Surviving the Side Hustle

Engineering Triumph: Akeem's Tenacity in Crafting Flipstick and Redefining Resilience

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 29

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When life threw him curveballs, Akeem didn't just duck; he built a better bat. This extraordinary founder of Flipstick joins us to recount his journey from losing a college scholarship to engineering a remarkable phone accessory that's changing the game. Akeem's candid tales, from embracing the omen in "The Alchemist" to the hustle of sales and the creation of Flipstick, are a masterclass in the art of perseverance. His overnight epiphanies, which led to prototyping and Kickstarter success, make for a story that's one part inspirational, one part instructive for anyone nursing a side passion or looking to leap into their entrepreneurial dreams.

A rollercoaster ride of highs and lows marks Akeem's entrepreneurial journey, packed with lessons on resilience and the entrepreneurial spirit. His battle with depression and the pressures of secret failures gave way to a story of redemption through innovative marketing and celebrity endorsements. But it wasn't all smooth sailing; with Akeem's transparent recount of scaling challenges, this episode is a clinic on learning from adversity. We also uncover the sheer audacity of his path that winds through a Super Bowl event, a viral comedy show moment, and a network of hustlers claiming ties to Diddy. This chapter of Akeem's story is a compelling reminder that sometimes, the most valuable asset is not knowing anybody.

Ending on a note of triumph over adversity, Akeem shares his deeply personal journey of overcoming the fear associated with hiding his sexuality and the liberation that followed his coming out. His pivot from a promising corporate trajectory to betting on his own vision is as much a lesson in authenticity as it is in courage. And as your host, I'm compelled to remind you that the precipice of giving up often hides the dawn of a breakthrough. Akeem's story exemplifies this, and I hope it encourages you to press on with your ventures, for success could be waiting just beyond that next hurdle.

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Speaker 1:

What's going on, guys? Today on the show we've got Akeem man recently connected with you and I'm glad we did. You seem like a super interesting person, man, and what do you got going on, dude?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man, so my name is Akeem, as you already mentioned, right, I'm the founder of this company here called Flipstick and dude, I've been on a pretty remarkable journey from where I started from and I'm just excited to be able to kind of share it with your audience here. I know the grind and the you know the grind of the side hustle coming from. You know a nine to five. And, yeah, man, I just I'm here to tell everyone look, you can do it If I did it you can do it too.

Speaker 1:

Oh, awesome, I love it, man. So before we dive into you a little bit specifically, mind sharing a little bit about what Flipstick is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure, man. So the Flipstick is a little device. This is actually here. So it's a little device, a family of devices, actually, that go on the back of your phone and they work as kickstands for your phones. You can prop it up, watch video, netflix, all that kind of stuff, but the real magic is our synthetic CT adhesive, which is based off the feet of geckos, so it's actually a NASA based adhesive, and essentially it allows you to stick your phone to virtually any flat surface you can see there. You can mount it in the car on an airplane to make TikTok videos or Instagrams or Zoom calls, or watch videos as well too, and the adhesive is actually reusable and washable, so you can clean it and use it again and again for thousands of sticks. Wow, that's Flipstick.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's pretty sick man. That's pretty cool. Thanks. You use it really like thousands and thousands of times, yeah, thousands of times.

Speaker 2:

It's completely reusable. It actually comes from a research study that NASA did back in the 70s where they were trying to come up with adhesives that would be reusable in space and they were really trying to come up with a replacement for Velcro and see what options they had. And so I discovered it and I'll get into kind of how I came to that. But yeah, man, it's good for usually typically a year longer for most of our customers.

Speaker 1:

Nice, wow, that's awesome. And does that leave any kind of marks or anything?

Speaker 2:

So no residues. It's not chemically based. It's a pressure based adhesive, so it's not like your typical tape or glue that you would use. Wow, that's pretty sweet or like suction cup.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really cool.

Speaker 2:

So as much suction cup as a suction cup would leave. You know, it's about it.

