August 8, 2025 • 34 mins
Steven Pemberton shares his inspiring journey from rock bottom to building multiple seven-figure businesses despite early failures and setbacks. His story demonstrates how persistence, hard work, and the willingness to learn can transform even the most challenging circumstances into extraordinary success.
• At 20, Steven launched a business, got married, became a father, and then lost everything
• Lived in his brother-in-law's basement feeling like a complete failure and contemplating suicide
• Took a warehouse job working 16-21 hour shifts, which became his turning point
• Advanced rapidly at PepsiCo by outworking everyone and turning a difficult colleague into a mentor
• Transformed the worst-performing warehouse in Texas to the best in six months through authentic leadership
• Left corporate to join his wife's business, which Amazon later shut down leaving them $100,000 in debt
• Pivoted to Facebook Marketplace and Shopify, scaling to over $1 million in annual sales
• Used business success to help hundreds of underprivileged children and give back $50,000 to their community
• Now runs Elevatum, helping e-commerce brands scale profitably
If you're ready to get over your fears, self-doubts and past failures and break through your comfort zone to reach the pinnacle of success in every area of your life, head over to terryfossum.com to pick up your free gifts and so much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
If you've been stuck in fear, self-doubt, your past
failures and you're ready tobreak through your comfort zones
to finally reach the pinnacleof success in every area of your
life, then this podcast is foryou.
Here's your host, Terry LFossum.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey, this is Terry L Fossum and welcome back to the
Comeback Chronicles podcast.
I'm glad you're here and you'regoing to be also.
My guest today has an amazingstory.
His name is Steve Pemberton andget this before the age of 22,
he launched a business, gotmarried, became a dad and lost
it all.
(00:46):
But that failure that becamethe foundation.
It taught him to show up evenwhen it's hard and shape the way
that he leads today.
So after five years incorporate, he watched his wife
scale her Amazon brand to amillion dollars in a year.
Well, that gave him theconfidence to go all in and
together they built a secondseven-figure brand using meta
(01:10):
ads, facebook Shops andMarketplace.
Today he leads Elevatum, ane-commerce growth consultancy
helping direct-to-consumerbrands doing $500K to $20
million scale profitably.
Plus.
Now he acquires or partnersinto e-commerce and supply chain
driven businesses to explodetheir growth.
(01:32):
He's the host of Voice Like aLion podcast and a two-time
seven-figure founder.
Welcome to the podcast, stephen.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Thanks for joining us , bud, terry thank you so much
for having me.
That.
That was an incredible intro.
I'm going to take that formyself and start using that
everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Fantastic.
We'll do it, man.
We can make that happen.
So I mean, your successes arephenomenal and we're certainly
going to get into that, but yourstory and, of course, for this
podcast for my listeners there'sa little note in there about
great success by the age of 22and then losing it all.
Talk to me, man.
What went on?
What happened?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So fantastic question .
At 20 years old I got married.
My wife was 19 at the time.
We found out.
Our son was on the way.
So he comes along about sixmonths later and my wife says,
hey, I don't want to go back towork.
And I go okay, that's great,but I'm making $13 an hour.
So we've got to figuresomething out.
And so for her, she decidedthat, hey, I'm going to start
doing this this networkmarketing company and she
(02:32):
started making $500 a month.
And I watched her grow herfollowing on Instagram from zero
to 10,000 people and it was tome this astonishing milestone to
say, wait, you can make moneyat home, because I was so used
to working with my hands andthat's all I'd ever seen my
whole life.
So when she did that, I said,hey, you know what is better
than one person doing this?
Two people doing this, granted500 bucks a month was not much
(02:54):
money.
So I quit my job.
I come home and full ofexcitement, full of zeal, and
literally within a month we hadnot made the sales we wanted to.
I had gone to the mall andtried to hand out all the
pamphlets and I looked like adeer in headlights.
I didn't have any skills and wehad no capital.
So we ended up losingeverything.
We had to tell the landlordslike, hey, we can't pay rent,
(03:15):
what do you want us to do?
And it's like, well, you'regoing to have to get out and we
won't evict you, but you, okay,where do we go?
And so we were blessed where?
So my brother-in-law, mysister-in-law, they brought us
in and we stayed in a basement.
They lived out in the woods andin that basement there was
spiders the size of the head,crawlers off of aliens.
And maybe it's just me, becauseI don't like spiders, but
(03:36):
that's what they seem like everytime.
I used to see them, but it wasso devastating.
Here I am, at 20 years old.
I'm supposed to be the providerthat's how I show love to my
family is I'm paying all thebills.
So I felt like less than a manand being in this basement, I
felt like a total failure and Ididn't see a way out.
And this is one of the mostdetrimental spots I've seen
people find themselves is theyhave one failure, or the label
(04:00):
at that, and believe that that'sthe end of their life.
I was 20 and was trulyconsidering taking my own life
because I didn't see that therewas any possibility of me
finding any other success thanthe failure that I was in this
basement.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, like you said, there's a lot of people out
there that probably feel thesame way.
They've lost, so all theseself-doubts come in and that
their fears are realized, or atleast they think.
And man, why even try?
Why even bother?
I'm a failure, I'm a loser, whybe here?
There's probably a lot ofpeople that felt the same way.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, and that was the biggest part for me was
being in that spot and really itwas being willing to just keep
going.
The thing was I would see myson he was less than six months
old and I'm holding him and I go.
Ok, I have to keep trying.
So I ended up going and takinga job, but at the same time I
was so depressed that I wouldn'teat.
I remember my mom.
She gave me a box of the NatureValley Crunch Bars the ones
(04:56):
that fall apart every time youopen them and I would only eat
two of those a day.
That was breakfast, lunch anddinner and I did that for months
and you can't tell it on thescreen and you definitely can't
tell it if you're listening tome, but I'm six foot four, 250
pounds, so only eating a littlebit like that was very
detrimental and at the same timeI was having chest pains,
making me feel like I was goingto have a heart attack because I
(05:17):
was under so much stress.
But yeah, that's all before Iturned 21.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Wow, Wow and that's a huge thing to burden on anybody
but also having a child thatyou're supposed to be taking
care of.
I mean, tell me more about someof the feelings that were going
through your head at that time,because there's probably
several listeners who may befeeling the same thing right now
.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
So for me is it was less about what I thought and
more about the actions I took.
So what I mean by that is, mythoughts were I wasn't good
enough that I'll never find away out of this basement, but
the actions I took was Iisolated myself from everyone.
I wouldn't talk, so, eventhough we were living with
another family, I wouldn't goupstairs, so I never interacted
with anyone.
I barely interacted with mywife, so that put us on the
(06:04):
rocks.
I didn't even really spend timewith my son.
I would just hold him every nowand then I would feed him, but
I separated myself from everyother life form around me, and
that was where I've startedspiraling, because I would sit
there with the lights off,watching YouTube videos and
trying to numb the pain by justlaughing.
Trying to numb the pain by justlaughing.
(06:25):
But that's where I was, andthose were some of the actions
and thoughts that I had, and Ididn't at that time have the
right people around me to justgive me the inspiration to try
again.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Right, right.
And a lot of people and that'spart of depression is isolation.
You don't want to be aroundpeople, you don't want to have
to interact with them, you don'twant to put on a show, you
don't want to, you don't want to, you don't want to.
So you just stay by yourself,and that is indeed the worst
thing you can do if you're in adepressive state.
So what did you do to get outof that state?
(06:52):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
That's a great question.
So I started working anotherjob.
I was actually working at thepost office.
I was the mail carrier.
So if you ever got somethingdelivered or not delivered, I
was the guy messing that up, butcarrier.
So if you ever got somethingdelivered or not delivered, I
was the guy messing that up.
But what happened?
This was a part-time role and Iremember coming home one day and
my wife was in bed and she goeshey, steve, and I applied you
for this job.
And she turns the computeraround.
She goes I just feel likeyou're going to get this job.
(07:15):
And now, mind you, the way thatI grew up is you either had to
know somebody or you had to havea degree, and I had neither.
So when she's showing me thisjob posting it is a full-time
role, more money than ever madeand I'm sitting there looking at
it and go okay, just, some ofthe requirements is I have to
have a degree and I go I don'thave that.
Some of the requirements wasand at least in my mind, this is
what I quantified it, as isthat I needed to know somebody
(07:39):
and it's like I don't knowanyone in this organization.
So I didn't believe her.
