We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joselito II De Los Angeles a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joselito II, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I came up with Intertwined Studios while eating a donut.

In September of 2022, my wife and I made the decision to integrate her as a co-owner into our business! I decided that there were enough changes in my life personally that I wanted to rebrand and start fresh with her. When I initially started my business, I was in school for my Bachelor’s of music at University. Naturally, my business was based off of live music and serving weddings, galas and corporate events to name a few.

My graduation year couldn’t have come at a worse time though – COVID happened and all of my classes were cut and I had no opportunities for live performance. I didn’t even have a graduation ceremony. To make a long story short, I used this time to pivot into a different medium – photography and cinematography.

Fast forward to September 2022 and we now had a business that had new skillsets – live music and photography and cinematography. It is an unusual combination but one I am deeply involved in. We needed a new name that represented these changes so we went to a cafe downtown to brainstorm these new changes.

While I was there, I ordered this really amazing donut. It was warm and crunchy and sprinkled with sugar. It reminded me of the twisted sugar donuts; it was then I started making the connection that the donut was intertwined and that my skillsets were now also intertwined. I also like to think that we become a little intertwined with our clients after every project we do.

The name stuck and thankfully it’s here to stay!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was always surrounded by music as a kid. My mom sang, my dad sang and played piano, my sister sang and my brother played harmonica and guitar. It was unavoidable.

Going into university, I really didn’t know what kinds of things were possible as an artist from a work standpoint. My only thought process was thought you could make money from playing music live and… that was it. It took me a year to notice that these gigs also need agents, arrangers, social media managers, stylists, and so much more.

I realized that many of my friends (including the most talented) needed help booking gigs and didn’t know how to approach this side of the business; people would often come to me seeking work or even advice on how to approach a client conversation or how to market themselves. That’s how I ended up starting my business.

Today, I mainly act as a booking manager sending musicians out to play shows. Because I now have the skills to take photos and video, I can market them too. The other half of my work is creating commercials, music videos and personal videos for clients and business.

It’s exciting to know that I can keep up with both passions and that I’m really just getting started.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I know that having a really strong reputation for reliability, quality and communication is key for an artistic avenue such as music or content creation. The pandemic made me feel like I was starting from scratch and I never had good marketing for myself but word of mouth kept me alive. I would do one good job and it would lead to another. That’s when you realize the community is really small and now that everyone knows who you are, it’s easy to be recognized for work when you’re needed.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Getting into content creation during the pandemic was definitely a pivot for me, but the pivot couldn’t have happened if I didn’t set myself up before the pandemic.

Even though I was a business owner in school, I was really struggling financially. Working and going to school at the same time is tricky. I tried to learn as much as I could about business in as short amount of time as possible.

One of the things I learned is that you need capital. There’s just no way around that. I was even still trying to figure out how to just make money. I had the idea of purchasing a camera when I realized that photoshoots are expensive and that I wasn’t happy with the results half the time anyways so in 2019 of June I bought my first mirrorless camera and lens. I was doing so much cheap or free work, but I was also beginning to realize that I could start paying my bills with this new endeavour and also could take photos of myself and my musicians at gigs!

Maybe I wasn’t happy with everything I shot, but I knew that I would only get better overtime.

When the pandemic hit, I found that I had an opportunity to lock myself in my room and learn as much as I could about the art of photography and filmmaking. Now that pandemic doesn’t affect my work anymore, it’s been great to work on new opportunities and to tackle new challenges.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.intertwinedstudios.ca
• Instagram: @jaydla

Image Credits
Joselito II De Los Angeles Jordon Hon