Meet Joshua Haynes | Joshua Haynes Graphic Designer & Printer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Joshua Haynes and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Joshua, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
My thought process behind starting my own business was to not quit. After the selling of the trademark of a clothing line I helped build, my business partner/head designer wanted to choose a different path. I experienced so much during that time and saw my network increase so much in such a short period of time I wanted more. This was the birth of my first company Kill Two Birds-KTB.

The idea behind KTB was to incorporate my now wife Dorcelle’s talents and mine to build a business that would eventually grow to take care of us both.

My wife was/is a hairstylist, and I took up merchandising after what I learned from building a successful clothing brand. We opened up a salon boutique where my wife could do hair, and I could offer screen printing services. We sold mens/womens apparel in our shop/online, offered a photo booth, photography services for parties/weddings. The idea was for our customers to Kill two birds with one stone by utilizing our products and services at the same time for automatic savings. If they needed there hair done for a special event we would try to dress them for the event as well. I would often have customers that needed family reunion shirts and I would discount the per piece price if the booked my photo booth for the day…

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Corporate/Street is what I like to call it.

Something that most don’t know about me is that I am a certified Radiologic Technician. I have been state and nationally qualified and have working for others/myself as an independent contractor doing Computed Tomography (CT) for the past 15yrs+.

I used my career in the medical field to help me keep the bills paid when the risk I took as an entrepreneur fell short. It was a job and a dream, and still is. Anyone that knows me professionally or in the streets has seen me still wearing my scrubs from a shift, and in the shop printing t shirts right after.

Real entrepreneurs know it’s a way of life, and that everyone has their own unique formula to success. You can use others as a guide but don’t expect the same results.

Change with the times is something I learned that helped me stay relevant and generate new money. I worked with a friend and sold patches for a small period of time. I loved the interaction I got with customers during that time. So guess what did? I started a side patch business called Patch Hussle to help generate more merchandising business. I would attend different community pop ups around Los Angels like Black on the Block, DTAMarket, I even attended the Filled Market, a Filipino American led pop up market to help diversify my customers. Patch Hussle brought a missing part of my formula that I didn’t know I needed until I started. It was community. Being able to talk to the people, and see how they people responded to what I had to offer was the game changer. I noticed following every pop up I had an additional 50-100 followers on social media, and at least 2-3 customers on average that visited our shop following the pop up event.

Always remember you get out what you put in is a very true statement as a creative/entrepreneur.
Sometimes timing has a lot to do with the success of a specific plan.
Have faith and don’t give up.
Look out for the signs that you are doing exactly what your suppose to be doing.
Know that coincidences does not happen by accident.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would shout out my previous business partner Eric Touchard. He opened my eyes to the world of fashion/design, and taught me some key designing tips that I still use today.

Lastly, I would want to shoutout Juan Heredia, and the rest of the Real Recognize Real family. After covid we had to close our salon boutique. I opened a small shop in DTLA for me to continue to print/design and offer photography services for my customers. I did ok in my shop downtown, but it wasn’t until I reconnected with a high school buddy Gustavo and his younger brother Juan.

I remember walking into Juan’s shop only seeing rack of bucket hats and a screen printing machine sitting in the back and telling him “I WANT IN”.
That was in November of 2022, when I decided to move in with Real Recognize Real. So much growth in so little time and all without a real plan.

Since then we have done work for the NFL,NBA, Floyd Mayweather, Jeff Hamilton, and many more to name a few.