FLASHBACK - How creatives claim a seat at the table or build their own w/ Bimma Williams

Count to learn more. Our travels continue this past week in Seattle with Amazon for Amazon Accelerating the Black Business Accelerator, where I got a chance to finally meet all of my mentees in person. Each of them are black founders working to make their dreams of reality. If you want to check out who they are my mentees that is, check out my post on I g um at Will Lucas on I g and you can see my peoples. This week, I'm in l A for afro Tech Executive l A. Um. Just I'm just about lost count of

all the afro Tech Executive events. Let's see, we kicked it off in l A. They went to Miami, hopped over to Brooklyn, d C. A couple of months ago, and now we're back in l a so I guess that makes this number five and especial number five. It is to be back in the City of Angels. And with all this road talk, I'm digging into the archives for a special episode which features Beatmon Williams, and he knows a lot more about fashion and upcoming designers than most.

On this episode, we discussed podcasting and media, leveraging your brand for value in parallel verticals, and that was a lot. It'll make sense when you get into the episode, and how to keep your finger on the pulse of what's hot so you can spire trends and capitalized early. It's black teching money, Let's get into it. Afro Tech teen Oakland, California.

Al finds out Morris, who's at the time of product designer at Corsera, the world's leading online education The platform isn't an afrotech lounge, and he drops rough with three keys about making it. As a designer for tech companies,

we work on web apps, websites. It's interesting because a product designer is responsible for all the stages of developing a product, where some people might think of a visual designer as what it looks like or ux designer as what it feels like a product designer is actually umbrella

of all of the stages of developing a product. So we do strategy, we do discovery, we do brainstorming, we do prototyping, we do wire framing and information architecture and visual design as well as we have a close relationship with engineering, usually because that's who ends up developing the

actual product. I think the biggest myth that I hear is you have to be an engineering to be in tech, And I understand why people think that, but that's why I also said the biggest myth that I hear tech has so tech is so big, there's so many layers that engineering is honestly just one slice of the pot.

That's who responsible for building a product. But you got the marketing team, you got the advertising team, you got ux writers, you got conscious strategist, You've got designers, you got data scientists, you got product managers, project managers, design leads. There's so many different lanes in tech that if more people knew that there was other positions besides for engineering and tech, I think you would see a lot more people of color in text. What skills are necessary to

become a product designer in twenty. I would say you definitely need to know a design to app, for example, a sketch or a figma. You definitely need to know about data as far as quantitative versus qualitative. You definitely

need to understand apps. And I would tell everybody something that a skill that they can learn on their own is to take out their phone and play with some of the apps that's on their phone and judge the app, what you like about the app, what you don't like about the app, And after you do that little app review with yourself, see what part of that process stood out to you. And that's a laye that you might be able to follow into product design because that's what

you're interested in. So there's a lot of design tools you can learn. There's a lot of books and methodologies you can read, but there's a lot of social media places you can go to to get inspiration and follow leaders in the industry. So I would say start with a design tool, but also a lot of research. Do you need to go to a four year school to become a designer? Which is pretty much saying do I

need a degree to become a designer? No, I don't think there's a threshold of when somebody can actually not be called the designer, you know what I mean, Or you don't become a designer once you get a degree. You would go to college for design if there was something super specific that you wanted to study. Can you go to a boot camp? Yes, But I also think you can become a self taught designer like I did. I just spent every second that I could learning this software.

And as I did that, I grew and I understand and I learned more about becoming a designer and what it takes to be a designer. So I'm all for four year colleges, but I'm also for allline education. I worked at an allline ad company, CorCE Era. But I also believe in somebody spending the time to use the resources that's available through social media or medium or Twitter

or LinkedIn. So no, I do not think you need to go to college to become a designer, and I don't think you'll be a better designer if you go to college. I think it's about preference and where you want to go, because certain positions may require a degree, and if they require that degree, then you should probably get it. But I don't think the degree will make

you the designer. That's what I'm saying. You gotta feel the not inside that you're a designer and you gotta show her through the work and the product actually produce. I'm Will Lucas and this is Black Tech Dream Money. I'm gonna introduce you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black in building, simply using textis to kill your back.

