← The Scoop With Erica Krupin
The Scoop With Erica Krupin
Ep 193. You Can't Lose If You Don't Quit: Winning the Mental Game
00:33:19
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Welcome to the Scoop with Erica Kruipen. Your host is the owner of Kruipen's Poop and Scoopin. She's built a six figure dog waste removal business and loves talking a little crap with like minded folks. Starting and growing a small business can be scary, but Erica wants to share some tips and tricks that she's picked up along the way as she continues her entrepreneurial journey. She hopes this podcast will educate and inspire you to think outside the corporate box and do something a little crappy like Scoop dog poop. And now, here's Erica
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what's Up Scoop Podcast. I'm your host Erica Kruipen and on today's episode, I wanna talk about imposter Syndrome. I was scrolling on Facebook for a very brief moment on my laptop because as you know, I deleted Facebook and all the social medias off my phone. But I came across a post that Jessica had wrote about imposter syndrome and then I seen in the comments that Derek also wrote a comment and I was like, you know what, this would be an excellent topic because I have been there, done that and I'm sure I will go through it again. So if you were interested in hearing all about that, stay tuned. And before I get into it, of course I got to give some love to the show sponsors and Jobber. They're the CRM I use to run, grow and manage my small, not actually so small, pooper scooper business. We've been growing, we've been growing, it's been amazing and I use Jobber to do all of that. So if you don't have a CRM yet, which I think they're called a field management software now, so I really gotta work on my pitch cause I've been saying that same thing for quite some time. Stay tuned. I'll work on that. Also the Poopscrew Millionaire community over on Skool. If you want help, if you need help, if you're looking to be a part of a community that has pooper scoopers that have been in the industry for a long time, or people that are just getting new in the industry and kind of just trying to figure stuff out, that is the community for you, there's a ton of resources. There's live events, there is classrooms, there's a community board, there's discounts, all the things. So definitely go ahead and click the link. Check that out as well. What else? Review Harvest. We'll include a link down below with Review Harvest. Clay is amazing. I was already providing excellent service with my business. My team was providing excellent service with the business, but I had to manually go in and message every single person to request a review. At a certain point in business you just don't have, you don't have enough time, you don't have enough time to do any of this stuff. So I brought Clay on a couple years ago and my reviews have just expedited. We're already providing the excellent service. Why not implement a follow up system to stay on top of people because they will forget. It's out of sight, out of mind. And providing them with a link to review us is so easy. You want to make things as easy as possible. And I have over, we have over 530 reviews now. I think by the end of spring rush we're going to have 600. So if you are wanting help with your reviews, check out Clay. The link will be down below. I think that's it. I think that's all I'm going to plug because those are my top three. We don't need to get crazy. If you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel yet, could you please just hit that subscribe button? I really want to get this channel to 10,000 subscribers. I know you're watching. I know you're hanging out because I can see in the analytics. But a nice percentage of you are not subscribed. So if you could just hit the subscribe button as a thank you to me, as a thank you Erica, for showing up and putting this content out. Thank you, subscribe. Appreciate it. What is imposter syndrome? What is it when you hear imposter syndrome, what do you think about what pops up in your mind? Well, I looked it up online to see what the actual definition is and I'm gonna read this to you. Definition. Imposter syndrome is the persistent feeling that your success isn't deserved and that at some point people are going to find out that you are not as competent as they think you are. Even when you have proof of your success, you have the experience and you have results, but your brain still tells you, I got lucky, someone else could be doing better. Eventually people are gonna find out they don't know what I'm doing. Psychologists first identify this concept in 1978 when researchers Pauline Kalandis and Suzanne lmes studied high achieving professionals who still believe that they were a fraud. And interestingly, it shows up most often in high achievers. That's not the actual. That is a longer extended version of the definition. That's just kind of like a summary type deal. So if you are feeling imposter syndrome. I want to say that you are more than likely a high achiever. I'm a high achiever. You listening to