Speaker 1:

So let's dive into a little bit about you specifically. So how did you get into that and what's your story like?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man. So you know I kind of fell into entrepreneurship. But to back up a little bit, I was in school for chemical engineering, had a full scholarship to college Howard University in Washington DC and I lose my scholarship and I have to come home and I was devastated. You know, I went to a school, fairly prestigious high school. A lot of those kids went to really you know prestigious universities. And you know here I am, have lost my scholarship, I'm back home, my parents house, and so I start working in sales.

Speaker 2:

I originally started in a in a sprint store selling cell phones, cell phone accessories. I eventually worked in a call center for Verizon and then for Square the guys who made Cash App, and the whole time I was always in sales and I was very successful with those in those careers. I became the number one sales rep at most of those companies. But you know, at a certain point I found myself just not fulfilled. Right, it was, the money wasn't enough anymore and I just realized the equation of no matter how much money I was making, the company was always making, you know, 100 times more for the same, for the effort that I was putting in, the clients and customers that I was bringing in, and I wanted to change that equation. So I left my job, I started doing marketing and then I realized you know, marketing is also not for me. I was working for a lot of different types of organizations and I felt like instead of having one boss, now I had 10 bosses. Still wasn't filling.

Speaker 2:

But my boss, when I quit my last job at Square, he gave me a book called the alchemist, and for those who don't know, the alchemist is about a boy who goes on this journey to find his treasure. He has a dream about treasure and this wise man, early on in his journey, tells him like hey, you're going to find your treasure, but you have to follow the omens or the signs. You know that the universe sends you in order to find this treasure. And he goes on this journey. Now, after I read that book, man changed my whole mindset. Even the way I found the book was just crazy story. And so once I read it I just knew like okay, my treasure is out there for me, I just have to keep my eyes open.

Speaker 2:

And so it was a late night, three o'clock in the morning, you know, I'm jobless and my uncle calls me and he's an engineer at NASA. He tells me about this adhesive and how he was going to use it for a project. And, man, I just latched on to it. I knew there was something there. And so I start to research this adhesive. I say, okay, you know, originally my idea was actually mount my TV on the wall with the adhesive. I was like that's probably not going to work, but maybe a tiny little TV, we can do that. And so I end up creating a prototype. I take some videos, I send that off to China and, you know, I look up how to do a patent, write my own patent, write my own trademarks. And I launched it on Kickstarter and in the first 30 days of pre-orders on Kickstarter, we did about $15,000 in sales and that was all the validation. I need to say like this is it for me? I'm taking this to the moon. That's how my journey began.

Speaker 1:

So, reflecting back on that journey that you had just gone through Now, at the time did you know that you were kind of bouncing from the sales position and the marketing positions? Did you think that those were going to help you later in life? Would you get into this entrepreneurial world?

Speaker 2:

I didn't know it then, but absolutely it helped when I left Verizon. I planned to start a business then, but I was afraid. I just didn't know enough. I was just stuck with fear, and so when a new position came available and they called me from Square, I took it, because I was really afraid to start and I had invested a little bit of money in another idea. But I was terrified. But what I learned when I was at Square is I was talking to entrepreneurs every day. People that were running their business started it from nothing and it started to give me the confidence.

Speaker 2:

And when we talk about sales, man, sales is one of the most valuable skills that you can have in life, because everything is sales. Right Like, getting a job is sales. Selling to your customers is sales. Getting people to work for you when you're a tiny little company is sales. It's all about how you tell your story, and how you tell a story that then influences someone's decision to give you time, to maybe give you their business, to give you their friendship, their partnership, and so, man, I'm incredibly grateful for the jobs that I have, because I was essentially being paid to learn, and I was being paid to learn something that I would never have learned in school. So, yeah, they were incredibly valuable in this journey, for sure.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I can totally see that and you're never going to forget or hopefully you never forget the information that you learned from those first few jobs there Now, so right out of school. That must have been a pretty difficult time because you're back to school you see everybody else supposedly succeeding and doing their own things. Now, what made you get into the sales position and what made you get like right back out there and what were you kind of going through at that time?

