May 6, 2025 • 38 mins
What happens when the safety of a corporate job no longer aligns with your deepest aspirations? Steven Pemberton faced this crossroads in 2020 when anxiety attacks signaled he needed a dramatic change. Despite being on track for a six-figure salary as one of the youngest managers at a Fortune 100 company, Steven took the leap into full-time entrepreneurship—only to have Amazon shut down his account shortly after, leaving him $100,000 in debt with a warehouse full of unsellable inventory.
Rather than retreating to corporate security, Steven and his wife pivoted to Shopify with Facebook Marketplace as their acquisition channel. The results speak volumes: from $5,000 in their first month to over a million dollars annually within 18 months. Along the way, they've built Elevatum, an e-commerce growth consultancy helping brands scale holistically, while creating a giving program that provided Christmas for 137 underprivileged children.
Steven offers refreshingly practical advice on entrepreneurial resilience: "You can have emotions—they're like warning lights on your dashboard indicating problems—but you're still holding the steering wheel." He emphasizes the power of systems over individual effort, sharing how they automated their seven-figure business through strategic delegation and spreadsheets before incorporating AI tools that now supercharge their decision-making and client analysis.
For those considering a business partnership with their spouse, Steven reveals how complementary roles became their secret weapon—he handles vision and marketing as CEO while his wife excels at systems and operations as COO. The mindset revelation that transformed their approach? Understanding that building a business for impact beyond personal financial needs eliminates the dangerous plateau many entrepreneurs hit when bills are covered but growth stagnates. As Steven puts it, "The amount of good you can do with a million-dollar business is just a small fraction of what you could do with a $10 million business."
Ready to break free from limited thinking and build a business that scales beyond your personal capacity? Discover the mindset shifts, strategic pivots, and practical tools that can transform your entrepreneurial journey today.
How to connect with Steven?
Website: https://elevatum.digital/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@stevenkpemberton
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenkpemberton/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skpemberton/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts, serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:22):
Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome back to another episode of Firing the
man podcast, the show forentrepreneurs, dreamers and
doers who are ready to takecontrol of their future.
Today, we are interviewingSteven Pemberton.
Steven quit his job in 2020after feeling led into business.
Steven and his wife have builttwo seven-figure e-commerce
businesses generating millionsin sales.
Today, they own and operateElevatum, an e-commerce growth
(00:50):
consultancy, helping brands fromstartups to $50 million in
revenue scale holistically.
Stephen is also the voice ofVoice Like a Lion podcast.
If you're feeling stuck,uncertain or just in a need of a
little inspiration, thisepisode is for you.
Stephen, welcome to the show.
(01:10):
Hey, david, thank you so muchfor having me, absolutely,
absolutely.
So let's start off to set thetable your path.
A little bit about your path inthe entrepreneurial world.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, so a little bit about my path in the
entrepreneurial world.
I remember my first everendeavor I guess we would say
into business was early, earlyon in my marriage.
So I've been married for almost12 years now and early on we
knew we had our son on the way.
My wife decided hey, steven,look, it's great that our son's
(01:43):
on the way, but I don't want togo back to work and, mind you,
I'm making $13 an hour, sothere's not really a way for us
to make that work.
And I said great, but you'regoing to have to figure
something out.
And she starts running abusiness online and at this time
I'd never seen anyone do it,and especially no one do it
successfully.
Not saying that this one has ahappy ending, but it was amazing
as I started watching her gofrom zero to making $500 a month
(02:04):
.
And I went well, you can makemoney online and not have to go
to a job, because at this time Iwas working in a warehouse.
So I said you know what'sbetter than one person doing it?
Two heads are better than one.
So I jumped out of my job, wewent fully into business and, of
course, I'm 20 years old, soI'm 20 at that time and we lost
I really, really fast.
We had no capital, no runwayand no skills, so it was bad,
(02:28):
but that was my first everendeavor into entrepreneurship
was 11 years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Very nice, very nice, and most some people, after
having not a great firstexperience, would run for the
Hills, but it sounds like youdoubled down and continued on
this path, so can you talkthrough that?
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah, so actually I did not 100% ran for the hills,
but the way we ended up comingback around and why I'm here
today is in 2018.
So this is years later.
I had been working in afull-time job been working for
the man, as we would say and Ihad gone up the chain of command
really quickly.
I started out at the bottom, Ihad no degrees, I had no
(03:07):
connections, and I worked my wayup.
I was one of the youngestmanagers in the Fortune 100
company and I was just gettingable to take over my own
location.
And so I'm taking over my ownlocation in East Texas and my
wife she's a stay-at-home mom.
So we actually come full circleon that story and my wife being
someone who is the mosthardworking, most intelligent
(03:28):
person I know, I knew that wouldprobably not last long.
And so she eventually tells me.
She says, Steven, I just don'tfeel fulfilled.
There's only so much Netflixand so much cleaning I can do so
, of course, she makes like thecardinal sin that we always tell
everyone not to make, which isto post that on Facebook.
So she posts that whole spielon Facebook.
Luckily, my mom reaches out toher and says, hey, I'm doing
(03:49):
this Amazon thing, Would you beinterested in it?
So they get on a call, theytalk through it, and my wife
comes to me hey, what do youthink about this, this Amazon
thing?
And I said, absolutely not.
I am finally moving up thechain of command.
I'm so close to getting a sixfigure raise.
Why would we do that?
It's like we have the life Ialways thought I wanted to live,
because I just wanted to bemiddle class back then and I
(04:10):
remember she said okay, and shedid anyways, and so that was our
endeavor.
Back into it was it was all her, and she went back into it.
This was early 2018.
And it was incredible to watchher go from zero, like she would
cry when somebody would leave aone-star review or when we
would get a return or achargeback to in the first year.
It ended up going from zero toover a million dollars a year.
(04:30):
We had six employees.
It was incredible and that waswhen I went wait, now this is
real.
This isn't $500 a month Now.
Granted, I always love to tellthis part.
Those profit margins wereterrible.
They were less than 10%.
But the fact that it waspossible so there's a million
dollars came into this business.
I realized working this job,it's like I don't have to do
this forever.
There's a better way.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Okay, and so what happens next?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
So the way that that plays out, 2020 happens.
Everyone knows how 2020 goes,but in 2020, so 2019 ends, we
roll in 2020.
I decide I'm going to be moreinvolved with her in the
business.
So what happens is I come inand I restructure the whole
thing because profit marginswere terrible and I said, if we
did half the revenue but doublethe profit margins, we make the
same money with a lot lesstransactions and less overhead,
(05:18):
because we're not going to haveto have as many people.
So I come in, I start doingthat, covid hits, everything
goes down the drain at the wrongtime and in May of 2020, so now
this business, this dream thatI had seen in front of me, is
starting to go away.
In May of 2020, I'm sittingthere and I started having
anxiety attacks, and this is thefirst time ever.
And even earlier in thispodcast I talked about losing
(05:40):
everything at 20 years old, witha brand new wife and a brand
new baby on the way.
And what was fascinating is Istarted having these anxiety
attacks because I'm sittingthere and I'm looking at my job
and I don't see how I'm going tobe able to continue to progress
, and I'm looking at thebusiness and I don't see a way
out.
So now I feel stuck.
So in June of 2020, I just madea decision.
(06:00):
I said you know what?
I can either stay like this orI can quit.
So that's when I fired the manand I said I'm out of this and I
went into business full time.
Now, it was not a Cinderellastory early on, because a couple
of months later, amazon endedup shutting us down.
And them shutting us down wasbecause we actually spent
$15,000 with this guy.
(06:21):
He was pretty big in thewholesale space and he started
selling his own laws.
So he had these connectionswith brands.
He would buy from them and thenhe would resell them to us.
So we thought, okay, cool, wecan get this.
There's only one person on thebuy box that we're going to
crush.
Little did we know that there'sthis thing called brand
security.
They're the only ones allowedto sell that.
So we buy $15,000.
We get set down.
We're $100,000 in debt, allthis inventory and I'm going.
(06:44):
I just quit my job.
There's no income.
What are we going to do?
And that's when we ended uppivoting and we started our own
Shopify brand.
Facebook Marketplace and Shopswas our main acquisition channel
, and I remember the first monthrunning that this was a couple
months after getting shut downwe tried everything in between.
We tried just like, hey, man,look, we will give this thing
(07:05):
away if you give me $5 for thiswhole lot of stuff.
But we ended up pivoting overin that first month on Facebook
and with that Shopify store, wemade $5,000.
And I went, oh wait, this mightbe a thing.
And then by the end of 2020, wewere doing about 10, 20,000.
We're doing a little over$10,000 a month.
We were able to help 37underprivileged kids have
Christmas Within six months fromstarting the business.
We're doing $100,000 a month.
(07:26):
And then by the end of 2021,that business was over a million
dollars a year.
We were able to help 137 kidshave a Christmas and that was
just like the most incrediblething, because we're able to
give back in the process.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
But that was kind of the full moment where I went.
