Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E23: Stop Making Excuses: How to Overcome Your Mental Barriers to Success with Liz Trotter

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Introduction

Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “Everybody listening is probably like, ‘No, I can’t hire. I can’t do that.’ Clearly, it’s possible because it’s been done before. If it can be done, then it’s your actions that are causing it from happening.”

From your first dollar to your first million, welcome to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast presented by ZenMaid. Join your host, Stephanie Pipkin, founder of Serene Clean, as she shares proven tips, tricks, and hard-earned lessons. Whether you’re just starting out or ready to scale, get ready to discover how to build your own cleaning empire. Let’s roll up our sleeves and dive in.

Meeting Liz Trotter

Stephanie: Hello everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners. I am your host, Stephanie Pipkin from Serene Clean, and today’s guest is going to get a fire lit under your bottom. Liz Trotter, we are already all fired up and ready to go, and I can’t wait for you guys to hear not only Liz’s stories but some of the methods to her success that she is going to be sharing with us today. Liz and I are very similar in a lot of ways. This is actually a re-recording of this episode because our audio was in a bad place on the last episode. So I’m actually very excited that we’re re-recording though, because I think this is going to be even better. We are in for a treat. Liz, thank you for coming back to me.

Liz: Literally, my pleasure.

From Dry Cleaning to Success

Stephanie: We’ll start off with your story. How you were very successful in the laundromat industry. You didn’t make any mistakes at all.

Liz: Yeah, so that’s kind of a tragic little story there. It actually was such a huge win, though. I was hired by a Korean gentleman and his family. They came here to the United States. The only way to really get going if you’re going to come here and you’re from another country and you don’t speak English very well is you got to start a business. Well, he did not want to stay here. He wanted to come here, start running a business, and he wanted someone to run his business. And it didn’t really need to make money. It just needed to run and not lose too much money.

I was young, right? I was really young, and I had never run a business, but I was really excited. “I’ll do all the things, sure, I can do it” – just very overly confident. And he said, “Okay, good, yeah.” He called me Bobby. He’d say, “Yeah, okay, you go, Bobby, you do it.”

Stephanie: Just a random word of endearment.

Liz: Back in the day, I used to have a nickname, and it was Buffy way back when. And so his version of Buffy was Bobby. That’s fine. I called him Mr. Jim, and that wasn’t his name either. So we just had a thing.

Stephanie: Like Mr. Miyagi – you were Daniel-san.

Liz: Kind of, right, except he didn’t really give you a lot of education. Would have been a lot better if he’d told me about the wax. He just said, “Here you go.” And I had never worked at a dry cleaner before. I had never done any dry cleaning or pressing or cleaning or anything. And I was like, “Sure, I can learn all that stuff. How hard can it be? They’re all over the place.”

So I lost so much money, so much money for him. I really did. I mean, that man’s a saint. He’s no longer with us, but I lost a ton of money for him, and he was just always, “Oh, that’s okay. That’s okay.” You had certain things that you had to do – get the taxes paid and get your suppliers paid, right? So that had to happen. There were times where I didn’t take a paycheck, and I felt guilty taking a paycheck because I’m the one that did this terrible, horrible thing.

So it was a great experience. Finally, I just lived in “losing money world” for a while, and then I finally figured out, “Duh, Liz, how about we make some money?”

Stephanie: Novel concept, I know.

Changing Mindset to Find Solutions

Liz: Which is kind of where I got the idea, way back in the day, about stop thinking about what you can’t do. Because, boy, did I have a lot of reasons why I couldn’t do this and I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t my company and blah, blah, blah. I just had to switch my mindset around to what could I do? And you know what I found out – there was a lot that I could do.

So I got some education, taught myself about cleaning, took a ton of classes, read a bunch of books about running companies and managing people. I had a really strong background in managing people.

Stephanie: How old were you when you transitioned to the cleaning business? You were pregnant at this time, right?

Liz: Yeah, that’s right, I was pregnant. I was old. It was my last child. I think they called it a geriatric pregnancy or something crazy.

Stephanie: What is it? 35 or something like that?

Liz: Really, my daughter was insanely angry about the whole thing. I wasn’t at the time, so I was somewhere in there. I’m going to say 37, 38, 39 somewhere around there.

