Salih Abdul-Karim

For our final episode of Revision Path for 2023, I talked with the amazingly brilliant Salih Abdul-Karim. If you’re a motion designer, then there’s a good chance you’ve used Lottie, which Salih co-created during his time at Airbnb and is the new industry standard when it comes to animation on mobile apps and the Web.

Salih talked about his current work at Cōlab, exploring their non-traditional approach which eschews agency hierarchies to maintain a hands-on, skill-diverse team that seamlessly fills in the gaps for startups and other companies. Salih also shared his personal journey of how he found his passion for combining tech and creativity, and we even gave our thoughts on Andre 3000’s debut solo album, New Black Sun.

Even with such a seasoned career, Salih’s humility and mindset of constant learning is truly inspiring. From all of us here at Revision Path, consider this episode our holiday gift to you! Merry Christmas!

Interview Transcript

Maurice Cherry:

All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

So my name is Salih Abdul-Karim, and I am a creative director [and] motion designer.

Maurice Cherry:

So, Salih, we’re recording this at the end of the year. When you look back at 2023, if you could pick three words that would describe how this year has been for you, what would those words be?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I would say…confusing. What’s the word to say that something went fast, like…

Maurice Cherry:

Swift?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Swift. Okay, so I got confusing. I got swift. And maybe lastly, I would say family is what I would say would be maybe the third word when I think about this. And that has to do with both my literal family, but also, like, where I’m working right now has a lot of family vibes. We all take care of each other, so it always comes up.

Maurice Cherry:

Do you have any goals that you’d like to accomplish in 2024?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah, I think that I don’t have any kind of specific goals, and I never really been the kind of person to sit down and set goals. I’ve tried to do it before, but if anything, maybe my number one goal is to really try to foster even more relationships. I think that’s probably the thing I think about the most right now, is I got a lot of great relationships based on the 20 years I’ve been doing this. And I kind of have been riding the waves of those relationships for a while. And I just know that there’s more out there, especially as new industries like AI come out. There’s people working in it. I want to meet those people. I want to talk to them. I want to foster just some more relationships in some different areas.

Maurice Cherry:

Isn’t it wild to say that you’ve been in this industry for 20 years? Doesn’t that feel wild when you look at the grand scheme of things?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

It’s wild. And I feel hella old, man. And then what has happened in those 20 years? It’s just been such a whirlwind. It’s interesting, I think about where that 20 years started, and it started in such a kind of ambiguous place where I’m getting out of school and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m trying to figure my way around it. And again, I still kind of feel like that. Today I’m at a company where we’re working with startups and I’m trying to find their way. And the feeling almost has not changed from when I got some experience and I have some skills I can lean on, but the feeling when I got out of school, I kind of still feel like that today, 20 years later. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

Do you feel like the guru at the top of the mountain? A little bit?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Definitely not. I definitely do not feel like the guru at the top of the mountain. And again, I can’t say that I don’t have knowledge or tricks that I lean on or experiences that I lean on, but more often than not, I definitely still feel like I really don’t know what the heck I’m doing and I’m trying to make the best decision I can with the information I have every day. It’s worked out. I still got a job, I’m still working, and I got a lot of great colleagues that I’ve built over the years, but I definitely still don’t feel like the wise guru or feel like I know what I’m doing at all.

Maurice Cherry:

Let’s talk about Cōlab, which is where you’re currently at. It’s this creative studio that’s based out of San Francisco. Tell me more about it. Like how did you get started there?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

So Cōlab is like you mentioned, it’s a creative studio focused in on marketing, brand design and product design. And Cōlab kind of sits within a growth equity company called Westcap. And so you imagine Westcap invests in mostly tech startups. They invest in the startup. They say, okay, we’re going to give you x amount of money, but we’re also going to have our creative team Cōlab parachute in and help you with various things. And when I say various things, I mean it could be almost anything. We got 22 people on the Cōlab team. We have brand designers, product designers, growth marketers, insights.

People do insights and research to better understand companies’ customers. We got me as motion design and creative director. We have brand strategists, we have content strategists, writers, we have pr. So we have a lot of various skill sets. And most of the skill sets we have are exactly the kind of skill sets that a startup shouldn’t quite have yet. There’s no reason for a startup to have a motion design, but there is a reason for me to, like I mentioned, parachute in and help out with various things. There are times where we have startups where they don’t have a CMO, but we have these two VPs of growth marketing. Maria and Diane. Sometimes they’ll parachute in very well what a CEO does and how to work with one based on all their experience.

They’ll be a temporary CMO for a minute. Cōlab is really about helping startups reach another level, and sometimes you can only reach that level when there’s a certain set of skills that you may not need yet. And that’s what we fill that gap for.

Maurice Cherry:

So you mentioned the team, and it has all these sort of different components. I mean, it sounds like almost kind of like a full-fledged agency.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah. And the only reason why we don’t call ourselves an agency, and this has been a debate between us since I started, the only reason why we don’t call ourselves an agency is because, number one, we don’t have all the layers that an agency has. Account director, senior account director, and all of the, I would say, account services of an agency. What we have are pretty much a couple dozen people who can, again, direct projects and lead projects, but also those people also design. So we don’t have people who are just managers for managers sake or salespeople or anything like that, that maybe a kind of traditional agency would have. Okay.

Maurice Cherry:

And I guess, like you said, it’s coming in from the bigger partner. So everything that comes in is basically like a fully qualified lead. You don’t have to hunt down work.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

That’s true. And one of the things I do like about Colack is we do have a group of companies that we work with on a regular basis that come in through who Westcap invests in. But we also do take external work as well. So we do sometimes reach out to companies that we’re interested in doing work for, or it might be a contact that we’ve known that has decided to start their own company and we’ll help them. So we do have external companies. Again, the main difference is when you work with us, you’re not really getting the same kind of, I don’t know, full fledged, layered agency experience. You oftentimes are working with a smaller group, four or five people. Each of those people is senior enough to do the work, but also to run the project as well.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay, I got you. So when new work comes in the door, what does the process look like? By the time it comes to you, I should say, what does the process look like?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah, when new work comes in the door, usually, obviously there’s kind of a meeting with me. I serve as a creative director, executive creative director. We also have Brian Wakabayashi, who’s our head of strategy. He’s also kind of like our creative studio managing director. And then we have Michelle Ha, who’s our operations director. So the three of us usually will meet with whoever the company is that is interested in collaborating. And really we start a conversation about what they think they need, what we think we can do, and begin to kind of formulate a plan on how we think we might be able to help them. And from there, depending on what it is, sometimes I fade away altogether and they don’t see me anymore, because what they need is something that’s more like strategy.

And then we’ll bring our other brand strategists in, they’ll do a strategy process, and that might be the end of the project. Sometimes a thing will come in, like as an example, we had an AI startup approach us to do an explainer video for them that explains their product. That was an instance where I took that project on. I brought on a designer, brought on a writer, and then Brian, our head of strategy, he disappears. Depending on what the project is, you’re going to get a different combination of people from the team that really focus on the thing that you need.

Maurice Cherry:

Now, it’s funny you mentioned AI. That’s been a regular theme that we’ve had on the show probably for the past two years now. We mentioned it at least in every episode in some capacity. Like, how are you using AI or any of this other new tech, like virtual reality, mixed reality, et cetera. Do you use any AI tools in your work, or do you have any just kind of general thoughts about AI with motion design?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah, I love it. I use them, but honestly, I more or less play with them. I haven’t yet figured out an exact way of how to integrate it into my day to day workflow. I imagine how I hope to be able to integrate it. Like as an example, if I have a video that I’ve made that’s 60 seconds long and it’s in a 16:9 kind of TV format, I’d love to just tell AI, :hey, make this into a square format for Instagram. Hey, cut this down to 30 seconds.” I’d love to be able to do that and have it just do it. But as of now, more or less any AI tool that I see come out, I try it, I play with it.

I play with mid journey, creating images, sometimes for fun, I definitely play with ChatGPT in terms of asking questions, or sometimes I’m doing writing for blog posts and I’ll have a proofread, stuff like that. But I feel a little bit like I’m just playing. I haven’t really found a way of integrating it into my work in a real way.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, has the AI gotten sophisticated enough to do motion work? I mean, I’ve seen like, chat, GPT will do text and mid journey and Dolly and things like that, can do images, but has it gotten sophisticated enough to do motion?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

There are some programs that do it. There’s one called Runway ML.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

They have a whole suite of tools. So sometimes one of the kind of projects that I work on sometimes is like screen replacement, right? So you imagine you have this app, and they need a video to show off what the app does. So obviously you need people walking around using the app, and you’re showing footage of someone using that app. And usually what happens is I go in and I put in a new screen on top, and I track it, and I do what’s called rotoscoping, kind of painting out the frames, the fingers in front or whatever, and making a new screen look like it’s integrated into the shot. And so this thing, Runway ML, they have a bunch of tools that can help you do that. For example, you can click on something and have it track. So if it’s a footage of like a surfer on a wave, you can click on the surfer’s body, and it’ll give you a tracking point as they move along. Then you can use that as you want to put a hat on the surfer or whatever you want to do.

So it has some stuff that are really kind of cool or fun to play with. But again, I’ve been using certain methods for a pretty long time, and occasionally I’ll try to use it to replace one of my methods, but it’s not quite at a place where I feel like it’s going to take it over quite yet.

Maurice Cherry:

Okay. I was curious if it had the capability to do that, because I had a motion designer on the show a couple of weeks ago, Andre Foster. He co-founded a motion graphics design studio and production house called First Fight. And he talked about how he uses it sort of as like a Pinterest board. Like, he uses it for just kind of like inspiration and stuff. But then he said it inspired him enough to actually put together almost like opening credits to a show, not a real show, but just like, oh, let’s see how far I can sort of push the technology. And honestly, it looked like something I would see on, like FX or something. It looked really good.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Oh, that’s dope. Yeah. See, I’ll talk to you when we’re done on what that is. And play with it.

Maurice Cherry:

You mentioned this in a past interview that you’ve done. You said that motion design is so crucial to making high quality digital products on any platform. Why is that the case?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

The case is just because the way, and this is maybe too deep and existential, right? But the way we experience all of our lives is through time, right? You walk outside, you walk down the block. That took 10 seconds. You experience time. You saw a dog, you saw a tree, you saw the sun. The way we experience life is through time. And I know that for years people were reading books and you using your imagination, people reading magazines. There’s a very static kind of experience. It lives as that thing, like a rock, just lives like that forever.

But now that we have technology, and smartphones are just ubiquitous, they’re everywhere, and you’re able to actually interact with them. You put your finger on it and you move it. You’re adding motion, you’re adding time to the equation. And the reason why motion is so important is because it helps you do something that feels more natural to what humans should be doing, if that makes any sense. So just as an example, right, if you’re on a website and you click on a button that’s going to take you to another page, the old school way is it’s just going to slam you right to the next page. Now you have to reorient yourself and figure out where you are now. And the way I think about it is motion can actually help you bridge those two things. It can help you understand where you were, it can help you understand where you went, where you’re going, and it just creates a more natural experience than just kind of blinking.

And now you appear somewhere else.

