Creating Values That Are True

You're listening to Shorts and Suits conversations about business leadership, culture and families through the eyes of two entrepreneurs in the small business community with Ben Kaulman and J.W. rayhans.

Okay, jw, welcome back. And today we're talking about values, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And excited to talk about this because, you know, this is one of those things that, that some business owners can think of like, oh, yeah, that's the soft stuff, but the reality is that's the meaningful part of your business.

Yeah, yeah. We're calling this Creating values that are True. And I think that's the important part of the title because you can have values that you pull off a shelf. And I'm going to get into that in a minute. But they maybe are not true to who you are and who the business really is. Right?

Yeah. And I think that that first word. Create. Right, Create values that are true.

Yeah. So let's start with the journey. I know that I've been doing this for 18 years. You're almost 20 now, right?

Yeah, over. Over 20.

Okay.

Yeah.

And when I started the company, you know, I was very, very novice when it came to running a business. I probably wasn't in the right position to be a business owner. But again, it was just me out of my house. So what was I going to lose?

Right, yeah, Very similar for me too. Yeah. You got to remember I was a 20 year old kid, you know, still finishing college when I started my company. And so I sometimes say that ignorance was my greatest asset.

I think you could still say that.

Probably. Probably.

I'm just kidding.

They ever learner?

Well, so values weren't a big deal for me then. Right. Because it was just me. But when I had our first two employees or so, it started to become a thing where I thought I should work on that. And honestly, it wasn't until I started working with business coaches who kind of started bringing up the acum of you need to have these values established. And so right away I felt very. Trying to think of the word. I felt, I think I felt very incompetent because I didn't know what exactly they were going to do for me or how I should be structuring them. And so I be honest, I pulled them off the shelf. I googled and said, what are good values? You know, I said, oh, that one, I like that one. I could, I could use that one. And oh, I like that one. And so that's what we did. I think we pulled maybe 15 or so because I couldn't, I like so many of Them.

Okay.

And therein lies another problem, is having too many values. Sure. But we pulled those and we put them down on paper and said, hey, everybody, this is our. These are our values. Okay? We didn't do anything with those. We just had them, and it was like, I checked the box.

Okay. Yep.

You've done that.

Well, I think lots of companies have done that. For me, the journey was a little bit different. So I was fortunate enough to serve on some boards early on in my career, and so I got to learn some lessons from larger organizations, and I noticed that every single one of them had a set of values. And so that's how my journey was a little bit different is I. I didn't pull any off the shelf. I had the experience of seeing how they were ingrained into the culture of corporations much larger than mine. And I just figured, well, if they're doing it, then that means that I should probably do it as a small business owner. And so here in a moment, I'll get into, like, how we created ours. But it wasn't. It wasn't a situation where I was pulling them, you know, off the Internet or anything like that. So I think that's because you didn't.

Know how to use the Internet.

Well, yeah, probably. I mean, you know, that, you know, you had to convince me to become an Apple guy, and still the farthest I've got is an iPad. But back to what you were talking about of, you know, sometimes we do. We start somewhere, we check the box and go, okay, well, we've got them. We did that. Now what do we need to do that's fair.

I mean, in the beginning, there is a lot of check boxes you have to check when you're starting a business.

That's right.

It's actually overwhelming. You can't just do the work sometimes. And that's all you really wanted to do when you started it, right?

That's right.

So values evolved for us, and I learned quickly that what we had off the shelf, that they just didn't fit. And so as I also started to learn through just different knowledge trainings, the values actually need to be part of the owner.

Yeah.

You agree with that?

I do.

They're an extension of the owner. They're really part of who that owner is, because that's ultimately the foundation of the business. It is.

Yeah. And again, you know, it's probably mostly small business owners that are listening to us, you know, because that's where we're at. And so I do think that is a. Is very common for Small business owners is that the, the company begins to take on the identity of the owner and the values of the owner, which is a great starting point. And, you know, this goes beyond values, and this is something that we've talked about in a couple of other podcasts. I'm sure it'll come up in the future is, you know, at what point does the business begin to take on its own identity? But, but it starts with making sure that the values are true to who you are as an owner, to true who you are as an organization. And that's the only way that you can really shape the identity of an organization beyond the owner at some point in the future.

