Turning Setbacks Into Startups with Debo Williams

Barely Famous

PodcastOne

Talk Radio, Society & Culture

4.7 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Delaware-born linebacker Debo Williams joins Kail this week to talk honest, unfiltered life after football, chasing the NFL dream, and becoming a 23-year-old tech entrepreneur. From growing up in Smyrna, grinding his way from an under-recruited high school athlete to the University of Delaware and then transferring to play SEC football at the University of South Carolina, Debo breaks down what college recruiting actually looks like.

They get into the realities of what really happens when you don’t get drafted even after calls from most of the league. Debo shares how he turned that uncertainty into purpose by launching SpendHer Hotline, an app that connects real people to real experts for paid advice on anything from podcasting to mechanics.

Debo and Kail also talk youth sports culture, parents rearranging their entire lives for kids’ athletics, when it’s time to push vs. when it’s time to pull back, and what to do when your kid is “good” but not a clear D1 star. If you’re a parent of an athlete, a student-athlete, or someone trying to pivot after a dream doesn’t go as planned, this episode is for you.

Follow Debo and download SpendHer Hotline now!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the shit show.
0:02.9	Things are going to get weird.
0:04.0	Get weird.
0:04.5	It's your fave villain, Kail Lowry.
0:06.4	And you're listening to Barely Famous.
0:24.8	All right. Welcome back to the barely famous podcast. Today I'm sitting with Debo Williams.
0:27.0	Thank you for joining us.
0:28.0	Thank you for having you.
0:28.9	So we met in 2021-ish through mutual friends in Delaware.
0:33.8	You were born and raised in Delaware.
0:36.0	And then you started playing football for South Carolina. Yeah. Okay. Before that, where did you go to high school? I went to Smurna High School. Oh, you did? Yep. Oh, I didn't know that. Born and raised in Delaware. Okay. And you're, everyone calls you Debo. Yep. But what is your real name? It's Darrell. Okay. And how did you get the nickname, Debo?
0:55.0	So I don't know if you ever seen Friday. Friday is basically the guy, Debo in the movie is a big bully. Always been a bully on the field. Were you a bully? Big bully on the field. Oh, on the field? Oh, on the field, I was a big bully for sure. So I got that name when I was around like five or six years old.
1:10.4	Okay.
1:10.7	And it just kind of stuck.
1:11.8	Like your family even called you?
1:13.4	Everybody calls me Debo.
1:14.6	Wow. That's so funny. We were just talking about nicknames before you got here. And my kids have already three letter names, but somehow they have nicknames now. It's like, why are we calling Rio Eo? You You know what you mean? So I love that. So you were an athlete throughout your whole childhood into high school. And what was that like? I was just kind of always taught to be the best. And so it started off of football. I played a little bit of basketball, but it was just, if you're going to do it, you're going to dominate it. So every single thing I try to do, just always try to dominate it.
1:46.0	Did you go to your parents one day and just say I want to play football? Now, I started off with that. Like my mom and dad put me into it, but dad always, he was real big in football. My uncles played. Dad played, everybody played. everybody played and it was like, it's kind of just something we did, you know?
1:59.4	And I was naturally good at it, you know?
2:01.3	So he kind of just honed in on my, on me just something we did, you know, and I was naturally good at it, you know.
2:01.3	So he kind of just honed in on my, on me being better at it, you know, perfecting the craft. I know that there's a little bit of controversy surrounding tackle football and youth and things like that. And so it's interesting when certain families, it's like all they know, we're going to put our kids in football and there's no controversy for them. And then there are other families who are like, oh, I don't know because of, you know, CTE.
2:20.9	Is it CTE?
	...

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