this? I'm guessing you're a high achiever, because from what I've experienced is people that aren't high achievers, they're not investing in themselves. They're not pushing themselves to do extra. They're not putting themselves in painful situations to where they're going to grow. They're great, comfortable, right? They have their job, they have their career. They don't have a job, they don't have a career. They live paycheck to paycheck. I don't know, insert reason why. And they're just content. They don't want to make themselves uncomfortable. And that's the. It's the sick part with us as entrepreneurs and high achievers is once we start to get comfortable and once things start getting too easy, we level up, and guess what? Then the pain starts all over again. We're just a glutton for punishment, right? I'm guilty of this. And I have been in business for eight years. And for those of you that have been here, it has been a journey. It has been a journey. I have shared the good, I have shared the bad. I have complained, I have cried. We have laughed. We have done all of the things on this channel. And in those moments when I don't want to share that stuff because I feel like such an L7 weenie, I'm glad that I still showed up, because it shows the authentic journey of a business owner and myself went through the imposter syndrome many, many, many times. For those of you that I had the pleasure of meeting Last year at ScoopCon 2025, I was a guest speaker. And I remember when William and Levi asked me if I wanted to speak, I didn't. I didn't. I mean, I did, but I didn't. I didn't feel worthy of it. And you might. You might be listening, be like, what? What? What do you mean? Well, I'm gonna tell you why, and I'm gonna share the reasoning behind it. It was. I was coming off the tail, end year of the worst year in business, my business. I almost went under. We were very, very close to going under. Mainly because mentally, I was not doing okay. Financially, we were not doing okay. I didn't have the passion. I didn't have the spark. I was beat down. I was tired, all of the things. And with those vehicle accidents like it, you know, and when you don't have enough Money to, like, pay for things and you're barely making it. It's just, it's stressful. It's one of those things where it's like, why? Why are you doing this? Why did you do that? Why did you invest all that money into those vehicles and into the branding? Why did you invest all that money into an office? Well, at that time, I believed in myself so heavily. So heavily. I was like, okay, we're going to get these beautiful vehicles and they're going to be wrapped with a new branding. We're going to grow the team and we're going to move into this office and we're going to have people in this office. When I moved in there, for those of you that were here when that whole thing happened and I did a tour, I planned on having an office person doing the receptionist doing office work. And then we would have the storage facility and then I had my podcast studio. I pictured us having lunches together in the little kitchenette. None of that happened. I mean, I did, my husband did, my friends that came over and like hung out with me did, but it didn't go as planned. And it was a struggle. And we were able to still pay everything that needed to be paid, but like, barely, you know, And I felt silly. I was like, you. I can't believe you believed in yourself like that, that that was going to, all of that was going to happen. Now look at you now. You're dealing with insurance companies, you have two wrecked vehicles. You know, what are you, what are you thinking? A huge shout out to today's episode sponsor, Jobber, the number one operations management software for home service business owners. Jobber is the software I use to run, grow and manage my small pooper scooper business. Jobber helps me handle the admin tasks quicker so I can focus on growing my business and get getting more me time back. From creating custom quotes all the way to getting paid my money, Jobber has my back. Yeah, we're pretty much best friends. But if I had to choose my favorite feature, I'd say the mobile app. I can create the quotes, edit the jobs, communicate with customers and keep my eye on the staff right from my phone. If you're a home service entrepreneur looking to level up your business, look more professional and save time, head over to jobber.com crouppen to start your 14 day free trial and get 20% off your first six months with my special link. Now let's get back to the scoop. You think that you can play with the big dogs? You think that you can be a larger company. Who do you think you are? And I felt like this big, and I know we've discussed this before, and the business, the lowest we got down to. I want to say we got down to like 87 clients per week, which is very low. I think my revenue dipped below 10,000 in recurring revenue, which is very low. And then I was stuck. Like, I could not get past 250,000. Like, I could. I could not break that. And it was like year after year, like three years in a row, I was stuck. Three years of being stuck