I went and actually interviewedfor another job, and this one
was a sales role at zero salesexperience, but they offered it
to me anyways and I didn'tbelieve in myself enough to take
that job.
I went to this other one thatshe, she, had signed me up for
and they told me this would bethe hardest job you've ever done
(07:59):
.
And they gave me examples ofpeople who used to lay bricks
and they would come to that joband say I've never done anything
harder than this constructionworkers, the nines and I said
yeah, okay, and so they gave methe job on the spot.
I ended up coming back in thenext week and, because of how
much money I was making per hour, we were able to move out of
the basement.
We moved into this little place.
I like to call the house on thewrong side of the train tracks
(08:21):
because there's tiny home rightnext to the train tracks and
right next to a crossing.
So every time a train wouldcome by, the house would rattle,
the the horns would blast, butit was hours and I wasn't in a
basement and that that is whatgot me out.
But I'll never forget themindset I had then.
I remember crying every daygoing to work because I was
working 16 hours immediately wowand what kind of job was this?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
What kind of job was this?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
So it was a warehousing role and it was
where I was loading pallets andthat you left when the job was
done.
It didn't matter if that waseight hours or 18 hours, which
is a real example.
One day we worked 21 hoursstraight, wow.
So I remember standing at thedoor, I would close the door
behind me, going to get in thecar, and I would cry and say,
but I have to do this, there wasnot an option.
So, because there was no optionbut to do, I kept showing up
and that was the beginning of Megetting out of that mindset of
(09:13):
just being in a depressive stateand me learning who I actually
was.
I think there was an air of canI actually do this?
I had never been put in asituation like it, so to see
myself push through pain where alot of times I quit because
there was no other option, thattaught me some valuable lessons.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Well, I think that's so many lessons right in there.
If you are in that depressivestate, the best thing you can do
is take action, even if it'sthe wrong action, but at least
it's action and you're movingforward.
And you took the view.
Obviously you had talked aboutperhaps committing suicide, but
you obviously made the decisionthat wasn't an option.
(09:50):
So you had no choice other thango to this job.
That sucked, you hated it, butit got you out of where you were
and toward where you wanted togo to.
This job.
That sucked, you hated it, butit got you out of where you were
and toward where you wanted togo to.
And that sounds like that wasyour mental state at the time.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Excellent, so you're going to this job, and what
happened from there?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So when I'm going to this job again, I'm working
anywhere from 16 to 18 hours,five to six days per week, and I
remember I'd never done any joblike it and it was absolutely
the hardest job I'd ever done.
But there was an instance thatI'll never forget, which is I'm
driving down one of the aislesbecause we're running around on
these electric pallet jacks andmy boss comes up to me and he
(10:28):
goes hey, steven, I see how hardyou're working and I want you
to know that you can move up inthis company.
And I went no, I actually saidthis out loud to him.
I said no, I can't.
I said I don't have a degree, Idon't know anyone, so the
likelihood of me moving up isit's not very likely.
And he said actually it is.
He said this is me.
He said I don't have a degree,I didn't know anyone.
He said I just worked harderthan everyone else and I learned
(10:50):
as much as I possibly could.
And I said really.
And he said yes.
And so I started showing up anhour early and leaving an hour
late every day so I could learnsomething new whether that was
learning how to drive a forklift, whether that was learning how
to take notes on a piece ofpaper, being able to unload
trucks, to understand what isthat whole process, staying late
(11:11):
, so we could count all thebreakage that we had.
Whatever it took, I was all in.
And all of a sudden though thisis one caveat that I want to
give the listeners the job wentfrom being something I hated to
something I loved because I sawpossibilities.
I think that this has been theanchor for my life is the anchor
for my life is to be able tokeep your hopes up and be
optimistic.
But how are you going to keepyour hopes up and be optimistic
(11:32):
if you're not optimistic for afuture, a better future than you
have today?
So when he gave me that onepiece of advice that gave me an
anchor to say that's a betterfuture than where I am right now
, so that means the discrepancybetween where I am, and that is
hard work and learning.
So if I don't have theknowledge yet, how do I acquire
it?
Let me talk to everyone and getthe knowledge that I need.
(11:53):
Let me shadow whoever I have to.
If I have to come in early, ifI have to stay in late, what is
the requirements for me to getthat and that was by far the
greatest lesson that I learnedworking at Pepsi.
That was where I was PepsiCo.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Oh, okay, that's a great company to be working for.
It sounds like the bottom lineis you found some sort of a
vision that gave you hope, hopefor a different future, and if
people have hope, well thenthey're willing to work for it,
but they have to have that hope.
So, again for the listenersfind hope, it's out there.
Find something you want to do,something you dream of doing,
(12:26):
something that would be fun,something, just something other
than where you're at right now.
Find that hope and then,exactly like Stephen said, work,
work harder than anybody else,whatever it takes.
What else Stephen helped youget out of where you were and
really start moving forward?
What do you think it was?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
So piggybacking on what I was just saying.
The reason why that drove me somuch was it gave me the
opportunity to go throughhardship, but not see it that
way, one of the things that I'msure there's a listener right
now that goes, steven, that'sgreat for you, but you don't
understand what I've beenthrough and you don't know what
I'm going through right now,currently and that may be true.
You'd be surprised if we satdown and had a conversation the
(13:06):
things that I have been through.
But what I would say to you isdon't talk yourself out of it.
A lot of times we don't allowourselves to dream.
So we will sit there and we'llsee the people with the mansions
and the cars and the successfulbusiness, or maybe they'll see
someone who's in the C-suite andsay that's just not me, but
you're not allowing yourself thefreedom to dream.
And if you can allow yourselfthe freedom to dream of a better
(13:28):
future instead of talkingyourself out as you go, okay,
what would I have to learn?
Just ask yourself a betterquestion.
The life will answer yourquestion to the power of your
question.
So if you want a better answer,ask a better question.
So for me, there was agentleman that I saw was like
this is the guy I have to winover, and it was not my boss.
There was someone one levelabove me who he knew everything
(13:52):
about the company.
He had been there for 11 years.
He understood all the systemsand processes and I went okay,
this is the guy.
And that guy, from day one,hated everyone.
He would cuss me out I meanliterally cuss me out every time
I tried to come by him.
He was an older gentleman andhe would.
He would cuss me out everysingle day and I'll just say,
hey, how are you?
Oh, it's so great to see you.
How's your day going?
(14:12):
And he would cuss me out.
And I did that.
I persisted and a lot of peoplewould quit when somebody does
them wrong.
Once For me, I saw him as theopportunity for me to continue
to advance and I could see that,hey, no, everyone else, this
deters them, but it will notdeter me.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
And it was fascinating.
I got to jump in because that'sso beautiful, so many other
people would go.
That's it.
I quit.
And it's his fault.
It's his fault, no, it's yourfault.
If you decide to quit whensomething like that is going on,
don't try to blame it onsomebody else or some other
situation or whatever.
You have the choice to moveforward or do not move forward.
(14:49):
You, stephen, chose to moveforward.
There's a story damn thetorpedoes full speed ahead and
that's what you're doing.
Look, I'm moving forward.
Anyway, I don't care.
I love that.
I really wanted to bring thatout.
Keep on going.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah.
So for me, I just continued topersist, continued to talk to
him, and it took months.
It was not a quick process.
Again, five to six days a week,I saw this guy Five to six days
per week.
I'm asking him hey, would youmind showing me this, this and
this?
And every single time he wouldcuss me out.
But what ended up happening inthe because I was only there a
year before I ended up moving upand moving to a whole different
(15:23):
state inside of the samecompany is he became?
I became basically his bestfriend because I continued to
persist.
And the thing is is he wouldtell me once to do something and
I would do it and I'll say, hey, I did it exactly as you said
and it went exactly how you.
You told me it would go.
So what else do you have for me, what that is?
And just now I'm realizing thatthis is.
That was a beautiful example ofa mentor mentee relationship.
(15:45):
The mentor may be someone whoyou're looking up to and you're
trying to get in contact withthem and you're trying to get
around them and they are notgiving you any time of day, but
what happens when they do?
I think most people who arelooking for mentors.
These days they find them onthe internet.
They'll see them in their localcity and they just want to
spend time with them.
Hey, let me pick your brain,let me go buy you a coffee, let
me take you out to dinner.
But they have no response whenthe mentor says, hey, I want you
(16:06):
to do this, this and this, theyjust look at them and they
freeze up For me.
He gave me one thing and I wouldexecute to the number that he
would tell me to do every singletime.
