Radu Dascălul: From Former Police Officer to Co-Founder of DAR Media

Discover Radu Dascălul’s journey, co-founder of DAR Media, from police officer to digital marketing and supporting 300+ businesses.

Radu Dascălul has been active in the marketing space since 2011. He is the co-founder of DAR Media, the digital marketing agency that helps online shops and service businesses attract new clients, offer them the best possible buying experience, and profitably turn them into loyal customers. In the 8+ years of the agency, he has worked with over 300 businesses from multiple niches, mainly in Romania but also abroad.

C&B: How would you describe yourself in a single sentence, to spark curiosity among those who don’t know you yet?
Radu Dascălul: I am a former police officer who resigned on my very first day of work to do something I enjoyed more: marketing and business. From 2011 until now, marketing has been a constant in my professional life – from affiliate marketing, network marketing, marketing for NGOs, and most importantly, running my own online marketing agency.

C&B: If we were to follow a narrative thread of your career or business, what were the key moments that defined you?
Radu Dascălul: I know that when we think of key moments, we imagine those major events, filled with emotion. But key moments are also those quiet ones, when it feels like “nothing wow” is happening, but which, in the bigger picture, are crucial. Like choosing to keep moving forward with discipline, day after day, without straying off the path. Or adding and removing small habits or people from your daily environment. But if we talk about the louder, more “obvious” key moments, I’d say:

• I wanted to be a police officer and was admitted to the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Police Academy.
• I no longer wanted to be a police officer after almost 2 years of studies – that’s when marketing, psychology, and personal development came into my life. After finishing the Academy, I resigned and left the system.
• I went on a two-and-a-half-year journey around Romania with an NGO that promoted tourism on one hand and inspirational people in local communities on the other. I didn’t do this alone but together with 13 co-founder friends. It was a fantastic journey filled with adventures, new skills, friendships, hundreds of places visited across 15 counties, hundreds of interviews conducted, and grassroots marketing.
• I decided to leave the NGO (initially planned to last 5 years). Together with two of its founding members, I co-founded DAR Media, a marketing agency, in January 2017.
• The 2020 pandemic made us pivot from working mainly with HoReCa and course businesses to eCommerce and service businesses.

C&B: What has been the most difficult moment in your journey so far, and how did you overcome it?
Radu Dascălul: The hardest moment actually happened four times in my career so far: facing the disapproval of my loved ones while staying focused on the new direction and giving it my all. This happened when I left the police, when I left my job to join the NGO, and later when I started the agency.
I overcame it by learning to set healthy boundaries and reminding myself of the “why” or the “stakes” behind the new path I had chosen. It may sound easy now, but at the time, those moments were intense. During the pandemic, another tough challenge was pivoting our services to eCommerce, which also carried a heavy weight.

C&B: Is there a dream or ambition that has always guided you, regardless of obstacles?
Radu Dascălul: Yes, I’d say there’s been a recurring theme that has taken different shapes: to use my “talents,” my abilities, to support and uplift the people around me. Whether I did it through writing, the NGO, or the agency, this theme has remained and given me energy to keep going, even when things didn’t look so bright.

C&B: How did you look at the beginning of your journey, and how do you feel you’ve transformed until now?
Radu Dascălul: At the start of my journey in marketing and entrepreneurship, I was more of a dreamer, more idealistic. I haven’t lost those traits, but experience has shown me the huge volume of details and skills behind successful marketing campaigns. I’ve also learned to distinguish what is truly a priority from what isn’t, and to say NO to situations, people, or collaborations that don’t align with my key directions.

C&B: If we were to meet your team or collaborators, what do you think they would say about you?
Radu Dascălul: That sometimes I can be very insistent and stubborn. (laughs) But at the same time, I think they’d say I stand by them and that together we find win-win solutions, especially in tough situations.

Over time, I’ve noticed that challenges – whether external (market changes, new competitors, new technologies) or internal (role conflicts, unclear responsibilities, shifting goals and values) – can actually be opportunities to improve collaboration. But this requires embracing the discomfort of clashing opinions or values, and even the possibility of ending the collaboration.
I’ve had great working relationships where open discussions allowed colleagues to switch roles and become happier and more fulfilled. And there were also situations where parting ways amicably was the right choice for that moment.

C&B: What is the most important decision you’ve ever made that changed your trajectory?
Radu Dascălul: Definitely resigning from the police changed my career path completely. But beyond that, there are two less glamorous yet equally important decisions:

• First: choosing to stop looking only at isolated micro-level solutions and instead focusing on the big picture, on the numbers, and working backward to the elements that produce the client’s desired result.
• Second: committing to continuous education. And that doesn’t just mean adding new skills, but also letting go of beliefs and habits that no longer serve me… you know, those “mental gremlins” whispering that I can’t, that it’s not the right time, or that come up with endless excuses.

C&B: How did you build your leadership style and decision-making process? Was it natural or learned?
Radu Dascălul: To start with the end: it was learned over time, sometimes proactively, other times the hard way, through failure. In terms of decision-making, I prefer participatory leadership, where I collaborate with colleagues, everyone contributes perspectives, and in the end, the decision with the strongest arguments remains.
What I’ve learned through the years at the agency is to alternate leadership styles depending on the situation, role, or objective. As much as I’d like to standardize everything, people are different. Sometimes coaching is needed for the team to technically understand an activity. Other times I need to emphasize vision – where we’ll get if we do certain things. In other cases, I take a more transactional approach, like when I monitor specific projects or team workflows.