Entrepreneurship is actuallysomething.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
I can do full time Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I love it, and one thing about your story that I've
taken note of is that you keptrunning up against a wall and
then busting through it andpivoting and continuing forward,
and I think that's somethingthat a lot of people their first
try doesn't work, their secondtry doesn't work, but those who
are persistent tend to berewarded.
And so my next question isabout selling on.
Your experience is selling onAmazon, and your experience is
(08:17):
selling on Shopify, and,admittedly, I'm an Amazon guy.
I've sold on Amazon for a whileand I'm a big fan of that
marketplace.
However, you had mentioned acouple of things that are very
familiar to me tight margins,the ability for your account to
be closed down, and so what hasthat pivot felt like from a
business owner perspective?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Great question.
So for me, it's two things, Ithink.
The one thing is I personallynot a huge fan of Amazon anymore
for us.
Personally, I think Amazon isincredible, depending on how you
approach it.
I mean it's the second,probably creeping up on the
first most searched thingoutside of Google, just because
I mean you're going to check tosee is it cheaper on Amazon,
what's the reviews look like,all those things.
(08:58):
So it's easy to get traffic ifyou know how to do it right.
I think the thing that Shopifyand Shopify is just the vehicle
that we found, that's just thevessel.
It could be WooCommerce,wordpress, whatever it is for
you, but we found that if youknow the right strategies there,
it gives you a lot more freedomto make different choices.
At least when we were sellingon Amazon a few years ago, there
wasn't an ability for me tocontrol a customer list, so
(09:20):
there's no way for me to upsellyou.
There's not a way for me tocontinue to email you, to have
you in this flow, so I wasn'table to control the lifetime
value of a customer, which to me, is that's like one of the most
powerful levers you can pull inan e-commerce brand.
So when we went over intoShopify, we were able to see oh,
these people keep buying.
This demographic of people arebuying this one product, so
(09:40):
they're in this place at thisage, so we can just resell them
to stuff just like this, we cancross sell them to something
over here.
And we just found that we'reable to do a lot better job
customer service wise, off ofAmazon.
But I think if you, then thisis for anyone who has a brand
let's say you're not on Amazon,and my opinion on it is once you
(10:00):
have a pretty good footing,understanding who your
demographic is, go on Amazon,because once you do, then that
just becomes rocket fuel foryour brand.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Okay, okay.
Now there's a great KevinCostner movie called Field of
Dreams and there's a quote fromthat movie.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
If you build it they will come.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yes, I have learned that that does not necessarily
apply to websites, and so I'mcurious what has been?
And I've had a lot of websitesthat I've built that no one
showed up to, and I spent a tonof time making sure they look
pretty and all of that, and sowhat have been?
What have been?
You know, you've obviouslybuilt it.
(10:41):
How are you getting people tocome to your website?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
So there's a couple of things.
This is great.
I love this because I talkabout this.
I just like when people bringthat up because we have a few
friends who's like well, youknow, I built it.
We're all the people it's like.
But the question is is why didyou build it?
Because if you don't askyourself why you're building
something beforehand and who youwant to sell it to, because
realistically, you're not goingto be able to sell to everyone
(11:06):
this was one of my biggestfallacies when I first started
in business is oh well, you know, if I build it, this thing's
for everyone.
Of course everyone wants homedecor, because we sell home
decor, it's like.
Of course everyone's livingsomewhere, right, it's like.
But that's not true.
Not everyone is going to wantyour style, so you have to
figure out who that is.
I think building it and theywill come is not as true anymore
(11:26):
.
Back in the day, if we'retalking about back in the 60s,
70s, 80s, when you built it, itwas normally a storefront.
You had a big sign out frontand people are going to be
interested in coming in andchecking it out nowadays because
of the barrier to entry tocreating a website is so low,
especially now with things likeClickFunnels or GoHighLevel,
anything like that.
You can create a quote unquotewebsite today and cheat.
(11:48):
So what is going to set youapart is the most important
thing what's the story behind it?
Why is it different than Jimmydown the road doing the same
thing?
Jimmy could have the same exactproduct, but the story behind
how you found it and the way youmake it and the way that you
help people with it is going tobe different than Jimmy.
And then on top of that isbefore you ever make the website
, if you're able to go and talkto people about your products,
(12:10):
there's going to be greatinformation that comes in from
that.
You're going to be able tounderstand is this actually a
need in the market?
So, proving the market in themarketplace before you ever sell
it, before you even have tocreate the website.
If you can prove it in themarketplace before you build it,
then what happens is you find areal need and you can find out
like okay, so if I build this,you're going to buy this right.
And if they say yeah, it's likeokay, great, here here's my
(12:31):
phone, sign up for this waitlist.
And so then you get them togive you money before you even
build and you can start buildingwith other people's money and
that a little bit of the secretsauce.
But really for me, if youalready have the website and
you're not sure why no one'scoming to it, if no one knows
about it, so you have to find away to get out and start telling
people about it, and whetherthat is in making your, making
(12:53):
LinkedIn posts, making Instagramposts, tiktok there's so many
social medias, there's so manyways to get your message out
there and you just have toconsistently do it.
I think that people expect,especially in the beginning.
If you're newer, you're tryingto exit your job.
This has been your side hustleand you're really hoping and
praying this is the thingthat'll get me out.
Then you're hoping that it'slike I'm going to go viral and
(13:13):
this one viral post is going todrive a half a million dollars
in sales and then I'll be ableto exit my job and I'll be able
to focus on the business.
It's like, but realistically,it's these baby steps, it's
these bricks that youconsistently build that then
will lead to you having aconsistent flow of customers,
because, let's say, that doeshappen.
You go viral once and you bringin people that buy half a
million dollars, are you evengoing to be able to fulfill that
?
First and foremost, that's awhole different problem.
(13:35):
But then, secondly, it's likehow do you keep that traffic?
Because if you're alwaysbanking on viral, that's not
realistic, because you're notalways.
Unless you can just manufactureviral content over and over,
and over and over again, it'sgoing to be a shot in the dark
for you and you're hoping thatlightning will strike twice.
So you have to actually startbuilding systems.
Think in terms of systemsinstead of just one offs.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Very nice, I like it.
I like it.
Now, this is a little bit of aoff topic, but it relates to
working with your wife and I'mgoing to give a backstory.
So my wife is a counselor andshe had an idea for online
counseling before COVID.
We built a platform and had anestablished platform pre-COVID.
(14:20):
When COVID happened, everycounselor in our area was
getting laid off and I thoughthere we go, this is my
eight-figure, nine-figureopportunity and I joke, but it's
true, it's the only job I'veever been fired from.
Me and my wife.
We learned that we're a greathusband and wife, but we are not
great business partners, thatwe're a great husband and wife
(14:42):
but we are not great businesspartners and we had different
goals.
And so we have opted toobviously continue that husband
and wife role but have not doneany joint ventures together.
And so what for peoplelistening that are thinking
about doing something with theirspouse?
What advice would you give tothem for navigating that and
(15:07):
still being married at the end?
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, that part?
That's a great question.
So for me, one of the biggestthings that, honestly, is luck.
I think that that's somethingthat doesn't get talked about
quite enough in business contentis there is an aspect of luck
that goes into it.
No matter how repeatable is,there is a there is an aspect of
luck that goes into it.
No matter how repeatable yoursystems are, there's an aspect
of luck and for my wife and I,as we met on a job, so when my
(15:31):
first job ever is where I met mywife, so we had to work around
each other before we ever gotmarried.
So I actually knew her from aworking standpoint before.
I knew her in an intimatestandpoint, so it made me.
It made it much easier for usNow, granted the thing that I
ran into.
So if you're listening to thisand you're working in a job and
you're like, oh, I'm about tofire the man, and then my wife's
already running a business andshe's helping me in my side
(15:51):
hustle, here's my one piece ofadvice is I remember when I quit
my job and I was expecting I'mgonna hit the ground running.
I came in she already ran thismillion dollar business and now
I'm walking into it and shedoesn't know how to train me.
And then I don't know what todo.
So I'm sitting there andthere's no one telling me what
to do.
She's like oh yeah, you'llfigure it out, just get in the
business and go.
And I went.
I barely know how to turn thiscomputer on, like what am I
(16:13):
supposed to do?
And I think what the biggestkiller when it comes to spouses
working together, especiallybefore they walk into it, is
unspoken expectations like thatone.
She just expected that I'd beable to pick it up, and for me,
I expected that she would teachme.
When neither of those thingshappened.
(16:34):
Now we had this incongruencywhere I just started playing
video games and then now she'smad at me because I'm not
working the business, but she'snot training me.
So of course I can't work thebusiness because I don't know
what to do.
And so this is where, if wewould have had a little bit more
time and, hopefully, wisecounsel around us beforehand, to
just say, hey, what are youguys expecting out of one
another?
And just setting that standardeven now is a great example With
(16:54):
the way the business isstructured.
