We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephen Stearman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephen below.
Hi Stephen , appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I had to look up the definition of resilience to make sure I answer this up to standard. The definition of resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.
My resilience comes partly from my personality and partly from life experience that caused to build up the mental muscle. My culture index profile is rain maker. One aspect of this profile is that I don’t take things as person as other people might. I don’t see my mistakes as deficiencies that I possess but instead as opportunities for growth. This doesn’t mean I don’t beat myself, I absolutely do, but I don’t see a “No” as something wrong with me.
This is a great quality for sales/revenue centric leaders to possess. I did door to door sales in college and that helped my resilience factor immensely. I was forced to knock on thousands of homes and receive “no” the vast vast majority of the time. I absolutely had to “eat what I killed” in order to survive. Another take on resilience is that once put in a trying circumstance, ever human the capability to call on the resilience necessary to succeed.
Another take on resilience is that when put in the circumstance, ever human as the resilience to “succeed”. I put that in quotes because succeed is subjective. If a person has a family to look out for and no income, they’ll do whatever it takes to make ends meet. When the deck is stacked against us, we act accordingly.
If someone has the drive to be an entrepreneur to create a better life for themselves, it’s best to burn the proverbial boats so they have no other option expect to push forward with all of their might.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Currently, I’m the leader of Elevate Holistics, an online consumer service connecting patients to physicians to get medical cannabis cards. We started the company mid-2019 and experienced 2-4x annual growth until 2023.
What Elevate really does is help patients live a better life a part from pharmaceuticals. We help patients reduce their medication cocktails by supplementing it with healthy consumption of cannabinoids. For better or for worse, we’ve developed all of our own technology to support the enterprise. What an amazing journey it’s been serving over 125,000 patients.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The three qualities that I find more impactful in my journey are optimism, emotional intelligence, and acceptance.
Optimism because I see things as a glass half full and see opportunity in everything. This is a choice. It’s a choice because I believe no matter what it’s more useful than seeing the negative in circumstances. Plus, it’s so much more fun seeing what’s possible.
Emotional intelligence is an absolute in my journey because I strive to understand why I believe what I believe, why I experience the emotions I’m experiencing when I’m experiencing them, and what I’m experiencing because of my childhood or the current moment. my therapist says that 90% of our reactions are an accumulation of our past and 10% the present. While that’s not perfect, it’s how I choose to see my emotional state. This helps me separate what’s real and what’s not. It helps me take a second to pause as ask, “is this how I want to be feeling? Is this the most productive reaction?” My actions AND reactions are my responsibility. Emotional intelligence is critical for this.
Acceptance is an easier explanation. Acceptance because I accept what is happening and I accept myself. I accept the things happening to me and although I believe I have full control of my destiny, there are things out of my control. I accept that. I accept the things I’ve already done because I can’t change them. These help me look forward, control what I can control, and see myself as the accumulation of my past experiences that I can’t change. I can only change the present and thus impacting the future.
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
My therapist. My therapist has helped me more than any one person. The close second is my executive coach. I believe if things are going great, see the therapist, if things are going poorly, see the therapist. He’s been critical in my self-acceptance and self-love. He also helps me rewrite stories that no longer serve me. Stories from my past or from my family or what I’m telling myself about my relationship.
Contact Info:
- Website: elevate-holistics.com
- Instagram: elevate.holistics
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-stearman-60ba6166/
