Last Updated on April 2, 2026 by Fly High Coaching
Scaling a business is something so many entrepreneurs dream about. You hear the word everywhere and it sounds exciting. But once you start digging in, it can feel confusing. So many business owners struggle with what scaling really means and how to grow without accidentally making everything harder.
In this episode, you will get real clarity on the essentials of scaling a business. Host and CEO Porschia sits down with Steven Pemberton for a warm, honest conversation about what healthy, smart growth actually looks like when you are the one leading it.
They break down the difference between having a strategy and having a plan, because they are not the same thing. They talk about why data matters when you are trying to make better decisions. And they open up about some of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when excitement pushes them to grow way too fast. You will also hear practical thoughts on mindset, leadership, and the systems that hold everything together when things get busy.
Steven Pemberton is an e-commerce entrepreneur, consultant, and growth strategist who has lived this journey himself. He and his wife built two, 7-figure, e-commerce businesses together, reaching over $4 million in sales. Now he leads Elevatum, a consultancy that helps brands scale in a more thoughtful, holistic way. He also hosts the Voice Like A Lion Podcast.
What you’ll learn:
- What scaling a business really means and why it is so much more than just making more money
- The difference between a strategy and a plan, and why you genuinely need both
- The biggest challenges entrepreneurs face when they start scaling a business
- Some of the essentials you really need, like staying focused on customers, watching your numbers, and making smarter decisions
- The common mistakes founders make when ego, guessing, or rushing get in the way of real growth
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Portia Parker Griffin, and I wanna welcome you to the Career 1 0 1 Podcast, a place for ambitious professionals and seasoned executives who want an edge in their career. We’re talking about all of the things you were never taught or told when it comes to career growth, development, and change.
Now let’s get into it.
Today we are talking about scaling a business with 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 over $4 million in sales. Today they own and operate Elevate, an e-commerce consultancy and growth agency, helping brands from 5 million to 25 million scale holistically.
Steven is [00:01:00] also the host of The Voice Like A Lion podcast. Hi Steven. How are you today?
Steven: I’m great, Portia. Thank you so much for having me.
Porschia: Absolutely. I’m excited to have you with us to discuss scaling a business, but first we wanna know a little more about you. So tell me about 7-year-old Steven.
Steven: 7-year-old Steven was way different than the 31-year-old Steven. So 7-year-old Steven is a complete contrast of who I am now 7-year-old. Me would never talk to anyone. I barely talked to my parents and I was the only child. So being an only child, I was the type of introvert where you could just stick me in a room in a corner, and I would be right there three hours later.
Doing whatever I was doing, reading a book, playing with Legos, and that’s who I was at seven. And it was very interesting to see the change that has happened over 24 years. But yeah, that was 7-year-old Steven, very introverted, hiding out in his room by himself. That was the epitome of an excellent day.
Porschia: Got it. I probably would’ve been with you Steven, because me in my books, [00:02:00] that was it. I’m an introvert. So I totally get it. So what did a 7-year-old Steven wanna be when he grew up?
Steven: Ooh. That’s actually really interesting because 7-year-old Steven, his box for what he thought life could be, there was never a moment where I was like, I’m gonna be an astronaut or I’m gonna be the president.
I never really saw that. So for me at that time, I. I actually just wanted to be, this is, I’ve actually never been asked this. I always wanted to work at a state park. Actually, one of my favorite things as a young child was going to battlefields. Living in the south, growing up in Tennessee, the civil war was a thing.
So going to the different battlefields, those was some of my best memories of my father. So that’s what I always wanted to do. I just wanted to be a park ranger. That was my, Hey, if I did this is success to me back then.
Porschia: I could definitely see how being a park ranger would’ve been fun.
So tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your business. [00:03:00]
Steven: So the biggest one for sure. I remember after we started a business, my wife and I, many years before I jumped into corporate, actually I was in corporate more or less. I was part-time working at the post office, but we started a business, failed that thing in less than three months.
So like pretty much record breaking how fast we failed a business. And in the meantime, being in this basement life was pretty tough. We ended up. I honestly got blessed with getting a full-time job working at another warehouse, and this was the beginning of my actual, what I would call quote unquote corporate career, and this was at PepsiCo.
So PepsiCo is a decent sized company and the most pivotal moment to me outside of the. The financial successes that come later was, I remember I just needed to put food on the table. I had a new wife. I had a new baby, and so I’m working as hard as humanly possible. I’m working 16 to 18 hours a day. And I remember having a boss come up to me and he said, Hey Steven, you know you can move up into this company?
