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156. 5 Barriers to Black Wealth—and How to Overcome Them
55 Plays9 days ago
What’s holding back black wealth—and how can we change it? In this episode of Spiritual Fitness, Eric Bigger and Cliff Goins IV break down the “Five Ds” blocking wealth from the black community and share simple, powerful steps to overcome them. Learn how mindset, community, and smart investing can help close the wealth gap for good.
In this episode:
- Learn the "Five Ds" that block Black wealth
- Start small with investing—consistency matters more than amount
- Community support and group economics help build collective wealth
- Shift your mindset from scarcity to abundance and take control of your money
- Use long-term strategies like dollar-cost averaging to grow wealth over time
About The Guest:
Author Cliff Goins IV is an investor in private companies. He also co-founded Scaleup, a startup that began in Amazon, which helps diverse-owned and other small and medium-size businesses grow into large enterprises. Goins has held roles at Northern Trust Asset Management, including COO of an early-stage fintech acquisition and head of strategy for the $1 billion business unit. He holds an MBA in finance and strategy from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in accounting from HBCU Florida A&M University. He is obsessed with tennis and lives near Chicago with his wife and two smart, beautiful, and sporty daughters.
Find him online at cliffgoinsiv.com
Connect with Cliff:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imcliffgoinsiv/
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliffgoinsiv/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Spiritual Fitness Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Spiritual Fitness Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Bigger. And each week, we will explore powerful practices, inspiring stories, and expert insights to guide you on your path to holistic health.
00:00:18
Speaker
By blending spirituality and physical wellness, we support you in strengthening your body and soul. Whether you're a seasoned spiritual seeker or just beginning your journey, the Spiritual Fitness Podcast is here to help you unlock your inner potential and live your most vibrant, purposeful life.
00:00:35
Speaker
It's miracle season.
00:00:40
Speaker
Spiritual Fitness, Spiritual Fitness Podcast.
Guest Introduction: Cliff Gons IV
00:00:43
Speaker
I'm back again. I'm your host, Eric Bigger, and I have the privilege, the privilege to have my guy, ah great guy, Cliff Gons IV. He's an author, investor, and he's really, really integrated and embodied in financial literacy and teaching, you know, black folks, black individuals how to gain money and, you know, build their wealth.
00:01:05
Speaker
Cliff, welcome to Spiritual Fitness. How are you today? Yo, Eric, thank you so much for having me, man. I'm super excited for this conversation. Yeah, just happy to be here, man. Let's get into it. Let's chop it up. I love this topic and let's go.
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah. So you have something that says the five biggest barriers to black wealth. What does that actually mean? And how did you get to the ideology to be speaking about it today?
Barriers to Black Wealth
00:01:28
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:29
Speaker
It's been a long journey to get to the ideology. I'll tell you what it means and then we can get down to it. But I think about it on five different levels. One is around capital. So i talk about denied capital and we can talk about a little bit of what that means.
00:01:42
Speaker
Another thing is around housing. So we call that ah devalued homes. We'll talk a little bit about that. Third dimension is around income and earnings. So I call that diminished wages.
00:01:54
Speaker
And you start to see a little theme there. Right. And then, you know, there's obviously a thing about how do you kind of invest and grow money? And so we'll call that delayed investment. And then the last thing is destructive policies.
00:02:07
Speaker
So those are my five D's that I call ah barriers that are blocking black wealth. But I like to talk about things that we can do to kind of disrupt it and to actually make progress on all those different fronts.
00:02:19
Speaker
But those are the things. How did I come to it? I've been an investor and a person who's worked in and around investments for my whole career.
Career and Systemic Factors
00:02:28
Speaker
I've always had a passion around trying to help black folks level up.
00:02:32
Speaker
A lot of that started on the personal finance side. But as I kind of got older and started being involved in some of the systems that deploy capital and invest capital, I realized that there are bigger things at play, right, that also affect our ability to build wealth. And so I think in order for you to actually play the right game, you have to understand what the playing field is.
00:02:54
Speaker
And so my latest book, Minding the Wealth Gap, is really about understanding that broader playing field before we go about solving the problem. Yeah, I love that. And it's so important to have the experience to kind of speak on the wisdom and understanding because I do believe in life.
00:03:10
Speaker
A lot of people know things they don't understand. Right. We know our mom, we know our dad, know our grandfather, we know our grandma, but we don't know their mothers, their fathers and ancestors before that.
00:03:21
Speaker
And I'm curious to know it because it raised a question. I was doing some research because, you know, there's something that you have i've written that 15 trillion racial wealth gap. But when I think about money, let's just talk about money cause I like to get to the root.
00:03:34
Speaker
To kind of understand the branch that we're in as a race. So I have two questions and then I want you to speak on your idea. so the first question is, what do you think is the story around money for black people today?