An Unexpected Background in Leadership

Liz: But my background – I think I never told you about this – I had a little bit of a leg up. I have a weird background until I became 12 that we won’t go into. But at the age of 12, I went to live with my birth father and my stepmom, and I was in charge of seven, sometimes eight children. And I was just all of a sudden in charge of these kids. Both of our parents worked two jobs. My dad was actually a full-time student, and then he also had a part-time job in the evening. And my mom had two full-time jobs. Later on, she had a full-time job, and then she also had a business on the side cleaning.

I was thrown into this position of having to get all of these kids that were younger than me up every day, feed them breakfast, get them off to school, get them dressed, get them to make their beds, do their homework, feed them dinner, and I had to get them to do the chores. Eight kids make a lot of messes.

Stephanie: The dishes, and you’re just a child being magnified by circumstance.

Liz: Yeah, and I was lucky because it was so much work that it was impossible for me to do it all. So I had to figure out how to get little kids to do all of this work. And you think it’s hard to motivate adults – you try motivating seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds, 10-year-olds. They want to go play with their friends.

So I learned a lot of tricks about how to motivate people and how to get people to do things and have them also still do it for me tomorrow and the next day and the next day. And I think that was the big secret. I wasn’t getting out of this family anytime soon, and I was still going to need this work done in six months, in a year, by the same exact people. And I didn’t have the option of employee turnover – child turnover wasn’t a thing.

Stephanie: You can’t bring in a new brother because this one’s not working out. You can’t use tactics that would peeve them to the point that they’re like, “No, I’m not doing this” where, you know, sometimes employers may be able to get away with that for a time, to replace them. Can’t do that.

Learning to Lead and Motivate

Liz: Threaten them, push them, make them angry – I couldn’t do any of those things, so I had to be really creative on how to get them to do it. And as I got older, I got more creative, but I was the one that got in trouble if things weren’t done. So I was also highly motivated to get all of the work done.

So when I decided with the dry cleaning that I needed to grow this thing and started to hire people, I used – sounds ridiculous – but I used those same little kid skills. And they work. I got people to come work, and they never left. They didn’t want to leave, and they liked doing their job.

Man, you ever been in a dry cleaner? It is brutal in the back. It gets like 120 degrees. There’s no air conditioning. There are exhaust fans, but it’s a brutal work environment. I mean, you want to talk sweatshop – and I wasn’t getting paid, remember, because we had no money. So I really learned quickly how to get other people to work for me and to do things for me. And then we started making money, and things started going in a much better direction.

He ended up liking that part – “Oh, this place is making some money.” Things kind of shifted and changed a little bit. I ended up moving on and running a florist for him for a while before I moved to my own cleaning. I just got a couple of opportunities. I feel like I’m like everybody else on the planet – got lucky, right place, right time, and you gotta recognize that. I can’t remember what the saying is, but when opportunity knocks, it almost always comes just in workman’s clothing.

Stephanie: Yes, I love that one.

Liz: So opportunity was knocking. It was going to be hard work, but it was a great opportunity. So I jumped on that and got into cleaning. I just got lucky in a lot of ways.

Recognizing Opportunity in Hard Work

Stephanie: Yeah, a lot of timing things. Another thing I like related to that is a lot of people don’t recognize success because it comes disguised as hard work.

Liz: Hard work. I always picture this really scary-looking guy on the other side of the door, totally with overalls, filthy clothes, filthy boots. I’m like, “All right, do I want to do that? That’s what it’s going to take.” So I can’t be afraid of hard work.

I think things are a little different nowadays. People look at hard work differently now than they did. I’m two generations past you, and my generation, everybody worked hard. It was normal. Putting in a 40-hour work week was easy. Hardly anybody really thought of a 40-hour work week as working hard. That was like the minimum you could do. And now people kind of look at a 40-hour work week as “not sure that’s giving me enough work-life balance here.” So it’s a different mindset with certain people.

Stephanie: Yeah, exactly. Before we started recording, we talked about our admiration and undying devotion to Alex and Leila Hormozi and all of their content. So if you’re not listening to them, immediately go to their YouTube, subscribe, because I listen to hours every day. It’s so inspiring, it’s so tactical. Even in the past year, how much it’s changed me and how I see things, even the concept of work-life balance – they say just make your work your life, so you enjoy it, and that solves that problem.