And I said, yeah, it’s I don’t have a degree. I don’t know anyone here, which I thought was the prerequisites to [00:04:00] moving up in a company. And he said, all you have to do is work hard and learn. And this is something that’s carried on in not only in my career, but also in my entrepreneurial journey.
So what I did is I just started consuming knowledge and I would go and talk to everyone, Hey, how do you learn this? Hey, how do you work this piece of machinery? Hey I’ll come in an hour early. I’ll stay an hour later. Mind you, 16 to 18 hours on average at this time. So I was willing to put in the extra time, but that was the most pivotal moment to me, was that just breaking that mindset that I had to have certain prerequisites met for me to be able to actually achieve success.
Porschia: You said a lot of great things there. I really liked what you said about how that leader came to you and said, just work hard and learn. And it sounds like you internalized that. And, really put in even more time to learn. I. I also wanted to ask you about something else that you mentioned in your background, because I have read that I think it was like over 50% of entrepreneurs had at least one quote unquote failed [00:05:00] business.
Yeah. The business that they, have, took off. Do you agree with that? Have you seen that in your career?
Steven: Oh, yes, 100%. I mentioned it a little bit earlier, but. I was working part-time at the post office, and so my wife and I, we were pregnant with our son. And so our son comes along and she goes, Hey, I’m not going back to work.
And I went, okay, great. I’m making $13 an hour. I feel like you’re gonna have to do something. So she starts a business and by business, she’s doing A-A-M-L-M at the time. And I remember she starts making $500 a month from home. And at this time I was like. I didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t know you could make money online.
So I said, Hey, you know what’s better than just you doing it? How about let’s both do it? So I quit my job. We started doing this thing. I remember I’m trying to go to the mall and pass out flyers and do whatever I can to make sales and it, and I remember running into where this was just another belief that was broken.
For me was, I was always told if you want to get success, you gotta put your back against the wall and then you’ll come out swinging. I [00:06:00] put my back against the wall and I froze. And so this was one of those moments where it takes more than just losing everything for you to make progress. And so this was, again, this was one of those moments where.
It’s, I don’t have any skills. We don’t have any financial backing. There’s nothing I know how to do. So within 30 days, pretty much from the time that I fully committed to it, we were living in a basement. We lost everything, had to move out of a house, sold a car, like everything we could possibly do just to try to stay alive.
And so that was the first taste of business. And that’s what, and this was what I found to be really interesting again, is like who you surround yourself with. Because I was not surrounded by anyone else who was entrepreneurial minded. That kept me from going back into business for almost six years.
Actually, it was six and a half years. So that first quote, unquote failure, I deemed it as that. I quantified it as a failure, and so internally, I internalized that as I am a failure. So I never wanted to go back into business.
Porschia: So you [00:07:00] touched on a lot there. Thank you for sharing your story. I think it’s really important for people to be real and also understand entrepreneurship.
So I don’t know about you, but I’m not one of those coaches who says everyone should be an entrepreneur. I don’t think so at all. I think, certain people can be successful as entrepreneurs and I think other people are more successful as employees. Agreed. Yeah. Back in episode 33, we discussed developing an entrepreneurial mindset.
And I think you started touching on that, and we also talked about the employee mindset versus the entrepreneurial mindset. What is your definition of an entrepreneurial mindset?
Steven: For me, the way that I, I view it is even if you’re an employee, you can be an entrepreneur. So I think when you think of entrepreneur versus entrepreneur is there’s a level of.
Of complexity that comes with both of those. There’s also a level of responsibility. So if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s like, are you willing to be the janitor and the CEO? [00:08:00] So there’s a lot more that comes with it, especially nowadays, at least from my experience, entrepreneur is this glorified word. I’m an entrepreneur and the thing is that being an entrepreneur is not all the glitz and glamor that you see on Instagram or on TikTok these days.
There’s a lot of dark days that ends up quantifying what you would define as suc as success. So I think. Being able to understand when I talk to people, at least entrepreneurial mindset wise is are you creating something that’s gonna change more than just your family? Because if you’re looking to just make more money, ’cause you wanna take more vacations, or you want a nicer house, or you want to drive a better car, you can be an employee and accomplish all of that and not have any of the overhead, have none of the extra stress.
You can be an employee and get raises if you are actually wanting to create a different kind of culture where you’re able to have employees that you’re impacting their lives, changing their lives, you’re creating a product that changes your client’s lives or customer’s lives, depending if you are a service-based business or if you are a direct to consumer business.