Maurice Cherry:

That makes sense. Now that you put it that way, it is something that I think humans are used to, that they’re used to motion. And also, so many things now are skewing towards video, and that’s nothing but motion. So it kind of makes sense to still put those sorts of animations and interactions in most types of applications because that’s just what we expect now.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Totally. And it’s not a surprise that TikTok is as popular as it is with videos. Right. We love to look at things that move. It feels good. In addition, to help you understand how Ui might work, motion just helps you add emotion. We are all emotional. You feel happy, you feel sad.

And the things you interact with, you want them to give you that same thing. So when something you interact with has a little bounce to it, it gives you a feeling. Oh, this is supposed to be fun when something you interact with has a smoother nature to it. Elegant. Oh, this is supposed to be classy, right? So it helps you give emotion to digital products, no matter what the devices are, whether it’s on a phone or AR or VR or whatever.

Maurice Cherry:

Motion adds emotion. I like that. That’s good.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

100%.

Maurice Cherry:

Let’s kind of switch gears here a little bit and learn more about you. I’m curious on where this sort of spark for design and animation sort of came from. So tell me more about where you grew up.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I grew up in the DC area. Kind of moved back and forth between DC and Philadelphia. And growing up, we always had the latest game thing. I’m dating myself here. I’m an old man. But we used to have the Texas instruments, we used to have the Atari 500, or we used to have all these old game systems when I was like a little kid, and I loved playing with them. But I also had this curious mind where I would try to take it apart. I would say, what’s in here? So I would get a screwdriver.

I would open up the back. My mom would come in a room a week later. She’d be like, “why is the cover off of the Nintendo?” And I’d be like, “well, I just wanted to see what was in there”, right? So I actually had a Nintendo that did not have a cover that I played for years because I couldn’t figure out how to put the thing back on. I just have a love of technology, like a lot of people. And I used to build my own computers when I was in middle school and high school, I’d buy the RAM, I’d buy the motherboard. I’d build them from scratch. It was just a fun thing. And when it’s time for me to go to college, I thought, okay, let me try to do computer science.

I’m going to learn how to program. I’m going to build. Make games, something like that. And my first year, at the end of my first year, I had a 1.2 GPA, and that was because the math was destroying me. We had, like, this Calculus, or Calculus 2, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. And not only that, at the time, I just didn’t know how to learn. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t know how to sit down and study. I didn’t necessarily have the discipline yet to really push through.

I didn’t know how to tell my homeboys, like, I can’t go out with you all; I got to get this computer science work in, you know what I’m saying? So I just ended up almost kind of flunking out of school. And this is a story I’ve told before. That one evening, my dad came…I used to live in my parents basement. During college, my dad comes downstairs, he’s like, “bro, we saw your grades. Like, look, we don’t care what you’re going to do, but either do this right or don’t do it at all.” And then he closed the door and walked upstairs.

Maurice Cherry:

Damn.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

And it was just a note. We don’t care what you do. We’re going to support you. But don’t just do something and be flunking and failing out. So I had a moment where I had to really say, am I going to really try to do this, or am I going to look for something else? And the school I went to, George Mason, they had a digital arts degree. It was basically a degree to help people make art using computers. So I thought, oh, well, let me do that. That seems kind of cool.

They have class in Photoshop. They had a class in after effects, which is wild that I still use after effects today. And then they have a class in 3D program that doesn’t exist anymore. And I took those classes. I was in the art department. I was learning about our history, critical theory, critical thinking, and I was really kind of enveloped in the art world through a technology lens. And from there, I got straight in. So that shift enabled me to kind of see how I could bring some of my creative mind and technology together.

So my senior year, I started to find these motion design companies all around the country that were doing these awesome commercials, and commercials will be animated with all these awesome graphics and characters. And I said, you know what? I want to do that after school. So after college, I packed up my little car, a little Acura, and I drove up to New York, and I moved up there, and I was knocking on doors. I had a little dvd. So funny. My kids, they saw some of my old DVDs in the garage. They were like, what’s going to use them no more? But I had my old DVD that I made. I burned it and had my reel of student work.

And I’m, like, walking into these shops trying to get work. And luckily, I had this. He kind of became my first mentor. He’s a creative director at BET right now, Kendrick Reed, and walked into his office, and it was amazing again to see somebody like me, six foot something, Black man, bald head, and he’s a super fashionable guy, wearing cool clothes. I was like, okay, I see. So I walk in his office, and he’s like, “so tell me, what do you want to do?” And I was like, “well, I love design. I love animation.” At the time, he was the creative director at Comedy Central, and so they had a department at Comedy Central that made commercials for Comedy Central that aired on Comedy Central.

So that was the department that he ran. He’s like, “well, what do you want to do?” I was like, “well, eventually, I want, you know, like, I want to be creative director at some place with a team like this.” So he kind of laughed, and he gave me my first job out of college. I was there for a couple of years, built some good relationships with some folks. I ended up going freelance after he left. I was kind of sad when he left. So then I left after he left, and I ended up going freelance for about eight or nine years after that. And I was just designing and animating wherever I could get in the door.

Design shops, ad agencies, TV networks like HBO, Showtime. I just would get in wherever I could. And it was an amazing experience. And some of the people I met back then, I’m still in contact with today, even though I’m kind of on the other side of the country, I’m doing something a little bit different. That was a really important part of kind of what led me to what I’m doing today.

Maurice Cherry:

During that time that you were doing all this freelancing, I mean, yeah, you were at a bunch of different studios, a bunch of different places. Do you feel like there was something that you were trying to attain? Like, were you trying to get to Kendrick? Were you trying to get to his position in terms of moving up the ladder or moving up in your skills?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I think the thing at the time, those ten years, what I really wanted to do was learn how to make my work good. Like, I would make something, and then I would go see someone else’s project. And it was very clear to me that mine wasn’t as good. My whole thing for that ten years was, I need to figure out how to make something good, because I see this person over here is crushing it, and mine doesn’t look like theirs. Why doesn’t mine look like theirs? And in the industry at that time, there’s a lot of late nights, and everybody worked from, like, ten to eight. We went out afterwards and come back to work the next day and deal with it. So it was a lot of hard work, but that was really the thing I thought about the most. Just like, why isn’t mine as good as that other person? It was more of a creative pursuit to make something that I felt was equal to the people I admired at the time.

Maurice Cherry:

I mean, I’m kind of trying to also place this just like, chronologically. So this was really during the time, I’m guessing this is like the early 2000s. Like early 2000s to 2010s, pretty much?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah. 2002 to 2011.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. I mean, during that time, even if you just step back and look at the web, think about how much the web had changed from 2002 to 2011. And of course that would end up invariably being reflected in media and advertising and publishing, because computers are now taking over as, like, the primary way that you do design, and the technology is getting better and the browsers are getting better, and all of a sudden now we’re using CSS, and now we have to change what we thought we did before with tables into something new. So there was always something new, I think back at that time, and it felt like there were new discoveries or new ways of doing things. Like every month it felt like it was something new and you had to keep going, you had to keep making stuff just to catch up. Like, you couldn’t really rest on your laurels during that time because of just how fast things were progressing in the industry.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Oh, yeah, that’s 100% true.

Maurice Cherry:

So after you were doing all of this freelancing and everything, you ended up as a motion graphics artist at square, and you were there for, I think, roughly about three years, is that right?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah, that’s correct. And square was the first place that I ever worked. Number one, that was a startup, but number two, that had, like, a physical product. All the things I had done for the ten years before were all advertising and marketing for tv shows. And the shows have people and Dave Chappelle’s show. It was interesting to be at a place that they had this little square card reader. And not only that, they had a whole team that worked on it. They had a team that worked on the box.

They had a team that worked on logistics of where the parts come from. They had a team that worked on every aspect of this little physical device. And so it was the first time where I worked at a company like that that I could actually get a peek inside the technology. I mentioned earlier. I was taking apart my Nintendo because I was curious what’s in there. And so it was really fun for me to be around people who were kind of making things, sending inside out. I think that it was mostly, again, like I mentioned, a little bit scary and daunting. It was comforting that I was on the video team at this company.

So I was still making videos. But when I would go into a meeting with the group who was responsible for the launch of the new Square Reader, and they’re talking about engineering challenges. I don’t know what they’re talking about. You know what I mean? I feel a little bit lost and confused, but the only thing I could rest on was like, okay, I’m still here to do the thing I came here to do. That doesn’t mean I can’t learn about what they’re doing. But that became my challenge at square was like, how much can I learn about what they’re doing, what they’re talking about that can help me do my job better?

Maurice Cherry:

And then after that, you ended up at Airbnb, where you started off as the company’s only motion designer. I bet that had to be pretty daunting, especially at that time when Airbnb was really starting to take off.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah, definitely. And so when I was at Square, like I mentioned, I was in the room with all these other functions, physical engineering, but also product designers. Yeah. And there were a couple of times when I was at Square where I collaborated with the product designers. Oh, I would do an animation for the square’s website. One of those product designers, Jason Mamro, who I still work with today, he left Square and went to Airbnb. He’s on Airbnb’s product design team. And at the time, their head of design, Katie Dill, she was, you know thinking, we probably should get a motion designer.

And everybody’s, all the product designers like, yes, let’s get a motion designer. And Jason luckily threw my name out and I ended up kind of coming in, interviewing for the role. And it was funny, my first week, I’m sitting with my manager, and since I’m the first motion designer, it’s not exactly clear how I’m going to plug in. So he asked me, he said, well, what should you work on? I was like, what do you mean, what should I work on? You should tell me what I should work on. Right? He’s like, well, no. Since we never had a motion designer, you have to help us understand what you can do as well as us telling you what would need you on. So it kind of opened my mind up to like, oh, this is a kind of a role where I kind of get to help create it and it’s not so cut and dry exactly what I’m going to be doing all the time. If I see an opportunity, I can pursue it.

If I see something I think I can help out with, I can go help; and likewise, people who think I can help can contact me for help.

Maurice Cherry:

What were some of those early things that you were doing?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

So I remember when I first joined, they were about to launch the Airbnb Apple Watch app. And you mentioned earlier how everything was always changing. So I was very much used to working on animations that were for TV. And the Apple Watch screen is tiny. And so I think the first project I ever worked on was the animation for the onboarding for the Airbnb’s Apple Watch app. We had these little characters and we had the little character, like, tap their watch and then we had a little Airbnb logo. It was very cute. I think that was the first project I ever worked on.

And then from there, I remember working on, they launched the Apple TV app and I worked on an onboarding video for that, or onboarding animation for the Apple TV app for Airbnb. And then from there, really honestly, it spread out to so many different things. Sometimes I was doing the animation for either the website or the app, but other times it was prototyping UI. Okay, we need a prototype. We got a meeting with Brian Chesky in three weeks. We need to put together a prototype to articulate how we want this flow to go. Or it was. Brian Chesky has a presentation about this new feature and he needs an animation for his presentation that shows what the UI is going to do.

And they still do this today. When you see Airbnb’s launches, they have a couple of motion designers now that they do this all the time where they’re making prototypes for presentations. So I used to kind of do, there were probably like a dozen different things, ways that I would help out just depending on the time and what was going on at the company.

