The Comeback Chronicles Podcast
Welcome to The Comeback Chronicles, where raw truth meets unwavering resilience. Hosted by Terry L. Fossum, this podcast reveals the untold stories of remarkable individuals who’ve faced crushing defeats—only to rise stronger, wiser, and more determined.
Through candid interviews, you’ll hear about moments of failure, heartbreak, and doubt, as well as the transformational steps that led to victory. This isn’t just about inspiration—it’s about equipping you with actionable strategies, like Terry’s signature ‘Oxcart Technique,’ to overcome challenges and ignite your own comeback story.
If you’re ready to break free from fear, shame, or self-doubt and move boldly into your conquer zone, The Comeback Chronicles will empower you with the tools, mindset, and motivation to rise above and achieve your next great success.
Get ready to turn your setbacks into stepping stones and reclaim the life you’re destined to lead.
The Comeback Chronicles Podcast
Beyond Rock Bottom to Seven-Figure Success with Steven Pemberton
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.
If you've been stuck in fear, self-doubt, your past failures and you're ready to break through your comfort zones to finally reach the pinnacle of success in every area of your life, then this podcast is for you. Here's your host, Terry L Fossum.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is Terry L Fossum and welcome back to the Comeback Chronicles podcast. I'm glad you're here and you're going to be also. My guest today has an amazing story. His name is Steve Pemberton and get this before the age of 22, he launched a business, got married, became a dad and lost it all. But that failure that became the foundation. It taught him to show up even when it's hard and shape the way that he leads today. So after five years in corporate, he watched his wife scale her Amazon brand to a million dollars in a year. Well, that gave him the confidence to go all in and together they built a second seven-figure brand using meta ads, facebook Shops and Marketplace. Today he leads Elevatum, an e-commerce growth consultancy helping direct-to-consumer brands doing $500K to $20 million scale profitably. Plus. Now he acquires or partners into e-commerce and supply chain driven businesses to explode their growth. He's the host of Voice Like a Lion podcast and a two-time seven-figure founder. Welcome to the podcast, stephen.
Speaker 3: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 for myself and start using that everywhere.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. We'll do it, man. We can make that happen. So I mean, your successes are phenomenal and we're certainly going to get into that, but your story and, of course, for this podcast for my listeners there's a little note in there about great success by the age of 22 and then losing it all. Talk to me, man. What went on? What happened?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3:So he comes along about six months later and my wife says, hey, I don't want to go back to work. And I go okay, that's great, but I'm making $13 an hour. So we've got to figure something out. And so for her, she decided that, hey, I'm going to start doing this this network marketing company and she started making $500 a month. And I watched her grow her following on Instagram from zero to 10,000 people and it was to me this astonishing milestone to say, wait, you can make money at home, because I was so used to working with my hands and that'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, granted 500 bucks a month was not much money.
Speaker 3:So I quit my job. I come home and full of excitement, full of zeal, and literally within a month we had not made the sales we wanted to. I had gone to the mall and tried to hand out all the pamphlets and I looked like a deer in headlights. I didn't have any skills and we had no capital. So we ended up losing everything. We had to tell the landlords like, hey, we can't pay rent, what do you want us to do? And it's like, well, you're going to have to get out and we won't evict you, but you, okay, where do we go? And so we were blessed where?
Speaker 3:So my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, they brought us in and we stayed in a basement. They lived out in the woods and in that basement there was spiders the size of the head, crawlers off of aliens. And maybe it's just me, because I don't like spiders, but that's what they seem like every time. I used to see them, but it was so devastating. Here I am, at 20 years old. I'm supposed to be the provider that's how I show love to my family is I'm paying all the bills. So I felt like less than a man and being in this basement, I felt like a total failure and I didn't see a way out. And this is one of the most detrimental spots I've seen people find themselves is they have one failure, or the label at that, and believe that that's the end of their life. I was 20 and was truly considering taking my own life because I didn't see that there was any possibility of me finding any other success than the failure that I was in this basement.
