Behind the Scenes of Pasha Eshghi: From Unknown Filmmaker to Directing NHL & NFL Stars (How?)
In an age filled with uncertainty for freelancers —
Your fate is sealed.
Either you will be the anomaly and flourish — or you will fail, as most do.
Pasha Eshghi was the anomaly, but he didn’t accidentally create the comedy documentary series BizNasty Does BC, sell it to Barstool Sports, get it released and receive over 10 million views in the first month.
Rather, his success was the result of numerous failures, hard work, continuous learning, networking and of course, never giving up.
Today, we get a sneak peek into the mind of someone who has successfully accomplished what most only dream about.
Pasha Eshghi
Eshghi grew up an avid hockey fan with a distinct love for comedy. From the time he could hold a camera he was obsessed with entertaining the world through comedic videos. As the years passed his love for comedy and film became one.
After graduating film school he set out on his journey to continue making comedic videos, but he was destined for a similar, but different path.
Today his clients include numerous professional athletes from the NHL, NFL and NBA. In addition, he has worked with stars like Alexander Ludwig, who starred in Hunger Games, Vikings and the upcoming Bad Boys 3.
Eshghi never imagined that he could make a living off of combining his three passions — film-making, comedy and hockey, but today he is living his dream and showing the world a lighter side of athletes through comedic films.
Failure
Each day, most of us dream of success, freedom and financial independence, but few of us are actually willing to work for it.
We want to relax in the sun on the beach while we earn millions, but aren’t willing to sacrifice to get there.
Ideas come and go — Yet, we complain when we see others making millions off an idea that we had once, but the majority of people are afraid to act for fear of failure.
“Failing to sell a series I spent months creating is still to this day one of the biggest learning experiences of my career.” — (Pasha Eshghi, 2019)
During an interview with Eshghi he revealed that his greatest learning experiences were in fact failures. Yes, the successes were amazing, but it was the failures in his life that taught him the lessons he needed to reach his true potential.
Hard Work
After graduating film school, Eshghi wanted to pave his path as a freelance filmmaker. Early on, it was tough to land gigs and have clients trust him with their visions because he didn’t have a proven track record.
At this point, most people give up and I believe that this is where we can all take a lesson from Eshghi — Rather than quit, he became increasingly vigilant in chasing down opportunities, took on projects that were not of any interest and even spent time doing monotonous tasks such as organizing and labeling footage for others.
Things are slow in the beginning, but eventually the snowball builds, two clients become four, your reputation for over delivering gets out and a few years later, you become an overnight success.
Never Give Up
Before Eshghi became an “overnight success,” there were many days that he wanted to throw in the towel.
One of the major problems in any business is the struggle to get your work seen (and ideally, to do so at a profit).
Eshghi produced, directed, edited and co-wrote an action/comedy in 2016 called SWERVE and immediately began trying to sell it.
For an entire year he heard things like—
“We aren’t interested sorry”
“Yes, we are interested, but we have to wait for X, Y, Z first”.
It was terribly discouraging for Eshghi, but he refused to give up.
After a year of long tireless days and this back and fourth with no signs of distribution in sight, he decided to release the series for free on YouTube (which had, at the time of inception, been his original plan). While he believed in SWERVE, he knew it was time to take the lessons he had learned during this process and move onto the next project.
Networking
During my conversation with Eshghi, he stressed the importance of meeting new people, helping others when you can and developing friendships.
“Regardless of how hard you work, you’ll never achieve success alone. Relationships are the cornerstone of success” — (Pasha Eshghi, 2019)
Eshghi was always a very sociable person growing up, and some of the friendships he has forged over the years have evolved into invaluable working relationships. He will be the first to tell you that his success would not have been possible without the friendships he had built with people like BizNasty (Biz) and Alexander Ludwig.
Sometimes the friendships we build can even change our lives
“In early 2017 I vividly remember receiving a text from Biz, who at the time was a casual buddy of mine, saying “Let’s make a documentary together this summer.” That was a text that changed the trajectory of my career completely. That summer we went through the trenches together to make BizNasty Does BC, and both the friendship and working relationship that came from that has been extremely rewarding. We have a terrific creative chemistry where we rattle ideas off of each other, and admittedly, some of his are crazier than mine. He sometimes refers to me as his filter, and for his ideas that stick, I then work to bring his ideas to life through the medium of film.” — (Pasha Eshghi, 2019)
In fall of 2017 Eshghi completed a new project called BizNasty Does BC but was yet again struggling to sell it after disaster struck and his original distributor bowed out due to a lack of funding.
For four months, he struggled, received rejections and truly believed that his project may never see the light of day.
“This was incredibly frustrating after all the blood, sweat and tears we had poured into it.” — (Pasha Eshghi, 2019)
When all hope seemed to have been lost, Eshghi’s good friend Biz linked up with Barstool Sports for a podcast, and simultaneously pitched project.
Barstool Sports President, Dave Portnoy saw the project and immediately said that he wanted it on his platform. Six months later, the project was complete and released on Barstool Sports.
Within the first month, BizNasty Does BC received over 10 million views and everything had changed for Eshghi and his team.
What originally appeared to be disaster with the original distributor backing out turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened, and it was a direct result of networking and friendships.
As with many freelancers in the world today, during the early stages they were working with a small budget and without the support of their network, they may not have been able to pull off the project.
Sam Reinhart and Morgan Rielly, friends of Eshghi and members of the National Hockey League volunteered their time to appear in the project and were even happy to go along with the silly ideas Eshghi and Biz threw at them, sometimes even contributing with funny ideas of their own.
So, after calling in some favors and leveraging their network immensely, they were able to pull it off, but not without the countless acts of selflessness and contributions from people like Reinhart and Rielly, the project would not have come to fruition.
The opportunities that arose out of the Barstool Partnership was immeasurable and just like that, Eshghi was officially an overnight success after years and years of hard work.
Eshghi and Biz have just recently completed a series with the NHL called NHL First Timer, and when asked about what the future may hold, he was careful not to tip his hat, but teased “There’s plenty more hilarious, star-studded content on the way.”
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