And because of that, as he saw,oh, this guy, he's listening to
me, he's doing it, he's nottreating me like everyone else
is treating me.
He actually is hungry to learn.
And that built our relationshipto where he was showing me
(16:27):
stuff that he showed no one elseI knew more than my bosses did.
Because of that onerelationship and that helped me
move up to that.
That one relationship helped mego from Tennessee, where I was
moved 14 hours away, a thousandmiles, to Fort Worth, texas, and
then in eight months which isyou're supposed to be in a role
a year, in eight months I movedup again, all because of this
one relationship that Ipersisted with.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Well, I think that's so important because I you are
so right.
You know people reach out to meyou know as well and want to.
You know, get advice andeverything, but then don't
bother following it.
And one of my things is youknow, if you stop listening I'll
stop talking, just like that,and I've seen it a lot of times.
So I think a couple of thingsfor again, for the listeners
(17:09):
there find a mentor.
You know, that's great.
Find a mentor, but be willingto work and do what they say.
Don't just oh yeah, but that'sfor you, that's not for me, or I
can't do it because, orwhatever.
You didn't do any of thatgarbage.
You took what he said and youran with it to the letter and
therefore he knew his time withyou wasn't wasted and kept
(17:30):
giving you more and kept givingyou more.
So you're moving up.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
You're moving up very quickly in the company.
What happened next?
So I move up and I take overthe worst location in Texas.
As far as that entire region,it was by far the worst, but it
was my opportunity.
They said hey, steven, if youwant to move up, here's this
opportunity.
No one else wants it, but ifyou want it you can have it.
And I said done because this issomething I've carried
throughout my life is I'mwilling to bet on me.
And the only reason I waswilling to bet on me is I know
(17:59):
who I am.
I know the amount of time I putin, I know the amount of skills
and knowledge that I have, so Ididn't doubt that I could do it
.
And again, that's something foreveryone.
Listening is the reason why youfeel uncomfortable when you
finally get the things thatyou've been asking for, the
things you've been praying for,is you haven't actually prepared
.
There's a level of preparationthat goes into the destination
that you're looking to get to.
So when I got to thatdestination, because of my
(18:21):
preparation, I turned that placefrom the worst in the region to
the best in six months.
Wow, and it was not a seamlessprocess.
I'm 24 years old.
No one had ever shown me how todo this.
I pieced it all together, butthe thing that I knew how to do
was talk to people.
So I go OK, I have 12 employees.
They all hate their job.
Let me find out why.
So I stayed on the floor withthem for 14 to 16 hours, asking
(18:43):
each and every one of them whatis the one thing you like about
working here?
Well, I like this one thing.
What is the thing that, if Ifix it tomorrow, would make you
love working here?
Oh well, if you could just fixthis, and I would conglomerate
all their answers and I wouldfigure out the top three to five
things.
That's like, if I can solvethese, the whole workplace gets
better.
And I would take those three tofive things to then my
superiors and say, hey, can I dothis, can I fix these?
(19:05):
And they gave me the freedom tofix them.
And then, once they saw that Iwasn't just talking, I wasn't
just a talking head walkingaround, that, a, I would listen
to them and implement change.
But B is, I would do the jobwith them.
I was willing to put on thegloves, I was willing to pick up
the cases, I was willing topick up the pallets.
I did what they did so theyknew if I asked them to do
something it was not coming froma place I wouldn't do it myself
(19:26):
, and those two key pieces waswhat turned that whole location,
gave me the best net promoterscore of any supervisor in the
region, helped us have aseamless running warehouse that
I took over again at 24 yearsold was just from listening and
asking better questions and thenactually implementing and
staying on the floor and doingthe actions with my guys.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Well, and that last part, your leadership is always
by example.
Good or bad Leadership isalways by example.
And you are doing trueleadership.
Not boss, you are a leader andthat makes all the difference in
the world when they see thatyou're willing to go where
they're going, but then also,like we were saying the other
direction, you are listening tothem and taking action on it.
(20:10):
So if you didn't, why evenbother talking to this guy?
It's just yet another, like yousaid, talking head, but no wait
, wait a minute, wait.
This guy, it's just yet another, like you said, talking head,
but no wait, wait a minute, wait.
This guy's different.
And that's true leadership.
And, whether you knew it or not, there were probably some of
those people who were in theposition that you used to be in.
You never know what's going onin somebody's life and then
(20:34):
somebody comes and makes adifference in their life and you
don't know what you pulled themout of in the process of
building your own career.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Yeah, I actually do know two stories, because I've
always been the one where if Ilearned something, I want to
turn around and immediately helpthe next person up, because
that's actually I didn't realizethat at the time, but that's
the way for you to learn evenfaster is being able to teach it
.
So as soon as I would learn aconcept, I would turn around and
teach.
So for me as I learned.
Okay, my boss did this for me,so when I get in that position,
(21:01):
I'm going to do that for others,and immediately I did.
There was a gentleman that heand his wife.
He came to me and he said hey,I think I'm going to divorce my
wife because of this.
This a vault.
It was not coming out.
It's not my business for me toshare, so I'm not going to share
it.
I was able to work with him tohelp him understand his role and
(21:22):
what was going on, instead ofhim just casting the blame on
his wife.
They ended up reconciling andthey're still together to this
day, to my knowledge.
So that was, and this was yearsand years ago.
Another person that I remembervery well was he was a Marine.
He is a Marine and he wastalking to me and he goes how
can there be a God if there'sdeath?
(21:44):
And I remember he asked this infront of everyone and, because
of where we were in Texas,majority of the guys turned
against him because they wereall Christians.
They went to church and for me,just hearing him out, instead
of questioning him, instead ofsaying no, I can't believe, you
don't believe what I believe,and all these things, I just
heard him out and I said, hey,come in my office, I want to
talk to you, I would love tohear your side of it.
(22:04):
And he came from a place wherehe had seen so much death and he
had gone through so much and noone had been there for him.
So me just being able to showup and not try to convince him
otherwise, but just be presentwith him gave him the freedom to
ask himself well, there's oneperson who cares for me, and
that is again, even with mebeing on the podcast.
(22:24):
I want you, if you're listeningto this, if you had the strength
to pick up your phone andlisten to this podcast today and
you go.
I don't feel like anyone cares.
Let me be the voice of reasonthat comes through that says I
care.
Whoever you are.
Wherever you are, I care foryou, and I mean that you are not
broken, you're not alone, andthis is not the end of your
story.
You may feel like you're at theend of your rope and you don't
(22:45):
have choices, but that is nottoday.
Just one more day.
What can you do today thathelps you have a better?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
tomorrow, amen, amen.
And that's exactly why I dothis podcast, the Comeback
Chronicles because I care too.
I care about people who arelike you, who are like me, who
are coming from a spot thatwasn't Silver Spoon.
It wasn't we had everythinggoing for us all the time, but
rather we went through our own.
We all went through our owntragedies and setbacks and
(23:15):
disappointments and darkthoughts and everything else and
came back from them.
And yeah, thank you for sayingthat, stephen.
I appreciate that.
We care.
That's why we're here for youright now.
So you're screaming up theladder here.
You're doing amazing things.
What came next?
Speaker 3 (23:35):
So what ends up happening is now we're making
enough money where my wife isable to stay home, and that was
something that she had alwayswanted to do At least she
thought.
My wife, for context is one ofthe smartest, hardest working
people I know, period Bar noneto this day.
And what happened was veryshortly I come home again I'm
still working 14 hours this isearly on in my career being over
(23:56):
this entire warehouse, and shegoes Steven, there's only so
much cleaning and Netflix that Ican watch.
And I go great, but we'remaking enough money for you to
stay home.
And she goes.
I hate it, I want to dosomething else.
And I said nope.
And what was fascinating is shedid what I call the cardinal
sin.
She made a post on Facebooktalking about how she didn't
like her life and, luckily, theperson who saw that was my mom,
(24:18):
and my mom has done quite a fewdifferent business ventures
throughout my life.
And so she reached out to mywife and she goes hey, I'm doing
this Amazon thing, would you beinterested in checking it out?
So they sit down, they kind ofgo through it.
She tells my wife hey, let meknow.
Monday this was on a Friday andmy wife talks to me.
When I come home, I tell mywife absolutely not, we are not
(24:38):
doing that, because why would weinvest time, energy and effort?
The last time we did a business, we lost everything and I could
only see the pain.
And so she goes.