Speaker 2:Well, like you said, there's a lot of people out there that probably feel the same way. They've lost, so all these self-doubts come in and that their fears are realized, or at least they think. And man, why even try? Why even bother? I'm a failure, I'm a loser, why be here? There's probably a lot of people that felt the same way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that was the biggest part for me was being in that spot and really it was being willing to just keep going. The thing was I would see my son 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 taking a job, but at the same time I was so depressed that I wouldn't eat. I remember my mom. She gave me a box of the Nature Valley Crunch Bars the ones that fall apart every time you open them and I would only eat two of those a day. That was breakfast, lunch and dinner and I did that for months and you can't tell it on the screen and you definitely can't tell it if you're listening to me, but I'm six foot four, 250 pounds, so only eating a little bit like that was very detrimental and at the same time I was having chest pains, making me feel like I was going to have a heart attack because I was under so much stress. But yeah, that's all before I turned 21.
Speaker 2:Wow, Wow and that's a huge thing to burden on anybody but also having a child that you're supposed to be taking care of. I mean, tell me more about some of the feelings that were going through your head at that time, because there's probably several listeners who may be feeling the same thing right now.
Speaker 3: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, my thoughts were I wasn't good enough that I'll never find a way out of this basement, but the actions I took was I isolated myself from everyone. I wouldn't talk, so, even though we were living with another family, I wouldn't go upstairs, so I never interacted with anyone. I barely interacted with my wife, so that put us on the rocks. I didn't even really spend time with my son. I would just hold him every now and then I would feed him, but I separated myself from every other life form around me, and that was where I've started spiraling, because I would sit there with the lights off, watching YouTube videos and trying to numb the pain by just laughing. Trying to numb the pain by just laughing. But that's where I was, and those were some of the actions and thoughts that I had, and I didn't at that time have the right people around me to just give me the inspiration to try again.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And a lot of people and that's part of depression is isolation. You don't want to be around people, you don't want to have to interact with them, you don't want 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 a depressive state. So what did you do to get out of that state? What happened?
Speaker 3:That's a great question. So I started working another job. I was actually working at the post office. I was the mail carrier. So if you ever got something delivered or not delivered, I was the guy messing that up, but carrier. So if you ever got something delivered or not delivered, I was the guy messing that up. But what happened?
Speaker 3:This was a part-time role and I remember coming home one day and my wife was in bed and she goes hey, steve, and I applied you for this job. And she turns the computer around. She goes I just feel like you're going to get this job. And now, mind you, the way that I grew up is you either had to know somebody or you had to have a degree, and I had neither. So when she's showing me this job posting it is a full-time role, more money than ever made and I'm sitting there looking at it and go okay, just, some of the requirements is I have to have a degree and I go I don't have that. Some of the requirements was and at least in my mind, this is what I quantified it, as is that I needed to know somebody and it's like I don't know anyone in this organization. So I didn't believe her.
Speaker 3:I went and actually interviewed for another job, and this one was a sales role at zero sales experience, but they offered it to me anyways and I didn't believe in myself enough to take that job. I went to this other one that she, she, had signed me up for and they told me this would be the hardest job you've ever done. And they gave me examples of people who used to lay bricks and they would come to that job and say I've never done anything harder than this construction workers, the nines and I said yeah, okay, and so they gave me the job on the spot. I ended up coming back in the next week and, because of how much money I was making per hour, we were able to move out of the basement.
Speaker 3:We moved into this little place. I like to call the house on the wrong side of the train tracks because there's tiny home right next to the train tracks and right next to a crossing. So every time a train would come by, the house would rattle, the the horns would blast, but it was hours and I wasn't in a basement and that that is what got me out. But I'll never forget the mindset I had then. I remember crying every day going to work because I was working 16 hours immediately wow and what kind of job was this?
Speaker 2:What kind of job was this?
