Eric Skeldon / Film Maker. Entrepreneur. Author

Eric Skeldon transformed his entrepreneurial skills from street hustling to steering a groundbreaking faith-based entertainment company.

The Kingdom Warriors Studios CEO shares how he's attracting Hollywood veterans to create $50M+ Christian blockbusters while building an ecosystem that's revolutionizing faith-based entertainment.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• How to transform past struggles into future strengths
• Building Hollywood-level connections from scratch
• Creating sustainable models for faith-based entertainment
• Leveraging ADHD as a business superpower
• Building an ecosystem of industry veterans

GUEST BIO:
Eric Skeldon is the visionary CEO and co-founder of Kingdom Warriors Studios, pioneering a new era in faith-based entertainment. A former military paratrooper and successful sales executive, Eric combines his entrepreneurial spirit with kingdom-minded principles to bridge the gap between Christian content and Hollywood-quality production. His company is currently developing multiple high-budget projects, including a $50M+ trilogy, while building an ecosystem of top industry professionals from major studios like Star Wars, Disney, and Marvel.

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (01:12.829)
Hey, welcome to the Headsmack podcast. My name is Paul Povolni and you are listening to Conversations with Misfits and today's misfit is Eric Skeldon. So good to have you on man. How you doing?

Eric Skeldon (01:28.014)
Doing good, thanks Paul for having me. We've been connecting and talking about superheroes, movies and stuff for a while and so I'm glad to be on.

Paul Povolni (01:38.013)
Yeah, thanks man. Eric is a kingdom entrepreneur pioneering in technology and media. He's also helping Christian investors multiply their wealth with cash flowing boring businesses. So Eric, tell me a little bit about yourself. I know we've been connected for a while. We've engaged with each other's content and you're doing some amazing things, but let, you know, before we talk about what you're doing now, let's talk about a little bit about your origin story. Where did young Eric start from?

Eric Skeldon (02:06.958)
Yeah, so I really started as a misfit kid. I'm a middle child, grew up C student, ADHD, labeled dyslexic, ADD, ADHD, going to summer school for math and elementary, really seeing why I was struggling to get these basic math concepts that everyone else was able to seemingly understand.

I grew up in the Dallas -Foreworth area, a city called Louisville, Texas, and kind of just always felt like I was a little bit different. And like, I just, I didn't really just fit into the crowd. So I kind of, from a young age, really started wanting to almost be like a class clown or just comedian or just whatever. Like I knew I could make people laugh. I knew I could just like, I liked talking all the time. So, and then I was the kid that was just daydreaming. So in elementary, middle school.

Paul Povolni (02:42.173)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (03:01.902)
I'm thinking about flying cars. I'm thinking about like movies and you know, what would it be like if we just, everyone just broke the rules and we all just ran away and did whatever, just did fun stuff. And like, I don't know, I'd always think about like what everyone was doing. And I was always thinking about what would happen if we all just did the opposite and like not followed everything we were taught to do. And so I was just always dreaming about like, I don't know, like this doing crazy stuff. And, and so I think, you know, I did like English and like history and.

Loved some different things, but science and math kind of struggle with as many of you guys probably could relate to. And really for entrepreneurship, really found my gift for entrepreneurship in middle school. And I got called into the principal's office. And then my mom got called by the principal because I was getting bulk candy from Sam's Club. You can get like 40 pieces, I don't know, 50 cents per unit. And then I sell them for a dollar. So.

Paul Povolni (03:35.581)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (03:59.649)
Yeah. Wow.

Eric Skeldon (04:00.878)
You know, was this basically flipping this candy business, bulk candy from Sam's club. And it's funny cause later on.

Paul Povolni (04:05.949)
Where'd you get that idea from? Where'd you get that idea from?

Eric Skeldon (04:08.974)
I'm just knowing that because at the school, I knew how much we would pay and my friends would all pay like I had this Asian friend Jack who they had this Asian restaurant down the street that had amazing food. And he his parents because they're entrepreneur and he helped the business. He always had money. This dude would be loaded and always bias. He was like kind of our like rich friend that would always bias like honey buns and bias candy bars at lunch. My dad was from South Africa. So so frugal. My dad would never give it.

Paul Povolni (04:29.053)
Heheheheh

Eric Skeldon (04:35.022)
Like he was even at if we would go to McDonald's, he would only let us spend $3 .24. We couldn't get a Big Mac meal. We couldn't get any of the ones through sevens. You can only get $3 menu items. And so my dad at lunch, like, like, like you can't get extra things, you know, you can't get those extra candy bars or whatever. So I knew that that's what the rich kids wanted. They always got the honey buns, the extra like they basically order your lunch at school, but then the extra food where like it's like in click funnels or whatever. It's like the up sales, right?

Paul Povolni (04:46.589)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (04:57.245)
Ha ha ha ha.

Eric Skeldon (05:04.846)
you have your lunch and then the upsells are all these extra cool things. And I was like, man, that's where the money goes. It's all those upsells. And I was like, I want to, I want to have my own vendor machine to be able to also throughout that, not just during the lunch period, throughout classes, I could be like, Hey, I have what those people have to. And so that's where I saw that all my friends would spend money on that on all these extra items, miscellaneous items. And so it was like, I could do that too. Cause I went to Sam's club, because I saw the prices of

Paul Povolni (05:04.925)
Ha ha ha ha.

Right, right.

Paul Povolni (05:21.501)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (05:32.782)
what they had, it was like $2, $3 for this stuff, $1. And I was like, okay, I can get these, you know, 40 pieces for 50 cents in bulk at Sam's Club. And I was like, then I can, you know, basically arbitrage. And, and so that was kind of, you know, hustling back then was kind of where I, you know, because we never had extra money, like my dad, my dad was just very frugal. And so he actually worked as an accountant. And for like JP Morgan, like in chase and

Paul Povolni (05:35.773)
Right.

Paul Povolni (05:41.277)
Ha ha.

Paul Povolni (05:52.861)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (06:00.206)
So it worked for these big places that had managing and counting beans, millions of dollars, and even worked for big pharmacy companies out there. But I think he just, the mindset he got from South Africa was very just like, you need to save everything and you just, you always save and hoard everything. And...

Paul Povolni (06:12.989)
Right. Right.

So he was a first -generation immigrant into the United States. Yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (06:20.334)
Yeah, yeah, he came out here, attended scholarship, 18 years old. So, yeah, that was really my upbringing was just like, very just like you have to figure out, you have to be resourceful to figure out what you're going to get and what you're going to do. My dad was like, when you go to college, you need to get athletic scholarship or you need to get military to pay for your school or whatever. So in my head, I'm like, I ended up doing both those things. I ended up getting really good at a sport.

Paul Povolni (06:33.533)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (06:46.909)
wow.

Eric Skeldon (06:48.206)
I was basketball was my first like thing. I spent my 10 ,000 hours as Malcolm Gladwell says, like you need to put in the time. I wanted to go to NBA. I'm six foot tall. So I just, you know, had a really good three point shot and in college I was actually able to dunk but never in high school. But, but yeah, I wanted to go to NBA and, but I was in the Dallas Fort Worth area. I mean, there's just the best talent in the world. So people are six, five, six, six, like they're just dunking over everyone. They could do three points and dunk over everyone. And I'm just like,

Paul Povolni (06:55.101)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (07:10.429)
Yeah. Yeah. So you were the shorty. Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (07:18.062)
I was not, I was good, but I was, and for some reason I still struggle with also like with, I saw that I, looking back, I really noticed I had a lot of still fear and insecurities because I was really good, but when like I would get under the spot and under like, like a coach or someone was like watching me or during the games, I would not perform as well as when I was like playing around and like, you know how they say like when you're in your like,

Like almost like your cheer, your what do they call it? The flow. Like when you're in the flow state, you're in the zone. You're just you're you're you're playing as good as you know, you can play. You're shooting how you know you can shoot. But I would get so nervous and during games and stuff, whenever I knew that it mattered, like I would just kind of freak out and I would I wouldn't play like I was in the zone. I'll get almost like stage fright. So I knew that there was like some fear to play really good the rest of the time, except like when it seemed like, yeah, when it really matters sometimes in some games, I wouldn't get out of it. But a lot of games.

