Episode #035: The Importance of Values & Mission in Your Business
The Importance of Values & Mission in Your Business
Does your business have core values and a clear mission? In 2022 it's almost ESSENTIAL that you do!
Listen in to this week's episode to learn how and why you need a values-based business more than ever!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 35. And in this episode, we're talking about leading with mission and values. How to show people what you stand for, what you believe in, and ultimately how to get more customers as a direct result of that. So let's get into it.
Hey, Hey, Hey, not so average marketer, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now I'm really excited because, for those of you who don't know, I was actually, last week at the time I'm recording this, in Las Vegas for a retreat. And I was really excited for this retreat because it was part of a program that I'm in, a mastermind coaching program. And I got to learn from peers and leaders in this space. And there was a conversation that was had, or a session that was led by an incredible copywriter that really talked more about the ethics and the belief systems around marketing.
And are we marketing with integrity and ethical values? And this presentation really stood out to me, because for those of you who have been following the show for a while, you know that at Not Your Average Membership and Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, we talk about things that don't just work well, but actually feel good. They don't feel slimy. They don't feel skivvy. They don't feel icky. Because we want to not just make money, but actually serve, help, and impacts people in a way that feels good and makes us money as well. So what I wanted to talk about today was some of my big takeaways from this presentation, but also some of the things that we've been doing in our business to be a more mission values, vision centered business. And I want to start by talking about the reality that this is very abstract in a sense, I'm going to give you some really tangible examples of where you can analyze in your business if you're leading with mission and value.
But I wanted to start by saying, are you actually doing this? Right? I know it sounds silly, because you might be like, well, I don't know if I'm actually doing this. But we're going to talk about it. So why would you want to lead with mission and value in your business? And just to clarify, when I say value, I'm not talking about free content, I'm talking about your core values. The things that you believe in. For us, it's compassion, integrity, inclusiveness, those are important values to our business and our products, right? Why would you do that? Because, here's the thing. In 2022, especially as a personal brand based business, people are making decisions based on who they trust, know, and like. Now, that's not new. That's not a brand new concept. That's not different from how it's been in the past. But there's one layer deeper.
And that is that people want to support people who stand for the things that they stand for. Now I know that's really wordy and it might be like, what does that even mean, Zach? Well, in short it means that people actually want to know that their companies have values. So to give you a really specific example. At the time I'm recording this it's June, it's Pride Month, and this pervasive message that I've seen from my friends in the LGBTQ+ community is that they are kind of tired of the virtue signaling that some of the bigger corporations do. Like making your logo rainbow, but then not donating to charities or not actually getting involved with the community. But they're making that dollar on the rainbow. We actually have a phrase for it. We call it the rainbow dollar, right? And in June, a lot of corporations say like, oh my gosh, look, we support the LGBTQ+ community.
We are rainbow colored and we're doing this, and we're doing that. When in reality, what a lot of us are saying is we want to support our community. And so, one of the pervasive messages that I've seen is like don't necessarily support a corporation, support a local business. Support, a small LGBTQ+ creator. And just to clarify, I'm not saying that in the month of June, you should support someone just because they're part of the community. What I'm saying is that people are starting to discern when people are doing things for money and doing things for value. And when things are actually impacting in a positive way, the community or values that we stand for. So what does this ultimately mean for you? Well, especially if you cater to a younger generation, and to me a younger generation is really anybody under 30 to 35 in this scenario. People want to know what you believe in.
They want to know that they're supporting companies that actually support who they are as people, right? So how do we do this? How do we actually show people what we believe in and what we support? To me, the first thing is you've got to get clear on your values, right? What are the values of your company? So I told you that some of our values are like inclusiveness, compassion, connection, community. Now we have core values, and this is really important. We have core values in our company of like, can do attitude, and gets things done, and takes initiative. But what I'm talking about are core values audience face. And this is something that I haven't heard a lot of people talk about, and yes, there's going to be some crossover between internal and external core values, but I call these external core values because they're what you're communicating to your customer.
So the first thing you have to do is say, what's important to me? And you can start by asking yourself, what is important to me in terms of social issues? What's important to me in terms of how I communicate my message? What's important to me in terms of what I see in the industry? And you can start there and just start asking the question, what are the things that are important to me that I want to communicate to my audience? So for us, inclusion is a big one, right? So for those of you who don't know, I am part of the LGBTQ+ community. And inclusion is really important to me. Because, there was a big part of my life where I felt like I wasn't necessarily being included or represented in what I saw on television and in real life and in movies, right? I didn't feel included. I felt like I was on the outside trying to figure things out for myself. So inclusion is a big, big value of ours.
The second thing is to get clear on what that means for the vision of your business. So, how do you want to show those core values? Right? This can be really straightforward. You can weave it into... Let's say you're doing a webinar or a podcast, you can say things like, we believe in inclusion. We want to support a diverse community of people who are looking to expand their business. I can be that blunt and direct. What's really key is that you show it in your actions. Right? Now, I'm not saying that you have to go out and donate a percentage of your revenue to charity if you're not at a point in your business where that makes sense. But I will tell you, we just did a promotion for our membership template pack, which is like an eight template, not course, but like eight template pack, I guess, template pack, that we give to people who are looking to launch their membership.