in the same place. And I'm just thinking to myself, like, I don't have anything new to say. I was losing my passion for social media because I felt. I felt stupid. You know, I was looking at these other people that had started doing, like, YouTube and started doing podcasts, and they decided not to. And they decided to focus on their business. And now their businesses are much larger than mine. So I felt, I. Yeah, I just felt dumb. Like, why, why did you do this? Why did you. Why did you choose this route? Instead? You focused all this time and energy into social media. Anyway, if you want to talk about monetary, Monetary. I mean, I make. I make money with social media, but I also pay it out. So it's not like I'm making a bunch of money. It's like I could have made a bunch more money with my actual pooper scooper business. And I was getting so wrapped up in that because I wasn't seeing the money that I needed in my bank account. So it was overshadowing everything. And then also with creating the content, I get to create the content and I put it out, but I don't get to see and talk to the people that it's impacting that's listening to it. Because not everybody comments, not everybody sends emails, not everybody I'm connected with on social media. So it was becoming, like, very lonely. So I was like getting all in my head. So when William had asked me to speak, I almost felt like I didn't have anything to bring and no value. The fact that I went through what I went through and still kept pushing through is really what this entrepreneurship is truly about. On social media, we often see the highlight reel. We see the people achieving and they're having great success. But that isn't for everybody. Not everybody is going to have an easy time with business. And the majority of us have the struggles, we have the goods, we have the bads. We get pushed down and we get back up. So my story is Just like your story. And I think that's why we relate so well to each other. And because it's, this is real life. I'm sharing what is really, really happening in the business. And you had. And I had. I made stupid decisions, I made good decisions, I made emotional decisions. I didn't make decisions at all. I made decisions too quickly. But at the end of the day, whatever happens, we just have to navigate through it and moving forward make better decisions. And I think we get so caught up in the day to day grind and let me know if you can relate to this. Where a week will go by or two weeks or even maybe a month and you're like, what, what has actually happened? Like, I don't even, I don't even remember what has happened. We're not remembering the successes, we're not celebrating the successes. We're not really seeing the momentum and the growth that's been stacking on top of each other. We just focus on like the negative stuff, the negative comment. Say for instance, we are asking specific questions to our customers going back and forth, which I can, Let me see if I have those up. Let's see, what questions are we asking? This is one of my copy and paste text things. It's. We're asking them what the motive is. Like why did they reached out? We're asking them how long it's been since the last cleaning. We're asking how many dogs. We're finding out the yard size. Were looking to see how urgent the cleaning is. And this one guy was at told me, he's like, it was a stupid question. I'm reaching out to you because I want dog poop removal. Like I need my dog poop picked up. Like, that's a dumb question. If you didn't ask dumb questions, maybe you would have more customers. And I really focused on that. That really bugged me. And I'm like, maybe that is a dumb question. It could have been worded differently. Josh had a conversation with me about wording, which is fine. But from that we had over 70 people that signed up. But there was one guy that said it was stupid. And then I was, I was thinking, oh no, maybe we shouldn't ask that question. It's a good question. It just needs to be reworded. And he was, excuse me. And he was just a jerk, so can't worry about him. I lost my train of thought. I was thinking about that guy. His name was Dustin, I believe. But anyways, we get so bogged down because we're working. We're busy. We're not really paying attention to the successes. There's times where I talk to Josh and he's like, do you remember that you were featured on nsbc? You've been on Jobber several times. You've been on several podcasts. You've been on the news. You've had articles written about you. There's so much. