Moe Massaquoi
Appearances
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
You know, I lost my hand, but I gained a new perspective of who I was as an individual. Things that were dormant or things that I took for granted, I started to learn. And that came from just going within myself and the things that people are interested in. That may be the key to unlocking their gift.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Yeah, I'll attack that in multiple ways. You know, One, you want to have a decent base before you face adversity. Having the way that I grew up, the resiliency through football, like I almost built muscle memory so that if it was something that shocked the system, whether I knew it or not, I had a reference point that I could get through it.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And so I'd encourage people to put themselves in uncomfortable situations before they need it, because then they have a reference that I'll get through this. The other part is to give grace because there are times where you don't know if you're gonna get through it. And so in my case, people see me now, but they don't see the anxiety attacks. They don't see the depression.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
They don't see the crying. They don't see the despair. They don't see all the things behind the scenes that you have to work through And as you're working through them, they're not an isolated journey where it's just me going through it. You know, just having a rock solid support system where, you know, your wife is checking on you and making sure they're good.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
If she catches you crying at night where you are unshaven and don't have a haircut and you got a friend that sends a barber to the house that says, clean yourself up. The ability to have someone like prop you up and say, hey, you need to start working out. You need to start doing this. You need to start doing that.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And so there is no individual hero, even though you may see like the character of a person that that looks like they've emerged through something. But there's a ton of people that are putting inputs in to kind of help you. And then over time, you're making progress. What you can't do is get so like sedimentary in whatever the despair is.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
that you don't allow people to add momentum because I'm eight years removed now. And so I'd technically be in the same position eight years later if I didn't allow people to push me for it. But now you almost get a little wind behind your sail and then you can start to kind of pick up the pace on your journey as well.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And so it's a I can't take credit for all of that, to be honest with you, but it's just the the inertia of being in motion from a previous experience while also having an amazing tribe around me that is helping me through everything I've been able to do.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Well, it's interesting because it's one and the same. A lot of leaders think that they have to do everything by themselves. You often hear leaders say like leadership is lonely and it's not lonely. It's isolated because there's a ton of people going through the same thing that you're going through. You're just not allowing other people to kind of. help what you're trying to accomplish.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I knew that I did not want to be in that position. I knew I had a greater purpose. And so the vision for what you're moving towards, if you don't have a vision and people can't buy into it, if you're not continuing to iterate along the way, I couldn't tell you eight years ago that we'd be on this conversation, but it's an iterative process to where you know where you're trying to go.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And along the way, you're learning different things and you're gaining different insights and you're developing yourself. And eventually you get to either the target that you thought or a better destination that you couldn't have foreseen prior to. And so a lot of times I'm helping leaders understand what is our mission? What is the vision that we have?
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
How do we work really good as a cohesive team, but then as an individual from a role clarity standpoint, how do you give people an opportunity to do what they do at a high level and the individual and the collection? They're working together to achieve something. And I'm an athlete. I'm a competitor. And so we're trying to perform. We're trying to put points on the board.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And if you're not trying to do that, then you're going to get passed up regardless if it's an opportunity or a challenge. And so that attitude of like, we're out here to compete. You know, you want to be the best podcast in the world, not just in this discipline, but like in general, I want to be the best in the world.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
When that's your target, it continues to inspire you to go figure out new ways to improve, new ways to make tweaks, new ways to assess yourself, new ways to be honest of what your weaknesses and deficiencies are. You need to hire for it, improve it, work harder at it, something of the sort.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And I feel extremely blessed because A lot of my friend group, they're athletes who have reached the highest levels of wherever. They're business leaders, they're entrepreneurs, and they're all like hunters. And so we're on a similar journey. If I didn't have individuals like that and I had to carry that burden all by myself, but I can make a call. and say, hey, I'm kind of facing this problem.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Well, I'm going to say this. You come from good pedigree that all your family's Georgia fans, you were raised right.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
So I said, man, I just got through that. Or somebody called me and said, hey, I'm going through this situation. You can talk through it. And it's not the fluff that people kind of get enamored with. I don't know, wake up and wash your face and, you know, run 50 miles a day. And it's like, that's not even realistic.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
But tactically, how do we work through these things to get us to the other side of the equation?
