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Jason Waller here true underdog podcast super super excited to all the underdoggers out there. Today we have Steven Skaggins. He's on the show. Steven's a best selling author award winning entrepreneur of multiple businesses with eight figure revenues. A motivational speaker who's spoken to all of you.

The audience is of thousands and a creator of the proprietary life mastery framework named transform you. I saw the you behind him here. He's well respected nationally sought after business and life mastery thought leader. He challenges people to break through their obstacles coming from a broken home years of struggle. Didn't finish high school. He also appeared on NBC CBS entrepreneur thrive global grit daily and more the best selling author for the journey principles. Steven, how you doing? My man. What's going on man?

I love the energy man. Hey, I'm trying. I'm excited. I found a real underdog here. Somebody who had the odd stock against them that somebody that really came in and and really changed, you know, the mindset of people around him built several companies. So I'm excited to pick your brain and let the listeners tune into what you're doing. So look, you built multiple businesses from the ground up. You've inspired thousands. I assume you're success didn't happen overnight. So let's dive into your past. Right. You've been open about the obstacles you face when you were young.

And you once said you feel like you didn't even have a childhood. Could you elaborate on that? Yeah, absolutely. You know, the first thing that I remember my father saying before we actually got into the broken home environment was scogons don't get ahead. They get by. It was the first time I ever heard any kind of like real programming that I later discovered wasn't going to serve me very well. My father's situation with income and whatnot. My mother's situation with struggles. I don't want to call it disorders, but she she had an abuse of childhood that she came up through my dad was now.

She was a alcoholic, you know, low and behold, by time I was three years old, they were doing their own things in different parts of the country being raised by single grandmother. And I'll never forget this at nine years old. My grandmother walks up to me. Skinny and frail, if you will, looks me in the eye and says I need you to step up. I'm nine years old. I've got a transformer in one hand and a GI Joe and the other. What I didn't know is that she had just gotten diagnosed with cancer. And she was getting ready to start even in the 80s. Essentially chemotherapy.

And, you know, we come a long way, you know, in the in the terms of science of what, you know, how you treat cancer. Even now, you know, so you can just imagine what it did to her body.

She taught me how to pull up a chair up to the stove, start making macaroni and cheese and hot dogs and all kind of keep them on. Picture the nearest nine year old that's closest to you. Right. Maybe it's maybe it's your own kid. My son's 10. So I'm I'm imagining right now my son's 10. So I'm I'm envisioning that. Yeah. Yeah. And you can you can just think about the mentality like this shift, right?

You know, my mom came back. She had a suicide attempt, but I'm the one that found her situation where I'm the one that called the paramedics that I think I was 10 and a half, maybe 11, you know, kind of thing. So life had always been kind of up and down.

My father's financial situation. He had a business lost a business. It was never really good with his money. You know, so about a time my grandmother did pass away around 11 and 11, 12 years old. I went to work immediately in the construction trade. Right.

Started building houses with my dad and carrying studs for 25 cents an hour. And that's what I actually want to remember my first mentor.

The guy that literally changed my life and you know, I'm looking back, hindsight being 2020. He was really my father figure by time was all said and done.

My dad is a great guy now. I mean, he's he's a fantastic grandfather. You know, but obviously the grandkids are like the doovers, which is great.

I mean, because I mean, you've learned something new, right? You're following along the way.

It's crazy. You say that I have to say I get that. I always say I love my parents, but they're way better grandparents than they were parents.

Oh, for sure. How old were your parents when you were born?

I think that what I think my mother was probably 23 or 24 father, maybe 24, 25. I mean, they were still young, right?

And the reality is is most people and this is this is important, especially if you're going to be an overachiever and entrepreneur stuff like that.

You're going to have to take a chance to look basically in the trunk. You need to understand what makes you do the things that you do, what makes you think the things that you think.

And so much of mine was, you know, trying to overcome this fear of failure, this fear of not having enough this fear of not being able to take the right steps forward.

All came from those early conversations from my parents. I found out that I basically had been married and divorced once and I had married one of my parents.

You know what I'm saying like you as far as like a personality style. I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

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