Speaker 3:So it was a warehousing role and it was where I was loading pallets and that you left when the job was done. It didn't matter if that was eight hours or 18 hours, which is a real example. One day we worked 21 hours straight, wow. So I remember standing at the door, I would close the door behind me, going to get in the car, and I would cry and say, but I have to do this, there was not an option. So, because there was no option but to do, I kept showing up and that was the beginning of Me getting out of that mindset of just being in a depressive state and me learning who I actually was. I think there was an air of can I actually do this? I had never been put in a situation like it, so to see myself push through pain where a lot of times I quit because there was no other option, that taught me some valuable lessons.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's so many lessons right in there. If you are in that depressive state, the best thing you can do is take action, even if it's the wrong action, but at least it's action and you're moving forward. And you took the view. Obviously you had talked about perhaps committing suicide, but you obviously made the decision that wasn't an option. So you had no choice other than go to this job. That sucked, you hated it, but it got you out of where you were and toward where you wanted to go to. This job. That sucked, you hated it, but it got you out of where you were and toward where you wanted to go to. And that sounds like that was your mental state at the time.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Excellent, so you're going to this job, and what happened from there?
Speaker 3: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 job like it and it was absolutely the hardest job I'd ever done. But there was an instance that I'll never forget, which is I'm driving down one of the aisles because we're running around on these electric pallet jacks and my boss comes up to me and he goes hey, steven, I see how hard you're working and I want you to know that you can move up in this company. And I went no, I actually said this out loud to him. I said no, I can't. I said I don't have a degree, I don't know anyone, so the likelihood of me moving up is it'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 harder than everyone else and I learned as much as I possibly could. And I said really. And he said yes.
Speaker 3:And so I started showing up an hour early and leaving an hour late every day so I could learn something new whether that was learning how to drive a forklift, whether that was learning how to take notes on a piece of paper, being able to unload trucks, to understand what is that whole process, staying late, so we could count all the breakage that we had. Whatever it took, I was all in. And all of a sudden though this is one caveat that I want to give the listeners the job went from being something I hated to something I loved because I saw possibilities. I think that this has been the anchor for my life is the anchor for my life is to be able to keep your hopes up and be optimistic. But how are you going to keep your hopes up and be optimistic if you're not optimistic for a future, a better future than you have today?
Speaker 3:So when he gave me that one piece of advice that gave me an anchor to say that's a better future than where I am right now, so that means the discrepancy between where I am, and that is hard work and learning. So if I don't have the knowledge yet, how do I acquire it? Let me talk to everyone and get the knowledge that I need. Let me shadow whoever I have to. If I have to come in early, if I have to stay in late, what is the requirements for me to get that and that was by far the greatest lesson that I learned working at Pepsi. That was where I was PepsiCo.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, that's a great company to be working for. It sounds like the bottom line is you found some sort of a vision that gave you hope, hope for a different future, and if people have hope, well then they're willing to work for it, but they have to have that hope. So, again for the listeners find hope, it's out there. Find something you want to do, something you dream of doing, 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 you get out of where you were and really start moving forward? What do you think it was?
Speaker 3:So piggybacking on what I was just saying. The reason why that drove me so much was it gave me the opportunity to go through hardship, but not see it that way, one of the things that I'm sure there's a listener right now that goes, steven, that's great for you, but you don't understand what I've been through and you don't know what I'm going through right now, currently and that may be true. You'd be surprised if we sat down and had a conversation the things that I have been through. But what I would say to you is don't talk yourself out of it.
Speaker 3:A lot of times we don't allow ourselves to dream. So we will sit there and we'll see the people with the mansions and the cars and the successful business, or maybe they'll see someone who's in the C-suite and say that's just not me, but you're not allowing yourself the freedom to dream. And if you can allow yourself the freedom to dream of a better future instead of talking yourself out as you go, okay, what would I have to learn? Just ask yourself a better question. The life will answer your question to the power of your question. So if you want a better answer, ask a better question. So for me, there was a gentleman that I saw was like this is the guy I have to win over, and it was not my boss. There was someone one level above me who he knew everything about the company.
