When Marvin Ellison reflects on his early days in retail—earning $4.35 an hour working at Target—his story doesn’t begin with glamorous opportunities, elite credentials, or fast-track corporate programs. Instead, it starts in the aisles of a discount store, where his willingness to take on the jobs nobody else wanted became the unlikely foundation of a rise that would eventually lead him to the CEO office at Lowe’s, one of America’s largest home-improvement chains.
- The Humble Starting Point: A Job, Not a Destiny
- Volunteering for the Impossible: How Leaders Identify Leaders
- The Breakthrough: Why Hard Jobs Unlock Bigger Doors
- Ellison’s Guiding Philosophy: Leadership Starts Before the Title
- What Ellison’s Story Reveals About Corporate America
- • Opportunity Exists—But Not Equally
- • The Most Critical Leadership Traits Are Often Overlooked
- • Corporations Reward Those Who Solve Pain Points
- • Hard work is necessary but no longer sufficient
- The Modern Relevance: A Lesson for a Changing Workforce
- The Legacy of a $4.35 Path to Leadership
Ellison’s journey is not merely an anecdote about hard work. It is a masterclass in upward mobility inside large corporations—an examination of how grit, humility, and strategic risk-taking intersect with the realities of modern workplace hierarchies. In an era when the path to leadership often seems inseparable from privilege, his story offers a rare counterexample: a reminder that influence can be built from the ground floor, literally, if one is willing to go where others won’t.
The Humble Starting Point: A Job, Not a Destiny
Ellison grew up in modest circumstances in Tennessee. A part-time job at Target was meant to be temporary—a way to earn money while studying business at the University of Memphis. But what changed his trajectory was not the job itself, but the way he approached it.
While many part-timers avoided the most unpleasant tasks—cleaning spills, reorganizing chaotic aisles, unloading trucks—Ellison ran toward them. He later explained that volunteering for undesirable duties was not just about earning goodwill; it was a deliberate personal strategy:
“I learned that if you do the work others refuse to do, you become indispensable.”
That philosophy made him stand out in a sea of hourly workers. Managers noticed. Opportunities followed.
Volunteering for the Impossible: How Leaders Identify Leaders
Every company has a set of “invisible jobs”—tasks that are difficult, thankless, or unglamorous but essential to operations. Most employees avoid them because they draw little recognition and often guarantee hard work with minimal immediate reward.
Ellison viewed them differently. By investing effort in overlooked areas, he consistently put himself in the path of unmet needs. Managers quickly realized he was someone who solved problems rather than created them.
This approach yielded two powerful advantages:
1. He Gained Skills Others Lacked
When Ellison volunteered to stay late, help with complex inventory issues, or manage messy back-of-house challenges, he was unknowingly building an operational toolkit far deeper than his peers.
2. He Built a Reputation Rooted in Reliability
Executives promote the people they can trust. Ellison’s willingness to tackle friction points made him the person managers consistently turned to when crises hit.
This simple formula—competence + consistency—became the engine of his early career.
The Breakthrough: Why Hard Jobs Unlock Bigger Doors
Ellison’s commitment to unclaimed responsibilities eventually led to his first major promotion. From there, he rose steadily through Target’s leadership ranks before joining Home Depot, where he spent more than a decade transforming operations and leading high-stakes projects, including store modernization and safety initiatives.
But Ellison’s reputation as someone who does the “dirty work” never faded. At Home Depot, he was often given complex initiatives with high pressure and unclear outcomes—the kind of responsibilities that derail weaker managers. Instead, he thrived.
His success eventually took him to JCPenney as CEO and, later, to Lowe’s, where he became one of the most prominent Black CEOs in the Fortune 500.
Ellison’s Guiding Philosophy: Leadership Starts Before the Title
Ellison often emphasizes that leadership is not something granted by a job description; it is demonstrated long before any promotion takes place. In his view, the corporate ladder is climbed through accumulated credibility—often gained one inconvenient task at a time.
He identifies three principles that shaped his rise:
1. Do What Others Avoid
By stepping into organizational blind spots, employees gain visibility and become essential.
2. Learn Relentlessly
Ellison credits his progression not just to hard work but to curiosity—seeking mentoring, accepting stretch roles, and mastering operational fundamentals.
3. Stay Grounded
Despite his ascent, Ellison insists that humility is a leader’s most underappreciated asset. Leaders who remember where they started connect better with frontline employees—the backbone of any retail giant.
What Ellison’s Story Reveals About Corporate America
Ellison’s path is exceptional, but it is also illustrative. His success highlights strengths and contradictions in the U.S. corporate system:
• Opportunity Exists—But Not Equally
Ellison’s rise shows upward mobility is possible, but it demands extraordinary effort, perfect timing, and mentorship that many never receive.
• The Most Critical Leadership Traits Are Often Overlooked
Grit, reliability, and humility rarely appear on résumés, yet they often predict leadership potential better than credentials.
• Corporations Reward Those Who Solve Pain Points
Ellison didn’t climb the ladder by chasing visibility—he earned it by tackling complexity.
• Hard work is necessary but no longer sufficient
Ellison himself acknowledges that corporate structures have changed. Progression now demands strategic positioning, advocacy, and emotional intelligence—not just effort.
The Modern Relevance: A Lesson for a Changing Workforce
Today’s workplace is often marked by burnout, job-hopping, and skepticism toward corporate loyalty. But Ellison’s journey offers an alternative perspective—one in which taking initiative, embracing challenges, and building unshakeable competence can still yield long-term rewards.
This does not mean blind adherence to corporate norms. Rather, it calls for identifying value gaps within organizations and stepping into those gaps with purpose. In a world where many employees avoid additional responsibilities unless accompanied by compensation, Ellison’s early-career strategy feels almost countercultural.
Yet it remains a potent differentiator.
The Legacy of a $4.35 Path to Leadership
Marvin Ellison’s rise from a minimum-wage job to the CEO office is not a tale of luck. It is the story of how character, work ethic, and the willingness to embrace discomfort can elevate an individual within systems that often favor predictability and status over merit.
His lesson is simple but profound:
Great careers are built in the places where others refuse to tread.
Ellison learned this truth in the aisles of a Target store decades ago. And he carried it with him, step by step, into the highest ranks of corporate America.