Liz: What work-life balance? It’s just all work and life, and we’re just doing our thing. Absolutely.

Overcoming Excuses and Taking Action

Stephanie: We were discussing how a lot of times it’s very easy for us to allow the legitimate potential setbacks or excuses or disadvantages that we have on paper. Like, “yes, this person has it easier than us,” or “they had this leg up,” or “they knew the right person, and that’s why they’re successful,” or “that’s why their business is going well.”

People could look at both of us and analyze our situations and apply that lens on it, or we could look at them and say, “Well, you have this, or you have this.” But at the end of the day, the answer is, “Okay, and what? What is them having that advantage going to do for you, or what action are you going to take?”

Our discussions on really throwing ourselves pity parties – every single one of us is so guilty of throwing pity parties and allowing ourselves to feel sorry for ourselves, and for maybe very good reason. You may have had a really bad run at it, had horrific things happen to you, or people screwing you over. Okay, how is feeling sorry for yourself going to get you to where you want to be? It probably is not going to help at all. Actually, it’s probably going to hurt you. So really kind of being hard on yourself.

I know that the whole self-love and self-care movement has really taken over. And I’m not suggesting to not do those things, but will that ultimately get you to where you want to be? And oftentimes, no, not at all, it’ll put you back.

Finding the Right Balance

Liz: You got to do some of that, of course. But there has to be balance too. The old “Is the glass half full or half empty?” You got to get right with it’s both – it’s half full and it’s half empty.

You can always find proof for anything, but you gotta find the proof you need, not the proof you want. It’s really easy to say, “Look at all this bad stuff that happened to me. Look at this. This is why…” and to get everybody to go, “Oh my gosh, you’re right. Oh, wow. No wonder. You poor thing.”

Or you can look at that same exact proof and say, “Oh, look at this exact opportunity that I had that I could use to propel me forward.” So what is the proof you need, not the proof you want?

Stephanie: Yeah, and interpreting the same exact event in different ways. For me, every bad thing that’s ever happened in the business, I have trained myself to immediately find the silver lining. It sucks in the moment. But when I look back at that first year, that second year, I’m like, “Oh, thank God those bad things happened. Because I learned this, and we changed this.” If it wasn’t for that pain, I would have never developed that system or process or policy.

Even looking at your childhood that you just described, you could have absolutely used that – and so many of us do. We’ve all had varying degrees of trauma in our childhood, and we could certainly all use that to be like, “That’s why I’m not successful, because this happened to me.” Look at all that unnecessary responsibility that happened to you as a child. That wasn’t fair, but you could have used that to hold yourself down.

I just went no contact with my parents in the past few months, and this has been the hardest time of my personal life I’ve ever experienced. It’s also been the time I’ve been killing it professionally. I couldn’t allow that to win. I’m not saying you guys listening don’t have a really hard time. You do, probably, but what are you going to do about it?

Using Pain as Fuel, Not Weight

Liz: Absolutely. Everybody’s going to have hard times. You get to use it as fuel, or you get to use it as weight. You decide – are you going to have it crush you, or are you going to have it propel you forward?

I wasn’t going to tell you about some of the stuff that happened to me when I was younger because that stuff’s bad, that stuff’s really bad, and people have a hard time even hearing that. The stuff that I told you about – that you’re like, “Oh, that could be hard” – I didn’t consider that stuff hard at all. I consider that easy. That was when my life was a dream. I was taken out of a really bad situation and put into this amazing opportunity.

So everything goes back to mindset again. You decide, is it working for you or is it working against you? Are you working for you or are you working against you?

I was in a conversation with someone today, and I needed an outcome, and I was allowing my emotions to not take me there. And I’m like, “Stop, Liz. If you want the thing, you know how to get the thing. You just gotta say this.” “But I don’t want to say that.” “Say it anyway.” “I don’t want to say ‘you are right. I was wrong. I’m sorry.'” “But those are the things that are going to get you there.”

The TIDY Method for Conflict Resolution

Liz: We have a saying – when there’s a problem, you have to TIDY it up. And whatever the problem is, you have to tidy it up. There are four phrases that you can use to tidy up any problem.

The first is T – it’s “Thank you.” So somebody tells you that you are the worst cleaning company on the planet – “Thank you.” Because when they tell you that, that’s a chance for you to be thinking about what you can change.