Now with Elevatum, I'm the CEO.
She was the CEO back then she'smore the COO.
That's what she loves.
She loves building systems, sheloves being able to talk to
people and help put them in theright places, and she wants to
see the little things move downthrough the workflows.
And so, for me, I'm better atcasting the vision for the
(17:15):
business.
I'm better at marketing thebusiness.
So we have distinctive rolesand we understand the one cool
thing we do let each other do.
It's like if it's a bigdecision though that's whether
for the business or our marriagewe're going to come together
and agree.
If we don't agree on this like,hey, I want to go spend $20,000
for this mastermind, she goes.
I don't think so.
I think we'd be better offputting that in marketing.
It's like, okay, let's go backand forth and just giving
(17:37):
ourselves the space to hash thatout.
But that's a big one, it's justunspoken expectations.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
I like it.
I like it.
That's good marriage advice.
Whether you're looking to gointo business with your spouse
or not, that's just rock solidadvice.
So when you were talking aboutyour story, you had mentioned a
lot of obstacles that you ran upagainst, and oftentimes those
obstacles become huge learninglessons that you carry with you
(18:03):
and cannot be learned in atextbook.
You just have to walk a mileand make the mistakes.
So my question to you is what'sone big mistake that you made
early on that you're stillcarrying with you?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Oh, fantastic question.
I think, to go along with whatyou were even just saying is I
think that there's a place wherelearning ends and action begins
, where, for me going back tothe business, I'll go back to
when Shopify really took off forus, which was just that first
month, october 2020.
I remember it very well.
I'm sitting there.
I still don't really know whatto do.
My wife and I are looking ateach other.
(18:37):
She really doesn't know what todo, but she has more skills
than I do and I go.
You know what?
I'm just going to do something,and I think that this is where
most early entrepreneurs getstuck.
Is you run into this first?
Really big problem.
You don't see a way through it,you don't see a way around it.
You don't know if it'll everfigure out.
You'll ever figure out how toget through it, and so they quit
.
And the thing is, is that ifyou consistently show up and
(18:59):
just pound your head against thewall, eventually you will get
through the wall?
And is that the best way?
I think that this is a fallacytoo.
It's like work smarter, notharder.
Sometimes you got to work smartand hard to be able to see the
results that you're wishing for.
So I mean, that was a big one,and I think another big one that
I've had this one came over thelast couple of years is there's
been plenty of times like Ijust want to address the people
who you're saying hey, steven,that's great that you're able to
(19:21):
just keep going.
It's like right now I'm justlike chronically depressed and I
just feel like I have no worth.
I don't feel like I can do this.
Been there many times.
The thing I've realized becausesometimes it just becomes this
way is you can have emotions,and emotions are like warning
flashing lights on indicatorlights on your car.
They're letting you know thatthere's a problem, but you're
(19:43):
still holding the steering wheel.
You get to decide what you dowith it.
So for me is I make the planwhen I feel good, like okay,
this is what I'm going to do,like this is how many reach outs
I'm going to do, this is howmany people I'm going to help.
This is what it looks like,here's our fulfillables, here's
the systems.
And then, when things get tough, then for me is I don't follow
my emotions to make the plan forme, I just follow the plan, and
when I'm still doing it, I'mstill grinding it out.
(20:05):
I can sit there and cry over mykeyboard, and for me is I'm
still making progress, eventhough I don't feel like I can
do enough to get the progress,to get the reward, to get the
result I'm looking for.
So I think that that's justbeen a big one is, I can move no
matter how I feel.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Okay, this may be an odd question, but how do you,
when you make a plan, how areyou documenting it and how are
you like breaking it out intoactionable steps?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
So this is going to be probably a little bit more.
I wouldn't even say contrarian,that for me.
The way I, if I have a visionfor something I want to build is
, then for me is I'm going tolook in the marketplace and just
see who else has done it andit's like, okay, they're doing
it, they're doing it really well.
How are they doing that?
And then I'm just going to golook at their stuff to be honest
, and then I'm going to type outeverything that I'm thinking.
(20:51):
I'm either going to type it out, make a voice note, record a
video Usually it's a video now.
So I'm almost like SOPing outand reverse engineering what I
want.
And then, after I do that, Ithrow it in chat, gpt, and it
gives me this exact list ofhere's some tasks you want to do
.
And what I'll do is then I'llbreak up the task and say, okay,
(21:12):
I put in the four quadrants.
It's like is it urgent?
Is it urgent and important?
Then I need to handle thatright now.
Is it urgent but not important?
It's like, okay, then I shouldprobably schedule a time that
I'm going to handle that Becauseit's urgent but it's not
important.
It's like, okay, is itimportant but it's not urgent,
then I'm probably going todelegate that to someone else.
And then is it not important,is it not urgent?
Okay, then I'm just not goingto do that.
(21:39):
So for me, that's the best way.
If they fall into these threequadrants that I'm going to work
on them, then instead ofdelegating it to a person, I'm
just gonna give it to a systemand I'm gonna let the system
software, ai agent, however youwanna call it I'm gonna let them
handle it, and I'm trying toremove as much of the manual
tasks as possible.
Because what I've noticed forfounders if you wanna go from
(21:59):
zero to a million, if you wantto get to a million to 10, you
have to change the way you think.
Now it's not just how much morecan I do, because that's not
realistic.
It's not just how much more canyou do.
It's what kind of systems canyou put in place to double,
triple, quadruple what'shappening in your business?
(22:20):
Whether that's from acquisition, whether that's piece of the
content, whatever it is that isbringing people into your
business, whether that's bettercustomer service, it's going to
take people, it's going to takesystems, processes.
So now your ideas have to bemonetized, not just your hands.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I like it.
I really like that, and I'mglad that you mentioned Chad,
GPT and how you're using it as abusiness owner.
I'm curious are there AIschanging the game?
And in some ways, we're notsure how it's changing the game,
we just witness it every day.
Come out with somethingremarkable or a task that you
know.
I used to be really good atExcel.
I, in fact, I had won acompetition called the Hotkey
(23:00):
Olympics where I built an Excelmodel without touching my mouse,
which is super nerdy.
I was a CPA a bunch of nerdsbut that I always felt like.
You know, being good in Excelwas something that was made me
unique, and now with ChatGPT,those skills are obsolete and
(23:22):
it's kind of a bummer, but it'salso like a superpower.
Now, with a good understandingof Excel, I can be a super user.
With a good understanding ofExcel, I can be a super user.
But I always love talking toother business owners.
How are you using AI right nowand where are you seeing the
biggest benefits?
Speaker 3 (23:40):
That is great.
So there's a couple ofdifferent ones that I use in my
business partner.
So we brought on a businesspartner first outside business
partner we've had into thisbusiness.
We brought him on about a yearago.
Business partner first outsidebusiness partner we've had into
this business.
We brought him on about a yearago.
The way that we use AI is acouple of different ways.
One is we will be on a.
We actually met through apodcast so we recorded a podcast
.
It was forever and a day long.
(24:02):
That was the longest podcastI've ever been on almost five
hours.
But what he did it is reallysmart.
What he did with this is hetook that whole podcast.
He put it into Claude, and whatClaude did is he said, ok, give
me the psychoanalytics of whoStephen is.
So it broke down.
Who, like Claude, said, this iswho I believe Stephen is,
because he's talking about hischildhood, he's talking about
his traumas, he's talking aboutthe good, the bad and ugly, and
(24:22):
it built a, a persona, aportfolio of me, so then he's
able to ask questions withouthaving to come to me and say, ok
, what do you?
How do you think that Steven'sgoing to respond if I bring him
this change to the business.
I go say, well, he willprobably respond like this, and
then he can shoot me a voicenote and I'm able to make that
response.
And it's crazy how he's able todo that.
And what's also interesting ishe'll plug in we do this both.
(24:44):
We do that.
I do this with ChatGPT.
He mainly uses Claude is.
We'll plug in differentpersonas of people.
We really look up to that.
We love their business content,whatever it is, and we will say
, okay, you're going to belooking at this as the top
lawyer, the top attorney ine-commerce.
Here is a contract.
Tell me where I'm missing it,tell me where there's the holes,
(25:04):
where it's ambiguous, where wecould be taken advantage of.
What does this look like?
And it's able to tell me withreally eerie efficiency hey,
this is what you're missing.
This is what it should looklike here.
Restructure like this.
Here's a better version.
So I think that the power for AIfor us and then now we're
getting more into AI agents webuilt an AI agent that does a
lot of outreach for us.
(25:25):
So to LinkedIn, it puts them inour CRM and moves them through
the opportunities so we knowwhere they are is nurturing
leads so, and there's peoplethat are doing even crazier
stuff than that, like they haveAI that are going out and making
calls and sound like humans andit's like that's.