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I forget. I do. I forget about that kind of stuff. And I don't celebrate the successes. And that's how the. I'm gonna say it for me, that's how the devil. The devil gets to me through that way, starts playing on my insecurities. You're not smart enough to be in these rooms. You don't have the personality to be able to mingle with these people. You don't have the net worth to be able to do the thing. How are you going to get the money to be able to put money into advertisement? You don't have the smarts or the resources to be able to manage a team. Yeah, maybe I don't. But guess what? When I go through all of that and trial and error, I'm going to gain the skills to be able to manage a team. I can read a book, I can listen to a podcast, I can listen to a YouTube video. But until I actually am in it, right, and I'm doing the thing, that's how I'm gonna do on the job training, baby. On the job training. And it's just so easy to talk yourself out of it and just allow the devil to play with you. And I know for me personally, with my beliefs and what I believe is the stronger. And the closer I stay to the Lord, the stronger I am, the more sharper my brain is, the more at peace I am. Because at the end of the day, I know I can't do all of this on my own. I can't. Personally. I can only scoop between 100 and maybe 120 houses a day or. Oh, a day, Girl, you crazy. A week. It just goes along with growing a team. We want the business to get bigger. We want things to get easier. More hands have to be in the pot to take that stress off of you, to be able to go ahead and delegate stuff. And when we're doing it alone, especially in those early years when we don't have the resources and we don't have the knowledge and we're kind of like, how are we gonna figure this out? But then you go five years down the road and then you look back and you're like, okay, we did that. We didn't give up on ourselves during the day when we are having head trash. Like, this is such valuable real estate right here. And Danny, from when I was working and doing premier design, selling jewelry, she used to tell me that because I would get in my own head, she's like, this is prime real estate. You don't let people live here. This is expensive. This is very, very expensive. Don't let people stay here. And the other saying that I kind of like, I wouldn't say I live and die by it, but it's something I use very often is one that controls your emotions, controls you. One that controls your emotions, controls you. And I've really worked on that emotional intelligence, being able to keep my emotions as level as possible. So I'm able to make good decisions, not so much emotional decisions. And I'm an emotional person. That has been a struggle, but we're working through it. And when I say we're working through it, it's myself and God. I spent a lot of time talking to God, like, a lot. I'll just show you. I can show you my little prayer section. It's a little cluttered right now because I have clothes all over the place because I haven't had a chance to do my laundry. But I have my office right here, which is in my bedroom. And then I have my bed, which is right across from my little office area. And my husband has his own bed because, as you know, that have been following me, I decided to get my own sleeping area so I could sleep better. But we're still in the same bedroom. And I do stay the night over there sometimes. Okay, I do stay the night, which is very important when you're married. If you know, you know. But I have my prayer. I have my prayer wall, and then I have a cross on my wall that my aunt actually made. And it just makes it really convenient to get down on my knees and really have a conversation with God and praise him for what he has given me and repent for whatever is going on. And then ask him for what I want. And then say, yes, I'm going to follow you, because I know you know what is best for me, because I don't. And I understand that not everybody is spiritual and I know not everybody is walking the same path as me. But it's just really important for you to find what it is that's going to keep your chin up and keep you locked in. Because if you have started a business and you are growing A business. And you are doing the things day to day, even if it doesn't feel like you're making the movements forward, all of that compounds onto each other. When I was first starting out with my retirement, putting money away, you know, I put a little bit away here and. And it's like, okay, I have a couple hundred bucks, maybe I have a couple thousand dollars, maybe I just have a couple more thousand dollars. And as it's growing and it's getting over, like the $100,000 in the account, then it's like it's all starting to compound on each other. And I like look back and I'm like, dang. My account made it doubled, so I put in, actually it tripled. If I put in $500, 540, I think it's 547 per month. And this month we gained either 15 or $2,000. Right. It wasn't like that in the beginning, but now, you know, now it's doing some things, which is awesome. And the same thing goes with your business. And some takeaways I want you to take away with this is writing stuff down is going to be important. So if you have a dry erase board or you have something where you could tape it onto the wall, write down the successes because they will be easily forgotten, because they will be overshadowed by the tough times that are happening. And this is something that the pastor made very clear in church. Because there's times where I have not been able to appreciate the moment because my anxiety is telling me something bad is going to happen. Trauma. Right, Trauma. And