00:03:48
Speaker
That's number one. And what do you think the story around money was for our ancestors today? back in the day. You know mean? Like, where's our money story, right? want talk to you about your story, but I know that was, I asked a lot of questions, but those two in particular, then we get into those five barriers for sure.
Complexity of Black Money Story
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I guess if I think about our story today, if I put it into it would be just complex. I think our story today is complex. I think, one, we have, I think, a fundamental understanding about money, that money essentially is an exchange. It allows you to kind of maneuver in the world that we live in.
00:04:29
Speaker
and obviously, if you know if you have more of it, you can do a little more maneuvering, okay? Yeah. yeah know One of the things you and I talked about a little bit on a pre-call was just this idea of psychological trauma or money trauma. And I do think from, a you know, on a broader community basis, our folks are a bit traumatized when it comes to how we maneuver money. You see some of that play out just how we display when we actually do have money.
00:04:57
Speaker
So if we get that, we can get into the deeper psychological piece around that. I think if we start talking about our ancestors, you know, at least based on all the research I've done, probably the word I would use is just hard.
00:05:10
Speaker
It was just hard for them to come up. You know, I go through a lot of it in the book. But i mean, I think about just if I just go back a generation to my parents, I mean, they legitimately had certain places. I'm from the Chicago area, certain places in Chicago that they literally could not move.
00:05:26
Speaker
And that was just like, literally, these are my parents. I'm not even talking about grandparents. you had grandparents You know, you can multiply that. So then as you start to go back into generations, it just was difficult to maneuver and to actually even create wealth, whether that's from a property perspective or from a business perspective.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, it's true, right? Because, you know, you're from Chicago, i'm from Baltimore. And growing up, it was even shoot, you got a wicked jump shot or you slinging crack right?
Personal Money Experiences
00:05:54
Speaker
Right. That's right. they are My family, you know, they were in the streets.
00:05:58
Speaker
I played basketball. So that was my blueprint of like, okay, this is how I can make a lot of money. And then as I gained success publicly and I kind of expanded my consciousness and who I am, I realized, but not just black people, all people,
00:06:11
Speaker
nervous system regulation. So if your nervous system cannot receive a whole, the money you're bringing in, you're going to get rid of it unconsciously. So I had something back when I was 16. I used to work at Falaka the action.
00:06:25
Speaker
And my grandmother was like, hey, you know, grandson, can you pay the phone bill? At the time, Cliff, I'm making $6.75 an hour. I'm 16. I got my shoebox money, right? I probably had like $364. But, you know, at the time, like um um'm I'm saving my money.
00:06:38
Speaker
And I remember, I think the bill was like $3.13. So I just gave all the money. And the feeling that came over my body when I left was it was like bittersweet. Like I was happy to get the phone turned back on. But then I'm like, oh, my money's gone.
00:06:49
Speaker
So throughout my life, I realized I have this pattern when I get money. I'll save it, but then I'll find a way to get rid of it. It's like weird. That's where my money story started.
00:06:59
Speaker
Right. Or you hear the word money doesn't grow on trees. That's too expensive. We can't afford that. So these are stories that we're programming in our community or we find ways to shortcut the process to get something. But then we can't sustain it long term like that because we're taking shortcuts.
00:07:16
Speaker
So in your line of work and understanding with your parents and your grandparents, where did your money story turn and what happened in your body or mind is like, you know, I'm gonna make a lot of money and I'm gonna be great at it. What was that story or what was that pivotal point for you to get to to the man you are today?
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah. So I would say I grew up kind of what I would call maybe lower middle class. We lived in an apartment on the south side of Chicago. And after I went to school at Florida A&M University, a nice HBCU down in order Florida, Tallahassee, that's right.
00:07:48
Speaker
Coming out of Florida A&M, I actually ah landed a job at what's now known as Ameriprise. So was American Express Financial Advisors at the time. And I worked in finance, and but I worked for our advisor business.
00:08:03
Speaker
And so I learned a little bit about the financial advice business. And I realized that my pattern was, yes, I was earning a little bit of money kind of out of college. I wasn't making a bunch of money, but making money but it all was gone.
00:08:15
Speaker
I would earn it. And to your point, it was gone. And probably about a year, call it a year and a half after having my first full-time job, I was paying a credit card bill.
00:08:29
Speaker
And I realized that I had no idea what I was paying for. Meaning i had bought the stuff, you know, whatever, 12 months ago or whatever it is. I didn't know what I was paying.
00:08:41
Speaker
because I was just, you know, like the other thing, I was just paying partially, right? I wasn't paying the whole bills. I was just paying partially. And I'm like, what am I paying for? I was a big music guy, so I had a ton of CDs, but I didn't have any CDs.
00:08:52
Speaker
Maybe I had the compact disc, right? But I didn't have any certificates of deposit. And I'm like, this is crazy. Like I'm working every day. I'm going, I'm getting up early. It's cold. I'm in Minnesota, right? It's cold.