Well, I have to tell your momsomething I said.
Well, tell her no.
And she goes.
Well, I'll let her know.
On Monday, and she gets reallysick.
Monday rolls around, she callsmy mom and says, hey, I'm going
to do it, so I went.
I come home, she tells me hey,I decided to do the business
(25:01):
with your mom.
And I go.
I go.
What the heck?
And I was the model of anunsupportive husband.
So if you're listening to thisand you go, hey, I just don't
understand what my wife is doingX, y and Z and you're not the
supportive role model.
Trust me, I've been there.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Or husband or whatever yeah.
Or friend, or or or yes.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I was 100% not supportive in the slightest.
But the thing that changed itall for me was I came home one
day and I'd worked 14 hours andshe was up working.
I go to bed, I wake up andshe's up working and I go, all
right.
So let me do the math If, ifthis is what I think it is, that
means she's worked at least 17plus.
So even though the money hasn'thasn't come into the bank
(25:42):
account yet, she is outworkingme.
And that's when I fully startedsupporting her and I watched
her go from someone that wouldcry anytime she get a one star
review or she would get a returnto two.
Within a year.
That business went from zero toover a million dollars, six
employees Wow, I came in on thetail end of it.
So I still put it on myLinkedIn and stuff because I
helped out a little bit, but shedid 99.9% of it.
(26:04):
What was interesting is becausewe had no business skills and
is the company revenue wise, wasgreat A million top line.
Bottom line was less than ahundred thousand dollars.
So our margins were not goodand I always want to preface
that when I'm talking to people,because a lot of people will
talk about the top line numberand people who haven't been in
business very long they don'tunderstand.
(26:24):
There's a bottom line numberand the bottom line number is
what actually shows up in youraccount.
And for us, since my mom wasour capital backer, she took a
portion of that money, so wereally made less than what I was
making being a supervisor, butthat was the key to unlocking me
coming into business.
(26:44):
2020 happens.
We're going through COVID allof us and in the middle of that,
we're restructuring this entirecompany.
So we're not doing near thenumbers.
But in May of 2020, I startedhaving anxiety attacks for the
first time in my life.
So you've heard it.
I've detailed it in thispodcast interview about what I
was going through my whole life.
You've heard it.
I've detailed it in thispodcast interview about what I
was going through my whole life.
So here I am sitting, at 26years old 25 at the time, I
believe and I am going throughsuch bad anxiety attacks that I
(27:07):
can't breathe.
I'm crying every time I'm on myway to work.
Wow.
And I remember one day I pullup to the stoplight and I say
because for me, faith is a bigpart of my life, and I said,
lord, don't take this from me.
This is an opportunity for myfaith to be tested, because
faith untested can't be trusted.
And I will never forget the dayI drove in, I went to work and
(27:27):
I go inside and I'm talking tomy immediate supervisor, who he
was over the sales portion.
I was over the warehouseportion and I told him.
I said, hey, I'm having thesereally bad anxiety attacks to
the point that I can't breatheand I start crying in front of
him.
Wow, I never cried in front ofanother man in my whole life.
I'm crying in front of him andhe goes hey, we'll get through
(27:48):
this.
And then he walks off and I gothat's not helpful in the
slightest.
That helps me none.
And so very shortly June 26 of2020, I put in my resignation
and I left the company.
Two weeks later they brought in.
There was a guy who got demoted.
He ended up in that role.
He ended up in a role rightthere next to me and he wanted
(28:09):
me to stay on to help himtransition in, and he was
probably the worst boss I everhad.
And so I told him I saidthere's no, no relational equity
here.
I'm out.
So I left that role and then Iwas fully in the business after
that.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Wow, wow.
That's amazing and, I think,also helpful for everybody to
understand.
These feelings happen to otherpeople as well.
Sometimes we think when we'regoing through those, it's just
us.
It's just us, it's just me.
No, it's not.
It's not uncommon.
It's actually more common thanyou think.
So don't feel alone, don't feelisolated.
(28:43):
Don't feel like there'ssomething wrong with you.
There's not.
It can be natural.
But do something about it.
Find help, change yourcircumstances.
Don't wallow in it.
Take action like we talkedabout before.
So now you're back in business,back in business with your wife
.
And what happened next?
(29:03):
We're running a little low ontime, but I want to finish this
story.
This is great.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, so this is where it picks up.
We pick up speed quite a bithere because with the business
is very shortly after I comehome because we're doing Amazon.
Amazon shuts us down, so we areget shut down.
We were doing wholesale.
Wow we had bought a pallet$15,000.
We send in all the receipts,everything that we're supposed
to, and they say, hey, you can'tsell this and we're going to
(29:28):
shut you down.
For those who don't know aboutAmazon is Amazon.
They shut you down and theyhold all your sales money period
.
You never get it out.
So what happened to us is I comehome, I cashed in my 401k, I
was all in, I pushed all mychips to the middle of the table
and now I'm sitting there$100,000 in debt and no income.
And I went now, what?
(29:48):
And it's like now, what do I do?
So I remember we cried, weprayed, we tried to liquidate,
we did everything, and then, afew months later, we ended up
stumbling across a Facebookvideo, a Facebook post that
talked about how FacebookMarketplace was coming out with
shipping, and so we said, hey,let's give it a shot.
So we put up some inventory onFacebook Marketplace.
It starts selling.
(30:09):
Then we go, ok, this is cool,let's add a Shopify store as
well, to anchor it as.
Hey, this is a real thing,we're not just fake.
And so we did that.
And then we ended up going fromzero to $5,000 profit within the
first 30 days, then by the endof 2020, we actually were able
to help 3,700 privileged kidshave Christmas.
Wow, then within six months,we're doing $100,000 in top line
(30:29):
.
By the end of 2021, we do overa million dollars in sales, able
to help 133 underprivilegedkids have Christmas.
Both of those years combinedwas about $50,000 that we were
able to give back into myhometown of Chattanooga,
tennessee.
We actually got to see all thekids, meet the kids.
We actually knew people in theschool system that helped us
figure out who needed the fundsthe most.
(30:50):
And what we did is we went andbought all the presents, we
wrapped them all.
We actually had a warehousemanagement system in our buddy's
basement.
We were Santa and his elves in2021.
2022, we're still up and up.
And then that's where we reallydecided and it was actually in
March of 2022, we decided toshift and start working with
other brands, start working withother businesses.
But yeah, I mean that was thestory of transition from Pepsi
(31:13):
into Amazon and then everythingelse afterwards.
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Wow, and now your own thing and that's and I think
that's fantastic from where youwere to where you're at now,
which, of course, is what thisshow is all about, and I
appreciate you sharing all that.
I mean that's a lot to shareand I realize that, and a lot of
times us tough guys like tokeep to ourselves, so I
appreciate your sacrifice andyour honesty there.
Any last minutes before we haveto call time on this, what
would you like to share withpeople?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
The same thing I shared just a few minutes ago,
and just reiterating a couple ofkey points is one if you feel
alone, you're not alone.
Whether we've met in person orthis is the first time you've
ever heard my voice, I want youto know that I'm here, that you
have someone in this world whobelieves in you.
Whatever you're doing right now, I believe in you.
Secondly is what that meansfrom my perspective is what are
(32:09):
you hopeful for?
How can you get your hopes up?
What does that actually looklike?
Can you map that?
Can you see the beast that youwant to sit on?
No-transcript?
(32:38):
How can you quantify what isactually happening?
What is my next best step?
Do I need to go talk to 10 morepeople and see is this business
even viable?
Am I okay letting this thing goand understand?
This isn't my identity.
If you failed, failure is notyour identity.
Things can fail all the time.
The people who win the most areactually the ones who lose the
(33:03):
most too, because they'rewilling to lose to win.
Most people who lose once likeme being in that basement, I
lost once and thought that I wasa failure.
I labeled myself a thing.
So if that's you and you'relistening and you've labeled
yourself something.
Remove that label, trust in abetter future, a better tomorrow
, and figure out your next bestone step.
I'm not asking you to make thewhole game plan, but what is
your next one step?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And taking that one step will make you feel better
right there, because you are nowtaking control, and that's what
a lot of it is is.
You feel like you don't havethe control.
Other things have control overyou.
By taking that, doing exactlywhat Stephen said, coming up
with whatever small plan it isand taking that step brings you
back to control.
So, as we close up, that's whatI would just say for you to do
(33:42):
Listen to everything Stephensaid, go back, listen to this
again there's so many nuggets inthere and apply this.