Yeah. And it's so important to understand that point because honestly, when you finally get that and you create some that are true to you, whoever you are out there as the owner, you'll start understanding how you can implement those. With recruitment.

Oh, absolutely.

How you manage your team and even to the kind of clients that you're looking for. And when you start doing that, everything starts to align a bit more, doesn't it?

Does. And I think that's why this becomes so important even for small businesses. You know, as I mentioned, I, I learned some lessons from serving on the boards of larger organizations and from other CEOs that were running bigger companies. But that's what I began to see is if you really need to identify, you know, who you work best with and who should be a good talent pool for you and who are great people to be a part of your culture, the values become a foundation for that if you use them that way. Because like you mentioned earlier, I think there's a lot of companies out there that they do still use it as a checkbox even today. And, and to them it's just values on a wall, but it's not really a part of their culture, who they are. And so that might be a good. So, so why don't we explore that. How do you. How do you let these become a part of your foundation? And if you want just quickly. So let me give a little bit of background on how we came up with ours and then I think that'll lead us both into now. How do you live those out and how do they really become a true foundation for your organization? So again, I feel fortunate that I got to learn from other organizations. And so what I began to do is I did look at some of the values of other organizations. To be honest, I actually looked at what some of the virtues are, the cardinal virtues, and others. Then I also Took a look at organizations that I had a high level of respect for. How did they utilize their values? And then I looked at my personal values and really I can actually even show you on my iPad where I have the notes from, where I tried to put all of these that I had collected onto like a single sheet. And then I started looking at, okay, well, which ones carry the greatest meaning to who we are and who we want to become as an organization, who we want to serve. And I begin to think about also, what are the values that we want to attract to our organization? Because then later on, once we had those defined, we actually put a behavior to each one too. So we've got a list of what we call values and behaviors. So the value, each value has a behavior associated to it. And that way everyone kind of understands what these words mean and how we live them out. And so we utilize that to say, okay, if the law of attraction is true, then if we live these out, we're going to attract people that carry the same values. Yeah, but it gives us a measuring tool too, to say, okay, are we, are we living those out?

And that's good because you have to make sure you maintain those and kind of go through those. So that process you went through, I think I want to add to that and say that it's okay to borrow from others.

Oh, yeah.

I think people might be like, oh, there's plagiarism when it comes to values does not exist, I think, because I think a lot of us carry similar values. And that's fair. I mean, if you are a Christian like you and I both are, you might have some Christian based values in your system and that's gonna be unique to actually nobody. We're all gonna have those. And so I just want to throw that out there because I think people might be thinking, wow, I gotta have my own unique values and they gotta be true. They need to be true to you. And you might reword them in your own flavor. That's cool.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you bring up that point because yeah, there's gonna be duplicates. It's just how you ingrain them into your organization.

Yeah. Yep. Okay, good. Well, I'm glad you shared that process because that's a, that's an interesting journey I was using. I was, I was subscribed to a different organization that was a training company that kind of took me through their process. Oh, cool. And so theirs was somewhat similar in that you kind of go out and look, but, but really what they had me do Was a lot of soul searching on reflections of behaviors because you said behaviors that I find good characteristics of people I'm trying to attract.

There you go.

And so kind of reversing that out. And so we would do is we look for the behaviors that we want to attract and then once we identify those behaviors that. How do I define those behaviors? And so suddenly you became creating values.

Absolutely.

So it's actually just the opposite of what you did.

Yeah.

But it kind of came to the same result. Right.

There you go. Yeah. And I think here's what that does then is as you grow, it helps other people understand what you're looking for, what carries meaning in your organization. And so in a way it almost becomes a self prophesying filter, if you will. And so maybe share with us a little bit about, you know, how does Rocket Media really keep these at the forefront of people's minds? You know, how do you guys really utilize your values in your decision making? Walk us through that a little bit. What is, what do the values day to day look like in Rocket Media?

Yeah. And I can always say we could, I would love to always do more work on this. But here's what we do today. So every Monday we have a standup of team standup and we usually will go around the horn and just kind of say what we are going to be doing this week, kind of accountability, but every once in a while change it up. And I'll say, think from this past week. This might be a Friday thing since you're thinking past, but either Monday or Friday, think from the past week and give me an example of where you utilize. And I'll say a value.

Yeah.

