35: How to Identify Your Values
Welcome back to Making Good, the podcast for small businesses who want to make a big impact.
I’m your host, Lauren Tilden, and this is episode 35.
If you’ve been listening for a bit, you know that December on Making Good means twice as many episodes! Yay.
Today’s episode is about identifying your values.
I want to open up this conversation by quoting the anthropologist and primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall:
You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
What I hope to convince you in this episode is that your business makes an impact, and getting thoughtful about what that impact is and will be gives you so much power.
We’re going to talk about:
What values are
Why values matter
How to identify your values
Let’s start by getting on the same page.
What are values?
For the purposes of this conversation, values are what’s important to you in the way you live and work.
When you see businesses list your values, you’ll tend to see a lot of jargon and vague words like “excellence” and “integrity”.
I have a little bit of a different approach… I think that getting REALLY REALLY specific with our values will make them so much more useful to us.
For example, business values might be some of the following:
Honesty
Anti-racism
Protecting the environment
Kindness
Family
Giving back
Speaking up
Being authentic online
Continuous growth
Rest
And before anyone goes down the rabbit hole of “but I don’t have values”... let me just stop you and say that you do. You just may not know what they are.
One useful way to confirm this is through your emotions -- through how you feel.
How we feel is directly affected by whether or not we’re behaving in a way consistent with our values.
When things feel “off” and out of alignment, that may be a sign that we’re not acting in accordance with our values.
If you’re not sure what your values are, this episode is for you.
Okay, so we know what values are. But why do they matter in business?
Because they help us make decisions.
As a small business owner, you know that there are constantly so many decisions we need to make. Big decisions, tiny decisions - our days are filled with decisions.
I bet you’d agree that anything that makes decision making easier would be a good thing… and even BETTER if something can help us make the RIGHT decisions.
This is where values come in.
And before anyone goes down the rabbit hole of “but I don’t have values”... let me just stop you and say that you do. You just may not know what they are.
One useful way to confirm this is through your emotions -- through how you feel.
How we feel is directly affected by whether or not we’re behaving in a way consistent with our values.
When things feel “off” and out of alignment, that may be a sign that we’re not acting in accordance with our values.
If you’re not sure what your values are, this episode is for you.
I want to give some examples of how values might guide your decision-making in business.
If your value is to speak up, and the decision you need to make is “what should I do when a controversial topic comes up?”
Your value of SPEAK UP makes your course of action clear: You would say something publicly about it, even if it cost me some followers or customers. This has been a big topic in the US recently, with the state of our politics and COVID19 and police killings.
If your VALUE is anti-racism, and the DECISION you need to make is which company to hire to print your business cards. The ACTION you might take in consistency with that value would be to look for businesses owned by people of color.
If your VALUE is body positivity, and the DECISION you need to make is who to feature in your product or brand photos, the ACTION you might take is to deliberately seek out a variety of body types to be included -- something other than a thin white woman.
If your VALUE is to protect the environment, and the DECISION you need to make is where to purchase shipping materials for your products. The ACTION you might take is to research eco-friendly shipping materials and methods - even if it costs more.
If your VALUE is supporting local manufacturing, and the DECISION is where to manufacture enamel pins and there are no local manufacturers, your ACTION might be that you do not produce enamel pins.
So, hopefully you’re getting convinced that getting clear on your values is a good idea.
But how do you figure out what they are?
I like to think of your values as the answers to this question:
What do you care about?
When you think about what you care most about, what comes to mind? Don’t limit yourself to generic words like “quality” or “service”. What core causes or issues do you care most about?
The process I used to figure this out for myself is to set a timer for 10 minutes, open my journal, and fill out the following sentence as many times as possible:
I care about __________
I care about __________
I care about __________
I care about racial justice, I care about protecting the environment, I care about spreading kindness
Keep going until the timer ends, don’t censor or edit yourself, we’ll edit later.
When your first timer is finished, set a second timer and do the same exercise, this time with the phrase:
I believe in ________
I believe in ________
I believe in ________
I believe in speaking up for what matters to me, I believe in convincing people that they are good enough, I believe in giving a portion of my income
After you’ve completed this brainstorming process, the next step is to organize your thoughts. Look for ways to group these ideas -- you’ll start to see patterns emerge.
For example, I might combine “be real online” with “share the truth about my experiences with mental illness” for an overall topic around cultivating a sense ofr belonging.
Spend some time on this, and narrow it down to 3 to 5 that you want to focus on for your business.
