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Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
Breaking the Rules of Ecom Growth with Steven Pemberton
What happens when the safety of a corporate job no longer aligns with your deepest aspirations? Steven Pemberton faced this crossroads in 2020 when anxiety attacks signaled he needed a dramatic change. Despite being on track for a six-figure salary as one of the youngest managers at a Fortune 100 company, Steven took the leap into full-time entrepreneurship—only to have Amazon shut down his account shortly after, leaving him $100,000 in debt with a warehouse full of unsellable inventory.
Rather than retreating to corporate security, Steven and his wife pivoted to Shopify with Facebook Marketplace as their acquisition channel. The results speak volumes: from $5,000 in their first month to over a million dollars annually within 18 months. Along the way, they've built Elevatum, an e-commerce growth consultancy helping brands scale holistically, while creating a giving program that provided Christmas for 137 underprivileged children.
Steven offers refreshingly practical advice on entrepreneurial resilience: "You can have emotions—they're like warning lights on your dashboard indicating problems—but you're still holding the steering wheel." He emphasizes the power of systems over individual effort, sharing how they automated their seven-figure business through strategic delegation and spreadsheets before incorporating AI tools that now supercharge their decision-making and client analysis.
For those considering a business partnership with their spouse, Steven reveals how complementary roles became their secret weapon—he handles vision and marketing as CEO while his wife excels at systems and operations as COO. The mindset revelation that transformed their approach? Understanding that building a business for impact beyond personal financial needs eliminates the dangerous plateau many entrepreneurs hit when bills are covered but growth stagnates. As Steven puts it, "The amount of good you can do with a million-dollar business is just a small fraction of what you could do with a $10 million business."
Ready to break free from limited thinking and build a business that scales beyond your personal capacity? Discover the mindset shifts, strategic pivots, and practical tools that can transform your entrepreneurial journey today.
How to connect with Steven?
Website: https://elevatum.digital/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@stevenkpemberton
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenkpemberton/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skpemberton/
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of Firing the man podcast, the show for entrepreneurs, dreamers and doers who are ready to take control of their future. Today, we are interviewing Steven Pemberton. Steven quit his job in 2020 after feeling led into business. Steven and his wife have built two seven-figure e-commerce businesses generating millions in sales. Today, they own and operate Elevatum, an e-commerce growth consultancy, helping brands from startups to $50 million in revenue scale holistically. Stephen is also the voice of Voice Like a Lion podcast. If you're feeling stuck, uncertain or just in a need of a little inspiration, this episode is for you. Stephen, welcome to the show. Hey, david, thank you so much for having me, absolutely, absolutely. So let's start off to set the table your path. A little bit about your path in the entrepreneurial world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a little bit about my path in the entrepreneurial world. I remember my first ever endeavor I guess we would say into business was early, early on in my marriage. So I've been married for almost 12 years now and early on we knew we had our son on the way. My wife decided hey, steven, look, it's great that our son's on the way, but I don't want to go back to work and, mind you, I'm making $13 an hour, so there's not really a way for us to make that work. And I said great, but you're going to have to figure something out. And she starts running a business online and at this time I'd never seen anyone do it, and especially no one do it successfully.
Speaker 3:Not saying that this one has a happy ending, but it was amazing as I started watching her go from zero to making $500 a month. And I went well, you can make money online and not have to go to a job, because at this time I was working in a warehouse. So I said you know what's better than one person doing it? Two heads are better than one. So I jumped out of my job, we went fully into business and, of course, I'm 20 years old, so I'm 20 at that time and we lost I really, really fast. We had no capital, no runway and no skills, so it was bad, but that was my first ever endeavor into entrepreneurship was 11 years ago.