I haven't got there yet, butfor me, the thing I love about
chat, gbt or how my partner usesClaude, is because we've given
(25:48):
it so much contextual data thatwhen we come to and say, okay,
look, this is the client we'reworking with, this is what we're
dealing with, what do you seeLike, what are you seeing out of
this Is they'll bring all of us, because we plugged in so much
of our speak and how we talk,and they'll bring all of these
other personas in there too,from the people that we look up
to, and it will say, okay, thisis what you should see and what
(26:17):
you should look at, and it'slike, wow, this is incredible
how efficient this thing is.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, I'm taking mental notes over here on how
you're using it.
One of the things that youbrought up that I am not using
it currently for, but will beafter this podcast, is the blind
spots, is seeing where yourblind spots are, and I really
like that as a way of using thetool, and so I also have one
more thing, one that is so.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
This is.
I'm going to give you two splitpathways.
One for, if you're aservice-based provider, is when
you're talking to someone like,let's say you're on a discovery
call, it's 30 minutes, you getoff the call, grab that
recording and throw it in cloth,throw it in chat GBT, and say,
okay, so how do you think, readthis person's facial expressions
, read how they're moving theirhands, their body language had
their inflection tones,no-transcript, and it's like, oh
(27:17):
, I missed that.
It can give you that and that'sthe thing.
That's like a next level forservice providers.
Also, it's really good forclients.
No-transcript wasn't just theirinflection, they sat up a
(27:39):
little straighter.
So they're excited to makethose changes.
They're excited would do withreviews.
You take all your five stars.
You understand this, especiallywith Amazon, if you're looking
to create a product, it'susually not going and looking at
all the five star reviews orthe one star reviews.
It's like the two to three andthe fours.
(28:01):
So you take those two to threeand the fours and you plug them
in and say, okay, what do peoplereally love about this?
Well, they love X, y and Z.
What do they not like?
Well, they didn't like this andthis and this.
How would you fix that?
Well, I would either getanother customer service rep,
I'd fix the packaging, I woulddo whatever it is and it's like
it makes it to where it's verybullet pointed.
Next steps this is what youshould do.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
I used to spend entire Saturdays on product
research, reading the one, twosand three star reviews and
trying to come up withimprovements for future product
launches.
It used to be something Idedicate an entire day to, and
it is now a 30-minute exerciseand that's probably at like the
upper end, and so it reminds mea lot of steroids and baseball
(28:43):
back when, like Mark McGuire,Sammy Sox era, where it just
kind of puts a jet pack on theentrepreneur's back and allows
them to work faster and moreefficient and uh, and the amount
of decisions you're able tomake in a given day is is
increases exponentially.
So that's really neat.
I always like talking to otherpeople about how they're using
(29:03):
AI, and I'm sure our listenersare going to take some great
lessons out of that lessons outof that.
So one thing I wanted to touchon is you talked about putting
Christmas presents under thetree for, eventually, hundreds
of families, and that'ssomething that I think is
outstanding and I commend youfor it.
It's also something that'stypically not on the radar of
(29:27):
someone growing andbootstrapping a company.
They are trying to make payroll, they are trying to pay for
inventory.
It's tight, and so I'm curiouswhat your experiences has been
with that and how you were ableto manage it while you were
growing your business.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
That is a great question.
So, before the realm of AI,when we are growing that company
, the one thing that I've alwaysbeen really good at is
leadership.
So I would say that that'sactually one of my stronger
abilities outside of marketingis how I can lead people.
So what we did is we were ableto automate our entire million
dollar business through peopleand spreadsheets.
(30:08):
So it's funny enough you'retalking about Excel sheets, we
were using Google sheets, butsame difference.
And so for us is we're able toautomate that entire business by
having people in it.
So the people that are handlingthe customer service, people
that are making sure that allthe returns were handled, all
the chargebacks were good, thatevery product was in, every
order was good.
We had a manager that wasmanaging the people and then we
could check in because of theway that we built the company,
(30:30):
that we could check in everysingle day at the end of day and
look at exactly what everyperson did, and because the
manager was keeping track ofthem and they were all virtual.
So for us it was really easy tokeep up with.
This is where we are.
This is our profit margins.
This is how much we made today.
This will be actually made.
This is how much we shouldexpect in payouts and when.
It should hit our account Easy.
(30:50):
So when we it was actually mycousin, this was his brainchild
the Christmas stuff, and he hasshut it down for a couple of
years, and I remember when wehad so October of 2020, we've
just launched this business.
We finally are making enough tojust like keep the lights on.
And then so in November, I'm athis house for Thanksgiving and
(31:11):
he mentions this.
He said you know, it's just onmy heart to get back into it.
Maybe I can help a couple ofkids.
And I said you know what,whatever money you put into it,
it's like if you decide to fireit up again, I'll give you a
thousand dollars right now.
And he said, really, and hewent, and that time it's like,
hey, we barely have an extra$1,000.
We had debts to pay offeverything else.
And I remember he said, okay,I'm going to do it.
(31:32):
So I gave him $1,000 and wefired it up and we were able to
help 37 kids that first year.
And I remember looking at himand we both looked at each other
at the same time and said we'regoing to help 100 next year,
and that 100 turned into 137.
And what was cool about that wasthat year, because it was such
a big task.
Now we had a lot more capitalto help him with that, but
(31:54):
outside of that is we had to goenlist our friends, family,
everyone.
This guy was nice enough thathe had an unfinished 2000 square
foot basement.
We turned that into a warehouse.
We had to do literal warehousemanagement system on it.
It was incredible, because wewere spending $300 per family,
like per kid, so it wasn't as ifthey're getting a toy.
They were getting a fullChristmas, and we found all the
(32:15):
kids through the school systemin Tennessee.
We bought all the presents,wrapped them all and deliver
them.
We were Santa and his elves, sofor us.
What we noticed, though, is whenyou are able to build something
that's not just for you, likeearly on in business.
Yes, everyone needs to makepayroll.
You need to keep the lights on.
You got to put food on thetable.
I get all that.
You don't want your carrepossessed, and if you're
(32:37):
building for just you, you'llget to a point where your bills
are covered and you go.
You know what's the point ofbuilding beyond this, but if you
can add a giving aspect in,really for two reasons.
One, especially if it's customerfacing, you're giving away for
people to feel empowered to buy,outside of just your unique
selling proposition.
They get to look at that and go,okay, just like Bamba, bamba
socks, you buy a pair of socks,we give a pair of socks.
(32:57):
Oh, now I'm making a realimpact.
So, outside of just having nicesocks, I'm also impacting
someone who won't have socks andso you're giving the customer a
way to be able to make thatimpact.
But also for you, if you can goand touch and meet these people
that you're impacting, itchanges your whole perspective.
It'll make you want to push anddo more, because the amount of
good that you can do with amillion dollar business is
(33:19):
literally one small fractioncomparatively of what you could
do with a $10 million businessor a hundred million dollar
business or a billion dollarbusiness.
Because if you're in the thingis, I've seen people they push
to a certain point and they say,oh no, I'm good, it's like, but
the people you want to impact,you're barely able to help them
at this stage.
If you get bigger, you can helpmore people and help them in a
way different way.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
I really like that perspective, and you're
absolutely right on hitting apersonal plateau where all your
bills are paid, and I thinkthat's something that, whether
it's conscious or not,definitely happens.
And so, yeah, I can think ofbrands that I've done business
with Tom's Shoes is a classicexample of this where they make
a great product and there's agiving aspect to it, and so
(34:08):
there's instances wheresomething can be great marketing
and also like a good thing todo, just as a human being, and
it's great when you can findopportunities for those two to
overlap, and so I really likethat, and I think that's
something that, uh, when peopleare thinking about how do I grow
my business, they're oftenthinking about email marketing
(34:28):
or socials or things like that,and the giving aspect, I think,
is something that is often notthought about enough, and so I'm
glad we're able to highlightthat Now.
Stephen, this has been anoutstanding interview.
I feel like we could go on forhours.
However, we have a section ofthe show called the fire round.
(34:53):
It's four questions we askevery guest at the end of the
interview Are you ready?
I'm ready, all right, let's doit.
What is your favorite book?
Thinking Grow Rich, nice.
What are your hobbies?
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Working out being a great husband and father, but
probably if we're talking aboutreal hobbies working out and
pickleball.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Very nice, very nice.
What is one thing that you donot miss about working for the
man?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
For me.
I don't know if there's anyoneelse out there, but I was
working 14 to 16 hours a day.
So I do not miss the fact thatI had a boss who was not very
nice, that I was working 14 to16 hours a day and I had no
control over that.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that one as well.
When you're self-employed, youat least get to pick which 14 or
16 hours you work.
All right.
And final question what do youthink sets apart successful
e-commerce entrepreneurs fromthose who give up, fail or never
get started?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Mindset Pretty easy answer to expound on that for 30
seconds is the only differencebetween somebody who goes from
zero to a million, or a millionto 10 million or 10 million to a
hundred million is how theyview the world, and I think that
that is a very ambiguous highanswer.
