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Tag: Mission Statement

  • If You Want a Business That’s Built to Last, Start With Your ‘Why’

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    Is it time for you to find a heroic mission? Do you want to create and lead a business worth fighting for—one that’s built to last? I’m for any entrepreneur, the answer is an emphatic yes! However, while it’s easy to write your business’s mission statement, finding one that will actually move the needle on performance takes some work. Here’s how to figure out the “why” behind your business and why that matters. 

    Start with your ‘why.’ 

    When you’re buried in the day-to-day of running a business, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. However, to build a remarkable business, you need to work backward. You need to find the unifying emotion that underpins everything you do. 

    Your “why” isn’t your product, your service, or your brand. It’s the higher purpose that gets you up at 5 a.m. when everyone else is still in bed. It’s the thing that will keep you going when the chips are down, when everyone else is ready to throw in the towel. 

    As the leader of your business, finding your “why” means having a direct line of sight to your reason for being. You wake up every day believing that the business you’re building is important and worthwhile. That belief guides how you think, how you act, how you move through the world. 

    Make yourself essential. 

    Here’s a simple test I would like you to consider: If you shut your doors tomorrow, then would anyone really miss you? The answer must be an unequivocal “yes.” 

    To build a business that people miss, you have to deliver something special. You have to offer them something unique, unlike what everyone else is offering. It has to be something that they literally cannot get anywhere else. 

    You don’t need to be different for the sake of being different. You need to be special and become a category of one. Your business must be so good at something and uncommon that your customers don’t just become buyers. Instead, they become raving fans. 

    Before every day begins, ask yourself, “Why do I do what I do?” Don’t just think it. Own it. Anchor yourself in it. Then, make everything else you do roll off that rock-solid foundation. 

    Beyond the job description 

    In a fast-moving world of exponentially increasing complexity, you need to focus on where people will want to work, where they will want to spend their money, and where they will want to put their energy. Your “why” is an answer to the question of what you do and why you do it. It’s powerful because it’s simple. 

    The most remarkable businesses are not necessarily the ones with the largest budgets or the most innovative marketing. The ones that really stand out are built by people who aren’t willing to compromise on their mission. That conviction becomes a magnet that attracts customers who don’t just buy from you—they believe in what you’re building. 

    In a sea of sameness, your “why” is your greatest competitive advantage. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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    Peter Economy

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  • Bombas Is the Most Successful ‘Shark Tank’ Brand. Here’s Why. | Entrepreneur

    Bombas Is the Most Successful ‘Shark Tank’ Brand. Here’s Why. | Entrepreneur

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    It was 2014 when Bombas‘ co-founders Randy Goldberg and David Heath found themselves on the set of Shark Tank‘s sixth season. Three, two, one went the countdown. They walked through the doors and in front of the judges, sweating under the lights for an “awkward” minute while production captured room tone, and waited for the cue to start pitching their sock business. A psychologist was on standby backstage, just in case — because “adrenaline takes over.” It’s fight or flight.

    “They warned us about it,” Goldberg and Heath recall. “For the first 15 minutes after you walk out, you’re actually not going to remember what happened. It’s almost hallucinatory like you’re in shock. The psychologist is on hand to brief you to make sure you’re not traumatized. Can you imagine people going on and saying the wrong thing and feeling like they just embarrassed themselves on national television?”

    Fortunately, the co-founders said the right things. After an hour and a half in the tank fielding all of the questions they’d worked tirelessly to prepare for, they landed a deal with Daymond John: $200,000 for a 17.5% equity stake. And once the very real shock wore off, Goldberg and Heath were elated. John, a fellow New Yorker who’d bootstrapped his own large apparel business, had been their first-choice shark from the start.

    “We knew that even though the mechanics of our business would be different, the nature and the heart of what it takes to build something from an idea from your home and turn it into something that is recognized all over the country [would be the same],” Goldberg says. “[We needed] somebody like that in our corner, validating and challenging us. That’s why we wanted Daymond as a shark. And it’s been a fruitful and amazing relationship.”

    Related: 5 Important Lessons Shark Tank Teaches Us About Negotiation

    John became an invaluable “friend and mentor” to the co-founders as they built Bombas from scratch, and the company’s since become the Shark Tank franchise’s most successful of all time — with $1 billion in lifetime revenue. But more important to Goldberg and Heath than that staggering figure is another 100 million. To date, the company has donated more than 100 million essential apparel items to people experiencing homelessness.

    And it’s the very reason Bombas exists in the first place.

    Entrepreneur sat down with Goldberg and Heath to learn more about their founding journey and unwavering commitment to the mission that’s fueled their business from the start.

    “Maybe there’s a way to solve this problem in the homeless community by starting a brand that donates a pair of socks for every pair of socks sold.”

    Although Goldberg and Heath became fast friends in 2007 when they met at a media company they both worked at and “always kind of toyed with the idea of starting a business together,” Bombas didn’t grow out of an initial business inclination at all. It began in February 2011 when Heath stumbled upon a Facebook post that revealed socks as the No. 1 requested clothing item in homeless shelters.

