell is most likely to be found shouting at the TV when his beloved Liverpool are playing and his favourite saying is, “If you need an answer then pick the phone up!”

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Welcome to 12-Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, His creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Darrell.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

So, I'm actually in a place called Cardiff.

I live in Bristol, which is the southwest, and spend a lot of my time there, but I do a lot of traveling in and around the UK, particularly London and Wales, quite a lot backwards and forwards because my network reaches that way.

By the accent, I would guess you were born there.

I was born in Cornwall, which is right down on the left-hand side, a place called Truray, which is the capital city of Cornwall.

So, I was born there, and at two years old, we ended up moving to Essex.

So, that's where the accent kind of comes from.

And we lived there until I was in secondary school, and then we moved to the West Country.

Quite interesting.

I've only started to find out why we moved, which is another story entirely, but essentially, my dad was in the Navy, my mum's brother was in the Army, my mum's brother was also in the Armed Forces, and a lot of stuff to do with Northern Ireland.

And part of the reason why we moved from where we are to Essex was that, yeah, there was a lot of stuff going on, so to speak, within the IRA terrorism and conversations like that way.

So, we were kind of like moved, which I only found out recently, we were moved from one side of the country to another.

But my name is Daryl, my last name is Erwin, so we didn't change our names, but they just thought it was better that we moved that side of the country.

So, yeah, interesting.

Is that part of the DNA of your discipline as an entrepreneur?

It's an interesting one, because my dad was in the Navy, and I found out, I always grew up thinking my dad was quite risk averse, but then I found out that he'd done the eighth most dangerous job in the world, which was essentially, if you watch Top Gun, the movie, when the planes come down on an aircraft carrier, he was the guy that would hold the paddles to bring the planes down.

And he was from a military family.

So, there he is as a risk taker and doing that particular job.

And then I found out that my granddad, which is his father, was a seafire pilot.

So, it's essentially a Spitfire, but lands on aircraft carriers.

And what was incredible about that was that those aircraft carriers were, you know, they were fairly innovative and new at the time.

And my granddad was basically going to fly, he's flying back from Portugal, ready to land on the Ark Royal, which was the Navy's like prime aircraft carrier.

And then the Germans actually sunk it.

So, on the day he's trying to land on this aircraft carrier, he gets shot down.

So, three missiles come out of the sky, they shoot at them, a bullet goes through the floor of the plane, up through his chin and out the top of his head.

He crash lands the plane into the sea and managed to get rescued.

He's broken both his legs in the process, gets rescued, gets taken back to England and nursed back to health.

The crazy thing was, if he landed on the Ark Royal, chances are he would have been dead.

When he ended up going back to England, he was nursed back to health by a lady called Joy, who eventually became his wife.

And one of the reasons why the discipline aspect really kicks in for me is this.

He had both legs broken, the plane sinking in the sea, and he chose to keep going.

So, no matter how difficult it gets in entrepreneurial life, I haven't been shot down and crash landed in the sea.

And it really gave me that sense of legacy that if he hadn't pulled through, then the generation following, which was my dad, couldn't pull through.

And my dad, who took big risks in the Navy, and eventually he was discharged because he got injured in the Navy.

He lost his kneecap, but hang a door, come back and took his knee out.

And effectively, his knee was never the same again.

And so, what happened is that he kept going in the midst of that.

So, I look at my life as an entrepreneur.

And although I'm not in the military, so to speak, I recognise that what I'm doing is taking big risks, but also in modelling for the next generation.

And so, whenever I feel like, oh, it's been a tough week or I want to give up, when I compare it to my granddad, it's nothing.

When I compare it to my dad and his sort of like career-ended injury, it's nothing.

I have the opportunity to build something special.

I have my health, I have my fitness, and I need to take full advantage of it.

So, I think for me, the discipline, yes, through military, but I think it's what's happened to them in military has given me the opportunity.

So, I feel I'd be giving them a disservice if I don't follow through in terms of what I should be doing.

Connecting the dots, you didn't tell us if you found joy the way your grandfather found joy.

So, interestingly enough, I was going to run a marketing agency in London.

I was dating a girl at the time.

And the girl that I was dating, as I was about to run a marketing agency to own it, she asked me the question, there's got to be more to life than this.

And it was in that moment where I'd been going to church and then kind of gone away from church.

And it was at that moment, after 10 years of running away, that question was effectively my joy moment where I decided to confess that I was from a Christian family.

My girlfriend at the time said, I'm never going to be happy unless I follow God.

And I then turned around and said, well, I'll do that with you.

And we've been married 25 years now.

So, you know, yeah.

So, you know, sometimes there's an open and honest conversation.

It's going to open some serious doors.

But, you know, we were dating each other, but not knowing, it was almost like there was stuff going on, but we didn't know what was going on until, you know, she said what she said.

And I said what I said.

What's been the fruit of that marriage or fruits?