Speaker 3:He had been there for 11 years. He understood all the systems and processes and I went okay, this is the guy. And that guy, from day one, hated everyone. He would cuss me out I mean literally cuss me out every time I tried to come by him. He was an older gentleman and he would. He would cuss me out every single day and I'll just say, hey, how are you? Oh, it's so great to see you. How's your day going? And he would cuss me out. And I did that. I persisted and a lot of people would quit when somebody does them wrong. Once For me, I saw him as the opportunity for me to continue to advance and I could see that, hey, no, everyone else, this deters them, but it will not deter me.
Speaker 2:And it was fascinating. I got to jump in because that's so beautiful, so many other people would go. That's it. I quit. And it's his fault. It's his fault, no, it's your fault. If you decide to quit when something like that is going on, don't try to blame it on somebody else or some other situation or whatever. You have the choice to move forward or do not move forward. You, stephen, chose to move forward. There's a story damn the torpedoes 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 that out. Keep on going.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So for me, I just continued to persist, 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 you mind showing me this, this and this? And every single time he would cuss me out. But what ended up happening in the because I was only there a year before I ended up moving up and moving to a whole different state inside of the same company is he became? I became basically his best friend because I continued to persist.
Speaker 3:And the thing is is he would tell 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 that this is. That was a beautiful example of a mentor mentee relationship.
Speaker 3:The mentor may be someone who you're looking up to and you're trying to get in contact with them and you're trying to get around them and they are not giving you any time of day, but what happens when they do? I think most people who are looking for mentors. These days they find them on the internet. They'll see them in their local city 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 when the mentor says, hey, I want you to do this, this and this, they just look at them and they freeze up For me.
Speaker 3:He gave me one thing and I would execute to the number that he would tell me to do every single time. And because of that, as he saw, oh, this guy, he's listening to me, he's doing it, he's not treating me like everyone else is treating me. He actually is hungry to learn. And that built our relationship to where he was showing me stuff that he showed no one else I knew more than my bosses did. Because of that one relationship and that helped me move up to that. That one relationship helped me go from Tennessee, where I was moved 14 hours away, a thousand miles, to Fort Worth, texas, and then in eight months which is you're supposed to be in a role a year, in eight months I moved up again, all because of this one relationship that I persisted with.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's so important because I you are so right. You know people reach out to me you know as well and want to. You know, get advice and everything, but then don't bother following it. And one of my things is you know, 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 things for again, for the listeners there find a mentor. You know, that's great. Find a mentor, but be willing to work and do what they say. Don't just oh yeah, but that's for you, that's not for me, or I can't do it because, or whatever. You didn't do any of that garbage. You took what he said and you ran with it to the letter and therefore he knew his time with you wasn't wasted and kept giving you more and kept giving you more. So you're moving up.
Speaker 3:You're moving up very quickly in the company. What happened next? So I move up and I take over the 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 you want to move up, here's this opportunity. No one else wants it, but if you want it you can have it. And I said done because this is something I've carried throughout my life is I'm willing to bet on me. And the only reason I was willing to bet on me is I know who I am. I know the amount of time I put in, I know the amount of skills and knowledge that I have, so I didn't doubt that I could do it. And again, that's something for everyone.
Speaker 3:Listening is the reason why you feel uncomfortable when you finally get the things that you've been asking for, the things you've been praying for, is you haven't actually prepared. There's a level of preparation that goes into the destination that you're looking to get to. So when I got to that destination, because of my preparation, I turned that place from the worst in the region to the best in six months. Wow, and it was not a seamless process. I'm 24 years old. No one had ever shown me how to do this. I pieced it all together, but the 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.
Speaker 3:So I stayed on the floor with them for 14 to 16 hours, asking each and every one of them what is the one thing you like about working here? Well, I like this one thing. What is the thing that, if I fix it tomorrow, would make you love working here? Oh well, if you could just fix this, and I would conglomerate all their answers and I would figure out the top three to five things. That's like, if I can solve these, the whole workplace gets better. And I would take those three to five things to then my superiors and say, hey, can I do this, can I fix these? And they gave me the freedom to fix them.