Maurice Cherry:

Man, I mean, it sounds like you really had your hands full, because I know that as Airbnb was growing, and I said, like you said, the tech was also changing. Mean, did you feel like you were stretched thin? I mean, did they eventually hire more motion graphics designers?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah, eventually we hired another one. Maybe on my third year we hired another one. Then he kind of subsequently left. So then it was just me again. But I used to tell everybody there were 60 product designers on the team with 60 product designers to one motion designer. I used to tell everybody, like, I’m just one person, so I’m going to do what I can and everything else is not going to happen. And everybody again, everybody who’s very understanding the culture that we had at Airbnb at the time it was real friends and family vibes. It wasn’t like people were like, oh, man, he’s not doing his job right.

Everybody knew that there’s no way that one person could do, you know, for a lot of teams, it was like even me helping a little bit was going to be better than not helping at all. So they would accept any level of engagement that I could give. Everybody’s really understanding.

Maurice Cherry:

That’s good, because I’ve definitely worked at some places that are not that. Definitely the opposite, where you’re the person that does it, they expect you to always be the one to do it. No matter how many times you’re like, I need help. No matter how many times you’re throwing out a life preserver, they’re like, oh, you got it, you’re good. No, I’m drowning over here. Can you help me? So while you were at Airbnb, and like you said, they ended up eventually building out the team some more, you were on a team that launched Lottie, which is an open source tool that adds animations to like, iOS, Android, native apps, et cetera. How did the idea for Lottie come about?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

So I mentioned earlier that one of the first things I worked on was the Apple Watch app. I had these little characters animating, and the way I delivered it that delivered the animation to the engineering team was, I’m pretty sure it was a sequence of PNGs. My engineering partner, an iOS engineer, he had to build a way for the app to play those PNGs in sequence. I think it was like 30 PNGs per animation. And for me, coming from tv, I was like, there has to be a better way for us to do this. The png sequence to do all our animations. The file sizes were pretty big and I think everybody hoped for a better way, but there just wasn’t anything out at the time. And I developed a really good relationship with an iOS engineer named Brandon Withrow.

He was an iOS engineer, but he went to school for animation. So we clicked right off the bat. And Airbnb used to have these things called Hack Weeks, where during the whole week you could work on anything you wanted. And I remember I approached Brandon, I say, maybe let’s try to find a way for us to get some data out of after effects, the thing I animated, and get it into iOS playing somehow. So he’s, I mean, let’s try it. What do you got? We ended up finding this tool called Bodymovin. It was this engineer named Hernan Torrisi created this tool that could export data out of after effects into a file, JSON file. It just has all the raw data of the animation.

So I send this file to Brandon. I’m like, what do you think? Bodymovin is open source? Take a look at it. So he said, all right. A couple of days, he came back, and he had a blue square show up on the screen. It wasn’t moving, wasn’t animating, just a blue square. And I think that kind of spurred the next step, which was, okay, now he has the square going left to right. Okay, next. Now he has a triangle and a circle.

And he, Brandon himself, just worked on features in his own time, and he got it to a point where we could do some small animations similar to the ones I did on the Apple Watch, and we could actually put know, I could export it from after effects, get the data out, put it into the iOS app, and the file size was much smaller, and it was way more performant. And so we had a little thing for iOS that was working, and we thought, well, we have an Android app. Kind of a bummer to have animations on iOS. Let’s find an Android engineer that could help us. And we brought in another engineer, Gabriel Peal. He was an Android engineer at the time. And we said, well, look what. Here’s what Brandon has on iOS.

Maybe we could do something similar on Android. And Gabe was the funniest one because he was like, I don’t know. He’s like, if we could do this, somebody would already name it. We gave him the same files, but he did the same thing. First he had a box, then he had a circle, then he had it moving left to right. And the next thing you knew, we had an iOS and Android framework that could play these really small animations in our apps. So we had that for a handful of months. And I think it was February, or I think it was like December of 2017, Facebook open sourced their version of what we had.

It was called Facebook Keyframes. It was exactly the same thing you export from after effects. Your data comes out. It works on iOS and Android. So when we saw that, we said, oh, they made it, too. It wasn’t open source at the time, so I thought, oh, well, let me try theirs. And I remember exporting one of the animations that worked on ours. I remember exporting it in their format, and there was a whole bunch of stuff broken.

So it was very clear to us that, oh, the thing we have is a little bit better than the thing they have. So we should open source as well. So Brandon came up with the name Lottie. It’s named after an animation pioneer named Charlotte Reiniger, who’s German. In the 1920s, she created full length feature movies and we got the name, we open sourced it, we made a little landing page and it just kind of took off from there.

Maurice Cherry:

Wow. It sounds like it was a pretty organic thing, though. It didn’t just sort of come. I mean, it came in a way out of necessity. But the way that it managed to sort of build out and really become a framework was really organic.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Absolutely. It was really organic. And it was just lucky. It feels a little bit like the right place at the right time. It was lucky that Airbnb had a motion designer at the time. It was lucky that Brandon was an iOS engineer who kind of knew about animation. It’s lucky that we were friends and he would work on it in his free time. It was lucky that Gabe was so talented that he could jump in and create.

And at the know, we all had other stuff to work on. Our managers really didn’t care if we worked on Lottie in our free time as long as we got our other stuff done. And so that was the vibe for about a year. It was really a side project.

Maurice Cherry:

And now Lottie is used all over the place. It’s used in hundreds of thousands of different applications and stuff. What does it feel like knowing that something you’ve created has really caught on like that and made such an impact?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

It blows my mind. It really blows my mind because again, it could have easily not happened or it could have easily been Facebook keyframes that have been the thing that really caught on. So, yeah, it blows my mind. And it’s just humbling to be a part of something that people like and they use it and all. Full disclosure, I’m sure someone’s going to come out with something better than Lottie and then Lottie will disappear. That’s just the nature of software. That’s just the nature of creativity. I’m cool with that.

But to have had a hand in something that people like and use and have been using for the last handful of years is really humbling and amazing.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I can imagine. Just seeing your work make such an impact and then to know that you were really kind of behind it in the beginning is amazing. And it’s not something that is, I would say, hidden to history. People know that you did it. It’s not like Lottie just sprung forth anonymously. They know that you’re one of the people behind.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Really, the thing that I really like now is, like I was saying, at Cōlab, I’m working with startups all the time, so I’ll be working with a startup and they’ll be like, hey, can we put this animation we do? Can we put this on our app? And they’ll be like, I heard of this thing. It’s called Lottie. Maybe we could use that. They don’t know how. You’re like talking about my child, you know what I’m saying? I know this thing so well. I helped build it. I was there from the beginning. But people don’t know and oftentimes I don’t say anything.

I’m not that kind of guy to be like, well, that’s my thing. But it’s just kind of cute and funny to me that it’s now coming back to me through other channels I can imagine.

Maurice Cherry:

Like, you have to sort of keep yourself in check, like, “oh, like, I can’t…I don’t want to blow my cover here.”

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Oh, 100%. But also, you know, design, motion design, this is a small industry of many. And what I did, while it’s maybe important to a couple hundred thousand people, there’s probably a ton of other people that don’t even know about it. So it’s not that big a deal. It’s not brain surgery. I’m not saving lives here. It makes me laugh when that happens, and it does happen every couple of months, which is great to me.

Maurice Cherry:

Is there still active development on it?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

There is some. So Gabriel Peal, the Android engineer; he still works on it. He still works on it. He gets requests through and I think that’s probably the benefit of being open source. You have other people in the community who contribute, you have other people who change the code and submit it. So yeah, it’s still being not, I think that for a little while, while I was at Airbnb, after Brandon and Gabe left, it wasn’t really worked on internally, but there were a couple pushes internally to help develop. So we, I remember it got changed from one language into Swift, and then I think more recently since I’ve left, they’ve done a couple small things on the iOS side, but it’s really honestly mostly being pushed outside of Airbnb. So there’s a company called Lottie Files.

They’re based in Malaysia and they’re doing a ton of development on themselves, bidding on top of it, building state machines on top of it, which is a complicated term. People can google it and they’re kind of doing all kinds of things with the format and helping develop it outside, mostly because it is open source.

Maurice Cherry:

When you look, sort of, back at the early parts of your career to now, what would you say is the biggest lesson that you’ve learned about yourself?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Maybe the biggest lesson I learned about myself is that I really do enjoy being in an environment that I don’t know what’s going on. Okay. That there’s things that are new, there are things to learn, there are things I can be curious about. So, for example, like I mentioned, when I joined Airbnb, I was the only motion designer on a team full of product designers and engineers, none of which I had worked with before. I’d never worked with an engineer before. But it was so interesting to me. I ended up taking an eight week coding class because, again, we were in meetings where I didn’t know what they’re talking about. So that part of trying to help myself understand someone else’s industry to better do my job is fascinating to me.

And now it’s a similar thing at Cōlab. I’m working with startups, I’m working with ceos, cmos, and founders. I’m understanding what they care about. I’m understanding that they care about their business goals, so they don’t care about how the thing moves or what it looks like. Is this having an impact on the business?

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

So now I’m having a whole different set. And I think every few years in my career, when I start to feel like I’m pretty competent at the thing I’m doing, I usually end up moving to something else that puts me a little bit off balance.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that because I think that that is a practice that is something that more creatives, I think particularly more Black creatives are starting to embrace. I’m tying this into something, I promise you. So we’re recording this right now on the day that Andre 3000 just released his new album, his debut album, debut solo album, New Blue Sun.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

We’ve been talking about it at work all day.

Maurice Cherry:

Oh, really?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I listened to it this morning, actually. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:

What do you think about it?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I think it’s…

Maurice Cherry:

You can be honest! Yeah, be honest. Think about it.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I mean, I’m such a big Andre 3000 Outkast fan. Like, I’ll listen to whatever they put out.

Maurice Cherry:

Right.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

You know what I’m saying? They could put out themselves beating a bucket and I’ll listen to it. But the interesting thing, I saw that they had an interview with them last night at GQ, and he was talking about, like, they were at the top of their game, and it loses some of its magic when you feel like you really know what you’re doing. And I think he was looking for something different where he could feel like a beginner again.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

You know what I’m saying? But, yeah, I listened to it this morning. I think it’s cool. I put it on while I was writing something. And honestly, for about 40 minutes – the album is like 90 minutes long. For about 40 minutes. I totally forgot it was on.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

And I think that’s the point.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, I think that’s the point, too. And the reason that I was asking about this is because I think sometimes, especially when people know you for a specific thing that you’ve accomplished in your career, that tends to be a box that they put you in. So anything else that you do is, like, compared to that thing, or they expect that the next thing that you do is going to be the same box-shaped thing that you’ve done before. So, of course, everyone knows 3000 for his lyrics. They’re expecting it’s going to be a fire rap album. Right? Instead, he comes out with some Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, Yusef Lateef-like flautist sound bath 90 minute journey that’s like the product of an Ayahuasca trip, right?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Oh, he definitely was.

Maurice Cherry:

And I’ve been seeing some of the reviews. I mean, it just came out. By the time this airs, people will have known about it or. But. But I was thinking, like, man, I bet people are going to clown this album like they did when Solange’s last album came out. Like, When I Came Home came out and people were like, what is this? Because they expected her to be in this, Beyoncé’s’ little sister, kind of like, T.O.N.Y.-shaped, Sol-Angel and the Hadley Street Dream- shaped box. And she comes out with this…I mean, that’s one of my favorite albums of all time, her last album.