When you start doing that’s more of the entrepreneurial mindset where you’re [00:09:00] getting outside of yourself. And I think that is the biggest difference. And also just looking at skillset. So for me, if you’re someone where you do better underneath of someone else, somebody directing you, then go be an entrepreneur.
You can still have the entrepreneurial mindset where it’s okay, I want to impact people. I wanna change people’s lives. But I don’t want to have to carry the overhead. I just want to help the leader as they lead, it’s okay, great. Then go be an entrepreneur. Find a, probably a startup, maybe a mid-size company that’s looking to hire in the C-Suite.
That’s an area that you can get into looking to into the Fortune one hundreds or things like that. They already have those kinds of people. So being able to dictate what is my skillset? Who am I? What am I really good at, is one thing to look at. But yeah, entrepreneurial mindset to me is a focus on others outside of yourself.
Porschia: I love that. I love that. Are you creating something beyond yourself? I think that’s a really important point that you mentioned. Steven, you told us a little bit about your background and your mindset. What motivated you and your wife to try it again, right? And start the [00:10:00] business that you have now?
Steven: So she did it. So the, I always love to tell this story specifically because my wife is the catalyst for this, but in 2017, towards the end of 2017, my, I moved up in my career. So now I’m over an entire location for PepsiCo. I’m actually over a location in east Texas, and I remember very vividly my wife we’re making enough money.
She’s a stay at home mom. She’s able to do all the things that she wants to, we’re able to take a vacation, all that. I remember coming home and she says, Steven, there’s only so much Netflix and so much cleaning I can do. And mind you, my wife is one of the hardest working people I know. She actually taught me what work actually is, and she’s one of the smartest people I know.
So her saying that was not a surprise to me, but I remember she did the cardinal sin, which was she put that up on Facebook and you just never do that, right? You just never put out your emotions on Facebook. It always goes sideways, but beautifully. My mom steps in. My mom has. Always been someone who’s at least endeavored, dipped her toes into different business ventures.
So [00:11:00] my mom comes to my wife and is Hey, I’m doing this Amazon thing. You want to check it out? So they get on a call on a Friday. My wife checks it out. She asked me, she’s Hey, Steven, so what do you think about this? Before she could even finish her sentence, I said no, absolutely not. Because we had finally got to this point where it’s okay, I’m literally months away from making a hundred thousand dollars a year.
This was my definition of success. And I thought, why would we do that? You’re, you can stay at home, you can have all the things that you want, and I’m about to get a raise and I’m just gonna keep climbing the ladder. And so Monday she needed to answer my mom. So a couple days later, she tells my mom, Hey, let’s do it.
So my wife starts this business, and I remember being the definition of an unsupportive spouse, and I was super unsupportive for a very long time. But the day that changed my life was, I worked 14 hours. So I’d come home after a 14 hour shift. She’s working. I go to bed, I wake up, she’s working, and I went, okay.
So theoretically, if she’s working after I go to sleep, she’s working before I’m awake. [00:12:00] She had to have worked probably 17 hours, if not more. And I went just because like it just happened in a moment. Just because the money hasn’t showed up in the bank account does not mean she’s not outworking me. And so when that shift happened, I started picking up a lot more around the house so she could focus on the business.
And what happened was she went from someone who would cry when she would get a one star review or would get a return or something happened on Amazon to where it, from the end, beginning of 2018 to the end of 2018, it went to a million dollar business. And so when that happened, the thing was that was 10% profit margins.
Again, my mom was our financial. Backers. So we didn’t make or keep a lot, but it was just an immediate change where I was like you can actually make real money with this. So for me, as in 2020, so then when I come in 2020, I start shifting things around because my background is supply chain and logistics.
So it’s like amazing. It works really well with e-commerce. And I’m also a manager, so I’m used to hiring people. I’m used to changing cultures. That’s what I got brought in to do. I was the person who came in when it was a dumpster [00:13:00] fire and turned the thing around when we’re talking about like corporate locations.
So for me, as I started doing that with us and our Amazon business, and as soon as I started doing that’s when Covid hit, but that’s how I got back into it.
Porschia: Wow. And as you were telling that story about your wife working before and after you, and then I’m thinking, and you guys had, at least one son at that point.
Yeah. I know that there was a lot of work going on in the house now. How did you and your wife decide to focus, on shifting to growth and scaling for other businesses and consulting through that?
Steven: So in 2020, again, COVID hits I, I will continue on the story, but in June of 2020, I decided to leave my job because in May I started having panic attacks.
I had never in my life had panic attacks. And even as you’ve heard in this episode, it’s like we started a business, lost everything, lived in the basement, have done a lot of different things, a lot of different ventures. This was the one moment where I felt completely [00:14:00] stuck is I didn’t feel as if that there was a way out for me.