I think the fruits are, it's a legacy of faith.

And I think what we've built is a family around the aspects of doing what God wants and the legacy of faith.

And I think that's, you know, if I'm not living faith, I feel something's not right.

I'm committed to doing what God's told me to do, which takes an inordinate amount of faith.

But that is the fruit that our children have come as a result of us being married and have began to model that.

I mean, my son last week said, oh, what do you want for your birthday?

And he said, I want to jump out of a plane.

So this time last week, he was jumping out of a plane 10,000 feet in the air.

So something's right.

You know, the risk is in the next generation.

They want to jump out of it.

My oldest now says I want to jump out of a plane, but she's trying to get me to do the same.

So I think we've raised a generation of risk takers.

And I think that is the legacy.

My son wants to get into politics and he's got to be a risk taker to do that.

So it's just, yeah, I think the legacy and the fruit of what we've been doing is inspiring the next generation of Irwin, so to speak, to just go bigger and go big and greater for God, you know.

You mentioned two children, but there are three of them, right?

I saw an interview where they were interestingly asking questions that they felt like I could see the competitiveness, right?

That was set up that, hey, we're getting to turn the mic on dad here, right?

But it's three.

And the third is really the pistol, isn't she?

Yeah, so Taylor is the smallest one.

She's the youngest one.

She was born on the same day as me.

So she shares a birthday with me.

And I think for us, we're just trying to figure where God wants to take her.

She's so good at communicating, very, very witty, very sharp and thinks very differently to the other two.

And so we're just trying to figure out, you know, she reminds me very much of my mother, you know, just the way that she is and the way that she jokes and stuff.

But she does a lot of dance.

She's quite creative as a person, very good drawer, like her elder sister.

But at the moment, we don't know.

But we do share this affinity that, you know, she is my she shares my birthday.

So there's always that aspect that's there.

So she's my greatest present.

That's the best way I can describe it.

From seeing the setup of the podcast that you're running and what you're doing, excellence seems to be big as a value system.

If that is accurate, tell me more about the big vision of Dara Lewin.

So I think the vision of what I achieve is about, you know, helping people find God, find purpose in the midst of media.

And that means I can't do it substandard.

So, you know, people said, why don't you do a podcast just on Zoom?

And I said, Well, no, I can't.

I've got to do it with a free camera shoot, because we that's what we do.

You know, my brand agency does that.

So, you know, as a brand agency, the expectation is you would do it better than other people.

And that's not necessarily to do, you know, pick up other people and say that they're doing the wrong thing.

But it's the expectation that I've set on myself is that I do things with excellence, and I want to capture the attention of people that all hang on a minute, they're not doing this properly.

And I think what that's also done is bring people into my life.

So when they come to the podcast, they don't get they get a good experience where they got free camera shoots, mic correctly, it's all that.

But they get to meet my family.

And they get to meet my children being homeschooled.

And they get to see or sample a little bit of our life in terms of where we are.

And, and I think for me, that's been, that's been the best thing about the podcast is it's like not only just come on a podcast, but come and experience the life that I live.

And when they see the homeschooling, and when they see that, you know, I'm married still 25 years, which is unusual in certainly in today's society, it just opens questions.

And, you know, we've had people that come on the podcast, and then DM me afterwards and come to church.

And now they're doing some amazing things for God.

So, you know, for me, it's about yes, you do things with excellence, but it's a doorway into a world that says, life can be lived on purpose, and you can do what God wants.

And it's a good life to live.

That's ultimately what I'm trying to model.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation, you hear the joy, right aspect of the conversation, you hear about your children, of course, they're older now, what's a message you'd leave for future you?

You've done a lot of the hard work, but continue to travel to continue to speak to continue to inspire.

I'm not a fan of retirement.

I'm very much a fan of refinement.

I think you you end up in life with different stories, you are the hero in your own story to a time, but there's a time where you shift and you become that Mr. Miyagi or Obi Wan Kenobi character.

And I think that's where I'm moving into now.

And I think in five years time, I would love to have 12 top flight

leaders running all each one of those businesses, you know, or at least know who the leader is

going to be for those businesses for the next 25 years, and have them all in place, you know,

so whether they're, they're starting out with me, or whether they're about to take

the job off me, then great, but that's ultimately where I want to do.

And then I'd like to be able to open my laptop, look at a dashboard of how those businesses are performing on a beach in Trinidad.

Is there any question that I could have asked that would have helped you serve us better?

I think it's been brilliant.

I think it's just a really good open conversation.

They were very thought provoking questions.

And I think for me, hopefully, there's someone sat on the other side thinking, you know what, that's, that's motivated me to do something about it.

I mean, as I said, if you're stuck in the sea, and you're sinking, and you choose to live, you know, compared to that, life is not as bad as that, I don't think.

Dara, this has been a great pleasure.

One I treasure.

Thank you for being on what is inspired by 1200 Confluence.