So I really like what you said about you, like, being in these spaces where you don’t know kind of what to do or what’s next. And I think that’s something that creatives in general, particularly Black creatives, should embrace, because it locks you in a box when you’re always doing the same type of thing over and over and over in a way. And as creatives, there’s more things that we want to do. There’s more ways we can sort of express ourselves. I think that’s a really good practice to have as a creative.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

And it’s scary.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

You know what I’m saying? It’s scary. But I think that’s part of the point. That’s the reason why people like roller coasters. It’s kind of scary.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

But that’s kind of what’s fun about it.

Maurice Cherry:

What would you say are, like, your next steps of growth for you as a creative? Like, where do you want to grow into?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Yeah, I think I have some knowledge from television. I have some knowledge from kind of the product design engineering side at Cōlab. I’m kind of putting those two things together. So I get to help startups with brand campaigns that have tv commercials, but also animations within their app. I think after talking with you about it for a little bit, it definitely feels like the thing that I butt up against most that I’m not always really sure about is really about business goals, how a business runs, how a startup runs, how do you actually make business impact, how do I use my skills in order to actually fundamentally change the direction of a business? You know what I’m saying? And I think that learning more about things like customer acquisition costs. Right. Learning more about measurement and research and strategy, I think will just help me put my work through a slightly different lens. And these are all things that at the moment, I would say I’m like a child at, but I think those are the things I’m starting to butt up against right now, especially when you’re talking to founders or people running companies.

These are things they care about and probably some things I need to learn there.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah, and that’s a good point. I mean, the best designers, I think, eventually end up finding out how to meld the creativity with the business and the strategy to really take it to the next level, because there’ll be a certain point in your career, and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but I certainly have, where you just feel like you’re the hired hand, like you just come in to do this part of the work and that’s it. And you may or may not see what the impact of it is. It may not be privy to you or you may not be exposed to it, but you know that you can do more. Like, you can feel yourself kind of growing out of that constraint that you have. And so I think that’s a good place to be, is to try to learn more about the business end. And I think with Cōlab, you’re at a great place to do it. You’re interfacing with startups.

Plus Cōlab is sort of this creative arm of a larger business entity. I think you’re in a great place to make that happen.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I think you’re right.

Maurice Cherry:

Where do you pull strength from?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Most of my strength comes from probably just my curiosity, like when I think about, what am I doing? So sometimes it’ll be like 11:00 and my whole family, my kids, my wife, everybody’s sleeping, and I’m just up, can’t sleep. And I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about some project that I’m involved in. It might be some explainer video where we have a script, but I think the script is not that good. So I’m really curious about looking up other scripts and good ones and seeing what they did. I’m really curious about doing, like, let me do, like, ten different versions of this thing and see what they look like. That curiosity, that creative itch. The part of the creative process where you’re really exploring this blue sky, it could be anything. I think that’s probably where I draw my strength from, is I’ll stay up late for those reasons.

And again, when I’m staying up late and I’m working hard on something, it does tend to be better.

Maurice Cherry:

Yeah. If you wouldn’t have gone into motion design and animation, what do you think you would have ended up doing?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I have no idea, really. I’ve been doing this so long, I don’t know what I would have done. And it all happened so kind of happenstance, you know what I mean? It was like, I rolled the dice, okay, now I’m in New York. Roll the dice again. Now I’m in San Francisco. Roll the dice again. I couldn’t have guessed that I would be where I am today, doing what I’m doing today. I don’t know if it’s like a question I have a really good answer for.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, I guess, to that end, what do you want the next chapter of your story to look like?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I think I want to continue doing the things I came to Cōlab to do, wherever it is. I want to keep bringing these two halves of my career together. So how can I use design and animation to entertain people? And also, how can I use design and animation to make people’s experience better, to make their experience of a product better? And I want to keep kind of jamming those two things together and then put a layer on top of. I want to use design and animation to help businesses achieve their goals. Right? So all three of those things. I want to just get much better at doing those three things.

Maurice Cherry:

Well, just to kind of wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about your work and everything? Where can they find that online?

Salih Abdul-Karim:

I’m the worst with social media, so I’m not really on Instagram or Twitter or X or whatever. Our work is at colabgroup.com. That’s where our work is. We’re actually probably going to start releasing some thought leadership pieces, just some things we talk about internally that we want to put out there so you’ll be able to hear my voice through that. I used to have a website. I used to have a portfolio on a rewl. I took it down because it got kind of old. I was like, man, I don’t like this work anymore. So I don’t really have a personal site.

But, yeah, I would say colabgroup[.com]. And the work that’s there, the things that you see on that site, is probably the best representation of me on the Internet right now.

Maurice Cherry:

All right, sounds good. Well, Salih Abdul-Karim, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, the work that you’ve done with creating Lottie, like I said, it’s had such a huge reach, just in terms of how many people use it. I think there are people that are sort of the benefactors of your work that have no idea that you were sort of the person behind it. But I really love what you had to say about the big takeaway, because I asked you this before we recorded, is like, what do you want the takeaway to be? And it’s like, you don’t have to know what you’re doing. And I think the cosmic happenstance of this episode happening at the end of this year, potentially the end of this podcast, is such a profound way to sort of close things out, because the main thing that I’ve always wanted to accomplish through Revision Path is that there’s more than one way to get to be a creative. There’s more than one way to do this, and you may not know what that is. And so maybe the stories of all these people can give you some insight as to what that thing might know.

So I really like that. That has been sort of a guiding force throughout your career and throughout your life, and I’ll be excited to see you bring those two halves of your career together in the future. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

No, thank you, Maurice. And thank you for doing all these episodes and putting this together. I think you’re doing something really special.

Maurice Cherry:

And we’re releasing this episode on Christmas, so it’s my gift to everybody. That was kind of corny, but, okay.

Salih Abdul-Karim:

Pour a little rum in it for me.

Maurice Cherry:

Hey, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m talking about.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

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Manuel Godoy

It’s no secret that stories from comic books and graphic novels have dominated the pop culture landscape since the early 2000s. However, the heroes in those stories that you see often don’t represent the true diversity out there in the real world. That’s where Manuel Godoy comes in. As the CEO of Black Sands Entertainment, he is the engine behind one of the most exciting and barrier-braking publishing houses in the nation. And with over 5,000 investors and over 200,000 books sold, it’s easy to see why!

We started our conversation fresh off of Manuel’s recent Shark Tank appearance, and he talked about how his company stands apart from other indie publishers, and how he’s leveraged social media to build a massive base of supporters and investors. Manuel also spoke about his time in the military, how he’s scaled Black Sands Entertainment over the years, and where he wants to take the company in the future. Hollywood, watch out — Manuel has created a movement that has no signs of stopping!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Manuel Godoy:
My name is Manuel Godoy, the CEO of Black Sands Entertainment. I am a writer, I am a publisher, and I also run an animation studio, so I have a lot of things going on. But my goal is to make black history before slavery a relevant thing, and we’ve been doing that pretty well over the last five years. So I’m thankful for you having me today.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. How has this year been going for you so far?

Manuel Godoy:
It’s been going pretty good. I mean, we started the year off with a Shark Tank episode so momentum is definitely on our back right now.

Maurice Cherry:
I want to just go ahead and just jump right into Black Sands Entertainment. I spent a lot of time yesterday and actually over the past few days just checking out the app, checking out the titles and everything. For those of who are listening who may not be familiar, can you give an introduction to what Black Sands Entertainment is and what it’s about?

Manuel Godoy:
Yes. Black Sands Entertainment is a comic book publisher who also does different mediums. So we also have digital content on BSE comics. We have animations and stuff like that. But our bread and butter is comic books, and most of our comic books are about black history before slavery. We have plenty of titles about that. We expanded significantly last year from three or four different titles to about 16 now. And we’re just on the move, like constantly moving forward, trying to tell the story about our people that’s not always negative. I felt like there’s too much negative content out there for black Americans to consume and that we need to have something more on a positive side, some kind of legacy that we could live up to. So even if you have very humble beginnings, you can still see a great path forward in your life.

Maurice Cherry:
I love, love, love that whole message of doing that. And I mean, in a way that’s kind of what’s… I mean, I don’t want to say that what we’re doing is the same, but I think in terms of trying to make sure to uncover the history that people may not know about, I totally completely vibe with that idea. What does a typical day look like for you? I mean, it sounds like you’re juggling a lot of stuff.

Manuel Godoy:
Oh, it’s chaotic. There’s no typical day. That’s why I need to hire some staff, right? I’m currently looking for an editor-in-chief. Well, not an editor-in-chief, but a lead editor for our company so they could take that side of the publishing side of my life off my hands. But yeah, we’re definitely looking for ways to break up my days, because my days are purely chaotic. I think I spend maybe 10% of my time actually making content because I’m in charge of so many things. So I would love to get that to 40% if possible. But my typical days are purely chaotic. We have a lot of press, we have a lot of scouting and recruiting and negotiating. Of course, I have to be very relevant on social media, so that’s also a big factor in my life.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean, I see you are super active on TikTok. I watched probably most of the videos that you’ve got up. How has social media helped you as you build Black Sands Entertainment?

Manuel Godoy:
Well, it just gives me independence. One thing is it’s a new age nowadays, that’s why I don’t really knock companies like Milestone Media, right? It’s like I’m not a fan of their business model, how they originally started, but I don’t knock them for it because there was limited options in the 90s. It’s not like they had much of a choice, right? But to work with the industry. Social media nowadays allows us to completely circumvent the traditional gatekeepers of this space. And so we can make our own customer bases, we can get our own investors without having to basically go through the…

Manuel Godoy:
Also, big shout out to Barack Obama for allowing Regulation CF to even exist in the first place, because prior to that, you had to be basically rich and white to invest in any small company. You weren’t going to get investments from people unless you had significant connections already. And now with Regulation CF, companies like ours and even other businesses, black-owned, can actually go out to the community and raise capital through unaccredited investors, right? So that’s a huge thing that happened recently. So I think the technology, the ability to go directly to your consumers, gives people with the drive to really scale and grow and make a difference without having to basically change their fundamental beliefs in order to be successful. You know what I mean?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And just for folks that are listening, Regulation CF is Regulation Crowdfunding. And one of the rules for that is that you can raise, I think it’s like a maximum of $5 million through crowdfunding over a 12-month period. I know that’s one of the rules of it, right?

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah. That’s for unaccredited investors. So after that you go into Regulation A and then you have to do only accredited investors, right? That’s a lot of money for most people. Companies that are raising $5 million rounds, they tend to be ready to go at that point. They’re not struggling anymore. Now they’re in market and they know what they’re doing and they’re trying to scale. You know what I mean?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean the advent of crowdfunding overall I think has really helped a lot of independent creators to get their ideas out there in the market. I remember… And I mean, this didn’t start with Kickstarter, but I know Kickstarter was probably one of the more prominent platforms that was really trying to build on this sort of… I guess, build on this idea that creatives can fund their own ideas through their fans and Patreons and stuff like that. But I remember when it came around 2009, 2010, it was hard to get people on board with even the idea of crowdfunding. And now it’s pretty common to use Kickstarter or use similar platforms to be able to raise money like that.