And we're taking about 15% of every sale and we're donating it to the Trevor Project, which is an LGBTQ+ support crisis line for youth that are questioning and just need somebody to hear them out. And it's a cause and a charity that's really close to my heart, and we decided to give to that. And we personally decided to be public about it. Now to be completely clear, we're not donating to this charity publicly because, oh my gosh, look how great Zach is and look at what he's doing. And I'm more likely to buy because I'm supporting the cause. We're sharing it publicly because number one, I'm a part of that community. So I'm not leveraging another community or another person's experience to capitalize. Right? And I think that's really important to communicate. I'm not looking to capitalize on a community.
I'm looking to share what I know and then use that to support a community that I'm part of. So, that's the first piece. The second piece is that when I communicate where and how we're donating our money, I'm actively telling my audience what I stand for. Right? So if I'm going to support to an LGBTQ charity, people are going to know that's important to me. They might assume that I'm part of that community and assume correctly so. They might think, oh my gosh, this is important to Zach, or this is about inclusion for Zach or Zach's doing this. And I do, or don't support that. And don't get me wrong. There are people who won't support what I support, and that is okay. Because the real question is when you're cultivating your community, whether it be your email list or your webinar attendees, or your podcast listeners, do you want to cultivate people who have values so different from you that they can't look past them?
I want to be super clear about this. I'm not saying create divisiveness. I'm not saying, oh, if somebody doesn't believe in what I believe in, they can't learn from me. I'm sure I have people in my audience who don't believe in what I believe in, but they can still learn from me. And that's okay. But, and this is a big one. I'm not going to step down from what's important to me for the sake of making money. And to me, that is what the mission or values driven business model is. It's saying some people might like it, some people might not like it, and guess what, I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to support what's important to me. I'm going to be vocal about what's important to me, and I'm going to be proactively sharing.
I recently joined a mastermind I was talking about, that I was in Vegas for, and on the sales page, one of the things they said is that inclusion was important to them. So regardless of race, gender identity, ethnicity, sexuality, you are welcome and in a safe community. And for me, that was huge. That was a big part of why I joined that mastermind. Now I knew the guy who was doing it. I was very interested beforehand, but for me, that was like this really cool tipping point. Not because it's like, oh, I need a safe space. And, if you do need that, that's not a bad thing. I have pretty thick skin and I can deal with people being people.
But to me, it told me the person that I'm working with, this is important to them. It's important to them that they have a welcoming space. It's important to them that they have inclusion. It's important to them that people feel safe to share their problems and issues. Even if it's through the lens of disadvantages or advantages that we have. And that was big for me. That was really important. And so just to be really candid, it was a multiple five figure investment to be in this program. And that little statement made me go, "I am in the right place." And that's what you want people to be saying. I am in the right place.
So we've talked a little bit about this conceptually, but I want to give you some practical things that you can do to communicate your values, right? And I'm going to do this through the lens of our values, which are compassion, inclusion, integrity, honesty, and community. I just want to really communicate what these are. So number one, we do everything with honesty and integrity. This sounds so simple. But if you say your card's going to close at midnight, and if I can buy the next morning at 7:00 AM, that's out of integrity. Let's just be honest, right? If you say one thing and do something else, out of integrity. So we always try to be in integrity. Honesty, and I would also say transparency. We tell people what to expect.
So in our most recent promotion of our membership workshop, which was a $37 training we did on how we grew our membership, we, in one of our sales emails for the workshop itself, said, hey, we're going to have an offer on the class. It's going to be $247. It's going to be a template pack of everything you need to launch your membership. And if this makes sense for you, great, you can grab it. And if it doesn't, no worries, no judgment. And we still want to have you in class. All conventional marketing wisdom says, don't do that. Don't tell people exactly what you're going to sell them because then they might not show up or buy or be interested. But we said, honesty, transparency and integrity are important to us. So why not just tell people what to expect? Why not just hand them the pricing and the positioning so that they can make an informed decision.
Because one of the things that the copywriter at our retreat said, her name is Brittany McBean. If you want to look her up. Phenomenal human. She said, "It's just about communicating information, and the information to make the right decision." And what I took away from that is not, oh, I have to do all of these things. It's simply to say, what if you supported people in a way that didn't activate that fight or flight response. So, listen, I'm not saying that your audience is upset with you or that they don't like these things. But I think about like countdown timers. Are we hammering our audience with countdown timers to force them to make a decision. So for us, we try to use minimal countdown timers. We might use them one or two emails out of our sequence, but I've been in promotions where there's a countdown timer on the sales page. And there's a countdown timer in every email. And there's a countdown timer on the replay page.