This podcast is for you. Pete mc williams is a tenure creative industry leader and executive and is currently host of Claim Up, a career discovery podcast to help black and brown creators discover their dream careers, and it's rated number one in iTunes. He was also previously in global entertainment marketing at Nike and global footwear product marketing for Yeasy at Adidas, and he's held other creative roles at

global brands. This is a strong bridge between technology and creative industries, where to be through how creative work is distributed, the opportunity to collaborate with other creatives, or how creatives actually create. Maybe it's a hot new app as being a how has technology opened up the floodgates on how

creators can monetize their work in intellectual property. Oh my goodness has changed everything, right if you think about it, we got to go go back just a time bit before you could monetize whatever you were doing, right, And so I think back to the time of like when we think about this creator kind of community that's happening

in the midst of of tech creator economy. There are times you're talking like two thousands eleven, two thousands and tens specifically where you know, Facebook was maturing, Instagrams coming online, Twitter's pretty mature, and some of these other things starting to pop up. And at the time people had like these these big followings, but there was no way for you to really do anything with from a monetization standpoint, right,

Like you might get something here and there. But when you think about today and how those tools that really advanced to literally you can literally have like a Patreon account where you can get a subscription model going for for and that becomes a business. Right Other than that, folks are selling merch which is still a great you know, revenue generator for a business, but from a tech perspective,

you weren't able to charge people's subscriptions seamlessly. You weren't able to have digital events where people could pay to attend those events um and then just the seamlessness of those services. It didn't exist at that time. And you think about now Apple, Apple now doing that directly through Apple Podcasts from a tech sign right Like, these are leaps and bounds from where we were a decade ago.

I wonder your thoughts on, you know, and I appreciate everybody out there, whatever stage of the entrepreneurial journey they're own, But I wonder your what what do you think when you see people who may have in their bio you know they're a designer or whatever, but the products may just be the T shirt that they started. And again, I appreciate everybody's journey because you've got to start somewhere.

But I wonder, like, at what point is somebody a bona fide design At what point am I at least in the direction of being like a Jeff Staple versus somebody who bought some Haynes T shirts or something, you know what I'm saying, and put my logo on them and I'm selling them and it still has the tag from Hans or your you know, American apparel or whatever, like, at what point, from your perspective, and this is your perspective, is somebody really on the right road to becoming a

real designer? Right? So, well, one thing I want to touch on that that you said is at a certain degree, you could be a designer at multiple different levels, right if if if if you have a graphic that shows upon a T shirt, you are a designer, and there's a space and a place for you to show up

in the industry in different ways. When you think of the traditional word, uh, designer, and I think in this instance, if you're thinking about maybe the consumer that's looking at it versus the brand that's looking at it, um the brand and working with partners, that typically comes down to like a product designer, can you design a product from start to scratch that shows up as this new thing? Right?

And so when we think about if you take it to a T shirt, you could be considered a graphic designer if you design that graphic that shows up on that printed shirt. Another level of design is also a designer that decided like, hey, I like the way that that shirt is, but I want to change the entire shape of that shirt, So you might come change, right, you might come change how you know the shoulder lines fall here, you might change the whiff and the boxingness

of the shirt. You might change you know, the size of the neckline, etcetera. Like those are different iterations of design. I think if you think about a Jeff Staple level designer, Jeff, Jeff Staple is a designer that has been through multiple phases and iterations in his career. Right, Jeff has a background in graphic design. Jeff has also now been able to jump into industrial and product design. I think he's

even got projects where he's designed bikes now. Right. It just comes from different levels of experience, and I also think you have to think about if you're thinking about it from a career side, you have to also think

about where you want to go. For example, if you want to design sneakers, right, that as a tangible product, it does not come from maybe eveneering, which is what we consider when maybe you add colors to a retro sneaker like a Jordan, right, and now if you have a totally new Jordan, like a Jordan thirty six that likely went through a whole eighteen month, sixteen month, maybe even longer process to design with multiple people working on

different parts of that sneaker. Yeah, and we're gonna come back to that because you just sparked so many ideas that that come to me. But I wonder before we want to continue setting the stage here before we go deeper into this, UM, I wonder how a designer who's really put in the work, how do they become a brand? Because I think about, like, how did what was the work like in Virgil of Virgil a blow deal or

like a Darryl Brown? Or at what point? At what point are they a brand that broke out got shelf space at Barney's or whatever? Like, at what point do you get to that? Like what are the moves you have to make right? Or or the person you need to know? What is it that gets me there? Right?

