Automated Transcription
Fabrice Sapolsky 0:00
There’s always someone who is going to tell you that they don’t like what you do. Or they will ask 10 different versions of what you offer, only to have you go back to the first. There’s a reason why the first one is usually and often the best. It’s because it’s fresh in your mind, and … your instinct exactly your instinct and spontaneity as a creator make the whole difference.
Richard Matthews 0:33
… 3-2-1.
Richard Matthews 1:29
Makes a lot of sense. So the next question I have for you is in regards to your actual customers that you work with. And I would imagine you’re talking to other creators that you work with, you help publish their works?
Fabrice Sapolsky 1:43
No.
Richard Matthews 1:45
You don’t?
Fabrice Sapolsky 1:46
No, no, I designed FairSquare Comics. Since right now it’s my only activity until I find another job or I have another opportunity, which I’m always available for. But I designed FairSquare Comics only for my own purposes as a creator.
Richard Matthews 2:04
So publish your own works then.
Fabrice Sapolsky 2:06
Exactly. Publishes my own works and the works of my very close friends or my family because we’re a family of creatives, we have a lot of talents.
Richard Matthews 2:19
Then we’ll frame this question slightly differently, so the common enemy then is generally we talked about something you could remove from your client’s life that you constantly have to fight against. So when it comes to publishing comics, and publishing your own works or publishing the works of your close friends and family what is something that you constantly have to struggle with that, if you can wave your magic wand and just make it go away and make it easier to get your comics published? Get them out there, get audience for them. What’s the common thing you always have to fight against when you’re trying to get something new published and going?
Fabrice Sapolsky 2:50
Marketing.
Richard Matthews 2:52
So how do you go about marketing comics and getting the attention that you need for comics, actually sell and make money and return the investment that you put into it?
Fabrice Sapolsky 3:03
It’s a question of, well, I’m sure you’re familiar with the French expression, savoir-faire. You know what it is?
Richard Matthews 3:14
I have not heard that French expression but my wife probably has. She speaks French.
Fabrice Sapolsky 3:18
Okay. So savoir-faire is when you know how to make some, okay? You have the knowledge. But in French, we have the opposite set, which is savoir-faire but faire-savoir which is you have to put your knowledge, put what you produce in the hands of actual people. When I’m at a show, it’s easy because I reach out immediately to the audience, the audience comes to me so it’s easy for me that’s why audiences are a very good way. And comic book conventions are a very good way for us to have our voices heard. Kickstarter is another very good place because Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms because people come to discover the new, the next big thing, and one day you can be the next big thing. So if you put the quality and the time and the dedication to your project, people will notice. But what about the rest? What about the rest? How do you put your books in the hands of readers? Very hard. That’s what I would like to have with my magic wand. It’s how the system will put my work in the hands of readers. Again, I was telling you that earlier, the audience never lies. Audience never lies, whether they like it, they vote with their dollars. They like it or they don’t. If they see it, they will have an opinion. I’m completely open for people to say your work sucks. But if they have a chance to see it first.
Richard Matthews 4:54
That makes a lot of sense. So if you could wave your magic wand, it would be figuring out basically how to have an audience for everything that you create. So if that’s the thing you fight against all the time, your driving force is the thing you fight for. And it’s right in line. So our Peter Parker that we’re all familiar with fights to save New York, Batman fights to save Gotham, Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for, at FairSquare Comics, so to speak?
Fabrice Sapolsky 5:24
Well, my mission is to have different voices heard, and especially my voice, because I think that I mean, I would have to ask you a question. Why did you create your first company? I can tell you why. I created my first company out of necessity because I thought that nobody would give me the chance to shine. I would have been put in a box or that box or that box, and I didn’t like being put in any box because I knew how to sit in desks. But how you, Richard.
Richard Matthews 6:01
So for me, it was – I started my first company, I started when I was 13. I did it because I wanted to make money. But as I’ve gotten older and the company that I currently run, the reason that I started it and the reason why I have done what I’ve done for the last 15 years is because I wanted to control certain aspects of my life. I wanted to control my time, I wanted to control my money, I wanted to control my location. And running my own business was the only way that I saw that allowed me to do that. So it gave me the freedom that I wouldn’t have had in another space.
