Speaker: 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs: 0:36

Welcome to the heart-led business show where passion meets purpose. Today we're thrilled to introduce the magnificent Cliff Goins IV, an investor, entrepreneur, and author of the enlightening Minding the Wealth Gap. Cliff Champions economic justice while helping small businesses soar like eagles, all from the heart of Chicago. Join us as we dive into his inspiring journey of blending financial finesse with a heart-led approach to business. So buckle up for a conversation that's bound to ignite your entrepreneurial spirit. Cliff, welcome to the show.

Cliff Goins: 1:11

Hey. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to chat with you. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Tom Jackobs: 1:18

I am as well. Fellow Chicagoland person, although I don't live there anymore, but that's exciting. But also just the premise of. The wealth gap and what you're doing for underserved communities, I think is just so important. I'm really excited to dive into that with the audience and give them that, that experience as well. That you're championing. I think it's gonna be great. Great episode. But first, I always like to ask the question, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Cliff Goins: 1:46

A heart-led business. It, it'll likely sound like I stole your promo. But I do think it is a lot around connecting passion and purpose. Uh. With a third thing, which is skills like what pre not preference, but skill, actual skill.

Tom Jackobs: 2:05

Yeah.

Cliff Goins: 2:06

and obviously, skill develops over time and so sometimes that definition or not, sometimes that definition will evolve. But for me it really is that intersection of what are things that you have discovered that you are passionate about? Maybe you have some natural talent there. Yeah. And then how do you start to connect that with skills and things that you can develop? And then how does that kind of blend into how you think about your life's purpose? And so for me that's that's what it means to be heart-led. And then, at the end of the day, businesses are really collections of people. And so it's all about then how do you connect that to relationships with people? So that's how I define it. It's, it sounds clear cut, as being a person who's been in business and worked with people it's much more complex from there. Right.

Tom Jackobs: 2:55

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I had another guest that had something similar and it was and I guess his advice was for, people thinking about doing their business as a passion project. He's yeah, that's cool. Do something that you're passionate about, but think about these three intersecting circles of you have your passion for it. Do you have the skills to actually do it? And is there a market for it?

Cliff Goins: 3:24

Oh, I love that Venn diagram.

Tom Jackobs: 3:27

It's I'm really passionate about underwater basket weaving, but I dunno if there's a market for that and I don't know how to do that. So that wouldn't be a very good business to go into. But, and then adding your life's purpose on top of that, I think what you bring to that, I think that provides people a really good roadmap to know, is this a business that makes sense to actually pursue? And, not just to, dump money into.

Cliff Goins: 3:53

Yes. It's interesting when you get on the, this type of topic I think a lot of times we almost demonize profits, so we demonize the moneymaking piece of it. I'm a believer in Christ and so I've, I profess professing Christian. And it's very actually clear that money is a subject that's actually talked about a lot in the Bible. And it's mostly talked about in reference to how we relate to it actually not demonized per se. But it's just how do we think about our relationship to it? And that really, I think informs how you approach it. From a very practical perspective, at the end of the day, businesses are created to actually make profits. So if you're pursuing something because you're passionate about it and you haven't connected that to the profit piece, then I think you're probably missing it.

Tom Jackobs: 4:50

Yeah, the business won't be around for much longer. Why? Why do you think people demonize money?

Cliff Goins: 4:57

I think it's one of those subjects one of those things that we all come in contact with in some shape or form, whether we have a little of it or a lot of it. Especially in the western world, specifically in the States, it really, is the symbol for whether or not you're"Successful".

Tom Jackobs: 5:17

Yeah.

Cliff Goins: 5:17

And, you people we have a lot of bad actors when it comes to money. And so you start to associate a lot of negativity sometimes with money. Certainly folks who don't have money see the people who have money and they, there might be issues between those two classes. And there just, a lot of noise and. Controversy. When you start talking about money and injecting money, you have families fighting over money. It is just all of those different things coming together. And so I think that's why you see, such a maybe demonizing on it. But I think once you understand what it is and how you use it and how we should relate to it you could be freed up from some of that.