Speaker 3:And then, once they saw that I wasn't just talking, I wasn't just a talking head walking around, that, a, I would listen to them and implement change. But B is, I would do the job with them. I was willing to put on the gloves, I was willing to pick up the cases, I was willing to pick up the pallets. I did what they did so they knew if I asked them to do something it was not coming from a place I wouldn't do it myself, and those two key pieces was what turned that whole location, gave me the best net promoter score of any supervisor in the region, helped us have a seamless running warehouse that I took over again at 24 years old was just from listening and asking better questions and then actually implementing and staying on the floor and doing the actions with my guys.
Speaker 2:Well, and that last part, your leadership is always by example. Good or bad Leadership is always by example. And you are doing true leadership. Not boss, you are a leader and that makes all the difference in the world when they see that you're willing to go where they're going, but then also, like we were saying the other direction, you are listening to them and taking action on it. So if you didn't, why even bother talking to this guy? It's just yet another, like you said, 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 the position that you used to be in. You never know what's going on in somebody's life and then somebody comes and makes a difference in their life and you don't know what you pulled them out of in the process of building your own career.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually do know two stories, because I've always been the one where if I learned something, I want to turn around and immediately help the next person up, because that's actually I didn't realize that at the time, but that's the way for you to learn even faster is being able to teach it. So as soon as I would learn a concept, 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, I'm going to do that for others, and immediately I did. There was a gentleman that he and 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 to share, so I'm not going to share it. I was able to work with him to help him understand his role and what was going on, instead of him just casting the blame on his wife. They ended up reconciling and they're still together to this day, to my knowledge. So that was, and this was years and years ago.
Speaker 3:Another person that I remember very well was he was a Marine. He is a Marine and he was talking to me and he goes how can there be a God if there's death? And I remember he asked this in front of everyone and, because of where we were in Texas, majority of the guys turned against him because they were all Christians. They went to church and for me, just hearing him out, instead of questioning him, instead of saying 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 to hear your side of it. And he came from a place where he had seen so much death and he had gone through so much and no one had been there for him. So me just being able to show up and not try to convince him otherwise, but just be present with him gave him the freedom to ask himself well, there's one person who cares for me, and that is again, even with me being on the podcast.
Speaker 3:I want you, if you're listening to this, if you had the strength to pick up your phone and listen to this podcast today and you go. I don't feel like anyone cares. Let me be the voice of reason that comes through that says I care. Whoever you are. Wherever you are, I care for you, and I mean that you are not broken, you're not alone, and this is not the end of your story. You may feel like you're at the end of your rope and you don't have choices, but that is not today. Just one more day. What can you do today that helps you have a better?
Speaker 2:tomorrow, amen, amen. And that's exactly why I do this podcast, the Comeback Chronicles because I care too. I care about people who are like you, who are like me, who are coming from a spot that wasn't Silver Spoon. It wasn't we had everything going for us all the time, but rather we went through our own. We all went through our own tragedies and setbacks and disappointments and dark thoughts and everything else and came back from them. And yeah, thank you for saying that, stephen. I appreciate that. We care. That's why we're here for you right now. So you're screaming up the ladder here. You're doing amazing things. What came next?
Speaker 3:So what ends up happening is now we're making enough money where my wife is able to stay home, and that was something that she had always wanted to do At least she thought. My wife, for context is one of the smartest, hardest working people I know, period Bar none to this day. And what happened was very shortly I come home again I'm still working 14 hours this is early on in my career being over this entire warehouse, and she goes Steven, there's only so much cleaning and Netflix that I can watch. And I go great, but we're making enough money for you to stay home. And she goes. I hate it, I want to do something else. And I said nope. And what was fascinating is she did what I call the cardinal sin. She made a post on Facebook talking about how she didn't like her life and, luckily, the person who saw that was my mom, and my mom has done quite a few different business ventures throughout my life. And so she reached out to my wife and she goes hey, I'm doing this Amazon thing, would you be interested in checking it out? So they sit down, they kind of go through it. She tells my wife hey, let me know.