And it's like, don't get me wrong. Yeah, those work. And if it works in your business and you feel an integrity doing it, great. But for me, I don't feel good just plastering countdown timers everywhere. Because I feel like I'm trying to get people to be like, I've got to decide. I've got to decide. I've got to decide. And what happens is I get more refunds. I get more people in the program who shouldn't be there, and people are buying out of fear, not buying out of abundance or this want to connect with me. Right?
Another thing that we've implemented in our business around our core values is we've gotten rid of what I call, the do it or you're a loser mentality. So I think we can all relate. Well, you've been on a webinar. It's a really standard webinar slide. Almost everyone uses it because it's been taught in our industry for a really long time. And that is that they say, you have two choices. You can join my program and advance yourself. Or you can stay where you are. Y'all, I don't know about you, but life is not an A or B conversation. There are C options. There are other options. There are ways that you can grow and expand and do more with your content and your life besides just buying my program or not buying my program. Maybe you don't buy my program, and you decide right now is not the time or financial decision for me.
I'm going to go learn from YouTube and Google for right now. Maybe you decide this is not high touch enough. I'm going to go find a coach. Maybe you decide it's too high touch and you need something cheaper. We have to stop doing this thing where we say, I'm going to point blank, manipulate people into feeling like they have to work with me, or they're a loser. And for us, it comes back to those core values of compassion and community. I want to be compassionate. I want people to know that, maybe it doesn't make sense for you right now, and that's okay. I'm still going to record my podcast. I'm still going to send you emails. I'm still going to stay connected. But if now's not the right time, that's okay too. And I think that we sometimes... This was something that Brittany said that really stood out to me.
She said, "Sometimes we say, it's all about copy and creative that gets the sale at any cost. And when we change our mentality to its copy and creative, that communicates our values and vision and message to our audience so well that the right people can't help, but want to be a part of our community when it makes sense for them. Is a totally different ballgame. It's a totally different conversation." The other thing that we do is we try to watch for sweeping generalizations, right? And we try to not do things where it's like, it applies to everybody. And this again was from Brittany McBean, she said something that really stood out to me. And she said, how often are you writing copy? Where everyone goes, oh my gosh, that's me. Right? It's like, are you writing copy the way that you would write your horoscopes?
Like, oh my gosh, that's me. Where it's so broad, it's so vague. It's so nonspecific that everyone's like, oh my gosh, that's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. You don't want everyone who reads your marketing message to say, oh my gosh, that's me. You want the right people at the right time to know that it's for them. So for example, are you saying things in your copy? Like, do you feel like you can't make it to the next level? Well, what does that mean? What does that actually say? What is the next level? Or are you saying things in your copy? Like, are you an online course creator, who's having trouble building their email list past the thousand person mark, and wants to leverage Facebook ads to grow? Notice the difference. Not everybody goes, oh my gosh, that's me. That's me. That's me sweeping generalizations are about sales, not about support.
And I know that's kind of like a tough coach statement. I get it. But it's like, are you actually supporting people and making a decision that they know is right? Or are you supporting people and making a decision that makes them feel like it's right, and ultimately, again, they're just going to come back later and be the wrong fit, the wrong person, or ask for a refund. And so getting that front end sale, was it worth it? Was it worth it for that temporary dopamine hit of the sale when you're going to lose it down the road anyway. The last thing I want to say is that we learn and we apply. So, there's this underlying message here that is like, we have to start being aware of our surroundings and our values and our mission. But what if we have a mission and we say the wrong thing, right?
Or what if we have a mission, but we don't know better, and we say something that we shouldn't have said?. Everybody's got a different view on this, but maybe you say something that you don't realize is a little upsetting to your audience or is ableist or is sweeping generalizations about a community. We're going to make mistakes. We are. And to me what's most important is that if I do make a mistake and my audience calls me out, or somebody says, hey, you really don't want to say things like that. Then I learn from it, and I apply it, and I grow from it. So I know that this episode is a little more abstract and not as tangible. I'd love to know from you guys. Come message me over on Instagram at Heart, Soul, Hustle. And let me know, do you like episodes like this where it's more like conceptual, high level?
I love having these conversations. I had a conversation like this with some of my coaching students recently. And I just think that we need to have more of these conversations, where we talk about things beyond, how do I increase my conversion rate 1%? And have a conversation more along the lines of, am I doing everything I can to communicate my value, to connect with my audience, to share my values, and to really attract the right people to my tribe. Right? So again, if you enjoyed this episode, message me on Instagram, @heartsoulhustle, let me know what you thought. And if you want to get a copy of the show notes/full transcript, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap035. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap035. We'll have the full episode there. We'll have the resources I talked about on the show. We'll have a full transcript, and you can check it out.
I want to leave you with this. Define your values. Figure out what's important to you. Because once you're clear on what matters to you, you can share that with the audience and they'll tell you what matters to them. And when you get on the same wavelength as your audience, in terms of vision, value, and mission, more people listen, more people pay attention, and more people will connect with you on a truly deeper level. I hope you've enjoyed this episode, and until next week, stay not so average.