Tom Jackobs: 6:02

Yeah and I think because humans have a natural tendency to go to the negative, so we always have a negative bias. So those negative stories of the, the billionaires that are doing ridiculous things really is top of mind. But we forget about the billionaires, like Warren Buffett, who's giving away 99% of his wealth and will still be a billionaire too, by the way, when he gives it all away and it's, we forget about, or Bill Gates, who's doing so many different things, for people around the world and his stuff. So sometimes we just forget that and we don't.

Cliff Goins: 6:37

you can even go back. Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, like these foundations actually still exist because very wealthy people decided to seed them. Yes.

Tom Jackobs: 6:47

Exactly. If, and I know I'm one that has demonized money or just not had a really good relationship with it. Somehow it finds its way, it finds its way back to me though. So it's, it all works. But like I've really had to work on that whole mindset around money. Have you worked with people or have you personally had to do mindset work around money?

Cliff Goins: 7:09

Sure. Early on, early two thousands I really, got convicted about how I was using money. So in, in the late nineties, I I realized that I was making money, but I did not have any money.

Tom Jackobs: 7:27

Yes.

Cliff Goins: 7:28

I was trying to figure out like why that was the case. And it sent me on this journey to get, I got really passionate about personal finance and I ended up writing a book called Stop Digging back in 2003. That was a Christian based personal finance book mostly about how we relate to debt, how do you get outta debt, and then how do you then build a financial foundation. And so since then, that's really been my philosophy and approach, but it was really a lot of, inside work. A lot of studying just personal finance principles, but really studying a lot of spiritual principles around money. And since then that's really guided my approach to money and I do not get it perfect. But I do have a North Star as I think about, pursuing the different things that I've pursued over my career. we talked a little bit in the pre-call about just some things that have gone wrong. Some things have gone right. I would say one of the things that went, terribly is early on in my life, I really thought I was gonna be a real estate mogul. At the time I didn't realize my main motivation was just to make money. And so I, and again, there's nothing wrong with making money, but again, you gotta tie it to purpose, passion, and, life's work, all those things. And at this point, I'm just, Hey, I'm gonna go, flip these properties. I'm gonna make. Tons of money and I was so smart that I did not get wise counsel. so I found this property. It was great. It was on the south side of Chicago. It was a graystone and a up and coming neighborhood. I, I talked to the owner. I was negotiating the deal. I didn't have a lawyer. I didn't have any, oh, I can do all this stuff. And it turns out the guy was straight swindling me. And it took me$12,000 to realize that some of which went to him and some of which went to other folks who, like I had a guy who, set up the rehab plan. Basically I was just spending money. And then it turns out this guy was a swindling me. I've had a, I've had a few scars along the way. Um. Even in discovering my own relationship to money. So

Tom Jackobs: 9:46

Do you think and I've had similar situations where I was just chasing the money. Do you think that if you're only chasing the money, you're really setting yourself up for failure?

Cliff Goins: 9:57

I think depends on how you define failure and success.

Tom Jackobs: 10:01

Okay.

Cliff Goins: 10:01

I think there are people who are super, super motivated for money. Go and go after it. And they make a lot of money. Some of them can do that happily, and some of them don't. I think it's very hard to have a sustained effort that is healthy and fun and energizing if all you're worried about is the money. Because money, as comes and goes. It grows and not grows. And it is a very fickle.

Tom Jackobs: 10:32

Yeah.

Cliff Goins: 10:32

So now again, it can buy you certain comforts and things of that nature. But you just have to me have again, have the right relationship with it.

Tom Jackobs: 10:40

Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So let's talk about your business now, your ent entrepreneur, investor which I think is really fascinating kinda your take on the investment. So can you take us a little bit through what you're doing with your investments and how you got into that? Yeah.

Cliff Goins: 10:57

How I got into it is I actually started my career and what's known as equity research. I was doing what's known as buy-side. Equity research, meaning we would research stocks and decide yay or nay if they were going into portfolio for our clients. So that's how I actually started my career in kind of the money management space. And eventually I ended up working in private equity as a mezzanine lender. so spent a lot of time. Reviewing and working with a lot of lower middle market companies, manufacturing companies healthcare companies, marketing companies, all kinds of different types of companies in the great heartland of the USA. And so that really created my foundation for just understanding the fundamentals of business, how you scale businesses, what role investment plays in scaling businesses what role talent plays in scaling businesses, all the things. Okay.