Manuel Godoy:
It’s definitely something that just gives us freedom. So I think that’s what was the downfall of Milestone Media. I think they had great IP. They probably had great numbers: sales, but it wasn’t to the liking of DC and Diamond, so they killed them, right? DC and Diamond said, “Die.” And they had no choice, they had to die because they had signed deals with them, right? And now they’re trying to revive them because of the Black Lives Matter movement, right? So they’re like, “Hey, this is a great time to have a black imprint,” right? But at the end of the day, they let them go away for 30 years. So why should you believe them now and their generosity, I mean and their genuineness for the revival of Milestone?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I just heard recently, Milestone was supposed to have like a black history comic that came out during Black History Month and now they pushed it back until June. And I’m like, “Well, that’s not Black History Month, but whatever.” But yeah, when you’re beholden to like these larger corporate interests, it does stifle innovation in that way.

Manuel Godoy:
Absolutely. Yeah. So we’re lucky that we never have to deal with that. And as a result we’re pretty much not only successful, but now we know our customers. So the big part about it is with social media is you know your customers, right? It’s not like it’s some, “Oh man, I wonder what kind of customer I have?” That’s something you have when you go to someone like Diamond Distribution or go to comic book shops, you still don’t know who the heck your customer really is. But with social, you know exactly who your customer is, so you can refine your acquisition over time. You know how to sell, you know who to sell it to, right? You know how to message. It’s all powerful just because you’re doing the right distribution.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean, this feeds into my next question which I feel like you may have just sort of answered, but how are you ensuring that Black Sands really distinguishes itself from other indie publishers out there?

Manuel Godoy:
Well, one thing is I don’t feel like we’re in the indie publishing space anymore to be considered another indie publisher at this point. Last year we did 1.2 million in sales, sold 120,000 books, right? And we’re just bringing online a whole bunch of new titles from our creators. So it’s going to be a huge year for us. Our main niche is history before slavery. We don’t do superheroes much at all.

Maurice Cherry:
Really.

Manuel Godoy:
That’s not our thing at all. I think we have like one superhero title and that’s it. Only because the creator has a sizable audience already, so we gave him a shot. We were like, “Hey, you a got a sizable audience. Let’s see if we can make your comic into a reality. And see if your audience will tap in.” And they really have been tapped in, so that’s a good one.

Manuel Godoy:
But for the most part, we wouldn’t try to do superheroes because that market is closed with Marvel and DC. It’s just closed. There’s no point even trying to compete with them. That’s them. They own that genre. I wanted to go for a genre that was 100% ours to own, and that is history before slavery. So mythology, fantasy, history, drama, all that stuff in an ancient setting or an ancient location or something like that is what we do. It’s not just Egypt, we have stories about Madagascar, the Mali empire, Moorish Spain, the Inca, right? The Malaysians, right? We just got a whole bunch of anticolonial rhetoric. That’s our power. That’s where we make our content, and that’s why everybody buys our stuff because it’s more of the good stuff, right? When they buy our books, they know it’s not going to be different or a different kind of vibe. It’s more of the stuff they want to have. More exposure to indigenous people, to people from diaspora and their actual culture, as opposed to the indoctrination of European powers.

Maurice Cherry:
No, I really like that. Years and years ago… God, I’m trying to remember when that was. Maybe 2015, 2016, we had an African comic creator from Cameroon who was making a… He had, I think it was a line of comic books, as well as a video game that was around African traditions and African mythology and stuff like that. And I remember him giving a similar reason as you just had in terms of like, it’s a lot more relevant to the audience that they’re trying to serve to talk about it in terms of history or to talk about history, than to create some superhero kind of aesthetic, which I think at the time he was saying was really more rooted in the west. Again, this is coming from an African perspective, but yeah.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah. Well, that’s the one thing about it. It’s I know for a fact that it’s a good thing for us to have this stuff, right? Without nobody messing up our power. We got to have our power and people really underestimate how much it matters for us to own the narrative and stuff like that. I mean, there’s too much crap they add to our stories just to go and control the narrative. One of the biggest examples I have is the recent movie that’s probably going to be played all across America. In every single school in America there’s probably going to be Harriet coming on. They’re going to be like, “Hey kids, let’s watch Harriet. It’s so great.” Talk about Harriet Tubman, right? They’re not going to use any other content for Harriet Tubman. They’re going to use the movie Harriet as the example, and that one is 100% fictional.

Manuel Godoy:
They had a black man who was the main villain of the story, a bounty hunter armed to the teeth in the South, because I guess they didn’t just Lynch black people who had guns in the South, right? Who’s the mythical villain that’s the main threat to Harriet Tubman. That’s some wild… They get 1,000 pitches a year for Harriet Tubman films, and they’re like, “You know what? The one that we’re going to spend $10 million to produce is this one,” right? And you just got to be like, “Wow, this is probably the only one that had that situation in it.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I remember there being a big criticism of that movie. For folks that are listening, it’s the Harriet movie with, I think Cynthia Erivo plays Harriet Tubman. I heard that was a big criticism of it, that the part you just mentioned about having a black antagonist as well.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah, and it’s not even real. He’s not real.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, they manufactured him for the movie.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah. It’s like what is that? That’s them sabotaging a very… Like to me, even my fans, right? And a lot of people, there’s a reason why Yasuke flopped on Netflix, right? It’s like, all you had to do is tell the story of Yasuke. You didn’t have to make it about mecha robots and supernatural aliens. You didn’t have to do all that. Just tell the story of Yasuke, it would’ve been great. You know what I’m saying? You know what I’m saying? It’s like they go so far over like we just can’t have history connected to black folks, right? In a positive light. We got to make it different. We got to make it more marketable.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, there were…. That’s funny because I remember when that came out and a lot of people were like, “Oh man, this is so good.” And I remember watching and being like, “Really? It’s not good.”

Manuel Godoy:
That was media hype, right? But once you actually got people who actually watched, they were like, “Why are we doing this?” They were like, “He’s not even the main character.”

Maurice Cherry:
He’s the main character there. There is like you said all these weird supernatural elements to it. And then I also think it was just too short. They tried to put too much into six episodes and it just… I don’t know. I didn’t think it was good at all.

Manuel Godoy:
And the littlest part was the actual historical parts.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Manuel Godoy:
Where there was flashbacks of his time with Nobunaga. It was like, “Oh, that’s amazing.” And then all of a sudden it’s back to, “Okay, trash story.”

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I would imagine probably one benefit of you using these historical stories and mythology and stuff like that is it takes out that comparison element. If you’re doing superheroes, for example, people might look at this and be like, “Oh, well this is just like, blah, blah, blah from Marvel.”

Manuel Godoy:
You can’t do that. And that’s a huge power to us. They can’t compare us, right? So the critics have to actually make a well-informed decision. They can’t just say, “Oh, this is just like this except you…” Or something like that.

Maurice Cherry:
I’ll tell you a story. I think I told this story on the show before maybe like, I don’t know, hundreds of episodes ago. But when I was younger, when I was a teenager, I really was into… I mean, I’m still into comic books now, and maybe not in the same fervor, but I was really into comic books and was like, “Yeah, I’m going to make my own comic books.” And I was in rural Alabama just drawing stuff up or whatever. And this is back when Yahoo had these user groups online, like Yahoo groups. And they had one that was dedicated to black comic books. I think it was called Black Comix with an X, like B-L-A-C-K C-O-M-I-X. And I remember going in there and I was showing off my stuff like that. And one of the people who had responded, one of the people who responded was the Dwayne McDuffie, had responded back to it and trashed it.

Maurice Cherry:
But he trashed it, I mean, not in a good way, but certainly trashed it in the way of like, “Oh, this is just like, blah, blah, blah from Marvel.” It was that sort of comparison, which honestly I was literally basing it off of that. I was looking at Marvel comic books and trying to make the Black Cyclops or whatever. You know what I’m saying? He trashed it. I was like, “Oh, shit. I can’t believe I was trying to do that.” And then I didn’t really know who Dwayne McDuffie was then. Of course people know who he is now in terms of his contributions. But yeah, I can see how not going that superhero route is a definite unique selling proposition and advantage for you in the market.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah. You definitely don’t want to get caught in that bubble where you end up basically doomed from the start.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Manuel Godoy:
It’s like you can’t get market cap because it’s already taken up. And what we’re trying to do is the exact opposite. We’re trying to basically develop a market from the ground up and then dominate that to the point where if you make anything they’re going to be like, “Oh, like Black Sands or like this title from Black Sands Entertainment.” And it starts being like we’re the gatekeepers, right? So they’ve been avoiding this topic for 50 years, so nobody better complain at all when we dominate this space and then gate keep. “Oh, man, listen…” “Nah, bro. Y’all had 50 years to do this. Y’all ain’t never did it, so we got to gate keep.”

Maurice Cherry:
That’s true. That’s true. Let’s switch gears here a little bit. I know we’ve talked a good bit about Black Sands, and we’ll talk more about it later, but I want to know about your origin story since we’re in the vein of comics here. Tell me about where you grew up.

Manuel Godoy:
I was born and raised in New York, right? Queens specifically. And also some time in Alabama as well. Pretty cool. At the end of the day, New York is a different kind of place, man. You got to really embrace new ideas. Everything changes in freaking two years in New York, nothing stays the same, right? So that was always a huge thing for us was that times change a lot faster in New York than anywhere else. I was also in the military for a while. So I spent about six years in the military army. Just been a pretty crazy ride. Not really knowing what the heck you were trying to do in life, so I went to the military early, like right after high school.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Manuel Godoy:
And it was good for me. I probably would’ve stayed in the military if my knees didn’t blow out. But at the end of the day, destiny calls. Things changed. I did some high, big brain stuff outside the military. I was a freaking, oh yeah, a telecommunication engineer. So it was a really big brain job, very lucrative. And then it got all outsourced to India, right? This was the Great Outsourcing in 2010. Everything started getting outsourced. That field just disappeared off the face of the earth. I moved around to San Diego to get a degree. Finished it up in New York, Queens College as a economics major. And in about 2016, I finally got my first comic done: Kids 2 Kings and that’s when the actual business started happening.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. Let’s bring it back to, again, those early days, when you said growing up in New York and you spent some time in Alabama. Were you so rounded by a lot of comics and comic books growing up?

Manuel Godoy:
No, no, no. I was a big anime guy. So me and all my friends and stuff were anime dudes. So we were the old Toonami peeps watching Dragon Ball and Yu Yu Hakusho and all the other stuff. That was my vibe. Also, video game fanatics. We were huge video game fanatics back then. That was our thing though. I wasn’t really a comic guy at all. Still ain’t to this day.

Maurice Cherry:
So back then, were you thinking, did you want to start your own anime series or anything like that back then, because you were around it all the time?

Manuel Godoy:
I wanted to make a video game series, a video game franchise based off Black Sands.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Manuel Godoy:
That was always my goal over time. In fact, I tried to do that first, get a degree in video game design. Didn’t work out for me, but that’s what I wanted at first, right? And that’s what the original idea was made for. And then I realized it was so expensive to make a video game and pivoted toward comics.