To bring that down is if youdon't think you can, you never
(36:14):
will.
So if you believe that it'spossible for you, then you will
at least try so and I think ifyou continue to show up, you
continue to try, eventually youwill break through.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I love it.
I love it.
Now, Stephen, if people areinterested in working with you
or checking out your podcast,what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
LinkedIn.
Linkedin is great.
Steven K Pemberton is thereAlso.
I kind of look like Aquamanjust a little bit.
So if you look for Steven, lookfor the guy who kind of looks
like Aquaman.
If you find a Steven who is notme and also kind of looks like
Aquaman, please find me and sendme a screenshot of that guy.
He would probably be my bestfriend or my long lost twin that
I don't know I have, so that'sprobably the best way to reach
me.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
For those of you who are tuning in on audio, only
Stephen does look like Aquaman.
I can second that one, so let'sgo.
Awesome, stephen.
Thanks so much for your timeand looking forward to staying
in touch.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yes, sir.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts, serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:22):
Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome back to another episode of Firing the
man podcast, the show forentrepreneurs, dreamers and
doers who are ready to takecontrol of their future.
Today, we are interviewingSteven Pemberton.
Steven quit his job in 2020after feeling led into business.
Steven and his wife have builttwo seven-figure e-commerce
businesses generating millionsin sales.
Today, they own and operateElevatum, an e-commerce growth
(00:50):
consultancy, helping brands fromstartups to $50 million in
revenue scale holistically.
Stephen is also the voice ofVoice Like a Lion podcast.
If you're feeling stuck,uncertain or just in a need of a
little inspiration, thisepisode is for you.
Stephen, welcome to the show.
(01:10):
Hey, david, thank you so muchfor having me, absolutely,
absolutely.
So let's start off to set thetable your path.
A little bit about your path inthe entrepreneurial world.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, so a little bit about my path in the
entrepreneurial world.
I remember my first everendeavor I guess we would say
into business was early, earlyon in my marriage.
So I've been married for almost12 years now and early on we
knew we had our son on the way.
My wife decided hey, steven,look, it's great that our son's
(01:43):
on the way, but I don't want togo back to work and, mind you,
I'm making $13 an hour, sothere's not really a way for us
to make that work.
And I said great, but you'regoing to have to figure
something out.
And she starts running abusiness online and at this time
I'd never seen anyone do it,and especially no one do it
successfully.
Not saying that this one has ahappy ending, but it was amazing
as I started watching her gofrom zero to making $500 a month
(02:04):
.
And I went well, you can makemoney online and not have to go
to a job, because at this time Iwas working in a warehouse.
So I said you know what'sbetter than one person doing it?
Two heads are better than one.
So I jumped out of my job, wewent fully into business and, of
course, I'm 20 years old, soI'm 20 at that time and we lost
I really, really fast.
We had no capital, no runwayand no skills, so it was bad,
(02:28):
but that was my first everendeavor into entrepreneurship
was 11 years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Very nice, very nice, and most some people, after
having not a great firstexperience, would run for the
Hills, but it sounds like youdoubled down and continued on
this path, so can you talkthrough that?
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah, so actually I did not 100% ran for the hills,
but the way we ended up comingback around and why I'm here
today is in 2018.
So this is years later.
I had been working in afull-time job been working for
the man, as we would say and Ihad gone up the chain of command
really quickly.
I started out at the bottom, Ihad no degrees, I had no
(03:07):
connections, and I worked my wayup.
I was one of the youngestmanagers in the Fortune 100
company and I was just gettingable to take over my own
location.
And so I'm taking over my ownlocation in East Texas and my
wife she's a stay-at-home mom.
So we actually come full circleon that story and my wife being
someone who is the mosthardworking, most intelligent
(03:28):
person I know, I knew that wouldprobably not last long.
And so she eventually tells me.
She says, Steven, I just don'tfeel fulfilled.
There's only so much Netflixand so much cleaning I can do so
, of course, she makes like thecardinal sin that we always tell
everyone not to make, which isto post that on Facebook.
So she posts that whole spielon Facebook.
Luckily, my mom reaches out toher and says, hey, I'm doing
(03:49):
this Amazon thing, Would you beinterested in it?
So they get on a call, theytalk through it, and my wife
comes to me hey, what do youthink about this, this Amazon
thing?
And I said, absolutely not.
I am finally moving up thechain of command.
I'm so close to getting a sixfigure raise.
Why would we do that?
It's like we have the life Ialways thought I wanted to live,
because I just wanted to bemiddle class back then and I
(04:10):
remember she said okay, and shedid anyways, and so that was our
endeavor.
Back into it was it was all her, and she went back into it.
This was early 2018.
And it was incredible to watchher go from zero, like she would
cry when somebody would leave aone-star review or when we
would get a return or achargeback to in the first year.
It ended up going from zero toover a million dollars a year.
(04:30):
We had six employees.
It was incredible and that waswhen I went wait, now this is
real.
This isn't $500 a month Now.
Granted, I always love to tellthis part.
Those profit margins wereterrible.
They were less than 10%.
But the fact that it waspossible so there's a million
dollars came into this business.
I realized working this job,it's like I don't have to do
this forever.
There's a better way.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Okay, and so what happens next?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
So the way that that plays out, 2020 happens.
Everyone knows how 2020 goes,but in 2020, so 2019 ends, we
roll in 2020.
I decide I'm going to be moreinvolved with her in the
business.
So what happens is I come inand I restructure the whole
thing because profit marginswere terrible and I said, if we
did half the revenue but doublethe profit margins, we make the
same money with a lot lesstransactions and less overhead,
(05:18):
because we're not going to haveto have as many people.
So I come in, I start doingthat, covid hits, everything
goes down the drain at the wrongtime and in May of 2020, so now
this business, this dream thatI had seen in front of me, is
starting to go away.
In May of 2020, I'm sittingthere and I started having
anxiety attacks, and this is thefirst time ever.
And even earlier in thispodcast I talked about losing
(05:40):
everything at 20 years old, witha brand new wife and a brand
new baby on the way.
And what was fascinating is Istarted having these anxiety
attacks because I'm sittingthere and I'm looking at my job
and I don't see how I'm going tobe able to continue to progress
, and I'm looking at thebusiness and I don't see a way
out.
So now I feel stuck.
So in June of 2020, I just madea decision.
(06:00):
I said you know what?
I can either stay like this orI can quit.
So that's when I fired the manand I said I'm out of this and I
went into business full time.
Now, it was not a Cinderellastory early on, because a couple
of months later, amazon endedup shutting us down.
And them shutting us down wasbecause we actually spent
$15,000 with this guy.
(06:21):
He was pretty big in thewholesale space and he started
selling his own laws.
So he had these connectionswith brands.
He would buy from them and thenhe would resell them to us.
So we thought, okay, cool, wecan get this.
There's only one person on thebuy box that we're going to
crush.
Little did we know that there'sthis thing called brand
security.
They're the only ones allowedto sell that.
So we buy $15,000.
We get set down.
We're $100,000 in debt, allthis inventory and I'm going.
(06:44):
I just quit my job.
There's no income.
What are we going to do?
And that's when we ended uppivoting and we started our own
Shopify brand.
Facebook Marketplace and Shopswas our main acquisition channel
, and I remember the first monthrunning that this was a couple
months after getting shut downwe tried everything in between.
We tried just like, hey, man,look, we will give this thing
(07:05):
away if you give me $5 for thiswhole lot of stuff.
But we ended up pivoting overin that first month on Facebook
and with that Shopify store, wemade $5,000.
And I went, oh wait, this mightbe a thing.
And then by the end of 2020, wewere doing about 10, 20,000.
We're doing a little over$10,000 a month.
We were able to help 37underprivileged kids have
Christmas Within six months fromstarting the business.
We're doing $100,000 a month.
(07:26):
And then by the end of 2021,that business was over a million
dollars a year.
We were able to help 137 kidshave a Christmas and that was
just like the most incrediblething, because we're able to
give back in the process.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
But that was kind of the full moment where I went.
Entrepreneurship is actuallysomething.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
I can do full time Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I love it, and one thing about your story that I've
taken note of is that you keptrunning up against a wall and
then busting through it andpivoting and continuing forward,
and I think that's somethingthat a lot of people their first
try doesn't work, their secondtry doesn't work, but those who
are persistent tend to berewarded.
And so my next question isabout selling on.
Your experience is selling onAmazon, and your experience is
(08:17):
selling on Shopify, and,admittedly, I'm an Amazon guy.
I've sold on Amazon for a whileand I'm a big fan of that
marketplace.
However, you had mentioned acouple of things that are very
familiar to me tight margins,the ability for your account to
be closed down, and so what hasthat pivot felt like from a
business owner perspective?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Great question.
So for me, it's two things, Ithink.
The one thing is I personallynot a huge fan of Amazon anymore
for us.
Personally, I think Amazon isincredible, depending on how you
approach it.
