As a company grows from seven people to hundreds, its culture will shift, but codified values can keep it from becoming generic. Write down your mission and use it to guide every hiring, training, and firing decision.
How do I scale without having to go corporate? I mean, I think it depends on what you mean by going corporate. The reality is, is that the culture is going to change as the business scales, as it grows up, as it goes from 7 people to 20 people to 50 to 200. Just like human beings change when they go from 7 years old to 20 years old to 50 years old. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. What we want to watch out for is that our core purpose, that our mission doesn't change. That's what is at the core of a company culture, and that is the thing that should persist. So if you want, make sure that you don't go corporate. If you want to make sure that you don't lose your soul, make sure that you write down that you codify what is our company's core purpose, what are we all about, what are our values? Make sure that they're written down, make sure that they're known. Make sure that you hire, train, and if necessary, fire by that mission and by those values. And if you're doing that, then the culture, the core, the soul of the business is going to persist no matter how big it gets.
