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Wealth, Wisdom, and Winning Strategies with Cliff Goins IV · The Heart-Led Business Show

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
• 0:09
  Speaker: 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.
• 0:20
  Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
• 0:29
  Speaker: So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.
• 0:36
  Tom Jackobs: Welcome to the heart-led business show where passion meets purpose.
• 0:40
  Tom Jackobs: Today we're thrilled to introduce the magnificent Cliff Goins IV, an investor, entrepreneur, and author of the enlightening Minding the Wealth Gap.
• 0:50
  Tom Jackobs: Cliff Champions economic justice while helping small businesses soar like eagles, all from the heart of Chicago.
• 0:58
  Tom Jackobs: Join us as we dive into his inspiring journey of blending financial finesse with a heart-led approach to business.
• 1:05
  Tom Jackobs: So buckle up for a conversation that's bound to ignite your entrepreneurial spirit.
• 1:09
  Tom Jackobs: Cliff, welcome to the show.
• 1:11
  Cliff Goins: Hey.
• 1:11
  Cliff Goins: Hey, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:14
  Cliff Goins: I'm very excited to chat with you.
• 1:16
  Cliff Goins: I'm looking forward to our conversation.
• 1:18
  Tom Jackobs: I am as well.
• 1:19
  Tom Jackobs: Fellow Chicagoland person, although I don't live there anymore, but that's exciting.
• 1:23
  Tom Jackobs: But also just the premise of.
• 1:26
  Tom Jackobs: The wealth gap and what you're doing for underserved communities, I think is just so important.
• 1:31
  Tom Jackobs: I'm really excited to dive into that with the audience and give them that, that experience as well.
• 1:37
  Tom Jackobs: That you're championing.
• 1:38
  Tom Jackobs: I think it's gonna be great.
• 1:39
  Tom Jackobs: Great episode.
• 1:40
  Tom Jackobs: But first, I always like to ask the question, what's your definition of a heart-led business?
• 1:46
  Cliff Goins: A heart-led business.
• 1:48
  Cliff Goins: It, it'll likely sound like I stole your promo.
• 1:51
  Cliff Goins: But I do think it is a lot around connecting passion and purpose.
• 1:57
  Cliff Goins: Uh.
• 1:58
  Cliff Goins: With a third thing, which is skills like what pre not preference, but skill, actual skill.
• 2:05
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 2:06
  Cliff Goins: and obviously, skill develops over time and so sometimes that definition or not, sometimes that definition will evolve.
• 2:14
  Cliff Goins: But for me it really is that intersection of what are things that you have discovered that you are passionate about?
• 2:19
  Cliff Goins: Maybe you have some natural talent there.
• 2:22
  Cliff Goins: Yeah.
• 2:22
  Cliff Goins: And then how do you start to connect that with skills and things that you can develop?
• 2:28
  Cliff Goins: And then how does that kind of blend into how you think about your life's purpose?
• 2:33
  Cliff Goins: And so for me that's that's what it means to be heart-led.
• 2:38
  Cliff Goins: And then, at the end of the day, businesses are really collections of people.
• 2:42
  Cliff Goins: And so it's all about then how do you connect that to relationships with people?
• 2:46
  Cliff Goins: So that's how I define it.
• 2:49
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 2:55
  Cliff Goins: Right.
• 2:55
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 2:56
  Tom Jackobs: Exactly.
• 2:57
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 3:07
  Tom Jackobs: He's yeah, that's cool.
• 3:08
  Tom Jackobs: Do something that you're passionate about, but think about these three intersecting circles of you have your passion for it.
• 3:18
  Tom Jackobs: Do you have the skills to actually do it?
• 3:21
  Tom Jackobs: And is there a market for it?
• 3:24
  Cliff Goins: Oh, I love that Venn diagram.
• 3:27
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 3:33
  Tom Jackobs: So that wouldn't be a very good business to go into.
• 3:37
  Tom Jackobs: 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?
• 3:49
  Tom Jackobs: And, not just to, dump money into.
• 3:53
  Cliff Goins: Yes.
• 3:53
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 4:09
  Cliff Goins: I'm a believer in Christ and so I've, I profess professing Christian.
• 4:13
  Cliff Goins: And it's very actually clear that money is a subject that's actually talked about a lot in the Bible.
• 4:21
  Cliff Goins: And it's mostly talked about in reference to how we relate to it actually not demonized per se.
• 4:28
  Cliff Goins: But it's just how do we think about our relationship to it?