So I just came to it, came to a head and I had to make a decision. And the decision was I’m gonna quit this job and I’m gonna go into business. So I come home and we’re still doing Amazon. I. Couple months later, Amazon shuts us down. So now we’re shut down a hundred thousand dollars in debt and there’s no revenue.
So I’m going, alright, cool. So I just quit. The only thing that was making us money and now we have no money at all, what is about to happen? And I. Two months later after crying, sitting in a corner, praying, doing all the things. We actually started our own Shopify store. Our main acquisitions channel was through Facebook Marketplace, Facebook shops, and that business went from zero to $5,000 in profit first month, then from $5,000 to $10,000 in the next month.
And then by the end of the year we were able to help 33 underprivileged kids have Christmas. Then by the end of 2021, it was again a seven figure business. We were able to help 137 kids have Christmas. That was about a $50,000 project. [00:15:00] ’cause we were actually going and finding all the kids in the school systems in Tennessee we’re making sure to buy them.
All the clothes, presents, everything, wrapping it all, had to do a whole warehouse management system for it. And we even delivered it. So we were saying themselves. So when 2022 happened, what we did was we went, okay, we have all this knowledge. We know how to get here. And what we did was we started focusing on how can we help other people?
So again, this was the mindset was, okay, we’ve climbed this part of the mountain, how can we turn back around and help the people who don’t know how to get there? So we first started with brick and mortar businesses, and that was a struggle, to be honest. ’cause these were people who had no website.
They didn’t understand why you would sell online. Why would I do that? I can just sell in person. And so that was interesting. Then we ended up shifting. Here was a period in time where we actually were running virtual events for other people, and at the same time working on helping them build a e-commerce brand.
And then we just went fully into we’re gonna help e-comm brands. And when we did that, it was half a million [00:16:00] dollars. Usually it was about startups to half a million. Then we went up from half a million to a million. Now we’re at 5 million to 25 million. But it was just from our own journey and seeing how there’s all these gaps and flaws and things that people don’t know how to do, that’s if we just turn around and give them these steps, they’ll be able to at least get here.
Porschia: Wow. I have a lot of thoughts, but I think one of the main ones, Steven, is that I’m sure throughout all of those trials and tribulations, you and your wife’s relationship grew and then also your business partnership group, right? What I’ve seen is. When there’s a couple in business, there’s a lot of dynamics going on there.
And some of them are similar on the business side when it comes to a business partnership, but in both of those scenarios, a lot of growth has to go on. So it sounds like that’s another undercurrent to what you were saying behind just the accolades and the accomplishments that you both achieved.
So Steven, I wanna talk a little bit about strategy [00:17:00] because I can tell that you and your wife are really good at strategy just based on how you were able to make some of these pivots in the business. So I think strategy is a word that gets thrown around a lot but I see that a lot of people don’t really know the difference between a strategy and a plan.
Can you explain what you think the difference is between a strategy and a plan?
The Career 1 0 1 Podcast is brought to you by Fly High Coaching, where we help our clients soar to their full potential. Entrepreneurs are setting out to achieve their business goals, but without the right support, it can be difficult, if not impossible. If you need business coaching, we’re here to help.
Check us out on our website, high coaching com.
Steven: Yes. So one of the big things that happened for us, which was a huge blessing, is last year [00:18:00] actually I was able to partner with a gentleman who, he’s been in business for over 20 years, and he’s been able to help much larger businesses than I have.
$50 million and above. So I was able to get a full understanding of what is strategy? What is strategy versus a plan? Because for me. To get to a million dollars, you can just have a plan. But if you want to get to 10 million, to 20 million, to 50 million to a hundred million, you need an actual strategy.
So you may be asking Steven, what’s the difference? A plan is, to me is a set of tasks that you do to accomplish set goal. But a strategy, it’s like how do we actually get to the mountaintop? What does this mean? So for me is what I’ve seen with a plan is you can bear and gr it I’m gonna do 300 LinkedIn.
Messages today. That’s a plan. But the strategy is like, what’s the strategy behind that plan? So let’s, it’s okay, my first initial connection message is gonna say this, my follow up messages look like this. I’m, and what is the goal of that? The whole goal is that I want to get them to schedule a call or I’m trying to give them a piece of information.
It’s okay, that’s the strategy behind it. The plan to execute that [00:19:00] is, I’m gonna do this many outreaches. So what I’ve also noticed is that. As you get bigger, so as businesses scale up and once they get over a million, ’cause a million again, you can get there it to people who’ve never been there. It’s ah, Steven, I don’t know if this is true, but from being there a few times and working with literally dozens of brands that have gotten to over a million dollars, what I’ve noticed is that there’s.
