…The arts impact everything. They teach us, they educate us, they help us market, they teach grit and determination to get back up, you learn resilience from the arts. It’s subjective, and you hear the word no and have to keep going. You can be engaged by the arts, you can learn from them. It’s history. It goes back further than anything in our time. Everything started with the arts. That’s how they told stories and got people to come along. And when everything even breaks apart in ecosystems, the arts continue to thrive in some form or fashion. When you believe in them and you trust in them, you utilize them, you learn from them, you will be better…
I had the pleasure of talking with Diane Strand. To understand the trajectory of Strand’s career, which spans from the high-pressure control rooms of the Staples Center to the creative autonomy of her own production studio, you have to look in the rearview mirror. Strand is a believer in the idea that life only makes sense in retrospect. “I always say that you can’t connect your dots looking forward, you have to look back to really be able to know exactly where you’re at and why you’re there,” she says. For Strand, the first dot wasn’t a movie set or a boardroom; it was a second-grade classroom where a precocious girl with undiagnosed dyslexia decided she wasn’t going to listen to the word “no.”
Strand grew up in the Seventies and Eighties, a time when learning disabilities were often misunderstood. She struggled with reading, and when she set her sights on playing Betsy Ross in the school play, the adults in the room, teachers and parents alike, tried to steer her away to spare her feelings. It backfired. “When somebody tells me no, I kind of say, ‘Uh-uh, watch me,’” Strand recalls. She landed the role. Later that year, driven by a desire for a 19-inch black-and-white TV, she out-hustled the entire school in a candy-selling contest. “I sold the most candy in my elementary school and I won that TV, and I still work in TV today,” she notes with a laugh.
That early tenacity became the blueprint for her life. While school remained “rocky,” the arts provided a lifeline, keeping her focused enough to avoid the pitfalls of teenage rebellion. By college, she had found her voice in journalism, interviewing figures like Bobby McFerrin and managing ads for the school paper. But the pull of the stage was stronger. She headed to Hollywood, picking up commercial work and theater gigs, eventually tapping into her entrepreneurial spirit to produce plays with her “unemployed actor friends.”
However, the industry wasn’t always kind. When Showtime rejected her screenplay purely because she lacked a four-year degree, Strand took the money for the script, went back to school, and earned her bachelor’s just to prove a point. She eventually found steady work in the high-definition control room at the Staples Center and on sets for shows like General Hospital and Friends. But the stability of the corporate entertainment world was fragile. A lost contract led to layoffs, pushing Strand toward a pivotal realization while producing for Amgen Pharmaceuticals.
At Amgen, the work wasn’t about glitz; it was about survival. She began producing videos for patients with cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. “The videos we were making made a difference in their lives,” she says. “That’s what sent me to make videos for corporate America and change everything.”
The true turning point, however, came on a night that felt all too familiar to working parents. Strand came home late, missing dinner and bedtime with her three-year-old, venting about the “win-lose culture” of reality TV production. Her husband looked at her and asked a dangerous question: “What if?” What if they sold the house, quit their Hollywood jobs, and started their own company?
“It took me about 15 seconds to say yes,” Strand says. They sold the house, moved to San Diego, and JDS Video & Media Productions was born. They started “old-school,” knocking on doors and building a client list that grew from local businesses to giants like Pfizer and Abbott.
Today, Strand operates as what she calls a “creativepreneur”, a hybrid of the artistic dreamer and the pragmatic strategist. She argues that talent alone isn’t enough; you need the business scaffolding to hold it up. “An entrepreneur just means that you’re solo, and nobody does anything alone; we need a community,” she explains. Her work now extends far beyond corporate videos. She has launched over 100 careers in the entertainment industry, working with everyone from mainstream actors to adults with developmental disabilities, placing them in acting, editing and other production roles.