00:09:03
Speaker
And I'm going to the office and I don't have any money. And I was like this like, I can't do this. And so I really started just studying up on personal finance and financial advising and all those different things kind of at that point. And that was really a turning point for me in terms of how I started to understand and approach money.
00:09:21
Speaker
It was that aha moment of you being aware of like, hold on, what am I doing? Like, what is this? You had that question. You asked yourself an empowering question. You ain't say, well, I got to pay this. He was like, what am I doing?
00:09:32
Speaker
And that leads to answers. And I think sometimes we don't understand the power of questions or curiosity. And now today you're the financial guru in a lot of sectors to someone listening or who's going to watch this.
00:09:47
Speaker
young, you know, man, old woman just in the world, black, white, Asian, and they don't have a lot of money right now. What advice would you give them to fix their money mindset or get into the space of how they should approach money, like their perception of money? Because I do think the perception of money is the different from the reality of money.
00:10:06
Speaker
Does that
Money as a Tool
00:10:07
Speaker
make sense? Yeah. Yeah. i mean, on the perception side, again, at the end of the day, money is a tool. So we give it a lot of power, but at the end of the day, it's a tool. It's a tool that you actually control.
00:10:18
Speaker
So I start with that. It's understanding that, hey, it's actually an object and you actually can control it. um In terms of practical things, i my big thing is just start where you are.
00:10:29
Speaker
um At this point, you know, it's 2025. Like, It's pretty easy to get started, for example, saying investing with literally like 25 So to me, yes, you may not have a lot of money.
00:10:43
Speaker
Even if it took you five weeks, you probably can scrape up 25 bucks. And my thing is just get started. You want to get started building investments, building savings, building wealth, so that you can start to understand practically what it looks like.
00:10:57
Speaker
My
Early Investments
00:10:58
Speaker
example is this, and it's kind of old now. but So ah shortly after I had that epiphany, maybe about a year later, I got a little bit of a bonus check, a little bit of a bonus check.
00:11:09
Speaker
I took almost all of that bonus check and put it into essentially an IRA. And it was literally one mutual fund. I had done some research, found this one mutual fund.
00:11:19
Speaker
I actually have that account right now to this day. Hold let's know. like i Because I got a rough IRA. I got mutual funds. What's the account? I want to give it to you. i mean, I don't know if it's still going to be performing how it performed, but I literally just have it literally a separate account still now.
00:11:34
Speaker
It's like my reminder of kind of the starting point and to see what the money did over time. So it's the Wasatch Core Growth Fund, if you want to look it up. W-A-S-A-T-C-H, Wasatch.
00:11:48
Speaker
And it's the core growth fund. But I have invested in it. I guess this would have been 1999 or something like that. yeah And I literally just left it alone. It was the only investment I made into that fund at that time. I've i've invested it in different ways in different ah accounts now.
00:12:04
Speaker
But I literally still have that one account. And it was my starting point, starting small, and then actually seeing now over whatever it is, 25 years, what's happened to that one investment that I made back in 1999.
00:12:17
Speaker
And again, it hasn't been all up and to the right, but he it's done this. So I'm serious. Like 1999, that's a long time, right? So you ain't got to give me the number. It's 10x what it was in 1999.
00:12:31
Speaker
Wow. Look at that, people. You see that? Were you constantly investing in it? So this was the thing with that one. That one truly was like my test starter piece. I started investing it in other ways and other accounts, but this was literally a direct investment into the fund at that time point in time. And I literally have not put another dollar into it.
00:12:52
Speaker
I mean, yes, it could be even better if I had done that. This is from a single investment in 1999 that I have not touched. And not i'm saying do that. I'm just saying that was by, for me, you know, we started talking about the psychology of it. That was me kind of having one place where it's like, look, here I'm going to make this investment and I want to see what it does over time.
00:13:13
Speaker
So that was just for me though. So what is your, I'm trying to figure out what the term is. Somewhere the money goes every, I forgot the terminology. Oh, you're talking about dollar cost investing?
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah, where I guess you go like $50 a week, $100 a week, no matter what. Do you think that's beneficial long-term if it's investing in the right stock or mutual fund or ETF?
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think no matter where you invest, the dollar cost investing is useful. um So if I think about my other investment accounts, that's exactly how I approach them. So you put in a certain amount, either every paycheck, every month, every week, whatever your interval is, and you do that over a long period of time.
00:13:54
Speaker
The reason that it's helpful is because even folks who spend all of their time and all of their effort studying markets can't time the market. So the idea that everyday retail investors, as we are known, could do it is pretty far-fetched.
00:14:11
Speaker
And so you what you want to do is you want to be continuously invested and continuously investing because you want to catch the market as it goes up and down. And that's what gives you ah good cost basis because ultimately, most equity markets, I'm talking about equity right now,
00:14:28
Speaker
go up over time.