Paul Povolni (07:48.925)
The zone, yeah.

Paul Povolni (08:01.821)
Yeah, stage fright, yeah. Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (08:15.022)
And a lot of times, even when my coach was watching the stuff, I wouldn't always play as good as I could. But that's something looking back, I really noticed that even hindered me in basketball because I there was a lot of fear that I hadn't dealt with. I didn't know that I had because I didn't even we didn't have spiritual people back then. Like we were in mega churches and stuff. But there was no like sozo and like dealing with your roots and dealing with, you know, the stuff back then. So that was the other pieces I worked in, like mega churches and stuff. And my mom was always working at a church, taking us to churches. So.

Paul Povolni (08:34.621)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (08:43.758)
That was kind of my stuff is big Texas, big churches, big, big five a schools and just yeah, that was kind of my upbringing.

Paul Povolni (08:46.749)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (08:50.621)
And so you mentioned that military was the other option. So you spent some time in the military.

Eric Skeldon (08:55.31)
Yeah, so going into college, before I joined the military, I went on a cheerleading scholarship. So my senior year, I got into cheerleading and we won state that year for Louisville, Texas, coed. So it's like one of the only schools that they do. They basically have always 10 male, 10 female, and they're just a really good coed, like powerhouse school at flips and stunts where you're doing all the like throwing the girls up and catching them.

Paul Povolni (09:22.973)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (09:23.726)
It's just really, it's like a really athletic school. And so I got into that. And then the good thing about, you know, if you're watching the good thing about male cheerleading that people don't know is there's not that, well, some people know this, but there's not as much male competition, at least for like the strong, strong guys that could do, that could lift the girls and do flips. So there's not that much competition. So the spots to get scholarships, there's only so many scholarships out there with any sport.

Paul Povolni (09:39.343)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (09:43.421)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (09:49.358)
But of course, basketball, baseball, some of those sports are really like, there's just a lot of competition around the country. Whereas cheerleading, there wasn't as much competition. So I got a full ride scholarship to Weatherford College and we ended up getting third in the nation that first year. I was competing with them and just, I got really good because I was already good at, I was always kind of like an acrobat, I always do flips and just like do crazy stunts. And so going into cheerleading, I just, I got...

Paul Povolni (09:53.597)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (10:12.893)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (10:15.822)
They saw a natural gift for me to do flips and stunts. And so I just became, I just put it in a lot, two days pretty much and started getting really good. And then, so I got a scholarship in that. And that's when I got introduced to my next, pretty much entrepreneurship business, which ended up being, being pretty much helping. The problem was we were, we would do our two days in college and school, cheer practice, and then like cheer practice sometimes at night, many times of the week. But then afterward we wanted to relax and we wanted to like,

have a beer, you know, you're 18, 19, 20 in college. So, you know, I was 18, all of our teammates, we would have a beer and they would smoke weed. And so that was just what they did in, in Texas in college. And so, well, most colleges, and at least the party kids. And so with that, they were like, they only, it was out in the country in the city called Weatherford. So they didn't have premium, good quality marijuana. And so in Dallas, we, I was like, Hey, we, my connections in Dallas, they have that.

Paul Povolni (10:46.813)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (11:13.358)
It's the same thing as the Sam's Club thing and buying a bulk. I bought an ounce in bulk and just to serve my teammates and then help them out. Cause they were like, they're always telling the man, I wish we could get good stuff, but you can never get it out there and they can never get the supply. So I just, I would always look at supply and demand or problems. So I was like, I could solve that for them. And I just try to solve the problem. Next thing I know this ounce that I started with keeps, they keep buying it from me. And the next thing I know I'm the dealer for the whole, the whole community college. And then I'm like making.

Paul Povolni (11:24.765)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (11:42.894)
tens of thousands of dollars and I have $10 ,000 in a safe. I ended up getting jacked multiple times, go through a lot of just crazy stuff. Like, cause I was trying to be this, the nice guy that's now making all this money, helping serving all these people, but I'm getting jacked. I'm getting next connected. So the, my guy that starts basically driving all the way out to me from the Dallas for it, they're dropping off one pound, two pounds of marijuana. And these are like vacuum sealed, pounds with like they're, they smell like coffee cause they came across the border.

Paul Povolni (11:53.693)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (12:12.814)
vacuum skilled. So it was just a crazy life. I was living at 1819. And I was like, and I knew that I was there was I just knew that I was starting to like follow this bad path. And that was because I ended up like flunking out of school, my mom, I was having issues with mom, people were jacking me all the time trying to steal them, steal the money, steal the marijuana and stuff and like breaking her house. And like, I was like, man, this isn't like a this isn't even though I'm making money. And because at the time I was watching movies.

Paul Povolni (12:12.829)
Ha ha ha.

Paul Povolni (12:28.861)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (12:41.454)
you know, I always got inspired through movies. So the time I was watching movies like days to confuse with Matthew McConaughey or a blow with with Johnny Depp, you know, blow with Johnny Depp. Just these movies like that Scarface, of course, with Scarface and and well, Johnny Depp story and blow didn't end well. So I kept looking at the end of the story. I was like, OK, I was like, if I'm 18, 19 right now and I keep people keep jacking me and people keep, you know, just like.

Paul Povolni (12:43.485)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (12:47.245)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (12:57.181)
Yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (13:07.31)
I'm either going to get, also it's a felony if you have over, I think two ounces. So I was like, I'm going to, so there was a, I wrote it in my book called the kingdom mind, but God really encountered me in really some unique ways through that. And like got me out of a lot of stuff. I never got in any trouble. And basically after two years, I just gave it up. God like encountered me, but also a movie really encountered me called father of lights. And it really showed some of the people who have a lot of them become friends now, but they were really,

Paul Povolni (13:12.125)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (13:36.494)
generals in the faith, doing what Jesus did all over the earth. And I really went because I was seeking spirituality, but I wasn't able to find it. I was just because I was at 18. I was off on my own for the first time. So I just I felt like my parents, my dad, his, you know, his dad sent him out here from South Africa and just was like, you're on your own now. Go make it figured out. And my I was the same thing for me. I was like, I got to figure out my life, like how to provide for myself. And so I didn't know about, you know, I knew big religion, but I never knew.

Paul Povolni (13:44.093)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:56.669)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (14:06.03)
Christianity, but I never knew a real relationship with God where I was speaking to him, hearing from him. And so that was during that time where I was seeking God and he met me like on LSD, shrooms, acid, ecstasy. Like we were, I was chasing a lot of this stuff to like try to seek, you know, a spiritual connection and he would even meet me on those things. And it was just really cool to see, but that movie really changed my life. And shortly after I ended up getting, my wife ended up coming back in my life. My wife was,

Paul Povolni (14:23.709)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (14:35.022)
at the time, you know, was actually radical story to coming out of rave clubs and stuff, but she came out of there at 17 and she was in my mom's Bible study. So when she got back in my life, five years previously, she was like already coming to my mom's Bible studies and stuff. And so we already kind of were in each other's sphere. And then she reached out to me after I changed my life. I ended up actually even going to work at Olive Garden and stuff for a year. And then I went back to college for a year.

Paul Povolni (15:02.525)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (15:04.814)
And then I enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard, which is basically, I did airborne infantry as my job. And so I basically had eight months, I had to do active duty. And then after the eight months, I was doing once a month. So you could work a civilian job. Do what?

Paul Povolni (15:18.493)
And at that point you were clean? At that point you were clean, you had cleaned up at that point? Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (15:24.238)
Yeah. So when I enlisted, I, so yeah, I did a year at Olive Garden and then I went back and did a year clean at the college almost to redeem myself. I feel like God was like finished because I left, I let my team down, that team, that cheerleading team that we won third in the nation. I let them down by doing, you know, trying to set, being so focused on making money and, you know, being in an industry that wasn't helping my teammates and stuff. I mean, of course they still partying.

Paul Povolni (15:37.597)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (15:49.198)
Smokey when I came back, but at least like I wasn't having anything to do with that when I came back. I was more just trying to be a better leader, better teammate. And so we came back. We won third in the nation again. It's funny if you go on Netflix, there's a series called cheer, which you'll see the person who beat us every time Navarro. But it's like it went super viral cheer on Netflix, but you'll see the kind of world we're in. But we would win third against them. And I'm friends with a lot of the people from like the coaches and stuff. But anyways, yeah, I went back a year.