She views her role as a dream-facilitator, using an acronym she coined: HOPE, or “Help One Person Every Day.” It is a philosophy born from her own experiences of needing grace. She recalls a mortifying moment from her college days working as a stage manager. During a tense, emotional scene, she mistook a dramatic pause for the end of the take. “I forgot all about the kiss. I was in the moment,” she admits. She called “Cut!” right before the actors locked lips. It was a mistake, but it taught her that “we can give grace to others because mistakes happen, we all make them.”
Strand is currently gearing up for DigiFest, an international festival bringing a slice of Hollywood to Temecula, designed to merge the worlds of seasoned professionals and emerging talent. It is the culmination of a career spent breaking down barriers. Whether she is producing for Barbra Streisand, who once hand-picked Strand over three men to run her production cues, or teaching a student with autism how to edit film, the mission remains the same.
“You are either winning or you are learning. You only fail if you quit,” Strand says, reflecting on the road traveled. For a woman who was once told she couldn’t read well enough to be in a school play, she has spent a lifetime proving that the best stories are the ones you write yourself. “I’m a firm believer that it’s the arts that impact life,” she says. “Everything started with the arts.”
Yitzi: Diane Strand, it’s such a delight to talk to you, to meet you again. Before we dive in deep, our readers would love to learn about Diane Strand’s personal origin story. Can you share with us a story of your childhood, how you grew up, and the seeds for all the amazing things that have come since then?
Diane: Well, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m super excited to talk to you and share my journey, which actually began at a very early age. I always say that you can’t connect your dots looking forward, you have to look back to really be able to know exactly where you’re at and why you’re there. And I definitely know that and all my dots really lead to where I am today. And it starts back in second grade. I was a precocious little girl and definitely wanted to be seen. And I wanted to play Betsy Ross in the school play, but I was a struggling reader, and it turns out I have dyslexia. I didn’t even know what that was nor was I diagnosed. And everyone told me that I shouldn’t, or even my parents and teachers didn’t want me to try. And when somebody tells me no, I kind of say, “Uh-uh, watch me.” And that’s exactly what I did.
Somehow I figured it out and I went out for the role, and I got the role of Betsy Ross in the school play. And later that year, my tenacity rose again, and there was a candy-selling contest and the person who sold the most candy in the school would win this 19-inch black and white TV. And I wanted that for my bedroom and enlisted help. That’s how I became bringing in the people to make everything happen, my parents mostly, and I sold the most candy in my elementary school and I won that TV, and I still work in TV today.
I’m a firm believer that it’s the arts that impact life and business because all through school it was always rocky for me, but it was always the arts that kept me connected and focused. I wanted to be in the play. I couldn’t deviate so much into all the other fun things that were going on, dating myself, the ’70s and the ’80s, I had to stay connected enough to be in the play. I couldn’t go out and get in trouble so much because those were the things I really wanted to do, but school was hard.
And even after high school, when I bounced around, it was getting into a play that got me back into college and then continuing to focus that, and that’s how I started to find my voice. I landed in a journalism class and I started working for the school magazine and paper, and I interviewed people like Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, just be happy,” when I was in college. I became the ad manager for the school newspaper, so I found out that marketing and advertising was lucrative and helped me pay my way through college.
From there, I really pursued acting. I was always in the theater department, I went up to Hollywood and I pursued a little in front of the camera. I did a few commercials and a lot of theater. And then I found myself getting all my unemployed actors, my entrepreneurial spirit came out, and I got all my unemployed actor friends together, and we started producing plays on theater row. I started producing plays and bussing in kids from the schools to come and watch us perform in hopes of getting discovered. It wasn’t exactly how it happened, but yet it kind of did. And I started writing more and that’s when I wrote a screenplay and it got some notice.
I was told by Showtime that they never hired anyone without a bachelor’s degree, and I only had an A.A. degree at that time. I took the money for the script that they were going to shelve, which they did, and I went back to college and I got my bachelor’s degree. I wasn’t going to let anyone ever tell me that. And then I came out and I worked on shows like Friends and General Hospital and built the high-def control room at Staples Center and had a pretty good career until reality television kind of hit, and that sent me running for entrepreneurship.