Investment Strategies in REITs and ETFs
00:14:30
Speaker
And there's going to be some waves, but it' the waves are going up if you look at the long arc of time. Yeah, I've been doing some research for the last year and a half and I've been investing in like real estate REITs.
00:14:42
Speaker
Oh, sure. Yeah. Passive income. And it's interesting how, you know, how the money comes back. And I guess I've been using a drip formula where you just, the money you make from that ah passive income is just go back. And then you reinvest it.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yep. And then there's another stock that I've been doing research on. i guess everyone says it's great because maybe they own like a lot of things in their ETF. I think it's Charles Schwab. And I was just like, oh, this is interesting.
00:15:06
Speaker
But to the people listening, right? If they just say someone had $100 right now, what would you say they should invest their money in? This ain't $100 a month, right? Because when I started my RAFRA, I was doing like 50 a month.
00:15:19
Speaker
Then I went to 150. Then I went to 300. Now I'm at 500, right? They took the yearly thing to 7,500 to make it 6,000 for the year. But to someone who just got $100 a month to invest, where should they put their money?
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, I always do. ah My caveat, which is I am not in a financial advisor, so this is not official financial advice. I mean, I think the direction that you're talking is right. You know, depending on if you're trying to invest what we call after tax money or if you're trying to do something that's more kind of long term retirement oriented.
00:15:53
Speaker
I would say you want to stick, at least as you start, you probably want to stick with funds, right? So it could be some kind of equity fund. It could be REIT, as you're saying, which is a real estate investment trust.
00:16:05
Speaker
But I would look at some funds. It's easy to research the top 10 REIT funds. The more practical thing is to just invest into one of the ETFs or mutual funds that track, say, the S&P 500. That buys you a broad exposure to the stock market.
00:16:26
Speaker
And so you probably will want to look at something like that if you're talking about equities. But as you know, you know, that those go up and down. Right now, we had a big swing down and then a big swing up because of some of the things that are happening in our nation right now. and But, you know, at the end of the day, we've had other shocks to the economy, whether we put it on ourselves or whether they came from other places.
00:16:49
Speaker
And you just want to stay invested. It's so good because I think that's the thing of life. We only get upset when things don't go our way. But life is rhythms, right?
00:16:59
Speaker
It's always constant. Like, it's not even real. Like, the sun has to come out, then it's dark. I want to pivot just for a second because I think this is important. So like I said, I went to Hampton University.
00:17:11
Speaker
You know, you went to Florida AM. And we had Dr. George Frazier at a conference, the Black Family Conference. And he talked about the wealth gap. Right. And he talked about money. He said a lot of it has to do with that.
00:17:22
Speaker
Black people are not getting married anymore. Right. So I was like, OK, that's interesting, you know, because that has something to do with your wealth accumulation. Right. But he also says something at the end that I'll never forget.
00:17:33
Speaker
He said, you learn, you earn, and then you return. He said, as black folks, we learn, we earn, but we never return. And I see that consistently, that when people make it, you know, you say the biggest athletes or entertainers, the Jay-Zs, the the Floyds, whatever. I'm not saying they don't return, but you never see these very, very successful, you know, black men talking about education.
00:17:56
Speaker
yeah do talk about financial literacy, but it does feel like we leave and we never return. what Why do you think that is a thing or is that's just a stereotype that's not true or myth?
Giving Back to the Community
00:18:06
Speaker
mean, it's probably a mix of both.
00:18:07
Speaker
It sounds like from return, he means kind of see the next generation of potential successful people. let's Let's leave it at that. I think part of it is my experience as a black person navigating corporate, navigating the investment world, navigating capital markets. Like it's hard.
00:18:29
Speaker
So sometimes you kind of get through it and you kind of like, whew, You know, at least I made it. You know what i mean? And so I think that that probably plays a little bit into it. That's just my yeah my intuition, just kind of thinking about that topic.
00:18:44
Speaker
You tapped into something because you're making me think now, growing up in Baltimore and then making it out. And I think to people listening and people who are black or might not black, I think what he's really saying is that when you leave our culture of whatever it is, poverty or not as much, is a texture of energy that you leave.
00:19:02
Speaker
And I can't say it's heavy. It's just different. And so when you get out of that, it does feel like the side you just did like. OK, right. And then people live in like nice neighborhoods. It's more peaceful. It's quiet.
00:19:14
Speaker
You got some consistent cash flow. You might have a family and you just want peace because the process it took to get there was maybe traumatic or tough or challenge. I know for me, going from.
00:19:28
Speaker
having to cold switch, or least I think I do, or i maybe I should shave my beard and be clean-shaven because I don't know if they're going to accept me, right? I'm not even saying that this is a reality, but this is my mind. This is me thinking.
00:19:40
Speaker
And then you grow and you go, like oh, made some money. Oh, I know this person. And then you get there then you see your peers like, oh, man, you Hollywood, you changing. It's so much coming at you in those moments that people don't get to see that because no one talks about it.