Speaker 3:Monday this was on a Friday and my wife talks to me. When I come home, I tell my wife absolutely not, we are not doing that, because why would we invest 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 mom something I said. Well, tell her no. And she goes. Well, I'll let her know. On Monday, and she gets really sick. Monday rolls around, she calls my 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 with your mom. And I go. I go. What the heck? And I was the model of an unsupportive husband. So if you're listening to this and you go, hey, I just don't understand what my wife is doing X, y and Z and you're not the supportive role model. Trust me, I've been there.
Speaker 2:Or husband or whatever yeah. Or friend, or or or yes.
Speaker 3:I was 100% not supportive in the slightest. But the thing that changed it all for me was I came home one day and I'd worked 14 hours and she was up working. I go to bed, I wake up and she's up working and I go, all right. So let me do the math If, if this is what I think it is, that means she's worked at least 17 plus. So even though the money hasn't hasn't come into the bank account yet, she is outworking me. And that's when I fully started supporting her and I watched her go from someone that would cry anytime she get a one star review or she would get a return to two.
Speaker 3:Within a year. That business went from zero to over a million dollars, six employees Wow, I came in on the tail end of it. So I still put it on my LinkedIn and stuff because I helped out a little bit, but she did 99.9% of it. What was interesting is because we had no business skills and is the company revenue wise, was great A million top line. Bottom line was less than a hundred thousand dollars. So our margins were not good and I always want to preface that when I'm talking to people, because a lot of people will talk about the top line number and people who haven't been in business very long they don't understand. There's a bottom line number and the bottom line number is what actually shows up in your account. And for us, since my mom was our capital backer, she took a portion of that money, so we really made less than what I was making being a supervisor, but that was the key to unlocking me coming into business. 2020 happens. We're going through COVID all of us and in the middle of that, we're restructuring this entire company. So we're not doing near the numbers.
Speaker 3:But in May of 2020, I started having anxiety attacks for the first time in my life. So you've heard it. I've detailed it in this podcast interview about what I was going through my whole life. You've heard it. I've detailed it in this podcast interview about what I was going through my whole life.
Speaker 3:So here I am sitting, at 26 years old 25 at the time, I believe and I am going through such bad anxiety attacks that I can't breathe. I'm crying every time I'm on my way to work. Wow. And I remember one day I pull up to the stoplight and I say because for me, faith is a big part of my life, and I said, lord, don't take this from me. This is an opportunity for my faith to be tested, because faith untested can't be trusted. And I will never forget the day I drove in, I went to work and I go inside and I'm talking to my immediate supervisor, who he was over the sales portion. I was over the warehouse portion and I told him. I said, hey, I'm having these really bad anxiety attacks to the point that I can't breathe and I start crying in front of him. Wow, I never cried in front of another man in my whole life.
Speaker 3:I'm crying in front of him and he goes hey, we'll get through this. And then he walks off and I go that's not helpful in the slightest. That helps me none. And so very shortly June 26 of 2020, 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 right there next to me and he wanted me to stay on to help him transition in, and he was probably the worst boss I ever had. And so I told him I said there's no, no relational equity here. I'm out. So I left that role and then I was fully in the business after that.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow. That's amazing and, I think, also helpful for everybody to understand. These feelings happen to other people as well. Sometimes we think when we're going 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 than you think. So don't feel alone, don't feel isolated. Don't feel like there's something wrong with you. There's not. It can be natural. But do something about it. Find help, change your circumstances. Don't wallow in it. Take action like we talked about before. So now you're back in business, back in business with your wife. And what happened next?