Speaker 2:Very nice, very nice, and most some people, after having not a great first experience, would run for the Hills, but it sounds like you doubled down and continued on this path, so can you talk through that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so actually I did not 100% ran for the hills, but the way we ended up coming back around and why I'm here today is in 2018. So this is years later. I had been working in a full-time job been working for the man, as we would say and I had gone up the chain of command really quickly. I started out at the bottom, I had no degrees, I had no connections, and I worked my way up. I was one of the youngest managers in the Fortune 100 company and I was just getting able to take over my own location. And so I'm taking over my own location in East Texas and my wife she's a stay-at-home mom. So we actually come full circle on that story and my wife being someone who is the most hardworking, most intelligent person I know, I knew that would probably not last long. And so she eventually tells me. She says, Steven, I just don't feel fulfilled. There's only so much Netflix and so much cleaning I can do so, of course, she makes like the cardinal sin that we always tell everyone not to make, which is to post that on Facebook. So she posts that whole spiel on Facebook. Luckily, my mom reaches out to her and says, hey, I'm doing this Amazon thing, Would you be interested in it? So they get on a call, they talk through it, and my wife comes to me hey, what do you think about this, this Amazon thing? And I said, absolutely not. I am finally moving up the chain of command. I'm so close to getting a six figure raise. Why would we do that? It's like we have the life I always thought I wanted to live, because I just wanted to be middle class back then and I remember she said okay, and she did anyways, and so that was our endeavor. Back into it was it was all her, and she went back into it.
Speaker 3:This was early 2018. And it was incredible to watch her go from zero, like she would cry when somebody would leave a one-star review or when we would get a return or a chargeback to in the first year. It ended up going from zero to over a million dollars a year. We had six employees. It was incredible and that was when I went wait, now this is real. This isn't $500 a month Now. Granted, I always love to tell this part. Those profit margins were terrible. They were less than 10%. But the fact that it was possible so there's a million dollars came into this business. I realized working this job, it's like I don't have to do this forever. There's a better way.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so what happens next?
Speaker 3:So the way that that plays out, 2020 happens. Everyone knows how 2020 goes, but in 2020, so 2019 ends, we roll in 2020. I decide I'm going to be more involved with her in the business. So what happens is I come in and I restructure the whole thing because profit margins were terrible and I said, if we did half the revenue but double the profit margins, we make the same money with a lot less transactions and less overhead, because we're not going to have to have as many people. So I come in, I start doing that, covid hits, everything goes down the drain at the wrong time and in May of 2020, so now this business, this dream that I had seen in front of me, is starting to go away. In May of 2020, I'm sitting there and I started having anxiety attacks, and this is the first time ever. And even earlier in this podcast I talked about losing everything at 20 years old, with a brand new wife and a brand new baby on the way. And what was fascinating is I started having these anxiety attacks because I'm sitting there and I'm looking at my job and I don't see how I'm going to be able to continue to progress, and I'm looking at the business and I don't see a way out. So now I feel stuck. So in June of 2020, I just made a decision. I said you know what? I can either stay like this or I can quit. So that's when I fired the man and I said I'm out of this and I went into business full time.
Speaker 3:Now, it was not a Cinderella story early on, because a couple of months later, amazon ended up shutting us down. And them shutting us down was because we actually spent $15,000 with this guy. He was pretty big in the wholesale space and he started selling his own laws. So he had these connections with brands. He would buy from them and then he would resell them to us. So we thought, okay, cool, we can get this. There's only one person on the buy box that we're going to crush. Little did we know that there's this thing called brand security. They're the only ones allowed to sell that. So we buy $15,000. We get set down. We're $100,000 in debt, all this inventory and I'm going. I just quit my job. There's no income. What are we going to do?
Speaker 3:And that's when we ended up pivoting and we started our own Shopify brand. Facebook Marketplace and Shops was our main acquisition channel, and I remember the first month running that this was a couple months after getting shut down we tried everything in between. We tried just like, hey, man, look, we will give this thing away if you give me $5 for this whole lot of stuff. But we ended up pivoting over in that first month on Facebook and with that Shopify store, we made $5,000. And I went, oh wait, this might be a thing. And then by the end of 2020, we were doing about 10, 20,000. We're doing a little over $10,000 a month. We were able to help 37 underprivileged kids have Christmas Within six months from starting the business. We're doing $100,000 a month. And then by the end of 2021, that business was over a million dollars a year. We were able to help 137 kids have a Christmas and that was just like the most incredible thing, because we're able to give back in the process.
Speaker 2:But that was kind of the full moment where I went. Entrepreneurship is actually something.