There was a small stint in there between building the high-def control room when the company I worked for lost the contract and we all got laid off. I went to work for Amgen Pharmaceuticals as a video producer, and I started making videos that mattered, and it changed everything for me. All of a sudden, I was making videos for people who had cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, and the videos we were making made a difference in their lives because it told them how to take their medication or what it was going to do for them or how they could get through different periods. Then I got to meet these amazing people, telling me their life story and being able to do videos on who they were and why they mattered. And that’s what sent me to make videos for corporate America and changed everything.
Yitzi: Tell us a story about how you started JDS.
Diane: Well, that was when I left the corporate video world and went back to reality television. And I was there about 11 months and I went running for entrepreneurship. I came home one night after missing bedtime and dinner with my then three-year-old kid, and venting to my husband about the win-lose culture and how I didn’t know how I was going to miss being a mom and make this work. And he said, “What if? What if we sold the house and you quit your job, and we moved down to North County San Diego and started our own production company?” And it took me about 15 seconds to say yes. And that changed everything.
We put the house up for sale, I turned in my one-month notice, and we made the change, and everything happened really fast. The house sold, and we started the business. And we started old-school. I had never done it for a livelihood before. I had just old-school calling, knocking on doors, and it worked. We started making videos that mattered, working for companies like Pfizer and then cities and then school districts and then companies like Abbott, and building one story at a time.
Yitzi: You probably have some amazing stories from your career and maybe this is hard to narrow down, but can you share one or two stories that most stand out in your mind from your professional life?
Diane: Well, if I’m talking about my recent professional life, the stories that really stand out to me most now are the ones where I get to make dreams into a reality for those we work with. I serve youth, teens, and adults, mainstream through special needs. I’ve launched over 100 mainstream careers into the entertainment industry as actors, writers, producers, directors, and some of the adults with developmental disabilities, placing them into jobs as editors and production assistants and on-camera talent. I get to turn their dreams into reality, and I really look at it as providing HOPE, which I break down into an acronym of Help One Person Every Day.
When I heard that for the first time, it was like a light bulb went off because that’s what I do. So I created my own acronym out of DREAM, which is if you have a dream that you want to become a reality, you need:
- Direction
- Realization of what that looks like
- Evaluate that dream, so you know the steps you need to take so you can road map it
- Action, if you want to create the momentum of that dream turning into a reality
- Momentum
And when people come to me and I hear from their parents, whether it’s a mainstream youth or an adult child, and they say how they are doing better in school, how they are learning how to read, like me, now I write and I read scripts do paperwork, and run three 7 & 8 figure businesses, and yes I’m still dyslexic, it has not changed, it didn’t go away, but I teach people how to use tools so they can move through challenges. Even the business, speakers, and coaches that I work with now I get to help them move from fear to launch, or stagnant to success, or if it is a creative who is looking to take their craft and share it with other people and get paid for it.
Those are the stories that really matter to me today. Yes, I have fun stories. I can tell you about when I was chosen to be the producer for Barbra Streisand. That’s a fun story. She picked me out of three other guys that were standing there, and this was back in 2000, and I was her choice and got to make all the lighting cues and do all the things, and that’s an amazing story. And just the fun we had last week at our haunted studio. Everyday there’s a fun story, but it’s when you really get to do the transformation that I really see in the youth, the teens, the adults, mainstream, special needs, the businesses that go from six figures to seven and eight figures that we work with. It’s just amazing.
Yitzi: It’s been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story about a funny mistake that you made in your career and the lesson that you learned from it?
Diane: Funny mistakes. I probably make a mistake every day, there’s no doubt about it. I learn from my mistakes. I truly believe that if you lead with heart, every mistake you make can be funny because you’re doing it in the right way. There have definitely been times that I’ve fallen on my face a little.
