#12 Who You Are, Not What You Sell

[Music] Hey, I'm John Henry and this is Open for Business, a branded podcast from eBay and Game Light Creative about building a business from the ground up. [Music] This week, I'm listening in on a conversation. "Hey Andrew, maybe just walk me through so I can visualize it." It's a conversation between three co-founders of a new architecture firm called Space Factory. They're talking with their business coach, Andrew Linderman. "Almost, almost ten." "What did he tell you about the. " It's Andrew's job to help these three partners articulate the mission of their new business. They've agreed to let us record this conversation and it's essentially a brainstorm session. At the end of it, they'll hopefully be one step closer to figuring out what their new companies all about and how to articulate that out loud. The role of a mission statement is to articulate the past, the present, and the future. This is Andrew, the business coach. Who you are, what you're doing, where you're going. Today on the show, how to define your mission? Every company knows what they sell. What's harder to define sometimes is why. What motivates you beyond money? Some companies have their mission statement on day one, but many others start out just trying to get the business off the ground. And then, a few months or years in, they realize they need to put words to the why of their business. A great mission captures that reason behind why your business exists today. But it also leaves room for your company to aspire for more in the future. It can guide every single decision you make, whether you're a business of one or one thousand. A clear mission can help you with decisions big and small, from who to hire to what features to build, to even how you answer your phones. Your mission can be a crucial building block of your business. Here are a few examples of mission statements. Disney creates happiness by providing the best in entertainment for people of all ages everywhere. At REI, they inspire, educate, and outfit for a lifetime of adventure and stewardship. eBay strives to connect millions of buyers and sellers around the world, empower people, and create economic opportunity for all. For our purposes, a mission is "a statement that defines what an organization is and why it exists. It's reason for being." And that's what our architects are here to figure out. These guys want their firm to avoid the pitfalls they see in the field of architecture today. They're talking about that now. You'll hear two of their co-founders, David, who's on the phone, followed by Michael. These guys want their mission to capture two main ideas. They wanted to design buildings that account for the way people actually use them. And they want to be on that cutting edge of technology in their field. I think this new technological era we live in with all the smart technology and the Internet of Things is I think it's a new horizon and there's a new way in which architecture can start to think about space based on those technologies that maybe hasn't happened yet. So architecture used to be a far ahead of information technology and now we're finding it far behind. As the conversation starts to veer into these ideas, it starts to get a little unspecific and lofty. They start throwing around words like innovation and imagination. Words that sound great but don't really mean anything. It feels like they're using jargon. Also an ambition of mine. Andrew, the business coach, steps in with a warning. But I'm not sure though, is that you need to actually deliver on what you're saying. Because if it sounds like nonsense and then you don't deliver something that's consistent with that, then all of a sudden you're a bullsh*t artist. This is lesson number one. Your mission statement must be clear, specific and practical. It's easy to veer into vagueness and jargon. When crafting your mission, think about how you'll actually live it out every day. I think it's that. I think it's what David just said and also this. The brain storm goes on. These guys are bad at around lots of different ideas. And then roughly an hour so into it. Andrew's ready to throw out a potential mission statement. So we've heard sort of three different responses to what will be possible in these buildings. But if I can sum it up, it's this idea of something that's personalized, it's intuitive and it's harmonized. To me, it sounds like you're making buildings human again. Yeah, that sounds great. I love it. Wonderful. Making buildings human again. That was a first try at the mission and I have to say I was pretty skeptical by that response in the room. I didn't buy it. So I jumped in. Wait a second. I've done this far too many times and I've never ever and I refuse to believe that a mission is spewed out and then the founders are like, "Okay, great. That's it." There's like. Good, good. I like this. Right? This normally takes six, eight hours plus and frustration and far too many beers. Can you just give me the mission statement again? Yeah, these three were. Coming up with mission statements is a meaningful part of what I do with the companies I work with. It's never that easy. Disagreement is part of the process and I felt like everyone was being too polite. I wanted to really push them to get to a mission that felt real. If I could ask you what that one line is right now, what comes to mind? We can feel free to build on it and be wrong or whatever. One of the founders, David Malat, who was on the phone, jumped in. I have an architecture company. I have a technology company. Architecture plus technology. What is it we're really trying to do? We want to bring buildings to life. We bring buildings to life. Space factory, we bring buildings to life. Here in that line, made everyone in the studio suddenly sit up and pay attention. I like this about the human experience and bringing buildings to life. Right. I think that's something that people can really understand. Because what does that. So much about a mission statement, slash vision statement, the real effective ones like they make me feel something. So when you guys say we're bringing buildings to life, it gets me as a listener who's outside of this process thinking about all kinds of interesting things. It prompts a lot of questions like, "Huh, what does that mean?" But it captures that humanness that I feel like you guys are excited about. At the end of the show, we're going to check back in with the guys at Space Factory. After a week has gone by, we'll see if we bring buildings to life. Really does feel like their mission. Your answer will surprise you. Sometimes you hire a business consultant to help you define your mission. Sometimes you wait for a hurricane. This is a news report about Hurricane Wilma slamming into