Take back control, take actionand you can have your own
Comeback Chronicle.
Thanks so much, stephen.
Comeback Chronicle, thanks somuch, stephen.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So that's it for today's episode of the Comeback
Chronicles.
Head on over to Apple Podcastsor wherever you listen, and
subscribe to the show If you'reready to get over your fears,
self-doubts and past failuresand break through your comfort
zone to reach the pinnacle ofsuccess in every area of your
life.
Head over to terrielfawesomecomto pick up your free gifts and
(34:21):
so much more.
We'll see you next week on theComeback Chronicles podcast.
If you've been stuck in fear, self-doubt, your past
failures and you're ready tobreak through your comfort zones
to finally reach the pinnacleof success in every area of your
life, then this podcast is foryou.
Here's your host, Terry LFossum.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey, this is Terry L Fossum and welcome back to the
Comeback Chronicles podcast.
I'm glad you're here and you'regoing to be also.
My guest today has an amazingstory.
His name is Steve Pemberton andget this before the age of 22,
he launched a business, gotmarried, became a dad and lost
it all.
(00:46):
But that failure that becamethe foundation.
It taught him to show up evenwhen it's hard and shape the way
that he leads today.
So after five years incorporate, he watched his wife
scale her Amazon brand to amillion dollars in a year.
Well, that gave him theconfidence to go all in and
together they built a secondseven-figure brand using meta
(01:10):
ads, facebook Shops andMarketplace.
Today he leads Elevatum, ane-commerce growth consultancy
helping direct-to-consumerbrands doing $500K to $20
million scale profitably.
Plus.
Now he acquires or partnersinto e-commerce and supply chain
driven businesses to explodetheir growth.
(01:32):
He's the host of Voice Like aLion podcast and a two-time
seven-figure founder.
Welcome to the podcast, stephen.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Thanks for joining us , bud, terry thank you so much
for having me.
That.
That was an incredible intro.
I'm going to take that formyself and start using that
everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Fantastic.
We'll do it, man.
We can make that happen.
So I mean, your successes arephenomenal and we're certainly
going to get into that, but yourstory and, of course, for this
podcast for my listeners there'sa little note in there about
great success by the age of 22and then losing it all.
Talk to me, man.
What went on?
What happened?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So fantastic question .
At 20 years old I got married.
My wife was 19 at the time.
We found out.
Our son was on the way.
So he comes along about sixmonths later and my wife says,
hey, I don't want to go back towork.
And I go okay, that's great,but I'm making $13 an hour.
So we've got to figuresomething out.
And so for her, she decidedthat, hey, I'm going to start
doing this this networkmarketing company and she
(02:32):
started making $500 a month.
And I watched her grow herfollowing on Instagram from zero
to 10,000 people and it was tome this astonishing milestone to
say, wait, you can make moneyat home, because I was so used
to working with my hands andthat's all I'd ever seen my
whole life.
So when she did that, I said,hey, you know what is better
than one person doing this?
Two people doing this, granted500 bucks a month was not much
(02:54):
money.
So I quit my job.
I come home and full ofexcitement, full of zeal, and
literally within a month we hadnot made the sales we wanted to.
I had gone to the mall andtried to hand out all the
pamphlets and I looked like adeer in headlights.
I didn't have any skills and wehad no capital.
So we ended up losingeverything.
We had to tell the landlordslike, hey, we can't pay rent,
(03:15):
what do you want us to do?
And it's like, well, you'regoing to have to get out and we
won't evict you, but you, okay,where do we go?
And so we were blessed where?
So my brother-in-law, mysister-in-law, they brought us
in and we stayed in a basement.
They lived out in the woods andin that basement there was
spiders the size of the head,crawlers off of aliens.
And maybe it's just me, becauseI don't like spiders, but
(03:36):
that's what they seem like everytime.
I used to see them, but it wasso devastating.
Here I am, at 20 years old.
I'm supposed to be the providerthat's how I show love to my
family is I'm paying all thebills.
So I felt like less than a manand being in this basement, I
felt like a total failure and Ididn't see a way out.
And this is one of the mostdetrimental spots I've seen
people find themselves is theyhave one failure, or the label
(04:00):
at that, and believe that that'sthe end of their life.
I was 20 and was trulyconsidering taking my own life
because I didn't see that therewas any possibility of me
finding any other success thanthe failure that I was in this
basement.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, like you said, there's a lot of people out
there that probably feel thesame way.
They've lost, so all theseself-doubts come in and that
their fears are realized, or atleast they think.
And man, why even try?
Why even bother?
I'm a failure, I'm a loser, whybe here?
There's probably a lot ofpeople that felt the same way.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, and that was the biggest part for me was
being in that spot and really itwas being willing to just keep
going.
The thing was I would see myson he was less than six months
old and I'm holding him and I go.
Ok, I have to keep trying.
So I ended up going and takinga job, but at the same time I
was so depressed that I wouldn'teat.
I remember my mom.
She gave me a box of the NatureValley Crunch Bars the ones
(04:56):
that fall apart every time youopen them and I would only eat
two of those a day.
That was breakfast, lunch anddinner and I did that for months
and you can't tell it on thescreen and you definitely can't
tell it if you're listening tome, but I'm six foot four, 250
pounds, so only eating a littlebit like that was very
detrimental and at the same timeI was having chest pains,
making me feel like I was goingto have a heart attack because I
(05:17):
was under so much stress.
But yeah, that's all before Iturned 21.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Wow, Wow and that's a huge thing to burden on anybody
but also having a child thatyou're supposed to be taking
care of.
I mean, tell me more about someof the feelings that were going
through your head at that time,because there's probably
several listeners who may befeeling the same thing right now
.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
So for me is it was less about what I thought and
more about the actions I took.
So what I mean by that is, mythoughts were I wasn't good
enough that I'll never find away out of this basement, but
the actions I took was Iisolated myself from everyone.
I wouldn't talk, so, eventhough we were living with
another family, I wouldn't goupstairs, so I never interacted
with anyone.
I barely interacted with mywife, so that put us on the
(06:04):
rocks.
I didn't even really spend timewith my son.
I would just hold him every nowand then I would feed him, but
I separated myself from everyother life form around me, and
that was where I've startedspiraling, because I would sit
there with the lights off,watching YouTube videos and
trying to numb the pain by justlaughing.
Trying to numb the pain by justlaughing.
(06:25):
But that's where I was, andthose were some of the actions
and thoughts that I had, and Ididn't at that time have the
right people around me to justgive me the inspiration to try
again.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Right, right.
And a lot of people and that'spart of depression is isolation.
You don't want to be aroundpeople, you don't want to have
to interact with them, you don'twant to put on a show, you
don't want to, you don't want to, you don't want to.
So you just stay by yourself,and that is indeed the worst
thing you can do if you're in adepressive state.
So what did you do to get outof that state?
(06:52):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
That's a great question.
So I started working anotherjob.
I was actually working at thepost office.
I was the mail carrier.
So if you ever got somethingdelivered or not delivered, I
was the guy messing that up, butcarrier.
So if you ever got somethingdelivered or not delivered, I
was the guy messing that up.
But what happened?
This was a part-time role and Iremember coming home one day and
my wife was in bed and she goeshey, steve, and I applied you
for this job.
And she turns the computeraround.
She goes I just feel likeyou're going to get this job.
(07:15):
And now, mind you, the way thatI grew up is you either had to
know somebody or you had to havea degree, and I had neither.
So when she's showing me thisjob posting it is a full-time
role, more money than ever madeand I'm sitting there looking at
it and go okay, just, some ofthe requirements is I have to
have a degree and I go I don'thave that.
Some of the requirements wasand at least in my mind, this is
what I quantified it, as isthat I needed to know somebody
(07:39):
and it's like I don't knowanyone in this organization.
So I didn't believe her.
I went and actually interviewedfor another job, and this one
was a sales role at zero salesexperience, but they offered it
to me anyways and I didn'tbelieve in myself enough to take
that job.
I went to this other one thatshe, she, had signed me up for
and they told me this would bethe hardest job you've ever done
(07:59):
.
And they gave me examples ofpeople who used to lay bricks
and they would come to that joband say I've never done anything
harder than this constructionworkers, the nines and I said
yeah, okay, and so they gave methe job on the spot.
I ended up coming back in thenext week and, because of how
much money I was making per hour, we were able to move out of
the basement.
We moved into this little place.