Speaker 2:

Listen, because my daddy told me you better go out and get a job. That's why he said you're not going to sit here at home. Well, I came back home and, man, it was a really hard time, even prior to coming home. I remember I went back to school, even though I was kicked out, and I stayed in the dorm for a whole semester and I literally slept all day and stayed up all night and, man, I didn't have words for it at the time, but I was just so depressed I mean severe I was eating like cheese and crackers. It was depressed, depressed. And when I came home, I still felt that same way, even though I was now around my parents. The secret was up. I told them hey, this is going on. I just felt so ashamed and I think that a lot of people, when you fail, we want to keep it a secret because we don't want people to know that we failed, and that's what I did.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't until I recovered and I ended up winning a huge competition at Verizon and it saved up nearly 100 grand, and I finally ended up telling my friends from high school that you know, hey, I'm not at school, but it was one of those things where, as badly as I felt, as much as I wanted it to be a secret and didn't want anyone to know of my failure, I also was determined to make a recovery. And when I came home I promised myself I said look, by the time all my buddies from high school are graduating college. I want to be making it at least as much as the average college graduate. That was my goal. And so when I was at Sprint, I was making like 30 grand and then it ended up being 40. And then when I went to Verizon, I was making 60 and then 70 and then 90. And so by the time my friends were graduating, I was making twice the national average.

Speaker 2:

And then I felt like, okay, I can come clean about what happened to me because I've recovered. And, man, you know, today I wish I knew back then. Like you can come clean right away, like you don't have to hold on to the failure, because the failure is a learning opportunity. And I was asked I was doing an interview the other day and someone asked me like, man, if you could go back to you, wish you would have finished school and stay. I was like absolutely not. Like you know, I have no regrets, like it hurt the way it happened, but, man, I've had such a cool life thanks to that failure and, honestly, it made me resilient enough to go on this journey because, if I can recover from that, what at the time seemed like the insurmountable failure, my life's over. You know, everything else seems like a, you know, walk in the park.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that mindset you have there of looking at the setback as a learning opportunity to really propel yourself forward, and and I feel like you've got the perfect Blend of motivation you have. You had a little bit of the motivation of the fear of getting caught about one of your setbacks in school, so you wanted to that, so that drove you to continue like learning and growing and working hard, and then at the same time, you had the reward kind of motivation like okay, yeah, I got to make more money, I got, I got to get to this spot here, so then I can kind of replace the identity that I previously had, which at the time, seemed to be like a negative Identity that you associated with because, yeah, school situation and and so I love that, that motivation and that blend of everything there and not. So now I got to ask you what's motivating you to continue growing forward and building the Business and expanding and doing everything else you've got going on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man. So you know I would end up taking flip stick right. And we, we first started in a mall selling a kiosk. Eventually I I applied to be on Shark Tank. I don't make it on the Shark Tank. I Then say, okay, I need another celebrity, let me get Jay-Z. And then I'm like, okay, Maybe Jay-Z's too much. And I'm like, okay, but what about Diddy? And so I go and I convinced Diddy to buy a ton of flipsticks by wrapping my pitch in a music competition to him. He introduces me to Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg ends up loving the flip stick. They helped get me on Shark Tank. We do Shark Tank.

Speaker 2:

And man, from there we just took off. We raised a ton of money. We got into tons of retailers Target, best Buy, at&t, t-mobile, went and got on the QVC, the shopping network, to Tayshow, people magazine, all this crazy stuff, right. And you know it just showed up, man. I look back and I'm like, wow, like once upon a time I feel like a complete failure. And you know I saw my life is is limited in what, in what was possible. And so you know, last year we hit our biggest year ever in revenue, but we had a secret, and that secret was that we weren't profitable. You know, we were growing and scaling the business. We scaled it up to millions of dollars, but we weren't able to figure out how to market the product Profitably. And so I had to go to our investors and it's to tell them guys, you know, we're not scaling fast enough to make it make it sense for us to raise more money. We're also not Uh fine, we're not seeing a way or a pathway to be profitable. And so I have to tell them like, guys, this is not, we're not gonna be able to sell this business. You know it's not, it's not gonna go the way that we wanted to go and you know, without raising more money, we're gonna have to close. Or we got to scale things back dramatically and, man, it was one of the hardest decisions I ever made to To essentially stop right. It felt like giving up, it felt like failure.