Fabrice Sapolsky 6:33
So you see, freedom. Freedom is a good motivation. It’s the same for every entrepreneur. It’s just a different shade of freedom. But everyone wants the freedom to do something. For me, it was the freedom of breaking out of the box. And, and it’s funny because when I was a young entrepreneur, and I was showcasing myself. People were like, Oh, we don’t need another art director. We don’t need another graphic designer. So I was asking, can I write for you? No, no, you don’t know how to write. You only know how to design, we know because we’ve seen what you’ve done. And then and then it’s funny because, after a few years of just writing, people were like, but can you design? We don’t want you to design, we just want you to write. And it’s always the same scenario that people want to put you in a box. And I like the fact that being an entrepreneur, I can be a one-man operation. I can do everything myself. I can write, design, draw, edit, correct, letter, color, publish. I can do it all, not because I want to swing my organ in the room and say, Hey, what, I’m the best and I can do it all. No, just because it saves time and I go straight to the point and I can deliver the message with more accuracy and clarity and … love –
Richard Matthews 8:01
There’s a method that you want to deliver.
Fabrice Sapolsky 8:02
Exactly. But I would love just to say to a company, hey, you don’t want to hire me, okay, use me as a consultant, because as a consultant, you can only have access to one of my talents. You don’t need them all, just take this one. But let me work with the other ones. And I guess for every entrepreneur, there’s this kind of internal debate, where you’re like, how much is service that you offer? And how much is content that you deliver? It’s always that balance between being a service provider and being a producer of your own content.
Richard Matthews 8:41
That makes a lot of sense. So my next question for you is more practically speaking. We call this your Hero’s Toolbelt. Maybe you got a big magical hammer like Thor or a bulletproof vest like your neighborhood police officer or maybe you just really love how Evernote helps you organize your thoughts, what are some of the tools you use every day to create the works that you create, that you couldn’t live without, something that you’re you’re always constantly using either for creating your works or getting them out or your marketing or whatever it is that you’re doing in your business, top one or two things you use on a regular basis to make your business go around?
Fabrice Sapolsky 9:15
Everything is behind me. So that’s going to be easy. A) my Mac. Very important. Been a loyal partner for 32 years. I mean, not the same model. But I’ve – it’s a funny story, by the way, because I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem for over 30 years. And both my parents were working at IBM, so imagine their face, at least my mom’s face because I lost my dad very early, but my mom’s face when I came back with a Mac, it was – she was like, I don’t want that at home. But in the end, Mac’s have been loyal partners to me. And the other one is the little thing behind me, here. And I’m going to take this. That is a pen. And it goes with the Wacom that is a tablet, a big tablet. It’s a pen display, and I draw on.
Richard Matthews 10:12
Is that the Cintiq? Is that what that is?
Fabrice Sapolsky 10:15
Yes, it’s a Cintiq. Absolutely, it’s a Cintiq. So I can write here and design here and conduct all my business operations. And I can draw there. So everything that I need is just behind me.
Richard Matthews 10:27
That’s awesome. I’ve always wanted to get one of those Cintiq tablets, the closest I’ve ever gotten is the iPad with a little Apple Pencil.
Fabrice Sapolsky 10:34
Yeah, I have that too. I have that too. And I and I tried, and it was actually useful because it helped me build my confidence as an artist because again, I’m self-taught with the iPad and then when I was limited by the real estate, I said look, you know what, let’s invest in something a little bit bigger and more professional and I have to say that sometimes you understand that the tool doesn’t make the creator. But in this case, it’s an enhancer. It’s an incubator for your creative and because I have this tool, because I have the Cintiq, I can create more and faster. And I have especially during quarantine. It’s like I’m on fire.
Richard Matthews 11:24
I’m in the same boat. I’ve got a camera that I’m looking at right now for this interview . It’s a 2500 dollar worth of camera equipment that’s pointed at my face here. And I, as a photographer, I can – I’ve been doing photography for 20 years, I can take killer stuff with the camera on my iPhone, and have been able to, all the way back to the iPhone 4. But what’s interesting is you’re still limited by the capabilities of a small sensor and small lenses that you can’t change out that kind of stuff. And there’s just opportunities and things and control and stuff that you can do when you have professional equipment that you just can’t do with your more consumer-grade equipment. So I totally understand in a different space.
Fabrice Sapolsky 12:09
Yes, absolutely. It’s creativity.
Richard Matthews 12:14
Absolutely. So I want to talk a little bit about your own personal heroes. So just like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi-Wan or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad, who were some of your heroes, were they real-life mentors, speakers, authors, peers who were a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your businesses?