    Heath was surprised socks were the most in-demand, even beating out jackets and shoes, and so was Goldberg when Heath shared the discovery with him the next day. “At the time, we weren’t like, ‘Oh my god, let’s start a business,’” Heath says. “We were like, ‘Okay, there’s this interesting problem in the homeless community.’ And we started carrying socks in our bags to and from work, and we’d give them out to people. The more we started to interact with that community, [the more we started to] realize firsthand how valuable this piece of clothing is to someone living on the streets.”

    The wheels continued to turn. Soon, their awareness of how other brands were making giveback initiatives central to their operations — Toms Shoes and Warby Parker both used buy-one-give-one models — got them thinking about how they might leverage their interest in entrepreneurship for good: Maybe there’s a way to solve this problem in the homeless community by starting a brand that donates a pair of socks for every pair of socks sold.

    Image credit: Courtesy of Bombas

    Bombas was born out of a mission, one it continues to uphold in deed and name: “Bombas” comes from the Latin word for “bumblebee,” and “Bees live in a hive and work together to make their world a better place,” the company explains on its website. “They’re small but have a big effect on things.” What’s more, the company’s “Bee Better” mantra, stitched into its apparel, is a reminder to be better for yourself and your community.

    Related: 6 Ways to Align Your Mission With Your Content-Marketing Strategy

    The co-founders started with an Indiegogo campaign in August 2013. In the campaign’s FAQ, they said that if they could hit the milestone of a million pairs donated, Heath would get a tattoo (he had no tattoos at the time). Goldberg and Heath were fairly certain no one would even remember the campaign a decade later. But the ink on Heath’s arm — the Bombas bee logo and mantra — is permanent proof otherwise. Within the campaign’s first 30 days, they did $150,000 in sales; that ballooned to $500,000 by month six. Because they kept selling out and needed to fund inventory, they turned to friends and family, ultimately raising another $1 million from angel investors. That’s when they were approached by Shark Tank.

    “There’s a forcing mechanism to the process of going on Shark Tank: It’s almost like a business school boot camp for your company.”

    At first, Goldberg and Heath thought the whole thing was a joke. The email inviting them to audition for Shark Tank came from a Gmail address. “It felt like a bit of a prank, and then quickly felt real,” Heath recalls. The co-founders continued fundraising as they underwent the “drawn out and intensive” audition process, which involved stacks of legal contracts and calls with the show’s producers. But then they were in — and in the thick of preparation.

    “There is a very real fear factor going on national TV and embarrassing yourself,” Goldberg says, “and that incentivizes you to make sure that you can answer any question that somebody might ask you about your business, even the questions you avoid talking about as a team — the hardest things, the most uncomfortable things. There’s a forcing mechanism to the process of going on Shark Tank: It’s almost like a business school boot camp for your company.”

    Goldberg and Heath knew only two things would be in their full control when they went on the show: their pitch and whether or not they chose to accept any deal that might be offered. So they made sure that pitch was rock-solid, and, fortunately, the decision to work with John was easy. He was “one of the few sharks that understood the mission.” Others warned it would “destroy” the company’s margins and questioned their impulse to give away so much product.

    Even though Bombas’ commitment to giving back might “feel obvious” by today’s standards, with no shortage of reports about the power of social impact and how much customers care about where their dollars go, just 10 years ago, it wasn’t nearly as commonplace, Heath points out. John saw Bombas’ mission as its driving factor before such initiatives became the “table stakes” they are now, according to the co-founders.

    Related: How to Make Giving Back Part of Your Brand’s DNA | Entrepreneur

    “You need to remember that Bombas was doing this before every brand was doing it,” John tells Entrepreneur. “Sure, there was famously Toms Shoes that led this type of giveback initiative, but Bombas made it part of the company’s core mission. It wasn’t an afterthought. And from going on a handful of charitable giveaways at homeless shelters with Dave and Randy, it’s still very much core to the business.”

    Image credit: Courtesy of Bombas

    Bombas’ mission-oriented approach wasn’t the only thing that initially set the company apart. It was also one of the first direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands and an early adopter of the “relatively new frontier” of ecommerce and digital marketing — both major factors in their success story, Goldberg and Heath say.

    “Nothing revolutionary around socks had been done in a long time,” John says. “And the fact that it was direct-to-consumer allowed the brand to tell its story and show off the product’s features in a way that could never be done when the socks were just hanging on a rack at a sports store or another brick-and-mortar retailer.”

    Related: Why You Need to Prioritize Direct-To-Consumer Strategies

    In those first few years, Bombas saw such impressive growth (tripling year over year) that it wasn’t long before the company considered launching other products. But John urged them to be cautious, the co-founders recall: “You’ve captured lightning in a bottle within the socks category. There’s no real competition. Just keep doubling down on the thing that you’re doing really, really well.”

    “If you’re building a for-profit business that’s mission-oriented, [the product] has to be best-in-class.”