C&B: What do you think sets your business or professional approach apart from the rest of the industry?
Radu Dascălul: I can’t say my business invented a brand-new “Holy Grail.”
But there are a few things we do well and keep improving:

• First, whether we’re working only on paid ads, for example, or handling several marketing activities, we always look at the variables influencing results – the big picture. This helps us calibrate expectations and clearly outline what we can and cannot support with our services.
• Second, our services are structured to cover the entire acquisition process that our clients’ customers go through.
• Third, we document our agency’s experiences in content across different formats, and we invest continuously in education, methods, and tools that foster growth. Yes, including AI tools and automations that boost productivity and work quality.
• Lastly, we invest resources in strengthening our ecosystem of partnerships and collaborations, so that when a client has a specific need we can’t fulfill directly, we connect them with the best people or businesses who can. We aim to be true growth partners for our clients – supporting them not only with marketing but also with dedication, support, and related solutions.

C&B: What does a typical day look like for you now, and which moments bring you the greatest satisfaction?
Radu Dascălul: A typical day is a mix of:

• Professional activities: from creating content for my personal and agency brand, to managing agency operations and improving our workflows – from sales to client service to team management. Alongside calls and meetings, I also do networking in business and marketing communities and keep up with industry news.
• Personal activities: spending time with my wife and daughter, going to the gym, or reading/listening to good educational material. These moments of connection with my family give me a foundation of well-being and confidence, which I then carry into my professional life.

As for the moments that bring me the most satisfaction, I’d say there are three types:

1. When we remove an acute pain point – for example, when we take over a client and stop their massive budget losses or fix a site/ad account issue blocking their operations.
2. When we achieve or surpass a goal after months of consistent work across multiple areas, with many colleagues involved.
3. When I, my colleagues, or clients have an “AHA” moment that changes how we approach things. And it’s not just the idea itself, but the fact that in that moment the idea sinks into our “muscles,” it gets internalized. Sometimes that AHA comes after lots of effort and failures; other times it comes naturally, in a quiet moment between tasks or in a discussion with peers.

All these moments give me satisfaction and, at the same time, motivation to keep improving.

C&B: What values or principles guide you in what you do, and how do you apply them day to day?
Radu Dascălul: I think we’ve all experienced or heard of companies where the values look nice on the wall or at the reception, but everyday reality is different. That’s something I strive for daily – to embody the things I and my colleagues declare, in concrete behaviors.

For me, these values are:

• Respect for clients and colleagues, for different perspectives and beliefs.
• Integrity, meaning the alignment between what we think, say, and do – both for clients and ourselves.
• Excellence, which is primarily an attitude. It doesn’t mean doing everything perfectly, but aiming to improve and deliver increasingly better services/experiences. To live this value, we place a big emphasis on education – investing in courses, tools, and certifications, but also offering education through our blog, client discussions, social media, and free downloadable resources.
• Care, the human side of excellence – being attentive to colleagues’ and clients’ needs, doing things with as much dedication as possible.
• Love – doing things from a good state of mind, things that we are passionate about and curious about. I don’t believe you can take things to the next level if you’re only doing them because you “have to.”

C&B: How did you come up with the idea of starting this business and giving it this name?
Radu Dascălul: It was early 2017. I had decided to leave the Romania promotion project, together with my colleagues Dumitru and Adelina. I remember we sat down and laid out all the experience we had gathered in the NGO and before. Our first thought was to open a travel agency, given our background. But then, looking at our acquired skills, the market’s needs, and the resources we had at the time, we concluded we wanted to focus on our strengths: marketing, communication, and sales. That’s how DAR Media was born – a mix between the acronym of our names (Dumitru, Adelina, Radu) and our key message: every business and every person has strengths, gifts to offer the market. Through our gift – digital marketing – we support entrepreneurs in amplifying their gifts (the products and services they offer).

Our first clients were HoReCa and service businesses we had met and promoted during the NGO journey. That was our advantage: we weren’t starting entirely from scratch, we already had many connections and understood the challenges HoReCa businesses face. Back then, far fewer companies in the industry promoted themselves online. Part of our work was also educating the market, which we took on willingly, in discussions with these businesses.

C&B: If you were to send a message to people who want to follow your example, what would it be?
Radu Dascălul: Set a meaningful direction, one that matters to you and also serves others. Take massive action in that direction. Adjust along the way – looking back, I could have acted faster instead of waiting for the “perfect moment.”
I’d also add that fulfillment doesn’t come only from achieving things but from giving… from sharing your authenticity, knowledge, and experiences. No matter what stage of your career you’re at, you’re always a few steps ahead of someone who could greatly benefit from your experience. On this note, I’ll share a book that was gifted to me and influenced my vision and way of doing things, both personally and professionally: The Go-Giver (actually a whole series) by Bob Burg and John David Mann.

Radu Dascălul’s story shows how passion, discipline, and the will to create value can transform a career and build a successful business.