I like to call the house on thewrong side of the train tracks
(08:21):
because there's tiny home rightnext to the train tracks and
right next to a crossing.
So every time a train wouldcome by, the house would rattle,
the the horns would blast, butit was hours and I wasn't in a
basement and that that is whatgot me out.
But I'll never forget themindset I had then.
I remember crying every daygoing to work because I was
working 16 hours immediately wowand what kind of job was this?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
What kind of job was this?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
So it was a warehousing role and it was
where I was loading pallets andthat you left when the job was
done.
It didn't matter if that waseight hours or 18 hours, which
is a real example.
One day we worked 21 hoursstraight, wow.
So I remember standing at thedoor, I would close the door
behind me, going to get in thecar, and I would cry and say,
but I have to do this, there wasnot an option.
So, because there was no optionbut to do, I kept showing up
and that was the beginning of Megetting out of that mindset of
(09:13):
just being in a depressive stateand me learning who I actually
was.
I think there was an air of canI actually do this?
I had never been put in asituation like it, so to see
myself push through pain where alot of times I quit because
there was no other option, thattaught me some valuable lessons.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Well, I think that's so many lessons right in there.
If you are in that depressivestate, the best thing you can do
is take action, even if it'sthe wrong action, but at least
it's action and you're movingforward.
And you took the view.
Obviously you had talked aboutperhaps committing suicide, but
you obviously made the decisionthat wasn't an option.
(09:50):
So you had no choice other thango to this job.
That sucked, you hated it, butit got you out of where you were
and toward where you wanted togo to.
This job.
That sucked, you hated it, butit got you out of where you were
and toward where you wanted togo to.
And that sounds like that wasyour mental state at the time.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Excellent, so you're going to this job, and what
happened from there?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So when I'm going to this job again, I'm working
anywhere from 16 to 18 hours,five to six days per week, and I
remember I'd never done any joblike it and it was absolutely
the hardest job I'd ever done.
But there was an instance thatI'll never forget, which is I'm
driving down one of the aislesbecause we're running around on
these electric pallet jacks andmy boss comes up to me and he
(10:28):
goes hey, steven, I see how hardyou're working and I want you
to know that you can move up inthis company.
And I went no, I actually saidthis out loud to him.
I said no, I can't.
I said I don't have a degree, Idon't know anyone, so the
likelihood of me moving up isit's not very likely.
And he said actually it is.
He said this is me.
He said I don't have a degree,I didn't know anyone.
He said I just worked harderthan everyone else and I learned
(10:50):
as much as I possibly could.
And I said really.
And he said yes.
And so I started showing up anhour early and leaving an hour
late every day so I could learnsomething new whether that was
learning how to drive a forklift, whether that was learning how
to take notes on a piece ofpaper, being able to unload
trucks, to understand what isthat whole process, staying late
(11:11):
, so we could count all thebreakage that we had.
Whatever it took, I was all in.
And all of a sudden though thisis one caveat that I want to
give the listeners the job wentfrom being something I hated to
something I loved because I sawpossibilities.
I think that this has been theanchor for my life is the anchor
for my life is to be able tokeep your hopes up and be
optimistic.
But how are you going to keepyour hopes up and be optimistic
(11:32):
if you're not optimistic for afuture, a better future than you
have today?
So when he gave me that onepiece of advice that gave me an
anchor to say that's a betterfuture than where I am right now
, so that means the discrepancybetween where I am, and that is
hard work and learning.
So if I don't have theknowledge yet, how do I acquire
it?
Let me talk to everyone and getthe knowledge that I need.
(11:53):
Let me shadow whoever I have to.
If I have to come in early, ifI have to stay in late, what is
the requirements for me to getthat and that was by far the
greatest lesson that I learnedworking at Pepsi.
That was where I was PepsiCo.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Oh, okay, that's a great company to be working for.
It sounds like the bottom lineis you found some sort of a
vision that gave you hope, hopefor a different future, and if
people have hope, well thenthey're willing to work for it,
but they have to have that hope.
So, again for the listenersfind hope, it's out there.
Find something you want to do,something you dream of doing,
(12:26):
something that would be fun,something, just something other
than where you're at right now.
Find that hope and then,exactly like Stephen said, work,
work harder than anybody else,whatever it takes.
What else Stephen helped youget out of where you were and
really start moving forward?
What do you think it was?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
So piggybacking on what I was just saying.
The reason why that drove me somuch was it gave me the
opportunity to go throughhardship, but not see it that
way, one of the things that I'msure there's a listener right
now that goes, steven, that'sgreat for you, but you don't
understand what I've beenthrough and you don't know what
I'm going through right now,currently and that may be true.
You'd be surprised if we satdown and had a conversation the
(13:06):
things that I have been through.
But what I would say to you isdon't talk yourself out of it.
A lot of times we don't allowourselves to dream.
So we will sit there and we'llsee the people with the mansions
and the cars and the successfulbusiness, or maybe they'll see
someone who's in the C-suite andsay that's just not me, but
you're not allowing yourself thefreedom to dream.
And if you can allow yourselfthe freedom to dream of a better
(13:28):
future instead of talkingyourself out as you go, okay,
what would I have to learn?
Just ask yourself a betterquestion.
The life will answer yourquestion to the power of your
question.
So if you want a better answer,ask a better question.
So for me, there was agentleman that I saw was like
this is the guy I have to winover, and it was not my boss.
There was someone one levelabove me who he knew everything
(13:52):
about the company.
He had been there for 11 years.
He understood all the systemsand processes and I went okay,
this is the guy.
And that guy, from day one,hated everyone.
He would cuss me out I meanliterally cuss me out every time
I tried to come by him.
He was an older gentleman andhe would.
He would cuss me out everysingle day and I'll just say,
hey, how are you?
Oh, it's so great to see you.
How's your day going?
(14:12):
And he would cuss me out.
And I did that.
I persisted and a lot of peoplewould quit when somebody does
them wrong.
Once For me, I saw him as theopportunity for me to continue
to advance and I could see that,hey, no, everyone else, this
deters them, but it will notdeter me.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
And it was fascinating.
I got to jump in because that'sso beautiful, so many other
people would go.
That's it.
I quit.
And it's his fault.
It's his fault, no, it's yourfault.
If you decide to quit whensomething like that is going on,
don't try to blame it onsomebody else or some other
situation or whatever.
You have the choice to moveforward or do not move forward.
(14:49):
You, stephen, chose to moveforward.
There's a story damn thetorpedoes full speed ahead and
that's what you're doing.
Look, I'm moving forward.
Anyway, I don't care.
I love that.
I really wanted to bring thatout.
Keep on going.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah.
So for me, I just continued topersist, continued to talk to
him, and it took months.
It was not a quick process.
Again, five to six days a week,I saw this guy Five to six days
per week.
I'm asking him hey, would youmind showing me this, this and
this?
And every single time he wouldcuss me out.
But what ended up happening inthe because I was only there a
year before I ended up moving upand moving to a whole different
(15:23):
state inside of the samecompany is he became?
I became basically his bestfriend because I continued to
persist.
And the thing is is he wouldtell me once to do something and
I would do it and I'll say, hey, I did it exactly as you said
and it went exactly how you.
You told me it would go.
So what else do you have for me, what that is?
And just now I'm realizing thatthis is.
That was a beautiful example ofa mentor mentee relationship.
(15:45):
The mentor may be someone whoyou're looking up to and you're
trying to get in contact withthem and you're trying to get
around them and they are notgiving you any time of day, but
what happens when they do?
I think most people who arelooking for mentors.
These days they find them onthe internet.
They'll see them in their localcity and they just want to
spend time with them.
Hey, let me pick your brain,let me go buy you a coffee, let
me take you out to dinner.
But they have no response whenthe mentor says, hey, I want you
(16:06):
to do this, this and this, theyjust look at them and they
freeze up For me.
He gave me one thing and I wouldexecute to the number that he
would tell me to do every singletime.
And because of that, as he saw,oh, this guy, he's listening to
me, he's doing it, he's nottreating me like everyone else
is treating me.
He actually is hungry to learn.
And that built our relationshipto where he was showing me
(16:27):
stuff that he showed no one elseI knew more than my bosses did.
Because of that onerelationship and that helped me
move up to that.
That one relationship helped mego from Tennessee, where I was
moved 14 hours away, a thousandmiles, to Fort Worth, texas, and
then in eight months which isyou're supposed to be in a role
a year, in eight months I movedup again, all because of this
one relationship that Ipersisted with.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Well, I think that's so important because I you are
so right.