    So Goldberg and Heath did double down on socks for the next eight or so years. And once they decided it was time to expand, they kept in mind the guiding principle that had helped them come so far: Focus.

    “The company’s extreme focus has been a key driver for growth,” John says. “Their focus on making sure their initial product was the best pair of socks; their focus on not expanding into too many product categories too quickly; their focus on making sure to create a digital marketing flywheel. They had a huge night when they initially aired on Shark Tank, and they didn’t let that get to their heads. They knew they needed to focus on building the business in a sustainable way to truly take advantage of this Shark Tank tidal wave.”

    Focusing meant falling back on the fail-safe, mission-first strategy Bombas had used to master socks: Create the best possible version of a product so that customers will love it and buy it, which leads to more donated items. “That great product translating to more donated socks became cemented like two pillars that really propped the company up,” Heath says.

    Related: Why Focus Is the Number-One Element of Business Success

    “If you’re building a for-profit business that’s mission-oriented, [the product] has to be best-in-class,” Goldberg says. “Both things have to be great. The mission won’t work as a business without the product side being great. And the product side will be much less resilient without the mission. And by creating the necessity and the relationship there, you make something defensible for the long term.”

    Underwear and shirts were the No. 2 and No. 3 most requested products at homeless shelters, respectively, which made them clear choices for Bombas’ first expansion. (The company also makes slippers, which the co-founders consider “sock adjacent.”) Paying attention to what customers want and what the homeless community needs helped Bombas determine its product roadmap and remain consistent with its “thoughtful approach to design” — considering the “small details” like a toe seam, how a fly is constructed, the material for a bralette, the way a shirt is cut and finished — ensures all products continue to meet the brand’s high standards.

    Image credit: Courtesy of Bombas

    “From day one, obviously, our mission and business were always mutually aligned and tethered,” Heath says. “So it’s why, over the years, we continue to focus on building this great business with great products. It ultimately led us to donate over 100 million items to those in need, which we surpassed just earlier this year.”

    “The mission really shows up in everything that we do, from customer experience interactions, to the website, to the creative, to the product.”

    To celebrate the 100 million milestone, Bombas launched a campaign to thank customers and educate people about the reality of homelessness — like the fact that anybody earning minimum wage in the U.S. can’t afford a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country.

    “We wanted to use our microphone and our voice to help remind people that when we talk about this issue, we’re actually talking about people,” Goldberg says. “We wanted to interview those people firsthand, present some surprising facts, [to show that] the first image you think of when you think of homelessness is not the full picture. And by getting the full picture and having a little bit more understanding, maybe we’ll create a little bit more compassion. And by creating a little bit more compassion, maybe that’ll change the way that you speak the next time you hear something, someone talking about this at a dinner party or in your friend group. And if we can put our advertising dollars behind shifting compassion, shifting knowledge a little bit, that creates a ripple effect and a movement in the world towards something positive and more human.”

    Related: 7 Inspiring Traits of Compassionate Leadership | Entrepreneur

    For other founders who hope to launch successful mission-oriented businesses of their own, Goldberg and Heath have some advice. First, “get close [to the mission] personally.” The co-founders still regularly volunteer their time with giving partners in New York, travel to other cities to meet up with them, and have regular calls to address issues and current needs in the community.

    You must also ensure the mission is “fully integrated into the business.” Not only does Bombas have a dedicated giving team that serves as a liaison for more than 3,500 donation partners across 50 states, but it also has an operations team that’s responsible for getting products from factory to warehouse to customer and for getting products from factory to warehouse to donation partners.

    “Every team at Bombas is responsible for the mission in either a direct or an indirect way,” Heath says. “And I think having that so intertwined makes our employees feel good about our mission. But it also makes it so that the mission shows up in everything that we do, from customer experience interactions, to the website, to the creative, to the product. It’s so much a part of our DNA that you could never separate the mission. It’s not an afterthought.”

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    Amanda Breen

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  • How Crafting a Story Helps Founders Define Their Mission and Values | Entrepreneur

    How Crafting a Story Helps Founders Define Their Mission and Values | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    According to Builtin, 46% of job applicants place a high value on company culture, and 47% cite their current work culture as the main reason they’re seeking new jobs. Corporate values influence company culture, which is now one of the most critical aspects of employment.

    Founders should be focused on their mission and vision from the ground up. This also helps them understand themselves better and “find their why.” This purpose then spreads across the company under their umbrella and leads the way for others to feel fulfilled at work.

    Related: The First Time We Tried to Define Our Company’s Core Values, It Failed. Here’s What We Did Differently the Second Time.

    Your story strengthens your values, which strengthens your brand

    The ability to understand and articulate your values helps you understand yourself deeper. It’s something that takes thought, introspection and time to work through. You can’t simply decide on a brand story and build your values around it, nor can you arbitrarily pick values that you think will “sound good” and use them as a basis for your story. You will soon find out that does not work out.

    While it is common that founders must figure out their mission before they share their story, it can work vice versa: Sometimes speaking to a media coach or mentor helps founders understand themselves and flesh out the details of their mission and story. In fact, even talking to the right journalists who ask good questions can be helpful for digging deeper into the roots of who you are and what you want your company to be.