When people tell us we’re amazing, we kick back, we relax, we take a deep breath, we pat ourselves on the back, and we just settle into “I’m amazing.” And when people tell you you suck, energy is generated. What are you going to do with that energy? You can either let it propel you forward, or you can let it push you down. You can use it as a weight, but it’s energy.

So the first thing on TIDY is say “Thank you.” And the next thing is I – a hard one. Nobody likes this one. You can say, “I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry” is a magic word. When you say “I’m sorry” to people, they have a hard time continuing to yell at you if you say it truthfully. If you say, “Listen, I’m sorry. This is not right. We messed this up.” People will stop, and they’ll work with you. If you say, “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” yeah, that doesn’t work.

The D is “Don’t worry” – like, “Don’t worry. We got this together. We’ve got this. You don’t have to worry. We’re going to tidy up this situation. Don’t worry.”

And the last one, a lot of people don’t like this one either – “You’re right.” So you can tidy up almost any conflict with those four little phrases: Thank you. I’m sorry. Don’t worry. You’re right. It’s amazing. It’s like magic. Think of a situation in your life, any situation where you were in conflict, and tell me that those four phrases couldn’t have got you out of it.

Stephanie: Every time. Oh, absolutely. Because the defensiveness that we all get when we are in conflict or in a situation that’s uncomfortable, you just tense up. Just even saying those words makes you relax and be able to actually hear what the other person is saying.

Moving Toward Solutions

Liz: And you can think again. When you’re in the TIDY up mode, you are working for the solution. When you’re not in the TIDY up mode, we have a tendency to be waiting for them to fix themselves, for them to fix the problem, fix what they did wrong.

It is really easy to look at every situation from the position of, “Yeah, but why do I have to change? Why do I have to say I’m sorry? Why do I have to do the thing? They’re the ones-” – going back to what you said earlier – “they’re the ones holding me down, they need to give me a leg up.”

Other people aren’t going to do it for you. You get to do it if you want. If you want to do it, you can do it.

Stephanie: I love the concept of voting for the identity that you want to inhabit. That’s from Atomic Habits by James Clear – if you haven’t read that book, listeners, it’s a great one. Every action that we take is a vote for the kind of person that we want to be.

If I want to be the kind of person – I don’t want to use the phrase “the bigger person” because that comes across arrogant – but I’m the one who reaches out that olive branch every time because I care about this relationship more than I care about being right or winning.

What is the end goal? Is it for you to feel righteous, or is it for you to actually establish a relationship or to learn and grow? I really love that approach. I think it would work so well with anybody – clients and employees, coming from a personal perspective too.

The FTD Philosophy

Liz: Works with kids. It works with everybody. It’s a role play that we do with people in one of our programs, and it’s another really great example where people are like, “We can’t find anything to stump this TIDY approach.”

Sometimes you’re not saying them all in order, but you’re saying them. And then the other part of that sometimes is FTD. That is, Feel, Think, Do. What do you want people to feel? What do you want them to think? And what do you want them to do?

Keep that in mind while you’re running through what you’re doing. How many times are you doing something, and you can tell you’re making them mad, and you keep doing it? Mostly this only happens with me with my husband, but I can tell I’m irritating him, but I don’t shut up. I don’t change what I’m saying. I keep going, knowing that it’s not going to go to a good spot, but somehow I want to prove that I’m right. I feel ridiculous afterwards. When I look back, I’m like, “Oh, Liz,” thankfully, there are no cameras in my house. I’d be mortified.

Stephanie: We fall into the same patterns, don’t we? We all have our things that we do. I can list all of the terrible things I do – I know better, but in the moment, it’s like, why do you have to say that?

Liz: Why do I have to have the last word? Why do I have to show them that they’re wrong? They are wrong, but why do I need to tell them they’re wrong? Why do I need to show them they’re wrong?

Recognizing Self-Righteousness

Stephanie: I heard once that anytime somebody is showing self-righteousness, there’s a wound there. I often think about that with customers, when they are acting foolish or being rude or ridiculous, or they’re just straight wrong.

In my opinion, it is our job as an industry to educate the masses, especially as things have changed when it comes to our industry and how people view it – pricing and the value of it. I have a lot of strong opinions about that, which I’m sure you do as well, that this is a profession.

