We recently connected with Jonathan Marcantoni and have shared our conversation below.

Jonathan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew your brand.

The hardest thing about starting a business and maintaining it is building a team. Finding people who match your energy, commitment, and who you can get along with is one of those magic tricks that is as much about luck as it is research. A resume only tells you what a person has does, not who they are. Part of the difficulty of finding and sustaining team members is that you don’t really know if someone is a good fit until they have had enough opportunities to show you who they are. Even starting a business with close friends, if you have never worked with those people, you don’t know that side of them.

Scaling up is only possible if you know yourself and if you can clearly state your goals. While the people you bring in may be wrong for your vision, the fault of that lies with you as much as with them. If you did not effectively state your goals from the outset, it isn’t your team members fault for not meeting your expectations. At the same time, you have to be forgiving of yourself for not getting large, complex ideas right the first time.

How you react to the initial failures of launching a company is the best predictor of whether that company will or will not fail. When you see something isn’t working, have the courage to change it. Be bold enough to say I’m wrong and its not the fault of others. Be brave enough to face your disappointment with yourself, process that disappointment, and get up the next day to pave the newer, better path your vision needs to take.

The persistence to fall and get back up is how you scale up. But the actual scaling up won’t happen until you can clearly articulate who you are, what your company is, and what kinds of teammates you need to make it succeed.

Jonathan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started Flamboyán Theatre initially because I wanted to change the cultural and artistic landscape of the city I live in, Denver. I tried to used my experiences as a writer and producer, particularly the experience of producing my play Puerto Rican Nocturne in 2019/2020 and again in 2022, to build a template for training and empowering other writers.

This original mission was too vague, and lead to several dead ends and difficult situations. Last Fall, I decided to adjust course and focus the theatre on Puerto Rican writers and being a home for Puerto Ricans in a region where we are underrepresented. We are now moving ahead with efforts to produce two new plays and complete a series of workshops for our playwrighting program.

I am proud of the innovation and persistence my team has shown through all the changes over the past year.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to empower Puerto Rican creatives to tell their stories in order to diversify a Latino arts and media environment that minimizes or erases the cultures and histories of non-Mexican Latinos. The Puerto Rican experience within the US is distinct in that we are colonized subject of the United States, and we deserve platforms that tell our stories, especially in this time of anti-colonial sentiment.

Now is the perfect time to push new perspectives, storytelling models, and artistic expression.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There is no one way to do it. While there are school programs and organizations dedicated to professionalizing the arts world, the fact is that there is no singular model. In non-creative fields, there is often a rigid hierarchy and a professional blueprint, but for creatives, we can make our own blueprint, and that is something we can also teach others. There are times to follow the basics and there are types to build upon a foundation, and then there are times to blow it all up. I love that flexibility and ingenuity to pursuing my goals.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://flamboyantheatre.com/
• Instagram: @flamboyan_theater
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-marcantoni-14919b3a/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nv11eCQK3M&t=5s