00:19:54
Speaker
But that I respect that I've never heard. And I think that is so profound. And that's probably the main reason why people don't return. Like me going back to my university was in me like, you know, what I've gained all this knowledge and wisdom and have some public success. I want to share with the young men and women because I was just there 15 ago.
00:20:13
Speaker
I sat in Oregon Hall. I graduated Barack Obama, you know, spoke in my graduate. So I have the history of being at Hampton. So let me give you some of my wisdom on life and what I had to grow through.
00:20:24
Speaker
And I think what you're doing with the wealth gap, definitely want to get into the five barriers is so important because. Most people don't even know there's a gap. They just trying to make it.
00:20:35
Speaker
They just trying to survive to get the next paycheck to get to the other side of the day or life or the week. So as much as you can share, and you know, got to go all in. But just can you start with like the first and then go through the five and how we can kind of approach or attack those five points?
00:20:52
Speaker
The solutions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you think about, you know, the first one was really about denied capital. That's really about investing in entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, right? Investing in businesses.
00:21:04
Speaker
If you look at the broad arc of kind of investment dollars and how they flow to the Black community, particularly around private businesses, right? you know, based on the studies that are out there, it's definitely less than 2% of that capital is really flowing to our businesses.
Investment in Black Businesses
00:21:21
Speaker
And so there are some folks out there who have actually raised funds to actually attack this problem. And some of them are people like Marcus Torbert, who's at Fifth Century Partners, that's actually ah based out of here in Chicago, or Machundran Thomas, who's one of the people featured in the book,
00:21:37
Speaker
who has a firm called the Copia Group, where they are trying to deploy hundreds of millions of dollars into Black-owned, Black-run businesses. Another gentleman, Ken Saffold out of Atlanta, who has a firm called O15, where they also are doing some similar things.
00:21:56
Speaker
And so it's really the idea of taking investment dollars that flow to private businesses and intentionally flowing that those dollars to Black-owned, Black-run companies to unleash what's really untapped potential.
00:22:10
Speaker
And so that's how we go from, you know, having kind of den denied capital to actually have having access to capital to help grow entrepreneurship. That's really that pillar. That pillar is really about entrepreneurship and secondarily job creation from that entrepreneurship.
00:22:25
Speaker
When you say deploy, what does that terminology actually mean? Yeah, deploy just means invest. If there was, you know, bigger enterprises and it's a podcast business, you're like, look, I have my own podcast, but I actually think there are a hundred other folks who should be doing podcasts. And I want to be a production company for those folks. And I need, you know, $10 million dollars to do that. It's going to source that $10 million dollars and make that reality, you know, come to fruition.
00:22:54
Speaker
And so again, it's things like that, or if you were like, Hey, I want to go out and buy a podcast production business. These are the types of funds who could potentially buy, you know, back that kind of strategy, you know, as long as it made sense and made money for their investors.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah. And it's so good. Right. Because, you know, I like to get, like I said, the root of things. And I'm curious. I would love you to be transparent and hold me accountable because sometimes, you know, I'm living from my way of being my way of life.
00:23:21
Speaker
There's a book called The Psychology of Money. And he was saying, based on a year you were born is based on like your paradigm, how you see money, baby boomers, you know, of the stock market crash, all these things. But do you think as a black man, right, growing up in your era and just b life, do you think the stereotype or the perception that we're a minority or i can't even say that we played a victim, right, that has some type of impact on our energy of receiving, you know, the investment in a black business or not allowing ourselves to see a more growth mindset behind what we're doing. Because I don't think you have a fixed mindset when around money and wealth. I feel like you have a growth mindset.
00:24:03
Speaker
You seem like And someone's like, I'm gonna make this money and you take that approach. Not that those things don't matter. Black history, slavery, like all those things. I'm not saying that, but I do think if we continue to perpetuate that story of history, it does keep some of us in this low frequency of not enough.
00:24:23
Speaker
I don't know how we're going to do that just energetically. Sure. One of the topics that people would like to talk a lot about, because at the end of the day, most of us want to understand tangibly, okay, I hear all this great stuff you're saying, Cliff, but tangibly, how do actually attack this problem?
00:24:41
Speaker
A lot of people want to talk to me, mostly if I have had to put it in a box, about how do I close my personal wealth gap? And so I think you're starting to tap into what some of the barriers there is.
00:24:53
Speaker
The biggest thing is really around your mindset. So it's to your point, do you have a more of a growth mindset or do you have a fixed mindset?
00:25:04
Speaker
In this case, because we're talking about these barriers, that these barriers do exist and still chart a path forward. Knowing that they exist. And are you willing then to actually put in the work?
00:25:17
Speaker
Because it is work to actually start to translate that new growth mindset into different habits. Right. Which then allow you to start to really understand and implement different tactics. Right.
00:25:33
Speaker
right At the end of the day, if you think about even saving or building wealth, what we're saying is, hey, whenever you bring in money, some of that money actually needs to be reinvested essentially into your future self.
