DJ Kleinbaum: Knowing Your Uniqueness

It's very important for your company to define the things that make you different from the rest of the world. So by definition, you're clearly thinking about things differently or else someone else would have probably already done this idea. You've already said, I actually think this is a good idea. So that's sort of the first thing that makes you contrarian. But it's important to establish what those things are for your company and to get buy in from everyone on those things. So I'm just going to list the things that are our contrarian truths at Emerald and you'll notice that there aren't any things here like quality first, because quality first is that's a great mission statement to have or a great thing to hold up for your company, but it doesn't actually make you unique. The point of this exercise of sitting down with your early employees and saying, what are the things that we believe in these four walls that everyone else outside of them thinks we're crazy for thinking. And it's a really valuable exercise and it's an important thing to point to as your company grows and matures, to have this as sort of a cornerstone of culture.