Speaker 1:I can do full time Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I love it, and one thing about your story that I've taken note of is that you kept running up against a wall and then busting through it and pivoting and continuing forward, and I think that's something that a lot of people their first try doesn't work, their second try doesn't work, but those who are persistent tend to be rewarded. And so my next question is about selling on. Your experience is selling on Amazon, and your experience is selling on Shopify, and, admittedly, I'm an Amazon guy. I've sold on Amazon for a while and I'm a big fan of that marketplace. However, you had mentioned a couple of things that are very familiar to me tight margins, the ability for your account to be closed down, and so what has that pivot felt like from a business owner perspective?
Speaker 3:Great question. So for me, it's two things, I think. The one thing is I personally not a huge fan of Amazon anymore for us. Personally, I think Amazon is incredible, depending on how you approach it. I mean it's the second, probably creeping up on the first most searched thing outside of Google, just because I mean you're going to check to see is it cheaper on Amazon, what's the reviews look like, all those things. So it's easy to get traffic if you know how to do it right.
Speaker 3:I think the thing that Shopify and Shopify is just the vehicle that we found, that's just the vessel. It could be WooCommerce, wordpress, whatever it is for you, but we found that if you know the right strategies there, it gives you a lot more freedom to make different choices. At least when we were selling on Amazon a few years ago, there wasn't an ability for me to control a customer list, so there's no way for me to upsell you. There's not a way for me to continue to email you, to have you in this flow, so I wasn't able to control the lifetime value of a customer, which to me, is that's like one of the most powerful levers you can pull in an e-commerce brand.
Speaker 3:So when we went over into Shopify, we were able to see oh, these people keep buying. This demographic of people are buying this one product, so they're in this place at this age, so we can just resell them to stuff just like this, we can cross sell them to something over here. And we just found that we're able to do a lot better job customer service wise, off of Amazon. But I think if you, then this is for anyone who has a brand let's say you're not on Amazon, and my opinion on it is once you have a pretty good footing, understanding who your demographic is, go on Amazon, because once you do, then that just becomes rocket fuel for your brand.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. Now there's a great Kevin Costner movie called Field of Dreams and there's a quote from that movie.
Speaker 3:If you build it they will come.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have learned that that does not necessarily apply to websites, and so I'm curious what has been? And I've had a lot of websites that I've built that no one showed up to, and I spent a ton of time making sure they look pretty and all of that, and so what have been? What have been? You know, you've obviously built it. How are you getting people to come to your website?
Speaker 3:So there's a couple of things. This is great. I love this because I talk about this. I just like when people bring that up because we have a few friends who's like well, you know, I built it. We're all the people it's like.
Speaker 3:But the question is is why did you build it? Because if you don't ask yourself why you're building something beforehand and who you want to sell it to, because realistically, you're not going to be able to sell to everyone this was one of my biggest fallacies when I first started in business is oh well, you know, if I build it, this thing's for everyone. Of course everyone wants home decor, because we sell home decor, it's like. Of course everyone's living somewhere, right, it's like. But that's not true. Not everyone is going to want your style, so you have to figure out who that is. I think building it and they will come is not as true anymore.
Speaker 3:Back in the day, if we're talking about back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, when you built it, it was normally a storefront. You had a big sign out front and people are going to be interested in coming in and checking it out nowadays because of the barrier to entry to creating a website is so low, especially now with things like ClickFunnels or GoHighLevel, anything like that. You can create a quote unquote website today and cheat. So what is going to set you apart is the most important thing what's the story behind it? Why is it different than Jimmy down the road doing the same thing? Jimmy could have the same exact product, but the story behind how you found it and the way you make it and the way that you help people with it is going to be different than Jimmy. And then on top of that is before you ever make the website, if you're able to go and talk to people about your products, there's going to be great information that comes in from that. You're going to be able to understand is this actually a need in the market? So, proving the market in the marketplace before you ever sell it, before you even have to create the website. If you can prove it in the marketplace before you build it, then what happens is you find a real need and you can find out like okay, so if I build this, you're going to buy this right. And if they say yeah, it's like okay, great, here here's my phone, sign up for this wait list. And so then you get them to give you money before you even build and you can start building with other people's money and that a little bit of the secret sauce. But really for me, if you already have the website and you're not sure why no one's coming to it, if no one knows about it, so you have to find a way to get out and start telling people about it, and whether that is in making your, making LinkedIn posts, making Instagram posts, tiktok there's so many social medias, there's so many ways to get your message out there and you just have to consistently do it.