he said, either you're coming out of a dark time, you're in a dark time, or you're headed towards a dark time. So enjoy the moment if you're not in that time, because it's gonna happen. That's how it goes. Things are good, things are not good. Things are good, things are not good. And that is the flow of life. I wish I could word that better, but that's the reality. So when things are going really good with the business, I. I'm like, I'm just gonna enjoy it. Today we had a good money making day. We didn't get no complaints today. I can't worry about tomorrow. That's just like with my hair. My hair. I had bedhead. I think my husband told me I had bedhead. I said, sir, listen to me back there is none of my business. It is none of my business right now. Not until I look in a mirror. That's whoever's business is behind me. I just need to focus on what's here. So it's very, very, I don't know, similar in my mind where it's. I'm going to focus on what's going on today, put things in preparation and plan for tomorrow. And if something happens, I'll deal with it tomorrow or when it comes. But I'm done letting it ruin that good moment. I'm done letting the devil ruin those good vibes. And it's really important to stop yourself and be able to realize that it's happening. Take a deep breath. Shoulders back, chin up. Smile. I love to smile. You know, I like to do a good reset. And it's. I've worked hard. I am human. I cannot work all the hours in the day, and I shouldn't have to work all the hours a day. I can rest, I can relax, I can enjoy, I can spend a little. But I always want to make sure that I'm saving more than I'm spending. Not everything is going to happen all at once. And business is a journey. And as long as I keep showing up, it's going to compound because as long as I don't quit, I'm going to succeed. You can't lose if you don't quit. You can't lose if you don't quit. And before I wrap it up, I just wanted to discuss the comparison part. What did I hear this at? I don't know. Comparison is the thief of joy. It's so true. It's so true. Just focus on yourself, focus on your business, focus on what it is that you want to do, and be happy for the other people. Yes, they might be growing faster. Maybe their vehicles look better. Maybe their social media is better. Maybe everything is better. Maybe every single thing is better. But that's okay, because there is still a piece of the pie for you. Because why? Because you're not going to quit. You're going to keep going. You're going to keep growing. Personally, professionally, myself, spiritually, all the above. And if you catch yourself on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and Facebook and it's messing with you, and you catch yourself being, like, angry about what's going on, and it's being a disservice to you, it's not fueling you. There's one thing. If it's fueling you and you're like, I'm taking them down, I'm going, that's different than if you see it and you're like, I just. There's no customers. There's just no customers left for me? Who's going to want to use my my service? Who's going to want to work for me? Who am I to have a business that has staff and something that is substantial? Do you want to launch or grow your Pooper Scooper business? If you answered yes, then you have to check out the Poop Scoop Millionaire community by Will Milliken, the president of a seven figure dog waste removal business, Swoop Scoop. You will gain access to the same strategies he used to scale his business from zero to over 2,000 reoccurring customers in just three years. Community members will receive exclusive access to his community forums with industry leaders, business courses are running, Facebook ads, commercial services and so much more. You'll get downloadable Pooper Scooper documents, documents, live coachings and trainings and access to verified one on one coaches and vendors that is a perfect fit for you. Including a gold level Google product expert that can help you with all of your Google troubles. Space is limited so please join Poop Scoop millionaires today@skool.com or click my link down in the description. Slap Slap. Just so you know, all of those things I just said are things that I have thought about in the past that have ran through my head. And I'm not saying that they're not going to happen again. But I'll tell you what I'm gonna do when that does happen again. I'm gonna get down on my knees, I'm gonna look at my cross, I'm gonna take a deep breath, I'm gonna praise Jesus. I'm gonna praise him and then I'm gonna repent for being silly and for not, I think I did this the other day for not appreciating what he has given me. And then I'm gonna ask for what it is that I'm gonna ask for in that moment. I'm gonna say hey, I'm feeling off today. You've given me so much and I'm not appreciative of it. Just something need to be taken off my plate. Like social media maybe you gotta get rid of social media a little bit and to not look at that kind of stuff. I was talking to Kathy Nicole last night and she affirmed is it the word affirmed? I don't know. Confirmed that me leaving social