I mean it's the second,probably creeping up on the
first most searched thingoutside of Google, just because
I mean you're going to check tosee is it cheaper on Amazon,
what's the reviews look like,all those things.
(08:58):
So it's easy to get traffic ifyou know how to do it right.
I think the thing that Shopifyand Shopify is just the vehicle
that we found, that's just thevessel.
It could be WooCommerce,wordpress, whatever it is for
you, but we found that if youknow the right strategies there,
it gives you a lot more freedomto make different choices.
At least when we were sellingon Amazon a few years ago, there
wasn't an ability for me tocontrol a customer list, so
(09:20):
there's no way for me to upsellyou.
There's not a way for me tocontinue to email you, to have
you in this flow, so I wasn'table to control the lifetime
value of a customer, which to me, is that's like one of the most
powerful levers you can pull inan e-commerce brand.
So when we went over intoShopify, we were able to see oh,
these people keep buying.
This demographic of people arebuying this one product, so
(09:40):
they're in this place at thisage, so we can just resell them
to stuff just like this, we cancross sell them to something
over here.
And we just found that we'reable to do a lot better job
customer service wise, off ofAmazon.
But I think if you, then thisis for anyone who has a brand
let's say you're not on Amazon,and my opinion on it is once you
(10:00):
have a pretty good footing,understanding who your
demographic is, go on Amazon,because once you do, then that
just becomes rocket fuel foryour brand.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Okay, okay.
Now there's a great KevinCostner movie called Field of
Dreams and there's a quote fromthat movie.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
If you build it they will come.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yes, I have learned that that does not necessarily
apply to websites, and so I'mcurious what has been?
And I've had a lot of websitesthat I've built that no one
showed up to, and I spent a tonof time making sure they look
pretty and all of that, and sowhat have been?
What have been?
You know, you've obviouslybuilt it.
(10:41):
How are you getting people tocome to your website?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
So there's a couple of things.
This is great.
I love this because I talkabout this.
I just like when people bringthat up because we have a few
friends who's like well, youknow, I built it.
We're all the people it's like.
But the question is is why didyou build it?
Because if you don't askyourself why you're building
something beforehand and who youwant to sell it to, because
realistically, you're not goingto be able to sell to everyone
(11:06):
this was one of my biggestfallacies when I first started
in business is oh well, you know, if I build it, this thing's
for everyone.
Of course everyone wants homedecor, because we sell home
decor, it's like.
Of course everyone's livingsomewhere, right, it's like.
But that's not true.
Not everyone is going to wantyour style, so you have to
figure out who that is.
I think building it and theywill come is not as true anymore
(11:26):
.
Back in the day, if we'retalking about back in the 60s,
70s, 80s, when you built it, itwas normally a storefront.
You had a big sign out frontand people are going to be
interested in coming in andchecking it out nowadays because
of the barrier to entry tocreating a website is so low,
especially now with things likeClickFunnels or GoHighLevel,
anything like that.
You can create a quote unquotewebsite today and cheat.
(11:48):
So what is going to set youapart is the most important
thing what's the story behind it?
Why is it different than Jimmydown the road doing the same
thing?
Jimmy could have the same exactproduct, but the story behind
how you found it and the way youmake it and the way that you
help people with it is going tobe different than Jimmy.
And then on top of that isbefore you ever make the website
, if you're able to go and talkto people about your products,
(12:10):
there's going to be greatinformation that comes in from
that.
You're going to be able tounderstand is this actually a
need in the market?
So, proving the market in themarketplace before you ever sell
it, before you even have tocreate the website.
If you can prove it in themarketplace before you build it,
then what happens is you find areal need and you can find out
like okay, so if I build this,you're going to buy this right.
And if they say yeah, it's likeokay, great, here here's my
(12:31):
phone, sign up for this waitlist.
And so then you get them togive you money before you even
build and you can start buildingwith other people's money and
that a little bit of the secretsauce.
But really for me, if youalready have the website and
you're not sure why no one'scoming to it, if no one knows
about it, so you have to find away to get out and start telling
people about it, and whetherthat is in making your, making
(12:53):
LinkedIn posts, making Instagramposts, tiktok there's so many
social medias, there's so manyways to get your message out
there and you just have toconsistently do it.
I think that people expect,especially in the beginning.
If you're newer, you're tryingto exit your job.
This has been your side hustleand you're really hoping and
praying this is the thingthat'll get me out.
Then you're hoping that it'slike I'm going to go viral and
(13:13):
this one viral post is going todrive a half a million dollars
in sales and then I'll be ableto exit my job and I'll be able
to focus on the business.
It's like, but realistically,it's these baby steps, it's
these bricks that youconsistently build that then
will lead to you having aconsistent flow of customers,
because, let's say, that doeshappen.
You go viral once and you bringin people that buy half a
million dollars, are you evengoing to be able to fulfill that
?
First and foremost, that's awhole different problem.
(13:35):
But then, secondly, it's likehow do you keep that traffic?
Because if you're alwaysbanking on viral, that's not
realistic, because you're notalways.
Unless you can just manufactureviral content over and over,
and over and over again, it'sgoing to be a shot in the dark
for you and you're hoping thatlightning will strike twice.
So you have to actually startbuilding systems.
Think in terms of systemsinstead of just one offs.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Very nice, I like it.
I like it.
Now, this is a little bit of aoff topic, but it relates to
working with your wife and I'mgoing to give a backstory.
So my wife is a counselor andshe had an idea for online
counseling before COVID.
We built a platform and had anestablished platform pre-COVID.
(14:20):
When COVID happened, everycounselor in our area was
getting laid off and I thoughthere we go, this is my
eight-figure, nine-figureopportunity and I joke, but it's
true, it's the only job I'veever been fired from.
Me and my wife.
We learned that we're a greathusband and wife, but we are not
great business partners, thatwe're a great husband and wife
(14:42):
but we are not great businesspartners and we had different
goals.
And so we have opted toobviously continue that husband
and wife role but have not doneany joint ventures together.
And so what for peoplelistening that are thinking
about doing something with theirspouse?
What advice would you give tothem for navigating that and
(15:07):
still being married at the end?
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, that part?
That's a great question.
So for me, one of the biggestthings that, honestly, is luck.
I think that that's somethingthat doesn't get talked about
quite enough in business contentis there is an aspect of luck
that goes into it.
No matter how repeatable is,there is a there is an aspect of
luck that goes into it.
No matter how repeatable yoursystems are, there's an aspect
of luck and for my wife and I,as we met on a job, so when my
(15:31):
first job ever is where I met mywife, so we had to work around
each other before we ever gotmarried.
So I actually knew her from aworking standpoint before.
I knew her in an intimatestandpoint, so it made me.
It made it much easier for usNow, granted the thing that I
ran into.
So if you're listening to thisand you're working in a job and
you're like, oh, I'm about tofire the man, and then my wife's
already running a business andshe's helping me in my side
(15:51):
hustle, here's my one piece ofadvice is I remember when I quit
my job and I was expecting I'mgonna hit the ground running.
I came in she already ran thismillion dollar business and now
I'm walking into it and shedoesn't know how to train me.
And then I don't know what todo.
So I'm sitting there andthere's no one telling me what
to do.
She's like oh yeah, you'llfigure it out, just get in the
business and go.
And I went.
I barely know how to turn thiscomputer on, like what am I
(16:13):
supposed to do?
And I think what the biggestkiller when it comes to spouses
working together, especiallybefore they walk into it, is
unspoken expectations like thatone.
She just expected that I'd beable to pick it up, and for me,
I expected that she would teachme.
When neither of those thingshappened.
(16:34):
Now we had this incongruencywhere I just started playing
video games and then now she'smad at me because I'm not
working the business, but she'snot training me.
So of course I can't work thebusiness because I don't know
what to do.
And so this is where, if wewould have had a little bit more
time and, hopefully, wisecounsel around us beforehand, to
just say, hey, what are youguys expecting out of one
another?
And just setting that standardeven now is a great example With
(16:54):
the way the business isstructured.
Now with Elevatum, I'm the CEO.
She was the CEO back then she'smore the COO.
That's what she loves.
She loves building systems, sheloves being able to talk to
people and help put them in theright places, and she wants to
see the little things move downthrough the workflows.
And so, for me, I'm better atcasting the vision for the
(17:15):
business.
I'm better at marketing thebusiness.
So we have distinctive rolesand we understand the one cool
thing we do let each other do.
It's like if it's a bigdecision though that's whether
for the business or our marriagewe're going to come together
and agree.
If we don't agree on this like,hey, I want to go spend $20,000
for this mastermind, she goes.
I don't think so.
I think we'd be better offputting that in marketing.
It's like, okay, let's go backand forth and just giving
(17:37):
ourselves the space to hash thatout.
But that's a big one, it's justunspoken expectations.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
I like it.
I like it.
That's good marriage advice.
Whether you're looking to gointo business with your spouse
or not, that's just rock solidadvice.
