The man behind some of your favorite Philly events was formerly incarcerated. He’s telling his story to inspire others

Robbie Long’s life changed once he started telling himself a different story.

He was incarcerated in a Delaware prison, locked up for violating his probation for drug-dealing charges. Long was 23 when he was sentenced to 16 months in 2010.

“How the hell did I get here?” he said he wondered to himself behind bars. Long realized he was in a cell because of the person he had been pretending to be.

“That I’m a gangster, that I’m a thug, that I’m tough, that I’m that dude,” he said.

After a few months in prison, Long started thinking about who he really was and who he could be. He started reading the Wall Street Journal and aspired to be like the people featured on its pages. He knew he was an entrepreneur at heart, filled with hustle and ideas. He was smart, too — others inside relied on his help with their paperwork, and he was doing well in the business classes offered in prison. Long started telling himself a different story.

“I stopped telling myself I was a thug and started telling myself I’m an entrepreneur.”

“That was a pivotal place in my life when I stopped telling myself that I was a gangster and started telling myself I’m smart,” he said. “I stopped telling myself I was a thug and started telling myself I’m an entrepreneur.”

Now 37, Long earned a business degree from Temple in 2023 and has operated a full-time events business since 2021 called Live24HRS, where he focuses on building connections for new community members, entrepreneurs, and those in the cannabis industry. He wants to share his story so that other people experiencing reentry and members of his North Philly community can look at him as proof that they can reshape their lives, too.

Long grew up between North Philly and New Castle, Del., always hustling.

“I joke and tell people I’ve been an entrepreneur since the blizzard in ‘96,” he said. “I was allowed to go outside and shovel that snow.” Even then, it felt like freedom to make money for himself and his family and be of service to his neighbors.

As he grew older, Long started selling clothes, hats, watches, and anything else he could move. He was a captain of his high school basketball team, was well liked, and knew everyone.

Long planned to go to college after graduating from high school in 2005 to study computer science, but his mother was struggling financially. She lost her house, and Long worked to support her. He held 9-to-5 jobs, but also started selling drugs.

He began with weed and was arrested several times for minor charges, sometimes only spending a night or two in jail. Eventually he progressed to dealing cocaine, which led to probation and his 16-month sentence.

After Long served his time, reentry after his release in 2012 was difficult. Even with Philly’s “ban the box” legislation, it was hard to land a job.

» READ MORE: What’s it like to come home from prison? Reentry simulations let people experience it firsthand

“There were a lot of jobs that made it all the way to the point [of], ‘All right, now we got to do the background check.’ And it’s like, damn, I know that’s not gonna work,” he said.

He eventually found work with catering companies, where cash tips went a long way. He was gaining experience in hospitality and watching how large events came together. Lots of his friends were artists and musicians, so he offered to plan their events for them, tapping back into his entrepreneurial instincts.

“It was a tough experience, but I gave it my all, and I always knew that I could do it.”

Long had a travel blog at the time, named Live24HRS, inspired by the places he read about while he was incarcerated. He got his passport just a few months after being released, and saved up for trips to places like Colorado and Puerto Rico. When people commented on his pictures, he’d often give the same response:

“I’m trying to live more. I’m trying to live more.”

He gave his events business the same name as his blog, and it has taken off.

“It was a tough experience, but I gave it my all, and I always knew that I could do it ... that confidence pulled me through,” he said.

Live24HRS has hosted over 100 events for different artists and organizations, including fundraisers for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s campaign. But equally important to Long are the events he’s organized for the purpose of building community.

His Dream Space series is designed for self care and manifestation, based off of his experiences dreaming of his future while he was incarcerated. Live24HRS uses multimedia art, spoken word, and music to inspire dreaming, and distributes free self-care resources to attendees.

“I feel like everybody deserves a space to experience the good things in life. To have space to reflect, build community, and live more,” he said.

Long also hosts The Circuit, events that bring together entrepreneurs from different sectors so they can network and learn how to effectively run a business.

And his most popular event series is Buds and Bubbly, a networking mixer for professionals and enthusiasts in the cannabis industry to connect and destigmatize the substance. Long said that it was “a smack in the face” to see Philadelphia decriminalize cannabis and watch the Pennsylvania legislature move closer toward legalizing recreational use, since he was incarcerated for drug charges. But despite his personal experience, Long still wants to foster community in a new entrepreneurial space.

“It’s becoming more popular now, but it’s not that easy to just go and talk to people you don’t know about your dreams or visions or endeavors with cannabis,” he said. “So I wanted to create spaces for those things to be nurtured.”

Long plans to keep growing Live24HRS and the different communities it supports. He can’t just leave his past behind him, so he said he hopes to use his experiences to help people coming from a similar background and experiencing reentry.

“I live in North Philly, you know what I mean? So when I walk outside, I see people who act and think in a way that I used to think. And I feel like I have a duty to continue to create spaces to let people see more and live more and really take a moment to redefine their story,” he said.

“There are people who know me as Robbie Long and there’s people who know me from the past. My story isn’t a celebration yet, because there’s so many people who are still suffering from the effects of the system and not having ... things in place to help them.”