Episode #52: "Creating Big Work Beyond the Major Film Hubs" w/ President & EP Josh Carrasquillo of Taproot Pictures

I mean, what kept you determined in those early years to make all these commutes and make all these relationships and trying to get sales?

So when we were doing our coaching all those years ago, my wife was just pregnant, right? And with our first kid, I have three kids, eight, six, and three.

Girl, boy, girl, which everybody wants to know, usually, right? And...

At that time, it was a it was a hard time.

You know, it was things were not, you know, we weren't where we wanted to be, I guess, financially.

And so there was a motivation just in internally of the business needs to grow in order to support the growing needs of of not only the company and the staff, but my family as well.

And so the motivation for me personally was like, I know I can do this.

I have the skill set to, to do this.

Um, and I had to, you know, just trust that like this was the right decision.

Um, and you know, I think it wasn't without a lot of failure, you know, uh, I don't know the percentage.

I didn't never kept track of, of meetings that never panned out to be anything, but it was the majority.

Yeah.

You know, so it really, for me, just came from a place of having

to make it work.

Do you feel like you were committed to Grand Rapids being like the base for Taproot the whole time? Because like I ask because there's so much noise around of like, should I move here? Should I go there? Should I do this? Is the reason this isn't working because I'm just in the wrong part of the country? You know, bring into your mindset there a little bit when you were experiencing all this failure.

I think early on in your career, what you're really building is instincts.

You're building, as you get more reps in, even when I was at the tech company and before and freelancing, the more reps you're getting, you're building instincts so that you can see and discern and you're listening out for what's real and what's not real.

And as everybody knows here, every client communicates differently.

Every business has different expectations.

And When you're in that problem solving mode, which is what we do, we're we're high level problem solvers as filmmakers.

Right.

Those lessons really provide a basis for filmmaking.

And so like when the thought creeps in of like, man, I can't be successful here.

Why? Why? Why can't I be successful here? It's like, well, there's no evidence.

in that experience over the years that you can't be successful from for me personally it was it was more clear that the reason why we weren't growing was purely relational and awareness like people looked all about us and i didn't know enough people and the portfolio wasn't there so we were growing slowly but the thought the question is like constantly creeping up in the back of your mind what if i'm in the wrong place right seems like everybody who You know, what's on the agency side, especially creative directors and people and other filmmakers who are from out of town would always say, like, if you really want to make it, you have to go to L.A.