    It’s worth the time and effort to define your personal values and let that be what influences your corporate mission and story. By infusing these essential parts of yourself into your brand, you’re weaving something that resonates as authentic and meaningful into the foundation of your company. Then, when you’re speaking to the media, potential customers or a new team member, your passion and sincerity will be what they pick up on.

    Values are dynamic: Don’t shy away from evolution and growth

    Many people believe they must cling to a single set of values for their entire lives. Otherwise, they will be perceived as unreliable, untrustworthy or even betraying themselves or their families. The same can be said for businesses, too.

    However, research supports that it’s normal and healthy for values to change and adapt over time. For instance, what was important to you as a child may no longer hold the same value as an adult. Or an opinion formed as a teen might not hold up to your lived adult experience. The priorities you have as a single person are likely to shift when you become a spouse or parent. In every instance, it’s reasonable for these value shifts to happen, and nobody would be able to make a serious argument that it was “bad” or “wrong” to make these changes.

    In the same vein, the values your company starts with may be different from the ones that serve your goals in a year or three years’ time. Yes, there will be thematic similarities, just like a founder’s personal values will share common threads reflective of their individual identities. An evolving mission is a healthy part of your brand’s storytelling.

    The ability to revisit, modify and live out each new iteration of your values is also an integral part of your story. This kind of honesty and transparency shows that you, as the founder (and by extension, the company), are willing to embrace vulnerability, be open to change and stand up for what you believe is right. This is a particular type of strength that only a small number of brands — and people — can claim to possess.

    Related: Core Values: What They Are, Why They’re Important, and How to Implement Them Today

    Telling your brand’s story is telling your story, so make it count

    In his own talks about values, Mark Manson, author of the bestselling book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, notes that “we are defined by what we choose to find important in our lives.” This is equally true in business. What founders value most will be reflected in their mission and values and will become inextricably woven into the tapestry of the brand’s story.

    Our values are fundamental to our identity, and our identity (aka your brand story in a capitalistic world) is what draws people to us. The more authentic and aligned with reality your brand story is, the easier it will be to grow your company and employees that will help you thrive.

    Related: How to Develop a Company Vision and Values That Employees Buy Into

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    Anastasia Chernikova

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  • 5 Ways Startups Can Leverage Tech Layoffs to Attract Top Talent | Entrepreneur

    5 Ways Startups Can Leverage Tech Layoffs to Attract Top Talent | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The initial wave of tech layoffs captured global headlines with a sense of shock and awe, and according to Nerdwallet, in 2022, more technology workers were laid off than in 2020 and 2021 combined. While big tech itself has laid off unprecedented numbers in a very short span and continues to navigate various economic headwinds, the broader tech industry continues its focus on innovation and strategic growth.

    These signals do not mean that the overall employment economy is bad nor are reflective of the broader talent market. According to Zip Recruiter, 37% of those laid off in the tech industry found a new job within one month, and 79% found a new job within three months, which underscores the many opportunities available. Additionally, quit rates remain the highest in over 20 years and unemployment stands at a steady 3.4%-3.7%, an incredibly low range. These tech employees are also looking into other industries – CNBC notes that many other sectors such as health care, education and government are experiencing a never-before-seen level of interest from top tech talent. Small and mid-cap tech companies are similarly experiencing newfound popularity.

    Related: Why Companies Must Leverage Outsourced Development Teams to Weather Economic Downturns and Layoffs

    Top employees who found themselves suddenly unemployed can still remain in the driver’s seat. The talent wars may be less drastic than a year ago, but they do still exist. This creates a tremendous opportunity for early-stage growth companies to reflect on recent events and look inwards at their culture to ensure they are best positioned to attract some of this talent. The ability of startups to hire and retain these resources could be a key determinant of future success. Yet, it’s not a done deal.

    Early-stage companies are unlike most other businesses in the market in that they have the flexibility to quickly pivot and innovate their culture. To attract and retain this newly available (and incredibly smart) talent looking for opportunities, startups must implement a set of key practices and procedures that will enable them to stand out from the pack.

    Here are five strategies they can consider to position themselves for lasting human capital success:

    1. Embrace hybrid and remote work environments

    Offer hybrid and remote work flexibility options. Not only will this provide a broader geographical base to hire from, but it will actually encourage diversity in the workplace. As Aki Cho points out in her article “The Reason Bosses are Freaked out by Remote Work,” hybrid and remote work environments will cater to a workforce that is more ethnically and gender diverse.

    2. Create a collaborative and flexible co-working space

    Early-stage companies need to break down the walls that siloed offices were once surrounded by. The office needs to become a place that employees want to visit versus have to visit. Startups can rethink the purpose of the office, designing with collaborative structures and making the décor inspirational and welcoming. In addition, there is an opportunity to extend open hours, allowing for early birds and night owls alike to have a place to operate during the time frame that they are naturally wired to perform best.

