Black Gringo Vol. 2: Live From Cartagena 🎬🎥🎤 — STILL !!!
Ok, so its been over two years since the first (and last) post in this series.... Two, LONG, DIFFICULT, CRAZY, TRAUMATIC years lol….especially the last year (for me, and pretty much for the rest of the world). It’s been a pretty eventful 2 years, so l’m going to jump right into the recap…
For those who don’t know my story…Hey👋🏾… I'm AKIL, I worked at in tech from 2009- 2017 when I decided to quit, pack all my things and move to Colombia to pursue a pretty wild dream. (I know, I got catalog dawg, haha). Good news, I’m now about 3.5 years into this journey and, um, hayyyyyy 👋🏾… I’m still here in Colombia. A few more grey hairs (just kidding, haven’t found any yet lol), a lot wiser, a lot more bumps and bruises, (scratches, cuts and scars), a lot more introspective about life, work, people, dreams, nightmares, our country, foreign countries, the world, you name it…. So, what spurred all the growth/development? Well… lets start at the beginning…
I left tech and moved to Cartagena, Colombia to do something totally different — build a small boutique hotel on an island off the city’s coast… This hotel would will have some really amazing design features — things that you won’t find anywhere in the world (I’m being vague now, but sit tight, the deets will be released soon enough). Sounds super dope, right? Welllllll… it is…. buttttttt its a lot easier dreamt, envisioned, planned, said, (insert whatever applicable verb here, lol) than actually DONE…
Before I get into the last two years, I’d like to say that Tiny Village Cartagena is still very much a thing…. Um, its my life actually. So before you get to thinking this post is a “I tried, but I’m done” post, picture me saying in a very strong Brooklyn accent, “FUCCCCADDAAA HERE!” haha. This post is actually quite the opposite. It’s to let the people who have been closely (or loosely) following my story over the years know that YES, I’m still alive, still grinding, still in the marathon pursuing that dream… and to give you all a couple of pretty significant updates with the project. So, let’s start….
Property Purchase — on an Island…. in Colombia…..FML…
You want to build a boutique beach resort on an island in Colombia, right? Step one: Find the perfect property.
Wait, wait, wait wait… before you find the property, learn the property rights on those islands — which (of course) is a lot more complicated than it sounds. En route to obtaining your “Masters In Obscure and Nonsensical Colombian Property Law” try your best to avoid scamming lawyers, shady local community members, and lots of people trying to sell you property that they actually, in fact, don’t own. Oh, and maybe, they have even sold that property to multiple unsuspecting rookies, potentially putting various parties in an unwanted property dispute🤦🏽♂️. Got that? Good. Now, back to the property search…
It took me over a year and a half dodging preverbal landmines to finally find the perfect property to build Tiny Village Cartagena. With the environment on those islands, we needed to take our time verifying EVERYTHING — no stone went unturned. Verifying the sweet old lady who was selling the property was actually the owner, verifying with the neighbors (through legal testimonies) that she was indeed living there for the last decade, verifying with the community counsel of the town that we could indeed build the project on that site, verifying that property was far enough away from sea level to build what we needed — I mean we “verified, verified, verified” (its a saying we have in the project). AND THEN, we had to put all that evidence in a custom purchase contract to get it signed, notarized and registered with the city of Cartagena (another weird kink of buying on islands in Colombia). I FINALLY ended up signing the to purchase the property on April 27, 2019. When it was all said and done, it took us 8 months verifying the property — but well worth the wait. We were finally ready to roll with full peace of mind.
Avengers Assembled
After the property was purchased, it was time to really get to work! Getting permissions to build, building out a financial model, creating milestones, etc. And in all of this planning I realized that I ACTUALLY don’t know how to build a boutique hotel on an island in Colombia (surprise, surprise, tech guy 🤦🏽♂️😂). I had the vision — a damn good one at that, but the details about the operations, construction, interior and exterior design, etc., I kinda had no clue on how to execute. Buuuutt.. Luckily for me I had a lot of dope friends that were experts at these different areas at this point in my life. SOOOO in the summer of 2019, after the property was purchased, I decided to take a pitch on the road to a select few really good friends who had skillsets that I thought could really help the project. The pitch was, “if you truly believe in this vision and really feel like you can add value in these specific areas, you lend me your expertise as an advisor and you’ll receive a percentage in return in profits.” Thankfully, they believed in that vision of the project and pledged to carve out some time to help (and loved me)! And THAT was how then able to get the best and the brightest people in the specific disciplines contributing the the project (finance, operations, creative design, social media, interior design, product marketing and engineering — all covered! 💪🏾). We had our first annual “Tiny Village Summit” in November of 2019 in Cartagena and our second in December of 2020. We’ve all been working really hard on some super dope stuff that we can’t wait for you to see. Check out some footage of the team below.