00:25:49
Speaker
And if you don't believe or hope that you even have that future, you're probably not going to do that. Or if you don't start to build a habit where, okay, I got $100, I'm shaving off 10 of it immediately, then you never really get to the point where we can really start really talking tactics around buying a business or you know, investing in a much larger scale around stocks and mutual funds and things of that nature. And so I do think that there is, we carry a lot of psychological baggage as Africans living in America.
00:26:23
Speaker
And some of it is because of our lived reality. I mean, we are literally, most of us, most of our relatives are cordoned off into what I call these little poverty zones.
00:26:36
Speaker
And you end up in this poverty cycle You got poor schools, poor policing efforts. You got, you know, just put all the things that you and I have kind of come through. And then you're expected because you're in America and everything is equal, which is not, but everything's equal. You expected to just, you know, pull up by your bootstrap and make your way out of it.
00:26:55
Speaker
Well, a couple of us did. Well, a couple of us are on this podcast because we did. it But we're not the majority of black Americans. We're not the majority of black families. And so unless we start to not only attack our mindset and things that we can do individually, but actually attack some of these systems, we'll still have a bunch of people in that same cycle.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah. and And I think it's so true. Right. The consciousness of our people, just consciousness of anyone. I was on a phone with a relative yesterday and he was like, e man, you know, like the economy is bad.
00:27:27
Speaker
Right. And I was like, yeah, I said, but whatever you believe is true. I said, that's the story you're telling yourself. I said, I'm not saying that it's not, but I don't live in that truth of believing that.
00:27:38
Speaker
And I said, the reason why is because of my network of people that I have the privilege to coach and serve. A lot of my clients are high end successful earners. They make multi, multi, multi millions of dollars. So in that frame of frequency from my life, I don't see or even think that there's a recession because of the environment I'm in.
00:27:57
Speaker
So they're working hard. They're going through stuff. So I'm also realizing our environment as a people, as a race does stop us or block us from getting to that other side of the growth.
00:28:09
Speaker
Right. Because even for me, and I think most people, they always say, get the bag, make the money. But then you make this money and you have it all saved. But what do you do with it? No one tells you what to do. They just give you these general work cards, save your money, but you don't know where to invest it.
Questioning Property as Wealth Strategy
00:28:25
Speaker
You don't know where to put it. And everyone's like, go buy property, go buy land. It's like, well, why is the same routine for everybody?
00:28:30
Speaker
I don't get that. Like, is that the only way to scale your wealth is buy land, buy property, which is fine. And then people think, about I don't got enough money to buy land. I don't have enough money to afford property.
00:28:42
Speaker
And I'm curious from your standpoint. And I talked about this before. And I said, I want to talk about something deep. Cliff, he's like, let's go. Because we go back to the 15 trillion racial wealth gap.
00:28:55
Speaker
i was like, what if? as a race of people, we're not supposed to accumulate that much wealth, right? Just hypothetically thinking, just say that's another thing. However, what if it's us to be regulated in our nervous system, to feel safe in our body, safe in our mind, to kind of be debt free, to have good money,
00:29:15
Speaker
But we ain't got to go chase 100, 200, 300 million. We're just chasing that within our vibration on how we feel the day to day, clearing out our trauma, having healthy relationships, having love around.
00:29:27
Speaker
And that is our wealth, because sometimes I feel like the people, you know, you know, was just say white people who own things. You don't see them. Well, at least I don't know that. But this is what I think. They're not trying to be LeBron James.
00:29:39
Speaker
They're not trying to dunk basketball. Right. Maybe some of them are. But I feel like they look at life different where they try to build structures around. They can depend on our energy to make money off of.
00:29:51
Speaker
I was telling a buddy the other day, I said, Wallow and Gilly are from Philly. And I said, a white man gave him 100 million. Supposedly. No black man did that. And I said, I do think as a community of people, we are selfish with each other, not in a way that we owe each other anything, but it just feel energetically.
00:30:11
Speaker
If I got something, want to get more than you. Right. If I got this type of client, I'm go get this client. But it's not like, how do we come together? And we had these, you know, it's just a lot. But I'm just curious, you know, for you, what do you think is the easiest way for us to close this personal wealth gap, we just say personal wealth gap within our community of people to feel safe where we're at instead of going to like, I want 20 million, I want 30 million, I want 40 million. mean, because course, I want to be a billionaire. I'm not going to sit here and act like, oh yeah,
00:30:42
Speaker
But I'm just saying, I feel like if we could just trust the love we give each other, like if you're my brother and like, man, Cliff, I love you. Like, big brother, you helped me so much. And then you pour into me and I'm pouring you. I think that energy will close the wealth gap because we're pouring into each other.
00:30:58
Speaker
And then I can do something you probably don't have the opportunity. You can do it. And we just keep building. And next thing you know, we own a hundred million dollar tech company. All because we've been investing in the energy of our relationship with love and accountability and say, E, do this. Don't do that. Right. And I think I'm coming from a perspective, at least from my family, people close. Like, how can I love them?
