We were lucky to catch up with Kuron Akiba recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kuron, thanks for joining us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

I have experienced a tremendous amount of ups and down within my personal life and businesses. I want to be remembered as someone who never gave up, who always showed up willing to give it my best efforts and someone who never let the “no’s” stop me or let anything get in my way or anyone to tell me I couldn’t do it.

Kuron, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have a clothing line, a marketing company and I am in the process of creating an afterschool program for at-risk youth based on expressive arts and music.

My clothing brand is called Trap Swag where our brand brings luxury and streetwear together. I love fashion and I think my brand represents always working hard and chasing dreams.

My marketing company is called Critically Influenced. I am currently in my senior year for Business and want to go on to get my master’s in marketing. I came up with the concept for Critically Influenced because I was always good at sales and knowing how to market a product and/or service. During the pandemic I saw a lot of people starting their own business without knowing the marketing aspect of business. I always tell people your family and friends will not keep your business up and running you need to know how to connect and appeal to the public and also know who your target market is. It is honestly something I have always been good at and while I’ve been in school I just really fell in love with helping small businesses market themselves better whether its helping them perform a S.W.O.T analysis on their business, to finding and understanding who their target market is, I even get into color psychology.

My afterschool program will be a non-profit. It is something I am taking my time with because I believe this is my purpose to help at-risk youth and it has a personal meaning to me because I was an at-risk youth myself and I believe if I had a program that introduced me to different types of art expressions and music, it would have helped me control my emotions and also have a safe place to express myself and learn about different types of music and art. A program like this would have kept me out of so much trouble after school so for me its important for me to be able to give me and build the type of program that would have helped me.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I spent a lot of my younger years in programs, and lock up facilities. I was always told I probably was going to use the system as a revolving door and the last time I was locked up it really did something to me, it changed the way I viewed life. I always had a entrepreneurial mindstate I just couldn’t find the focus to really start, I had all the ideas in the world but the lacked the motivation to start. I made a promise to myself, God and my family that last time would be the last time and I meant it. When I got out I got serious about everything I wanted to do and I started taking action. My mind state right now is no one can stop me, I will do everything I put my mind too and put my all into every business I come up with.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Being consistent with everything I do. If there’s one thing I’m going to do is let everyone know about all of my businesses and what I have in the works. I think talking to people and engaging with people will always help you, your name and brand stay relevant.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.criticallyinfluenced.com
• Instagram: trapswaginc
• Facebook: Kuron Akiba
• Linkedin: Kuron Akiba