A hundred gaps in a million dollar businesses that they just don’t see. They’ve been able to get good at one thing, so they’ve been able to find one acquisitions channel that works with them. They probably have a handful of products that work really well that are the majority of what is getting themselves, and then that’s it.
Like now all of a sudden they have all these gaps, but they just keep trying to do the same things that got them to a million to get them to 10. And realistically that’s not a good plan or a good strategy because what I’ve seen is okay, what got us here? We ran really good Facebook ads.
Amazing. So what’s the plan to get us to 10 million? What we’re gonna do better at Facebook ads? If you’re really good at Facebook ads already, I. Maybe it’s time for you to expand into another acquisitions channel. [00:20:00] What’s, what else is broken in the system? Our customer service is okay, our return time is four weeks.
It’s okay, that’s a long time. Our response on a question takes us two days. It’s that’s a very long time, so maybe we should work on customer service. And this will get people to buy more. So now we don’t have to expand acquisitions channels, we just have to do better on the backend to increase the lifetime value of a customer.
So to me, when I think strategy versus plan is like what are the steps to me is like what’s the strategy behind it? The strategy behind it is what is the thought process and how on actually executing this? And what I’ve seen is as they get bigger. They have different pieces. So they’ll have a paid acquisitions team, they’ll have an SEO team, they’ll have a customer service team, and they’re all working in silos.
So it’s like, how do you unify that, where we’re moving towards one common objective? All if Amazon is a great example of this. If you ever read, there’s a book where they put all of Jeff Bezos’s, basically his memos in there and he always left a chair open and he said, this is the most important person in the entire company.[00:21:00]
This is the customer. So what that is he is unifying the strategy that everything we do, we look at through, we look at it through the lens of customer first. So what is that for your company? It’s like everything we do is we look at it through customer first. So we look at it through excellence and just quantifying things.
What does excellence mean? Because I think that’s one of the big things too, is I just wanna make more money. I can hand you a dollar and you’re a dollar richer than you were. How do you quantify that? So being able to quantify things is really the overarching part of a strategy. It’s like, how do you quantify success?
What’s the metrics for that? I. That’s a strategy. What is the plan to hit that? The plan is we’re going to do this many reach outs. We’re gonna get on this many calls, we’re gonna close this many people. We’re gonna keep this many people on for a longer duration. It’s like each one of those different pieces is a part to the plan and just a bigger part of the overall strategy.
I
Porschia: love it. So from your perspective, what does it mean to scale a business?
Steven: So there’s two ways to look at this. One is if you’re scaling a [00:22:00] business, like I said, depending on where you are, you can just do more. So you can do more of what has gotten you to whatever point you’re at. Let’s say you’re at a hundred thousand dollars a year, you’re a service-based business.
What’s your main way of getting customers? My main way is through referrals. Amazing. So is that from client referrals? Let’s say I work with You have a great experience. I’m sending someone to you. Then that’s not quite as scalable as, let’s say that you’re able to work with agency partners or you’re working with influencers, or let’s say you’re working with the agency partner and then they refer people to you because you guys have a symbiotic relationship.
It’s okay, great. You want to grow your business, go get more referral partners. So that’s just where you get, you do more of what’s working already. The thing is, let’s say you’re doing a lot, so let’s say you’re doing a thousand. Cold outreaches on LinkedIn, and that’s your main acquisitions channel.
Maybe doing more isn’t the best way to go about it. So now you go back and you actually do this thing called analytics. You go look at your data and you say, okay, I’ve done a lot of this and it has produced very little. Instead of doing more, let’s do it [00:23:00] better. So how do we go into this and see where did these people drop off?
They initially responded to my message, but then two messages in, I brought up, let’s hop on a call. They didn’t, they never hopped on a call. I got like a 0.2% conversion rate on that. Then how about instead of the third message, let’s wait till the fifth message. We’ve built a lot more rapport with these people.
Let’s see if that does better. So now we’re focused on better. And then if you can’t do more and you’re not able to do better, then you try something different. So for me is this is where as you begin to scale, this is the, this is where complexity comes in. So again, you get to a million. At a million, you think I gotta do a whole bunch of things.
I noticed this too, is you get stuck at a plateau and instead of figuring out how to do. More or how to do better. They just do something different. Okay, we scaled up with Facebook ads and we’ve done, okay, here, let’s go into TikTok, let’s go into Google let’s start spreading out our acquisitions channels.