    Related: Your Tech Employees Are Your Most Potent Reputational Tool as Your Firm Recruits

    3. Offer liberal equity packages and clearly define vesting schedules

    Most employees at big tech companies own a very small piece of a very large pie. By joining a startup, they now have the opportunity to own a meaningful part of their company’s success. Offer generous equity packages, encouraging employees not only to join feeling like co-founders but also to find a longer-term commitment to success. Clearly articulate your company’s vesting schedule and communicate the value through frequent valuation exercises. Extend top-ups when goals are met and the company meets clearly defined and well-communicated metrics.

    4. Create and communicate vision, mission and values that stand for something different

    Early-stage companies have an opportunity to stand out from the big tech pack. Create a vision, mission and values set that represents clarity, aspiration and inclusivity. Develop a clear communications plan and incorporate it into employee hiring, onboarding and retention materials. Stories of laid-off employees attest to their feeling anonymous, overlooked and undervalued. A clear communications plan will serve as the first step to proving it will be different this time around.

    5. Be purposeful in hiring

    Many tech companies experienced massive growth during the pandemic. According to CNN Business, some grew by as much as 100%, just in the 2019 – 2022 time frame alone. As these same companies are now reducing their workforces in record numbers, those terminated are concluding that their hires were based on reactive growth, not properly thought through. Many feel as though they didn’t matter. Early-stage companies can tell a different story by clearly defining the roles they are hiring for, implementing a reasonable company-wide hiring plan and holding themselves accountable for longer-term retention of those they bring on board.

    As the tech layoff trend continues, next-generation leaders are realizing that this time around it’s more than transactional. Affected employees are reflecting on their experiences and reframing their definitions of a meaningful career. It can be argued that startups are best positioned to address this newfound north star; they are nimble, collaborative and able to present the most ownership-oriented reward structure. With intentional planning, focus and ongoing championship, early-stage leaders can leverage this unique hiring opportunity to build best-in-class teams that set the foundation for lasting success.

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    Kalon Gutierrez

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  • Tweak Your Company’s Mission Statement to Inspire Sustainability With Just One Word | Entrepreneur

    Tweak Your Company’s Mission Statement to Inspire Sustainability With Just One Word | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Companies have vision statements that summarize their values for a reason — employees that get on board with your mission and vision tend to work harder for you, and according to the Dale Carnegie institute, companies with engaged workers outperform competitors by 202%. Still, as the current focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) demonstrates, times change. You’ll have to update your vision to keep pace with this new ESG focus, but as little as one word can be all you need to improve your relevancy and influence.

    Related: Vision Statements: Why You Need One and How to Create One

    Brief and built into everything

    Good vision statements are memorable. To achieve that memorability, your best bet is to keep your new, ESG-oriented vision statement as brief as possible.

    Take Cisco. If they had written something like “to build voice-over-IP systems that utilize the most advanced internet connection technologies, are the best in the industry, and return a great value to our shareholders,” people probably wouldn’t have given the words more than a quick skim before moving on to something more interesting. Their actual vision, “changing the way we work, live, play and learn,” is more to the point and free of jargon. It gets across that Cisco wants to be a change agent and that it understands the significance of connection and communication in our world.

    At Merchants Fleet, we adhered to this rule of simplicity first by consolidating the multiple vision statements we had for different areas of the business into just one: “Enabling the movement of people, goods and services freely.” To update this for ESG later on, we added a single word: “responsibly.”

    Once you have a concise vision statement that incorporates some ESG values, you’re not done. You then have to go back and look at all the training and messaging your company has. Are the ESG values there, too?

    Ensuring that the values are consistently visible in everything you do supports buy-in to the vision statement because it shows your team that you’re serious about the ESG shift and are going to follow it up with a real plan of action. At the same time, the concise vision statement helps workers understand why you’re approaching the training and messaging the way you are.

    Related: Why Companies Need to Think More Strategically About Their Environmental Impact

    Perspective and keeping promises matter

    When we added the word “responsibly” to our vision to ensure it had an ESG focus, we recognized a critical point — “responsibly” means different things to different people.

    If our business suddenly got rid of every gas vehicle we’ve got, it would seem responsible to clients who are fully behind electric cars, vans and trucks. But it would seem irresponsible to clients who don’t have a lot of charging stations around or who have to travel distances that are still beyond the range of an electric vehicle (EV). For one of our clients, it didn’t make financial sense to try to install the infrastructure EVs would have required.

    In the same way, our company’s diversity profiles in New Hampshire and Chicago are very different. In New Hampshire, our profile is at 5% diversity, yet that’s higher than the New Hampshire average. In Chicago, we’re 45% diverse, simply because that area is more diverse overall. To require 45% diversity would seem responsible in Chicago but near impossible in New Hampshire.

    So as you adapt for ESG, be careful to give the word or words you add careful thought and avoid absolutes, even as you push for something that’s still specific. The words should be acceptable and understandable on a broad level, but they should also be flexible enough that you can still meet the needs and expectations of your entire base. They shouldn’t alienate anyone, including your employees.