Fabrice Sapolsky 12:32
That’s a very interesting question. So in my case, I have looked for a mentor for a very long time because I lost my dad when I was 11. So I grew up without a father, as a teenager, and when you have this kind of experience, you’re looking for a mentor, a substitute father. And I never found one. Although there were very few men still alive in my family. So it was hard for me to find one and I was the firstborn, my generation. So, I still am. I’m not dead yet. And it became apparent after a few years that I wouldn’t find one. And I would become by that time, the mentor for other people. So I started mentoring other parts of the talents before I was even fully formed. Again out of necessity because you had these kids needed guidance, and I thought that I could bring something to the table. So, there’s – I find a lot of, we’ll probably find that very awkward, but a lot of people have their heroes are people I mean, of course, there are comic book creators that are my heroes. Jack Kirby, … , and even though he’s controversial. But also my peers, I mean, David Hine, who co-wrote Spider-Man Noir with me is one of my heroes because he was a great mentor. I never wrote – normally just a single comic book before I started this adventure with him. But I never wrote in a language that was not mine. And so it was definitely it shaped the writer that I became. The other family of heroes that I have come from the music industry because as you mentioned earlier for my bio, I’m a huge RnB and hip hop fan. And I consider that someone like Prince is one of my heroes because I was mentioning it in another podcast recently. He was not a philosopher, but he was because he made songs. There are so many great things, great ideas, a great concept that for decades we are going to study what this man brought to the world and other people who are in this camp like Jimmy Louis or other people like that. I consider my mentors because their craft, their work ethics, the way to handle their business is extremely interesting to look at from an outsider’s perspective. The other person that I would consider a reference or a mentor for me is Bruce Lee because I’ve studied Bruce Lee, and I actually did. Bruce Lee was really a philosopher. I mean, he had a brief time on earth only 33 years. What he accomplished in 33 years was pretty impressive. And I did this graphic novel a few years ago three years ago called Intertwine which the main character was loosely based on Bruce Lee. And it was the story of an immigrant superhero in New York in 1971. And it was really, all my worlds colliding. You always come – I always look back and look at the people who were before you, where they came from, who they were, they are extremely impressive people in my family, not by what they accomplished, but by their soul. They have a beautiful soul. I mean, and I, of course, I love my mom forever for being very patient with me and my siblings. Despite the fact that she didn’t really have the tool and she was a survivor. I mean, it’s like she was a widow at 30 with three small kids. And she made it. We didn’t have money. We didn’t starve. And she found ways. So yes, I mean, my mom is a superhero. And my –
Richard Matthews 17:09
My grandmother was like that for my mom.
Fabrice Sapolsky 17:12
Exactly. But I also look now at my kids. I have three kids, and they’re all adults, and they live in different countries. I look at them as the next-gen superheroes. They are my superheroes too. Because as much as as a parent, you can look at your kids like, okay, I did the job. They’re okay. And they can take care of themselves. When you hear them back. Okay, Dad, are you okay? What can we do? You’re like, Alright, this is a two-way street now. And it’s incredibly rewarding.
Richard Matthews 17:53
Mine are all very small right now. I’ve got a one-year-old up and then a three, six, and ten-year-old so I got a bunch of little ones at home.
Fabrice Sapolsky 18:01
My youngest is 18. So –
Richard Matthews 18:06
You don’t look old enough to have adult children. Just FYI.
Fabrice Sapolsky 18:10
Richard, I’m going to be 50 in a month.
Richard Matthews 18:15
I would have only placed you a few years older than me. And so you’re doing something with a skincare routine.
Fabrice Sapolsky 18:21
That’s my superpower, too. I guess.
Richard Matthews 18:23
Your superpower looks 20 years younger than you are.
Fabrice Sapolsky 18:27
My grandmother when she died, my grandmother on my mother’s side when she died, she died at 91. And she looks 20 years younger. Amazing.
Richard Matthews 18:36
My mom’s like that too. She walks into a room. People ask me if she’s my girlfriend or my wife.
Fabrice Sapolsky 18:42
Interesting.
Richard Matthews 18:43
I’m like, no, she’s my mom. She’s 20 years older than me.
Fabrice Sapolsky 18:49
I mean, in my case, it’s like these North African genes from my mother’s side of their family that made the difference.
Richard Matthews 18:58
So I want to bring it home for our listeners a little and talk about your guiding principles, top one or two principles or actions that you put in place every single day that you think contribute to your success and to your influence. Maybe something you wish you’d known when you first started out on your own hero’s journey or your own entrepreneurial path?
Fabrice Sapolsky 19:13
Trust yourself.
Richard Matthews 19:16
And what do you mean by that?