I think the two interesting things that are the one interesting thing that that comes from the two folks that you just mentioned is that, uh, they came from under a certain designer and creative and that design and creative being Kanye West. And you have to think about when you are building a brand, right, the benefit of being a brand yourself or being at a brand. Uh, if

you're thinking about it through a business lens. Is the visibility that that brand can offer, right, the doors that that brand can open, the conversations that you could be at, the tables that you could sit at, the tables that you can then build right after you've you've you've been through kind of that journey. And when I think of someone like Darre, I think of someone like Virgil. The start of that was they had to set that foundation for being a designer, Like where did they start to

cultivate those initial skills? Right? We know Virgil went to ri Is, the we know Daryl has his background had to start somewhere, so they had some sort of understanding

about design to begin with. I think after you have that particular experience, you want to start to figure out, Okay, how can I like get more experience that takes me a level above maybe you know some of the other designers because the space is crowded, right, There's a lot of folks that want to be in design, a lot of folks want to be creatives, a lot of folks want to be small business owners and entrepreneurs. And so if if if that next step for you is like, Okay,

how can I start to separate myself. Then naturally you're looking for experiences that are going to do that. That usually starts with a network, right That is that next phase is a huge like separator from the pack, and it's all about what sort of network that you can get into. Some networks come from going to work at other brands. For example, I want to go work at soken E, Adidas, and Nike. There's a certain thing that comes when you're able to get into that because proximity

puts you into certain circles. If you're thinking about a Darrow or a Virgil, you have to imagine before we knew Virgil as Vergil today, Virgil was in the Easy and Kanye camp for several years and no one knew who he was. And at the time, you know, Virgil is continuing to get more experience as a design himself. He is also um getting challenge with all these different creatives that come through that network of which he has

been working with. And then in addition to that, he is getting, you know, his own ideas about what it might look like for him to create his own brand. And when you think about a brand, a lot of times people think about brands and they're like, it's a logo and they think it's a name. That's not a brand, Like that's a logo, it's a it's a design thing that tells you what the brand is. The brand and

his heart right, the brand is purpose. The brand is how do you make people feel If we leave this call today and will remember nothing else, he remembers that I talked about careers, that's a brand. The brand is what you leave here on that person that you intend to connect with. That's what a brand is. And so when you think about Virgil right at this current point in time, his his brand is always going to shift as a as a creative, that's what he should do.

But his current brand sits around this kind of deconstruction of design really be mystifying democratizing design, if you will. When you think about Darryl, he's really down this path of work where and actually doing authentic work where and coming from this different perspective. And so that's what brands are. It's what. It's not a name, it's what what does it make that person feel? What does that takeaway when you're no longer in the room or in that presence.

But like at some point there has to be where the name doesn't hit an inflection point because how do you get people to pay attention? So I imagined and tell me if I'm wrong, But I imagine I found out like Daryl's from my hometown, so I knew that. So I'm like, but like with his stuff really hit, you know, the upward trajectory, because I saw Lebron wearing it in a press conference and so I'm like, so

does you talked about proximity? So is it that you need because the marketplace is so crowded, do you need that co sign? You need? You need a concert of co signs is what I would call it. Right. You need several things working for you, almost citaneously, right in

order to have that sort of that presence. Right for Daryl, it's a couple of different things that happened, right, Like Darryl came into my my, my mo mental when he was doing the hats, the real Friends hats, right, So that was like one of the things that started to bubble and it started to circulate in the in the pr But then you know, as you look at him, now he was a stylist for Kanye West for a certain point in time, So then you have that sign