Paul Povolni (15:49.757)
Right.

Paul Povolni (15:54.877)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (16:02.845)
-huh.

Paul Povolni (16:10.941)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (16:18.67)
clean in Olive Garden, working a year going back to cheer and then just working a normal job, trying to, you know, coaching like gymnastics and stuff to help pay while I was in college. And then, yeah.

Paul Povolni (16:32.317)
So with the entrepreneurship, you went from the middle school entrepreneur selling candy to the college entrepreneur selling drugs. Between those two things, was there still that entrepreneurial thing that continued in you, or was that pretty much the highlights of that era of your life?

Eric Skeldon (16:51.31)
Yeah, no, actually, let me think. Yeah, I love garden. I started up picking up my camera, my DSLR camera. Actually during this goes into my film world is if you look at my YouTube, I have like 6 ,000 plus subscribers on YouTube. And it is from back then too. I left a lot of my main videos from cheer, but because I just, I always wanted to go back and be like, whatever I do with my content, I wanted to go back. Some of the bad videos that I did that were real, real worldly, I did delete a lot of those.

I've there's a lot of deleted content, but they're the main ones that aren't super bad or like just whatever where I could just say like, hey, this was me. This part of my testimony. They're still on my YouTube from 10, 11 years ago. Anyways, but during that time, I picked up a T3I Rebel. I bought it at Best Buy, this DSLR camera. And even during high school, I picked up my mom's camera because she did photography for our high school for football and basketball. So I pick up her camera and I started doing videos.

on a DSLR camera back in 2009, 2008. And then so in college, I was also making videos. So I made videos of us flying, of us doing like the stunt. They call it something called Stunt Fest. It's the best stunters in the world. So that's where I didn't get paid for it, but I started getting my skills for making and editing videos. So I mean, some of my cheer videos have 100 ,000 views and hundreds of comments. And so I started seeing that people, I can make good videos and I can capture content traveling. I was going from, you know,

Paul Povolni (18:02.941)
Wow, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (18:19.822)
the preparing for this event to go to compete there in the nation. And, you know, anyways.

Paul Povolni (18:25.309)
Where did that interest for video come from? Was this from, you know, something that you learned from something that you watch like.

Eric Skeldon (18:32.206)
It was just from my mom, because my mom was getting paid to do it. And so I was like, and then I think movies too. Like I just, like I said, I was just always a movie buff. And like, I just, my whole, like even today, like my, my free time, I just spend watching movies and I speak to God through movies or I'm like, God, I'm like, God, can you show me something, Holy Spirit, show me something through this movie, like a lesson, whether it's from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, something about bravery, honor, integrity, anything I could learn about character and values and like making good decisions or bad decisions.

Paul Povolni (18:40.637)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (18:51.901)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (19:01.454)
And movies and video games, I always loved like the idea of role playing and you know, what, what decisions you make. Cause every decision you make will either lead you in the kingdom of heaven, kingdom of darkness, like it'll be good or bad. So that's why I always love movies and video games. But, so yeah, when my mom started getting paid for it, I was like, okay, other people get paid to do this. Like, you know, high schools need it. Movies need it. I knew it was a skill that you, whether you were in movies or you're just doing weddings. So my mom was always doing weddings and, senior photos and.

So, and I was like, I was like, mom, you have this amazing camera, but it has a video feature. You never use the video feature. My mom only did the photography feature. So I was like, mom, you're missing out on all this like videography. So I started maybe just thinking like I'll learn video and maybe that'll be a skill I can do. So that was kind of just in my head and I knew you can get paid for it. And then, cause there was other videographers at the weddings, there was always, I knew that you can do video. And at the time, 11 years ago, video was just on YouTube. Everything was just becoming more video and like,

Paul Povolni (19:35.589)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (20:00.75)
some of my friends in that, you know, would also just start doing these videos and making money. And then I actually got, during that year at Olive Garden, I started getting in the rap scene with rappers like 2 Chainz, The Weeknd. I started doing it like House of Blues and filming like behind the scenes for these. I got connected. One of my other servers was I connected to the rap scene. He's like, hey, you're a videographer, come with me, let's do this. So we, but I also saw God almost like put your camera down because in that scene it was like, there was just a lot of also.

Paul Povolni (20:15.901)
Yeah, wow.

Eric Skeldon (20:29.774)
back in that environment of drugs and clubs and, and like, and I didn't want to be filming and in that scene and it wasn't really making that much money. I was just like, but I saw, I could have started making money getting connected to these rappers and making music videos. And even some of the Dallas rappers, some of my rappers that I grew up loving, I got to do like behind the scenes of their music videos. So in a way it seemed like attractive, but that was like Satan's pool to be like, Hey, come do the rap scene and come be like, because in that world I would have just went down a bad path. And that's why.

Paul Povolni (20:31.805)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (20:54.045)
Right.

Paul Povolni (20:57.885)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (20:58.158)
I just even stopped doing that. But that's where my entrepreneurship was always kind of looking at. I was always looking at things I could do even while I was working at Olive Garden or anywhere.

Paul Povolni (21:08.893)
Right. Well, and it seems like you've always had a knack for, you know, spawning, whatever it is they're doing and making money from and finding a way that your skillset can work towards doing the same thing. And so, you know, so now you're, you know, now you've picked up the camera, now you're starting to do video. when did you actually start making money with it? Was that a, was that your next job, your next entrepreneurial pursuit? Like where,

What was the next thing after you discovered that you liked the camera in your hand?

Eric Skeldon (21:41.742)
Yeah, so it's funny, I always say it took like 10 years, it was almost like 10 years of me putting down my camera. So through that journey of putting down the camera in the rap industry, and then going into the army, so eight months of the army kind of changed my life. I also got married in the middle of that. So our first break after, they call it just the first initial part of basic training, which was like three months long, my wife and I wrote letters, we got married outside of Fort Benning, infantry base, we had a three day break, then I went to airborne school and then

Paul Povolni (21:54.525)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (22:11.886)
the after cycle, like basically your job training, infantry, advanced training or whatever, but completed that. Got my wings, went to airborne school, got back in December of 2013. And then I enrolled that January into University of North Texas to business school. So I already pretty much finished almost two years. I was like a little, I was just the math credit shy of my two year associate degree. So I enrolled at University of North Texas. I got exempt from the math classes that I failed.

I actually failed three math classes and, but they're even remedial math. So I never did my SAT or ACTs. so when I, when I went and tested, they just tested me for remedial math. So there's like three math class I had to pass to even get to the normal credit that actually counts towards your math credit. So I, I even hated the college school system because of that, cause they were making you do these remedial classes. Didn't even count towards the credit. So in my head, I was like, that's just stupid. That's a waste of time. So I would never even put enough energy to pass those classes. So anyways, I passed everything but math.

Paul Povolni (22:45.789)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:03.517)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (23:10.702)
And then I ended up getting exempt from remedial math for being in the army. Shout out to the US government and the army. So I got exempt. So I went straight into business math and I passed it the first try. I got with I got with prior service buddies that were smarter than me. And I just sells what I learned to get around people are smarter to you and like work with them. I ended up passing business math. And then from there, I got to do the class I loved entrepreneurship, startups, international marketing, how to raise money for nonprofits. And so I did.

Paul Povolni (23:16.605)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (23:27.677)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:35.773)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (23:38.094)
I did a business degree with kind of a like a minor in marketing and it was also a mix of like even public affairs and community service and like nonprofit. So I knew I wanted to do business and nonprofit type stuff. At the time, my older brother was going to seminary and he was doing a nonprofit. So I'll see in the impact he was doing. I was like, man, like I want to do more of that. Like where you use your, you use your skill sets to, to do like impact type work and nonprofit type work. And,

Paul Povolni (23:55.869)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (24:02.813)
So did you see your ADD as a super power or as kryptonite?