Speaker 2:

And you know, I remember this is maybe in November of last year. You know, I was just feeling really bad and and I got invited to Excuse me at the beginning of December last year I'm feeling really bad, right, you know, and I had an airing on QDC, which is like big shopping network, so I flew out to Philly and I'm doing it and we saw probably like a hundred thousand dollars right in eight minutes on QDC and I'm sad. And then I had to like take some perspective and be like a king. There was a time in your life where you make a $10 an hour. It wasn't that long ago. Catching the bus to work to make $10 an hour and even though the business didn't end up the way I wanted it to, the fact that I can go and make $100,000 in eight minutes is a dream. It is a dream to previous me, and so I made an announcement on our Instagram that hey, flip stick. I said it was shutting down. And it wasn't actually shutting down, but it was for all practical purpose. We were stopping an investment into the business.

Speaker 2:

But I realized something I was like the journey that I've had has been one of constant failure and constant overcoming of that failure.

Speaker 2:

And I found the most passion over the past few years being invited to speak and I've been very fortunate to be invited to some very large stages to share my story and when people come up to me with their entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs or people who just trying to make it to the next stage of their life graduate, college, whatever and they hear my story and they receive something from it that makes them say you know what I can do this, I can keep going, man.

Speaker 2:

That's what gets me up in the morning and gets me excited. And so I decided for 2024, my chapter is going to be spreading my message and hopefully being able to mentor and coach and influence people to say look, chase after your dreams. I feel like the astronaut that says hey, we shot for the stars, we landed on the moon. Right, not too bad, I shot for the stars and I got to the moon and it wasn't too bad. And speaking of Jay-Z, I never got investment from Jay-Z, but I did get engaged on Beyonce States. Jay-z was there, so I feel like I was pretty close.

Speaker 1:

That is pretty awesome, oh man. So how did you let me bring it back? How did you even get connected with Jay-Z and Diddy and Snoop Dogg?

Speaker 2:

Like you just run into him on the side of the street. No, I knew nothing, right. So this is just the power of the universe, of how crazy things can get. I'm going to give you the full story. Normally I just say like, oh, I saw Instagram ad for this event called the revolt summit, which is a music conference that Diddy puts on every year. Now, that is true, I did see the ad, but I was actually primed before the ad because when we didn't make it on a shark tank, had opportunity to go out to the Super Bowl and we gave away flip sticks at the celebrity football game before the Super Bowl.

Speaker 2:

At the Super Bowl, I meet this rapper named Salento. He made a song watch me whip, watch me nae, nae. If you remember, that song was viral from a few years ago. So he invites me to come out to the BET Awards out in LA. So we go out to the BET Awards. I take my mom because it was her birthday, and on her flight back she meets this guy that says hey, my brother is really close to Diddy, your son should talk to him. So I cap on the phone with this guy. He introduces me to another guy. They introduced me to another guy.

Speaker 2:

Eventually, I'm on this conference call with allegedly Diddy's best friend, and then this other guy, dp, was in it and they're trying to convince me like yo, we got this show coming up and these are like these certified gangsters, these are like they met in the penitentiary and they're like we can get you set up with Diddy, we'll have you at this event. All you got to do is give us a percentage of your company and we're going to make a million dollars. So they were trying to hustle me and I felt they were trying to hustle me and eventually I looked them up and I find out DP is an international drug lord and he went to prison because he had moved $150 million worth of drugs through private jets and was cleaning it through the record industry. Crazy, right. So I go and I tell these guys right, yeah, no, I'm not going to do business with you. Look, I don't need you and I don't want to give you a percentage of my company. Needless to say, they were very upset. They were like you wasted our time, they're upset, and so it was that mindset that I had right. These guys are trying to hustle me. They say they know Diddy. I don't know who, they know they're just trying to take a piece of my company. That I see this ad for the event that they were talking about. So I'm like you know what? I'm going to go to the event and I'm going to get Diddy to invest, just despite them.

Speaker 2:

And so, man, I decided to go to the event. There was a pitch competition for businesses. I didn't get in the pitch competition because it was closed, but they had a music competition. So I'm like look, I got to do what I got to do. I took music appreciation in high school. So you know, I'll figure it out, I'll write a rap. And so I write the rap, I go down, I do the rap, they love it.