Speaker 2:We're running a little low on time, but I want to finish this story. This is great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this is where it picks up. We pick up speed quite a bit here because with the business is very shortly after I come home because we're doing Amazon. Amazon shuts us down, so we are get shut down. We were doing wholesale.
Speaker 3: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't sell this and we're going to shut you down. For those who don't know about Amazon is Amazon. They shut you down and they hold all your sales money period. You never get it out.
Speaker 3:So what happened to us is I come home, I cashed in my 401k, I was all in, I pushed all my chips to the middle of the table and now I'm sitting there $100,000 in debt and no income. And I went now, what? And it's like now, what do I do? So I remember we cried, we prayed, we tried to liquidate, we did everything, and then, a few months later, we ended up stumbling across a Facebook video, a Facebook post that talked about how Facebook Marketplace was coming out with shipping, and so we said, hey, let's give it a shot. So we put up some inventory on Facebook Marketplace. It starts selling. 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.
Speaker 3:And then we ended up going from zero to $5,000 profit within the first 30 days, then by the end of 2020, we actually were able to help 3,700 privileged kids have Christmas. Wow, then within six months, we're doing $100,000 in top line. By the end of 2021, we do over a million dollars in sales, able to help 133 underprivileged kids have Christmas. Both of those years combined was about $50,000 that we were able to give back into my hometown of Chattanooga, tennessee. We actually got to see all the kids, meet the kids. We actually knew people in the school system that helped us figure out who needed the funds the most.
Speaker 3:And what we did is we went and bought all the presents, we wrapped them all. We actually had a warehouse management system in our buddy's basement. We were Santa and his elves in 2021. 2022, we're still up and up. And then that's where we really decided and it was actually in March of 2022, we decided to shift and start working with other brands, start working with other businesses. But yeah, I mean that was the story of transition from Pepsi into Amazon and then everything else afterwards. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:Wow, and now your own thing and that's and I think that's fantastic from where you were to where you're at now, which, of course, is what this show is all about, and I appreciate you sharing all that. I mean that's a lot to share and I realize that, and a lot of times us tough guys like to keep to ourselves, so I appreciate your sacrifice and your honesty there. Any last minutes before we have to call time on this, what would you like to share with people?
Speaker 3:The same thing I shared just a few minutes ago, and just reiterating a couple of key points is one if you feel alone, you're not alone. Whether we've met in person or this is the first time you've ever heard my voice, I want you to know that I'm here, that you have someone in this world who believes in you. Whatever you're doing right now, I believe in you. Secondly is what that means from my perspective is what are you hopeful for? How can you get your hopes up? What does that actually look like? Can you map that? Can you see the beast that you want to sit on? No-transcript? How can you quantify what is actually happening? What is my next best step? Do I need to go talk to 10 more people and see is this business even viable? Am I okay letting this thing go and understand? This isn't my identity.
Speaker 3:If you failed, failure is not your identity. Things can fail all the time. The people who win the most are actually the ones who lose the most too, because they're willing to lose to win. Most people who lose once like me being in that basement, I lost once and thought that I was a failure. I labeled myself a thing. So if that's you and you're listening and you've labeled yourself something. Remove that label, trust in a better future, a better tomorrow, and figure out your next best one step. I'm not asking you to make the whole game plan, but what is your next one step?
Speaker 2:And taking that one step will make you feel better right there, because you are now taking control, and that's what a lot of it is is. You feel like you don't have the control. Other things have control over you. By taking that, doing exactly what Stephen said, coming up with whatever small plan it is and taking that step brings you back to control. So, as we close up, that's what I would just say for you to do Listen to everything Stephen said, go back, listen to this again there's so many nuggets in there and apply this. Take back control, take action and you can have your own Comeback Chronicle. Thanks so much, stephen. Comeback Chronicle, thanks so much, stephen.
Speaker 1:So that's it for today's episode of the Comeback Chronicles. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and subscribe to the show 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 terrielfawesomecom to pick up your free gifts and so much more. We'll see you next week on the Comeback Chronicles podcast.