that raises his profile of bit and then he's seating folks, and then he's developing relationships, and then he's doing partnerships with different brands. Those things actually start to propel you to a different lane. It's not just gonna be that one Lebron seating that's gonna do it. It's gonna be the Lebron hit, and then it's gonna be oh yeah, this is the brand of watch because Complex just you know,

listed Darrow as the brand to watch. And then oh yeah, Kanye is wearing those pants that you know, Daryl just designed. And so it is always you know, I think Darrel is you know, working on a couple of other projects too. Like it's always a concert of things. It's never just

one thing. But if I'm talking to someone who is vastly interested that, I would say, yo, like it is one your network, right, Do you have a network of other designers or a community of people that work in that fashion space that you can you know, send products to get their feedback, if they like they might wear it, might show up somewhere. That's great. Can you do collaborations with with other people? Is mutually beneficial and it's not just about oh, we did a collaboration and you wanted

to show up on the site. You know, we're kind of past that from from you know, a culture standpoint, like that's been done before, like what's the meaning behind that? And then storytelling. A lot of folks are really doubling down on how they storytell, how they bring these ideas of their brands to life, and those things start to circulate and gain attention. Uh So I would say it's a it's a concert kind of those different ideas building

momentum over time. Just for everybody watching live on lunch Table or Facebook right now, we do have producers watching the chat, so feel free to drop your comments, questions, or other inside the chat, and if you know we can get to it, we would certainly do our best to get to them. And feel free to be selfish and specific because I want to make sure we're being we're bringing actual value to you in your situation. Um, so go ahead and drop that stuff in the chat.

So I wonder how collapse work and how money is made, and so you think about some of the names we talked about, all the Virgils, the Darrel's, the Jeff Staples instead who have done collaborations with other brands, and one that specifically struck my interest when I was preparing for this talk was like the Little nos X and Mischief for the Demons shoe And I wonder, number one, how

do collaborations make money for the designer? And to like the Mischief one with Nike said we don't have anything to do with this, So how did they even get this? How did they get all of the sneakers to be able to you know, hack them up and then put them Like how did that happen? Yeah? So I would say that particular collaboration was more one of those black

market collaborations. Right, It's not anything that's officially done with a brand the size of Nike, So if you're gonna do something like that is likely more so considered uh, those to collap here. We would typically consider that there's somebody customized sneakers and they sold them, you know, separately, on their own. I think not. Little nos X and his team took it to a different place by putting

a whole campaign around us. So essentially the way they have to get those shoes is they likely had to go purchase those shoes off a retail one hundred percent unless they had some sort of connection and somebody, you know, hook them up with a discount from somewhere. But likely

they bought those shoes retail. After they bought all of those sizes, the company that was the customizer would literally had to buy hand or whatever team that they have would have to customize those shoes one by one and then they put those those sneakers up for sale a project project like that. I think they had under a thousand pairs for those sneakers, right, and then I think the price tag was somewhere around two d three hundred bucks. And so you know, it's a it's a it's a

good bit of a chunk of change. But if you're talking about you know, we look at the global sneaker market, you're talking billions and billions of dollars in a large scale of things, that's that's not a huge chunk. For the team that customized those shoes, they made money because Little Nozex team likely paid them a commission for being the designers behind that. If we think about that from a brand side and in the sneaker industry and how that works on that side, well, if you you bring

in someone like a Virgil or a Darrel. Usually UM there's a design fee behind that, right, So that's how they automatically recruit UM or make money from that particular deal. Beyond that, depending on how things are negotiating and how they move forward, you know, they may have you know, additional money that comes from the seal of those sneakers.

And if you think about where collapse were back in the day UM, and you think about where collapse are now, collapse have become a part of what we consider in the industry, like inline product. Like people buy collapse more than they buy you know, the white on white or the black on black Airpluce one that's on the shelf.

