Felony at 20: How a Convicted Founder Rebuilt Into Regulated Healthcare

A felony conviction at roughly 20 years old ended Joey Stiver's first business before it started. The founder ran a gray-market peptide and steroid company, drew a federal indictment, and says he lost everything. He has since spent more than 12 years operating businesses in highly regulated medical and telehealth sectors.

Stiver told his story in a first-person essay published by Entrepreneur. He was candid about the origin. "I was 20 years old and naive," he wrote. "I saw an underground, unregulated industry doing things wrong and thought I could do it better."

The venture did not fail for lack of process. Stiver says he introduced strict operational standards, including batch-testing. The industry itself was illicit. Authorities shut the business down. The indictment followed, then the conviction.

What did the conviction actually cost him?

Banks refused to work with him. Institutions flagged his name. He describes spending "the best part of the next decade" rebuilding his life and career after paying what he calls a heavy price.

That decade produced a management philosophy built on two ideas: radical self-accountability and conditional second chances. Stiver frames them as inseparable.

"Accountability has to start with me," he wrote. "As a founder, I can't expect my employees to take responsibility for their decisions if I'm not prepared to do the same with my own."

His standard for his own companies hardened because of the record. Being "good enough" was never an option, he says. Every business had to be demonstrably legitimate and commercially successful at once.

How does he decide who gets a second chance?

Stiver draws a sharp line between forgiveable and disqualifying failure. The test, he says, comes down to effort and ethics.

"If they're trying and willing to learn, I want to support them," he wrote. "But accountability is non-negotiable. If someone violates our ethical standards, that's an immediate dealbreaker."

He concedes the tension in his position. A founder who needed a second chance himself now enforces immediate termination for ethical breaches. His answer is that a second chance never erases consequences; he had to accept his own before rebuilding.

His practical advice to other leaders is a three-part diagnostic: ask whether the problem is skills, effort, or integrity. "They're different problems and require different responses," he wrote.

Skills gaps get support. Effort gaps get coaching or exit. Integrity gaps end the relationship.

Why does he hire for adversity over credentials?

Stiver hires on character and potential rather than qualifications alone. He places particular value on people who have overcome adversity — "that's a kind of determination that can't be taught," he wrote.

When a struggling employee shows the right attitude, he relocates rather than fires. He calls it finding "the right seat on the bus for the right people."

The retention numbers speak for his approach. Some employees who joined his businesses a decade ago still work with him today. He employs hundreds of people and says he takes their livelihoods personally, seeing team members buy homes and support families as among the most rewarding parts of his work.

Where do second chances go beyond payroll?

Stiver expanded the philosophy beyond his own headcount. He established the Joey Stiver Foundation to fund educational, entrepreneurial, and second-chance opportunities.

Its flagship initiative, the St. Dismas Accelerator, targets formerly incarcerated adults and at-risk young people. The program provides three concrete assets:

• Seed capital
• Executive mentorship
• AI training

Stiver credits grit, determination and luck for his own recovery, and argues that many equally determined people never receive a comparable opening. His faith, he says, shaped the conviction that people can own their past and still deserve a shot at a better future.

Does strictness contradict mercy?

Stiver anticipates the criticism. Some readers, he writes, will question how he can hold strict standards while championing second chances. He insists the pairing is the lesson itself: you can fail, take responsibility, get back up, and build again.

His closing message targets anyone who treats success as something that happens to other people. "If you've got the drive, grit and determination to build something better for yourself, why shouldn't you get that opportunity?" he wrote. "Why not you? The race isn't over."

For founders and executives, the operational takeaway is the diagnostic, not the memoir: separate skills, effort, and integrity before deciding who stays, who moves, and who goes.