However, anytime I feel that righteousness of “How dare they think that we’re not worth XYZ” – that’s when you’re trying to prove yourself. Anytime I feel like I need to prove myself, there’s probably some work that needs to be done.

Liz: It’s a personal problem right there. That one goes away a little bit as you get older. So good news, Stephanie, that will hit you less as you get older.

Stephanie: I’ve already experienced that change so much from my 20s to 28 now. That chip on my shoulder seems to be going away a lot more. It is an interesting dilemma, and I think it causes you to maybe behave in ways that your true long-term self wouldn’t want, because you’re trying to prove something to people. Why do you even care what they think?

Arguing with Children – Literally and Figuratively

Liz: Oh my gosh, right. How many times do we do that? Have you ever argued with a child? I’m right now arguing with a child. What is happening right now? How am I the adult? Well, I guess I’m acting like a child.

You said that you have already begun to get out of it at 28, and I would bet big money that has a lot to do with what you’re feeding your mind. You’re listening to the Hormozis, and I know that’s not the only thing you’re doing. You’re working in your business, doing the podcast. You have a lot of things where you’re focusing on: What’s the mindset I’m choosing? Who am I choosing to be? What am I choosing to be known for?

But because it’s hard to make those mindset shifts sometimes if you’re insular, sometimes you have to have this outside influence.

Recognizing Your Business Bottlenecks

Stephanie: To be exposed to different ideas and perspectives of people who have gone down the path ahead of you. In our last conversation, something that I really loved was the story you told of the event where the question to the cleaning business owners was, “How are you the bottleneck in your business?” Because you are – we all are likely the biggest bottleneck in our business in some way.

I know everybody listening is probably like, “No, I can’t hire. I can’t do that.” Clearly, it’s possible because it’s been done before. If it can be done, then it’s your actions that are causing it. I’ve said that same thing, even though I know better – “Oh gosh, we’re really struggling with hiring.” At the end of the day, that’s one of the biggest struggles in our industry – keeping up with the hiring aspect of it. Well, clearly it’s possible. So what am I doing wrong?

Would you share that story again about the woman with mindset and money? We can shift gears and talk about money mindset being a huge problem. I think it’s something everybody needs to hear, and I need to hear it again.

Overcoming the Money Mindset Block

Liz: I don’t know exactly which story – I probably have 20 stories of that because when I’m in front of a crowd, I always ask that question. I think you’re talking about the woman with the price increases?

Stephanie: Yes, that’s it.

Liz: So when I ask about it, they’re like, “Oh, I’m the bottleneck.” What I’m trying to get them to see is: what about you is the bottleneck? It’s so hard to see what you’re doing. We call this GOYAO – Get Out of Your Own Way, because it is hard. How am I in my own way right now?

The woman I was talking about needed to do price increases. I just met with her last week, and she had done all of her price increases. At an event we did in Atlanta last October, she was going to do those price increases. She was going to do it. But I just had a conversation with her last week – so it took this long for her to be able to get out of her own way enough to actually put those price increases out there.

She put somewhere in the 30s of price increases. She didn’t want to do them all, but she wanted to do a good chunk. And she’s in one of my circles, and I kept checking in. “Got any pushback yet? Got any pushback?” “No, no pushback.” Moving forward.

How much more money is she having dropping to her bottom line, doing nothing except charging people what she’s worth? It is super difficult. We don’t know what we’re doing, and a lot of times we can’t define it because we look at it from that victim mentality. “Well, but it’s not me…” We call them “big buts” – you got a big but over there. You need to slim down, get rid of that big old but.

It is so easy to get stuck in “Yeah, but you don’t understand” or “Yeah, but where I live” or “Yeah, but I have a lot more independents in my area” or “Yeah, but I live right on the border between California and Mexico. My situation is different.”

My response is, “My but’s bigger than yours.” Because other people are doing it down there. Other people have made it work. And even if they haven’t yet, someone’s going to. Is it the three-minute mile or the four-minute mile? I never remember.

Stephanie: That barrier was broken, and all of a sudden, everybody could do it.

Breaking Your Own Barriers

Liz: Now everybody can do it, but until then, nobody could do it. So at some point, whatever you’re struggling with, if it hasn’t been fixed yet, someone’s going to fix it. Why not you? Are they smarter than you? I mean, look around. Are these people better than us? They’re not.

Did I tell you the story of my brother?