Eric Skeldon (24:07.31)
I mean, it could be both. I mean, you can get so distracted that you're smoking weed, you're doing pills, you're doing crazy stuff, you're hooked on all this stuff, and you're so distracted that you're not effective, which was a big part of my life, was doing all sorts of crazy stuff. But then I did learn how to turn it into my superpower and how to use it for like extreme focus and just to be extremely like, almost be like a Steve Jobs or like Richard Branson. Richard Branson has

You know, he has an airline company as a galactic, you know, space company. He has train companies on all these things. And so that's how my brain thinks too is like, I think big and like, we can have this company, we can have this company. And so now we have that not the level of Richard Branson, but we have that. So yeah, I think you have to turn it into your superpower. And I think that's the that's what excites me about Misfits and just using your story for, you know, I'm 32 years old this month, in two weeks, I'll be 33. And

Paul Povolni (24:41.085)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (25:06.702)
the fact that you can, in your 20s, figure out, try different things. Try film, try rap industry, try working at Olive Garden, try the military, go to business school. It took me three years to finish that business school, graduated in 2016, and then I went into sales. And in sales, I declared that I was gonna be a multimillion dollar salesperson before anyone ever hired me. I just kept declaring it and I wrote it down. And even through that, I did some entrepreneurship with Lyft.

I ended up becoming a Lyft ambassador. They paid me Lyft, which is now a billion dollar tech company. At the time they were launching in Dallas while I was in business school. And I saw the power of Lyft and Uber. I knew it was going to change the world back in 2015, 2014. And I ended up becoming an ambassador and helping them launch into Dallas. They paid me $20 per user I could attract and get to use my code. So I had the codes. This showed my affiliate marketing game back then. I had the codes, DallasMavs,

Paul Povolni (25:49.533)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (26:01.341)
Hahaha.

Eric Skeldon (26:05.038)
I think it was Cowboys and Bar Perks. So all the sports teams, Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Cowboys, Bar Perks. My code was Bar Perks. My code was HotelPerks. So I would get these holders. I'd buy the holders in bulk and I'd print the cards in bulk with my code on it. And they let me give away $50 in free ride credits. So I had a perfect offer. I can give away hotels, bars, and sports fans $50 in free ride credits.

Paul Povolni (26:16.157)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (26:32.334)
So they don't have to drink and drive. They can park two miles away from the stadium and they can get a free ride to the stadium. And so I was providing something free with Lyft. I ended up getting thousands of people to get that. And I made like, while I was in business school, I made a really good income driving people around, like business people to airports and stuff. And then also they even gave me a car, like where I paid for my car note to drive Lyft. And I just, I refer to thousands of people making.

Paul Povolni (26:44.477)
Wow.

Eric Skeldon (26:58.638)
but they ended up starting to screw us. They gave us $20, then they gave us $10, then gave us $5 per person. So my income I was making at $20 was good, but then once it moved to the $5, I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. But anyways, after getting a business degree, that actually experience actually landed me a software sales job. So I was able to show them what I was able to do just on my own initiative, no incentive, no base salary. And so I landed a $40 ,000 base salary, software sales job with uncapped commission.

Paul Povolni (26:58.749)
Wow.

Hahaha.

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (27:09.629)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (27:15.709)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (27:28.046)
And it really did well in that, in Dallas, and then went into freight brokering. And this was the cool thing about what God will use if you focus, like you just said, use your ADD for superpower or even use your super powers for God instead of the enemy. And then after that software sales job, I started doing well after college. I ended up going into freight brokering and I ended up doing millions in revenue within 12 months, landing huge multimillion dollar contracts with shippers. And we were doing over a hundred loads a month.

Paul Povolni (27:54.333)
Well...

Eric Skeldon (27:58.03)
And I was just connecting almost like the cartel connecting all these lanes and shipments all over the country. But I'm there my contracts I landed with my clients and then I'm giving them to the truckers and the truckers are doing hundreds of loads. I'm doing all from an office for my cell phone or from my email. And and I ended up making two hundred fifty thousand dollars for the first time just doing the same skills I was doing moving the marijuana except I was moving furniture. I was moving.

Paul Povolni (28:00.797)
Hahaha

Eric Skeldon (28:26.222)
I was moving 48 ,000 pounds of lumber, 40 ,000 pounds of steel, of all that stuff. So it was the same skill set to make six figures doing it legally with the freight industry as the enemy was trying to get me to use moving weight for cartels and stuff.

Paul Povolni (28:28.669)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (28:41.885)
Right. So when did, you know, that, of course, you know, that, that you moved on from that into what you're doing now when it comes to, to movies and things like that and entrepreneurship and, and crowdfunding and things like that. So talk to me about when did that transition happen and how did, you know, what was it like to start off with and where are you at now with it?

Eric Skeldon (29:02.062)
Yeah, so after the freight industry left, that was corporate America pretty much left in 2019. And there's a whole story on how I didn't even want to leave that industry. When my fourth daughter was born, I pretty much had to like, I was almost, yeah, pretty much fired and because I had the kids and I was like asking to work remote, the whole thing, I was in FMLA, ended up getting fired. Long story short, and maybe even, it's crazy because you know, Pedro Deo and 100X?

Paul Povolni (29:30.013)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (29:31.022)
So I was making six figures in corporate America. I just paid Pedro like a couple of grand to get in his programs and to go to his first, his 2019 event. And while I was making six figures, but anyways, long story short, I invested in Pedro and then I invested in his $10 ,000 expansion program back in 2019. Cause I was already seeing that I could do more. And like I was the six figure, like salesman type guy and could build this book of business, land these big contracts. So I was like, I know I could do more. And.

Anyways, I ended up I ended up getting into Pedro's programs and going to his first conference where I got, yeah, I got to give it up for that. Like learning that more kingdom thinking of entrepreneurship was what saved me honestly, when I got fired from corporate America. So when I pretty much got my book of business taken, I got into that world. So I went all in on kingdom entrepreneurship, because I'm like, this is what I'm invested in. This is my mentorship. This is like my, you know, online education and my tribe.

Paul Povolni (30:24.125)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (30:27.566)
So I went all in and I just started just like going live every day doing, that's when I launched my first podcast, Kingdom Passive Income. All studying passive income, affiliate marketing. So that same skillset I had for affiliate marketing, I started doing affiliate marketing. I started doing, I got into real estate. So I did 20 real estate deals and it kind of like the affiliate marketing. I did wholesaling where you get a property under contract and then you assign it to an investor. So I helped the investors find the properties and I got five, 10 up to $17 ,000 fees for doing that.

And so I was really just using my same skills for in Pedro's world. I sold like $20 ,000 of Pedro's stuff and, you know, made 40 % commission. So I was just doing what I had with what I had in my hands. And I was just making, making money, serving people, serving other leaders and doing some real estate deals while I was learning kingdom entrepreneurship. And so I was all in on kingdom entrepreneurship. Dr. Miles Monroe.

Paul Povolni (31:09.405)
Right.

Paul Povolni (31:20.125)
So what does kingdom entrepreneurship mean? For some people that could be a new term that they've never heard before. Or maybe they've seen it but they've never really understood what that means. What does kingdom entrepreneurship mean?

Eric Skeldon (31:33.134)
Yeah, and it's kind of, I feel like it's changed a little bit for me, but right now my definition is really thinking about the king and his kingdom and then think about this government. So if you think about the kingdom of heaven and his government and think about us all as stewards and managers of this kingdom, all the resource on the earth are gods. And as kingdom entrepreneurs, we're, we have management contracts with our time, our resources, our talent. So if I have a business, let's say I have a landscaping business.

I'm a manager of this landscape business that is to steward the people, the team, the customers and stuff for the best use of what would impact the kingdom of God and like represent the kingdom of God well. So it's really just manage, it's really just a management is being a good manager of your money, of your team, of your time and stewarding it well to create good in the society. Like.

So your staff is like, man, like I'm proud to work at this company. This company's impacting people. People are getting discipled within this company. They're loving Jesus more. Their families are getting better. Their marriages are getting better. So it's really just being good managers at the end of the day of all this resource on the earth that are gods and work. And it was hard for me because I was always like, I said, my dad was, you know, very, very about, this is mine. I'm an owner of everything. I need to hoard everything. Don't give that much.

Paul Povolni (32:42.429)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (32:54.493)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (32:56.558)
So it was backwards to everything I learned about like, give more and you'll receive more, help more people and God will bless you more. The more you sow into people, like even the laws of repented sowing, there was a lot of just stuff I had to re -program of everything I learned from the school system and everything I learned from my parents. And it was...