Maurice Cherry:
And now when you say you wanted to go into that, was this when you were looking to go to San Diego State?

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah, because I was going to the Arts Institute in San Diego first.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Manuel Godoy:
That was the first place I went and that was for video game programming or something like that. I think it was video game programming or design or something. And it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t for me, so I switched up, went into creative writing at San Diego… Yeah, San Diego State. And then eventually ended up in economics. I did the smart thing. I didn’t do all the writing classes up front. I went to all my general studies so I could transfer over. So I didn’t waste too much time when it came to changing my degrees and stuff.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, it sounds like you were at least building that foundation, and then I think even that trial and error part with first studying games or going into game development and realizing this wasn’t what you wanted to do and then going into something else. I mean, college is the time where you can figure those things out, where you can decide what the path is that you want to take. Even if it may not suit the goal then, you’re still building that foundation, at least from what we can see now in hindsight is to where you are now.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah, for sure. Definitely was. But probably the biggest important thing was the economics, right? It’s like I can’t build a freaking chart or graph to save my life nowadays, right? Because I haven’t used it in so long, right? But the fundamentals of economics is what led me to the success I am today, right? Because I always think of things from a supply and demand perspective. I was never trying to do things in oversaturated markets. I knew how to get my proper price points, right? To figure out… Because the thing about it is I mean, the logic doesn’t even make sense of how I do business. I avoid comic bookshops as a comic book publisher, right? I avoid them like the plague. Don’t market to them. Nothing I care about that.

Manuel Godoy:
That right there is a conundrum unless I have some kind of evidence behind it, right? It makes no sense if I’m doing that from an outside perspective, but that’s what I do. I have the most expensive books in the black community. My books are just straight up more expensive than everybody else’s by far, yet I sell 10 times more than the next person up. So I sell more units than everybody else while also having the most expensive books. And these are all decisions that I’ve come to based on the actual field. For me, from the economics perspective of this community is that black people have no problem supporting things that matter to them. So that part of it is people think that black people are all poor, and it’s not true at all. There’s a whole bunch of wealth in our community and they buy very expensive things for their families. When they do it, it’s to make sure that their kids have a great upbringing, right? That they have a legacy built for them and everything else.

Manuel Godoy:
So what we’re providing for them is really high luxury products that they can be proud of, both the parents and the kids, and we could price it out to match that and they have no problem with that. And it kind of reminds me of I don’t know if you’ve had time in New York, but there’s a restaurant in Jamaica, Queens called Margaritas Pizza. Their cheese slice is like $3.50 for a slice of cheese. Everyone around them in the entire area has dollar slices. They’re like, “Hey, these poor black people, they can’t buy anything. This is a poor community.” Whatever, right? The one place that always has a line out the door with all the black people is the one that sells for 3.50 and everybody else won’t listen to the evidence. They won’t see the evidence saying, “Just make a superior product, that people will support you.” They don’t see that. All they simply do is just focus on their preconceived notions of what is the proper thing for the market.

Maurice Cherry:
There’s an interesting word that you used as you were describing that, that I’d like you to maybe talk about a little bit more, just in terms of how you’re viewing your product in the market. You said luxury, which I don’t think when people hear about comics or really anything like of this sort of caliber in this realm, they don’t really think about luxury.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, I’m just curious. Talk about that a little bit more.

Manuel Godoy:
I’ll expand on that. I’m sorry. I just saw something from my wife.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh.

Manuel Godoy:
Basically, what I mean by luxury is at the end of the day, we do hard cover. We do hard cover anthologies of our books. They are library-bound. So in other words, you can’t break them apart if you wanted. It’s really tough to damage to them permanently, which is great, right? Especially if you give it to younger kids. They’re so easy to destroy things. The paper quality is very thick, so it’s very hard to crease. Even if you’re turning the pages like a crazy man, you won’t crease the pages. The art style is absolutely phenomenal, and that’s across the board in our entire company. You look at all the titles and you’ll be like, “Wow, these are all super high level professional stuff,” right? Basically we’re like Shōnen Jump. Shōnen Jump is basically the elites of Japanese Manga, right? If you’re in Shōnen Jump, you’re not going to be a bum. You’re not going to have basic stuff. You’re going to have the best content in the entire Japanese market. And that’s basically what we’re doing with our brand. And we price ourselves as such. We’re the best.

Manuel Godoy:
So people, they price what they think they should be at. I see people making comics for $5. $5 to sell a book for $5, because that’s what the comic bookshop does. But I’m like, “Our customers don’t shop at comic shops.” The overwhelming majority black consumers don’t shop at comic bookshops. They start at Target or whatever. $10 book is normal to them. $20 hard cover is normal to them.

Maurice Cherry:
I know you just said earlier, you were like, “I don’t go to comic shops.” You avoid comic shops. And I would imagine part of that reason is because of what you just said, that’s not where your target market is going to be. But then also I would imagine talking to those comic shops, that’s probably what some other publishers would do just in terms of just trying to get their books on the shelves.

Manuel Godoy:
Absolutely. That’s their only way of knowing how to sell, right? That’s the thing, they just don’t know how to sell any other way. So they use the traditional means to sell. And the thing about it is you got to deal with pricing and stuff, right? Why should they buy Black Sands for $10 when they could buy Black Panther for four? And I’m like, “Because Black Panther is not about history, how about that?” But they still… There’s that preconceived notion of what the market is. Why should you worry about a middle man when you could do it yourself? Just cut the middle man out because they’re already out of touch.

Maurice Cherry:
Did your time in the army help influence you when it came to just the idea of building Black Sands Entertainment?

Manuel Godoy:
Mostly the management side. So I’m a big believer in having subject matter experts, people who actually know what they’re doing and can handle operations without my guidance. So over time I’ve gotten employees or officers that really knew how to take things on without my help while I just do minimal amount of information to get the product done. And that has significantly helped us to scale compared to other people.

Manuel Godoy:
We’re very hands off in productions, and the people who are in charge, they know what they’re doing. They have a lot of skin in the game, and as a result, they really know what they’re doing. They learn the principles of management through me. And I might help in the initial recruitment of their team, but once that’s it, all I got to do is cut some checks and comics come out. I don’t want to have to think about what they’re doing. As long as our standards are up-to-date, right? But I’m not trying to figure out their story. If the fans like it, good. That’s all I care about, right? I’m not here like, “Well, I don’t think this story should go this way.” That is not my responsibility. You know what I mean?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean, I think also like you said with the number of titles that you have and that they focus even on different cultures and stuff, and forgive me for this reference, but you can’t Tyler Perry it where you’re like, your name is over the whole thing and you’re overseeing and micromanaging every part of the production.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah, you can’t do that. You got to let people do what they want. Just as long as they’re in the ballpark, you’re good to go. Because at the end of the day, this field is completely open, so it’s not like you have to be super freaking precise, right? You just make good stories. For instance, I’ll give you some examples. Grenada’s Shadow, that’s our Moorish title that’s coming out very soon in the next month or so. It’s already done. And that one is about an assassin who’s a Moor, who’s basically trying to undermine the Crusaders. When Spain was basically… When basically European powers and the Pope specifically was trying to take back Spain from Moorish occupation, which has gone on for 400 years. So this guy who got killed by… His whole village and stuff got killed by Crusaders is now an assassin taking out really high level leaders of the Crusaders. It’s dope. It’s a dope story, and it’s very different from what you would normally expect when people make these titles, right? No superhero powers, nothing, just straight up Assassins Creed type joint.

Manuel Godoy:
We have Lion’s Game: Masters of Mali, where it’s a martial arts tournament in ancient Mali. We have all these fighters from all across Africa coming together to fight in the capital. And one of the fighters is somebody who was the great grandson of a previous Mansa who was basically assassinated and usurped. So he has a legacy he’s trying to reclaim in secret, so he joins this martial arts tournament. And it’s crazy, it’s like one of those… It’s just like Baki or something like that. It’s really freaking hardcore, hyper masculine, martial arts tournament type stuff. And it’s a different vibe, but it’s still the same thing. We’re showing culture. We’re putting stories that will be dope in modern day settings and just putting it in an ancient culture. So you can always have a good connection to great ancient civilizations prior to slavery. That idea that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Everybody in America says that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Whenever we have any type of adversity. “Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Where’s our Rome?

Maurice Cherry:
Of the titles that you have now, is there one that really stands out to you as a favorite?

Manuel Godoy:
Out of the ones that are not made by me, right? I would say Lion’s Game is probably my favorite just because the story is crazy, first of all. You’re going to have a lot of martial artists from all across Africa, with their own cultures, their own martial art style that’s real. And a lot of characters that people may have never known before, but actually were real people in the old times. It’s just culturally fun. I mean, it’s just culturally amazing and while still being a hit for the parent, for the fathers specifically. This is not a title for the kids. They’ll probably watch it. The teens will probably watch it anyway, but the parents, specifically the dads, them 30 to 40 year old dads are going to be like, “This is the best comic I’ve ever read in my life.” It’s going to have that vibe.

Manuel Godoy:
Super hyper masculine, forget your feelings. This is raw. And we haven’t done any titles like that at Black Sands, but this is one that I felt like it would definitely work. And even though it’s written by Kevin Brown, it was originally my idea because what I do is I do competitions in my Patreon community and I have like a topic. I’m like, “This kind of topic would really sell well to my fans.” I automatically know what kind of topic it is. And I’m like, “Who’s going to give the best possible pitch for this story?” And then I judge them and I say, “The one that does the best, who has the best possible pitch, they’re given an opportunity to get published by us, and we do everything,” right? We mentor them. We get them the artists. We pay for their production. We give them royalties on the book sales.

Manuel Godoy:
They’re starting their career on the Black Sands all because they won a competition. But the competition has 100, 200 applicants. So it’s not like they’re just a random guy with an idea. They had to beat out a whole bunch of other people who had the same marching orders. You know what I’m saying?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Manuel Godoy:
So this story was heavily curated before it ever got a chance to start being written and this guy killed it. So I was like, “Yeah, this one right here has super longevity. This one is probably going to get to screen very fast in the future after comic books come out. I think this one’s going to be very quickly picked up as a, either a live action or a show of some sort, because it’s never been done. It’s perfect for the time we’re in now. The Bakis, the Syngins and all these other martial arts tournament type shows are very in right now. So this is going to fit perfectly.

Maurice Cherry:
Talk to me some more about this Patreon community. How did that come about?

Manuel Godoy:
Well, it’s always been something that we’ve always had. A large community. Our community wasn’t that big, maybe two years ago, but once we started raising capital, it ballooned out of control like really big. The way we give back to the community, besides the comic books that we make and stuff like that is we give them opportunities. Opportunities is what we do. So voice acting opportunities, publishing deals through competitions. They do a competition, they get in there. Early access to investment rounds, so when we do our investment rounds. Patreons and the previous investors always get two weeks or more of the exclusivity where they get to buy up as much stock as they want before we open it up to the public. And that can make a huge difference in the world when we have early bird specials.