Tom Jackobs: 11:59

Yeah.

Cliff Goins: 12:00

That's led me to a place where I'm actually essentially trying to buy businesses myself to build out a portfolio. And so I'm looking at lower middle market businesses hopefully revenue. Definitely profitable. And, hopefully in some way mission driven around whatever service or product that they're delivering to the market. So that's where I am now. Also work on a startup called Scale Up that, few of us spun out of Amazon. We, we're still kicking alive and kicking, but we truly are a startup. And that's, that business was created to actually try to help scale diverse and other small businesses leveraging technology and connections. So those are my two, two projects, of course. And then the book.

Tom Jackobs: 12:48

So talk to us about the work that you're doing for underserved communities and how that kind of frames your investment strategy.

Cliff Goins: 12:57

Yeah scale up was actually started just post George Floyd. The premise was how do we start to create more large scaled black-owned businesses? That's where we started. Again we've morphed a little bit from there. And the inciting statistic was we looked at businesses, private businesses that do a hundred million dollars or more in revenue.'Cause we wanted to have, okay what would a big business be and we just, a hundred million dollars. And so we, but we go and we look at the data and it turns out that there are almost 18,000 private businesses that do a hundred million dollars or more in the states. And of those less than 100 are black owned. Fact, we actually thought at one point it was less than 50. We had some people who argued with us about that statistic. So we pushed it up to a hundred. But at any rate is 0.6% is what it's, and that just set us on this mission of like, how do we actually start to really help these businesses operate at scale? And we landed on really. making sure they have the right connections, first and foremost to customers secondly to capital as they need it. And then thirdly, to essentially what we call champions or council, but basically people who can, pick up the phone on their behalf or who could actually sit on their board and things of that nature. And so we think if you can connect these businesses with those types of resources you can really impact their ability to scale. And so that's, yeah, that's the mission there as it dovetails into my own investment philosophy. It's really just taking that to the streets. Trying to find businesses, whether they're diverse, owned or not diverse owned. But then start to build out some more diverse leadership and things of that nature as you purchase the companies and scale them.

Tom Jackobs: 14:47

Okay. And when you're looking at businesses to invest in or to purchase, how much are you looking at the mission piece of that business versus the profitability of the business?

Cliff Goins: 14:59

Yeah, for me personally and so this is where, i'm just practical. looking at the fundamentals of the business like way, way more. I, yeah. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, so I think there are a couple of ways to think about mission one way, and I think is a very traditional way that people think about it probably even as you maybe intended to comment, which is how do I actually impact lives that actually may. Be underserved in some way, whatever that way may be. And certainly I do think that's fine. And I'll continue to do that either through this due to my investment mechanism or otherwise. I think the other piece though is ultimately to me, we actually are on the planet to impact lives no matter what the lives are.

Tom Jackobs: 15:52

Yeah.

Cliff Goins: 15:53

Again, businesses are always collections of people. These are all people who have some sense of why they're at the job. It might just be because they need to make money so they can party on the weekend. it might be they have aspirations to run their own business one day. I think our job as owners and or leaders of these businesses is to. Yes, help these folks. Help us with our mission, which is usually to service our customers and make some kind of profit, pay back our lenders, pay our investors, all those different things. but also to understand what is it that they're trying to do in life. Sometimes they don't even know that, and so maybe it's just drawing that out of them and helping them understand how this part of their journey can help. Get them to whatever the next phase of their journey is. And so that's where I really wanna lean in with some of the companies that I buy. So it is more about the life and the people as it is and about the business.

Tom Jackobs: 16:59

Yeah. Are you, so you're doing a lot of research for a lot of different companies. Is that a fair statement to make?

Cliff Goins: 17:05

I've done a lot of research on a lot of different companies. I would say. Yes.

Tom Jackobs: 17:10

So in, and I think that gives a really unique perspective as well and in terms of when you're looking at the fundamentals of the business and you see some things that are like, ah, just that doesn't make sense that this business isn't producing the type of revenue that should, and then you look back is it because there isn't a heart as part of that business? Is it all brain and no art, or is there a connection to that is really what my question is between fundamentals and being a heart-led business.

