87 ⎸ [Leadership] Your brand is more than a logo

Join us for another mini episode on leadership with our Leadership coach, Meriah Ayer, as she takes you inside of the Leadership Blueprint to explore the importance of crafting & defining your mission, vision, and values, while offering actionable tips for establishing each one.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• how to create your mission, vision, and values
• why they’re so foundational to your firm (even if you don’t plan on building a team!!)
• what your firm’s most valuable virtue is

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Core Values to Run Your Business On - Listen for some mission statement examples!
• [Leadership] Thinker, Doer, or Dreamer - Listen for how you can enhance your dreaming!

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper

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Podcast Publishing Tools we use:

• Podcast Editing: Ian Gilliam: https://www.iangilliam.com/sabr-media-llc
• Descript (affiliate link)
• Buzzsprout (affiliate link)

Transcript

[00:00:29] Meriah: Welcome back to the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. I am your host today, Mariah Ayer, director of Operations and leadership coach inside the Ambitious Bookkeeper brand. Today is one of our leadership episodes and I am going to give you a backstage pass, a sneak peek inside the leadership blueprint. Today we're gonna cover.

Let me hear a drum roll. Da da da da . All right. Drum roll please. Are you ready? We're gonna cover mission, vision, and values today. Does this sound familiar? I really hope so, because I know we have talked about these before on our podcast, but there is a reason they get so much air time from us. They are truly a very important foundational piece to what you're building and inside my leadership blueprint, I have a warning label, even with a big stop sign that takes up an entire page asking you to please not proceed with the remainder of the blueprint without first completing your dreams, goals, mission, vision, and values. The reason being proceeding without first lane, those integral foundational pieces that are needed is gonna produce less effective results.

So I highly, highly encourage you to get these. taken care of. Yes, they're definitely not a task that you can just quickly check off your to-do list, something you can get done. Just licky split real quick, but it is vital and important to the foundation of your firm. 

Think of your mission, vision, values, your goals, and your dreams as being the perimeter pieces to your puzzle. they provide you a framework to connect all the other pieces to create the beautiful picture, which makes up the puzzle. I am sure that you can agree for those of you who enjoy puzzles, it's possible to put a puzzle together without first having the perimeter pieces framed, but it is more difficult and without the perimeter pieces, the puzzle is going to have an unfinished look, and you won't have the full satisfaction of having a completed puzzle.

If you haven't crafted your dreams, go back to the previous leadership episode and begin there. If you haven't designed your mission, vision, and values, let's start there. And if you already have crafted them, then celebrate that, and I believe you'll still gain some value from this episode. If in fact you are working on actively creating your mission, vision, and values, I really encourage you to listen to this podcast actively with a notebook in hand, ready to jot down notes and thoughts as they come to you. Also, I would suggest that you set some dedicated time if you're in the middle of trying to craft these, I would set some dedicated time on your calendar to spend actively working on creating these. You can have a notebook handy also as you go throughout your day, and you can even keep notes on your phone, but as things come to you or you see things throughout your day, , jot those down so that you don't forget them, because later when you go to work on these, you might think, oh, I had this great idea, but now I can't remember what it was.

So have a dedicated place that you keep these notes and things and thoughts as they come to you. And from here forward, when we talk about your firm's brand, I want you to think of not just your logo. , but your mission, vision, and values, because your brand is not just a logo or a tagline, it's how you show up at every single touchpoint from your internal workplace culture to external perceptions that impact how you attract new talent as well as clients.

Let's break these down. Mission. Is your purpose, why does your company exist? It's your heartbeat for showing up to work every day. It has action. It's compelling. It has a verb. It's easy to memorize, and it's short some questions to think about. What makes you different from other. You can consider four key elements when crafting your mission for internal and external.

You have an internal mission for your firm and an external mission, which will be spoken in the language of your clients. These four key elements are: 

Value, what is the value you bring to your clients and your employees? 

Inspiration, why should people want to work with you or for the company? 

Plausibility? Is it reasonable? Is your mission statement reasonable? 

Specificity, how does it tie into your firm and how you interact and how you work on a daily basis? 

Typically a mission statement includes a basic description of the company, its purpose and its goals. If you would like some examples of mission statements, you can go back and listen to one of the episodes and we'll try to link it in the show notes. You can go back and listen to one of the episodes Serena and I recorded and we gave you some examples of some mission statement you can also look up some companies or firms that you respect and see what their mission statements are, and that will help bring you inspiration when you decide on your mission. This will guide your decisions and all your new ideas that you've come up with. You will run them through this filter to see if they align with your mission. 