Speaker 3:I think that people expect, especially in the beginning. If you're newer, you're trying to exit your job. This has been your side hustle and you're really hoping and praying this is the thing that'll get me out. Then you're hoping that it's like I'm going to go viral and this one viral post is going to drive a half a million dollars in sales and then I'll be able to exit my job and I'll be able to focus on the business. It's like, but realistically, it's these baby steps, it's these bricks that you consistently build that then will lead to you having a consistent flow of customers, because, let's say, that does happen.
Speaker 3:You go viral once and you bring in people that buy half a million dollars, are you even going to be able to fulfill that? First and foremost, that's a whole different problem. But then, secondly, it's like how do you keep that traffic? Because if you're always banking on viral, that's not realistic, because you're not always. Unless you can just manufacture viral content over and over, and over and over again, it's going to be a shot in the dark for you and you're hoping that lightning will strike twice. So you have to actually start building systems. Think in terms of systems instead of just one offs.
Speaker 2:Very nice, I like it. I like it. Now, this is a little bit of a off topic, but it relates to working with your wife and I'm going to give a backstory. So my wife is a counselor and she had an idea for online counseling before COVID. We built a platform and had an established platform pre-COVID. When COVID happened, every counselor in our area was getting laid off and I thought here we go, this is my eight-figure, nine-figure opportunity and I joke, but it's true, it's the only job I've ever been fired from. Me and my wife. We learned that we're a great husband and wife, but we are not great business partners, that we're a great husband and wife but we are not great business partners and we had different goals. And so we have opted to obviously continue that husband and wife role but have not done any joint ventures together. And so what for people listening that are thinking about doing something with their spouse? What advice would you give to them for navigating that and still being married at the end?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that part? That's a great question. So for me, one of the biggest things that, honestly, is luck. I think that that's something that doesn't get talked about quite enough in business content is there is an aspect of luck that goes into it. No matter how repeatable is, there is a there is an aspect of luck that goes into it. No matter how repeatable your systems are, there's an aspect of luck and for my wife and I, as we met on a job, so when my first job ever is where I met my wife, so we had to work around each other before we ever got married. So I actually knew her from a working standpoint before. I knew her in an intimate standpoint, so it made me. It made it much easier for us Now, granted the thing that I ran into.
Speaker 3:So if you're listening to this and you're working in a job and you're like, oh, I'm about to fire the man, and then my wife's already running a business and she's helping me in my side hustle, here's my one piece of advice is I remember when I quit my job and I was expecting I'm gonna hit the ground running. I came in she already ran this million dollar business and now I'm walking into it and she doesn't know how to train me. And then I don't know what to do. So I'm sitting there and there's no one telling me what to do. She's like oh yeah, you'll figure it out, just get in the business and go. And I went. I barely know how to turn this computer on, like what am I supposed to do? And I think what the biggest killer when it comes to spouses working together, especially before they walk into it, is unspoken expectations like that one. She just expected that I'd be able to pick it up, and for me, I expected that she would teach me. When neither of those things happened. Now we had this incongruency where I just started playing video games and then now she's mad at me because I'm not working the business, but she's not training me. So of course I can't work the business because I don't know what to do. And so this is where, if we would have had a little bit more time and, hopefully, wise counsel around us beforehand, to just say, hey, what are you guys expecting out of one another? And just setting that standard even now is a great example With the way the business is structured.
Speaker 3:Now with Elevatum, I'm the CEO. She was the CEO back then she's more the COO. That's what she loves. She loves building systems, she loves being able to talk to people and help put them in the right places, and she wants to see the little things move down through the workflows. And so, for me, I'm better at casting the vision for the business. I'm better at marketing the business. So we have distinctive roles and we understand the one cool thing we do let each other do. It's like if it's a big decision though that's whether for the business or our marriage we're going to come together and agree. If we don't agree on this like, hey, I want to go spend $20,000 for this mastermind, she goes. I don't think so. I think we'd be better off putting that in marketing. It's like, okay, let's go back and forth and just giving ourselves the space to hash that out. But that's a big one, it's just unspoken expectations.