• 4:31
  Cliff Goins: And that really, I think informs how you approach it.
• 4:36
  Cliff Goins: From a very practical perspective, at the end of the day, businesses are created to actually make profits.
• 4:40
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 4:50
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, the business won't be around for much longer.
• 4:54
  Tom Jackobs: Why?
• 4:54
  Tom Jackobs: Why do you think people demonize money?
• 4:57
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 5:07
  Cliff Goins: Especially in the western world, specifically in the States, it really, is the symbol for whether or not you're"Successful".
• 5:17
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 5:17
  Cliff Goins: And, you people we have a lot of bad actors when it comes to money.
• 5:22
  Cliff Goins: And so you start to associate a lot of negativity sometimes with money.
• 5:28
  Cliff Goins: Certainly folks who don't have money see the people who have money and they, there might be issues between those two classes.
• 5:34
  Cliff Goins: And there just, a lot of noise and.
• 5:41
  Cliff Goins: Controversy.
• 5:42
  Cliff Goins: When you start talking about money and injecting money, you have families fighting over money.
• 5:46
  Cliff Goins: It is just all of those different things coming together.
• 5:48
  Cliff Goins: And so I think that's why you see, such a maybe demonizing on it.
• 5:55
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 6:02
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah and I think because humans have a natural tendency to go to the negative, so we always have a negative bias.
• 6:09
  Tom Jackobs: So those negative stories of the, the billionaires that are doing ridiculous things really is top of mind.
• 6:16
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 6:34
  Tom Jackobs: So sometimes we just forget that and we don't.
• 6:37
  Cliff Goins: you can even go back.
• 6:38
  Cliff Goins: Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, like these foundations actually still exist because very wealthy people decided to seed them.
• 6:46
  Cliff Goins: Yes.
• 6:47
  Tom Jackobs: Exactly.
• 6:48
  Tom Jackobs: If, and I know I'm one that has demonized money or just not had a really good relationship with it.
• 6:54
  Tom Jackobs: Somehow it finds its way, it finds its way back to me though.
• 6:58
  Tom Jackobs: So it's, it all works.
• 6:59
  Tom Jackobs: But like I've really had to work on that whole mindset around money.
• 7:05
  Tom Jackobs: Have you worked with people or have you personally had to do mindset work around money?
• 7:09
  Cliff Goins: Sure.
• 7:10
  Cliff Goins: Early on, early two thousands I really, got convicted about how I was using money.
• 7:17
  Cliff Goins: So in, in the late nineties, I I realized that I was making money, but I did not have any money.
• 7:27
  Tom Jackobs: Yes.
• 7:28
  Cliff Goins: I was trying to figure out like why that was the case.
• 7:34
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 7:47
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 7:57
  Cliff Goins: And so since then, that's really been my philosophy and approach, but it was really a lot of, inside work.
• 8:03
  Cliff Goins: A lot of studying just personal finance principles, but really studying a lot of spiritual principles around money.
• 8:09
  Cliff Goins: And since then that's really guided my approach to money and I do not get it perfect.
• 8:15
  Cliff Goins: But I do have a North Star as I think about, pursuing the different things that I've pursued over my career.
• 8:21
  Cliff Goins: we talked a little bit in the pre-call about just some things that have gone wrong.
• 8:26
  Cliff Goins: Some things have gone right.
• 8:27
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 8:37
  Cliff Goins: At the time I didn't realize my main motivation was just to make money.
• 8:41
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 8:49
  Cliff Goins: And at this point, I'm just, Hey, I'm gonna go, flip these properties.
• 8:53
  Cliff Goins: I'm gonna make.
• 8:54
  Cliff Goins: Tons of money and I was so smart that I did not get wise counsel.
• 9:01
  Cliff Goins: so I found this property.
• 9:03
  Cliff Goins: It was great.
• 9:04
  Cliff Goins: It was on the south side of Chicago.
• 9:05
  Cliff Goins: It was a graystone and a up and coming neighborhood.
• 9:09
  Cliff Goins: I, I talked to the owner.
• 9:11
  Cliff Goins: I was negotiating the deal.
• 9:14
  Cliff Goins: I didn't have a lawyer.
• 9:14
  Cliff Goins: I didn't have any, oh, I can do all this stuff.
• 9:16
  Cliff Goins: And it turns out the guy was straight swindling me.
• 9:20
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 9:32
  Cliff Goins: Basically I was just spending money.