00:31:18
Speaker
Because I got programmed to just every time I see people I love, give them money, give them money, give them money, give them money. give But they're not changing. Yes, there's a component of wealth that you call non-material wealth, be like spiritual wealth, right?
00:31:33
Speaker
ah Mental wealth, right? They're definitely kind of non-material. Obviously, when I'm talking about the $15 trillion, dollars I'm talking about material wealth. I think one of the things you said is pretty accurate, which is there really is no separation of material wealth from spiritual wealth and mental wealth. And so they all do have to kind of work in tandem together.
00:31:58
Speaker
I think the other thing you touched on is this idea of relationships and maybe what you would even call cooperative economics, which could you know help if you think about us, quote unquote, solving the problem ourselves, or at least trying to get after the problem ourselves.
00:32:17
Speaker
I do think there's a math challenge.
Pooling Resources for Investment
00:32:19
Speaker
And even if all of Black America banded together to do the things that you're talking about, we're still talking about centuries and centuries of a wealth gap. That's neither here nor there. You can read the book if you want to Delve deeper into that.
00:32:30
Speaker
But I think that, yeah, there are individual efforts we could take as a community. You gave a good example. Hey, I can't afford to buy a property. Okay, but Could five of you all ah afford to buy one together?
00:32:43
Speaker
Could 10 of you all afford to buy one together? And could that be the start? And it doesn't mean that forever and for always, you all have to buy properties together, but that might be the way we have to start.
00:32:55
Speaker
And we have to be open to that because quite frankly, that's exactly what our counterparts are doing. And now they just do it at a much larger level. So I did a little work in private equity,
00:33:07
Speaker
And they would do these things that are, quote unquote, called club deals. You know what a club deal means? It means that i have a hundred million dollar fund.
00:33:19
Speaker
You have a three hundred million dollar fund. You have a billion dollar fund. And for this particular investment, we're going to club up. I'm going to put in 10 million.
00:33:31
Speaker
Your fund is going to put in 30 million because it's based on kind of what you can afford. And hey, you know, you're the billion dollar fund. So going lead this deal and you're putting up whatever, 200 million. And we're going to go buy this bigger company together.
00:33:45
Speaker
as a quote unquote club deal. And so people are doing that at the very highest levels of wealth. And so certainly we can do that at the lower levels, but you got to be open to
Understanding 'Club Deals'
00:33:55
Speaker
doing that.
00:33:55
Speaker
And it does take some sacrifice. It takes, you know, somebody to kind of take the lead. um It takes some people to take their ego off the table. And yeah, sometimes there's arguments, there's contentions, like this happens at the highest level of business all the time.
00:34:10
Speaker
But to your point, we got to change our mentality. g Cliff, let me tell you something. This is why I'm so inspired by you. don't know why i was like, cause i was on your page. I'm like, I could just see your energy. I'm like, I just love this guy. Like I could just tell he wants to help people.
00:34:22
Speaker
Like I can feel it. And like, you just a good person. I really appreciate it. So this is what I've been learning in my life is always the little things, right? I have a mentor. He say, Eric, it's the small balls that win the games, not home runs.
00:34:37
Speaker
Let's get on base. And that information that you just shared, I'm going to repeat it so people take note, listen. You said the club deal thing. That was one thing, right?
00:34:48
Speaker
But how about five of us come in on an opportunity on a property? Wow. Like that alone is like, well, if they're selling this for 200 million and I got, you know, 20 million, you got, you know, a billion and this person got, we put our money together.
00:35:07
Speaker
Because I'm like, how these people owning all these apartment buildings? Like, I'm thinking it's all their money. He's like, no, it doesn't work like that. So that's the information I feel like our people are missing.
00:35:18
Speaker
And we're all trying to be this individual superhero where we can collaborate, come together to demonstrate. And that is how people From my ears to your hearts to your souls, what I'm getting from this man's higher self is that we come together and that's how we close the wealth gap.
00:35:36
Speaker
in we have to drop the egos. We have to be open to different. We got to be a little bit more selfless is not selfish. Because then if you own everything individually, what does that mean? So what?
00:35:48
Speaker
And it's all these people over here suffering, but yet you're only one on the top of the food chain. Now you understand why these people want to take what you have. So that right there just shifted something to me because it's simple, not esoteric.
00:36:02
Speaker
It's not, you know, smart goals. It was like, no, you have some money and you know, some other people have some money. You guys come together, you buy some property or you invest together and you can close a wealth gap, and not even in the world, but just within your family.
00:36:16
Speaker
And it just makes a difference. And it goes back to community relationships, relationships run the world. I'm excited because what's next for you? Like, and know i you got the book, right?