So when you were talking aboutyour story, you had mentioned a
lot of obstacles that you ran upagainst, and oftentimes those
obstacles become huge learninglessons that you carry with you
(18:03):
and cannot be learned in atextbook.
You just have to walk a mileand make the mistakes.
So my question to you is what'sone big mistake that you made
early on that you're stillcarrying with you?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Oh, fantastic question.
I think, to go along with whatyou were even just saying is I
think that there's a place wherelearning ends and action begins
, where, for me going back tothe business, I'll go back to
when Shopify really took off forus, which was just that first
month, october 2020.
I remember it very well.
I'm sitting there.
I still don't really know whatto do.
My wife and I are looking ateach other.
(18:37):
She really doesn't know what todo, but she has more skills
than I do and I go.
You know what?
I'm just going to do something,and I think that this is where
most early entrepreneurs getstuck.
Is you run into this first?
Really big problem.
You don't see a way through it,you don't see a way around it.
You don't know if it'll everfigure out.
You'll ever figure out how toget through it, and so they quit
.
And the thing is, is that ifyou consistently show up and
(18:59):
just pound your head against thewall, eventually you will get
through the wall?
And is that the best way?
I think that this is a fallacytoo.
It's like work smarter, notharder.
Sometimes you got to work smartand hard to be able to see the
results that you're wishing for.
So I mean, that was a big one,and I think another big one that
I've had this one came over thelast couple of years is there's
been plenty of times like Ijust want to address the people
who you're saying hey, steven,that's great that you're able to
(19:21):
just keep going.
It's like right now I'm justlike chronically depressed and I
just feel like I have no worth.
I don't feel like I can do this.
Been there many times.
The thing I've realized becausesometimes it just becomes this
way is you can have emotions,and emotions are like warning
flashing lights on indicatorlights on your car.
They're letting you know thatthere's a problem, but you're
(19:43):
still holding the steering wheel.
You get to decide what you dowith it.
So for me is I make the planwhen I feel good, like okay,
this is what I'm going to do,like this is how many reach outs
I'm going to do, this is howmany people I'm going to help.
This is what it looks like,here's our fulfillables, here's
the systems.
And then, when things get tough, then for me is I don't follow
my emotions to make the plan forme, I just follow the plan, and
when I'm still doing it, I'mstill grinding it out.
(20:05):
I can sit there and cry over mykeyboard, and for me is I'm
still making progress, eventhough I don't feel like I can
do enough to get the progress,to get the reward, to get the
result I'm looking for.
So I think that that's justbeen a big one is, I can move no
matter how I feel.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Okay, this may be an odd question, but how do you,
when you make a plan, how areyou documenting it and how are
you like breaking it out intoactionable steps?
Speaker 3 (20:31):
So this is going to be probably a little bit more.
I wouldn't even say contrarian,that for me.
The way I, if I have a visionfor something I want to build is
, then for me is I'm going tolook in the marketplace and just
see who else has done it andit's like, okay, they're doing
it, they're doing it really well.
How are they doing that?
And then I'm just going to golook at their stuff to be honest
, and then I'm going to type outeverything that I'm thinking.
(20:51):
I'm either going to type it out, make a voice note, record a
video Usually it's a video now.
So I'm almost like SOPing outand reverse engineering what I
want.
And then, after I do that, Ithrow it in chat, gpt, and it
gives me this exact list ofhere's some tasks you want to do
.
And what I'll do is then I'llbreak up the task and say, okay,
(21:12):
I put in the four quadrants.
It's like is it urgent?
Is it urgent and important?
Then I need to handle thatright now.
Is it urgent but not important?
It's like, okay, then I shouldprobably schedule a time that
I'm going to handle that Becauseit's urgent but it's not
important.
It's like, okay, is itimportant but it's not urgent,
then I'm probably going todelegate that to someone else.
And then is it not important,is it not urgent?
Okay, then I'm just not goingto do that.
(21:39):
So for me, that's the best way.
If they fall into these threequadrants that I'm going to work
on them, then instead ofdelegating it to a person, I'm
just gonna give it to a systemand I'm gonna let the system
software, ai agent, however youwanna call it I'm gonna let them
handle it, and I'm trying toremove as much of the manual
tasks as possible.
Because what I've noticed forfounders if you wanna go from
(21:59):
zero to a million, if you wantto get to a million to 10, you
have to change the way you think.
Now it's not just how much morecan I do, because that's not
realistic.
It's not just how much more canyou do.
It's what kind of systems canyou put in place to double,
triple, quadruple what'shappening in your business?
(22:20):
Whether that's from acquisition, whether that's piece of the
content, whatever it is that isbringing people into your
business, whether that's bettercustomer service, it's going to
take people, it's going to takesystems, processes.
So now your ideas have to bemonetized, not just your hands.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I like it.
I really like that, and I'mglad that you mentioned Chad,
GPT and how you're using it as abusiness owner.
I'm curious are there AIschanging the game?
And in some ways, we're notsure how it's changing the game,
we just witness it every day.
Come out with somethingremarkable or a task that you
know.
I used to be really good atExcel.
I, in fact, I had won acompetition called the Hotkey
(23:00):
Olympics where I built an Excelmodel without touching my mouse,
which is super nerdy.
I was a CPA a bunch of nerdsbut that I always felt like.
You know, being good in Excelwas something that was made me
unique, and now with ChatGPT,those skills are obsolete and
(23:22):
it's kind of a bummer, but it'salso like a superpower.
Now, with a good understandingof Excel, I can be a super user.
With a good understanding ofExcel, I can be a super user.
But I always love talking toother business owners.
How are you using AI right nowand where are you seeing the
biggest benefits?
Speaker 3 (23:40):
That is great.
So there's a couple ofdifferent ones that I use in my
business partner.
So we brought on a businesspartner first outside business
partner we've had into thisbusiness.
We brought him on about a yearago.
Business partner first outsidebusiness partner we've had into
this business.
We brought him on about a yearago.
The way that we use AI is acouple of different ways.
One is we will be on a.
We actually met through apodcast so we recorded a podcast
.
It was forever and a day long.
(24:02):
That was the longest podcastI've ever been on almost five
hours.
But what he did it is reallysmart.
What he did with this is hetook that whole podcast.
He put it into Claude, and whatClaude did is he said, ok, give
me the psychoanalytics of whoStephen is.
So it broke down.
Who, like Claude, said, this iswho I believe Stephen is,
because he's talking about hischildhood, he's talking about
his traumas, he's talking aboutthe good, the bad and ugly, and
(24:22):
it built a, a persona, aportfolio of me, so then he's
able to ask questions withouthaving to come to me and say, ok
, what do you?
How do you think that Steven'sgoing to respond if I bring him
this change to the business.
I go say, well, he willprobably respond like this, and
then he can shoot me a voicenote and I'm able to make that
response.
And it's crazy how he's able todo that.
And what's also interesting ishe'll plug in we do this both.
(24:44):
We do that.
I do this with ChatGPT.
He mainly uses Claude is.
We'll plug in differentpersonas of people.
We really look up to that.
We love their business content,whatever it is, and we will say
, okay, you're going to belooking at this as the top
lawyer, the top attorney ine-commerce.
Here is a contract.
Tell me where I'm missing it,tell me where there's the holes,
(25:04):
where it's ambiguous, where wecould be taken advantage of.
What does this look like?
And it's able to tell me withreally eerie efficiency hey,
this is what you're missing.
This is what it should looklike here.
Restructure like this.
Here's a better version.
So I think that the power for AIfor us and then now we're
getting more into AI agents webuilt an AI agent that does a
lot of outreach for us.
(25:25):
So to LinkedIn, it puts them inour CRM and moves them through
the opportunities so we knowwhere they are is nurturing
leads so, and there's peoplethat are doing even crazier
stuff than that, like they haveAI that are going out and making
calls and sound like humans andit's like that's.
I haven't got there yet, butfor me, the thing I love about
chat, gbt or how my partner usesClaude, is because we've given
(25:48):
it so much contextual data thatwhen we come to and say, okay,
look, this is the client we'reworking with, this is what we're
dealing with, what do you seeLike, what are you seeing out of
this Is they'll bring all of us, because we plugged in so much
of our speak and how we talk,and they'll bring all of these
other personas in there too,from the people that we look up
to, and it will say, okay, thisis what you should see and what
(26:17):
you should look at, and it'slike, wow, this is incredible
how efficient this thing is.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, I'm taking mental notes over here on how
you're using it.
One of the things that youbrought up that I am not using
it currently for, but will beafter this podcast, is the blind
spots, is seeing where yourblind spots are, and I really
like that as a way of using thetool, and so I also have one
more thing, one that is so.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
This is.
I'm going to give you two splitpathways.
One for, if you're aservice-based provider, is when
you're talking to someone like,let's say you're on a discovery
call, it's 30 minutes, you getoff the call, grab that
recording and throw it in cloth,throw it in chat GBT, and say,
okay, so how do you think, readthis person's facial expressions
, read how they're moving theirhands, their body language had
their inflection tones,no-transcript, and it's like, oh
(27:17):
, I missed that.