• 9:34
  Cliff Goins: And then it turns out this guy was a swindling me.
• 9:37
  Cliff Goins: I've had a, I've had a few scars along the way.
• 9:40
  Cliff Goins: Um.
• 9:41
  Cliff Goins: Even in discovering my own relationship to money.
• 9:45
  Cliff Goins: So
• 9:46
  Tom Jackobs: Do you think and I've had similar situations where I was just chasing the money.
• 9:50
  Tom Jackobs: Do you think that if you're only chasing the money, you're really setting yourself up for failure?
• 9:57
  Cliff Goins: I think depends on how you define failure and success.
• 10:01
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 10:01
  Cliff Goins: I think there are people who are super, super motivated for money.
• 10:05
  Cliff Goins: Go and go after it.
• 10:06
  Cliff Goins: And they make a lot of money.
• 10:08
  Cliff Goins: Some of them can do that happily, and some of them don't.
• 10:13
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 10:25
  Cliff Goins: Because money, as comes and goes.
• 10:28
  Cliff Goins: It grows and not grows.
• 10:30
  Cliff Goins: And it is a very fickle.
• 10:32
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 10:32
  Cliff Goins: So now again, it can buy you certain comforts and things of that nature.
• 10:37
  Cliff Goins: But you just have to me have again, have the right relationship with it.
• 10:40
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:42
  Tom Jackobs: Cool.
• 10:42
  Tom Jackobs: So let's talk about your business now, your ent entrepreneur, investor which I think is really fascinating kinda your take on the investment.
• 10:51
  Tom Jackobs: So can you take us a little bit through what you're doing with your investments and how you got into that?
• 10:57
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 10:57
  Cliff Goins: How I got into it is I actually started my career and what's known as equity research.
• 11:03
  Cliff Goins: I was doing what's known as buy-side.
• 11:06
  Cliff Goins: Equity research, meaning we would research stocks and decide yay or nay if they were going into portfolio for our clients.
• 11:15
  Cliff Goins: So that's how I actually started my career in kind of the money management space.
• 11:20
  Cliff Goins: And eventually I ended up working in private equity as a mezzanine lender.
• 11:26
  Cliff Goins: so spent a lot of time.
• 11:29
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 11:42
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 11:58
  Cliff Goins: Okay.
• 11:59
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 12:00
  Cliff Goins: That's led me to a place where I'm actually essentially trying to buy businesses myself to build out a portfolio.
• 12:06
  Cliff Goins: And so I'm looking at lower middle market businesses hopefully revenue.
• 12:12
  Cliff Goins: Definitely profitable.
• 12:13
  Cliff Goins: And, hopefully in some way mission driven around whatever service or product that they're delivering to the market.
• 12:21
  Cliff Goins: So that's where I am now.
• 12:24
  Cliff Goins: Also work on a startup called Scale Up that, few of us spun out of Amazon.
• 12:29
  Cliff Goins: We, we're still kicking alive and kicking, but we truly are a startup.
• 12:33
  Cliff Goins: And that's, that business was created to actually try to help scale diverse and other small businesses leveraging technology and connections.
• 12:42
  Cliff Goins: So those are my two, two projects, of course.
• 12:45
  Cliff Goins: And then the book.
• 12:48
  Tom Jackobs: So talk to us about the work that you're doing for underserved communities and how that kind of frames your investment strategy.
• 12:57
  Cliff Goins: Yeah scale up was actually started just post George Floyd.
• 13:02
  Cliff Goins: The premise was how do we start to create more large scaled black-owned businesses?
• 13:10
  Cliff Goins: That's where we started.
• 13:10
  Cliff Goins: Again we've morphed a little bit from there.
• 13:13
  Cliff Goins: And the inciting statistic was we looked at businesses, private businesses that do a hundred million dollars or more in revenue.
• 13:20
  Cliff Goins: 'Cause we wanted to have, okay what would a big business be and we just, a hundred million dollars.
• 13:25
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 13:35
  Cliff Goins: And of those less than 100 are black owned.
• 13:40
  Cliff Goins: Fact, we actually thought at one point it was less than 50.
• 13:42
  Cliff Goins: We had some people who argued with us about that statistic.
• 13:45
  Cliff Goins: So we pushed it up to a hundred.
• 13:47
  Cliff Goins: 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?
• 13:58
  Cliff Goins: And we landed on really.