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
You know what's interesting? I... My because has changed. And you have a near death situation, and you realize that one life is very fragile, it's fleeting. And so we have to make the most of it. And we kind of take that for granted, depending on where we are in life.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
But then the other side of that, I feel like everybody's going through some type of transition, you know, and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but we got to work through it and we're going to go through many of them. And so I feel like God's equipped me with the ability to help individuals go through that transition to reach whatever the highest form of their being is. And I enjoy that.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And it's amazing. I would have never anticipated this because, you know, I was so focused on, you know, sports and all that other things stuff, but as life has just evolved and I've gotten these collection of experiences, I just find myself engaging with people that are trying to figure this out.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And it's just truly a joy to try to help someone become the best version of themselves as they're switching and transitioning through these different facets of life. And so my, because it's to just help, you know, just, just to help people on their journey.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I'm a Tar Heel as well. There we go. Yes. Carolina, being from Charlotte, Carolina was one of my favorite schools growing up. I still perform and everything. And so that's my second home too.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I would say go within themselves. I lost my hand, but I gained a new perspective of who I was as an individual. Things that were dormant or things that I took for granted, I started to learn. And that came from just going within myself and the things that people are interested in. that may be the key to unlocking their gift. I'm just fascinated with people. I'm fascinated with performance.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
How I apply that is through going within myself and discovering that now towards the work that I do. But once again, I continue to harp on it. I've always been on teams. Everybody plays a different position. Everybody plays a different role. The same is true in life where you can't do everything by yourself.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
The more that I allow people in on where I think the vision is for my life, where I think things are coming towards me, the more that they start to open up doors and they start to become thought partners and they start to be encouragers and they start to be accountability partners. And those are the things that continue to help move things forward.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
You put something out in the air and you realize somebody's checking up on you. Did you do X, Y, Z that you said you were going to do? Somebody's making an introduction for you. but it comes with you having some type of direction first in life so that people understand how to help you along the way.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Man, count me in as a friend, bro. I see a lot of value in what you do and just who you are as a human. If I can help at all, count me in.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
We can't do that. Listen, you have a very popular podcast. This isn't something... All right, we'll keep it that way.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Oh, man, that is... You know, it's honest, it's the Georgia guys, because the Georgia guys talk so much trash, whether it's, you know, your Prince Millers, your Asher Allens, your Brandon Boykins, your Tim Jennings, your Demario Minners, rest in peace, Paul Oliver. But I mean, those battles are, you love them so much because you're actually spending real time with these guys all the time.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
It's not like, you know, high school or college, like you're living with these guys, you've seen them all the time. And it's just tension and trash talk. But I love all those guys, but hate all of them as well.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
The obvious is beating Florida. Unfortunately, we were one in three against Florida when I was there. And the ability to look over at the other side and see a little pain in Gator Nation was probably the most fun. There it is. Down in Jacksonville.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I'm a lifer. And I was tracking the – the March Madness and I was seeing Duke and all their talent and I was like, no, I just can't take it. So I wish all those young men all the best of luck at the NBA level, but I did not want them to come home with it.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Now, I would say beating the Steelers because we didn't have a lot of success. But interestingly enough, it's just being there. You know, you're there with you get a chance to just watch individuals do their craft at the highest level. And while you're playing, you're also a spectator. because you're seeing just the most amazing thing from names that you know, names that you don't even know.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And you just have an appreciation for the craft and the ability for this discipline and whatever a person's put in to actually do that on a stage where 80,000 people are in stadium, millions of people are watching home and just the ability to perform. And so that's kind of a little bit of both.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Ooh, the one book. Give me just in general or?
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
You know, I love A Man's Search for Meaning. That's an amazing book. And then A Midnight's Library is an amazing book, where it kind of gives you different interpretations of what your life could be like, depending on the decisions that you make. And then depending on which direction you want to go, we could go a million different directions.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
But I would say those two are really amazing, just from like a life perspective.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Count me in, brother. Happy to make it happen. You got it. Where can people follow and find you? Uh, so, uh, you can find me on LinkedIn. Um, it's my name. Uh, you can find me on my website, the vessel.com, uh, T H E V E S S O L.com. Uh, and then all my social media, uh, are at iron Massaquah. Um, and so reach, reach out. Happy, happy to connect with you.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
See, people don't understand because we... have all the legacy basketball, whether it's Duke or Carolina, Wake Forest, NC State. There's a ton of good basketball talent. And people think that North Carolina is a basketball state. And largely it is. But there's a lot of football talent that come through there. The Jordan Davises of the world, the Hakeem Nicks, the Ty Gurley.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And, you know, the list continues to go on. And so being able to go to a school like Independence and largely being able to play for an individual like Tommy Knotts, our head coach, who's I think he's on 16, 17 state championships. During my run, it was 109 games in a row, seven straight. And the fact that like losing wasn't an option. It was we're going to set a goal.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