Stephanie: I don’t think so.

Liz: This is a great story. My brother had a rough childhood – rough, rough, rough. There were three of us siblings, and we were separated and put into orphanages for quite a few years, a decade. It really harmed my brother. He has a very high IQ, but he was very damaged.

He ended up doing drugs. He couldn’t get into stuff. He ended up being homeless, and he was homeless for decades, to the point where my kids knew him as “Uncle Icky.” We called him Uncle Icky because my kids were small at the time, and I wanted to make sure they knew if Uncle Icky comes to the door, this is what he looks like. Don’t let him in, don’t talk, stay away, because he was dangerous – very dangerous.

This was for decades – I want to say three, maybe even four. But approximately 15 years ago – and he’s my same age, about 10 months younger than me – he got clean and sober.

A Remarkable Transformation Story

Liz: He got picked up stealing a ham or a roast beef from a grocery store. Didn’t have any shoes or socks on, and he was stealing this food. He got caught, picked up, and was taken to a homeless shelter. After they processed him and did all of the things, he met a guy that my brother said spoke the word of God to him. Before that, my brother didn’t believe in God at all, but he said this man spoke the word of God to him.

The short version of the story is he is now a mega-millionaire. 15 years later, he’s retired, and his mission is that his whole entire family be millionaires before he dies. That’s his vision for his life – he wants everyone, everyone – nieces, nephews, his entire bloodline – to be millionaires before he dies. And he doesn’t see that as unachievable.

The homeless drug addict for literal decades. When people say they can’t do something, I’m like, “Really?”

Stephanie: That gives me chills.

Liz: It’s so intense, and it’s just so crazy. Now I do have to add this one little piece, because everybody thinks, “Okay, he just had a shift, and he was just the perfect human being on that day.” No, he was not. He was a train wreck. He was clean and sober, but he also was a train wreck.

His mindset was so broken. While he was clean and sober, he was hurting a lot of people. He was not paying taxes, not paying bills, not doing, not doing, not doing. But every day, his big focus was, “I gotta fix my mindset. I know it’s my mindset. I gotta fix my mindset.” And every day, he worked on his mindset.

Slowly but surely, he is now one of those people that, when you hear him talk and you see the things that he does, you’re like, “Wow.” He’s just so impressive. But he created that just by day by day, working on who he was going to be – not what’s holding me back, but how am I going to do it?

We talked a little bit about celebration, and my brother has five rules. Let me grab them if you want to be successful. This is his five things that you need to do.

Five Keys to Success

Liz: My brother has five rules if you want to be successful. Let me pull this up, because this is amazing stuff.

Stephanie: That is so incredible. The thing is, the more pain you go through – though nobody deserves that, and sometimes we just reap what we sow from our actions, but for the most part, we don’t deserve that – but you can use that as fuel. I’m not saying, especially when people go through horrific things, “Oh, you should be grateful.” I don’t think that.

I am not grateful these terrible things happened to me, but I am grateful that I have the wherewithal to take something and build from it. I’m not going to let these things define me. I’m going to let what I made from it define me.

It sounds like you’ve had very difficult things happen to you, Liz. Your brother did. I’ve had difficult things happen to me. I’m not going to let them define me. I’m going to let them make me into this incredible person, not let those things be all that is to my life.

Liz: I’m one of the people that kind of does look at it as a blessing, because the worse the stuff, the more energy, the more fuel. If you have things too easy, it is really hard to get the fire and get the energy and get the passion to go do the thing. It’s way easier to have some bad thing happen that propels you.

The Five Daily Practices for Success

Liz: His five things that he says got him to where he is:

First thing – every single day, celebrate 10 things. 10 times celebrate. He says, “Don’t just think you’re grateful for it. Celebrate it.” Figure out your celebration. What is it? And celebrate. I’ve got my own little celebration – “Yeah, Liz, fireworks!” Track that you’re celebrating 10 times, because pretty soon you won’t do it anymore.

The next one is keep a tight circle of influence – tight circle of people that you know are the kind of people that you value and that you want to be like. These people are going to help you increase your circle. You have to have a tight circle, but you also have to increase your circle of influence. Get the core strong. Once the core is strong, that’s where your power comes from, and then build out all of the rest of your influence.