It can give you that and that'sthe thing.
That's like a next level forservice providers.
Also, it's really good forclients.
No-transcript wasn't just theirinflection, they sat up a
(27:39):
little straighter.
So they're excited to makethose changes.
They're excited would do withreviews.
You take all your five stars.
You understand this, especiallywith Amazon, if you're looking
to create a product, it'susually not going and looking at
all the five star reviews orthe one star reviews.
It's like the two to three andthe fours.
(28:01):
So you take those two to threeand the fours and you plug them
in and say, okay, what do peoplereally love about this?
Well, they love X, y and Z.
What do they not like?
Well, they didn't like this andthis and this.
How would you fix that?
Well, I would either getanother customer service rep,
I'd fix the packaging, I woulddo whatever it is and it's like
it makes it to where it's verybullet pointed.
Next steps this is what youshould do.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
I used to spend entire Saturdays on product
research, reading the one, twosand three star reviews and
trying to come up withimprovements for future product
launches.
It used to be something Idedicate an entire day to, and
it is now a 30-minute exerciseand that's probably at like the
upper end, and so it reminds mea lot of steroids and baseball
(28:43):
back when, like Mark McGuire,Sammy Sox era, where it just
kind of puts a jet pack on theentrepreneur's back and allows
them to work faster and moreefficient and uh, and the amount
of decisions you're able tomake in a given day is is
increases exponentially.
So that's really neat.
I always like talking to otherpeople about how they're using
(29:03):
AI, and I'm sure our listenersare going to take some great
lessons out of that lessons outof that.
So one thing I wanted to touchon is you talked about putting
Christmas presents under thetree for, eventually, hundreds
of families, and that'ssomething that I think is
outstanding and I commend youfor it.
It's also something that'stypically not on the radar of
(29:27):
someone growing andbootstrapping a company.
They are trying to make payroll, they are trying to pay for
inventory.
It's tight, and so I'm curiouswhat your experiences has been
with that and how you were ableto manage it while you were
growing your business.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
That is a great question.
So, before the realm of AI,when we are growing that company
, the one thing that I've alwaysbeen really good at is
leadership.
So I would say that that'sactually one of my stronger
abilities outside of marketingis how I can lead people.
So what we did is we were ableto automate our entire million
dollar business through peopleand spreadsheets.
(30:08):
So it's funny enough you'retalking about Excel sheets, we
were using Google sheets, butsame difference.
And so for us is we're able toautomate that entire business by
having people in it.
So the people that are handlingthe customer service, people
that are making sure that allthe returns were handled, all
the chargebacks were good, thatevery product was in, every
order was good.
We had a manager that wasmanaging the people and then we
could check in because of theway that we built the company,
(30:30):
that we could check in everysingle day at the end of day and
look at exactly what everyperson did, and because the
manager was keeping track ofthem and they were all virtual.
So for us it was really easy tokeep up with.
This is where we are.
This is our profit margins.
This is how much we made today.
This will be actually made.
This is how much we shouldexpect in payouts and when.
It should hit our account Easy.
(30:50):
So when we it was actually mycousin, this was his brainchild
the Christmas stuff, and he hasshut it down for a couple of
years, and I remember when wehad so October of 2020, we've
just launched this business.
We finally are making enough tojust like keep the lights on.
And then so in November, I'm athis house for Thanksgiving and
(31:11):
he mentions this.
He said you know, it's just onmy heart to get back into it.
Maybe I can help a couple ofkids.
And I said you know what,whatever money you put into it,
it's like if you decide to fireit up again, I'll give you a
thousand dollars right now.
And he said, really, and hewent, and that time it's like,
hey, we barely have an extra$1,000.
We had debts to pay offeverything else.
And I remember he said, okay,I'm going to do it.
(31:32):
So I gave him $1,000 and wefired it up and we were able to
help 37 kids that first year.
And I remember looking at himand we both looked at each other
at the same time and said we'regoing to help 100 next year,
and that 100 turned into 137.
And what was cool about that wasthat year, because it was such
a big task.
Now we had a lot more capitalto help him with that, but
(31:54):
outside of that is we had to goenlist our friends, family,
everyone.
This guy was nice enough thathe had an unfinished 2000 square
foot basement.
We turned that into a warehouse.
We had to do literal warehousemanagement system on it.
It was incredible, because wewere spending $300 per family,
like per kid, so it wasn't as ifthey're getting a toy.
They were getting a fullChristmas, and we found all the
(32:15):
kids through the school systemin Tennessee.
We bought all the presents,wrapped them all and deliver
them.
We were Santa and his elves, sofor us.
What we noticed, though, is whenyou are able to build something
that's not just for you, likeearly on in business.
Yes, everyone needs to makepayroll.
You need to keep the lights on.
You got to put food on thetable.
I get all that.
You don't want your carrepossessed, and if you're
(32:37):
building for just you, you'llget to a point where your bills
are covered and you go.
You know what's the point ofbuilding beyond this, but if you
can add a giving aspect in,really for two reasons.
One, especially if it's customerfacing, you're giving away for
people to feel empowered to buy,outside of just your unique
selling proposition.
They get to look at that and go,okay, just like Bamba, bamba
socks, you buy a pair of socks,we give a pair of socks.
(32:57):
Oh, now I'm making a realimpact.
So, outside of just having nicesocks, I'm also impacting
someone who won't have socks andso you're giving the customer a
way to be able to make thatimpact.
But also for you, if you can goand touch and meet these people
that you're impacting, itchanges your whole perspective.
It'll make you want to push anddo more, because the amount of
good that you can do with amillion dollar business is
(33:19):
literally one small fractioncomparatively of what you could
do with a $10 million businessor a hundred million dollar
business or a billion dollarbusiness.
Because if you're in the thingis, I've seen people they push
to a certain point and they say,oh no, I'm good, it's like, but
the people you want to impact,you're barely able to help them
at this stage.
If you get bigger, you can helpmore people and help them in a
way different way.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
I really like that perspective, and you're
absolutely right on hitting apersonal plateau where all your
bills are paid, and I thinkthat's something that, whether
it's conscious or not,definitely happens.
And so, yeah, I can think ofbrands that I've done business
with Tom's Shoes is a classicexample of this where they make
a great product and there's agiving aspect to it, and so
(34:08):
there's instances wheresomething can be great marketing
and also like a good thing todo, just as a human being, and
it's great when you can findopportunities for those two to
overlap, and so I really likethat, and I think that's
something that, uh, when peopleare thinking about how do I grow
my business, they're oftenthinking about email marketing
(34:28):
or socials or things like that,and the giving aspect, I think,
is something that is often notthought about enough, and so I'm
glad we're able to highlightthat Now.
Stephen, this has been anoutstanding interview.
I feel like we could go on forhours.
However, we have a section ofthe show called the fire round.
(34:53):
It's four questions we askevery guest at the end of the
interview Are you ready?
I'm ready, all right, let's doit.
What is your favorite book?
Thinking Grow Rich, nice.
What are your hobbies?
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Working out being a great husband and father, but
probably if we're talking aboutreal hobbies working out and
pickleball.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Very nice, very nice.
What is one thing that you donot miss about working for the
man?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
For me.
I don't know if there's anyoneelse out there, but I was
working 14 to 16 hours a day.
So I do not miss the fact thatI had a boss who was not very
nice, that I was working 14 to16 hours a day and I had no
control over that.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that one as well.
When you're self-employed, youat least get to pick which 14 or
16 hours you work.
All right.
And final question what do youthink sets apart successful
e-commerce entrepreneurs fromthose who give up, fail or never
get started?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Mindset Pretty easy answer to expound on that for 30
seconds is the only differencebetween somebody who goes from
zero to a million, or a millionto 10 million or 10 million to a
hundred million is how theyview the world, and I think that
that is a very ambiguous highanswer.
To bring that down is if youdon't think you can, you never
(36:14):
will.
So if you believe that it'spossible for you, then you will
at least try so and I think ifyou continue to show up, you
continue to try, eventually youwill break through.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I love it.
I love it.
Now, Stephen, if people areinterested in working with you
or checking out your podcast,what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
LinkedIn.
Linkedin is great.
Steven K Pemberton is thereAlso.
I kind of look like Aquamanjust a little bit.
So if you look for Steven, lookfor the guy who kind of looks
like Aquaman.
If you find a Steven who is notme and also kind of looks like
Aquaman, please find me and sendme a screenshot of that guy.
He would probably be my bestfriend or my long lost twin that
I don't know I have, so that'sprobably the best way to reach
me.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
For those of you who are tuning in on audio, only
Stephen does look like Aquaman.
I can second that one, so let'sgo.
Awesome, stephen.
Thanks so much for your timeand looking forward to staying
in touch.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yes, sir.
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