Construction: “Plan for double the cost and quadruple the time”
My first day as a full-time employee at Apple I had a meeting with the Director of my group — A typical “welcome to the team” meeting. I was 23, the youngest on the team, and the only person to start on the team straight out of college. I walk into her office for the first time and as soon as I sit down, she blurts out… “How old are you?”
Me: “23” 😳 (feeling nervous at the question — I was already a bit self-conscious being so young in this role)
Her: “DAMNIT!”
Me: 😳
Her: “I thought I had WWDC (Apple’s big yearly conference) t-shirts older than you. But, my oldest is 22 years old” 😂
Me: “Hahaha” Thinking… “OMG, I thought she was pissed — sooo glad she isn’t, haha”
In that meeting she told me some of the best advice I would ever get in my career. She was telling me that she was happy to have me on the team. I told her that I was happy too and that I felt LUCKY to be a part of the team. She stopped me right there, looked at me firmly, and said “Stop. I don’t EVER want to hear you say that again. You are not ‘LUCKY.’ You earned this position. You studied hard. You did well In your internship for TWO SUMMERS. THATS WHY you are here. You earned it.”
Goddamn!! For someone like me who was just starting his career, you imagine how powerful that statement was from a Director. From that first day, IF (didn’t happen often lol) I ever doubted myself or felt nervous in a meeting, I always told myself “you EARNED your seat at this table — do your thing.”
8 years later, after I left Apple we were both at a wedding for a former co-worker. Naturally, she asked me how was the project going in Colombia. I explained to her that we were starting contraction soon (this was in 2019). She immediately dropped another gem — she looked at me firmly and said “Plan for it to be double the money and quadruple the time.” 😖😖😖😖… I looked at her like 😳😳😳😳😩😩😩.. She saw the disbelief in my face, and said “I’m serious.”
I thought maybe she was exaggerating. Her experience couldn’t be the same as mine, right?. She was probably building a marble house or something. Haha. 2 years into owning the site for Tiny Village, I know that she was right (again). We had originally projected construction to take 6 months. Between permits, technical studies on the soil and water treatment, going through different contractors, redoing bad work, issues with logistics, weather, etc etc etc, we are only about done with the construction of Phase 1 which was originally scheduled to be 6 weeks. And every time I think about how behind and over budget we are, I hear her voice in my head, “expect double the money and quadruple the time.” 😩. Some examples of “double the money and quadruple the time” below.
The Pandemic
The COVID 19 pandemic has affected EVERYONE in the world — EVERYONE. But, of course, I feel like MYYYY case was especially incredible lol. Let me explain….
Ok, so the property was purchased in 2019, A YEAR AND A HALF into me moving to Colombia. As difficult a process as that was, In hindsight, that was kinda the easy part. After that was done, it was down to finalizing all the the technical/environmental studies to make sure that we are building something safe, environmentally conscious, and something that matches the vision. That took us literally a full year (and we are still making tweaks). We finalized a deal with a contractor on March 17, 2020. And with a couple of toasts of champagne we were on our way — or so we thought. Literally, the very next day Colombia was thrown into a country-wide lockdown — Which for us, meant — “y’all aint building shit.”
The Colombian government started its pandemic response with a two week curfew from 10pm - 5am. We all thought that would be it. But, that two week curfew soon not only got lengthened to four more weeks, then 8 more weeks, but also got more and more intense. At one point you could only leave your house once every 10 days based on the last digit on your ID number — and only for one hour to go buy groceries or go to the bank. When it was all said and done, after working for a year to finally sign a construction contract, the pandemic caused over a year of additional delay. From government restrictions, to availability of workers and contractors, to lack of materials and transportation, to on and on and on. To add insult to injury, I was stuck in Colombia for 9 months during this lockdown (literally in my house like 23hrs a day — jail) as they closed the international borders, and if I left on a humanitarian flight, I could be guaranteed when I could return to run my business. Fucked up, right? Yea, I know. It was a really really crazy, and difficult time where we were forced to reshift focus on working things that were extremely important but did not require a fully built hotel to advance on. Things like marketing and social media strategy, hotel standard operating procedures, interior design documents, etc. These things, of course are extremely important, but, they wouldn’t matter if we couldn’t finally build the hotel. So, time wasn’t totally lost during the pandemic as we got to at least be productive working on aforementioned items. But also, we got kinda lucky. We were able to purchase some really nice items from some restaurants and other businesses that had to close down due to the pandemic 😢. So, I guess it wasn’t all bad — just like 95% bad, haha.
Restart… kind of….