In your conversations, in your personal life or anywhere else. Because it doesn't always have to be work related. Right. Sometimes these values carry home. And often work does carry home. Right. Yeah. And so that's one way we do it. Because what we're doing then is reflecting and we're utilizing the thought of that particular value and how we reflect to it. And we're sharing examples company wide and it's interesting to hear how people kind of interpret that. Right. And it's an indicator usually when I do that, if we need to revisit values or not, because if people are right on it and they're giving me great examples, then I know that they are still keeping in. We of course will use those in annual reviews and sometimes even quarterly reviews because we try to keep it more relevant. So we have a kind of a grading scale system. I will say in the Past, like years. Years past when we had the off the shelf ones that weren't so much important to us, we actually went through the process of having everybody memorize the values. And so when you went in for your quarterly review, you would be asked to recite the values, which they weren't that difficult. So we kind of create, you know, like a rhyme and reason to it. So it wasn't like this, like, laborious name all the presidents kind of thing. Right. It was more of just being able to recite these, These. These values that we had. So. But we don't do that now. And the reason why we don't do it now is because a. But we don't really need to because we live them.

Yeah.

And they're simpler. So it's not as like needs to be ingrained. So those are just two examples. One, utilizing it in our common, you know, reflections that we do on the weekdays and then trying to integrate it in the work that we do as well. Like when we're. I know I usually run the sales right now, so when I'm looking for sales opportunities or looking to join a partnership with somebody else, I kind of listen for those values in their work and what they do. And I think, okay, do they have that? Do they have this? Okay, great. So they're going to align with us better because we have a similar. Right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And thank you for sharing both of those examples. You know, it's great to see just how you're giving your team an opportunity to share how they're practicing these values and how they see themselves living those out. But as you mentioned, then the others can learn. Everybody gets to kind of see the view or the perception and the wording that each person uses to describe the values. Because even like you and I, when we help shape these values and through our leadership, we try to make sure that it's ingrained everything that we do. And it's still important that we recognize that there's gonna be multiple interpretations of what these words mean, what these phrases mean. How do I use that when I'm working with a client? How do I use that when I'm working on a website? And how does it actually get practiced in my day to day? And so by having the opportunity to share those examples, then you're creating an environment where everyone can learn from one another of what those values truly look like.

And one quick add to that, if you're thinking about doing this yourself, I always go first because I think it's important to set the tone and you're, of course, putting people on the spot when you say, okay, I want you to give me an example. The first person that has to go is guessing sometimes, and they're like, I'm not sure what he's looking for. So if you're going to do that, just go first. Say, I'm going to go first. And here's what my example is. And so what you've just done is you've set the bar and you set kind of an example so they can all go, oh, that's what he's looking for. Because they might have forgotten. Especially if you have newer employees that have maybe never done this before. Yeah, it's great to have that kind of. So I'm just throwing that out there. If you're going to try that, I learned go first. Yeah.

No. And so here's where I'm going to give a different perspective because I actually don't go first on purpose because you're meanie. And so here's. But you bring up a great point in setting an example. Right. And so what? A lot of times when. And we do this regularly in our team meetings, too. But what we've taken on the practice of is I'll identify someone on our team ahead of time, and I'll go to them and say, hey, you know, what's one of the values that you really feel like you've been able to put to use recently? Would you be willing to share that and go and go first at the team meeting? Part of why I do that. And it's cool that we're having this conversation because it helps everyone understand there's no right or wrong way to do it.

Right.

But each person can give it their own style and even their own leadership style. So the reason I don't go first is because I don't necessarily want to influence the tone of the conversation. I don't necessarily want to influence the definition of it, because if there needs to be a coaching moment later where, let's say a few people go, and I can tell that maybe that isn't the right interpretation of the value, then it gives me a coaching opportunity to say, here's how we really want this to be defined. And so it can work either way. Going first sets a great example. Allowing other people to go first allows for a coaching moment. So. And who knows, maybe one of you listening, you go, I'm going to just use both styles. And sometimes you alternate it up.

You're going to find out, Ben's way's better. But go ahead Try them both.

That's all right. You probably will. But, you know, for anybody that's more comfortable letting other people go first, you've been given permission. There you go.

Permission granted.

There you go.

Okay, so now go to another step. I know we didn't. I didn't mention any hiring. I mentioned a little bit about acquiring clients or aligning with clients. You know, in the value side, what do you do with the values when it comes to hiring? Do you integrate that in the hiring process?