Cliff Goins: 17:41

Yeah, I'll just use and I'll try to keep it as mask as possible, but I'll just use like examples of organizations that I've actually worked in. You looked at that LinkedIn, you'll see where I worked, so you might be able to figure some of this out. But I'll say for example, one organization was very, very successful organization and, had a certain philosophy about how they went about business. It was a philosophy that, again, worked for the business for quite some time and quite frankly, will probably continue to work for the business. It was very limiting to the business's ability to growth, to grow. And a lot of it was because you had a lot of ego then you had a lot of what's the word? Had a lot of. What's the word to do different that is connected to mission or connected to the types of people was there. I can't call, but that, that definitely was a limiter to that company's growth, but you still would call that company successful. I'll give a second example of a company that shot up like a rocket engine. Did very well. Partially because it started to empower people to just run different aspects of the business the owners would in his, historically would've run themselves. And so that, and was a very healthy and scary ride. and, but it's still, still the business still ran into some challenges. I. Because, again this is all people stuff, right? Certain people wanted to do things certain ways and others didn't. And if you can't come together you actually end up impacting the business. And that business was very, would say client focused, which would, that was their mission. Their mission was, we really wanna make our clients like shine. And they did that, right? And I don't know if that answered your question, but those were the two stories that came to mind.

Tom Jackobs: 19:40

And looking at again, the history that you have, I think gives a really interesting perspective and full perspective as well. Do you find that the founder or CEO. Has a lot of influence over how that business operates in terms of being heart-led or can it, can that come from down up also.

Cliff Goins: 20:05

That's actually an interesting question. I think the first answer is yes. How the CEO leads matters and matters exponentially more than the other leaders. That said, and some of it is dependent on the size of the organization. But yeah, in one of the organizations we had a very dynamic, heart-led leader who was not the CEO of the company but was very impactful, very influential changed, shifted culture, even if it was just shifting subculture because he was not successful shifting the whole culture. But. So you can have those pockets of impact. And I would say probably most of the people who worked for him are off doing other things, and they have that foundation that they carry to the next places that they went. And you can still, still pockets of impact, but certainly for a given business. The CEO has outsized impact on how heart-led is gonna be. At least that's been my experience. Yeah, that's been my experience.

Tom Jackobs: 21:20

The example that comes to mind is for me anyway, is Zappos a shoes. Shea, Tony Shea, the CEO of that unfortunately died. And then I don't know what happened to Zappos after, I know Amazon bought it, but allowed him to run it as an independent company. But then after his death, I'm I was actually very surprised that that culture seems so ingrained that it's customer first. No matter what, put the customer first. We're a customer, business, not a shoe business or customer business that happens to sell shoes. I think that was his quote, right?

Cliff Goins: 21:54

Yes.

Tom Jackobs: 21:55

Where are they now? Without that really dynamic leader, I would've thought that there was some succession or the underlings.

Cliff Goins: 22:04

Yeah, I, I don't know that specific story. I don't know what's, what happened to Zappo since Tony passed away. But I will say so I worked for Amazon, I could see why Amazon would've bought Zappos, because Amazon is very much customer centric. But the one thing allows Amazon to scale in the way that it scales is if you have responsibility for an area, and that can be a big area a small area. They w the STO, the single threaded owner,

Tom Jackobs: 22:37

Okay.

Cliff Goins: 22:38

and then you are accountable to deliver what you need to deliver. Now, if you don't deliver, obviously is a, there's a different conversation, but. the most part, they, they try to hire for the right people who can deliver and then they empower those people to deliver and it's very liberating. So I worked there for 16 months. I tell people like I did three years worth of, got three years worth of work done because we were just free. It, and again, now this is not everybody's experience in Amazon, so I do wanna be clear about that. But I will say that part of what. Again, allows that business to scale in a way that it does, is because, when Jeff Bezos left, like Amazon really didn't miss a beat.

Tom Jackobs: 23:22

Yeah.

Cliff Goins: 23:22

When Andy Chassis decides to do something else, I don't think Amazon's gonna miss a beat because there are people in the organization who really embody the culture and actually have been empowered to carry it. And so I think maybe that, that, that is. A principle that even smaller businesses could use. But yeah, these, a lot of these smaller businesses, these CEOs cannot let go. Yeah, they will not let go. They shall not let go.

