Deon Taylor: From Pro Athlete to Building His Own Hollywood Empire

Deon Taylor (0:00)

Content is king right now, and everyone's trying to get into this space. I think once you could create an environment where others can come, be it me, or people like me, or other people that are bigger than me, or whatever you distributors, I think once you create an environment, people come. It's no different than Facebook. My entire family's from Gary. When you're coming from those environments, the biggest thing that I learned that I took away from it was not violence, was not the fact that we didn't have anything, was not the fact that we were struggling. I think the biggest thing that I was able to adapt and pull out of that was love and a sensibility that everything's going to be all right. These are things I teach my kids. You know what I mean?

Rod Watson (0:37)

Yeah.

Deon Taylor (0:38)

You know, making sure that people's intentions are pure when you come from the places that we come from. I think being able to have the ability to know that tomorrow's another day, the ability to know that you can make something out of nothing.

Rod Watson (0:51)

Absolutely.

Deon Taylor (0:51)

The ability to know that your mom can have no lights on in the house today and they'd be on tomorrow. You ain't got no car, you on the bus, but maybe one day, those things, man, is what I believe. The hood teaches a lot of us.

Rod Watson (1:03)

Absolutely.

Deon Taylor (1:03)

You know what I mean? Like whatever that is that makes you wake up every morning and be like, yo, I gotta go get it. That's what I took from there.

Rod Watson (1:16)

Come on in, brother. Come on in, man.

Deon Taylor (1:17)

It's good to see you. You too. Thank you for having me, man. Yes, sir.

Rod Watson (1:25)

Deon Taylor, welcome to The All In Podcast, brother.

Deon Taylor (1:27)

What's happening, brother? How you doing, man?

Rod Watson (1:29)

Good, man. It's great to have you here today. Thank you. I'm truly inspired by your story. You're an inspiration to work you're doing with your wife. Thank you, man. And your family. Your brother played in NFL. And I had a chance to sit with you guys a few months ago on a project we're working on, just to see your whole operation and the way you're moving in this space. And you didn't just get started in this business. You've been at it almost 20 years, and maybe a little more. So today, we're going to really dive in and talk about your journey, who Deon Taylor is, what it's taken for you to build, not just the name and the reputation, but the brand and the business.

You creating your own seat rather than the traditional way, waiting to get a show greenlit or to break into Hollywood. You've created your own table for you and your family to sit at. And we want to dive into how that process manifested. And then also ownership, right? That shift from not just creating a project and trying to figure out what channels or doors you can get that project in and relying on other people to get your project out there. You have created a platform, you've created a production company, you're now the co-founder of Hidden Empire Film Group with your wife, Roxanne. We want to talk a little bit about that. And then family and legacy, right? And also what's next. But before we dive into All In.

That's a lot, that's a lot.

I know you're a busy man, you stay on the go a lot, you got juggling a lot of projects, you juggling family and business. I saw you at the Summer League this summer, and you're also engaged with the NBA, former athlete, you played at San Diego State, which I played at a smaller Christian school in San Diego called San Diego Christian. We used to play San Diego State. I know San Diego Christian, yeah. Yeah, we used to play, and they were Christian heritage before. Yeah, that's right. Y'all, we used to coach with schedule us. That was our like warm up for the season and get our butts kicked. But it was it set the tone for us during the season to play against some high level competition, you know, and, you know, you grew up in Gary, Indiana. Yes. Born in Chicago. But during summer league, what was the purpose of being there this summer? Well, I know you have some things in the works, but what was your purpose?

Deon Taylor (3:26)

Well, I mean, the the, you know, Albert Hall and Warren, who created December League 20-plus years ago, fantastic disruptors, just great people in general. They started December League, and after, you know, so many years of doing it, they ended up figuring, you know, a couple of years ago, like, man, we could expand on this. And I just so happily was in the room with Kevin Garnett and Mike, his partner, and a few others. And the expansion that they were talking about was what else could we do?