How We Set Core Values at MarketBeat

Hey, guys, Matt Paulson here. I want to talk about core values in this video. So, MarketBeat, we've been kind of a small team for quite a while. We were four people until this week, and we had written down our core values in maybe 2013, and I wanted to pull them up again because we have a couple of new employees, and I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page as to what our core values were. The problem was I actually couldn't find the document and I couldn't remember what they were. So clearly they probably weren't core values in our business, right? Nobody remembers them. Nobody can find them. Clearly they weren't actually core values. So I decided it was probably time to take a look and say, okay, what are our core values? Especially now that our team is growing core values, I think they're important because they kind of help your team think and make decisions and. And work kind of in a consistent way and just in the way that you would want them to, in a way that's good for your business and for your customers. They also kind of help describe what your company is all about to people that interact with your business, whether that's your customers, your employees, your partners, anybody, anybody can look at MarketBeat and say they are all about these things. When you hear their core values. Core values, I think they are important. Sometimes I do think they can be over overemphasized a little bit in some businesses. I mean, if you put them on the wall in every room in the office, maybe that's a little bit too much. But I do think they are important, and I think every company should have them. If you've never written core values down, you probably do have some core values. You've just never really thought about them as core values before. For example, my favorite coffee shop right next to my office is quite Queen City Bakery. And one thing that makes them unique is that they make all of their baked goods from scratch. They care highly about food quality, ingredients, and they do it at the point where it even costs them more money to do that versus doing frozen stuff or whatever other bakeries do that, you know, don't make everything from scratch. You know, they don't do mixes or anything like that. So for them, food quality would be a core value. I doubt they have a list of core values in their back office hanging on a wall. But for them, food quality is that core value. If you've never written down core values or if you've never thought about them, you probably do have them. You really Just need to think what is really unique about your business compared to other businesses like yours? And how do you operate uniquely? How do you treat your customers? How do you do operations? And as you think about what makes your business special or different, that's kind of when your core values begin to emerge. Now, you can't just write down core values and expect that to define your business. Core values are not really something that you can write. They are things that emerge out of your company and how you treat your customers and how you run your business. So if you write down some core values and your employees think you. That doesn't really sound like us. They're probably not your core values, and they probably won't become your core values. But if you write down some core values and your employees think, oh, man, that describes this to a T. Those are definitely your core values. So at MarketBeat, we've kind of come up with a new list of core values we had written down some five years ago. Forgot about them, never thought about them again. With a couple new team members on board, I wanted to have us have a consistent set of values, and I'm going to walk through them with all of you so that you can have a better understanding of how we run our companies, how we think about core values, and then how you might write your own for your own company. So we have seven core values at MarketBeat. And this is a list of core values that you'll probably see at no other company in the world, because our core values are pretty unique. First, you know, MarketBeat is a company run for introverts by introverts. So our core value, number one, is it's okay to be an introvert. We don't have any mandatory company fun. We don't go to movies together. We don't do activities together in the park. We just don't do that stuff. Because my assumption is that my employees have their own friends and would probably rather hang out with those people than with me on a Friday afternoon or spend time with their family. So we don't do mandatory company fun. It's okay to work in an environment where you don't have to be very social and talk to a bunch of people all day. All the employees work remotely, so it is a great company for introverts to work at, which is why that's our first core value. Second, core value is that we automate everything. I believe that humans shouldn't do work that software can do. So if there is a recurring task in our business that happens more than once a Month or so we automate it. If we can automate it, we will. Because if I can have a computer do something, I know that the computer is always going to do that task and always do it the same way. And it's never going to require coaching or management. Yeah, you want to have some other code that makes sure that code works. But you know, there's code that I've written five years ago that's still performing the same function it was five years ago and I've never really had to think about it again. So we're a big believer in automation. That's how we're able to run a six million dollar company with six people third. Our third core value is be data driven. So MarketBeat is as a company, we're a subscription business and a lead generation business. And there are some big numbers that flow through there. We've got 750,000 year old subscribers, we've got a quarter million web push subscribers, we've got 4 or 5 million people that hit our websites every month. So small incremental improvements in these things, in getting say one person from the landing sales page to the payment page or making a payment page just a little bit easier, little improvements like that can make a big difference in aggregate together on overall revenue. So because we have such big numbers kind of coming through our kind of sales and customer funnel, those little improvements can make a big difference. So we always want to make decisions based off that kind of flow with data. So we test a lot of stuff, we do a lot of split tests. Who knows what fifth core value is. Be Scrappy has a fantastic profit margin, probably about 75% in 2018, about 80% the year before that. And the reason we're able to do that is that we, you know, we do a lot of stuff cheaply and we use a lot of free software. We don't spend a lot of money on stuff like we don't have a big fancy office. We pay our employees well and we pay for a lot of advertising and we pay for some web hosting, but other than that we just don't spend a lot of money and that's okay. So, you know, markbeat, profitable company. I want to keep it that way. So we try to do stuff freely and cheaply and not spend money where we really don't have to. Number six is that we embrace flexibility. So everyone gets to set their own schedule. I kind of want people available between kind of nine and two because that's when a lot of the emails come in. But if you Take a day off or you work on a Saturday because you take Thursday off to do whatever. I really don't care as long as I kind of have a good idea of when you're working and when you're not doing not working. There is kind of a, there's kind of a flip side to this too. Work doesn't fit neatly into the 8 to 5. So if the server breaks on a Saturday, somebody's got to fix that. Or if something is broken on a weekend, somebody's got to fix that. Or I might have a crazy idea on a Saturday. And that means I'm going to send you a slack message. You might not have to do anything with it. But you know, I think about my business 24 hours a day, so that means you might be getting slack messages from me 24 hours a day. So number six, embrace flexibility. And number seven, the final core value is to have a life outside of the Office. You know, MarketBeat as a company, it's always existed to allow the people that work for MarketBeat to pursue their other passions. So for me that's entrepreneurship. It's kind of the church leadership, evangelism kind of stuff with Sioux Falls Seminary and my church and other organizations I help out with. And on the entrepreneurship side, it's Zeel, it's a million Cups, Hasty Falls, all those other kind of bucket of projects. So MarketBeat, my work through MarketBeat provides an income for my family and that income frees me up to do these other things. So I really don't. I'm one that believes that your work shouldn't be your life. You should have your life and then your work should fund that life. So those are, or, excuse me, those are, or those are. Or whatever those are. Seven core values. So one, it's okay to be an introvert. Two, automate everything. Three, be data driven. Four, be dependable. Five, be scrappy. Six, embrace flexibility. And seven, have a life outside of artwork. So I'd love to hear what your guys core values are in your companies. So maybe comment below. I'd love just to hear what they are. Maybe learn something about your business in the process. And if you like my videos on YouTube, feel free to press the like button. Feel free to subscribe if you want to get them automatically. I'm probably going to try to do these more consistently. Maybe I'll do a video a week, two videos a week. I don't really know yet. I don't want to say this is the rebirth of my podcast, but I'm definitely going to do more video content. So click. Like, click, subscribe, tell your friends, whatever. I'd love to have you guys watch more of my video content. Thanks.