We're going to go hunt it down. The fact that we're going to work together as a team, there's no individuals that are bigger than the team. The fact that, you know, how disciplined we are or how hard we work, all those things, you know, I think was the undercurrent of allowing us to really thrive.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And Friday nights were exciting because you knew going out there, you're going to put yourself in a chance to win and have a lot of fun in the process.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I played for Coach Rick, so there were no bags being exchanged. Everybody that you saw where that red and black came because they really bought into the culture. What Coach Rick was building really bought into the university. You've seen how the university's grown. Great experience while you're on campus, great education. Bulldog Nation, as everybody knows, is one of the best in the world.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
You see a Georgia hat anywhere, you found a friend for life. And the combination of all those things made it a place that was just, I knew I'd be comfortable. Athens isn't that far from Charlotte, door to door, it's under three and a half hours. And so it's relatively close as you cross state lines. the ability to play early.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
We were graduating two really amazing receivers in Reggie Brown and Fred Gibson. And so I knew there would be an opportunity to compete for a spot. And the thing that sweetened it all, I got a chance to go with my high school quarterback, best friend, a guy named Joe Cox.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And so we got a chance to go down there together and, you know, just increase comfort and increase the opportunity to have somebody that's going to make you familiar, have somebody you can work hard with, just do life with. And so the total package was one that worked out really well and haven't looked back since.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
Well, you know, it's interesting because being an athlete, people look at you one dimensional. And one of the interesting things about Coach Rick is people almost know him more of just as a person than as a coach, which is saying a lot because he had tremendous success at the university. But when we leave the game or even when we're playing the game, we still have to be complete humans.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
We don't get a chance to just be athletic athletes. in this isolated domain. And so whether it's getting your education or being a great family man or being a great person in a community or knowing how to engage with different individuals, knowing how to adapt to different situations, all those things were a part of the journey and a trajectory.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And I think it's helped a lot of individuals transition out of football once our bodies can't do it anymore. Yeah, man.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
We went 84. And it's just, I mean, Stafford's a guy that there's not a place on the field that he can't put it. And he's just a great human being. Just was an honor to play with him. Still track what he's doing now. Everybody's getting a chance to see his talent. I think the guy, his arm is going to last until the 60s. So it's just a matter of how long he wants to play.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I mean, the first year that he was there, it was different. You know, it's something that, you know, he probably could have played pitcher in the MLB if he wanted to, but it's such a live arm. But I think one of the things that he's been able to do is also put touch and precision and timing.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And so it's a combination of not just having a big arm, but also being able to throw the pass that is needed. You know, you see him throwing no look in the Super Bowl. You see him fitted in different areas with his arm angles. And so once you get used to that, it's something that is a gift because you're always open and he trusts you to make a play for him. You just got to be ready, right?
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
This is just me and you. No, I'll give you an honest answer. So I'm from Carolina, and we didn't get a lot of Cleveland media. And so I wasn't actually familiar with them. And Cleveland... had gone maybe they finished like nine and six, maybe a year or two before.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And so they had a complicated background, but they looked like they were up on up and then they took a dip and then they brought a new head coach in. And so I had no knowledge of what it would be going in. And then you get the culture shock. I remember flying from Georgia to Cleveland. I left Georgia in shorts because it was 80 degrees. I landed in Cleveland. It's like 40.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I was like, whoa, I've never seen anything like this in May. Yeah. And it was complicated because there was so much change taking place where we didn't know, but the team in the background was being put up for sale. We had a new head coach. We had multiple position changes. We had multiple player changes. And so I would say it was just almost like a case study of change, of change.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
What to do, what not to do, how to set up structure, how to set up stability. And we never really got that while in Cleveland. And I think we're still trying to figure that out as an organization 15 years later.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
It's a complicated question because some people are really talented and but don't love it and can still be great players. Some people's motivation are to change the trajectory of their family. Some people just love to compete, whether it's basketball, football, accounting, engineering, they wanna compete, that's just how they're wired. And so you just see a different flavor of it.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
The other side of that though, depending on the system that you're in,
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
can change your love of the game you know if you're losing you know it's not a place that you want to be it kind of wears on you if you um don't necessarily have trust in your coaching or if you don't have um trust that you're going to be there like all these other factors if you don't think that you're being compensated fairly can change this the purity of the game that we played you know on the street or you know sideline tackle when a car is coming by you got to press timeout um
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And so all those things like really complicated. And if you're in a organization that is a little more volatile and doesn't have that trajectory where you think you're going to win, the love of the game can change a little bit. And so it's a little complicated.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I mean, you have to invest in your body. Nobody's going to baby you. You have to find the right mentorship. There's no guarantee that you'll be there next year. There's no four-year scholarships. And so you have to earn your spot every year. You have to continue to develop yourself, even though you're
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
You know, one of sixteen hundred ninety six people, you still have to figure out ways to get better. You can be replaced at any time because there's a new crop of athlete that younger, cheaper, faster. And then so that the desire to continuously compete, what you put on film is your resume. You're getting evaluated all the time. And so you want to make sure that you put a good product out there.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
And so it's a different animal from just, you know, happy-go-lucky. You're on the team and you're just happy to be there. You better be adding value to the team.
Mick Unplugged
Mo Massaquoi: Football, Transition, and Building Relentless Personal Growth
I'm doing great, brother. How you doing today, man? I need to take you everywhere for introductions.