Why I wrote my company's core values before hiring a single employee

You are not your company.

The thing about starting your own company is that in the early days, it can feel like a personal extension of yourself.

Because you’re the one writing the emails, posting to social media and creating pitch decks, your voice is oftentimes synonymous with the voice of the company. But as your company grows and scales, as you listen to more customers, make pivots, and build the brand, you realize that your company is NOT you.

I felt this challenge intimately because my company, Fruitful Fertility, solves a problem that has affected me personally and that I deeply care about. I started writing, talking and sharing about my own experience with infertility before creating Fruitful. So after launching the service, the lines were incredibly blurred between my own personal voice and Fruitful’s brand voice.

I noticed this challenge and decided to be proactive about solving it. Who is Fruitful? What does Fruitful care about? Why does it exist? I wrote a strong mission statement, problem statement and “elevator pitch”…but…then what?

What are 'core values?'

I believe one of the most effective ways to get ahead of this challenge is by creating a set of core values. According to Gino Wickman’s book Traction, core values are defined as “the small set of vital and timeless guiding principles for your company.” They define the company’s culture and who it truly is.

Core values are clear. Concise. Limited to 3–7 values. And evergreen. Companies can then hire, fire, review, reward and recognize people based on how they embody those specific core values.

Below are write-ups of Fruitful’s core values: empathy, realness, innovation and resourcefulness.

A powerful exercise, indeed.

So there ya have it…empathy, realness, innovation and resourcefulness. That’s it. Those are our 4 core values.

Articulating what we stand for has helped me get more focused on the decisions we make, the opportunities we pursue and perhaps most importantly, the goals we prioritize.

Crafting your company’s core values is an incredibly powerful exercise; one that I believe should be explored long before Employee #1 is hired.

This article was originally published to Elyse Ash's Medium account on November 6, 2019.

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