The third one is more goals, not just one. He says, “I know this is the opposite of what everybody tells you. Everybody says one goal. Go for this one goal.” He says, “No, not for me. I have a lot of goals all the time. I want to have clean socks every day. I want to have brand new socks – not just clean, brand new socks – every day.” The man goes through a lot of socks.

Stephanie: Coming from his background, though, that would mean something to him.

Liz: So lots of goals. Have one for today, one goal that you’re working on today. But have lots of goals, things that matter to you, that you care about. You got to create your own passion. Passion isn’t something that is just bestowed upon you. You got to build it and create it.

The fourth is decide – decide. You got to make the decision. Decide that you want it, decide that you’re going to get it, decide that you’re going to track it, decide that you’re going to do it, decide what it is that you want, and then go get it and go do the things.

Most people – the person that I was talking about before with the price increases – she never decided to do the price increases. She knew she needed to. She said she was going to, but she never actually decided to do it until last week, and she was like, “I’m doing it today.” Sometimes she would say, “Okay, I gotta get these done. I’m gonna go sit at my desk until I do it.” And then she didn’t. So make the decision, decide.

And the last one is when you don’t know what you care about, because this happens to a lot of people, especially people who begin to achieve a level of success. I know a lot of people that when they hit the million dollar mark in top line revenue, they kind of lose their gumption. They’re like, “Wow, I thought it would feel different. I thought it would be better. I thought it would be cooler. I thought it would feel different.”

So when you lose that, when you don’t know what you care about, get away from everybody else, spend time with yourself and dig deep. Figure out where you need to be alone, without your phone, without other people, without any stimulation. If you can do it in nature, he says it’s better, but dig deep and find out what you really care about. Because when you find what you care about, you can build stuff.

So I love his five things. I keep them right here on my little desktop. I’m not perfect with them – otherwise, I would also be a mega millionaire, making millionaires in all my family. But I do think he’s done a lot for me and my family to get us to do a lot bigger things because of him. We have a lot of rental properties that we would have never had if it wasn’t for him.

Stephanie: That’s amazing to be so close to someone so inspirational. I love reading and learning, specifically from former addicts. I find that they have a particular gumption. When you have a pension for addiction, that means that addiction may very well just be transplanted to something healthier.

One perfect example, if you’ve ever read the book “Finding Ultra” by Rich Roll (not Rick Roll) – Rich Roll – he is a very accomplished ultra marathoner and a fumbling, almost died alcoholic until 40, and then completely changed his life. The lessons to be found from people who have gone through those things are truly spectacular. That’s the beauty of the internet and the age that we’re in – we can learn from other people’s life experiences without having to experience them. That’s not something that 100 years ago you could do. The circle of influence was your town, the people that you could verbally speak to, where now I can learn from this.

Liz: I met a billionaire a few weeks ago. Back in the day, that wasn’t a thing, right? That just wasn’t a thing. Now I had a conversation with him, like, how’s that a thing? Stephanie, I do have this hard stop today. I know you wanted to ask me one more thing, but I do have this hard stop.

Final Thoughts and Resources

Stephanie: I can do that. We’ll do a part two or something like that. Well, listen, I know you have a hard stop today, so we’ll have to extend our conversation into a part two. I know we didn’t hardly even talk about our businesses, but honestly, I just really felt like we were aligned on this kind of avenue of conversation. So I’m happy that we were able to delve a little bit deeper into our thoughts on motivation and using what we’ve experienced to fuel us to greater things. So Liz, if people want to hear more from you, where can they find you?

Liz: Core Profit Builders dot com. They can see me on Facebook. They can join my Facebook group, Not Another Cleaning Group. They can email me, Liz at Core Profit Builders dot com. I’m all over the place.

Stephanie: Yes, Liz knows how to make money, guys, and we hardly even talked about that. So we’ll have to do a making money episode. But truly a spectacular and appropriate guest for Filthy Rich Cleaners. Thank you, Liz, for your time. I look forward to speaking with you again. And everybody hit that subscribe, hit that like, go follow Liz and comment below your favorite moments or things that you need to get away from using as excuses. Do a little tough love on yourself in the comments, guys. We’ll see you next time. Thank you.

If you enjoyed this episode of The Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Core Profit Builders
• Not Another Cleaning Group
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Finding Ultra by Rich Roll
• Alex and Leila Hormozi YouTube Channel