Speaker 2:

Then they disqualify me because they're like you can't be in the top five because you don't want a record deal. You're trying to pitch your business. Let's say what's the difference? Do the record deal and pitch it in business? And what ended up happening was, right before the final top five got to go on stage, there was a comedy show with DC Young Fly and I was sitting in front row and he was cracking his jokes and I just stood up and I held my product in the air and he looks at me in a very colorful language. He was like you know what are you trying to sell me, bro? And I just go full pitch mode, full sales mode, like I'm in the sprint store. It lets you stick your phone here you can make TikTok videos.

Speaker 1:

And he goes.

Speaker 2:

I'm not sure if I can curse on the show, but he goes. I got one question for you. He's like will it stick to my girl's ass? Because if it will, I'll take 50 of them right now. Man, man, the crowd goes nuts. Eventually, the whole show gets derailed. Right, people are coming up to the stage and eventually it lets me on the stage. I do my rap during his set and I end up going backstage. I meet DJ Khaled, I meet Diddy, I meet all these guys, get everyone's contact information. The sponsor of the event was AT&T. I get all their contact information and as I'm backstage, right, and I'm like adrenaline is pumping through me it was so much adrenaline Like it was free drinks in the back, but I'm drinking and I'm like this alcohol is not affecting me, what's going on. But I'm sitting there, you know, and all these famous people are there and all of a sudden I see DP and Diddy's best friend.

Speaker 2:

They're like six foot three and they're walking straight toward me.

Speaker 2:

I'm like, oh shit. And they walk up to me and I'm like, oh shit. And DP looks at me and he's like, oh shit, you did your thing, bro. He's like, but you know, you wouldn't have to do all that if you had to just roll with us. Wow, and that me up, gave me a handshake and it was pretty cool. And then you know, from there, just, you know, we got to LA and met Snoop and you know all this other stuff ended up happening.

Speaker 2:

But I didn't know anybody. You know I didn't have any connection, I had no business even being at the event. But I just knew in my heart like I need to go there, no matter how many obstacles came in my way. Like I said, no, I'm meant to be here. So when I got, you know, kicked out and just qualified, I'm like, no, it's not over. Like when I, when I go, like I just, I think for a lot of people they think it's like who you know? If you don't know anybody, start knowing people, get to know somebody. And I'm just taking that mindset into everything that I do. Where it's like, look, just figure it out, you know, I'll figure it out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, dude, that's, that's an incredible story, dude, it sounds like a movie and it's just that's hilarious that that happened. And then they're there afterwards too. Oh my God, that's like literally a movie. You got to sell that to to somewhere in Hollywood.

Speaker 2:

I think, I think I may have to.

Speaker 1:

But I love that too, because I'm often telling a lot of people about how you can kind of create your own luck, and it's becoming more and more popular about the equation of like preparation and opportunity creates that luck.

Speaker 1:

So somebody outside that looks like the luckiest situation ever, but you put in all of that hard work leading up to that. So you were prepared with your pitch, you with your product, you knew how to sell, you knew how to market, you knew what you were doing. And then you put yourself in that opportunity. One thing didn't go well. You just went right into the next one and you can clearly see how much drive you have with just about everything you're doing. So I love that. You just you just go out, you just go for it and you just dive right into it. That's incredible, man, wild stuff.

Speaker 2:

And like I think for me, what propels me like once these, when these types of things happen, right, like it propels you to go forward, because you look back and you're like how in the world did that happen that way? And once it happens once or twice, then it just becomes habit. You're like I'm just going to go do it again. I'm just going to go do it again and it makes for one. It allowed me to be more successful than I ever could have imagined. But on the flip side, it was fun. It made a life that was just so enjoyable where I'm just having a great time, and so I kind of just take that. I take that I use it for fuel to go further.

Speaker 1:

I love that you really were genuinely enjoying yourself doing that. And it's crazy too if maybe you could speak on this a little bit, because I know a lot of younger entrepreneurs, people who are in the side hustle. They're often time held back by fear fear of doing something and you didn't have any fear, even at the comedy show, just to just hold up your product thing, just dive in and get going from there when?

