A Conversation with: Jurian Isabelle of Isabelle Studios

Sit Down With Success is a feature of the Huntsville Business Journal on entrepreneurs and their keys to success. To read the full story, please visit the Huntsville Business Journal website.

Ever since he was 5-years-old, Jurian Isabelle was reaching for the camera. He was raised around a very tech-focused father, who often pushed his son to pursue his creative ideas. This upbringing, to Jurian, was the main reason that he believed he was always a creative at heart.

A long-time Huntsville native, Jurian graduated from Johnson High School in 2005 and went on to achieve a communications degree with a focus in film from Alabama State University in 2008. During his time at ASU, Jurian went to California State L.A. to take specialized classes in video and film editing.

After graduating, Jurian turned his love of film making into a career. As of today, Jurian has a decade of film making experience and is a filmmaker and director at his company Isabelle Studies where he has produced various titles that include The Last Disciples (2017), Buffalo Soldiers: A Quest for Freedom (2018), God of Dreams (2022), Candy (2019), and his most recent film Nine Divine (2023).

Outside of Isabelle Studios, Jurian is intensely invested and involved in the community. In 2020, Jurian officially opened the Isabelle Academy of Film and Creative Arts, a non-profit organization that specifically focuses on engaging younger creatives from all backgrounds and providing them with a safe space, technology and editing software, and educational guidance to pursue their creative projects and ideas.

What advice would you have for people who are wanting to branch out and work for themselves?

You have to get up and do the work. You have to be the person who is okay with doing it for free, meaning that you won’t get that paycheck like you used to immediately. If you are the type of person who wants security and you are not sure you have the drive to work for free, then get into another occupation other than owning a business or being an entrepreneur.

You have to wake up and be prepared to fall in love with the work. You cannot work hard for a goal if you do not love to work. This is just not sustainable. The work will speak for itself, but you have to sit down and make sure that you have the drive to help it get there.

What is the difference between working for someone else and working for yourself?

Wherever you have a lot of people, there can often be different types of problems. When you work for yourself, you have the ability to control your environment to a degree. Obviously, you are sometimes limited on things like the economy and politics, but you can control who you let in and who works with you.

What is a piece of advice you would give to someone who is looking to open their own business?

You need to reevaluate what the

By: Gus Wintzell

idea of financial freedom means. Yes, if you are an entrepreneur or you work for yourself, you are financially free, but at the same time now you do not have financial dependency either. You do not have that steady flow of income. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier. You have to be okay with working for free, working hard, before you can get that financial freedom to match with your financial dependence. You will not be truly “financially free” until then. w