They want the Virgil. And so you see you see an off white air Force one in bigger volumes than we would ever have seen when you know, I was camping out the sneakers, you know, to two thousand five or whatever. Like it's a completely different scenario. And I think the other way that folks were making money, you

have been making money and from those collapses. A lot of times those uh, those those personalities and those individual brands also have their own retail and so they would have an allocation of products that they could sell through their own channels and they can make a bigger markup on that product. And so you've gotta be thinking a couple of different ways about how you would do that. But at the end of the day, Collapse are starting

to scale, right, they are volume based products. Now, they aren't just these we made a hundred pairs and um, you know it was a good marketing thing. You know, these things are actually generating depending on how big you can get volumes. They are actually generating real business. And so that's how a lot of folks who are doing designing and Collapse are getting design fee, they're getting royalties and if they, you know, have their own retail, they

can sell it and make money there. Right. I think Travis Scott has a spot called Space on Houston and so he's able to distribute products through that. Um, Kanye has easy supply, He's able to sell his product directly from his own platform, and so at the end of the day, can get scale and you can do it through that lane. That's how you're making your money. So so I have a deep question streets want to know,

does Nike care about bots on the sneakers app? Does Nike care that you cannot hit on the sneaker's app. They don't they can't care. I'm taking was just like, just like everyone else the streets. Want to know, man, the streets one to know what was the last sneaker you try to get on? Sneakers? Oh, the last ones I tried to get I actually hit on. They were the blue fours and I actually got blue concrete fo. I actually hit But I was like I didn't even

really want them. I was just like, I'm just seeing, just try. But the ones I actually want take it else left and right. So so let's but let's but let's actually go because there's something here now, because I wonder there are people really making money on these bots. And I'm like, okay, but if if know our non melinated friends are building these boxes and getting getting the bag,

how do we cash in? Because apparently the system is built for people to be able to manipulate it in some way, So I wonder, how do we take advantage

if we're not going to be the designers? Wait, what are the other opportunities to make money, whether it be in the secondary market, whether it be you know, buying a thousand pair of Air Force ones and finding somebody in our community who's got a name, and then doing it for a rapper in our community, and like, how how do we find interesting and creative ways to take advantage of the opportunity of creativity. I talked to me

about some of the things that you've seen happen. Yeah, totally, I've seen I've seen it though from that the entrepreneurial side, right, and I think you got to think about it in multiple ways. You have Jock Slade who has made a career out of creating content around sneakers and fashion all on YouTube, right and literally has a based that's in the millions at this point, and they show for the videos,

receives conversation through ads, through other monetor monetization avenues. It's done, work with foot Locker, has done, worked with eBay and you name it, right, And so that's one of the lanes, right, You can you can go through the through the lane of maybe the creator economy and and do it that way. I think another way could be seeing yourself in retail. Right. Yes, we know that the stock x exists and some of these other um resale platforms uh that are out there,

but folks also love brick and mortar. Right. We also love supporting the businesses in our neighborhood. I'm in uh Portland's right now and Index is still alive and well and it is a you know, an aftermarket sneaker boutique. Right. You can then if you have passion for those things and maybe you could take it into a different basis may not even think of so for example, UM, dead Stock Coffee here is a sneaker inspired coffee shop. Right.

Who you know who would have thought like that would be a thing, but it's one of the pillars of the community here. Uh, you can go down the realm of what we've done. Right. We are a you know at the at this current point, we have a podcast and we expand into some other things. But we've been able to take digital content and figure out how to monetize that content with different sponsors UM that support the work that we're doing in the audience that we're trying

to cultivate and teach about different career possibilities. I think at the end of the day, the other thing that is most important is taking the time to figure out how can you learn more from other people that may be doing things creatively that you may be interested in. Right, we talked to an unlimited amount of people, and we try to record that information so that that next generation or even folks that are in career paths and want to pivot right from a creative standpoint, we try to

give them as many examples. That's how you can go about doing that because nine times out of tend you didn't grow up with that information. Right. We didn't grow up in communities where you literally had you know, your mom's best friend may have been in you know, a VC, or had may have been working at Facebook or working at Bravity. Right, we didn't necessarily grow up with a