Here’s a funny story: when I was in college, I was working on a television set as an intern, as a stage manager, and the scene was going, it was a fantastic take, and they came to the end. It was this long beat pause, and they were supposed to have a kiss. I forgot all about the kiss. I was in the moment. They came to this long beat pause and I went, “Great, that’s a cut!” And they weren’t done. And we had to go back and do the whole thing over. That was a learning mistake, but it was okay. Were they upset in the moment? Of course, they were upset in the moment. And I was mad at myself. It’s something that I will never, ever forget. And now I really know. And that’s a little bit more prep. I was a student, I was in college, and I got caught up in the moment. And it’s okay, but what it taught me is the grace that I’m able to give other people. That’s the lesson that I learned, is that I can give grace to others because mistakes happen, we all make them. We’re human.
Yitzi: Please tell us about the exciting new projects, initiatives, announcements you’re working on now. We’d love to hear it. We’d love to hear how our readers can support it.
Diane: Well, I’m always working on something new for sure. I’m going to make it snow here in my studio in a couple of weeks when we put on Frozen Junior. But the big thing that I’m really working on is DigiFestⓇ, which is our international three-day festival in April, 24, 25, and 26, 2026. This is where we bring Hollywood to Temecula, and I merge all my worlds together. Bringing the true creativepreneur out, whether you’re the actor, the director, the writer, the producer, you are the business leader, the thought leader, and able to make impact and transformation, we all need to be seen, we need visibility, and that’s putting ourselves on stages and being in the media and being represented sharing our stories.
I put it all together with DigiFest, and it’s now in its 10th year, and we are already putting an amazing lineup of Hollywood musicians and rappers and Emmy winners and stars in their own right, with inclusion included, represented from the autism and entertainment space all the way through the Academy Award space. And it’s an exciting festival, it’s a competition, which works for students, amateurs, and professionals to be able to all network and come together. I believe in cross-collaboration. Those with the most experience can learn from those who are emerging and still learning and provide a way to give back as well as those that are learning and emerging to be able to see what it takes to really get to where they want to go, that it doesn’t happen overnight and it really takes a lot of hard work, creativity, and commitment, but yet you can have fun and entertain and engage along the way. I love the cross-collaboration. I even put vacation and work together, and it’s a workcation. You just have to find the balance and bring them together so we can all find our joy.
Yitzi: You mentioned a great word, which is creativepreneur. I love that. And it just strikes me that a creativepreneur has unique challenges and opportunities that other entrepreneurs don’t have. Can you tell us a bit, what are some of the unique opportunities or some of the unique challenges that a creativepreneur, like a filmmaker, like a music artist, who is both the creative and an entrepreneur, faces?
Diane: Sure. Well, I tell everyone that I work with that an entrepreneur just means that you’re solo, and nobody does anything alone; we need a community. If you’re an actor, you’re an actorpreneur. If you’re a musician, you’re a musicianpreneur. If you’re a lawyer, you’re a lawyerpreneur. You need to have that business side. We all need to have some strategy and thought and some direction that we’re putting to what it is that we want to achieve in life and move forward. That is the preneurship of it. That’s the business, the structure, the systems, the pillars that we all need to move for, building a framework, making it work.
And then we have the creative side. I’m a creative. I’m all of the above. There are moments I love to be acting and on stage and doing that. I love directing, I love writing, but I love a good spreadsheet, too, there’s no doubt about it. They all come together. So that’s where I came up with creativepreneur.
For any craft that you want to do, you just can’t be this amazing talent out there because nobody’s coming and knocking on your door, you have to go knock on other people’s door. That’s getting in the right mindset. That’s getting in the right training and education that you need, and then building the resilience that you need to move forward, so you can be able to have your dream into a reality.
And when I work with my business clients, they need to find more creativity because we all have to market. [clears throat] We all have to market, right? You need creativity. We have to break through today’s noise, and that takes creativity to be able to make that happen. If you’re marketing and you’re advertising, you need more creativity. So the businesses need to learn that. They all need to learn how to message and find their clarity and get out there and be more visible. Find the stages that you can get on, whether that’s being in an article or that’s being on a stage and sharing, giving back, because the more we serve, the more we end up receiving. That’s what I really try and stress, and that’s where the creativepreneur comes all together. We need everyone to be creativepreneurs.