We do. Yeah. And I know, I know you and I are going to do another podcast on really kind of our full hiring process.

Right.

But I do want everyone to know that we do include that in our hiring process. And almost similar to what you described a moment ago, we look for clues, right? Because we don't want to give it away. And actually, we don't share our values and behaviors publicly. Our belief is that if we're living them out, then these are the words and phrases that people will use to describe us. Now, I will tell you from a marketing standpoint, I've been told many, many, many, many, many times over, that that is a ridiculous marketing practice, that we should express what our values and behaviors are.

Well, you know, the thought behind that. I'll just interlude. I'll come back to you. Is being able to attract the kind of people that you want with that, Right?

Yep. And so over time, I've come to see that perception of, okay, well, there could be good reason to share these publicly, but up to this point, we haven't. That could change. Now back to your question about the hiring, though, is it gives us opportunity to look for clues. Right? So let's imagine for a moment we didn't have a set of values defined. How do we know whether we're going to find a person that is the right fit? Right. Because we could see their skill. But how do we really know that they're going to fit what we're all about?

So we both never always had values. Right. So maybe we can reflect on that and say it's probably. We go with our gut. We go with, like, we had a good conversation. They made me smile a lot, you know, that kind of stuff, which is probably not the right way to make those decisions. I even have gone to, like, flipping a coin. Yeah. I'm not ashamed to say that, you know, heads or tails, they're in.

Yeah. Well, and, you know, let's be. Let's be real small business owners. We don't necessarily have all the HR resources that larger organizations have.

That's right.

And so. But at the same time, it's pretty costly to make the wrong decision on a hire, on a hire and on a person. The reason is because as a small business, you don't usually have the broadband coverage in positions that other organizations do. And so I really do believe that having clearly defined values and behaviors is critical to the hiring process because it helps you to look for the clues in that hiring process to see if they probably possess those values.

Yeah. And I think a lot of our questions, at least from mine, because when they get to interview with me, I don't really do the technical side of it much. I leave my team. So it's really. Now it's culture fit. It's do I feel like they're a good fit? Right. And so how do I do that? Well, that's what I do. I just bring out my values. I have questions that kind of bring them out of them in conversation. Right. That's why I can hear what I'm looking for.

Exactly. So for any of you listening, if you want more details on our hiring processes and the ways that we go about selection and then keeping a strong culture with our team, you know, tune into the podcast that we're going to do on that. Specifically, here's something else that I think is worth touching on when it comes to values and, like, how we live them out as an organization. I'll share just a couple of quick examples of how we do that. And here's what I'm going to share. I'm going to share something different than, like, what you've shared, because we actually practice very similar to you. It's just part of every weekly team meeting. One thing that I'll share, especially when it comes to the weekly team meetings, the other thing that we do, and I don't know if you guys do this, but we send out a packet or an agenda to our team ahead of the meeting, and that way they can do the preparation that they need to do. But one of the things is next to each agenda item, we literally type on the agenda which value that agenda item is linked to. So that way everyone on our team can tell really easy why we're discussing that particular agenda item or why it's on there. It's because it's linked to this value.

Okay.

And it just reinforces the why.

Right.

It reinforces the values each and every time they see something on the agenda.

Yep. Connecting those dots.

Exactly. And so that's one practice that I'll share with everyone listening is link your Agenda items. And that can be done for any meeting. You know, it can be done for one on one. It can be done for team meetings, it can be done for client meetings if you want to do it that way. But then it just links. Here's the value that this is attached to.

Okay.

Now the other thing that I'll share in the way that we go about practicing those values is we actually created kind of an assessment. So if I use terms that might be familiar with other people you've heard of, like individual development plans or goal plans or performance plans. So we include a self assessment that each person can do in those development plans where they can basically identify and we've got each of the values listed and there's a scale that they can rank themselves and what they get the opportunity to do is say how much they feel like they've been given the opportunity to live these values out through their work. So one of the things that we're finding, and I think probably most people that are listening are finding this, is that people are choosing where they want to work more on purpose or the purpose or the mission of that organization. They want to know that they're part of something bigger than just the work they're doing on a daily basis.

Oh, yeah, I think we just talked about that not too long ago in one of our episodes, but I see that all the time.