lot of those networks. And so now it's important that either our generation shares that information back or we can partner with these different corporations and organizations to make sure that information is readily available. There was a question that came in on Facebook from Tamika Carroll says, how is sustainability playing a part in consumer choices? How does a sustainable company garner support? And does branding matter with regards

to sustainable products? And I just want to throw this little caveat in because I remember Nike came out with it. This is trash like a year ago, which are left over pieces from the cutting, you know, room floor, and they made other sneakers out. So how is sustainability playing

a part in creative industries? I think sustainability has a long way to go um from the standpoint of how it actually resonates with consumers, and I think it is actually directly tied to diversity and inclusion, right, and so one of the things that I've been saying for a very long time when we talk about sustainability is how is it humanized? From the brand standpoint? How is that?

How is that being humanized? Because when I think about sustainability, right, I think about, Hey, I'm a black man, and my sustainability, as far as definition, is actually my life because I don't think about it when it comes to I can't think about recycling that product, that that that bottle just yet.

I can't think about the specific recycled you yet because if I'm a kid in Baltimore, if I'm a kid growing up in New Orleans, I'm trying to figure out how I'm getting home a lot that to me is sustainability. So I think when we think about that and we think about brands, you gotta humanize right now. It's not

human right now. It is more of an elitist viewpoint that we can't really wrap our heads around when we're all trying to figure out the day to day of what's happening in this world, what's happening in the US. So I could talk to you another we got, but I want to make sure I get this question in before we get out of here. As we all remember, you know the Kanye conversation with Sway, and Sway was saying, why don't you just put your own money up in

the moss Way? Um? And so we do have this conversation in our communities about like if you can't get to see at your table, build your own table. And I wonder like, yeah, while we laugh at the meme of the house, Sway like, what is it that causes black owned brands and smaller brands across the board, not just black owned brands, but brands period from being able to break through to being big houses like the Ralph

Floor is the Calvin Klein's and Michael Corps? Like what is it that these smaller brands don't have that those brands have somewhat of a monopoly on per Kanye financing. Financing is the number one difference maker because when you think about what a LVMH is able to do with a Louis Batton uh, and you think about Inte, which I know was just rolled down. But the thing that's able to happen is they can show up at fashion Week and they can spend millions of dollars on campaigns

that circle the world. They can sign contracts with rodal A Blow, they can have fashion fashion shows where Kick Cutty walks down. Right, all of these things costs money. Now there is a scale to it, right, you don't necessarily have as much money as that and still be able to make waves. I think Telfer is a great example of how to build a brand and not have maybe access to the same amount of funding as Louis Baton, but Telfer is granting a ton of traction. It is

the community built brand and slowly built over time. And so when you think about what you have, creativity plays a huge part of it. Money doesn't always equal success, right, but money added on top of really great ideas could definitely add fire to the to the flame, fuel to the flames and so but at the end of the day, if you're asking me sinctly. That is a major difference.

It's funding. It takes money to build these brands. It takes you know, resources when you think about supply chain, it takes uh money to innovate, continue to come up with great ideas to bring in the best talent for expanding. After you have one high item, how do you continue

to have multiple high items? It takes those resources. If you need more visibility, maybe you want to bring in a personality like a you know, a person a creative director, or you want to bring in the celebrity, or you want to bring an athlete to maybe wear that product. It takes funding and resources to do that. And for our businesses, we need more access to that type of capital, which is why it's great to see more of some

of those options showing up, but we need more. It's not enough because as you can see, there's such a vast difference in what's accessible to black and brown businesses versus you know, the LBM majors that are out there that have been around for so long. Black Tech Cream Money is a production of Blackvity Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network and Ihearm Media's produced by Morgan Dabon and me Will Lucas with additional production supported by

Love Beach and Marisa Lewis. Special thank you to Michael Davis is the car savon Jan you know like the Whine. Yes, that's his real name. Learn more about my guests and other technis from this innovators at afro tech dot com. The video version of this episode would drop the Black Tech Green Money on YouTube next week, so tapping enjoining Black Tech Green Money People's a five star rating on iTunes. Don't get your money, Peace and love