    Similarly, make sure that your mission statement is realistic and attainable. If you choose a word that makes it impossible to follow through on your promise, customers will see that you’re not doing what you said and lose faith in you. Suppose you’re an airline company. If you added the phrase “on time” to your mission statement, you’d be opening the door to a massive number of complaints, as there are just too many variables around airlines to promise you’ll hit every time point perfectly. If you add “safely,” though, that’s much easier to achieve consistently.

    The best practice is to aim for something that’s timeless and a little better than what you had. Leave buzzwords and trends on the shelf because the more you change your vision statement, the less memorable or sticky it will be.

    Related: Three Letters That Will Make Your Company More Successful and Sustainable

    The journey, action, and accountability are all ongoing

    Keeping in mind that there’s a connection between your ESG vision statement and the practices of your company, consider your vision statement an ongoing journey. Revisit it on a regular basis to make sure it still works for you in an authentic way.

    Any time you tweak your statement and add more words, make sure you have an execution plan and accountability. When we added “responsibly” to Merchants Fleet’s vision statement, we were clear that we were adding an ESG team. But your moves could also include reorganizing, doing more training or developing checks and balances. Expect to sum up what you’re doing and the results you’re getting in reports along the way. The rule is to understand that you’re signing up to develop new goals and take additional action with whatever you add.

    Related: Why ESG Companies Are Better Equipped to Weather an Economic Storm

    ESG can deliver both stability and positive change

    Even though ESG is getting more press than it used to, it’s something great companies have always practiced, and the need to connect your ethics to your action will always be relevant. ESG values can ground your business through multiple generations in a powerful way. At the same time, they can help you continuously explore how you can still grow to be a larger help to everyone around you. If you integrate those values into your vision statement, which is the foundation for everything you do, you’ll get the buy-in necessary for the positive change you want.

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    Brendan P. Keegan

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  • How Moderate Republicans Became an Endangered Species

    How Moderate Republicans Became an Endangered Species

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    Early this summer, the federal government will, in all likelihood, exhaust the “extraordinary measures” it is now employing to keep paying the nation’s bills. As the country careens toward that fiscal abyss, Congress will face a now-familiar stalemate: Republicans will refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless Democrats agree to cut spending. Democrats will balk. Markets will slide—perhaps precipitously—and the economy will swiftly turn south.

    When that moment arrives, the most important people in Washington won’t be those who work in the White House, or even the party leaders who occupy the Capitol’s most palatial offices. They will be the House Republicans who sit closest to the political center: the so-called moderates. The GOP’s majority is narrow enough that any five Republicans could dash Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s plan to demand a ransom for the debt ceiling. They will have to decide whether to stand with him or join with Democrats to avert a first-ever default on the nation’s debt.

    “Those guys will be called on to save the day,” says former Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who, until his retirement in 2018, was one of the House’s most prominent moderates.

    Yascha Mounk: How moderates won the midterms

    Dent is talking about Republicans such as Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, whose Omaha district voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020. Bacon is a leader of the faction of Republicans hoping to serve as a counterweight to the House Freedom Caucus and the far-right hard-liners who extracted all manner of concessions from McCarthy earlier this month in exchange for allowing him to become speaker. During the four days of voting that McCarthy endured, Bacon regularly held court with reporters outside the House chamber, castigating the holdouts as the “chaos caucus” and comparing them to the Taliban.

    Bacon, a 59-year-old former Air Force commander first elected in 2016, styles himself as a pragmatist and a realist, and he is keenly aware of the sway that he and other like-minded Republicans could have. Indeed, he and his allies have already blocked two bills backed by some on the far right—including a measure to replace the federal income tax with a 30 percent sales tax—from coming up for a vote. But don’t call him a moderate. “I’d rather be called a conservative who gets things done,” Bacon told me.

    In rejecting the moderate label, Bacon is no different than the other 221 Republicans now serving in the House, virtually all of whom describe themselves as some version of conservative. As the party has moved to the right, so, too, has its leftmost flank. The decline of the GOP moderate is a story more than two decades in the making, but it carries particular significance at a moment when centrist lawmakers could wield so much power. If they choose to use it. If they exist at all anymore.

    Two years ago, Bacon picked up the discarded flag of a dormant GOP group called the Main Street Caucus. The caucus is the House extension of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a political organization founded 25 years ago by then-Representative Amo Houghton of New York. The original Main Street Partnership was explicitly, and proudly, moderate; Houghton called himself a “militant moderate,” and the group’s aim was to “serve as a voice for centrist Republicans,” as well as to soften the GOP’s harsh rhetoric and policies on abortion, gay rights, and the environment, among other issues.

    The Partnership remains active—it spent $25 million in support of Republican candidates last year—but it has rebranded itself to stay relevant in today’s GOP. Searching through its website history on the Internet Archive, I found that the Partnership dropped the words moderate and centrist from its mission statement sometime in the fall of 2011, shortly after the last new Republican House majority forced a confrontation over the debt ceiling with a Democratic president. They’ve since been replaced by more generic descriptors, such as common sense and pragmatic.