As we prepared for the lockdown to be lifted (the ‘extreme” version of that was over more or less in October 2020— but as of writing this, Cartagena still has a curfew 🥴), we began to reorganize and reprioritize things a bit. We began focusing on emphasizing what a fully finished phase 1 of the project would mean for the company. Phase 1 included all of the “social areas” of the property — the pool, restaurant, bar, reception area and terrace, so we thought, “how could we put that to use before we actually finish phase 2?” The idea was that we could get this built up and actually start using this area for event space while we are still building out the villas on the property. We were on a really tight schedule to get this finished in time for January 3 as we planned a pre-launch event to test out the property as an event space. So, we hired a supervisor. We felt that we FINALLY would have someone dedicated to managing some of the things we really had no experience or expertise in handling — materials, using proper construction techniques, managing different group of workers, etc. Boom, we were off running — and after two months of working, running, and our fair share of drama — we did it! Kinda. Haha…
We weren’t able to finish EVERYTHING in phase 1, but we were able to get the property in a good enough shape to host the event! We invited about 40 people to help us test out the transportation to the island, the logistics, the food, and the vibe of what would be the foundations of our #SanctuarySundays event in the future. Welllll… let’s just say the vibes were on point… the other stuff…. mmmmm… we have some more work to do lol… All in all, the event “Pre-launch” event was a success… check out some of the vibes….
Phase 1’s finishing touches
We went through an INCREDIBLY hectic last two months of 2020 blazing through building of the pool, restaurant, kitchen, reception and lobby area, and the terrace. We also produced two, pretty complicated events (for me at least), did some video production work, and held our second Tiny Village Summit. There wasn’t much time within that two months to evaluate and analyze the processes we had — we we were just focused on GETTING SHIT DONE! Ater the event was wrapped, we took about a week break and then reconvened for a bit of a post-mortem. The post-mortem for the events put very simple — we aren’t ready operationally to have events 😩🤷🏾♂️. The post-mortem for the construction — in short, we need more stringent/professional supervision — there were entirely too many items done incorrectly or incompletely 🥴. So, we got back to the drawing board on both of these 🤓👩🏻💻👨🏽💻🤓. We decided that we needed to do a lot more logistical work on the Sunday events and began meeting weekly on ironing out those logistics. For construction, we began searching for a more experienced supervisor. It took us took us a couple of months to find our original supervisor, so we knew that finding a more professional supervisor would probably at least take a similar amount of time. So in the meantime, we identified jobs and fixes on the property that we could do OURSELVES to not have the project stagnant while we look for this new person. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 530am we would head to the island and do things like planting grass (which is a lot more complicated as you think, haha), laying water piping and plumbing (also complicated), and fixing the other little issues that were left incomplete like our bar (also very complicated).
After a few months, we finally got a supervisor who we thought was professional and we were off working on some of the finishes that were pending for phase 1. Spoiler alert, we had to let him go after a month (long story short, he was a bit of a disaster🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️) buuuuttt on a positive note, we were able to continue working with some of his contacts to start putting the finishing touches on Phase 1. And, for the things that were left over that we felt we could handle just doing ourselves, we just made a DIY project out of it. Check out some of the photos below.
Starting phase 2
With the phase 1 work finishing up, its time to start focusing on phase 2 -- BUILDING THE VILLAS! This is obviously the heart and soul of the project (and the money maker 🙏🏾🤪). Within the last two years, we’ve had contacts with many, many contractors. We’ve had to tow the line between sharing ENOUGH information for them to understand and submit a proposal for the project, and not share TOO MUCH information to where we open ourselves to confidentiality breaches. Also, we’re in Cartagena, Colombia, which also adds another layer of complexity. First of all, its a foreign country and when an expat 🙋🏾♂️ arrives with an impressive project idea (ya, i said it! haha), you risk people getting the “BIG GREEN GRINGO MACHINE” 🤑🤑🤑🤑 eyes with thoughts go getting rich by over charging and under delivering. Second, Cartagena has been known to be one of the most corrupt cities in a pretty corrupt country, so its important to be very careful with information. We’ve created some processes and strategies to avoid confidentiality breaches which includes screenings, NDA’s, etc before we even take in-person meetings with contractors. At this point we’ve decided to not commit to one contractor to build all 10 villas, but rather to go through our normal screening process, negotiate, only commit to building only ONE villa with that “winning” contractor first — then seeing how it goes (its important to hold that carrot). Its going to likely result in construction process taking a bitttt longer than we’d like to finish all 10 villas (hopefully ONLY A BIT), but, we think it is worth it to hedge the risk to insure we build the villas within the quality and budget standards that we have. Here is a bit of what we are building to….
Launch outlook
So, now to the question that everyone asks me, “when are you going to open?” If I knew that, I’d have the website up and running for y’all to pre-book NOW (haha!). Nah, jk — but not really 👀. The real answer is, we HOPE we can be ready in 6 months (HOPE because you know how construction is — lawd, construction is a BEAST). If that is the case, don’t worry, you’ll start seeing A LOT of dope ass content (we’ve been working on content for about a year 🤪) to support the launch dropping on social media about 3 months before. While construction has been beasty, a challenge and a huge, huge pain in the ass, one of the things we do have on lock is our roll out plan— we just have to get there! We can’t wait for you all to see it as we get closer to the launch!
So, bare with me, bare with us…. @TinyVillageCartagena— STILL coming soon! 😉 Follow the progress on my page @akiljking, and follow @TinyVillageCartagena for official updates!