We sure did. And so I think it's up to the organization to really know, like how you tell your story, how you tell your mission, how do you express what every person is a part of? And so, you know, in that self assessment, it gives them the opportunity to go, yeah, I feel like I'm a part of something bigger. I feel like I am a part of these values or it gives them the opportunity to identify and go, you know what? I'm not really sure how I live this one out in my daily work. And then there again, it's a coaching opportunity for whoever's doing that one on one huddle when they see that self assessment to then turn it into a conversation. It's not, here's where I'm great and here's where I'm lacking. It's do I feel like I'm being given the opportunity?

Yeah, yeah. Touching on that for just a second, that kind of reminds me of the E. Myth story. Right. Where you're working in the business or on the business. And I think as new businesses, you're really tactical in what you do, the technician side of your mind. And so you're probably not Thinking. And this why this came up is because what you just said about people working on things that are bigger than them and have more purpose, and every business actually has a greater purpose than probably what they think. But when you're starting out, you're so tactical that you don't really think about that, but you should, because once you start understanding that people want to have that connection and you can somehow extract that from what you do, then. Then you've kind of got a golden ticket that you can hang your hat on that allows you to track those type of people.

Yeah.

And you can start talking about that with your team and saying, this is what we're doing. We might be just doing XYZ because that's what we do every day, but it does this, and that's what people are looking for. So I'm just throwing that out there because you brought up a good point, and I think clarification on that might help. So I'm put you on the spot real quick before we close out here, and let's. We've each got a list of values. I have six. I don't know how many you have. What's your favorite value that you have? I'll go first because, you know, I like to go first.

That's right. Yeah.

Give you a chance to think about it. Okay. Set the tone here.

That's right.

And I'm cheating because mine are in front of me.

Are they really?

I've got you on this one, but I don't. I only needed it because I want to make sure I didn't misinterpret the explanation. So my favorite one we have is actually our first one. It's called choose the Right Attitude. I think attitude is such a huge piece of the puzzle for everybody, not just in work, but in your life. There's so many things that hit us each and every day. Right. And we get to choose how we want to interpret that. And so ours reads like this. Clients can be rude. Budgets can be sparse. Timelines can be tight. You can't choose your circumstances, but you can purposely choose how you react to them. And I think that just encompasses that value for us. And that's how we look at it from a business perspective. You can interpret that in lots of different ways, but that's got to be my favorite one. And I think that's why it's number one, is choose the right attitude.

Yeah. Well, and thanks for sharing that and really kicking things off, because it does set the tone. So now you've got me thinking through all nine of our values. I'm like, okay, a favorite. And I can truthfully say that I don't have a favorite of our values, but here's the one that I'll share, and it's because I think it encompasses a lot about who we are, and that's our value of unity. Our value of unity and the behavior that is described, associated with unity is together, our reach extends further. How can I improve? And so that's the one that I'd like to share with everyone in our audience of, you know, that one for us, because we really do view our clients as extended family. We view the people that we work with as the people, internal people, as part of the Ray Hans Financial family and Joshua Development family. But we also see the others that we work with, vendors, investment companies. Those are all part of the extended family because they're helping us achieve our mission, even though they may not be here in the office and they may not be a part of the immediate team. So we do see them as extended family. And that. That value of unity really, I think, kind of brings that together.

That's great. I like that one. Yeah, that should be your favorite one, maybe. Okay.

This has been awesome, man. It's always fun to get together. We really appreciate everyone that. That kind of just takes some time and invest some time to really listen. Obviously, our hope is that you're able to put what we share into practice in your way, with your style, your gifts, with your talents, with, you know, what you're trying to pursue, but really put it into practice, because as we know, it's what we do with what we learn that makes all the difference.

And I'm willing to share my values if you were willing to share yours.

With everybody out there, so I'd be. I'll be happy to do that.

Hop on our site. We'll put links to our values so you can check them out. Shortsandsuits.com and take them away.

That's right.

All right, thanks for your success.

Yep.

Thank you for listening to Shorts and Suits. Your hosts are Ben Kaultman of Rocket Media, a digital marketing agency, and J.W. rayhans of Rayhans Financial, a financial investment advisory firm. For more information, go to shortsandsuits.com if you find this podcast helpful, please help us by telling a friend and rating us on itunes. Subscribe to our tribe and learn more@shortsandsuits.com.