media for a little bit was a good choice because she knows that I was really struggling with it. But you know I've grown the business substantially and hopefully this next month goes really well and we hit the goal that we're going to hit and she was like you made the Right decision so you could lock in. And I felt like I did. And it was just nice to hear from somebody on the outside that was like, you know, you did that. You made the decision. You. Even though you were unsure how it was going to turn out, but you had enough confidence to know that that's what you needed to do and you did it. And now look. And I think as we grow as entrepreneurs and as we grow in our confidence, especially with women, I can't speak for men, I'm not too sure what that looks like for you, but for as a. Coming from a woman, there's been times where I didn't have a lot of other female entrepreneurs around me. And so I didn't see what it was like for women to be in business. They always had like home businesses or something where they're working from home. They weren't outside the home building these big businesses until I started getting around other powerful women to see what it looks like behind the scenes. And. And what's the secret sauce? What is it? What's the secret sauce to these people that are what I see as powerful, dedicated, educated, successful, wealthy. Like, they got money. What is it? They show up, they work hard and they don't quit. And a lot of them learn how to delegate very quickly. I have been around. There's been some guys that I've been around in different, like not the pooper scooper space, but different spaces where I'm like, how do these guys have multimillion dollar businesses? Like, what is it? What is it? They might not be super smart. They find people that are smart. They are not afraid to move, like make moves within their business and they delegate and they bring people in that can help you grow because you can only go so far by yourself. And I think a lot of us, maybe I can just speak for myself, that you get to a certain point where you're doing too much and you're exhausted. And I really feel for me, I think those accidents and me hurting my back was a pivotal changing point because I physically couldn't do the scooping anymore. For the longest time it was just like, well, I can just do it. It's easy for me to do this right now because. Because hiring was hard. Figuring out all of the things that went along with hiring was hard. I just didn't wanna do it. Like, I just, I didn't wanna do it. I didn't wanna have the difficult conversations. But I was forced. I was literally forced into it. I was forced into having conversations with unemployment. I was forced into having conversations with my insurance company and being dropped and being put into a high risk plan, which then forced me to really have honest conversations about like, my budget and where my money is going and am I charging enough? I was forced to start hiring and start expanding because I had to rehab my back for six months. Like, I couldn't. I couldn't do the work anymore. So even that was a really crappy, awful time. I'm still so grateful for it because if that wouldn't have happened, like, I don't know, I don't know what things would be like today. I'm not too sure. So, yeah, that is my thought on imposter syndrome. I know we kind of weaved all over the place. I hope I didn't lose you. I hope that me sharing my, I don't know, my thoughts, my experiences can help relate to you. I've just, I've. I've been through it. I'm going through it. I'm just trying to figure it out. And I'm sure you are too. We don't have to know everything. We just have to wake up in the morning and believe in ourselves that we're going to crush it that day. And hopefully the day doesn't crush us. And if it does, that's okay. We'll go to bed, we'll wake up, we'll look in the mirror and say, we're going to crush today. Because we're not going to give up. We're going to keep betting on ourselves. We're not going to let people or fictitious stories or the devil spent too much time in our precious real estate because this is so valuable. And we're not going to let people control our emotions. Because why? Because when people control your emotions, they control you. When people control your emotions, they control you. I appreciate hanging out with you today. Thank you so much for spending your valuable time with me over here on the podcast. If you're not subscribed yet and you want to help me get to that 10,000 subscriber mark, go ahead and hit that subscriber button. And until next time, bye.
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Thank you for hanging out with Erica Kruipen. She is so grateful and honored you decided to tune in to the Scoop podcast and hopes the information you heard today positively impacts you moving forward in business and life. Follow Erica on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at Croupin's Poopin Scoopin. And don't forget to follow the show in order to get notified when the next edition of the Scoop drops.
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Sam.