Speaker 2:

do you?

Speaker 1:

think you develop this bravery, or how can somebody develop some bravery like that?

Speaker 2:

You know, I think part of it is knowing your lane. So the only reason that I did all these crazy things is because I sucked at marketing. I didn't know Instagram ads, I didn't know Facebook ads. The website wasn't making any money, so I had to come up with something else, and for me, my strength was always in person sales, in person pitching. So I played to my strengths, and when you play to your strengths instead of trying to develop your weaknesses well, you have a lot more confidence.

Speaker 2:

You're like well look, I may not be able to make the Facebook pop off, I may not get my Shopify store running, but I can go someplace and make a splash. And so, because I was in my element, it made it a lot easier. And then, in terms of fear, I let fear hold me back my whole life. When I sent you the email I sent from psych war to shark tank, and the way I ended up in that mental hospital was I was working at Verizon. I just won this big competition called Rockstar made me the number one rep in the entire company, getting all these outglades. But then I had this massive anxiety attack Thanksgiving night and it led to a ton of insomnia and depression and it was extremely painful, even worse than what I had experienced in high school and, excuse me in college. And what brought that on was my realization that I was gay and my parents didn't know, my family didn't know, I never told a soul and I was just hoping that it would go away, that I wouldn't have to. You know, I was like I just don't, I don't want to have to carry that burden. At least that's what I felt then. And so I carried it my whole life, and then my brain and my body was just like no more, like you were breaking down here, you know. And the reason I had made those decisions was out of fear. Right, I had this big fear that can't be a good salesperson if you gay. You know you can't, your parents won't love you, you know your friends won't be your friends none of that. Everything will change if people know this deep, dark secret. And so I had spent so much of my, my creative capacity pretending to be someone that I wasn't, and it was all out of fear. And so, finally, my, my boss had told me take time off work. I went to go see a therapist, went to this hospital, they gave me all these drugs and I ended up coming out to my parents and with this whole thing of taking these medications, these mood stabilizing medications there's another long story there. But on the other side of that, facing that big fear of you, know what the rejection will look like in my life, if people know this about me.

Speaker 2:

When I actually did it, I remember there was this guy in my building security guard, big, tough dude One time. This guy, like this, is the kind of guy where one of the people that lives in my building. Their purse was stolen and he chased the guy down. He stole their purse and shot him. Like this is a tough dude, right, and he didn't kill the guy, he just shot him. But you know, he's just a really tough guy, man's man, tough guy.

Speaker 2:

And I remember my now fiance, then boyfriend. We were walking up. He's like, oh yeah, this is my boyfriend. And he's like, oh yeah, that's what's up. He's like that's what's up. And it was just like I just knew like he was going to be. Like you know, I just I thought he was going to come at me in a way that I didn't expect.

Speaker 2:

And then I started moving through the world and people didn't care, you know, and just my friends didn't care, you know, my family accepted me. It didn't affect my career, like out, you know, it just showed me like man. I spent 22 years being afraid and it was painful, like why did I do that? Why did I let this perceived fear, something that wasn't even real, control my life for 22 years? And so when I left my job, I was once again terrified. But I'm like I can't let fear stop me from being who it is that I want to be, and if, who I want to be is a successful entrepreneur, you know, that controls his own schedule, that does what he wants to do in life and is not on the schedule on a boss. Then why would I let the fear stop me? And the thing is, the first time when I quit my job it did stop me. I started up and then, as soon as there was opportunity to go work for someone else, I went back.

Speaker 2:

But the second time around, when I felt really strong and true to myself, I remember I took Flipstick. This was like the first six months of business. I took it to this big show in Detroit and I meet all these people I'm pitching it. And I pitched it to this woman who was a petroleum. She had a petroleum sales company and she's like. She looked at me. I pitched her Flipstick. She could use it to customize her logo on her brand.

Speaker 2:

She looked at me and she was like you are an incredible sales person and she's like. She's like I would pay you $300,000 a year to come and sell petroleum at my company. You want to do it? And I said no, I couldn't believe it because at the time I hadn't even made $60,000 Flipstick. You know what I'm saying and here she's like you'll make $300,000 if you come work for me.