But if you’re not, if you’re not actually good and you’re not able to do better inside of that Facebook channel, what [00:24:00] happens is you’re spreading out your ad spend and you’re it. These are different skill sets per one. So now you’re still running into the same plateau and just burning cash. So I think again, it goes back to your earlier question.
Having the right strategy because if the strategy, the plan, everything that got you to a million gets you to seven figures and above that plan to get you to a million is not gonna get you to 10. So before you even do any of that, the big question is, especially if you’re a business owner, is asking yourself, what is your North star?
What is your definition of success? If your definition of success is I just wanna keep $10,000 a month, like that’s it, then, okay, great. You can do that without adding any complexity. You can just do more of what’s already working. You can do it a little bit better. If you’re saying, Steven, I’m at a million, I wanna get to 10, then now you have to switch from being a doer to being a thinker.
So how do I get from here to there? And what I mean by that is okay, here’s, let me think a little bit more forward and say our Facebook ads are getting us a two return on ad spend. How can we do better? We could have more creatives, [00:25:00] we could do better creatives. We could do better targeting, we could spend more money.
It’s okay, both of those are more and better. Focus on that first and test it. The biggest thing I noticed when we were talking about scaling is founders, especially founders, they don’t do a great job of reading their data. And so for me is almost being, I wouldn’t say you need to be a data scientist, but you should at least understand what your KPIs are.
Like your key performance metrics is what is, what are those key performance indicators? That’s what KPI is. But when you look at that. You actually need to understand what each one of those things means and how that applies to your business. So what is your cost to acquire a customer? If it’s, if you’re selling something for a hundred bucks, it’s costing you 125 bucks to get that customer, you may say, oh man, I’m losing money.
It’s but if you know your data and you can spend $125 to get someone at a hundred. Because the lifetime value of that person is a thousand dollars. You’re making money, but you don’t know that if you don’t know your data. So to me, scaling is all about understanding the underlying things that work don’t work.
Can I do more? Can I do better? What is my data actually telling [00:26:00] me? And making informed decisions instead of emotional decisions.
Porschia: Wow, I love that. Do more, do it better or do something different. So in my years as a coach working with executives and entrepreneurs, I’ve seen many different approaches to scaling.
Can you describe some essentials needed to scale a business?
Steven: So even going back to what I’ve just mentioned is understanding your data, that’s the, to me, that’s the biggest one because it doesn’t matter where you are on this road of business in entrepreneurship or however you wanna label it. There’s a podcast I just listened to before I got on here that this guy’s doing $600 million a year.
That’s quite a bit of money, but for him is, it’s. The way that he views business and the way that he’s able to tell you his data right off or right off the top of his head, that lets me know that he’s informed. What happens again as people scale up is that they try, and this is why you gotta define success early, [00:27:00] is let’s say that your definition of success is you want a lifestyle brand.
Lifestyle simply means that this thing is paying you and you can go live whatever life you wanna live. So being able to understand, what does that mean? Is that $10,000 a month? Is that 20? Is that a hundred thousand? Is that a million dollars a. Once you have that set now. If you get there, then that’s success.
So let that be success, because if you think I’m just gonna hire all these teams, agencies, I’m gonna let them handle everything, and you’re not informed. Now all of a sudden you look back a few months later and you go, where’d all my money go? I’m no longer being able to make that same kind of money.
It’s because you’re no longer informed. So for me, is one of the basics is just understand what is my cost to acquire somebody. So how do I actually get somebody to sign up to do a thing? So let’s say that you’re doing only cold outreach. You could say, Steven, there’s no cost to acquire someone, but there’s a cost on your time.
So if you’re able to understand it takes me 40 hours a week to get one person, it’s okay, so how? If I was to come in and let’s say that you’re a coach and you [00:28:00] are coaching and your coaching program is a thousand dollars, break that down into 40 hours. What does that look like for you? It’s okay, if it’s a hundred dollars an hour, so it took you.
$4,000 to acquire that one customer and they’re only making you a thousand. That’s where you should probably do more of whatever it is or do it better. So for me is just understanding cost to acquire a customer, whether that’s just hours in or if you’re actually spending money on paid acquisition.
Understanding what that looks like. Understanding what is that average? So if you have multiple different packages, package prices, then it’s okay, typically I have a $45,000 one, I’ve got a $200 one, and the average is a thousand bucks. It’s okay, so when somebody signs up, this is on average how much money they spend with me when I acquire them.