Manuel Godoy:
Most of our Patreons are actually investors already, so they have stock. They get a 10% discount on their stock. So if you were investing $5,000, you got $500 worth of stock for free. So it makes a huge difference if you’re on the higher side of investors. If you’re investing $100, it ain’t going to matter much if you get early access or not. But when you’re investing thousands, it matters a lot.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Manuel Godoy:
And so that’s been the huge reason why people join us. The future opportunities that we give them is like the call. And usually what happens is when we’re raising capital, we have a downtick, so we lose a lot of Patreons over time when we’re at raising capital. And then when we’re no longer raising capital, and now we’re preparing for the next round, we drastically increase in Patreons. So it’s like a huge ebb and flow. Everybody’s basically flowing into the investment round, the one that wants that’s done. Everybody who didn’t make it into that investment round is like, “Dang, I can’t miss the next one.” So they start flowing back into the Patreon, right? It’s like it’s just the way the ebb and flow of the Patreon community is now.

Manuel Godoy:
So right now we’re about 1,500 members in and we have over 20,000 a month in donations. So it’s pretty big. It’s a pretty big community, much bigger than other people for the same amount of Patreons. If you go on the website, Grafion, you’ll see that in our category, most people’s average pledge is 2.50, something like that. $2.50. Our average pledge is about $14. While we might have much less subscribers than some people on the list, we still collect way more than them, even though they’re higher on the list, just because our community is in. They’re like super in.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Okay, so you built this on Patreon. Okay, I was trying to… As you were sort of mentioning that, I was like, “What platform are you using?” But you’re using Patreon. Okay. All right. Yeah, Patreon has been, I think really for a lot of artists and creators, Patreon has been a pretty good platform for them to be able to at least have those kinds of different tiers and things like that. But if you’re bringing in that much per pledge, that’s great. That’s great. I had Revision Path on Patreon for years and it was not that good. We ended up getting off of there, but –

Manuel Godoy:
The main thing about growth of Patreons is it’s not a monthly thing. I think the whole preconception of Patreon is bad because it messes up the way people should be strategizing growing Patreon communities, right? It’s all about opportunities. So in other words, let’s say you’re a video game… Video game companies do great on Patreon. One, here’s why. They get betas. Betas all the time, right? Beta access. “Hey, this is what we developed this week. Download it.” Boom. But two, “Oh, you want to be a side character. You want to write a line for certain characters who’s a side character in the story. You want to write a paragraph, right? Submit your stuff.”

Manuel Godoy:
People are getting opportunities to be a part of the production all the time, which is why those communities grow so fast, because they’re saying, “Hey, next week we’re going to be getting some designs. We’re going to put some Patreons in the community into the game. If you’re active at this date, you’ll be able to apply.” And then people flood in, right? Because they want their opportunity to shine. Or, “We’re about to have voice acting for our thing. We’re about to do some casting. It’s going to start on January 1st. So if you’re a Patreon on January 1st, you’ll be able to apply,” right? Don’t even do no open casting, just straight up only Patreon casting. Boom, hundreds of people sign up.

Manuel Godoy:
This is the way to get… Converting people to sign up on Patreon is super freaking hard. So you got to give them a very high incentive to do the first month. They’ll stick around. About 60% of all the people who sign up for some kind of special event even if they don’t make it. About 60% will stay long term. So 40% will die off pretty quickly when they don’t get the job or whatever the heck opportunity is happening. But about 60% will stay because they see that there’s always a new opportunity is coming eventually.

Manuel Godoy:
That’s the idea. Pump and… It’s not pump and dump. It’s pump and freaking like pump and hold. There you go. Pump and hold, right? It’s like you try to hold on to as many people as you can after you pump it. And then the next pump, you got to get another push. It’s never monthly. Some months I’ll just lose 50 Patreons and I won’t gain a single Patreon that month. It’ll be a net negative 50. So I’ll gain Patreons, but it’s not at the rate to replenish the people that left. So I’ll have negative 50 on that month. And then some months I’ll have 400 new Patreons.

Maurice Cherry:
So that’s a nice, I mean, for folks that are listening, hell, for me too, that’s a nice lesson on how to man manage doing some sort of like a Patreon type of a community like that, if you’re using Patreon. But no, that’s good information to know. I mean, I think certainly, you mentioned having this background in economics, that’s probably something a lot of independent creators don’t have when it comes to approaching the mechanics of how you build equity and build money for the company in order to do the kind of things you want to do.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah. I just don’t think people understand that. I mean, they don’t even take the examples that are clearly in their face. Netflix doesn’t get subscribers by having a whole bunch of shows they can watch. Netflix gets subscribers because Squid Game is the number one talked about series in the country and it just came out. Because Bird Box is the number one story in the country right now and people want to see it and they can only see it through Netflix, so they sign up and that’s the first time they ever sign up and then they might stick around. You understand? But they got to have some big win to get people to sign up because people aren’t just signing up. They aren’t signing up because they have a service, right? They’re signing up because of a specific thing they absolutely have to see. And then they’re like, “Eh, might as well stick around.” You know what I’m saying?

Manuel Godoy:
So, but people don’t look at that and say, “That’s the business model for subscriptions.” It’s what’s going to get people to sign up? World of Warcraft spends $100 million on just expansions because they have to get those people who might have lapsed, those people who are not subscribing to resubscribe or become a new subscriber. They got to have some big, giant ridiculous event. They can’t just be, “Hey, we’re the number one freaking MMO in the world.” That’s not good enough to get new subscribers. It’s good enough to keep them, but it’s not good enough to get them. You know what I’m saying? So you got to have big, over the top things in order to get people to be motivated to subscribe, because subscription is the most difficult purchase in the world. They’re in a contract. So it’s not like, “Hey, I just bought some food, right? People have no problem giving you a $100, right? But if you said, “Hey, just give me $15 a month, they’re like, “Ooh, wait. Whoa.”

Maurice Cherry:
That is the truth. That is the truth. Absolutely.

Manuel Godoy:
They’re like, “Wait a minute, a month? Can’t I just give you a $100?” They’re like, “Yeah, but it’s going to take you seven months, eight months to…” “Yeah, but 15 a month though, I don’t know.”

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s talk about Shark Tank because you did mention at the top of the show, starting off the year with the Shark Tank appearance. Please, I want to know how did it come about? What was it like facing Kevin Hart? Tell me all about it.

Manuel Godoy:
He’s brutal, man. He’s brutal. He’s a lot taller in real life, and I don’t mean height. He’s a very dominant dude. And that fight went on a lot longer than what y’all saw. People were like, “Man, you should have countered for this.” I did. I did. I did. There was other offers on the table. But at the end of the day, Kevin Hart knew he had veto power. He just knew it, right? It’s one thing about you got to know who you are and what you’re worth. So he knew he had veto power, right? And even the other Sharks admitted it too during the debate.

Manuel Godoy:
Like for instance, Kevin O’Leary, he accepted my counter. He said 10% and a 25 cent royalty on books. He was like, “I’ll take that deal for 500,000.” He was like, “I’ll take that deal.” But he understood that the more we talk is like Kevin Hart is Kevin Hart. He’s saying he’s going to make this show. If he’s saying he’s going to give you this, that and the other, that’s not a normal resource that you’ll ever get. That’s like you’re saying this and he said… That’s a lot different from what… That 30% you’re paying, you’re not giving up 25% equity for $500,000. That’s not what you’re doing. You’re not giving up more, 25% more equity than you came in for, right? For the money. The money doesn’t matter at all. In fact, you didn’t even need the money. The reality was you were doing that for Kevin Hart’s specific direct involvement in all of your productions from now until the end of time, and that’s a very strong person. Plus mark Cuban, right?

Manuel Godoy:
Plus mark Cuban and his resources. But specifically Kevin Hart, who’s like a top five paid actor in the world, like independent productions and businesses that he’s just straight up done himself who understands the idea of owning as opposed to, “Hey, let’s give this to Hollywood and have them make a show.” He’s like he doesn’t believe that. He believes in owning. He’s already done all that. It’s time for him to own it himself. So this is huge when it comes to what it means on the deal side. So a lot of people look at it, they just think 25%, you got robbed. And you’re like, “Do you know how much it costs for Kevin Hart to endorse your company?”

Maurice Cherry:
Right?

Manuel Godoy:
“The real dollar implications of that endorsement.” He said, and then Chase’s like, “Hey, check out the new card,” right? When Kevin Hart does the commercial, that’s $3 million minimum. That’s $3 million minimum for, to use a commercial with Kevin Hart doing it. That super bowl commercial probably cost them $10 million minimum. It was like a 30 second commercial, right? It is like that is the reality of just the endorsement side. Not even his actual real like work. His real actual involvement in productions. So the implications is way more than 25% is what I bought.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. How have things changed since the Shark Tank appearance?

Manuel Godoy:
Well, one, we’re getting a lot more publicity. We’re getting our verifications and stuff like that. We’re starting to get that. Sales has jumped. We still haven’t gone public with the deal yet just because we’re still negotiating. But we’re about done. We’re very close to making announcements on our actual go-to-market strategy. But once that happens, that’s when the stuff will really hit the fan. We have a huge amount of major press things happening right now, so that’s going to be coming out for the next two weeks. We’re going to have stuff like that happening. So it’s going to be huge rolling success. The idea is don’t lose your 15 minutes of fame. He is like, “Get on it and keep getting the press. Keep getting the things. Keep staying in front of the camera as much as you can in order to stay relevant. Be the top story.”

Manuel Godoy:
So that’s what we’re doing. We’re lucky that we’re still capable of doing that even though a lot of other Shark Tank companies don’t have this kind of follow up, right? They don’t get on the big major shows or anything like that. So the fact that we are is freaking huge for us. We’re doing that before Kevin Hart says, “Man, Black Sands is like the best thing ever. We’re about to make billions,” right? Once he starts saying that publicly, that’s when it really will start becoming like an unstoppable force. You know what I mean?

Maurice Cherry:
Because you’ll have that endorsement and then coming from him like that, a lot of other people are just going to check it out from there.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah. Not just an endorsement, but big money people will start gravitating towards you. Not everything has to be made by us. Black Sands is clearly going to be made by us. We want to control it and we want to own everything of it, right? But there’s some titles that we just don’t have the manpower for, but we don’t want to stop these creators who are under our brand from having their own shows. So we might have more traditional deals out there for some other IPs in our company, which makes like three, four, five, six different shows all being under direct development at the same time, all because of Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Productions and everything else. So that’s the crazy thing about it, right? Is this is about to be a black Renaissance when it comes to content and ownership because I have investors, regular small investors.

Manuel Godoy:
And this is the thing I always tell people too, if we get to a billion dollar valuation in say five years, which isn’t impossible, it’s not impossible at all. Two seasons of Black Sands would’ve already came out. Licensing and merchandising deals with Walmart and everything else would’ve already probably happened by then. And these are like really big licensing deals.

Manuel Godoy:
So if this is already happening within five years and we get to a billion dollar market cap, right? And go IPO. Somebody who invested $5,000 at my $5 million valuation back in 2020, they’ve maxed out, that was the max that the government said they could do, because they’re unaccredited. So they $5,000, the max you can give. And they gave 5,000 because they just were hardcore believing in Black Sands. They’ll be able to flip that 5,000 for a million dollars, 200 times return because that’s the valuation we’re at now. We’re at a million dollar market… I mean a billion dollar market cap, and they invested at five million, they basically are getting 200X roughly around there if they sell their shares. That’s huge, that’s real generational wealth. And there’s a lot of people who did it. There’s a lot of people who invested at the max in the first round.