Speaker 2:

And I said no, and she was like you're going to make it. That's what she said. She's like you're going to make it and she was going to give me that job, but she also knew like he's going to do it and it took me a while. It took me three years before we made $300,000 in a year, but then a couple of years after that we're making 10 times that. So yeah, I mean, look, fear stops so many of us and the fear of failure stopped me for a long time. But then, once you fell a couple of times, you face fear down and you realize, like man, that was imaginary. Then you just take life by the horns and then push through.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, wow, and I can see that you're definitely going to dive straight into this speaking career and you're just going to. You're going to help so many people in so many different ways. It's going to be incredible and it's going to be great. Dude, that's just great story all around and I really respect you. Even back when you weren't making that much money, though, you still had the vision and you knew. You knew you needed to set the boundaries and not fall back into that working for somebody else. You need to dig your feed in and say this is where I am, this is who I am, this is what I'm going to do. And you took that and you ran with it. Man, congratulations on that and all that success. And this is pretty sick stuff, man.

Speaker 2:

Good stuff. I appreciate it and I just kind of see like for my few, I see this as just the beginning, like I was. I did an interview the other day and this guy is an agent for NFL players and he's like I get to sign, I've done a billion dollars in contracts, like getting guys in the NFL is what I always want to do, he's like. But the real tough thing is getting them out the NFL when they're no longer an athlete. They have to make that transition. So I just told him the story of me transitioning and he's like dude, he's like I know it's hard for you to go through a lot of that stuff, but you had to go through that. Because I'm listening to you now.

Speaker 2:

You never play football but I'm going to tell you my guys who were in the NFL, who were making that transition, they're going to hear your story and they're not going to be afraid of that transition.

Speaker 2:

And that's where the hardest man, it's one of the hardest transitions that any human can make to go from professional sports to a civilian life and he's like that you going through that shows other people they can too. And I was just you know it kind of reaffirmed for me like I'm in the right place. And if someone asked me the other day, like what success means for you, and I thought about it and I said this is like the first time I thought of this, but I was like it really means waking up and knowing I'm right where I'm supposed to be and for the first time in probably two years, I'm like man, I'm right where I'm supposed to be and I want for other people to feel the same way. And that looks different for everyone, right, and most people won't understand, right, but as long as you know I'm right where I'm supposed to be, man, it feels great and then magic starts to happen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, man Dude, that's some powerful stuff. I love that Awesome. Well, I do want to be courteous of your time. I don't want to take up too much because I know I'm a busy guy A lot of things going on so if people are interested in connecting with you more, finding a little bit more about your story, how do they get in touch with you? How do they? How do they tap in and see what you up to? Where do they go to?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, of course. So you can follow me on all social media channels at Akeem Shannon. So that's a K E E M Shannon S H A N N O N. You can check out more about Flipstick at get flipstick F, l, I, p, s, t I K. And if you want to just connect with me directly, I send out motivational texts and I connect with people directly over text. Then people can text me. They can reach me at 314-789-9005. And that comes straight to me and I'll connect with you.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, there you go, connecting through text, social media and Flipstick. It's Flipstick without the C in stick, correct? Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1:

F, l, I, p, s, t, I K. All right, dude, I appreciate you so much. I love the story, I love everything you've got going on. I can't wait to hear more of you when you start hitting some of these crazy big stages, and I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to stop today and share this story and a lot of valuable information and knowledge and experience, even with the audience. But before I let you go, man, I got to ask what would be your number one piece of advice for surviving the side hustle.

Speaker 2:

Don't give up. Don't give up too soon and, like so many people, especially when it's a side hustle, when you first start it's exciting and you're ready to do it and you're motivated, and then, when you get just a little bit further, it gets really, really hard, because you're trying to take something from a hobby to a business and people stop, they start something else. Don't quit, because I'm telling you in my experience is just on the other side of that really difficult wall that you have your next rocket ship that takes you off. So don't give up too soon.

Speaker 1:

Boom. Love it, man. Love you. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you, Rob. Got to have you back on the show in the future. Appreciate you so much, man. We'll talk soon. Appreciate you, thank you.