Speaker 2:I like it. I like it. That's good marriage advice. Whether you're looking to go into business with your spouse or not, that's just rock solid advice. So when you were talking about your story, you had mentioned a lot of obstacles that you ran up against, and oftentimes those obstacles become huge learning lessons that you carry with you and cannot be learned in a textbook. You just have to walk a mile and make the mistakes. So my question to you is what's one big mistake that you made early on that you're still carrying with you?
Speaker 3:Oh, fantastic question. I think, to go along with what you were even just saying is I think that there's a place where learning ends and action begins, where, for me going back to the business, I'll go back to when Shopify really took off for us, which was just that first month, october 2020. I remember it very well. I'm sitting there. I still don't really know what to do. My wife and I are looking at each other. She really doesn't know what to do, but she has more skills than I do and I go. You know what? I'm just going to do something, and I think that this is where most early entrepreneurs get stuck.
Speaker 3:Is you run into this first? Really big problem. You don't see a way through it, you don't see a way around it. You don't know if it'll ever figure out. You'll ever figure out how to get through it, and so they quit. And the thing is, is that if you consistently show up and just pound your head against the wall, eventually you will get through the wall? And is that the best way?
Speaker 3:I think that this is a fallacy too. It's like work smarter, not harder. Sometimes you got to work smart and hard to be able to see the results that you're wishing for. So I mean, that was a big one, and I think another big one that I've had this one came over the last couple of years is there's been plenty of times like I just want to address the people who you're saying hey, steven, that's great that you're able to just keep going. It's like right now I'm just like chronically depressed and I just feel like I have no worth. I don't feel like I can do this. Been there many times.
Speaker 3:The thing I've realized because sometimes it just becomes this way is you can have emotions, and emotions are like warning flashing lights on indicator lights on your car.
Speaker 3:They're letting you know that there's a problem, but you're still holding the steering wheel. You get to decide what you do with it. So for me is I make the plan when I feel good, like okay, this is what I'm going to do, like this is how many reach outs I'm going to do, this is how many people I'm going to help. This is what it looks like, here's our fulfillables, here's the systems. And then, when things get tough, then for me is I don't follow my emotions to make the plan for me, I just follow the plan, and when I'm still doing it, I'm still grinding it out. I can sit there and cry over my keyboard, and for me is I'm still making progress, even though I don't feel like I can do enough to get the progress, to get the reward, to get the result I'm looking for. So I think that that's just been a big one is, I can move no matter how I feel.
Speaker 2:Okay, this may be an odd question, but how do you, when you make a plan, how are you documenting it and how are you like breaking it out into actionable steps?
Speaker 3:So this is going to be probably a little bit more. I wouldn't even say contrarian, that for me. The way I, if I have a vision for something I want to build is, then for me is I'm going to look in the marketplace and just see who else has done it and it's like, okay, they're doing it, they're doing it really well. How are they doing that? And then I'm just going to go look at their stuff to be honest, and then I'm going to type out everything that I'm thinking. I'm either going to type it out, make a voice note, record a video Usually it's a video now. So I'm almost like SOPing out and reverse engineering what I want. And then, after I do that, I throw it in chat, gpt, and it gives me this exact list of here's some tasks you want to do. And what I'll do is then I'll break up the task and say, okay, I put in the four quadrants. It's like is it urgent? Is it urgent and important? Then I need to handle that right now. Is it urgent but not important? It's like, okay, then I should probably schedule a time that I'm going to handle that Because it's urgent but it's not important. It's like, okay, is it important but it's not urgent, then I'm probably going to delegate that to someone else. And then is it not important, is it not urgent? Okay, then I'm just not going to do that.
