The Profit Scale

Generational Wealth Through Entrepreneurship - Ep. #18

Episode Summary

Salutations, friend! It’s RJ here, and today I am sharing a very special episode with you. We just held our very first Coin-versation at RJC Consulting on Generational Wealth through Entrepreneurship. These monthly Coin-versations are money-related business discussions geared towards creating a safe space for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities to share experiences and to learn from each other. In today’s episode, I’ll be sharing a powerful clip from our discussion.

Episode Notes

To start out our Coin-versations strong, we delved into creating generational wealth through entrepreneurship. We talked about the difference between rich and wealthy, the challenges entrepreneurs face attaining wealth as part of the BIPOC community, how culture can sometimes clash with coins and so much more.

As you listen to this episode, we encourage you to think about how this topic applies to you and your business as you’re building!

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Episode Transcription

Episode 18 - Generational Wealth Through Entrepreneurship

Introduction 

Salutations, friend! Welcome to an episode of The Profit Scale. This is the podcast for consultants, experts and service providers who are either already serving corporate clients or transitioning towards it. This is the place where you can find tailored solutions to help you close your first, next, or biggest client yet.

I'm your host and Income Strategist, RJ Connell, and if you're looking for expert strategies to help you build on your existing success, then you, my friend, are in the right place! Turn up the volume and lean in because we are about to get started.

Episode Content

Salutations, friend! It’s RJ here, and today I'm sharing a very special episode with you. This past weekend, we, here at RJC Consulting, held our very first Coin-versation. These Coin-versations are money-related discussions about business geared towards creating a safe space for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) entrepreneurs to learn. So what better way to kick off this past weekend’s inaugural Coin-versation than to have a discussion about generational wealth through entrepreneurship.

We talked about the difference between rich versus wealthy, the challenges entrepreneurs face attaining wealth as part of the BIPOC community, and how culture can sometimes clash with coins and so much more. 

In today's episode, I will be sharing with you a short clip from our discussion. The most impactful part of the discussion for me was hearing the stories of fellow entrepreneurs as it related to our topic of discussion. It became evident that there is a need for space where these discussions can happen freely and safely,  so to respect the privacy of those who shared in the clip, what I'm about to share with you is focused more on the content than the conversation. As you listen, I encourage you to think about how these topics apply to your own entrepreneurial journey. I'm excited for you to listen, friend, so, let's jump right in!

An introduction to who we are... 

The company that I own and run is called RJC Consulting and we are a corporate consulting firm that serves clients globally. We help Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC)-owned businesses land their first, next, or corporate contract yet—one of the things I'm very excited about. 

A little bit just about who we are...

Our purpose is generational wealth through entrepreneurship for BIPOC-owned businesses. Our mission is scalable systems to help BIPOC-owned businesses navigate entrepreneurship through the corporate lens. So, I wanna touch on that a bit.

My goal—my personal goal—is to help create wealth through entrepreneurship, not just make you rich; not just make you financially independent, but to help you position your business to be a source of wealth which ties into our vision—is creating legacy companies—those companies that are passed down. It is my goal to create for myself and to create for you a business that creates generational wealth where you can’t even trace where that money comes from. You know how you hear both families that here like, “I don't even know when they became wealthy.” It goes so far back that you can't even trace who started the wealth. That's what I want for us to be. That's what I want our businesses to help position us for. That's what the heart of this company is. 

On top of that, what we do is we focus on the corporate perspective and help you engage in the corporate world. We help you get your foot into the corporate world,  through your own business because realistically, that's where the money is. So, it's bringing you to where you can be positioned to thrive, but you still have the freedom to navigate your business in the way that is important to you. You don't necessarily have to conform to the corporate way because there is a corporate way. You get to have the freedom to run your own business in the way that is most passionate for you and is going to allow you to be most impactful.

At the same time, you are positioning yourself and being strategic about how you allow your business to make income, so that it can be sustainable so that it can create that generational wealth, and so that it can last longer than you. After you have moved on, your business is able to be passed on from one person or one generation to the other whether or not you decide for that to be through your family. 

And then, lastly, our values, so research-driven results, confidence in coins, and the corporate lens.

What that means is, anybody who doesn't know me, I actually have a science background. That's what I studied in school. I have two degrees that are based on science, so because of that research is my thing. It's what I love doing, so I love talking about it. I love talking numbers. It's part of my favourite part of working with my clients. It’s like, “Just give me the numbers; someone else does everything else.” I just want the numbers.