Paul Povolni (33:16.125)
So what are some of the changes that you started seeing in your business as you started employing that mindset of a kingdom entrepreneur? What were some of the things that you started seeing happening?

Eric Skeldon (33:25.934)
Yeah, I started just seeing like thinking about serving people without getting paid. I served a lot of leaders without getting paid. I served a lot of just things like other people. Like how can I help other people achieve what they want? Which I did learn that from the corporate world. It's like consultative sales, like help them get what they want. But I did that in the kingdom world and was just like, all right, I want to help people and help leaders. I want to like learn while you earn. And just by helping people and doing that.

God just started blessing me and I learned a ton. So just by helping people, even if they didn't pay me or I got paid super low to help like high level people, I learned a ton while serving them and helping them because as I helped them, I watched how they did life. I watched how they did parenting. I watched how they did business and I learned and I was able to get grace from what they did to be able to be like, I want like my parents never were entrepreneurs. My parents didn't teach me about wealth and money. So I had to learn that from other people about wealth.

about money, about even like marriage, like all that stuff, parenting, how I would want to parent. Like I had to learn that from other men and other leaders. So just, yeah, and I would say too, like planting seeds, like sowing into things, like, you know, just knowing that it's like, you're not expecting a return. Like we bought land in Africa and we have been supporting an orphanage and it's been cool to just, like even, like I don't, we don't even own our own house out here. Like we have.

we're still just like a possible like we're living in Airbnbs and we're just like renting. We've rented our whole life. And so like, but we bought land and we're like sowing into Africa and like seeing things like that and seeing the kids out there and on my birthday and May 24th, some of the kids, they call me uncle Eric and they're like gonna just gonna be there on my birthday to sing happy birthday and stuff. And just seeing that you can impact other nations. Cause that was my heart when my wife and I got married 10 years ago.

Paul Povolni (34:54.941)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (35:09.981)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (35:19.727)
We said that we're going to go do international ministry. We want to have a business or basically that we wanted to do ministry. But I realized I had to do some business because that's how I know how to pay the bills. And so, but our whole goal was to go to the nations and support the nations. So I would say it's, it's changed my whole life. And then just following the supernatural path with God and like even leaving corporate America to see what he's done. So I've done e -commerce since leaving corporate America, I've done affiliate marketing, e -commerce, real estate.

and then we got into 2021, I raised $50 ,000 to, do an NFT project. We sold out of a million dollar NFT project. and we got all these artists and creatives, you know, from Sony, Disney and Marvel to be a part of that. That, that led into us landing John Rhys Davies from Lord of the Rings into our film, which led into now a studio. We're building an equity crowdfunded studio that has people that worked on Star Wars that are co -founding out with us.

And so it's like everything's gone glory to glory to glory to basically like not count anything like, and that's the thing is a lot of people would say, well you did e -commerce, but you didn't make a ton of money and didn't, you know, build the best e -commerce company in the world. But that those 500 orders I did with kingdom dominion, it was called kingdom dominion. I launched it in April, like April 4, 14 of 20, 22 or.

Paul Povolni (36:34.621)
Ryan.

Eric Skeldon (36:47.406)
I don't know, it was two, three years ago, probably three years ago, 2021. Yeah, 2021 is when I launched it, Kingdom Dominion, but those 500 orders and doing like 10, 20 ,000 e -commerce taught me a lot and it now got me to the next step. So it's like for ADHD people and like misfits, just cause you do something that doesn't pay all your bills and now you make 10K a month and out whatever, you can use the skillset you did in e -commerce or whatever to now go in the future and have that knowledge. And with real estate too, like,

Knowing the knowledge of, I know how to find off -market deals. Now we're looking for an off -market deal for ourselves to buy our first house in Orlando using off -market. So everything can help each other and nothing's wasted in the kingdom, which is what I love about being a misfit and just being ADHD and using it to just use. For instance, in the film and business world, I look at it in such a different way than all the other people that worked at Lucas Films.

Paul Povolni (37:23.869)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (37:44.046)
people who worked at Disney, the people who worked on these companies. And so for some reason, they're attracted to work with me because I'm showing how to solve problems in the Christian film industry. And even in Hollywood, exiting to like a new realm where we can make movies, distribute movies without Hollywood. And we're looking at solving problems in a different way in this industry. And so the people that are wanting to work for a Kingdom company, they're like, we want to work with your guys company because one, you guys are looking at different ways. You're seeing how to finance things. You're seeing how to...

Paul Povolni (37:53.789)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (38:12.078)
bring crowds together, you're seeing how to do marketing, business, connecting. Because at the end of the day, me being ADHD, just my brain just sees patterns and connections and pinpoints. So I'm able to connect all the dots where they're just like, I just want to make a Pixar style movie. I want to story development. I want to think about story and art, which is great, but they're not thinking about how everything can come together to actually make a whole system for those stories to get funded, to get distributed, to make money. And so there's just a...

Paul Povolni (38:22.141)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (38:27.613)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (38:41.774)
You can use ADHD for good in the industry, especially when you bring the supernatural and like more kingdom thinking of abundance and hearing from heaven and like getting downloads from heaven dreams. That's where it gets fun is when you mix it in with everything God has paid for and Jesus has for us. It's like, it gets a lot of fun.

Paul Povolni (38:59.741)
So talk to me about the, cause you kind of mentioned a few things about the movie industry and people that have been involved that you've gotten involved with it. So talk to me about that. What, what specifically are you doing when it comes to, making movies and, you know, that's, you know, that sounds like a natural progression from, you know, picking up your mom's camera and saying, Hey, this records video. And so, so talk to me about what you're doing in the movie space and.

You know, what excites you about it? What are your latest projects in that space and how did that come about? Like what was the first step towards, you know, making movies? I mean, making movies sounds like such a big, grand, you know, amazing thing. So what were some of those steps that led you into it and what are you doing now?

Eric Skeldon (39:45.134)
Yeah. So when I raised the $50 ,000 in 2021, I started hiring a team and the investor who actually gave me 50 ,000 and partner with me, he was in Hollywood, doing a lot of this extra on set for a lot of different things. I met him in a hundred X as well. And he also was working, so he had a, a small little studio in Sacramento. So he went from Hollywood to Sacramento after COVID and was, you know, all into videography and just basically just doing.

had a heart for film and all that stuff and really want to do that. So he already had more experience than that than I did, right? So that's one key is that, you know, start working with people who have more experience than you, where I play a position and maybe launching things, building community, connecting all the people. And so from there, we brought in other artists and artists that worked at Sony. He sold over a million dollars of art to Sony. So I put this in that artist. You know, I can't draw that good. Like if you see my draw, it's like stick figures.

but I can attract an artist that sold a million dollars of art to Sony. So I had that guy, then I had a developer that worked on like Star Wars, Rogue One, VR experience and amazing.

Paul Povolni (40:48.445)
And how did those connections come about? Like are those all through a hundred X or those through other things? Like how did those connections come about for somebody that's like, well, man, yeah, you've, you've come across these amazing people, but I never have, I will never have access to those kinds of people. How did that access come about?

Eric Skeldon (41:04.174)
Yeah. So I think it's interesting. The Kingdom Networks and the Christian Networks are getting pretty cool. The developer guy, he actually was through the NFT Network. So once I got in the NFT world, I started, before I even launched, thought about it, launched an NFT project, I bought 20 projects and I started making money. So I made like $5 ,000. I bought one for 200, ended up being a super rare NFT. I sold it for five grand. I did that twice where I made like 10 grand off these $200 NFTs where you buy it during the launch and you, you know, you get lucky and you get a good one.

And so I did that and I was like, wow, there's like, you can make money in this industry. Cause at the time there was so much demand, whatever anyways. So I met him from that community. So for me, I would say I always, I would always go into industries and I would, one, I would find people that I liked in those industries or those networks and I would find people I like and I would connect with them and talk to them. If I felt like attracted or I felt like they had something that I like, I was like, man, I appreciate that they're really good at this. So this guy in that industry, Monty who became.

