As a solopreneur service provider working directly and intimately with business owners and community leaders, my personal and brand values are basically one and the same.
(A less founder-forward brand might have core personal values that relate, but are slightly different than their business’ core values. Find the right balance for you!)
My values are:
✨ conscientiousness
✨ contribution
✨ exploration
✨ integrity
✨ intentionality
They show up (ideally) in every decision I make and across all my copy, content, and conversations.
Since our values are our “HOW,” they’re the fuel, the momentum, the mechanisms that bring our business vision to fruition.
They fill the space between our mission (WHY) and vision (WHAT) and the people on the receiving end of our brand (WHO).
They’re what keep us constantly and consistently moving in the “right” direction.
Here’s an example from out in the wild—a DC-based shop that has a SPECIFIC page about Republican customers.
With this bold statement, they’re:
A: really understanding their audience and the context they’re operating in.
B: letting their values shine through and thereby attracting and repelling their perfect-fit people.
While I think they could have benefited from a good editor (can’t we all?), the end of this page sums up their stance well:
“What does any of this mean? Going forward we would still be glad to have you as customers, but we’re done pretending the Republican Party’s embrace of cruelty, racism, Covid lies, climate change denial, and threats to democracy are anything other than the risks they legitimately are. If you need us to pretend you are not creating the hurt you are creating in order for you to continue to be our customer, I’m sad to say you might be happier elsewhere.
If on the other hand you still want the best spices and don’t need us to respect what you now vote for to be our customer, Hooray! We are happy to have you here, but know that we will, on a regular basis, try to wake you up from this dream that has you believing there is anything conservative left at all to what the Republican Party has become. We can and will work without Republicans to solve the problems we face, but it sure would be nice to get back to a time where Republicans were equal defenders of equality, the environment, and democracy. We look forward to that day.”
Basically: you’re welcome here if you can get on board with how we view the world. If not, shop elsewhere.
***I know some of you are absolutely cringing at the idea of being this bold. You can share your values without being so overtly “polarizing” or frank if that’s not your vibe. However, I will say that the more clear your stake in the ground, your voice, your values, the easier it is to attract and repel the right people.
Many other business owners have statements in their email signatures, website footers, or social profiles with indigenous land acknowledgements, inclusivity claims (like “We believe Black Lives Matter, Love Is Love, and no human is illegal”), community agreements during onboarding, a religious verse, or some other direct reference to their beliefs.
But that’s not to say just because you DON’T do this, you AREN’T living out your values. (Whoops, that was a lot of double negatives.)
You can also be a bit more implicit as you stand up for your values in order to stand out. That doesn’t make it any less transparent or impactful.
Most of my content is less explicitly tied to the values I mentioned above, but the vocabulary I use, the stories I share, the people and movements I shoutout are a direct reflection of what I care about and what I think (and want) people in my orbit to care about too.
Any way you share your values is perfectly complete AND a work in progress.
The way you talk about your values and act on them can and will evolve. It’s a super useful exercise to make sure you know what those values are (establish), what they mean to you (define), and how they manifest across your business (apply).
Keep your values at the center of all your messaging, marketing, and decision-making so that no matter the context, you’re always in alignment.
(See this podcast episode and this one for more ideas on this topic.)
And values-aligned brand messaging strategy gives you the jumping off point so that you’re never starting from scratch. It allows you to figure out how to talk (and write and act) “like yourself” in order to connect with and be clear to other people who don’t live in your head and heart all day every day. (Think: clients, team members, collaborators, even AI.)
Because your big dreams and big ideas deserve to see the light of day. And the people who need and want what you have to offer deserve to know about it.
So, with that, send me a note with your personal or business values!
And book a free Alignment Call with me if you want to chat more about how they show up in your messaging, marketing, and decision-making.
This is an excerpt from Toward Purpose & Progress, my newsletter where I share business tips, good news, shoutouts to Founder Friends, and other juicy snippets. Subscribe here for more rants, reflections, and resources.