Speaker 3:So for me, that's the best way. If they fall into these three quadrants that I'm going to work on them, then instead of delegating it to a person, I'm just gonna give it to a system and I'm gonna let the system software, ai agent, however you wanna call it I'm gonna let them handle it, and I'm trying to remove as much of the manual tasks as possible. Because what I've noticed for founders if you wanna go from zero to a million, if you want to get to a million to 10, you have to change the way you think. Now it's not just how much more can I do, because that's not realistic. It's not just how much more can you do. It's what kind of systems can you put in place to double, triple, quadruple what's happening in your business? Whether that's from acquisition, whether that's piece of the content, whatever it is that is bringing people into your business, whether that's better customer service, it's going to take people, it's going to take systems, processes. So now your ideas have to be monetized, not just your hands.
Speaker 2:I like it. I really like that, and I'm glad that you mentioned Chad, GPT and how you're using it as a business owner. I'm curious are there AIs changing the game? And in some ways, we're not sure how it's changing the game, we just witness it every day. Come out with something remarkable or a task that you know. I used to be really good at Excel. I, in fact, I had won a competition called the Hotkey Olympics where I built an Excel model without touching my mouse, which is super nerdy. I was a CPA a bunch of nerds but that I always felt like. You know, being good in Excel was something that was made me unique, and now with ChatGPT, those skills are obsolete and it's kind of a bummer, but it's also like a superpower. Now, with a good understanding of Excel, I can be a super user. With a good understanding of Excel, I can be a super user. But I always love talking to other business owners. How are you using AI right now and where are you seeing the biggest benefits?
Speaker 3:That is great. So there's a couple of different ones that I use in my business partner. So we brought on a business partner first outside business partner we've had into this business. We brought him on about a year ago. Business partner first outside business partner we've had into this business. We brought him on about a year ago. The way that we use AI is a couple of different ways. One is we will be on a. We actually met through a podcast so we recorded a podcast. It was forever and a day long. That was the longest podcast I've ever been on almost five hours.
Speaker 3:But what he did it is really smart. What he did with this is he took that whole podcast. He put it into Claude, and what Claude did is he said, ok, give me the psychoanalytics of who Stephen is. So it broke down. Who, like Claude, said, this is who I believe Stephen is, because he's talking about his childhood, he's talking about his traumas, he's talking about the good, the bad and ugly, and it built a, a persona, a portfolio of me, so then he's able to ask questions without having to come to me and say, ok, what do you? How do you think that Steven's going to respond if I bring him this change to the business. I go say, well, he will probably respond like this, and then he can shoot me a voice note and I'm able to make that response. And it's crazy how he's able to do that.
Speaker 3:And what's also interesting is he'll plug in we do this both. We do that. I do this with ChatGPT. He mainly uses Claude is. We'll plug in different personas of people. We really look up to that. We love their business content, whatever it is, and we will say, okay, you're going to be looking at this as the top lawyer, the top attorney in e-commerce.
Speaker 3:Here is a contract. Tell me where I'm missing it, tell me where there's the holes, where it's ambiguous, where we could be taken advantage of. What does this look like? And it's able to tell me with really eerie efficiency hey, this is what you're missing. This is what it should look like here. Restructure like this. Here's a better version.
Speaker 3:So I think that the power for AI for us and then now we're getting more into AI agents we built an AI agent that does a lot of outreach for us.
Speaker 3:So to LinkedIn, it puts them in our CRM and moves them through the opportunities so we know where they are is nurturing leads so, and there's people that are doing even crazier stuff than that, like they have AI that are going out and making calls and sound like humans and it's like that's. I haven't got there yet, but for me, the thing I love about chat, gbt or how my partner uses Claude, is because we've given it so much contextual data that when we come to and say, okay, look, this is the client we're working with, this is what we're dealing with, what do you see Like, what are you seeing out of this Is they'll bring all of us, because we plugged in so much of our speak and how we talk, and they'll bring all of these other personas in there too, from the people that we look up to, and it will say, okay, this is what you should see and what you should look at, and it's like, wow, this is incredible how efficient this thing is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm taking mental notes over here on how you're using it. One of the things that you brought up that I am not using it currently for, but will be after this podcast, is the blind spots, is seeing where your blind spots are, and I really like that as a way of using the tool, and so I also have one more thing, one that is so.