    “We used to be called moderate. We are not moderate,” says Sarah Chamberlain, the Partnership’s CEO and a former aide to Houghton (who retired from Congress in 2004 and died in 2020). Its members now identify as “pragmatic conservatives.” “The entity from day one has the same name, but it looks very different,” Chamberlain told me.

    David A. Graham: Kevin McCarthy’s predicament is a warning

    The Main Street Caucus isn’t the only congressional group whose members once might have identified as moderate. Others include the Republican Governance Group (formerly known as the Tuesday Group) and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. A couple dozen Republicans, including Bacon, are members of all three groups. But they each eschew the word, in part, Bacon explained to me, because in primaries “it’s used as a cudgel.”

    Another reason is they are simply more conservative than their predecessors. As Republicans who embraced the moderate label, including Dent, have left Congress over the past 20 years, the Republicans replacing them have moved ever further from the political center. Many of the original members of the Tuesday Group and the Main Street Partnership, for example, backed abortion rights; Dent, who left the House five years ago, told me he believed he was either the last, or one of the last, House Republicans to hold that position.

    Earlier this month, the Main Street Caucus—the largest of the three groups, with about 60 members—elected as its chair a Republican even more conservative than Bacon, Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota. When I spoke with him by phone, Johnson eagerly volunteered that both he and the group’s new vice chair, Representative Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, earned higher ratings than the average House Republican on the scorecard kept by Heritage Action, the conservative activist group that has warred with GOP moderates for years. “We are members who overwhelmingly want to deliver policy wins—conservative policy wins,” Johnson told me.

    The big question now is whether the GOP’s self-identified pragmatists will stand up to—or simply behind—the party leadership in the fiscal battles to come. During the speakership fight, Johnson, Bacon, and other pragmatists served as McCarthy’s protective guard, staring down the GOP holdouts by declaring that they would vote for no one other than McCarthy. Yet, with only a few complaints, they largely blessed the concessions the new speaker made to empower the far right at his own expense.

    Bacon assured me that he and his fellow pragmatists will use the leverage they have, noting the two bills that they had already prevented from coming for a vote. On the debt-ceiling debate, however, many of the deal-seeking Republicans are sounding like McCarthy, who has said the president must endorse spending cuts in order to lift the borrowing limit. “We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling until we have some additional fiscal responsibility returned to spending in this town,” Johnson told me. He put the onus on Biden and the Democrats to negotiate, equating their refusal to do so with “choosing the path of legislative terrorism.” Other members of the Main Street Caucus struck a slightly more malleable tone. “We have to be aggressive on spending, and it’s something I ran for Congress on, so I’m comfortable with that,” Representative Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told me. “But we also have to continue to be able to govern.”

    The primary mechanism that the pragmatic Republicans could use to bypass McCarthy is a discharge petition, which would force a vote on increasing the debt limit. Given the GOP’s narrow lead in the House, only five Republicans would need to join Democrats to get the requisite support. (One GOP leader of the Problem Solvers Caucus, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, mentioned this as a possibility when the hard-liners were blocking McCarthy’s path to speaker.) “It would be very difficult for me to sign a discharge petition against leadership,” Armstrong told me. “I would never say never, but I would be very, very skeptical that I would ever sign that.” Yet in the next breath, Armstrong suggested that if the stock market were crashing, that could change his mind: “I’m not cratering every senior in my district’s 401(k). I’m not doing it.”

    Annie Lowrey: The trillion-dollar coin might be the least bad option

    A discharge petition is an imperfect vehicle for resolving a debt-ceiling crisis; because of the House’s procedural rules, gathering signatures would have to begin weeks or even months in advance. In 2015, Dent helped lead a bipartisan coalition in using a discharge petition to go around the GOP leadership to pass legislation reviving the Export-Import Bank, a federal credit agency that conservatives wanted to let die. Then-Speaker John Boehner had already announced his departure, having been ushered into retirement by a far-right revolt. “Ordinarily, the speaker would be pretty upset about it. I can assure you he was not,” Dent recalled.

    A dozen years ago, it was Boehner leading a House GOP majority bent on securing spending cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling. After several rounds of negotiations failed—including an attempted “grand bargain” on taxes and entitlement programs with then-President Barack Obama—Congress agreed to form a “super committee” to put in place budget caps that became known as sequestration. (Congress would later prevent many of these caps from being put in place.)

    Dent predicted that Republicans would win few if any concessions from Democrats for raising the borrowing limit this time around. “You’re going to get something close to a clean debt-ceiling bill,” he told me. Perhaps Biden will agree to form a fiscal commission to propose possible spending cuts, Washington’s favorite face-saving punt. A fig leaf, in other words. Bacon told me he’s hoping for something more, such as a commitment to keep increases in federal spending below inflation. “I’d like to see more than a fig leaf. I’d like to at least see some underwear on.”