Great. Then understanding how do you drive the lifetime value? So if you do have something at 200, how do I get them from 200 to a thousand? How do I get them to from a thousand to 45,000? Now your cost to acquire a customer can be astronomical. Because you know what it takes and you know how much profitability each one of these people have coming in, but just having a base understanding of your [00:29:00] data is the best way that I’ve seen for you to scale.
Analytically over emotionally. ’cause especially in the beginning when you’re under a million or even really at a million, is there’s so much emotional things. There’s a million fires to put out every single day. You’re not quite big enough yet to hire the teams to put out all the fires. So you’re still in there having to do the stuff.
And what happens is you get caught firefighting. Instead of working on the business, you’re stuck in the business. But if you can understand your base metrics now when you’re firefighting, you can go, wait, this is taking away from me doing the main driver. And just being able to quantify what is the main thing that’s gonna get me unstuck from here.
Is that better client acquisition? Is that better fulfillment? Sometimes you’re great at acquisition and not good. At fulfilling the product and now you’re not good at fulfilling the product. The people drop off and you’re having to keep chasing more customers every single month. And it’s this endless cycle.
But if you’re really good at fulfilling and keeping them on, ’cause they, you do have an excellent product now it makes your, it makes it much easier for you to go find customers. But yeah, base is just understanding your metrics. [00:30:00]
Porschia: Yeah, I would agree. And I love how you talked about client acquisition costs because I think that’s something that, especially a lot of.
Early stage entrepreneurs do not think about, they just are focused on revenue that not profit, but revenue. Yep. And then they’re not really understanding the data, to your point. So what are some of the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen entrepreneurs and executives make when it comes to scaling a company?
Steven: So I’m gonna boil this down the same way. I had a gentleman on my podcast. He’s helped companies go from zero to over a hundred million dollars a year. He is done it for five different companies and he quantified this very well ego. So you may say, Steven, how does ego get in the way of me scaling my business?
I will tell you. So what I’ve seen is that founders, again, especially early stage, which you’re saying I’ve run into this time and time again, is if they are a million dollars or less, is that they either are one or two people, is they either one, they think they know everything and it’s okay, I.[00:31:00]
If you know everything, why are you stuck? And then two is they don’t know everything, but they’re also not willing to listen. So what I’ve noticed with those two subsets, and then you have the third one, which is they understand they don’t know everything and that’s why they’re seeking help and they’re open to learning.
So when I was growing up, it’s called being coachable. So for me, this is what I’ve noticed for any kind of founders who do get stuck. Is, especially in this day and age, is you can’t just say, I don’t know how to Chad, GPT is free and you can ask it. How do I do this? And it will give you a way to go and do it.
So for me, what I’ve noticed is that when they get ego, it’s no, this is our brand. This is how we position it. These are our customers. This is how we talk to them. It’s but you’re at $500,000 a year. Is it possible that’s not the best way? Is it possible that’s not actually your ideal customer?
Is it possible? I’m not saying that you’re right or wrong, but is it possible? And if they say, no, it’s not possible because we’ve done dah, it’s then you’re gonna be stuck because you only are only able to see life through one lens. And there’s people who are out here who have done incredible things that are a, that [00:32:00] are going to be willing and able to speak into you, whether that’s through a book, through YouTube, through direct coaching.
That are gonna be able to help you get unstuck, but you have to be willing to listen. So when I’ve seen the biggest issue, biggest, even if I throw away all the data, you can throw away all the data. And if you’re coachable, somebody can come in and teach you how to know the data, and now you can grow. But if you’re not coachable and your ego gets in the way, you’re gonna get stuck at one of these plateaus, and then you’re gonna blame, you’re gonna start blaming external circumstances when realistically, as an internal one, keeping your business from growing.
Porschia: Wow. Wow. You dropped a lot of gyms there, Steven. And Yes. Being coachable is so important. One question that I heard a consultant, a business consultant say a long time ago, and is how he screens his clients. He asked the question, do you want to solve the problem or do you want to just make the problem go away?
And I think that kind of speaks to what you were saying a bit with ego [00:33:00] and really getting to the root of scaling. So thank you. Tell us more about your business.
Steven: So my business is called Elevate ’em. Elevate ’em. We are an e-commerce growth consultancy. We work with brands. We actually are just rolling out new offerings right now where we are able to work with brands again from startup up to a hundred million dollars a year.
So what’s interesting about that is we’ve decided to shift away from, this is what I was talking about earlier, focusing on the client experience, right? Customer journey. So for us is one thing we realized is we were scaling up pretty rapidly and we noticed that it’s okay, we’re able to help our clients really well.
