Marcus Bullock, Flick Shop founder, urges incarcerated Utah residents to build skills and stay connected to family

Marcus Bullock, CEO and founder of the mobile app Flick Shop, told residents at the Central Utah Correctional Facility that personal setbacks can be a starting point for later success and encouraged people preparing for reentry to develop practical skills and maintain family ties.

Bullock opened the talk by saying he was ‘‘super excited to be here’’ and stressing the importance of having visible role models: "It's very hard to be what you can't see," he told the audience. He framed his remarks around two themes he said he teaches to outside audiences—sales and business fundamentals—and his own life story of conviction, imprisonment and eventual entrepreneurship.

Bullock gave a detailed personal account of how he was arrested as a teenager after a series of decisions that culminated in a carjacking, and said a judge sentenced him to "23 years to life," later suspending 15 years so he served eight years in adult maximum-security facilities. He described the emotional and practical challenges of adolescence in prison and how his mother’s letters and photographs helped sustain him while incarcerated.

After his release, Bullock said he faced repeated rejections in job interviews because many employers asked about felony convictions on applications. He recalled applying broadly—"41 job applications"—and said his breakthrough came when he used experience gained running small contracts to win larger bids after obtaining minority business certification.

Bullock described launching Flick Shop to help families send printed photos and short messages to people in jails and prisons. "For less than a dollar, we'll print that picture and mail it to any prison anywhere in the country," he said, and added that the service had grown from a handful of customers to serving "over 186,000 families" nationwide. Bullock framed the product as both a business and a tool to maintain family connections that, he said, reduce recidivism by providing tangible reminders of life outside.

He also said he reinvested in workforce supports: "I launched a new school called the Flick Shop School of Business where I trained formerly incarcerated people to introduce themselves to the tech and the entrepreneurship sectors," Bullock said, describing a curriculum aimed at preparing job seekers and entrepreneurs to compete for work and contracts.

Bullock closed by asking audience members to treat his visit as a concrete example of a post-release pathway and encouraged them to share the tools and contacts he described. "I got now, y'all got next," he said, urging attendees to develop ideas and seize opportunities when they return to their communities.

The presentation combined personal testimony about conviction and life after prison with practical advice and a description of private-sector tools Bullock said can help maintain family ties and improve employment prospects for people leaving custody. Bullock offered to explore bringing Flick Shop’s training content into correctional facilities to expand reentry supports.