    What’s all but certain is that a significant chunk of the House Republican conference won’t go for that kind of deal. Republicans told me that they doubt the party could pass any debt-ceiling increase on its own, and many conservatives might reject any deal that McCarthy could get Democrats to endorse, if he can get Democrats to negotiate at all. That will put the pressure once again on the GOP’s pragmatists, the Republicans who pass for moderate in 2023 but won’t dare use that word. If and when the debt crisis comes, they could well be the ones deciding between, well, moderation and default.

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    Russell Berman

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  • How to Develop a Company Vision and Values

    How to Develop a Company Vision and Values

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I’m sure you’ve read about the importance of having company values and a mission or vision statement. But why is it important and how do you establish them? When I first started my business with one client and a couple of employees, I didn’t have the structure in place. But as we grew and added more clients and staff, I realized the importance of having a roadmap so that everyone was on the same page. I might have had a vision in my mind about where I thought we were going, but I needed to share that vision and get input from my team on where they wanted to go as well.

    Brainstorm what you want and what you don’t

    After I made some key leadership hires, we met together as a group and did a lot of brainstorming. We thought about everything we wanted to be and what we didn’t want to be. We looked at our staff and our clients, people we admired and looked up to and tried to reverse-engineer their characteristics (can you tell I’m passionate about reverse-engineering?) We agreed that we wanted to be more like “this,” and we wanted to work with clients that are more like “that.” We used these to create our values. Why didn’t we like working with certain people? Because they were jerks — that’s where one of our four core values of “Make it Fun, Don’t Be a Jerk” came from.

    Once we came up with our mission and core values, we put a system in place to make sure those values became part of our workplace culture. We created a Slack channel to recognize people who live up to those values. Anyone can publicly recognize anyone else by giving them a shoutout for something they’ve done. Then at our biweekly company-wide meetings, we select a few people who were nominated and give them a financial award. I used to think mission, values and vision were just things they taught business school, but it’s real and I’ve seen the positive impact it’s had on our company.

    Related: Five Top Tips for Crafting Mission and Vision Statements with Meaning

    I was an SEO expert but didn’t have a lot of experience as a CEO of a fast-growing company. At this point, I decided to work with a coach who recommended that I develop a “vivid vision,” something that outlines where I see myself and the company three years into the future. He recommended that I go to a place that inspires me and just sit there and try to put the vision that I had in my head on paper. I chose to go to a nice hotel in Beverly Hills.

    I spent the afternoon sitting in a nice coffee shop where they had a piano player, beautiful paintings on the wall, people coming in and out and nice cars pulling up. It inspired me, and I came up with three pages of bullet notes. I used adjectives that described the specific details of what each part of the vision looked like. Creating a vivid vision doesn’t need to be a whole book — just write a few bullet points of your dreams and goals. Describe in detail what the office looks like, how many people you employ, your revenue and perhaps even the awards you have received. The point is to create a visual for the rest of your employees so that they can envision the future in the same way you do. This way everyone is aligned and clear on where you are going as a company.

    Related: The Key to Finding Your Company’s Mission? It’s in Your ‘Also.’

    Making the dream a reality

    After my time at the coffee shop, I got on a call with our director of communications to discuss what I had come up with, and then she wrote it into our vivid vision story. The mission and values were created with the leadership team. The vision was something that I needed to develop myself, as the CEO. It’s written in the present tense, three years from now, as if it is already accomplished. We decided on a three-year vision as 5-10 years seemed too far in the future to be realistic. From here, it went to our creative team to make it come to life with visuals and images. Once it came to life visually, our engineering team then took it and turned it into a web page that is live on our website for anyone to see. That includes our employees, our clients, our bankers and our competitors. We’re radically transparent, and we’re very clear about where we’re going,

    Related: How to Engage Employees Through Your Company Vision Statement

    We just created our vivid vision last year, and there are already aspects of the vision that are coming to fruition. I think there’s a lot to be said for being intentional about direction and then just watching the manifestation happen. As everyone starts to understand where we’re going, it starts happening. As the CEO, I couldn’t possibly do it all on my own, but I can instill the vision into the team and with them to make that vision a reality.

    We have our vision for the next three years. We won’t change it or lower our expectations if we miss a target. We have set our sights high and will work towards achieving or surpassing those goals. We also review our vision once a quarter. We like to do this at our leadership retreat, where we get high-level reports on how things are going.

    If you haven’t put together a mission or vision for your company, perhaps it’s time to take action. If you think it’s only something for large corporations or only something they talk about in business school, I hope my experience can help change that perception. Having a clear vision and a specific mission helps define the purpose of the organization. It makes sure you are working towards the right goals and helps you direct resources to the appropriate place. When everyone is working towards the same goal, it increases productivity. It gives employees a sense of unity. When employees understand the vision, it motivates them to work hard to achieve the goals that have been laid out. It takes some time to put together, but the results are more than worth it. I don’t think I’ve ever worked in another company that has a better culture because of the way we initially structured our vision and mission.

    Related: 4 Essentials for Making Your Company Mission Thrive

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    Jason Hennessey

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