There is nothing quite like a good comeback story. From the Award Winning 1976 classic Rocky movie that made Sylvester Stallone a star to the more recent real-life story of Tyler Perry going broke and evicted to billionaire and enriched we all love to root for the underdog. Although this sounds like the American Dream, the truth is stories of the long shot and the dark horse rising to the top are possible anywhere and look no further than the 2024 Olympics to see those tales of greatness. Still, there are everyday comeback stories that I find especially inspiring. Maybe it’s because those experiences seem more possible to us mere mortals. With that in mind, we set out to spotlight some everyday comeback stories that truly motivate us all.
Denise Thomas shared this personal accounting:
After 15 years in his corporate job, my husband was laid off only months after building our dream home. He got another job pretty quickly but was laid off again. Then, the stock market crashed. We attempted to sell the house, but no one was buying.
Paying the bills with what was left in savings and in the stock market, eventually, the money ran out. We had just enough left to hire a bankruptcy attorney and buy a lawn mower and trailer to mow lawns to put food on the table.
The bankruptcy was liquidation. If you could touch it, it was sold. Having a garage sale is one thing. Having strangers make an offer on the pot I was cooking my dinner in is a whole different feeling. I had to ladle my food into a container so I could clean and sell my $200 Magnelite pot I had received as a wedding gift for $5.
A few months later, I realized my daughter was starting high school. College would be around the corner. How are we going to pay for this? We had no savings, no 401k to borrow against, no house to borrow equity from, and that bankruptcy meant we couldn’t co-sign for those student loans everyone likes to talk about.
I began to do the research. Friends were saying I was starting too early, “Wait until Junior year for that,” 70% of college students graduate with college debt, but that means 30% are graduating debt-free. How are they doing it? What are they not telling us? There are those with wealthy parents or who scrimped and saved, a tiny percentage on athletic scholarships, but what about those of us “in the middle” who make too much money for grants but not enough to write a check. After all, we still made money. I put into practice everything I found in my research that sounded logical, that it might affect college acceptance or winning scholarships.
In the end, my 2 homeschooled teens attended college on 17 scholarships totaling more than $199,000 for 4-years of college debt-free with cash left over. In a sense, they got paid to go to college. Nationally, only 0.3% of college students have enough scholarships to cover the cost of attendance. Now, it’s been my life’s work helping other parents break the burden of college costs with my knowledge of the educational industry, which in itself is now its own successful business.
Had we not lost it all and filed for bankruptcy we most likely would have just taken on the hundreds of thousands of loans like many other parents do for their aspiring college kids.
Learn more about Denise at www.GetAheadOfTheClass.com and https://www.facebook.com/denisethomasdebtfreecollege?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Cheri Perry gets vulnerable:
It’s nice when things work out, but sometimes, things that are not working out light a fire in your soul! That was the case when I lost a huge referral partner. I’m talking about the kind of loss that put my company and all the people who work for it in jeopardy. I was blindsided by the ending of the relationship, and I never saw it coming! Back in the day, I had no tracking, no monitoring of the partnerships, and no key performance indicators. Instead, I was simply running my business at full throttle and expecting things to work out. After the ‘surprise attack,’ I got busy reevaluating partnerships and our contribution to those partnerships. Zig Ziglar said, “You can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.” It turns out that our referral partners wanted help developing the businesses they served, and they wanted to be able to see what actions were being taken, what was working, and what wasn’t. We added a referral partner dashboard and specialized staff to improve and increase communication. Then we reported on the key performance indicators, the things we’ve always done. Today, we have over 170 referral partners across the country, and our entire team is dedicated to providing service at the highest levels, tracking every step of the way! Losing valuable partnerships (and profit) is never fun, but today, when I drive by that old partner’s offices, I smile and thank them for the departure that improved my focus and my business! What could have been the end of me was the beginning of a better me in business and life.
Connect with Cheri at https://www.facebook.com/CheriSPerry.
And then there is Jeff Steinberg. David Fagan, his agent, highlights his story like this:
He stands 4’6” tall on wobbly legs as he holds a microphone with a metal hook attached to a myo-electric prosthetic arm and yet he commands the entire stage filling the auditorium with his uplifting presence and message “You’re A Masterpiece In Progress!”
More than a few people will tell you, “Jeff himself is a Masterpiece In Progress!” Born with no arms, severely deformed legs, and the expectation that he would not survive, Jeff spent his early years abandoned mainly by his family in hospitals, including Shriners’ Hospital for Crippled Children in Philadelphia, PA. He endured multiple orthopedic surgeries, eventually learned to walk with a brace, and was fitted with his first prosthetic arm. At age nine, he was placed into The Good Shepherd Home for the Physically Handicapped in Allentown, PA, until he was 19.
As a young boy, Jeff learned the truth that would become the foundation of his life: “I am made to be awesome and wonderful!!” He sees his disabilities as assets, not liabilities. Jeff is living proof that “the difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer!” He travels the globe with an extraordinary message; that a real handicap is “…anything that keeps me from being or becoming all that I was created to be!” “God uses the least likely person to accomplish the most extraordinary things in a most unusual way!”
For more than 50 years He has performed on TV Variety Shows & telethons. He was Co-Host for an entertaining and original informative Television Special, called “The Best You Can Be…The Handicapped Hall of Fame.” He was headline for the luncheon for “The President’s Council on Hiring Persons with Disabilities;” he appeared on “The Variety Club Telethon” with Host Monte Hall in the U.S. and CANADA. Jeff has shared the stage with various big names.
Jeff has a very special Message for your next event: “Quit focusing on the handicap and start appreciating The Gift!!”. He has been married for decades with his own children and grandchildren. His family is the most important thing to him. He has truly done a lot with very little.
Learn more about Jeff at TinyGIANT.com
To cover different events and add a variety of expertise to the news and stories we report, we have several staff writers who contribute to our publication.