You know people reach out to meyou know as well and want to.
You know, get advice andeverything, but then don't
bother following it.
And one of my things is youknow, if you stop listening I'll
stop talking, just like that,and I've seen it a lot of times.
So I think a couple of thingsfor again, for the listeners
(17:09):
there find a mentor.
You know, that's great.
Find a mentor, but be willingto work and do what they say.
Don't just oh yeah, but that'sfor you, that's not for me, or I
can't do it because, orwhatever.
You didn't do any of thatgarbage.
You took what he said and youran with it to the letter and
therefore he knew his time withyou wasn't wasted and kept
(17:30):
giving you more and kept givingyou more.
So you're moving up.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
You're moving up very quickly in the company.
What happened next?
So I move up and I take overthe worst location in Texas.
As far as that entire region,it was by far the worst, but it
was my opportunity.
They said hey, steven, if youwant to move up, here's this
opportunity.
No one else wants it, but ifyou want it you can have it.
And I said done because this issomething I've carried
throughout my life is I'mwilling to bet on me.
And the only reason I waswilling to bet on me is I know
(17:59):
who I am.
I know the amount of time I putin, I know the amount of skills
and knowledge that I have, so Ididn't doubt that I could do it
.
And again, that's something foreveryone.
Listening is the reason why youfeel uncomfortable when you
finally get the things thatyou've been asking for, the
things you've been praying for,is you haven't actually prepared
.
There's a level of preparationthat goes into the destination
that you're looking to get to.
So when I got to thatdestination, because of my
(18:21):
preparation, I turned that placefrom the worst in the region to
the best in six months.
Wow, and it was not a seamlessprocess.
I'm 24 years old.
No one had ever shown me how todo this.
I pieced it all together, butthe thing that I knew how to do
was talk to people.
So I go OK, I have 12 employees.
They all hate their job.
Let me find out why.
So I stayed on the floor withthem for 14 to 16 hours, asking
(18:43):
each and every one of them whatis the one thing you like about
working here?
Well, I like this one thing.
What is the thing that, if Ifix it tomorrow, would make you
love working here?
Oh well, if you could just fixthis, and I would conglomerate
all their answers and I wouldfigure out the top three to five
things.
That's like, if I can solvethese, the whole workplace gets
better.
And I would take those three tofive things to then my
superiors and say, hey, can I dothis, can I fix these?
(19:05):
And they gave me the freedom tofix them.
And then, once they saw that Iwasn't just talking, I wasn't
just a talking head walkingaround, that, a, I would listen
to them and implement change.
But B is, I would do the jobwith them.
I was willing to put on thegloves, I was willing to pick up
the cases, I was willing topick up the pallets.
I did what they did so theyknew if I asked them to do
something it was not coming froma place I wouldn't do it myself
(19:26):
, and those two key pieces waswhat turned that whole location,
gave me the best net promoterscore of any supervisor in the
region, helped us have aseamless running warehouse that
I took over again at 24 yearsold was just from listening and
asking better questions and thenactually implementing and
staying on the floor and doingthe actions with my guys.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Well, and that last part, your leadership is always
by example.
Good or bad Leadership isalways by example.
And you are doing trueleadership.
Not boss, you are a leader andthat makes all the difference in
the world when they see thatyou're willing to go where
they're going, but then also,like we were saying the other
direction, you are listening tothem and taking action on it.
(20:10):
So if you didn't, why evenbother talking to this guy?
It's just yet another, like yousaid, talking head, but no wait
, wait a minute, wait.
This guy, it's just yet another, like you said, talking head,
but no wait, wait a minute, wait.
This guy's different.
And that's true leadership.
And, whether you knew it or not, there were probably some of
those people who were in theposition that you used to be in.
You never know what's going onin somebody's life and then
(20:34):
somebody comes and makes adifference in their life and you
don't know what you pulled themout of in the process of
building your own career.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Yeah, I actually do know two stories, because I've
always been the one where if Ilearned something, I want to
turn around and immediately helpthe next person up, because
that's actually I didn't realizethat at the time, but that's
the way for you to learn evenfaster is being able to teach it
.
So as soon as I would learn aconcept, I would turn around and
teach.
So for me as I learned.
Okay, my boss did this for me,so when I get in that position,
(21:01):
I'm going to do that for others,and immediately I did.
There was a gentleman that heand his wife.
He came to me and he said hey,I think I'm going to divorce my
wife because of this.
This a vault.
It was not coming out.
It's not my business for me toshare, so I'm not going to share
it.
I was able to work with him tohelp him understand his role and
(21:22):
what was going on, instead ofhim just casting the blame on
his wife.
They ended up reconciling andthey're still together to this
day, to my knowledge.
So that was, and this was yearsand years ago.
Another person that I remembervery well was he was a Marine.
He is a Marine and he wastalking to me and he goes how
can there be a God if there'sdeath?
(21:44):
And I remember he asked this infront of everyone and, because
of where we were in Texas,majority of the guys turned
against him because they wereall Christians.
They went to church and for me,just hearing him out, instead
of questioning him, instead ofsaying no, I can't believe, you
don't believe what I believe,and all these things, I just
heard him out and I said, hey,come in my office, I want to
talk to you, I would love tohear your side of it.
(22:04):
And he came from a place wherehe had seen so much death and he
had gone through so much and noone had been there for him.
So me just being able to showup and not try to convince him
otherwise, but just be presentwith him gave him the freedom to
ask himself well, there's oneperson who cares for me, and
that is again, even with mebeing on the podcast.
(22:24):
I want you, if you're listeningto this, if you had the strength
to pick up your phone andlisten to this podcast today and
you go.
I don't feel like anyone cares.
Let me be the voice of reasonthat comes through that says I
care.
Whoever you are.
Wherever you are, I care foryou, and I mean that you are not
broken, you're not alone, andthis is not the end of your
story.
You may feel like you're at theend of your rope and you don't
(22:45):
have choices, but that is nottoday.
Just one more day.
What can you do today thathelps you have a better?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
tomorrow, amen, amen.
And that's exactly why I dothis podcast, the Comeback
Chronicles because I care too.
I care about people who arelike you, who are like me, who
are coming from a spot thatwasn't Silver Spoon.
It wasn't we had everythinggoing for us all the time, but
rather we went through our own.
We all went through our owntragedies and setbacks and
(23:15):
disappointments and darkthoughts and everything else and
came back from them.
And yeah, thank you for sayingthat, stephen.
I appreciate that.
We care.
That's why we're here for youright now.
So you're screaming up theladder here.
You're doing amazing things.
What came next?
Speaker 3 (23:35):
So what ends up happening is now we're making
enough money where my wife isable to stay home, and that was
something that she had alwayswanted to do At least she
thought.
My wife, for context is one ofthe smartest, hardest working
people I know, period Bar noneto this day.
And what happened was veryshortly I come home again I'm
still working 14 hours this isearly on in my career being over
(23:56):
this entire warehouse, and shegoes Steven, there's only so
much cleaning and Netflix that Ican watch.
And I go great, but we'remaking enough money for you to
stay home.
And she goes.
I hate it, I want to dosomething else.
And I said nope.
And what was fascinating is shedid what I call the cardinal
sin.
She made a post on Facebooktalking about how she didn't
like her life and, luckily, theperson who saw that was my mom,
(24:18):
and my mom has done quite a fewdifferent business ventures
throughout my life.
And so she reached out to mywife and she goes hey, I'm doing
this Amazon thing, would you beinterested in checking it out?
So they sit down, they kind ofgo through it.
She tells my wife hey, let meknow.
Monday this was on a Friday andmy wife talks to me.
When I come home, I tell mywife absolutely not, we are not
(24:38):
doing that, because why would weinvest time, energy and effort?
The last time we did a business, we lost everything and I could
only see the pain.
And so she goes.
Well, I have to tell your momsomething I said.
Well, tell her no.
And she goes.
Well, I'll let her know.
On Monday, and she gets reallysick.
Monday rolls around, she callsmy mom and says, hey, I'm going
to do it, so I went.
I come home, she tells me hey,I decided to do the business
(25:01):
with your mom.
And I go.
I go.
What the heck?
And I was the model of anunsupportive husband.
So if you're listening to thisand you go, hey, I just don't
understand what my wife is doingX, y and Z and you're not the
supportive role model.
Trust me, I've been there.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Or husband or whatever yeah.