• 14:01
  Cliff Goins: making sure they have the right connections, first and foremost to customers secondly to capital as they need it.
• 14:10
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 14:22
  Cliff Goins: And so we think if you can connect these businesses with those types of resources you can really impact their ability to scale.
• 14:29
  Cliff Goins: And so that's, yeah, that's the mission there as it dovetails into my own investment philosophy.
• 14:35
  Cliff Goins: It's really just taking that to the streets.
• 14:37
  Cliff Goins: Trying to find businesses, whether they're diverse, owned or not diverse owned.
• 14:41
  Cliff Goins: But then start to build out some more diverse leadership and things of that nature as you purchase the companies and scale them.
• 14:47
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 14:48
  Tom Jackobs: 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?
• 14:59
  Cliff Goins: Yeah, for me personally and so this is where, i'm just practical.
• 15:05
  Cliff Goins: looking at the fundamentals of the business like way, way more.
• 15:09
  Cliff Goins: I, yeah.
• 15:10
  Cliff Goins: Yeah.
• 15:10
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 15:30
  Cliff Goins: Be underserved in some way, whatever that way may be.
• 15:35
  Cliff Goins: And certainly I do think that's fine.
• 15:37
  Cliff Goins: And I'll continue to do that either through this due to my investment mechanism or otherwise.
• 15:43
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 15:52
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 15:53
  Cliff Goins: Again, businesses are always collections of people.
• 15:57
  Cliff Goins: These are all people who have some sense of why they're at the job.
• 16:02
  Cliff Goins: It might just be because they need to make money so they can party on the weekend.
• 16:07
  Cliff Goins: it might be they have aspirations to run their own business one day.
• 16:12
  Cliff Goins: I think our job as owners and or leaders of these businesses is to.
• 16:19
  Cliff Goins: Yes, help these folks.
• 16:21
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 16:30
  Cliff Goins: but also to understand what is it that they're trying to do in life.
• 16:34
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 16:43
  Cliff Goins: Get them to whatever the next phase of their journey is.
• 16:46
  Cliff Goins: And so that's where I really wanna lean in with some of the companies that I buy.
• 16:51
  Cliff Goins: So it is more about the life and the people as it is and about the business.
• 16:59
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 16:59
  Tom Jackobs: Are you, so you're doing a lot of research for a lot of different companies.
• 17:03
  Tom Jackobs: Is that a fair statement to make?
• 17:05
  Cliff Goins: I've done a lot of research on a lot of different companies.
• 17:08
  Cliff Goins: I would say.
• 17:09
  Cliff Goins: Yes.
• 17:10
  Tom Jackobs: 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?
• 17:31
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 17:41
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 17:49
  Cliff Goins: You looked at that LinkedIn, you'll see where I worked, so you might be able to figure some of this out.
• 17:53
  Cliff Goins: But I'll say for example, one organization was very, very successful organization and, had a certain philosophy about how they went about business.
• 18:07
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 18:16
  Cliff Goins: It was very limiting to the business's ability to growth, to grow.
• 18:20
  Cliff Goins: And a lot of it was because you had a lot of ego then you had a lot of what's the word?
• 18:30
  Cliff Goins: Had a lot of.
• 18:33
  Cliff Goins: What's the word to do different that is connected to mission or connected to the types of people was there.
• 18:39
  Cliff Goins: I can't call, but that, that definitely was a limiter to that company's growth, but you still would call that company successful.
• 18:48
  Cliff Goins: I'll give a second example of a company that shot up like a rocket engine.
• 18:53
  Cliff Goins: Did very well.
• 18:54
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 19:06
  Cliff Goins: And so that, and was a very healthy and scary ride.
• 19:14
  Cliff Goins: and, but it's still, still the business still ran into some challenges.
• 19:18
  Cliff Goins: I.
• 19:18
  Cliff Goins: Because, again this is all people stuff, right?
• 19:20
  Cliff Goins: Certain people wanted to do things certain ways and others didn't.
• 19:23
  Cliff Goins: And if you can't come together you actually end up impacting the business.
• 19:27
  Cliff Goins: And that business was very, would say client focused, which would, that was their mission.
• 19:32
  Cliff Goins: Their mission was, we really wanna make our clients like shine.
• 19:35
  Cliff Goins: And they did that, right?
• 19:37
  Cliff Goins: And I don't know if that answered your question, but those were the two stories that came to mind.
• 19:40
  Tom Jackobs: And looking at again, the history that you have, I think gives a really interesting perspective and full perspective as well.
