We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cameron Ljungkull a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Cameron, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Developing affordable, community lead co-working spaces for creatives is at the core of Secret Spot DTLA’s identity. Understanding the needs of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and establishing artists is our businesses. We seek to empower visual artists, musicians, photographers, podcasters, producer, remote workers and creative professionals by providing them with a smart, upscale, turn-key facility, fully furnished with all the hardware and software tools they need to create exceptional content.
Whether you’re a creative looking for painting or, rehearsal space or studio time & equipment rentals we are here to service you. We understand the costs associated with being a creative and our facility is committed to offering some of the most affordable rates in Downtown, Los Angeles.
Secret Spot DTLA is a co-working start-up operating in its beta stage. Cameron Ljungkull the companies founder and community manager. He has refined, evolved and built a scalable artist focused co-working model from his near 10 years of experience working in the hospitality, music, cannabis and entertainment industries.
Prior to opening Secret Spot DTLA, Cameron owned & operated two recording studios & creative spaces in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area before moving to Los Angeles in 2018. Having previously built and opperated similar concepts the Secret Spot DTLA was a natural first step toward our goal of establishing our presence in multiple major cities.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Entrepreneur and, Producer, Cameron Ljungkull is the founder of Secret Spot DTLA, he currently sits on the board of directions at The FAM Music and works on a number of other music and arts related side projects including hosting & curating events and releasing his own music available on Apple Music, Spotify with an extended discography on Soundcloud under the artist name Prod. Cam Lj.
Like many of my peers I’ve worked a number of jobs across a large spectrum of industries, while the vast majority of my traditional job experience is in the music industry I’ve also worked in the food service industry, local politics, the non-profit world and the cannabis industry. Having had my hands in so many different pie feel like truly I got a hands on education seeing close up people in all different situations and industries build their businesses, platforms & brands from the ground up.
While I grew up playing, writing and producing primally music, the projects that I’m most excited now are larger scale projects where I can take on a little more of the true producers/directors role. While I am still producing many records and freelancing as I get closer to 30, I find myself enjoying producing podcasts, facilitating event and, hosting artist contests where we can really dedicate all of my resources to a project start to finish.
At Secret Spot DTLA we empower artists by providing them with the work space and creative tools they need to create. We not only provide a centrally located co working environment but also provide industry standard DSLR, Mirrorless and ASC-C camera bodies, lenses and microphones as well as our studio iMac fully loaded with creative software such as AVID Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, the Adobe Creative Cloud and much more.
One of the most exciting projects I’m working on outside of Secret Spot DTLA is our Studia Musique Artist Laboratories Open Mic Contest! The open mic contest is an event we’ve been hosting for the last few years offering new and experienced musicians the opportunity to come together for an evening to share their music and compete for a chance to win free studio time, a music video and photoshoot produced at Voltiv Sound. The open mic gives myself and our partners the chance to connect, feature and work with local talent.
As a producer I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects with artist like Joe Sumner, Monica Martin, Pressa Armani, ChaseTheMoney, Trevor Bell Terrell and many others! I’ve been blessed to work on projects ranging from audio books & large scale Audible projects to engineering and producing one-on-one sessions with artists of all levels!
If there was one thing I could say, it’s that while in the past few years I have had the chance to work with some incredible, high profile artists I seem to get the most enjoyment out of working with new, up-and-coming artists who our team and I can really make an impact on.
Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?
As an entrepreneur I was always told by friends, mentors and family that I needed to “niche down.” I’ve always had a big picture, renaissance approach to my businesses and creativity. starting out as a musician and, community theater kid I was exposed to all of the arts.
Once I opened my first commercial space it seemed like a nature transition for me to offer all of my service in once place; having one physical location to bring clients to always made that exchange easier for me.
At Secret Spot DTLA we take supplementary revenue streams to an extreme, while we are a member supported co-working office and do offer hot desks and traditional co-working opportunities the vast majority of our members join the facility for the unique access to creative tools like camera’s, microphones and services like studio time, painting and gallery space as well as, access to plugins and creative programs like the Avid Pro Tools, Final Cut Pro, the Adobe Creative Cloud and much more.
We not only provide a centrally located co-working environment expressly tailored to creative professionals but we also build community by host in-house and external events both for our members and for the public. On top of that we also provide our members a number of discounts to local businesses and stores.
Outside of our member services we also offer business to business amenity services & partnerships working with apartments, hotels hostels and property management companies to give their tenants access to our spaces.
Understanding the needs of our various users and balancing their needs is at the core of our business and we do everything we can to cater to all of our partners, members and tenants needs. Pairing experienced artists with brand new or up-and-comming artists and musicians is something I absolutely love and belive builds better creative on both ends!
While conventional wisdom would tell you “No, cut the fat or, just do one thing” I strongly belive without weaving together all of our various incredible partners/communities to only rely on one revenue stream; our business would struggle to reach its potential. I am a big believer in the old adage “it takes a village to raise a child” and I think the same thing is true for your business.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
While for the vast majority of my life I’ve known what I wanted to do finding the path to build a co-working space for creatives has been tricky to put it lightly.
I was already setting up a home studio and recording my friends, neighbors and craigslist clients as a teenager with the vision of building a creative community center based around music and co-living. At the time I had no idea how to break it down into steps and take a project from start to finish; as a young person with a “big picture” mindset that was always something I struggled with.
So how do we go from hourly recording studio to co-working community spaces? The answer is a pivot; while in my early 20’s I interned and owned & operated a couple of small commercial studios between 2014-2017 primarily surviving on hourly sessions and events we’d host. The events always drew the most people to the space but at the time I hadn’t figured out how to monetize that success. I knew people wanted to be in the space for more than just their sessions but I couldn’t figure out how to make that happen until I opened with Innovation Artist Laboratories in Minneapolis pioneering the co-working for creative professionals concept in early late 2016-2017 when we started offering monthly memberships.
I’ve since refined the membership model creating a smart, remotely accessible workspace expressly designed for artists. creating a scaleable model that can work in any size or in any city is my goal and as we grow and work toward expansion in the next few years I’m excited to test out this model on a larger and larger scale, hopefully allowing us to service more and more artists and creatives at all points in their process.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.secretspotdtla.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronljungkull/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secretspotdtla
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEvUPPJLbJyiGn3ljK_uXUw/
- Other: Cameron’s Portfolio https://studiamusiqueinter.wixsite.com/camlj Studia Musique Artist Laboratories https://studiamusiqueinter.wixsite.com/studia-musique/ SoundCloud (Prod. Cam Lj.) https://soundcloud.com/cameron-ljungkull Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/6CRtqBGV5bcjCEMDlX4RtG?si=WxNmK2WaQ7ePEgWf-W1Puw
Image Credits
all i’mages are shot by Cameron Ljungkull.