Maurice Cherry:
What would you say has been the toughest thing that you’ve had to deal with since starting all of this?

Manuel Godoy:
Fighting my own personal frustrations not blowing up. I mean, online, they see my bravado, right? And my toughness, but I hold a lot back. I hold a lot of my hating back. I’m a huge hater, right? I just don’t let problem go. But I believe if you’re not a hater, you ain’t really… You don’t really care about life. You got to be mad when somebody else gets an achievement that you didn’t get, especially if you’ve done more than them. So I’m a huge freaking hater. Holding that energy back, not to disparaging other colleagues, even though I know that their claim is completely bogus or their achievements should have been my achievements, I should have been on certain list or whatever. That was the thing that I felt was the hardest thing to do over this entire time. Because you can really make yourself as this super negative force in this space if you wear your emotions on your chest. And I try to, even though people see me all the time bashing Hollywood. Hollywood’s not a person, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Right.

Manuel Godoy:
I used to always articulate things to not make it personal, not try to burn any specific bridge. So if you still were hurt by what I was saying, the main thing was you probably were somebody that I didn’t want to be in colleagues… I mean ever work with in the first place because you’re one of those people. So that was the hardest thing, controlling that, because like I said, we’ve probably been the best independent publisher for three years now, yet we were never on a top 10 indie black mangas or indie black comics you need to read, right? We never got any kind of accolades or something like that, regardless of what the numbers said. They just didn’t care. They didn’t like any research. You Google black comic books, you’d find us. So how the hell did you avoid us?

Maurice Cherry:
I’ll tell you because I’ve been doing this now with Revision Path for nine years, and I share that frustration that you’re talking about with you put in all this work and you don’t feel like sometimes everyone sort of recognizes that or gives you the credit that you feel you deserve for it. That’s just, I mean, unfortunately that’s just the media. The media’s always going to glam on to whatever the newest thing is, whether you’ve been in… Especially like if you’ve been doing this for a while and you have longevity, they really only care about the new stuff. They’re like, “What’s the new thing that’s coming out? What is it that is keeping you motivated to continue? I feel like I might know the answer to this question, but I’d love to hear you sort of. Where does this drive come from?

Manuel Godoy:
I just want to see Rome burn. Like that’s it. I just want to see Rome burn to the ground. I’m Hannibal at the gates. I always think of that whenever I think of what my mission is. I’m not here to be successful. I’m not here to tell my great story. People always trying to make it so indifferent. “Oh, I’m just trying to tell a great story. I just want to be a creative person. I love this and I’m so humble.” No, I want to see Rome burn to the ground and that means we have to have absolute veto power and control over our own stories. It’s the only way we’ll ever be able to stop Hollywood from dictating what is acceptable black history, because we don’t need 10 new black slave and civil rights stories a year. I don’t need to see the new ways of lynching people like, “Oh man, I just need to see that. I need to see a new way.”

Manuel Godoy:
“Oh, we’re about do a Emmett Till documentary.” “Yeah, I definitely want to see Emmett Till die again. That would be great.” “Oh, you know what? You know what? This black history we’re deciding we’re going to talk about the Black Wall Street Massacre. Yeah, we’re going to do a whole series on the Black Wall Street Massacre.” I said, “How about do a series on Black Wall Street before the massacre? How about that?” It was like but we don’t control the budget. We don’t control the means. We don’t control any of it. So if we don’t take that control and show that we can actually do numbers with that control, then they will always be able to dictate what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable for black people to consume. And I’m tired of it. I want to see that entire infrastructure burn to the ground. And the only way that’s possible is if we dominate this space and be complete tyrants once we get there.

Maurice Cherry:
Who are some of the people that influence you?

Manuel Godoy:
There’s three, right? And I said this in a previous interview. There’s three that influenced me. You’d be surprised, one of them was Kevin Hart, which was kind of ironic. Tyler Perry and George Lucas. Those three people. What I respect is not success. I don’t care about success, because you can be successful and a complete tool at the same time. Your whole career can be canceled out. Everything could happen overnight because you are still a product of the system. So boldness is the stuff that I respect more than anything. People who’ve risked a lot in order to be successful.

Manuel Godoy:
For George Lucas, it was holding onto his IP rights, making moves to make sure that he never lost them. Over decades of freaking negotiating with Hollywood elites and stuff like that, he was like, “No, I’m not giving up these rights no matter how much y’all pay me.” And that made him the only billionaire who wrote a story. There is no other billionaire who wrote a story in the world. Period. Everybody who’s written a story don’t even have $100 million to their name. The creator of Naruto, Kishimoto, he’s worth $40 million today. If you believe the highest estimates of his net worth. But the man’s IP: Naruto, has brought in $15 billion, so he is not even worth 1% of his brand. Stan Lee died with less than 1% of Marvel’s brand.

Manuel Godoy:
This is the reality of all these people. They simply they’re considered successes by the world’s standards, but at the end of the day, they got robbed. They made everything. They worked nonstop for their entire lives and they didn’t even have 1% of the thing that they created. And only George Lucas was the one that ran the table. He basically kept 50% of everything Star Wars ever made. And that’s power.

Manuel Godoy:
Tyler Perry, everybody hates him in the industry because he’s going to make his stories whether you like it or not. You can say, “Am I a fan of Tyler Perry’s movies?” Eh, sometimes. For the most part it doesn’t really matter what I think. All I know is if Tyler Perry feels like making a movie, he’s going to do it. You can invest. If you don’t, he’s going to make it anyway and release it right on your freaking network whether you like it or not. He’s going to do whatever the heck he feels like. He’s going to cast whoever he feels like. He’s going to buy whatever he feels like, and you can’t stop him. And the reason why you can’t stop him is because he did all this. He was rich before you ever met him. Before Hollywood ever gave him a chance, his shows were already generating millions of dollars locally through the fans.

Manuel Godoy:
Build the infrastructure, and then these people in Hollywood can’t dictate nothing to you. When they were like, “We want to buy Madea.” They were like, “No. You can fund some of it, but you ain’t owning Madea whether you like it… I’m just not giving it to you. I don’t care what you offer me. I already make millions of dollars.” That’s the grind. And Kevin Hart, he said, “Why the hell am I going to get less than 5% of a tour or 3% of a tour or 3% of a tour’s proceeds if I’m the fucking main attraction. If the tickets are being sold because of me, why do I get only 3% of the total amount of money? Everybody else is making money off of me. So how about I pay for everything? I hire everyone. I get the venues. I do the marketing. And then if I sell out, I keep freaking 80% of everything made.”

Manuel Godoy:
He went into massive millions and millions of dollars up front. You can’t do that stuff after the show is already done. You got to book tours half a year in advance. So he had to go real deep into the red before his first show. So that’s power to me to make plays like that and just trust it. Say, I trust myself to make this happen. I believe my fans truly believe in what I’m doing. And I’m going to finally flip this industry. I’m not going to be an actor for the rest of my life. I’m not going to let people dictate my career and if they feel slightly offended by what I did, they can cancel out my entire career. You can’t cancel them now. You can’t cancel Tyler Perry. You damn sure can’t cancel George Lucas. You can’t cancel them no matter how much you care, you can’t do nothing to stop them. And that’s the people that I really respect, people who have done enough, built enough of their own fan base that they cannot be stopped by conventional means. You can’t stop them.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Where do you want Black Sands Entertainment to be? Where do you want to be personally as a business owner? Talk to me about that.

Manuel Godoy:
Well, I just want to be in the top 10 animes in the world, period. So top 10 animes in the world for Black Sands, maybe some video games down under our belt as well. But the idea is if that happens, we’re basically going to dominate the entire space, right? Because we’re independent and that’s never happened before. It’s never happened before. An independent production get into the top 10 in the world and do massive licensing and merchandising. It’s never happened. And when I prove that model, it proves that black consumers are no longer something that can be measured by Hollywood, because they’ve never seen it before. They’ve never seen somebody just do it without any of the metrics they normally would use. And that is where I would like to be. I would like to just be a king maker in this space, I decide what’s hot, what’s not.

Manuel Godoy:
And because of that, they all have to work with us. Not just me, but all the other creators under my umbrella and give us the best possible deals or they don’t work with us, period. Because we’re just automatically the king makers in this space. If you want to do anything in this space, you have to come through us, right? So that’s the idea of what I want the company’s position to be in, right? That’s the idea of where I want Black Sands, the anime to be in, right? And for me, I’d like to relax a little bit in five years. Probably can’t but it’s very intense right now.

Maurice Cherry:
It sounds intense. Yeah.

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah. But for me, I’m in my Thanos mode right now, right? I’m trying to get the stones. I’m trying to get the stones and I don’t care who I got to crush to do it, right? I just can’t wait for the day when I finally rest. “He’s done what he was supposed to do. It’s now broken. The system is broken.”

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you and about Black Sands Entertainment and everything online?

Manuel Godoy:
Yeah. So follow us on all platforms: black Sands Entertainment. Manuel Godoy on LinkedIn if you want to work with me. Blacksands.com is my store, right? So you want to buy some books, go ahead and get them from there. BSP Comics is my app. So you can download a whole bunch of freaking black comic books there. You don’t actually have to download it. It’s server side. So it’s about 70 megabytes for the app. So you don’t have to worry about that. It’s 45 different titles from all types of creators. Really cool stuff. And lastly, if you want to be an investor. Investor round is over. We just raised a million dollars for BSP Comics. Our next investment round is for the Black Sands Anime. In order to participate, it’s probably best that you just sign up for Patreon at patreon.com/blacksands, because they’re going to be the first investors. And that investment round should happen in the summer. So there you go.

Maurice Cherry:
Manuel Godoy, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean your passion and your drive behind what you’re doing with Black Sands Entertainment is super infectious. I’m hyped up just listening to you talk about this. This just felt like a masterclass in how to build an empire. So I hope for people that are listening, they definitely will check it out and will get behind you. I mean, it sounds like you already have a very strong community behind what you’re doing, and I hope that with what we’re doing here with Revision Path by having you tell your story, we can get this out to even more people. So thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Manuel Godoy:
Thank you. Appreciate it, man.

Arthell Isom

This week’s episode will be a real treat for anime fans out there! I had the opportunity to talk with Arthell Isom, co-founder of Japanese animation studio D’ART Shtajio. You’ve probably seen his studio’s work on The Weeknd’s video “Snowchild”, or as part of the hip-hop inspired indie anime Tephlon Funk, but how did he come to be the first Black man to own an animation studio in Japan?

We talked about his current road to success, and Arthell shared how he runs the studio from day to day. He also gave his thoughts on representation in animation, what he loves about Japan, and he discussed why he started a studio there instead of the U.S. Arthell is making history and I love that he is blazing a trail for others to show that it can be done!

Sponsor

Facebook Design is a proud sponsor of Revision Path. The Facebook Design community is designing for human needs at unprecedented scale. Across Facebook’s family of apps and new product platforms, multi-disciplinary teams come together to create, build and shape communication experiences in service of the essential, universal human need for connection. To learn more, please visit facebook.design.