Clayton Rodrigues, creating a cohesive blueprint in your mind to establish a level playing field.

Let’s remove the flooring of discrimination towards certain social groups. These negative stereotypes may prevent people from taking action towards their dreams by making them feel disadvantaged. As you read through our interview with Clayton Rodrigues, CEO and Founder at Zothex Flooring, Cabinets and more, you will see how creating a level playing field starts with the mind. We all have a mind, the ability to think and overcome. However, most of us don’t use it. We tend to give up at the first challenge, claiming we can’t do it. The quitting mentality is pretty prominent in society today. Mindset is something everybody has, and everybody has the ability to think, regardless of their upbringing, or any other factor. You have to say… How do I get out of here? What do I do to get to the next level? You define yourself in that moment. The point where we think and try to overcome an obstacle is where we begin to create equitable circumstances. The amount of thought and effort that it takes will vary from person to person. It can take a shift in emotion for an individual to want to change, what did it take for you? When I moved to the United States from Brazil it was challenging adjusting to the language barrier and culture change. Having to relearn 17 years of my life and not knowing how to talk to people was hard. Being brought up in Brazil, there was a huge lack of opportunity for betterment and advancement in life. The country isn’t built to empower people for growth, unfortunately, to get ahead in life, you need to cheat and steal, which are things I’m not willing to do. I also had to deal with the limited mindsets of some of my country mates that were in the United States longer than me. That type of stuff wears on you. It took people rejecting me for me to change my mindset to even remotely consider having a retail store. There were people coming after me just for the sake of it because they didn’t believe that I could make it happen. The owner told me, it was almost like a little bit of an alliance saying don’t employ Clayton. For 3 months I had no job, nobody to employ me in Sacramento because they saw I was trying to have my own company. “It was just me saying to myself, how do I make this happen?” I don’t want to get too much into race here but it does play a role, right. Being a black male limits my advances. Whether in this industry or any other, I don’t receive the same treatment.