Speaker 3:This is. I'm going to give you two split pathways. One for, if you're a service-based provider, is when you're talking to someone like, let's say you're on a discovery call, it's 30 minutes, you get off the call, grab that recording and throw it in cloth, throw it in chat GBT, and say, okay, so how do you think, read this person's facial expressions, read how they're moving their hands, their body language had their inflection tones, no-transcript, and it's like, oh, I missed that. It can give you that and that's the thing. That's like a next level for service providers. Also, it's really good for clients. No-transcript wasn't just their inflection, they sat up a little straighter. So they're excited to make those changes. They're excited would do with reviews.
Speaker 3:You take all your five stars. You understand this, especially with Amazon, if you're looking to create a product, it's usually not going and looking at all the five star reviews or the one star reviews. It's like the two to three and the fours. So you take those two to three and the fours and you plug them in and say, okay, what do people really love about this? Well, they love X, y and Z. What do they not like? Well, they didn't like this and this and this. How would you fix that? Well, I would either get another customer service rep, I'd fix the packaging, I would do whatever it is and it's like it makes it to where it's very bullet pointed. Next steps this is what you should do.
Speaker 2:I used to spend entire Saturdays on product research, reading the one, twos and three star reviews and trying to come up with improvements for future product launches.
Speaker 2:It used to be something I dedicate an entire day to, and it is now a 30-minute exercise and that's probably at like the upper end, and so it reminds me a lot of steroids and baseball back when, like Mark McGuire, Sammy Sox era, where it just kind of puts a jet pack on the entrepreneur's back and allows them to work faster and more efficient and uh, and the amount of decisions you're able to make in a given day is is increases exponentially.
Speaker 2:So that's really neat. I always like talking to other people about how they're using AI, and I'm sure our listeners are going to take some great lessons out of that lessons out of that. So one thing I wanted to touch on is you talked about putting Christmas presents under the tree for, eventually, hundreds of families, and that's something that I think is outstanding and I commend you for it. It's also something that's typically not on the radar of someone growing and bootstrapping a company. They are trying to make payroll, they are trying to pay for inventory. It's tight, and so I'm curious what your experiences has been with that and how you were able to manage it while you were growing your business.
Speaker 3:That is a great question. So, before the realm of AI, when we are growing that company, the one thing that I've always been really good at is leadership. So I would say that that's actually one of my stronger abilities outside of marketing is how I can lead people. So what we did is we were able to automate our entire million dollar business through people and spreadsheets. So it's funny enough you're talking about Excel sheets, we were using Google sheets, but same difference. And so for us is we're able to automate that entire business by having people in it. So the people that are handling the customer service, people that are making sure that all the returns were handled, all the chargebacks were good, that every product was in, every order was good. We had a manager that was managing the people and then we could check in because of the way that we built the company, that we could check in every single day at the end of day and look at exactly what every person did, and because the manager was keeping track of them and they were all virtual. So for us it was really easy to keep up with. This is where we are. This is our profit margins. This is how much we made today. This will be actually made. This is how much we should expect in payouts and when. It should hit our account Easy.
Speaker 3:So when we it was actually my cousin, this was his brainchild the Christmas stuff, and he has shut it down for a couple of years, and I remember when we had so October of 2020, we've just launched this business. We finally are making enough to just like keep the lights on. And then so in November, I'm at his house for Thanksgiving and he mentions this. He said you know, it's just on my heart to get back into it. Maybe I can help a couple of kids. And I said you know what, whatever money you put into it, it's like if you decide to fire it up again, I'll give you a thousand dollars right now. And he said, really, and he went, and that time it's like, hey, we barely have an extra $1,000. We had debts to pay off everything else. And I remember he said, okay, I'm going to do it. So I gave him $1,000 and we fired it up and we were able to help 37 kids that first year. And I remember looking at him and we both looked at each other at the same time and said we're going to help 100 next year, and that 100 turned into 137.