Tom Jackobs: 23:49

Guilty. I'm starting to loosen up quite a bit, but explain that, that philosophy in terms of, I have a team of 18 people. They're amazing teammates of mine. I think I give them latitude to do the right thing, but I also have structure as well. So what would the advice be for entrepreneur like myself in terms of letting go and giving more freedom to the employees to do what they need?

Cliff Goins: 24:18

Yeah. We all have certain things that we are very good at, that almost no one on the planet can do what we do in that thing. Some of us haven't discovered it, some of us. Maybe are only partially aware of it or don't fully live into it, but most of us, especially if you get into our age, I don't know how old you are, I'm pushing 50 and you have a feel for Yep, I'm really good at these things and I'm pretty terrible at these things. And so in business, a lot of times the CEOs are good at two. Maybe three things that just they really kill it at, and they usually probably just need to focus on those top two. And then it's how do you then take all the other pieces and get people in place who basically have the same kind of competency you have in your two things those things? And then how do you kinda let them cook and also be okay with perhaps them only doing it 80% of the way that you would do it. And understanding that like 80% is actually okay. So I think that's that's part of it. But the other thing, and you said you have it right? You have to have accountability mechanisms in place. So it's not Amazon just lets you go and be free and just do whatever you wanna do. No. We actually have a operating model. The operating model is built around, I don't know if you heard of the PR FAQ. is our public press release, I'm sorry. And FAQ that you have to do for every project or every business idea or everything. And that gets everybody on the same page.

Tom Jackobs: 25:50

Okay.

Cliff Goins: 25:51

And then we have mechanisms for review. We have what we call if it requires it, weekly business reviews. It depends on the type of business you're in. Monthly business reviews and quarterly business reviews, and they're all around. did we say we were gonna do, and are we doing that? And so that, that's the mechanism that keeps everybody aligned and in check. Yeah. And then at some point, yeah, you do have some people who don't perform and you have to, deal with that, but that's the way you can start to scale yourself and scale whatever it is that you're trying to do. Long-winded answer.

Tom Jackobs: 26:26

No, I love it. That's great and I think that, goes to the leading with heart as well is allowing your employees and your teammates to do what they need to do to be successful. Because that's where the joy comes, is when you are successful. It's not. And for some people that's the money and sometimes it's the praise. It's, whatever it happens to be for that individual. And I think that's what drives us as people. And if you allow your employees to do that same thing, then the satisfaction's gonna go way up.

Cliff Goins: 27:01

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Tom Jackobs: 27:03

That's good food for thought. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sit on that.

Cliff Goins: 27:08

80% is okay. 80% is okay

Tom Jackobs: 27:11

Of course it is. Yeah. Early on, like my first business, I was a complete control freak and it was so evident as well. So I've, yeah after 45, I'm 54 now, but I've loosened up.

Cliff Goins: 27:29

Love it. I love it.

Tom Jackobs: 27:31

Yeah. Cliff, this has been just a fantastic conversation and what a great insight as well in terms of different areas of business. So I really appreciate the insight. How can people learn more about what you're doing and potentially, work with you or get get bought out by.

Cliff Goins: 27:49

Sure you can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm@cliffgoinsiv. Very easy to find there. You can also find me on Instagram. That's I am Cliff going the fourth. And so that's my handle on Instagram. Yes. And yeah, mining the wealth gap, our playbook to close it together is out. You can buy that on Amazon. And yeah, let me know what you think.

Tom Jackobs: 28:11

Awesome. Cliff, again, thank you so much for sharing your expertise to, with the audience and with me in particular. I really appreciate it. So thank you so much for being on the show today.

Cliff Goins: 28:21

This was so fun. Thanks.

Tom Jackobs: 28:23

Awesome. And thank you listeners for watching the show today or listening to the show. We really do appreciate it and make sure you're checking out everything that Cliff is doing and we're gonna provide links to the book and all that in the show notes as well into his LinkedIn and Instagram profile. So go ahead and click away down in the show notes. And while you're down there, can you do me a favor and give me a nice rating and review five stars? Of course. If it's less than that, just tell me and we can. Separately, but if you could do that, they'll help share the show with other people as well. So until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2: 28:57

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.