• 19:47
  Tom Jackobs: Do you find that the founder or CEO.
• 19:51
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 20:05
  Cliff Goins: That's actually an interesting question.
• 20:08
  Cliff Goins: I think the first answer is yes.
• 20:12
  Cliff Goins: How the CEO leads matters and matters exponentially more than the other leaders.
• 20:21
  Cliff Goins: That said, and some of it is dependent on the size of the organization.
• 20:26
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 20:49
  Cliff Goins: But.
• 20:50
  Cliff Goins: So you can have those pockets of impact.
• 20:53
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 21:05
  Cliff Goins: And you can still, still pockets of impact, but certainly for a given business.
• 21:11
  Cliff Goins: The CEO has outsized impact on how heart-led is gonna be.
• 21:16
  Cliff Goins: At least that's been my experience.
• 21:18
  Cliff Goins: Yeah, that's been my experience.
• 21:20
  Tom Jackobs: The example that comes to mind is for me anyway, is Zappos a shoes.
• 21:25
  Tom Jackobs: Shea, Tony Shea, the CEO of that unfortunately died.
• 21:29
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 21:36
  Tom Jackobs: But then after his death, I'm I was actually very surprised that that culture seems so ingrained that it's customer first.
• 21:44
  Tom Jackobs: No matter what, put the customer first.
• 21:47
  Tom Jackobs: We're a customer, business, not a shoe business or customer business that happens to sell shoes.
• 21:53
  Tom Jackobs: I think that was his quote, right?
• 21:54
  Cliff Goins: Yes.
• 21:55
  Tom Jackobs: Where are they now?
• 21:56
  Tom Jackobs: Without that really dynamic leader, I would've thought that there was some succession or the underlings.
• 22:04
  Cliff Goins: Yeah, I, I don't know that specific story.
• 22:06
  Cliff Goins: I don't know what's, what happened to Zappo since Tony passed away.
• 22:09
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 22:18
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 22:33
  Cliff Goins: They w the STO, the single threaded owner,
• 22:37
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 22:38
  Cliff Goins: and then you are accountable to deliver what you need to deliver.
• 22:43
  Cliff Goins: Now, if you don't deliver, obviously is a, there's a different conversation, but.
• 22:48
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 22:56
  Cliff Goins: So I worked there for 16 months.
• 22:58
  Cliff Goins: I tell people like I did three years worth of, got three years worth of work done because we were just free.
• 23:05
  Cliff Goins: It, and again, now this is not everybody's experience in Amazon, so I do wanna be clear about that.
• 23:10
  Cliff Goins: But I will say that part of what.
• 23:13
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 23:22
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 23:22
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 23:34
  Cliff Goins: And so I think maybe that, that, that is.
• 23:37
  Cliff Goins: A principle that even smaller businesses could use.
• 23:41
  Cliff Goins: But yeah, these, a lot of these smaller businesses, these CEOs cannot let go.
• 23:45
  Cliff Goins: Yeah, they will not let go.
• 23:47
  Cliff Goins: They shall not let go.
• 23:49
  Tom Jackobs: Guilty.
• 23:51
  Tom Jackobs: I'm starting to loosen up quite a bit, but explain that, that philosophy in terms of, I have a team of 18 people.
• 23:59
  Tom Jackobs: They're amazing teammates of mine.
• 24:01
  Tom Jackobs: I think I give them latitude to do the right thing, but I also have structure as well.
• 24:07
  Tom Jackobs: 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?
• 24:18
  Cliff Goins: Yeah.
• 24:18
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 24:27
  Cliff Goins: Some of us haven't discovered it, some of us.
• 24:29
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 24:44
  Cliff Goins: And so in business, a lot of times the CEOs are good at two.
• 24:49
  Cliff Goins: Maybe three things that just they really kill it at, and they usually probably just need to focus on those top two.
• 24:57
  Cliff Goins: 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?
• 25:08
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 25:18
  Cliff Goins: And understanding that like 80% is actually okay.
• 25:23
  Cliff Goins: So I think that's that's part of it.
• 25:25
  Cliff Goins: But the other thing, and you said you have it right?
• 25:27
  Cliff Goins: You have to have accountability mechanisms in place.
• 25:30
  Cliff Goins: So it's not Amazon just lets you go and be free and just do whatever you wanna do.
• 25:34
  Cliff Goins: No.
• 25:35
  Cliff Goins: We actually have a operating model.