Yitzi: This is our signature question. You’ve been blessed with a lot of success, and you must have learned a lot from your experiences. Based on your vantage point, can you share five things that you need to create a successful career as a creativepreneur?
Diane: Yes.
- Start before you’re ready because you’re never going to be ready enough. You need to get started and just go. There is no perfect time; the time is now.
- Believe in yourself a little bit more than you don’t. It’s the 51% rule that it will grow from 51 to 60 to 65 to 70. You have to deposit coins into your confidence bank, which is even keeping your word to yourself. If you say you’re going to make that call today, make that call today. If you’re going to send that email, send that email today. If you’re going to walk into a business and do the ask, do the ask. That’s how we build the confidence.
- Along those same lines, pack your own parachute. Trust yourself. You need to know that you are prepared. Prepare. That’s how you pack your own parachute. You learn. You know the right way to do it. You do it yourself, and you get it done. Once you can do it, then you can teach others to do it, and they will help you do it because you can become a visionary leader that way.
- Resilience Get back up. Just get back up. Don’t quit. You are either winning or you are learning. You only fail if you quit. Get back up. It is hard. It is challenging. It will continue to surprise you along the way. Things are always changing, but get back up. The pain is temporary, the growth is permanent.
- Give grace and be kind. Because you want that along the way as you figure it out. You will make mistakes, but if you’re always leading from the right place, then it will be okay in the end. You will get through it because the pain and the challenges are temporary; the growth when you get to the other side is permanent. Know what matters. You need to know what matters, what’s right around you. Don’t worry about them and they, right? What matters is what matters. We get caught up in the external things and turn that off. Stay in the here and now, and what really matters are the people right around you, and the them and they go away. I think that’s five.
Yitzi: Can you share some of the self-care routines that you use to help your body, mind, and heart to thrive?
Diane: I probably should be better at that, but I do take my moments to actually self-reflect, which I think is very important. I self-care that way. Self-reflect on what went right, what could have gone better each day. That’s usually an evening routine for me. In the morning, I won’t say it’s a ritual, but I have certain things that I put into place to get my body moving, to make my mind in the right place. Sometimes the music changes that I might need to listen to. Sometimes it might be a podcast that I listen to, something to inspire me, something to just get me kind of going and dancing if I need to get myself awake a little bit more. So I go through routines that are in that. When we get into the self-care, I love a good massage. I can’t say that I ever really ever disconnect because I find passion and purpose in my work. I am grateful for what I get to do. I don’t ever 100% disconnect, but I know how to turn off for period of time.
Yitzi: This is our last question and then I have to go to another meeting. You’re a person of enormous influence. If you could spread an idea or inspire a movement that will bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Diane: The arts. The arts impact everything. They teach us, they educate us, they help us market, they teach grit and determination to get back up, you learn resilience from the arts. It’s subjective, and you hear the word no and have to keep going. You can be engaged by the arts, you can learn from them. It’s history. It goes back further than anything in our time. Everything started with the arts. That’s how they told stories and got people to come along. And when everything even breaks apart in ecosystems, the arts continue to thrive in some form or fashion. When you believe in them and you trust in them, you utilize them, you learn from them, you will be better.
Yitzi: How can our readers continue to follow your work, how can they engage your services, how can they attend your programs, how can they support you in any possible way?
Diane: Well, you can find me all over social media at Diane Strand. I’m also the #JDSfamily. That’s all our JDS things will be searchable that way, as well as a main website to find everything is JDSstudio.live. You’ll learn about DigiFest, our TV show Spirit of Innovation, Arts Across America, it’s globally streamed as well as locally broadcast and throughout California on ABC. And I love to connect with people. Arts Across America.
Yitzi: Unbelievable. It’s so amazing to talk to you. I’m excited to share this with our readers and look forward to talking to you soon.
Diane: Thank you so much, Yitzi. This has been awesome.
Diane Strand on Dyslexia, DigiFest and Building a New Path for Creativepreneurs was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.