We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Trey Braheem a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Trey thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Our mission was to create an experience that we weren’t finding elsewhere in the social scenes in Los Angeles. One of my business partners and I were talking one night about how we wanted to go out somewhere where the music was good, where you could grab a good drink and a little bite to eat, where we could dance if we wanted to but also sit down someplace comfortable and meet some new people if we were feeling like socializing. We were looking for an environment that was comfortable but also sparked intrigue – a place that was safe and sophisticated, where our creative and social desires could be fulfilled. So that’s when we decided to start hosting our own events, so we could create a space like that. In the beginning, it was popping up at different spaces in downtown for after hours parties once every month or so, but now it’s become our own venue with multiple event series, a record store, and an art gallery.

Trey, 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’m an independent filmmaker and creative producer. Filmmaking is my solo pursuit and passion – it’s really the purpose I’ve chosen for my life and my biggest love. But it’s hard to deny the success I’ve had as a creative producer in the music and art industries, and at this point it’s an equally significant part of my career and who I am.

Around town most people know me for being one of the founders of MELT, a house music event series that is deeply rooted in community and blends multiple elements of experience together. Alongside the music, we’ve incorporated food, fashion, visual arts, and immersive experience into our parties. After a year of putting on events, we got our own space which led to us opening up Agora, a dance music record store and fine art gallery. Recently we’ve curated shows with Risk and Keith Haring, and we have the only legitimate record store in the city for finding deep cut electronic music.

Being a filmmaker at heart, I’ve been independently producing a documentary series about the culture of electronic dance music called Sounds After Midnight. With being constantly immersed in the rich, vibrant world of the house and techno scene, I couldn’t help but start turning it into a movie.

I got into doing what I do by listening to my desires and then committing myself to figuring out a way to make them happen. I started from square one in all of this. I never had any prior industry connections. I could never land a job in film or entertainment. I had to start with my own independent projects – and from there, things just took off.

I think what sets me and my work apart from a lot of other stuff in the space is that I’m just doing the things that excite me. It’s never profit motivated – my only concern is creating the thing I want to experience, the thing that I can’t find elsewhere. Of course, money is necessary to make it happen, but the goal isn’t to get rich with some self serving agenda, it’s to create something that I love and find beautiful.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Getting the money together to start the business began with scraping together whatever I could from my savings, and putting as much as I could into the account. Once I had enough to make it feel real, I started taking action and setting things into motion. That gave me the confidence to start talking about what I was doing, and once I started talking about it more people became interested and wanted to invest in order to help make it happen. But in the beginning, it was about living off as little as I could, working as hard as I could, and putting everything I could into it to get the fire started.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Word of mouth. If you do what you do well, other people will bring you all the clients you need.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @agora.dtla @melt.dtla @trey_braheem