Speaker 3:And what was cool about that was that year, because it was such a big task. Now we had a lot more capital to help him with that, but outside of that is we had to go enlist our friends, family, everyone. This guy was nice enough that he had an unfinished 2000 square foot basement. We turned that into a warehouse. We had to do literal warehouse management system on it. It was incredible, because we were spending $300 per family, like per kid, so it wasn't as if they're getting a toy. They were getting a full Christmas, and we found all the kids through the school system in Tennessee. We bought all the presents, wrapped them all and deliver them. We were Santa and his elves, so for us.
Speaker 3:What we noticed, though, is when you are able to build something that's not just for you, like early on in business. Yes, everyone needs to make payroll. You need to keep the lights on. You got to put food on the table. I get all that. You don't want your car repossessed, and if you're building for just you, you'll get to a point where your bills are covered and you go.
Speaker 3:You know what's the point of building beyond this, but if you can add a giving aspect in, really for two reasons.
Speaker 3:One, especially if it's customer facing, you're giving away for people to feel empowered to buy, outside of just your unique selling proposition.
Speaker 3:They get to look at that and go, okay, just like Bamba, bamba socks, you buy a pair of socks, we give a pair of socks. Oh, now I'm making a real impact. So, outside of just having nice socks, I'm also impacting someone who won't have socks and so you're giving the customer a way to be able to make that impact. But also for you, if you can go and touch and meet these people that you're impacting, it changes your whole perspective. It'll make you want to push and do more, because the amount of good that you can do with a million dollar business is literally one small fraction comparatively of what you could do with a $10 million business or a hundred million dollar business or a billion dollar business. Because if you're in the thing is, I've seen people they push to a certain point and they say, oh no, I'm good, it's like, but the people you want to impact, you're barely able to help them at this stage. If you get bigger, you can help more people and help them in a way different way.
Speaker 2:I really like that perspective, and you're absolutely right on hitting a personal plateau where all your bills are paid, and I think that's something that, whether it's conscious or not, definitely happens. And so, yeah, I can think of brands that I've done business with Tom's Shoes is a classic example of this where they make a great product and there's a giving aspect to it, and so there's instances where something can be great marketing and also like a good thing to do, just as a human being, and it's great when you can find opportunities for those two to overlap, and so I really like that, and I think that's something that, uh, when people are thinking about how do I grow my business, they're often thinking about email marketing or socials or things like that, and the giving aspect, I think, is something that is often not thought about enough, and so I'm glad we're able to highlight that Now. Stephen, this has been an outstanding interview. I feel like we could go on for hours. However, we have a section of the show called the fire round. It's four questions we ask every guest at the end of the interview Are you ready?
Speaker 2:I'm ready, all right, let's do it. What is your favorite book? Thinking Grow Rich, nice. What are your hobbies?
Speaker 3:Working out being a great husband and father, but probably if we're talking about real hobbies working out and pickleball.
Speaker 2:Very nice, very nice. What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man?
Speaker 3:For me. I don't know if there's anyone else out there, but I was working 14 to 16 hours a day. So I do not miss the fact that I had a boss who was not very nice, that I was working 14 to 16 hours a day and I had no control over that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree with that one as well. When you're self-employed, you at least get to pick which 14 or 16 hours you work. All right. And final question what do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
Speaker 3:Mindset Pretty easy answer to expound on that for 30 seconds is the only difference between somebody who goes from zero to a million, or a million to 10 million or 10 million to a hundred million is how they view the world, and I think that that is a very ambiguous high answer. To bring that down is if you don't think you can, you never will. So if you believe that it's possible for you, then you will at least try so and I think if you continue to show up, you continue to try, eventually you will break through.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. Now, Stephen, if people are interested in working with you or checking out your podcast, what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 3:LinkedIn. Linkedin is great. Steven K Pemberton is there Also. I kind of look like Aquaman just a little bit. So if you look for Steven, look for the guy who kind of looks like Aquaman. If you find a Steven who is not me and also kind of looks like Aquaman, please find me and send me a screenshot of that guy. He would probably be my best friend or my long lost twin that I don't know I have, so that's probably the best way to reach me.
Speaker 2:For those of you who are tuning in on audio, only Stephen does look like Aquaman. I can second that one, so let's go. Awesome, stephen. Thanks so much for your time and looking forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir.