Paul Povolni (41:33.661)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (42:01.87)
our developer that worked on all these films. And he had another guy that worked on all these big films that he brought on to help us during our launch. Yeah, I just met them from the NFT world and they were just also just thinking about Web3 and the future of digital ownership and royalties and art and like there because there are these really good developers and artists and they're working in Australia actually. It was working at these big like like futuristic healthcare companies and but they were bored at their job, you know, so the NFT world, the Web3 world.

we would all get on Discord and talk to all these people about creating and changing the world and building our own Disney's, our own Marvel franchises. So we were all dreaming big together. And so that's how I found them. And then the other guy, the artist was through another marketing network. It was through a marketing network called Giver Marketing where we met him and got introduced to him. And so, and even now, like now the guy that worked at Star Wars, I worked on three of the Star Wars, three of the Harry Potter's.

Paul Povolni (42:37.021)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (42:58.318)
Elysium, Jungle Book, he departs the Caribbean. He has two Academy Awards. He became a co -founder because I hired a chaplain that was also a recruiter for Silicon Valley. But now he's focused on being a kingdom chaplain. And I gave him one percent of my company and I said, hey, like, we need prayer in this company, in the studio. We're going after Hollywood. We're going after all this big stuff. We need, you know, at the center, we need prayer and we need kingdom thinking. So can you here's one percent of the company. Can you be?

Can you be our chaplain and kind of chief people officer was his role. So it's all about people. And then after just through Supernaturally, we got a co -founder who was a Disney guy and worked for Reinhard Bonnke and worked with NASCAR and Marriott. And he worked at Disney for over like 10 years or something. So he came through Supernaturally. And I met him at Earl Roberts University while speaking on Kingdom Warriors. And when we did a seven figure launch and I was telling my story. So I met him over there.

Paul Povolni (43:29.757)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (43:54.19)
And then the guy at Lucasfilms, we met him through our Chief People Officer. Our Chief People Officer was like, hey, we got this guy. He worked at Lucasfilm. He's in between projects right now. He was working on David, the animated film, and working on, he did Jungle Beat that got sold to Netflix from South Africa. And he's like, he's really, he's like, you'll like him because my dad's from South Africa. He's like, you'll like him because he's South African. And so we just got connected and I started sharing the vision. So once you get connected to these high level people,

Paul Povolni (44:13.885)
Yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (44:22.063)
You have to, you just share the vision. Here's the vision, here's what we're doing, here's what we're struggling with. I don't know how to solve this. Here's what I know we're supposed to do, but here's what I don't know how we do this. And here's what I feel like God's called us to do. And if they feel aligned to it and they want to help build this solution, then, you know, they end up, you know, we'll either get connected and see how they can help in some way.

Paul Povolni (44:24.989)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (44:42.205)
Yeah, it sounds like along the way, even earlier on, before you got to the, to the bigger, folks is that it was you sharing your vision of what you wanted to do, right? You started sharing on discord and having these conversations, with folks and sharing what your dreams were, what your visions were. And then suddenly people started connecting to that or saying, Hey, I know somebody else that has a similar vision. You should connect with them. And so I think.

Eric Skeldon (44:54.478)
Mm -hmm.

Eric Skeldon (45:10.638)
Exactly.

Paul Povolni (45:11.325)
I think for somebody there's, there's power in understanding that is sometimes when you have a vision, when you have a dream, when you have a big idea, a, even if it's a misfit idea and it seems out of the way out there is sometimes just simply sharing it. You you'll be amazed how then suddenly connections start happening. And so it sounds like that started happening with you early on is you just started sharing this desire to start making movies and start making movies that made a difference. And so.

those connections started happening. And then one connection led to another connection, which led to another connection that led to these bigger connections that you wouldn't have imagined early on, but it came about from you just simply sharing your vision and your desire and your dreams and stuff, right?

Eric Skeldon (45:56.686)
100%. So yeah, it's all about sharing the vision. And the two is like, a lot of people would get scared to say, I don't want to share my vision or my dream because somebody will steal it, right? Somebody is going to steal. But the idea was so big. It was like, we're going to create our own kingdom Disney or own Marvel. Anyone can see Marvel or Disney and be like, I want to make my own. You know, it's like, that's not, that's not, I'm not like, I'm not scared of someone taking my idea of like, we're going to build something big. That's going to make epic things. Like we're going to build this epic media franchise. Like anyone can go after that idea, honestly, like.

Paul Povolni (46:11.165)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (46:15.101)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (46:25.885)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (46:26.318)
But anyways, I, so I just started sharing it and started saying, here's how we're doing it. Here's what God's doing now. Here's where we're going. And, and yeah, not being afraid to just talk to people about where you're going and talking to people about what you need. Because like you said, I don't know. I, my experience was making YouTube videos, you know, 10 minute long, 15 minute long YouTube videos, like across the country, like this, what I was experiencing with a DSLR camera and those in a cheap microphone.

I didn't know about the fancy microphones and the red cameras and I never worked on movie sets. I never worked on any of that, but I was, I'm able to look at business and industry and study it like really quickly to where, not that I know everything about it, but I can like just watch videos and I can consume content and ask like the people who know questions. And I can almost like, that's the thing I think is good about ADHD people is if you're passionate about something, you can learn it really quick. And so like, if you're like, for instance, podcasting and microphones and

Paul Povolni (46:53.693)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (47:19.613)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (47:23.566)
Like if you're passionate about that, you could just start studying YouTube videos. What are the best shirt mics I need? What are the best XLR cables? What is this? How do you set them up? And you could just start learning it very quick, especially in the day and age we're in now where people are getting paid in ad dollars just to make the best content, the best tutorials. And so all the information's available to you if you're just open to just learning it. And so I started learning everything I can about storytelling, script writing, cameras.

Paul Povolni (47:29.501)
Right. Right.

Eric Skeldon (47:50.574)
what you need to know as a producer, what you need to know as an executive producer. Because they kept saying, well, you're the executive producer. You're the creator of this executive producer. So I'm like, what do I need to know as the creator and executive producer? That's my role, but what does that mean? And so as I was building my own intellectual property, I had to figure out what is my role. I was like, well, what did George Lucas do? Because George Lucas was different because he wrote the script and directed it, where I was like, well, am I supposed to direct it? If I do, I need to learn how to direct. And...

Paul Povolni (47:58.447)
Sure I am. What is it? Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (48:19.886)
but I didn't direct it. So I haven't directed anything. So if I wanted to do that, I probably need to get more skills. So I've been studying that. But the other pieces, the producers who have been helping us make our first thing, it was also through connections, through people who got attracted to us, connected us to them. They had three films with Lionsgate, a couple with Paramount and one with Universal or whatever. And yeah, I got connected and really liked our story and like what we're doing. But I think...

Paul Povolni (48:20.061)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (48:48.974)
I would say, yeah, getting people around you that know how to do all that stuff. So like more I'm seeing now, I'm more of, if you look at Angel Studios, they're really good at technology and marketing. That's the problem we're really solving now with this network we're building is where we're building an ecosystem with the best of Christian producers, the people who already make, for instance, we're working with Chuck and Carrie of God's Not Dead, Nefarious, Unplanned. So they're really good at one to $10 million movies.

If you give them a good story and one to $10 million for a story and a script and, and, movie, they will make a really good movie and they know how to distribute it and launch it to make money, at least double their money or more. So that's so like we're partnering with them on like, Hey, we're going to do some movies with you guys. All right. Now, now we have, so they've done 250 million in the box office. So now I'm partnering with them. I'm adding value to them and now they're wanting to work with us. So I would say those are things you can do.

Paul Povolni (49:17.789)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (49:29.757)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (49:46.574)
If I know they know how to make the movies and launch the movies, but I know how to maybe bring finances and bring, they need to bring, they need to start building an audience and a following and they want to build a platform. So we're going to help them with that. So there's, as we're building this ecosystem out, it's really seeing what can you, what can you help with? And this is for anyone listening in your industry, find out what you're really good at, what your superpower is and bring that to the industry to where you can go and look at the industry. And for me, it's.

Paul Povolni (50:09.693)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (50:15.31)
bringing everyone to work together. Like I'm able to bring all these different people to work together and say, what if we thought bigger? So now we're building on our own where we're like bringing in team, bringing in people. But now we're saying we don't have to all just own each other, but what if we all just work together and built an ecosystem to where we all can, from distribution to story to development, to scripting, to marketing, distribution, all the different things. What if we all work together?

