Conversations with Cameron Ljungkull

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cameron Ljungkull.

Hi Cameron, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am the 28-year-old founder & community manager at Secret Spot DTLA, a black, queer, trans-racial-adoptee. My pronouns are he/they and apart from being a creative entrepreneur, I (Prod. Cam Lj) am also an active producer, engineer, photographer and board member at The FAM Music non-profit. Like many other Angelinos, I am a transplant attracted to the city from the midwest for its numerous creative opportunities.

As a child, I grew up on a farm in rural, small town in Wisconsin. My mother raised sheep and I spent most of my young life in Cumberland. I started my musical journey early taking piano lessons and playing trumpet in band from elementary school all the way through college.

Before moving to Los Angeles, I lived in Minneapolis-Saint Paul and studied music business & songwriting at the now defunct McNally Snith College of Music after studying trumpet performance at the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists. I went on to operate a few small recording studios and small creative spaces giving me a strong understanding of artist communities and creative spaces. I was also one of the first tenants at the Schmidt Artist Lofts and gained a sense of how to build and manage a community of artists. I also lived in an artist coop and have been living and working in artist & creative spaces for the majority of my adult life.

In 2017 I co-founded Downtown Minnepolis’s first black-owned co-working space for creative professionals the Innovation Artist Laboratory a 1750+ sq ft. ground floor facility outfitted with individual work pods recording and photo studio, private offices, kitchenette, lofted recreational area and a gallery space. It was my vision to expand that facility to include co-living including pod beds but unfortunately, we weren’t able to make that come to fruition at that location.

I operated that space from 2017-2018 with my business partner until we decided to split ways leaving me with the lease. At the same time, I got an offer to move to Los Angeles where I had never been and I jumped at the opportunity to move to the snowness west coast. I closed the space, put everything in storage, and just two weeks later myself and 2 other Minnesotans packed our Uhaul and headed out to the middle of south-central to meet our new roomies. I spent the next year learning the city and pitching to anybody who would speak to me about getting a new space off the ground.

I got to know LA’s music scene interning and helping out at a brand new studio that at the time had just opened in downtown Voltiv Sound by fellow midwestern producer and engineer Phil Galloni. I worked there getting to know the city and started hosting open mic contests and working as much as I could. While at Voltiv I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects with clients like Brisk, LG & H.E.R, Monica Martin, Pressa Armani, Scorey and many others. During my first few years in LA, I spoke with many investors and potential partners to help bring the co-working for creative professionals dream back to life!

Honestly, I thought it would be easier, and it absolutely wasn’t. It took almost 3 years to find our current location and during that time I was a professional, blunt roller for the Albert Einstone’s “El Blunto” team during the day, and freelancing as a photographer and running studio sessions out of my bedroom apartment and at Voltiv at night. With patience & persistence, I finally found our first partner for what would become Secret Spot DTLA.

It’s still my vision to bring a full size. Upscale coworking and coliving facility for creatives to life but; I understood to get things off the ground here in Los Angeles, I’d have to start smaller. Unfortunately, working slow and starting small is patiently hard for me. It’s taken a long time to build a co-working model that can really thrive in a small space but after almost 10 years of experimentation, I feel like I’ve finally found that “secret sauce.”

Secret Spot DTLA is a 444 sq ft. co-working and amenity service for creative professionals and property managers. Because it has been my vision to create a co-living facility for so long, it was a natural progression for me to offer the facilities services to local hotels, hostels, and coliving facilities in our area.

Our space differentiates itself from other co-working spaces by providing much more than just work & office space. SSLA provide our members with all the creative software and hardware tools and subscriptions they need to create! Members receive access to our library of DSLR & mirrorless camera bodies, lenses, microphones, photography backdrops, art supplies, and software subscriptions like Adobe Creative Cloud, Splice, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, FL20 & many more. Members can also book time with an engineer or photographer or assistant to help maximize their work time.

Our entire facility is pre-furnished and smartly managed so tenants and members can come and go with keyless smart access right from their smartphones, giving them access to all our amenities. It is my goal to expand to offer many more services as well as to open a second larger facility closer to west Los Angeles to better service our customers outside of downtown.

Secret Spot DTLA currently serves two properties with around ~40-60 residential tenants through our amenity service program plus an additional 5-7 monthly members at any given time but we are always looking for more remote workers, artists, gamers, podcasters, photographers, producers & creative professionals to join our cohort.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
While I have been incredibly lucky and am grateful for all the experiences I’ve had that isn’t to say I haven’t had my own bumps in the road.

I struggled a lot coming to terms and defining my identity growing up but I’ve been lucky to find many incredible role models and people I can learn from and look up to along the way. I think one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced was simply coming here, starting over and building this business over, from the ground up. Trying to navigate and infiltrate the real estate communities in Los Angeles while also building a strong reliable network and finding the right amount of work-life balance.

One of the things that surprised me the most about Los Angeles when I first arrived was the distinct sense of division between in the neighborhoods. In many cities Downtown functions as the city’s central business and transit hub. However because transit doesn’t play a major role in our city, downtown becomes just another business center overshadowed by tourist attractions like Venice Beach and the Hollywood walk of fame. Given the vastness of the city, it also makes traveling from one end of the city to another exhausting & time-consuming, especially when in a massive metropolitan like LA most things can be found nearby.

Bringing focus back to downtown is something I am very passionate about and I am excited to see projects like the 6th Street Via Duct, new transit lines, and numerous new building plans for downtown.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
As a producer, I am most proud of my work producing live-in-studio performances with artists including Monica Martin, Joe Sumner, Ayanda Jiya, South Africa, YouTube Sensation TERRELL and others.

From a business perspective, Secret Spot DTLA serves primarily new, young, artists, musicians and creative professionals who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford a work or creative space. Ultimately being able to connect and provide artists with resources and opportunities they might not otherwise have is what I absolutely love and am most proud of and that’s what I’m building this brand around.

I also serve as the director of strategic partnerships on the board at USC’s The Fam Music nonprofit.

We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I’m an e-bike expert, ex-professional blunt roller, and have an all-instrumental project on Spotify/Apple Music called Prisoner of Mars with Phil Galloni.

Pricing:

• $49/month “Day Pass” @SSLA
• $150/month Basic Membership w/15hrs + drop-ins
• $250/month Founders Membership w/25 hrs + drop-ins
• $550/month Studio membership 15/hrs with an engineer/photographer
• $37/hr non-member rate

Contact Info:

• Website: www.secretspotdtla.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronljungkull/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secretspotdtla
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEvUPPJLbJyiGn3ljK_uXUw
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/cameron-ljungkull
• Other: https://calendly.com/sslabooking

Image Credits
Cameron Ljungkull (photographer)