When you’ve selected your values, we then want to think about how we’re going to use our business to address these topics.
For each value or cause you selected, brainstorm different ideas for how your business could contribute to change.
Ask yourself the following question:
How could I use my business to ____________?
How could I use my business to help people feel good about themselves?
How could I use my business to fight racial injustice?
How could I use my business to spread kindness?
How could I use my business to help remove the stigma around mental illness?
Don’t edit yourself, and don’t feel constrained to actions you’ve seen other companies do. One of the beautiful parts about running a small business is that we are flexible enough to get really creative and think outside the box.
If you’re looking for some ideas about actions you can take, I have some favorites to get you started that I talk about in detail in episode 2 of this podcast, which you can get at makinggoodpodcast.com/2.
When you’ve brainstormed actions to take for each value, we need to make some decisions. Of all of the possible actions that you could take, select the ones that are most attainable and impactful. Choose one (or two) action to correspond with each of your business values.
Now that we have identified our values and mapped some actions to go with them, I find it to be super helpful to articulate them cohesively.
I’ve written what I call a Good Business Statement, and it is immensely helpful to me in my business decision making and overall direction.
What is a Good Business Statement?
A Good Business Statement defines what we believe in, and what we’re going to use our business to do about it.
You can find that at goodsheila.com/goodbusiness, but I”ll read it to you here in a second.
Before I went into small business, my background is in marketing, so I can’t resist offering some tips around writing this:
Write it as simply as possibly
Make it human
Say specifically what you mean
Start with a short headline
Where possible, lead with a verb
Don’t mention what you sell
It’s worth spending time on this. You’re probably listening to this podcast because you know that small businesses have power; that every decision we make has the opportunity to make an impact on the world.
Our Good Business Statement is our declaration of how we will be intentional about creating the world we want to live in.
If you want even more details on this process, I have a workbook that walks you through how to do it, and includes some more tips on writing it effectively. You can download that at makinggoodpodcast.com/goodbusiness.
When you have your statement written, some next steps might be to publish it on your website, incorporate it into your marketing, set up a time to revisit your Good Business Statement and your actions in a few months, and in general - view every business decision as an opportunity to make a difference.
I promised I would read my Good Business Statement for Good Sheila that I created using this process. Here it is.
WE KNOW ONE THING FOR SURE.
Business is about more than making money.
We’ve written what we call a Good Business Statement, which you can read below. It sums up what we care about and what we’re doing about it.
SHARE WHAT WE HAVE
We want our business wins to be wins for the world. Through our 5% for Good program, we donate 5% of our profits to a cause we love, rotating on a quarterly basis. This money goes to organizations supporting racial justice, protecting the earth, mental health awareness, animal welfare and LGBTQIA+ causes.
SPEAK UP
We won’t be silent about the things that matter. We stand for building an anti-racist world, for LGBTQIA+ equality, for women’s rights, and for the empowerment of all marginalized communities. We welcome people of all races, genders and abilities here.
SPREAD KINDNESS
We know that small acts of kindness add up, and create ripple effects of good in the world. In our customer service, people- managing, community engagement and other business operations, we will be kind.
SPEND INTENTIONALLY
We believe that every dollar we spend is a vote for the world we want. So, we do our best to spend our money with businesses who have responsible environmental practices and have values aligned with ours. Where possible, we aim to spend with small businesses, local businesses, and businesses owned by marginalized communities.
REDUCE IMPACT ON EARTH
As a paper company, there is an environmental impact of producing our goods. We are in the process of evaluating each step of our production, packaging and shipping practices to minimize environmental impact and make eco-friendly decisions.
I started with a quote, so I want to wrap up with one I love, too:
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. That is from the fable The Lion and the Mouse.
WHEW! So, what do you say… are you interested in writing your own statement? If you do, I would LOVE to hear from you (and cheer you on!) - send me a message on Instagram @makinggoodpodcast.
But whether or not you write a Good Business Statement… I would so strongly encourage you to go through the process of identifying your values. Getting clarity on what is most important to you in your business makes making decisions in our business so much easier.
You can find links to the resources I mentioned at makinggoodpodcast.com/35.
If this is your first time tuning in and you’re interested in hearing more about my businesses, check out my plant-inspired stationery company goodsheila.com, or Seattle retail shop Station 7, station7seattle.com.
Thank you for being here, and for focusing on making a difference with your small business!
Talk to you next time.