I love to make sure that I'm presenting you with research-driven results, and not just this is what I think, this is what I feel, or I heard someone else say this two years ago, and so it sounds good, I'm gonna throw it up on a side deck. That's not what we do. We make sure that everything that we do, including our systems and our team, everything is based on research-driven processes. Then, we test those. We make sure that they work before we bring them to our clients. Even when we bring them to our clients, we still tweak them based on feedback.

Then, confidence in coins, we believe that confident people make coins. It's very simple. Although it's sometimes hard to achieve, confidence is a precursor to you getting to that generational wealth because you have to be able to stand inside rooms where you don't belong. You have to be able to demand a seat at the table where nobody wants you there. You have to be willing to open up a door for somebody else behind you. 

All that takes confidence in who you are, what you have to offer, and in the value that you're bringing to your clients, to the company, to the world, into your community, as well as to yourself. Confidence is a huge part of where our values are.

Then, the corporate lens, because as I mentioned, it's where the money is. It's just the reality. It doesn't mean that you can't serve the everyday customer, as well as the everyday consumer. It just means changing the perspective for us as business owners to think bigger than where we are right now. How can you tie your service or product together with a corporate company or with a corporate income stream? It doesn't really matter what you do. Those opportunities are available. We just tend to not think that big because we are typically looking at, well, “How can I make money today?” So that's what we value in terms of bringing that corporate lens to the table. 

I did some research because, again, it’s my thing. It’s what I love to do, and this is what I found. In 2019, on the Forbes list of world billionaires, there were 2,153 people. As part of that, 100 of those billionaires were of Latin-Caribbean descent. That represents 4.6%. As part of that number, the number of businesses on the list owned by a person that identifies as Black was 13. That's 0.6%. On that list, there were 9 people who identified as Indian-American. That represents 0.4%. 

If we put these numbers together, that totals less than 6% of the total list. This is between three large brackets of ethnicities. It's a shocking number. It could sometimes feel discouraging to look at that and say like, “Where are we?” “Why aren't we represented here” “Why don't we reach this area?” It's staggering to look at this.

I actually pulled some additional statistics. I didn't have everything here on the list, but just to share some other statistics with you as part of that, 55.8% of those billionaires on that list of the 2,153, are self-made as opposed to the 13.3% that are inherited. This means that 55.8% of that number have created their own wealth through entrepreneurship. 

It is possible. Why aren't we doing it? Why aren't we positioning ourselves for it? It's easy to look at these wealthy people that we've just named and just talked about and say, well, they had it, they were set up properly, their parents passed them down money, or to create excuses and reasons why we can't do what they did when the reality is that more than half of those people have created their own wealth.

This can still be hope for us—that we can do this. It is possible. People have carved the path. These numbers, they're not high, but it should at least be encouraging to say it's been done. We can do it. There's already a trail that's been placed. We just need to think about how we take those steps, how we position ourselves, and how we become strategic about the way we build our businesses.

So, we get to wealth...

I want to be on the Forbes list. I want to be at the top of the Forbes list. I want to be on RJ’s list, not even a Forbes list. It needs to be an RJ’s list of billionaires. That's the level that I want to get to, and it’s the level I want to bring as many people with me too as possible—because it is possible. That's what these numbers show us. They show us a stark contrast between who's there now, and the gap between where we are now, and where we are striving to be, but it's still possible. 

It's important to have people who are examples in your own culture, so looking at that list of 244 women who are on that Forbes list. Who are they? Let me find out more about their businesses. We find out more about how they achieved their wealth, whether you are Black, Latin American Caribbean, Indian-American, Native American, or native to the country that you’re in. Who are the examples that I can look to? How have they made their wealth, especially considering the challenges that they faced? Use that as an example. 

I heard growing up, Oprah was an example for so many people. That if Oprah can do it, if she can get to the level that she's at, I can too. That's important because that representation doesn't matter. Part of the way that we combat the culture is by having someone within the culture that defies the culture... if that makes sense.

So having somebody who can be in their culture or is representative of the culture—the experiences that we've had—but has still achieved at a higher level than where we are at right now. That's important to us beginning to make this shift. 

I wanna touch on very briefly how we begin to make the shift. How do we begin to start seeing change? We first start by un-learning. 

Before you owe anybody else, you owe to yourself. You have to first anchor yourself before you can lift anybody else up. you have to be standing on solid ground, and that means it has to first be for you. 