Now, tips to consider. Keep it simple, short, and concise. Your mission statement is not intended to be fancy or clever, but you want to just sum up the company's mission in just a few sentences. Think long term. The mission statement is an investment in your company's future, so keep it open enough to reflect your long-term goals. Don't make it too restrictive. Let yourself think of the big picture, and make it stand out. Ensure that it is relevant. Your mission statement should make readers feel like something is happening now and if you currently have contractors or employees, feel free to get their feedback. Because this is a tool designed with them in mind too. So get their opinion, ask how they would improve it, and what they like or dislike about it, and any suggestions that they have. This is a great way too, if you already have a team, to start embodying your mission into your company culture. 

Don't be afraid to change it. Things change, right? So if the mission statement no longer represents your company, and you're firm, it's time to rewrite it. A mission statement is a declaration of what makes the business important by design, it guides the actions of the employees and draws your clients in By creating direction and explaining what your firm intends to accomplish. 

 We're gonna move on to vision. Your vision is your strategy for where you are going. Creating and maintaining a vision for your firm is just as important for the success of your business as marketing and selling. I'm gonna say that again. Creating and maintaining a vision for your company is just as important for the success of your firm as marketing and.

So think of crafting your vision as part of your marketing plan. Your vision will motivate you as well as help you stay focused on your goals that you're working towards. This is going to involve dreaming. So if this is something you struggle with, go back to the previous leadership episode and listen to the steps that you can take to enhance this quality because it is one that you can enhance and.

The beauty of all this is there is no wrong answer. This is based on your dreams and the impact you wanna make, the legacy you wanna leave, and the difference you feel called to create. I think that is beautiful and super exciting because you're not gonna be working towards somebody else's dreams now. Somebody else's mission and vision, you are gonna be crafting and creating your.

Zig Ziegler says, if you wanna reach a goal, you must see the reaching in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal. 

So that's where the dreaming comes in. You've gotta dream about it. What's your vision? Where are you going? You wanna keep it simple, clear, and concise. Enhance it with passion and inspiration. Look, five to 10 years into the. , and this is gonna require you to dream big and focus on success. When you write it, you wanna write it in the present tense as though it is already happening, and you want all these to align. You want your vision to align with your mission as well as your goals. 

Let's move on to values. Core values are the beliefs you hold about What is important in your life. Think of them as your North Star. They help you navigate decisions and difficulties, and they will be a crucial pillar to your firm. Confirming your core values will help you define your boundaries, and your non-negotiables. That will help bring clarity to absolutely everything you do. Your values are gonna affect who you hire, who you fire, who your clients are, and the clients you let go. 

They will also help you prevent mistakes because staying aligned with your values in your decisions will help you avoid mistakes that you will regret later. They also keep you aligned and on track while simplifying your decisions. They're gonna be the filter that you run decisions through. Your values are probably something that's so intrinsically ingrained in you that you might not even give them much thought, but you already know what you value. You might find it easy to list out many values that are important to you, but for the sake of your firm's values, it is best to try to keep your list to about six. They will become part of your interactions with your clients as well as your team. 

And there are exercises that you can do to help you flesh out your values. Think of someone or a business you really admire, what values do they exhibit when you have interactions with them? So jot those things down. Then write the first thing that comes to mind when I say "prioritize...", "am driven by..." "strive to...". Also, you can think about what you want people to say about your firm. You can also look up lists of values and write down your top 20, then break the list down from there. 

Remember, you can always pivot and update your mission, vision, and values. The important part is that you create them and start implementing them. These will become living, breathing parts of your firm. They aren't something that you're gonna just work on tirelessly and then put them in a drawer never to look at them again. They're gonna become key aspects to how you run your firm every day. When you have big decisions to make, like taking on a client or hiring or firing someone or letting a client go, you will look at these to see how the decisions you're about to make align with your mission, vision, and values your MVV, if you will. Your most valuable virtue. 

You know how in sports you have your MVPs for your most valuable players? Well, your mission, vision and values are your most valuable virtue of your firm. They are the m MVP of your firm. It's corny, I know. But that's how important they are. 

Quick recap: 

Mission is your purpose. Why does your company exist? 

Vision, your strategy for where you're going. 

Values, those are the beliefs you hold about what is important in your life.

Most importantly, I would say is have fun. Carve out the time and play some of your favorite tunes to get you energized. You can sit in your favorite spot, take a mini vacation somewhere, even if you create the atmosphere in your home or office, go to the beach or a favorite place like that, but enjoy designing the puzzle of your dreams. Then decide on something that you will do to celebrate your accomplishment once you have them drafted, so that you can give yourself something to look forward to that will help motivate you. 

I hope you truly enjoy creating your mission, vision, and your values, because it is a fantastic thing that you get to decide, you get to determine, You completely get to sit in the driver's seat. All right. Until next time, continue to embrace ambition.