This retainer thing just isn’t the best way for us to help them. So what we decided to shift into was more sprint based. It was like 15, 30, 90 days. And this is very quantifiable. It’s very tangible. The thing that we’ve run into being a consultancy, it’s okay, you’re helping me grow my business, but how?
Like really, how much more money am I gonna make? Really? How much more time am I gonna save? And so now we have it very quantified and it’s very obvious what those tangible things are. So for [00:34:00] us is when we work with. E-commerce businesses. What we love to do is be able to look at it holistically. Again, we don’t wanna get stuck into being we’re just marketing.
We’re just customer journey. We’re just. Supply chain logistics because there are so many different gaps. There’s so many holes, and this is even what I was talking about here. If you’re at a million dollars or less, or even at a million dollars up to $5 million, there are so many gaps in your strategy that you don’t see that’s holding you back, and one of them might be you.
So this is one of the things that for us, is we just come in and give you your next best steps. And we are a third party. So what that means is we come in, you’re already working with agencies. We have an in-house team, we have no. Other objective than to just help you become more successful and whatever that definition of success is for you.
So that could just be, Steven, I’m at a million, but I just wanna solidify this thing. So it pays me this amount of money for the rest of my life. It’s okay, we can do that. Or it’s Hey Steven, I wanna get to 10 million, then I want to exit. Hey, we can help you do that. So either, no matter who you are, we have specific steps, things in place to be able to help [00:35:00] you with the plan and the strategy.
Porschia: Love it. Love it. So we’ll be providing a link to your website and social channels in our show notes so people can find you online. But now Steven, I wanna ask you a final question that we ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or entrepreneurs can get a positive edge in their career?
Steven: So easy answer is focus on people.
So if you want to grow a business. Focus on people. So in the beginning, you might not have, you might not be venture backed. So if you’re not venture backed, you don’t have a big capital behind you, focus on the customer first. It’s okay, I’m building something for the customer, not just a way for me to make more money.
Focus on that first. If you are either these other two sub subsets where you are an executive or you are venture backed, or you have a decent sized business and you’re wanting to grow, focus on people. So what does that mean? Is simply put, is. Focus on the people below you. And I heard this from a gentleman.
He was on my podcast and he has one of the [00:36:00] largest logistics companies in the whole country of Mexico. And he said this the best. He said, we serve the level below us. He said I serve my top line executives. My executives serve the directors. My directors serve the middle managers. Middle managers serve the frontline managers.
Frontline managers, serve the frontline teams and simply put his. They care so much about the level below them that they’re focused on that not just focused on shareholder numbers or whatever else. So what I’ve seen with teams, the way that I’ve been able to handle teams is going in and actually hearing them out.
What is their actual stresses right now? What’s their pain points? Same way you would with a customer, right? What is your pain points? What is, what does success look like to you? How can I make this realistic for all of us? Because there are certain things where they say, I want an hour and 51 minute lunch.
And it’s eh, I can give you maybe an hour. Like we could figure that out. But so being able to figure out and quantify what is their pains, and then how do you help those go away inside of the business and inside of the company that you’re working for. Because those are the things where if your team feels like, oh, this guy’s really bought into me.
This [00:37:00] lady’s really helping me move not only inside of this one confines of the team, but they’re not afraid to lose me. What happens is if you’re able to help people grow in their career, your career grows too. So if you’re an executive and you’re going, yeah, but. I’ve got this lady and she’s incredible, and if I lose her, then what happens?
It’s I promise you, you will lose her and you’ll be able to train somebody else up and they’ll be excellent too. But let her move on in her career. Let her go be excellent. Maybe she does outrank you at some point, it doesn’t matter. You can actually say, Hey, Susie, she was once on my team and now she’s the CEO.
It’s so if you’re looking at it from that executive point of view. Focus on the people below you. If you’re a business owner and you’re looking to scale up, focus on your teams. How do you love on them? How do you treat them well? How do you keep them metric based and how do you keep them objective driven?
So if you can do those things easy,
Porschia: I love that. So Steven, you’ve shared a lot of wisdom with us today and I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident in their entrepreneurship. We appreciate you being with us.
Steven: Thank you so much for [00:38:00] having me.
Porschia: This episode was brought to you by the Brave Bird Career Alliance, the go-to membership designed for seasoned executives and ambitious professionals with everything you need for career planning, strategy, training, and support. Thank you again for listening to the Career 1 0 1 podcast. I hope you have at least one key takeaway that you.
Can use in your own career. If you enjoyed hanging out with us, please rate, subscribe, and share this podcast. Until next time, here’s to your success.