Yes, women, I talk about generational wealth, I think about my family, I think about my parents. I think about my future children, I think about friends, my nieces, my nephews, I think about all that, but first, I think about me. I think I need to be here because if I am not here, I cannot help anybody else. It's the same mentality of putting on your own oxygen mask before you try to help somebody else's, and so first you owe it to yourself. 

Next, we have to begin to talk about money. That's what these Coin-versations are. They're to bring a different perspective to a money conversation as it relates to business and entrepreneurship, but also the intersection of culture and how it plays into how we are building our businesses.

We have to begin to normalize these conversations about money to be able to say, “I'm struggling,” and not feel ashamed. Struggling is a universal experience. 

Why do we shame people for struggling? Why do we shame people for being at the beginning of their business? Why do we shame people for wanting what they want?

It's a normal experience. We have to begin to normalize my conversations around money—to talk about debt. Having these conversations, creating this space for these conversations freely, openly, without judgment, and it being a safe space, is something each one of us need to have.

So you can come to these conversations and I'm more than happy to help you to have you here every single month, but I also need you to take this and bring it into your own life, and to normalize this within your own circle. 

That might just start with broadening the conversation around your bank. That might just start with broadening the conversation around investments. Hey, “Have you thought of investments?” It doesn't need to be a whole talk. it doesn't need to be a whole TED Talk. It doesn't need to be a whole training or teaching. It's just talking about it, where there is no shame or judgment, and we begin to create a safe space for us to learn freely.

Next, work twice as smart. Instead of twice as hard, “twice as smart.” It's not the absence of hard work, but it's the strategic application of it. What that means is that I'm not saying don't work hard, I'm saying, figure out where you need to be. Create the rules for yourself.

Yes, life is not fair. There are a lot of barriers that we face as part of the BIPOC community that other people don't. It's a reality. So, we have to then learn how to navigate this strategically. How do we create a different set of rules for ourselves? A big part of that is even just owning and starting our own business. Then once you have done that, how do you then navigate? Right? 

So it's taking those strategic moves that tie in with knowledge, that ties in with having a space to have these conversations, informing yourself, equipping yourself so that you can go about and move strategically. When you know that the game is stacked against you, you're no longer trying to make that fairground. You then play from your vantage point and see, “What moves can I make from here?”

And that's what I'm trying to get you to think about. Let's not focus right now on the fact that, okay, well, the chips are stacked against us. We're working hard to change that. In the meantime, we are here. What can we do from here? How do we navigate our businesses strategically from here?

The last one is inheritance equals success. Beginning to shift our mindset that having an inheritance or passing along an inheritance is not inherently a bad thing because someone didn't work for it. Someone put that hard work in and because of that they were able to achieve a level of success that many of us aren't. We're here today because it's what we want to achieve. So shifting that perspective that having a trust fund or having an inheritance isn't a negative thing and that there is success in that. That, in itself, is a version of success. 

As we finish off, I wanna leave you with this quote, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

This is the same as it stands, now, this is our version of the same at RJC consulting.

“Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime. But teach them how to buy the whole damn lake, and you feed them, their family, and their communities for generations.”

And that's what we're about here. We don't just wanna give you a fish. We don't even just wanna teach you how to fish. We want you to own the lake, so you can pass it down, so you can support bigger than yourself. That's what the vision is.

It's this level.

So, what did you think? We touched on some powerful topics in this discussion, and again, this is just a snippet of our entire conversation. Click the link in the show notes to access the full replay of our Coin-versation on Generational Wealth through Entrepreneurship. 

Friend, these conversations serve as a safe space for us to learn and have money-related business discussions that would challenge our mindset and push us forward and closer to creating the generational wealth that we want to see.

They're geared towards supporting Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) entrepreneurs, towards creating sustainable wealth-generating businesses, and we're gonna be having these conversations on a monthly basis. There's no cost to attend. All I ask is that you invite a fellow entrepreneur that's part of the BIPOC community, or an ally, to have a seat at the table with us. 

Our next conversation is gonna be taking place on August 22nd at 10 AM Eastern time, and the topic is “Pricing: the Myths, the Mistakes, and the Mindset.” All you have to do is click the link in the show notes to save your seat at the next one.

As always, friend, I am so grateful for the time we have together, and I'm especially excited to see your name on the registration list for next month’s Coin-versation. Until then, I wish you coins, confidence, and all the bags. Bye for now.