Fabrice Sapolsky 19:20
When you don’t have a lot of experience, and especially if you’re working with other people, either they’re clients of yours, customers, or they’re peers or potential mentors or people with more experience, they will always tell you what to do. And especially remember, I came from design, from 21 years old, to now a big chunk of my life I’ve been – has been in graphic design, art direction, graphic design, and art. There’s always someone who is going to tell you that they don’t like what you do, or they will ask 10 different versions of what you offer, only to have you go back to the first. There’s a reason why the first one is usually and often the best. It’s because it’s fresh in your mind and your spontaneity, your instinct, exactly, your instinct and your spontaneity as a creator makes the whole difference. What I do usually in my process when I create is that I draw or I draw a rough or I write the skeleton of a script, and then I leave it out. Let it rest for a little bit. And I tackle it again with a fresh pair of eyes. And if it can, if it can survive the second look, after I let it rest for a few days, then it’s good enough for me to invest time on it. I wish clients or customers would think the same, they would have the same level of respect for us than we have for them and the problem with when you spend a long time servicing other people is that you trust their judgment more than you trust yourself. You never shall forget that the reason why they came to take you is that you know something that they don’t. You should trust yourself.
Richard Matthews 21:40
I had the experience just recently, actually. I had a client that I had for a number of years, and we were doing a brand design for them a number of years ago, and I put together a brand design that was based on who he told me his customers were and what the message he wanted to get across was, and we put it all together and he was like, don’t like it. He’s like, I wanted it to be more edgy and more modern, and I was like, we can do that. And it’s really simple to change the aspects of design to do that. We changed some font structures and some other things to give him what he wanted. But I didn’t have the confidence at that point when I was to say, no, this is actually what you need, I don’t really care what you want. And it was two or three years later, he wasn’t getting the results that he wanted, and brought in a different consultant to talk to him about some bad things. And the other consultant was like, Hey, you should probably do these couple of things to your brand. And what was most funny was it was back to what I’d given him three years ago. And it was that that first instinct that was actually the correct instinct, and to your point: trust yourself.
Fabrice Sapolsky 22:42
Trust yourself. Trust yourself and build the confidence to say no, because I learned that when I was when I had my first company, I had – one of my partners of my – not business partner but a technical partner – she had a company at the time we were printing really old school, we were printing before we were printing directly to paper, there was a phase where we were printing on sets. And every file had to be separated in 4, one for cyan, magenta, black, and yellow. And we were printing on … So I was using the services of the company to go through that. And she was working with big studios like Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount because she was doing a lot of DVDs and stuff like that. And she told me that story that once she walked away from meeting with Universal because they wanted her to lower the price, change the routine, change everything. And at one point, she said, Look, I know what’s good for you. You don’t. So we leave it here. This is a luxury. Not everyone has the luxury to say no to a client. But if you build your confidence, you can. If you have the right material to prove your point, if you don’t and it’s just a manifestation of your ego, then no, you can’t. But if you have actually something –
Richard Matthews 24:13
– The skills to back it up.
Fabrice Sapolsky 24:15
Exactly. You have to have the skills to back it up and say look, I know what’s good for you. If you don’t want to listen, that’s your money. That’s your choice. Don’t come back in two years. Tell me. You told me so. Or I told you so. Because this is how it works. Sometimes. The problem with being an outsider is that you think for yourself, and you think for the person you have in front of. It’s also – that’s also a flaw for me. It’s like, I kept – I’ve been observing the comic book market for 25 years, as an observer, as much as an actor. And so I see things happening and I can almost anticipate stuff happening. Because it’s very simple. You just look at how the forces are moving on the chessboard, and you know what’s going to happen. And sometimes you really are pissed that you were right. And sometimes you’re very happy that you were wrong. So it humbles you. Because you never cease to learn. You never stop getting challenged by your environment.
Richard Matthews 25:29
I think that’s a fantastic piece of advice, by the way, to trust yourself. And I think one of the things that’s -it’s not something that’s going to come easy that comes with years of experience and getting knocked down and realizing that you actually have the skill set to back up what you do. But that’s the place you want to get to. You want to get to a place where you trust yourself and you’re capable of telling Universal Studios to backup. I know what’s good for you. You want to be in that place in your business. I think it’s a great guiding principle to – if you’re not there yet, work on that. Work to a place where you can get to trust yourself.
Richard Matthews 26:01
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Richard Matthews 27:35
That basically wraps up the interview. I have one last thing that I do in all my interviews. It’s a simple little challenge. I call it the Hero’s Challenge and it’s basically this, do you have someone in your network, that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story, who are they, first names are fine, and why do you think that should come to share their story with our audience?
Fabrice Sapolsky 27:52
I have so many.
Richard Matthews 27:56
Your gut instinct. The first one that popped into your head.