00:36:29
Speaker
You got the book, but you're not doing no talks. You're not putting out no courses. Like, what's next for CG? What's next for Cliff? Yeah, yeah. We're working on the talks. I have a couple of ideas around few tours we want to do around the country. So we're working on that. Got to get some sponsorship money for that, though.
00:36:46
Speaker
And yeah, just personally, could just investing in in private businesses, trying to build out a portfolio there and Yeah, we'll see ah if there's another book in the works. People keep asking me about that. That I'm not quite sure about. We'll see kind of how things go with this. But yeah, definitely trying to get more talks and and events on the calendar. So just stay tuned and look out for that.
00:37:07
Speaker
We need that from you because I think what I'm learning, you know, in the spiritual realm of people and all people is not always about what we have or what we do. More importantly, about who we are. And I think what comes through your vessel, through your voice, that God in you that comes out, I feel like it makes people listen. doesn't even matter about how much money or, you know, where you went to school, what you invested in, just who you are. Like the energy of that coming through is what I think we need to see more just in a visible standpoint, because then you giving me inspiration. I'm like, oh, this is a brother. like look I appreciate that.
00:37:37
Speaker
And I want to ask a personal question right now. Do you have any awareness or wisdom or understanding of how to scale like a restaurant business? So I will say I did own a retail business for a minute.
00:37:52
Speaker
Here's just some generic things about restaurant businesses that I've learned just on the investment side, right? One, very important that you have the right people in place. Two, just fundamentals of the business, usually lower margin businesses.
00:38:06
Speaker
So you really need to be sharp on your operation and sharp on how you think about managing your financials. Third, maybe most important thing, if you're in a retail restaurant format, if you really want to actually grow and create a sustainable business, you have to be thinking about multiple locations.
00:38:27
Speaker
If you just have a single location concept, again, you can do that. It'll be a lifestyle business. You can maybe make a little bit of money. But if you really want to build a business, you got to be thinking multi-location really off the bat.
00:38:39
Speaker
And so those would be three things. That's just generic. I've never run a restaurant, never worked in one, but I did run a retail business, which will have some similar attributes.
00:38:50
Speaker
And I'm saying that because we got a family restaurant here in Baltimore, 1137 Seafood, and it's really successful. And I think that's where we're at. Like we want to scale. we want to open up more locations. Well, we can't find that one person or that thing to help because it's been around for 10 years and we've been successful.
00:39:04
Speaker
But it's only here. And people love the food. People come from Philadelphia, New York just ah try to try the food. So I'm just so curious. And I've been looking and doing research and trying to connect with people.
00:39:15
Speaker
How do we, you know, get to that person or that thing to change it? But, you know, that's another conversation. But I just wanted to get it on air just so people because people might be listening, might have a restaurant. They might think, but it makes sense. Like if you really want to scale and that's where we at, we want to scale at least open two more in a DMV area.
00:39:33
Speaker
Right. But yeah, man, Cliff, this has been great. I'm looking forward to your speeches, more books, just you talking. I think you have so much wealth of knowledge and you speak in a way in ways relatable and we can understand it, you know, and I think sometimes but always say language matters.
Engaging with Financial Language
00:39:50
Speaker
And like you said, I asked the word, where what does deploy mean? So a lot of us, you know, people who don't have the information or who not on the frequency, when they hear that from someone, they see you, you know, look and dress up. They just turn their ear or their eye. You're not even open to receiving the rest because I don't know what that means. This guy, we give up, right? Because we don't relate.
00:40:08
Speaker
How can the listeners and people watching, you know, find you? What are you offering right now other than a book or, you know, Instagram, Facebook? Like, how can we get into your world?
Connect with Cliff Gons IV
00:40:18
Speaker
Yeah, my IG is I am Cliff Goins the 4th.
00:40:22
Speaker
So at I am Cliff Goins the 4th. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me at Cliff Goins the 4th there as well. My website is CliffGoinsthe4th.com. And so those are the different ways you can kind of connect with me.
00:40:34
Speaker
Like I said, you know, trying to keep the news and events live and updated on the website and got a few things and in the works. And we' hopefully some of that stuff will play out this summer and into the fall. As beautiful people follow him, Cliff Goins the 4th. He's amazing. He's phenomenal.
00:40:50
Speaker
And he just has a wealth of knowledge. And I appreciate you so much for coming on Spiritual Fitness Podcast, Cliff. And if you need anything from me, you want to pick my brain, I'm here, man. Anything I can do to help you as a brother, as a friend, you know, I just feel you. And I feel like, you know, if I can help, I want to. So let me know.
00:41:07
Speaker
But people share the episode, share it with a friend and we out. Peace and love.
00:41:14
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on the Spiritual Fitness Podcast. We hope today's episode has inspired you and provided valuable insights for your holistic health journey. By blended spirituality and physical wellness, you can strengthen your body, mind, and soul.
00:41:29
Speaker
If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Until next time, stay strong, stay inspired, and remember, it's miracle season.