 Today on The Journey, we'll be talking about how to define your company values for your business. So if you want your business to stand the test of time, it's more than just about your bottom line. We're not talking about a gimmick for the sake of public perception. We're talking about true core values and basically how you show up in the world. All right, so how do you define company values? It doesn't just come out of the air. You have to take a look inside your company's psyche. Yeah, and I think to getting started with those company values is understanding what makes you unique, what makes you as a core for your business unique versus the rest. And defining those will really help how you operate with your customers and with your employees. So what makes your company unique? When you started your business, maybe you started it before a specific reason. Maybe you're giving 20% of your proceeds to a nonprofit or you are just trying to go against the grain. You're not trying to be traditional. Think about the why you started. So now there's three questions I want you to ask yourself to better understand what makes you unique. The first being, how are you different from your competitors? Pretty standard question there. And then what do you offer that others can't? How can you use your uniqueness to formulate your values? So now let's define your mission. Now you've discussed your strengths. Now you want to see if they really tie into your overarching mission. Yeah, your mission is ultimately the why behind your business. It's why you got your business started in the first place. I am an avid WordPress fan and user. Their mission statement is to essentially democratize publishing, basically make anyone a publisher as easy as possible on the internet. And you're going to stand for something. So this is an important part here because your core values are just more than just the bottom line. It has to be something that really drives you. I know a company that is in Philadelphia, my hometown that for every slice of pizza, they take some of that money and they put it aside so that it adds up when someone homeless comes in for something to eat, they can offer them something. That's super cool. And with your actual mission, are there things that you would take a stand for with your team versus your customers? We know the customer is always right, but we have to back our team sometimes too. And now your mission, it may not please everyone. It's okay to be polar. It's okay to pick a side of the fence. I think that's what makes businesses stand out in the world today versus just being too mainstream or too in the middle. So next, think about the type of positive impact you want to have. I love this exigler quote. He said, you can have everything in life you want if you'll just help enough other people get what they want. So Nilly, what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? I want to be known for the best co-host of the journey. But in all seriousness, there's three questions I want you to ask yourself. Again, I know it's me asking you to ask yourself lots of questions. So to start off, what type of change is your business trying to make in the world? And then are you trying to disrupt business as usual and not just go with the flow? And then last, do you have any meaningful partnerships with other organizations in the world? A great example of this is with a company called Basecamp. They've been around 20 years and on their about page, they have a section called Give a Dam. And I want to make sure I get this right. So I'm going to get the exact verbiage here. We treat our customers as we'd want to be treated. We treat each other like family. We treat ourselves to a good day's work and a good night's sleep. Have fun. Do exceptional work. Build the best product in the business. Experiment. Pay attention to the details. Treat people right. Tell the truth. Have a positive impact on the world around us. Give back and keep learning. So yeah, I really love that because it shows that this company is really caring more about the people and it's not all about the bottom line. And of course, this does seem simple, but yes, they really do give a damn. Right. And they show up this way day after day after day following these core values with everything they do with their business. So choose values that actually define your day to day activities. Now, it's easy to say that you value creativity and innovation, but what does that look like? You want to make sure that you pick values that are actionable. Yeah. And they also need to be widely applicable to all facets of your business. When you're creating these, it shouldn't just focus on the CEO or the customer service or marketing. It needs to happen across the board and make sense to everyone. So a good example of this is Patagonia. They are 100% committed to sustainability. I live on their website and some of the content they create, they really speak to their mission, which is to seek not only to do less harm, but do more good. And that speaks volumes to what they represent. So next, embrace team collaboration to find your values. If you would ask five different employees what they believe the values are, sometimes you'll get a way different response. And you know us millennials are kind of picky. Seven out of 10 millennials actually look at a company's values before making a buying decision, which is a lot, especially if that's your target audience. One way to solve this is to actually get your employees involved in the company value creation process. And the way you do that is with more questions. So starting with asking them why they wanted to work for your company in the first place. That helps you understand what drew them to you. And then you can kind of figure out what are the common reasons and formulate the answers that way. The second way is to ask your managers basically what are the values they use when managing their teams. And the third way is moving up the chain to a company-wide level, whether it's hosting interviews or sending an email blast, asking for feedback on the company's values as they currently stand. Alright, so now you've looked internally, you've asked everyone what they think the company values are. Now look at your customers. If you have existing customers and potentially an email list, send out a survey and see what they think your company values are. Yeah, and we all know perception is reality. You might think your company's values are something entirely different than what your your customers actually think they are. So getting that feedback is definitely insightful and you may be surprised. So if you've gone through everything that we've just discussed, you more than likely have pages of great information. But as far as your company values, you want to keep them concise and simple, easily to be remembered by your employees and your customers. Yeah, so if someone were to go on there and read it, they they're not going to want to spend their entire day figuring out what you're all about. That just doesn't make sense. So keeping it short and simple, something easy to digest, maybe a paragraph or two like the one we talked about earlier is all you need. And then if you want to and kind of embellish and like live it in different ways and on your website, you can absolutely do that. Those mission statements and those values have to be short and simple. So here are some tips. One, you want to combine any overlapping values to make a list of 10 and go through there and see which ones your company just can't live without. And then three, get rid of any bland values that really don't excite people to want to live them out. Yeah, and then once you have all these values, it's time to extend them to your organization with how you think, how you operate, how you act, literally everything. It's the old saying, you can't just talk the talk, you have to walk the walk, you have to walk these values that you say represent your business with all facets of your business. All right, so that's a wrap. You just learned how to define your company core values. Make sure that you like and comment on this video and subscribe to this channel and ring that bell so you can see these episodes first. This is The Journey. We'll see you next time.