Or friend, or or or yes.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I was 100% not supportive in the slightest.
But the thing that changed itall for me was I came home one
day and I'd worked 14 hours andshe was up working.
I go to bed, I wake up andshe's up working and I go, all
right.
So let me do the math If, ifthis is what I think it is, that
means she's worked at least 17plus.
So even though the money hasn'thasn't come into the bank
(25:42):
account yet, she is outworkingme.
And that's when I fully startedsupporting her and I watched
her go from someone that wouldcry anytime she get a one star
review or she would get a returnto two.
Within a year.
That business went from zero toover a million dollars, six
employees Wow, I came in on thetail end of it.
So I still put it on myLinkedIn and stuff because I
helped out a little bit, but shedid 99.9% of it.
(26:04):
What was interesting is becausewe had no business skills and
is the company revenue wise, wasgreat A million top line.
Bottom line was less than ahundred thousand dollars.
So our margins were not goodand I always want to preface
that when I'm talking to people,because a lot of people will
talk about the top line numberand people who haven't been in
business very long they don'tunderstand.
(26:24):
There's a bottom line numberand the bottom line number is
what actually shows up in youraccount.
And for us, since my mom wasour capital backer, she took a
portion of that money, so wereally made less than what I was
making being a supervisor, butthat was the key to unlocking me
coming into business.
(26:44):
2020 happens.
We're going through COVID allof us and in the middle of that,
we're restructuring this entirecompany.
So we're not doing near thenumbers.
But in May of 2020, I startedhaving anxiety attacks for the
first time in my life.
So you've heard it.
I've detailed it in thispodcast interview about what I
was going through my whole life.
You've heard it.
I've detailed it in thispodcast interview about what I
was going through my whole life.
So here I am sitting, at 26years old 25 at the time, I
believe and I am going throughsuch bad anxiety attacks that I
(27:07):
can't breathe.
I'm crying every time I'm on myway to work.
Wow.
And I remember one day I pullup to the stoplight and I say
because for me, faith is a bigpart of my life, and I said,
lord, don't take this from me.
This is an opportunity for myfaith to be tested, because
faith untested can't be trusted.
And I will never forget the dayI drove in, I went to work and
(27:27):
I go inside and I'm talking tomy immediate supervisor, who he
was over the sales portion.
I was over the warehouseportion and I told him.
I said, hey, I'm having thesereally bad anxiety attacks to
the point that I can't breatheand I start crying in front of
him.
Wow, I never cried in front ofanother man in my whole life.
I'm crying in front of him andhe goes hey, we'll get through
(27:48):
this.
And then he walks off and I gothat's not helpful in the
slightest.
That helps me none.
And so very shortly June 26 of2020, I put in my resignation
and I left the company.
Two weeks later they brought in.
There was a guy who got demoted.
He ended up in that role.
He ended up in a role rightthere next to me and he wanted
(28:09):
me to stay on to help himtransition in, and he was
probably the worst boss I everhad.
And so I told him I saidthere's no, no relational equity
here.
I'm out.
So I left that role and then Iwas fully in the business after
that.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Wow, wow.
That's amazing and, I think,also helpful for everybody to
understand.
These feelings happen to otherpeople as well.
Sometimes we think when we'regoing through those, it's just
us.
It's just us, it's just me.
No, it's not.
It's not uncommon.
It's actually more common thanyou think.
So don't feel alone, don't feelisolated.
(28:43):
Don't feel like there'ssomething wrong with you.
There's not.
It can be natural.
But do something about it.
Find help, change yourcircumstances.
Don't wallow in it.
Take action like we talkedabout before.
So now you're back in business,back in business with your wife
.
And what happened next?
(29:03):
We're running a little low ontime, but I want to finish this
story.
This is great.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, so this is where it picks up.
We pick up speed quite a bithere because with the business
is very shortly after I comehome because we're doing Amazon.
Amazon shuts us down, so we areget shut down.
We were doing wholesale.
Wow we had bought a pallet$15,000.
We send in all the receipts,everything that we're supposed
to, and they say, hey, you can'tsell this and we're going to
(29:28):
shut you down.
For those who don't know aboutAmazon is Amazon.
They shut you down and theyhold all your sales money period
.
You never get it out.
So what happened to us is I comehome, I cashed in my 401k, I
was all in, I pushed all mychips to the middle of the table
and now I'm sitting there$100,000 in debt and no income.
And I went now, what?
(29:48):
And it's like now, what do I do?
So I remember we cried, weprayed, we tried to liquidate,
we did everything, and then, afew months later, we ended up
stumbling across a Facebookvideo, a Facebook post that
talked about how FacebookMarketplace was coming out with
shipping, and so we said, hey,let's give it a shot.
So we put up some inventory onFacebook Marketplace.
It starts selling.
(30:09):
Then we go, ok, this is cool,let's add a Shopify store as
well, to anchor it as.
Hey, this is a real thing,we're not just fake.
And so we did that.
And then we ended up going fromzero to $5,000 profit within the
first 30 days, then by the endof 2020, we actually were able
to help 3,700 privileged kidshave Christmas.
Wow, then within six months,we're doing $100,000 in top line
(30:29):
.
By the end of 2021, we do overa million dollars in sales, able
to help 133 underprivilegedkids have Christmas.
Both of those years combinedwas about $50,000 that we were
able to give back into myhometown of Chattanooga,
tennessee.
We actually got to see all thekids, meet the kids.
We actually knew people in theschool system that helped us
figure out who needed the fundsthe most.
(30:50):
And what we did is we went andbought all the presents, we
wrapped them all.
We actually had a warehousemanagement system in our buddy's
basement.
We were Santa and his elves in2021.
2022, we're still up and up.
And then that's where we reallydecided and it was actually in
March of 2022, we decided toshift and start working with
other brands, start working withother businesses.
But yeah, I mean that was thestory of transition from Pepsi
(31:13):
into Amazon and then everythingelse afterwards.
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Wow, and now your own thing and that's and I think
that's fantastic from where youwere to where you're at now,
which, of course, is what thisshow is all about, and I
appreciate you sharing all that.
I mean that's a lot to shareand I realize that, and a lot of
times us tough guys like tokeep to ourselves, so I
appreciate your sacrifice andyour honesty there.
Any last minutes before we haveto call time on this, what
would you like to share withpeople?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
The same thing I shared just a few minutes ago,
and just reiterating a couple ofkey points is one if you feel
alone, you're not alone.
Whether we've met in person orthis is the first time you've
ever heard my voice, I want youto know that I'm here, that you
have someone in this world whobelieves in you.
Whatever you're doing right now, I believe in you.
Secondly is what that meansfrom my perspective is what are
(32:09):
you hopeful for?
How can you get your hopes up?
What does that actually looklike?
Can you map that?
Can you see the beast that youwant to sit on?
No-transcript?
(32:38):
How can you quantify what isactually happening?
What is my next best step?
Do I need to go talk to 10 morepeople and see is this business
even viable?
Am I okay letting this thing goand understand?
This isn't my identity.
If you failed, failure is notyour identity.
Things can fail all the time.
The people who win the most areactually the ones who lose the
(33:03):
most too, because they'rewilling to lose to win.
Most people who lose once likeme being in that basement, I
lost once and thought that I wasa failure.
I labeled myself a thing.
So if that's you and you'relistening and you've labeled
yourself something.
Remove that label, trust in abetter future, a better tomorrow
, and figure out your next bestone step.
I'm not asking you to make thewhole game plan, but what is
your next one step?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And taking that one step will make you feel better
right there, because you are nowtaking control, and that's what
a lot of it is is.
You feel like you don't havethe control.
Other things have control overyou.
By taking that, doing exactlywhat Stephen said, coming up
with whatever small plan it isand taking that step brings you
back to control.
So, as we close up, that's whatI would just say for you to do
(33:42):
Listen to everything Stephensaid, go back, listen to this
again there's so many nuggets inthere and apply this.
Take back control, take actionand you can have your own
Comeback Chronicle.
Thanks so much, stephen.
Comeback Chronicle, thanks somuch, stephen.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So that's it for today's episode of the Comeback
Chronicles.
Head on over to Apple Podcastsor wherever you listen, and
subscribe to the show If you'reready to get over your fears,
self-doubts and past failuresand break through your comfort
zone to reach the pinnacle ofsuccess in every area of your
life.
Head over to terrielfawesomecomto pick up your free gifts and
(34:21):
so much more.
We'll see you next week on theComeback Chronicles podcast.
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