So I've been finding the best people in each of the like nine pieces of Christian film development and kind of having a network of those top people, the top people who do it. So I don't have to do it because I don't want to learn all those, all those roles. I don't have the time to do that. But I know the nine people who are the best at that in this one to 10, one to $20 million film range. And so now we're our job right now is we're building an ecosystem that is going to help bring all those people together so we can make better films, better stories, how to get these.

Paul Povolni (50:55.229)
Right. Right. Right.

Eric Skeldon (51:12.782)
even good stories that don't get financing, how to get them financed, how to get a crowd around them. So that's some of the things we're in development right now. And we're actually in the friends and family side on WeFunder. So in the future, you'll see our WeFunder out where we're basically letting the fans now come in and be a part of this studio and ecosystem.

Paul Povolni (51:31.741)
So what kind of movies are you wanting to make? Because there's so many different categories, and so many different types of movies. Are you wanting to jump into all of them? Is there a specific kind that excites you most? Where are you at with your interests for the future?

Eric Skeldon (51:44.782)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (51:49.614)
So our first intellectual property through Kingdom Warriors is called Legends of Elydrea. And it's basically this good versus evil. I call it Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings meets Dune. So that's what our intellectual property is. It's a mix of those three and the Matrix as well. And so it's a mix of those. And it's a trilogy. So we want to do a $50 million.

Paul Povolni (52:03.837)
Ha ha ha ha.

Paul Povolni (52:11.869)
wow.

Eric Skeldon (52:17.358)
budget plus for each of those films. So right now we're in development. So we put about half a million into it, but we've gotten advice now that they see the vision of, hey, we want to do this as a trilogy. We did it with some producers that have made those kind of like half a million to $1 .5 million films, but they've never made a fantasy film. So it's decent, but it's not good enough. It's not good enough to where now that our team that has worked in Star Wars and stuff is happy enough to try to release it and try to just like...

Paul Povolni (52:37.533)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (52:45.245)
right.

Eric Skeldon (52:45.838)
make our money back on that. So really what we're doing now is repackaging, redeveloping that all like the little bit under half a million we put into the intellectual property. And we're positioning that and packaging that to get basically to get more of the financing for a $50 million to do it really well. So it's almost like most people in the industry, they only have a script and maybe like some AI pictures on a pitch deck. Whereas we have half a million dollars of film, of shooting, of trailers.

of concept art of decks. So now we're kind of repackaging that to bring to do a bigger thing. So that's one.

Paul Povolni (53:20.733)
Well, you're definitely not starting small when you talk Lord of the Rings Chronicles of Narnia, Matrix and Dune. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (53:25.006)
Exactly. You know, that's why we don't we don't want to do it cheap because Dune just did 150 million budget to do Dune 2, which was you've seen it. It was like it was amazing. It was like it was literally cinema gold. And it's like Dennis did such a great job and just all the actors. And, you know, when I see that, I'm like, I don't want to do just the one million dollar fantasy. Like I got to do it good. So now we're taking everything we did. And like I said, nothing is wasted. You know, so we put half a million dollars into the concept.

Paul Povolni (53:36.253)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (53:46.525)
Yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (53:54.126)
So it's not wasted, but it's gonna give now people the, of what, like, hey, we did this for super cheap, low budget, but imagine if we had 50 million, imagine if we had 70 million and we know how to shoot in South Africa where we could triple the budget in South Africa. So we're even building film connections and studios in South Africa where the US dollar compared to the Rand, we can, you know, 4X our production budget. So 25 million, we could do a hundred million to our budget film. So it's like, there's just a lot of cool things God's teaching us, but.

Paul Povolni (54:03.037)
Right, right.

Right.

Paul Povolni (54:15.869)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (54:22.51)
I would say, so yeah, that's the big one. That's like the next 10 years of my life, bringing that to life, this trilogy, and making sure we do it well. So that's that. And then we have a smaller budget TV series. So we have a card game and TV series. It's gonna be more of the animation we're gonna do.

Paul Povolni (54:27.633)
Yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (54:52.462)
Sorry, my two year old is like knocking on my door right now.

Paul Povolni (54:54.013)
Heheheheh

Yeah, that's okay.

Eric Skeldon (55:00.814)
So yeah, the animation, we have a TV series, we have a card game. So if you think about with that one, you could think about Pokemon and like Yu -Gi So it's gonna be a TV series and a card game launched together. And the card game is already developed. It's already an amazing card game. It's being tested by...

Paul Povolni (55:09.629)
Mm -hmm.

Paul Povolni (55:17.373)
So is that in the fantasy space as well or is that in a different category? Okay.

Eric Skeldon (55:20.462)
Yeah, fantasy trading card space kind of like very Pokemon, Yu -Gi but we call it like Yu -Gi or Magic the Gathering without all the witchcraft and without all the evil stuff. So it's still a cool fantasy for youth, but it's not going to have all the demonic stuff.

Paul Povolni (55:31.121)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (55:36.829)
So is that what you lean to and that's going to be the goal of what you're doing? Is high budget fantasy stuff or is there other kinds of stories that you're wanting to do?

Eric Skeldon (55:44.302)
Yeah, that's a good point. So there's documentaries. We have one documentary on our slate. It's called Wealth with Purpose and it's like the biblical version of The Secret. So think of the secret and like, you know, Tony Robbins style, like all these, you know, manifestation type people. But we're going to follow the story of Chick -fil -A, how it got founded and stewarded, the story of Hobby Lobby, the story of Annie Anne's, the story of even the Hot Cheetos. Hot Cheetos was invented by Richard Montanez.

Paul Povolni (55:53.309)
Okay.

Paul Povolni (56:04.381)
wow.

Eric Skeldon (56:13.422)
and Hot Cheetos, the story of even like our Kingdom War story, other, so other cool stories we're gonna share where God, they got a God idea and they stewarded it well and they launched it and it impacted people. So we're gonna basically give credit to that. So we have documentaries, we have a Johnny Cash family and the hip hop, this hip hop connections, Johnny Cash thing, and why he had a heart for prison reform in prisons. So we're gonna do that whole thing.

Paul Povolni (56:25.981)
That's amazing.

Paul Povolni (56:38.717)
Yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (56:41.966)
And we're talking to some people in his family to do that. So we're gonna do a number of things. And I think even Christian films, we're gonna do some overtly Christian films. Think of God's Not Dead. So we're working with Chuck and Carrie on some different things. And so we're gonna do some Christian films with them. But I think what we wanna do is we want to definitely tell films that matter and that are gonna create impact and that are just stories that are really cool. They're like, man, why has nobody done this?

Paul Povolni (56:50.589)
Yeah, right.

Paul Povolni (57:10.589)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (57:11.054)
The stories are like, why, like this has to be done. Like nobody's done this, this is crazy. We should have done this already. And we want to bring this to life.

Paul Povolni (57:16.765)
Yeah. So Christian movie. So Christian movies have traditionally got a bad reputation. You know, people, people haven't been a fan of them. People have said, you know, they're terribly made or they're overly preachy or they're just, they seem second rate. What are some movies that for you have stood out that you feel are well done? These, these are movies that people have really elevated the game in the space.

Because I feel there are some that have done that. What are some that stand out to you?

Eric Skeldon (57:52.302)
Yeah, I just saw the movie by Kingdom of Story Company, Unsung Heroes. They did a really good job. So Unsung Heroes, even the... Yeah, Unsung Heroes, Jesus Revolution was awesome and just like, just seeing Lonnie Frisbee and seeing the story and like, he was a misfit, you know? He was like this hippie dude and like, you know, just had so much impact and all these people saved and teach people about Holy Spirit and just like...

Paul Povolni (57:56.349)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (58:05.533)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (58:12.605)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (58:19.886)
living in the spirit of love and just like loving people, even though they don't look like you or they don't look like, you know, they're different than you. And so that was really impactful. I think, yeah, Dune II actually, even though it's not a Christian film, Dune II is this, it was like, I say we need to learn a lot more from what they did in Dune II. Like it was just so powerful, the storytelling, just the cinematography. And so.