Fabrice Sapolsky 27:59
Oh my god. Look, I mean, this is really timely. But right now I want to say this. We don’t have enough diversity in this world, not just the diversity of colors, not just a diversity of backgrounds, not just diversity of orientations, not just the diversity of anything. We also need diversity in spirit, different sets of ideas, people that don’t necessarily think like us, people that are going to challenge our whole spectrum and say, okay, maybe we should think about what we’ve been doing for years. And put it backward. Make it different. And right now, the – at least that’s what I’ve been seeing in America – but it was also the case in Europe. These old I would say these old schools – the old school of thinking, they’re not ready. They’re not ready to welcome people like us that aren’t going to challenge that. They’re not ready. Okay, we’ll wait. We’re patient. We can wait from the top of my head. There are a few people that really deserve attention that I’ve met through the years. Women, a lot of women with a lot of great ideas and that deserve a bigger spot to express themselves. Of course, creators of colors that have a lot of talent and ideas and intrapreneurship and sometimes are completely beaten up by the market. People like me, I’m thinking about a couple of creators that I really know. One is David Walker. David Walker is a bigger creator than I am. He has a big – more body of work. He has a lot of things that he’s been doing for years. But he was also an inspiration for me because two years ago, he launched his own boutique label, just like I did first where he’s label was Solid Comix. And David did that. Knowing that, for him, it was a way to put out some material that other publishers didn’t want to take a chance on. And that’s the problem that I want to point out. A lot of established publishers, they have something they want. They’re all driving in the same – on the same highway in the same direction. How about if we take the middle road on the side, and we prove to them that there’s a niche for that? Yes, but that’s why small companies like David’s company, Russell Nohelty’s company, for example, or my company. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. I’m thinking about this woman. I only met her once but I’m following her. Her name is Chiquita Smith. She does her own comic book convention for women, Koshiro. In LA and I mean, I don’t necessarily agree with what she’s putting out in terms of taste. I don’t like everything, but I admire her entrepreneurship. I can talk about my friend Regine Sawyer. Regine is the founder of a group called Women in Comics. And she has her own company, Lockett Down Productions and she has – and she’s trying to -she’s struggling to put the word out and publish more content. So these are people that I’m thinking about that could have more exposure.
Richard Matthews 32:05
We’ll see if we can reach out and maybe get one or two of them here on the show and tell their stories. And it’s kind of interesting. You’re the second person we’ve got to bring on who’s actually in the comic book space, which is cool for an entrepreneur podcast that’s based on this whole comic book world. So, it’s at this point, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and what it is that you do. My last question for you is really simple. Where can people find you if they want to pick up your comics if they want to read one of your Spider-Man Noir, or see some of your independently published stuff? Where can they find you? And then, more importantly, who are the types of people that you write for? What’s your ideal audience, so to speak?
Fabrice Sapolsky 32:45
Okay, so where to find my stuff. The best way and the most supportive way is to find me on the social networks at my full name @fabricesapolsky very easy, or at https://fairsquarecomics.com/ everything that I published is there. And there’s a store, I’m also making t-shirts like this one. I just created a new design that is a letter to the big companies. And I’m aping the Star Wars logo. And on that logo, it says, dear brands, it’s time to empower creators. And you have four versions of it. It’s time to empower creators, time to empower black creators, agents, ragers, LGBTQ creators. I think it’s time for creators to get a bigger piece of the pie. And the other thing you were saying you were saying the second question.
Richard Matthews 33:49
Who is your target audience for the comics that you write?
Fabrice Sapolsky 33:53
Oh, yes. So the target audience is everybody. I have – I am building right now. I mean, Spider-Man Noir is not for kids. Not at all, it’s for mature audiences. One Hit Wonder is for mature audiences and Intertwine is for mature audiences. So all my three published graphic novels are for mature audiences but I’m working right now on three different projects for young adult and middle-grade audiences because I have a passion for kids’ material. And I finally allowed myself to talk about my life and my stories and and and these stories are going to be published either through FairSquare or through third party publishers next.
Richard Matthews 34:38
Awesome. Well, I really look forward to seeing some of those come out. And again, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Fabrice Sapolsky 34:43
My pleasure, Richard. Thank you very much.
Richard Matthews 34:44
Final words – any final words of wisdom you want to say to our audience before I hit this stop record button?
Fabrice Sapolsky 34:50
Yes. People create and open your minds to creators over brands.
Richard Matthews 35:01
Awesome, I completely agree. And again, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Fabrice Sapolsky 35:06
Thank you.