• 25:37
  Cliff Goins: The operating model is built around, I don't know if you heard of the PR FAQ.
• 25:42
  Cliff Goins: is our public press release, I'm sorry.
• 25:44
  Cliff Goins: And FAQ that you have to do for every project or every business idea or everything.
• 25:48
  Cliff Goins: And that gets everybody on the same page.
• 25:50
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 25:51
  Cliff Goins: And then we have mechanisms for review.
• 25:53
  Cliff Goins: We have what we call if it requires it, weekly business reviews.
• 25:57
  Cliff Goins: It depends on the type of business you're in.
• 25:58
  Cliff Goins: Monthly business reviews and quarterly business reviews, and they're all around.
• 26:05
  Cliff Goins: did we say we were gonna do, and are we doing that?
• 26:08
  Cliff Goins: And so that, that's the mechanism that keeps everybody aligned and in check.
• 26:14
  Cliff Goins: Yeah.
• 26:14
  Cliff Goins: 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.
• 26:25
  Cliff Goins: Long-winded answer.
• 26:26
  Tom Jackobs: No, I love it.
• 26:28
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 26:40
  Tom Jackobs: Because that's where the joy comes, is when you are successful.
• 26:44
  Tom Jackobs: It's not.
• 26:45
  Tom Jackobs: And for some people that's the money and sometimes it's the praise.
• 26:49
  Tom Jackobs: It's, whatever it happens to be for that individual.
• 26:51
  Tom Jackobs: And I think that's what drives us as people.
• 26:54
  Tom Jackobs: And if you allow your employees to do that same thing, then the satisfaction's gonna go way up.
• 27:01
  Cliff Goins: Absolutely.
• 27:01
  Cliff Goins: Absolutely.
• 27:03
  Tom Jackobs: That's good food for thought.
• 27:04
  Tom Jackobs: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sit on that.
• 27:08
  Cliff Goins: 80% is okay.
• 27:09
  Cliff Goins: 80% is okay
• 27:11
  Tom Jackobs: Of course it is.
• 27:12
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 27:14
  Tom Jackobs: Early on, like my first business, I was a complete control freak and it was so evident as well.
• 27:21
  Tom Jackobs: So I've, yeah after 45, I'm 54 now, but I've loosened up.
• 27:29
  Cliff Goins: Love it.
• 27:29
  Cliff Goins: I love it.
• 27:31
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 27:32
  Tom Jackobs: Cliff, this has been just a fantastic conversation and what a great insight as well in terms of different areas of business.
• 27:39
  Tom Jackobs: So I really appreciate the insight.
• 27:41
  Tom Jackobs: How can people learn more about what you're doing and potentially, work with you or get get bought out by.
• 27:49
  Cliff Goins: Sure you can reach me on LinkedIn.
• 27:51
  Cliff Goins: I'm@cliffgoinsiv.
• 27:53
  Cliff Goins: Very easy to find there.
• 27:55
  Cliff Goins: You can also find me on Instagram.
• 27:58
  Cliff Goins: That's I am Cliff going the fourth.
• 28:00
  Cliff Goins: And so that's my handle on Instagram.
• 28:03
  Cliff Goins: Yes.
• 28:03
  Cliff Goins: And yeah, mining the wealth gap, our playbook to close it together is out.
• 28:07
  Cliff Goins: You can buy that on Amazon.
• 28:09
  Cliff Goins: And yeah, let me know what you think.
• 28:11
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 28:12
  Tom Jackobs: Cliff, again, thank you so much for sharing your expertise to, with the audience and with me in particular.
• 28:17
  Tom Jackobs: I really appreciate it.
• 28:18
  Tom Jackobs: So thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 28:21
  Cliff Goins: This was so fun.
• 28:22
  Cliff Goins: Thanks.
• 28:23
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 28:24
  Tom Jackobs: And thank you listeners for watching the show today or listening to the show.
• 28:27
  Tom Jackobs: 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.
• 28:37
  Tom Jackobs: So go ahead and click away down in the show notes.
• 28:40
  Tom Jackobs: And while you're down there, can you do me a favor and give me a nice rating and review five stars?
• 28:45
  Tom Jackobs: Of course.
• 28:46
  Tom Jackobs: If it's less than that, just tell me and we can.
• 28:49
  Tom Jackobs: Separately, but if you could do that, they'll help share the show with other people as well.
• 28:53
  Tom Jackobs: So until next time, lead with your heart.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.