Paul Povolni (58:41.725)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (58:46.51)
I think we got to think like that level. And then of course, you know, Star Wars, a lot of it was, you know, Christian, it was like Christian thinking, even though obviously they're putting like biblical stuff in it. But, you know, Anakin, for instance, was his mom, you know, didn't have a father, there was no dad, you know? So they took that story. But of course, Anakin was like, not like Jesus, because he turned into Darth Vader, but.

Paul Povolni (59:02.301)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (59:08.765)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (59:14.973)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (59:16.014)
But it's like there was a lot of those those stories. Of course, Lord of the Rings Chronicles Narnia. I got to meet Cary Granit. Cary Granit started with one hundred million dollars with Phil Anschutz, a Jewish billionaire, and he started the company Walden Media. So they made holes. They made a journey to the center of the earth. They made Chronicles Narnia, all of them. Prince of Caspian. Some of the later Chronicles are not Chronicles Narnia. Yeah, Chronicles Narnia. Yeah, some of the later Chronicles Narnia.

Paul Povolni (59:32.893)
Mm -hmm.

Eric Skeldon (59:46.222)
stopped making money or didn't do as well. But yeah, I mean, the Karnakas Narnia, definitely the Aslan, the way they showed Aslan and like seeing like the father and like his heart was always just really fascinating. Even Lion King, Lion King when you have, when Simba almost got him and his cousin Nala killed or whatever. And then, you know, he was like, the father was so like sad and like disappointed because he...

Paul Povolni (59:55.004)
Right, right.

Eric Skeldon (01:00:11.79)
because his son was leading them astray into this darkness and could have got killed or was about to get killed. And instead of disciplining them, they take him up this hill and he basically just loves on his son and just says, I'm like, look, I love you. I don't want you to die. And basically just loved on his son. And so I used to always cry during that scene because I always wanted a father like that.

Paul Povolni (01:00:17.405)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (01:00:35.95)
So Lion King was just like always, and then I'm, you know, being from South Africa, I always like love lions in Africa. And that was always impactful. So I always wanted to do animations like that, that showed the father through animation, through even whether it's an animal or whatever, that showed the father's heart. And so that's, you know, movies like Wall -E, Wall -E was always big to show like consumerism and just to show like, you know, American consumerism and like, like we consume too much. So we're not even thinking about.

Paul Povolni (01:00:35.965)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:00:52.285)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:00:58.685)
Right.

Eric Skeldon (01:01:05.102)
veterans or homeless or not thinking about the people and the poor people and like and we're just all just shopping so much and it's like I've always wanted to make movies like that animations to just expose you know just expose like like how are we all falling as sheep for this system of just like you know we're we're just so distracted we're so unfocused on what God has for us that we're just sitting here like becoming fat and lazy and like so I think I've always loved stuff like that.

even though they're not even overtly Christian films, you know, they're not they're not they don't have to preach Bible verses, but they're telling us reality and things that we need to watch out for. I Am Legend was one of my favorite movies with Will Smith. They're making a new one. Even some of the Guardians of the Galaxy, like Chris Pratt and some of those and like him having to like be like this guy and his all his orphan thinking and things he learned from, you know, the hardship and trauma of his parents and his whole origin story.

Paul Povolni (01:01:32.893)
Yeah, yeah.

Eric Skeldon (01:02:01.39)
and what Chris Pratt had to do and like, always inspired me and like, I used to always love that character as a kid with Marvel. I used to always have all these Marvel comics and stuff. And so I think just, go on.

Paul Povolni (01:02:11.965)
So with, go ahead.

Eric Skeldon (01:02:15.726)
Yeah, so like even The Matrix was my favorite trilogy, one of my favorite trilogies of all time. Neo, they had stories like Neo, The One, which of course is very biblical, Trinity, Nebuchadnezzar. They had Zion, you know, Zion's the home. My daughter's name, my oldest daughter's name is Zion, with a Zion with a. So like it all connects movies and stuff. And so I think it's, there's amazing ways to.

Paul Povolni (01:02:33.213)
Right, right.

wow.

Eric Skeldon (01:02:44.942)
to speak to power, but also speak to people straight to the hearts through movies. And that's why I'm working at mobilizing the best of the industry where I don't have to be, I'm the best filmmaker, because I'm not. But what I can do is I can see the vision for film, and I have a heart for film and the industry. So I could bring everyone together and help bring a system of bringing financing so they can make the best creators. And hopefully, I'll play a small piece in it on getting movies done.

Paul Povolni (01:03:09.373)
Yeah. So if, if budget wasn't a problem, what would be the movie that you'd make?

Eric Skeldon (01:03:17.358)
The Matrix trilogy. So like my own version of the Matrix trilogy, Lord of the Rings style movies. Like I'll make my own Lord of the Rings style trilogy, my own, you know, like the way my brain sees it with the best creatives. I bring the best writers, creatives, people who also love that vision. And I just keep making my own Lord of the Rings Chronicles Narnia style trilogy. And then I'd make my own Matrix like us versus AI type trilogy that speaks real good story and like good just.

Paul Povolni (01:03:45.469)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (01:03:46.542)
shows you who you are in the spirit and like how you're meant, you're born for more and you're, you know, we're not just meant to live here, pay our bills, pay our taxes and die. And like, that's not just what we're here for. And just awaken people. I'd make films that would just awaken people to their purpose, to their potential and to show them that, you know, pretty much we were fed a lie our whole life and that we have to break free from the lie we were fed.

Paul Povolni (01:04:12.925)
Right. So if you could speak to the younger Eric from years ago, what would you tell him?

Eric Skeldon (01:04:20.814)
Yeah, I would just wake him up a lot quicker and say like, the time is now, start dreaming big, start doing everything you set your mind to, believe in yourself. There's no limits. There's only the devil can only, the only power the devil has is the power of agreement you give him. You know, like you're loved that God has, he has you and he has great plans for you. But we also have to wake up to the fact that he's given us a level of dominion that

It's up to us to really start getting a lot of this done. And yeah, he'll bring in the people, he'll bring in the angels to protect you. He'll bring in all the things you need to live in life and godliness, but you have to actually make decisions. You have to actually move. You have to go. You have to make your dreams happen and you have to actually go for it. And don't be afraid.

Paul Povolni (01:05:10.845)
That's amazing. And so for, for somebody that is, you know, is a Christian and they're interested in moviemaking and cinema and, you know, all the things that you've talked about today, how did they get ahold of you? What's the best way to get ahold of you and be, become a part of your world?

Eric Skeldon (01:05:28.014)
Yeah, you can just, Eric Skelton on all social medias, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, just DM me, you know, movies, DM me. You know, I want to get involved with movies and Christian media. And yeah, I'll get back to you. We have a free, there's 4 ,000 people. It's called Kingdom Warriors Global Community. It's kind of our, you know, global community we have in our guides. We have just tons of resources to, we've had dozens of businesses launched through our free community.

We've had a couple get married from South Africa and Indiana through our community. We just had our first marriage. We've had tons of people get jobs through our community. So it's just a kingdom of networks where people are thinking about creativity, but also business and how to be sustainable so we can go after our passions and stuff, but also have the same sustainability because sometimes your passions don't start paying off right away.

Paul Povolni (01:06:23.101)
Right. Well, and you also have a book, Kingdom Mind on Amazon. So be sure if you want to learn more about Eric and what he's about, check out the book, Kingdom Mind on Amazon as well. Eric, thank you so much for being on today, man. It's been great hearing your story.

Eric Skeldon (01:06:37.55)
Come on, Paul. I'm glad I'm on. And yeah, forgive me for in the past, we've been talking about movies and stuff and I haven't been able to show. I know you've been wanting to watch our movie, but I haven't. We only have right now, John Rhys Davies, like a minute and 20, where he's kind of sharing the story. But we're going to have a lot more to show soon. Now that Scott is coming on from Star Wars and he's really, he's going to redo our trailer and stuff so we could re -show it. And like, so I'm excited once he polishes up so we could release more.

Paul Povolni (01:06:53.373)
Yeah.

Eric Skeldon (01:07:05.326)
of what we have, but we just, we're thinking a lot bigger now, you know, before we were just thinking low budget, let's just make something, but now we're thinking a lot bigger and yeah, we'll see, we'll see what happens. It's gonna be cool.

Paul Povolni (01:07:08.477)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:07:15.357)
Well, I'm excited for you, man. I think it's awesome and keep going, man. Keep going.