Cosmell back in October of 2005. Wilma also hit the floor to keys that year, but it just devastated the Yucatan Peninsula. It took lives and destroyed people's homes and businesses. It did roughly $30 billion of damage. One of the businesses destroyed by Wilma belonged to Tanya Moss. Tanya is a jewelry designer based in Mexico. At the time Wilma hit, Tanya had been in business for a decade. She had four brick and mortar stores in Cosmell selling jewelry mostly to tourists. Those stores made up three forts of her profits. In the course of one day, that was all destroyed. The feeling that I had then was that I had a black cloud on top of my head. It was pretty scary. By then, my husband was already my partner. We didn't have any second income coming. This was what we would eat from. It was a really tough time. Tanya rebuilt her stores in Cosmell after the hurricane. But the tourism industry there just wasn't rebounding. We went on believing we could make it happen again and business never came back. And then things went from bad to worse. Tanya's employees were used to working on commission, which meant they weren't making any money. They started to feel really desperate because people weren't stopping so much. They took it upon themselves to feel that whole with stealing. Tanya's employees began stealing from her. This was her breaking point. The hurricane was horrible, obviously, but it wasn't personal. This was a betrayal by people she trusted. because you end up spending so much time with these people that are working with you and you kind of give them your heart, your energy, your trust, and all of a sudden everything goes down the drain. This was rock bottom for Tanya. She thought of her employees as family. That betrayal made her question everything about how she was running her business. She realized that she needed a reason to keep going. The money was key but it wasn't enough anymore. She needed something that would motivate not just her but her employees. She realized she needed a mission. And to find one, Tanya did some soul searching. One day, she looked down at a piece of jewelry in her shop. It was a bracelet with the very first design she'd ever created. The first pieces that I made was a butterfly. Whenever I did butterflies, they would sell. And if I had something that wasn't selling, I would just put a butterfly on it and it would sell. Looking at that design, Tanya remembered that she actually used to be really scared of butterflies as a girl. She used to freeze when one fluttered by the idea that something that used to frighten her was now empowering that spoke to her. She used it as the inspiration for her mission. I'm always looking to be a better version of myself. So it's a way of saying this. This is what I want to give out to the world. Tanya's mission for her company is simple. Be the best version of yourself. It may seem almost like a personal motto, but for Tanya, her business is an extension of herself. This mission is what drives her both in real life and business. This is lesson number two. The most authentic mission usually comes from within. Ask yourself why your business exists. The answer will motivate you and your employees, especially during the tough times. Today, Tanya has 16 stores across Mexico City. She also sells her designs on eBay and jewelry stores all over Mexico. Having a mission has been a unifying theme for Tanya. She now employs roughly 100 people who she says believe in her company as much as she does. That's because her mission has changed her whole approach to hiring, starting with the interview. Pretend I'm a new hire and you are interviewing me for a job at Tanya Moss, jewelry. What would you say to me to help get your mission across? The first thing I would try to get is to know you as a person, to understand how you feel about the values are important to me. Such as family, such as stability and as how you see your career. I try to get a feeling of your personality. Today, Tanya feels confident about the future. That black cloud is gone. You go into the office and it feels light in the heart. It just feels comfortable. If you really are willing to give your heart and the best part of yourself, you're going to be really happy there. And you're going to understand that it's taking its time because a brand doesn't get built from one day to the other. But you're being part of it. Coming up. So, you have a mission. Now what? That's after the break. Welcome back to Open for Business. We're talking about how to define your mission. For this next story, we're traveling from Mexico City to Boston to one of the offices of a company called Moo. They've been in business for about a decade, making personalized business cards and stationary. Moo has a mission. It's their purpose as a company. It's great design for everyone. They also have a set of core values meant to guide and motivate their hundreds of employees. So, we have an acronym. It's called Make It. This is Stephanie Shore, Chief Marketing Officer at Moo, describing those values. And each of the letters stands for something special, obviously. So, M is Make It Simpler. A is always deliver delight. K is Keep It Human. E is every detail counts. I is my favorite. Imagine it better. And T is Tackle It Together. So, that's Make It. At Moo and many companies, these values are intertwined with the mission. Putting the values into action is a crucial step towards realizing that broader mission. That's why at Moo, they want their employees to internalize these values. And that's been a challenge because the company's been growing so fast. Adding more than 300 employees in the past four years. Stephanie says that as Moo began to scale, some employees didn't even know that there was a mission. Much less this core set of values. It all felt further and further removed from their day to day. It's always been a challenge to really get those values off a postcard. So, that, to me, was interesting just coming into Moo and saying, "Okay, this is a company that feels like it really lives in breeds its culture." But have we actually gotten the values off the poster? That was Stephanie's job. To get the values off the poster and into everyday life for Moo's employees. So, last year, she got all the employees together. Hundreds of people over a multi-day event dedicated to figuring out why they weren't connecting with the values and the mission. It was really about getting people to look beyond literal interpretations of everything. They were literally sitting there with the values saying, "Okay, have I made something simpler? Have I tackled it together?" You know, you might find yourself working on a big project on your own for a week. But then, if you feel like, "Okay, I didn't tackled it together with someone else, I failed at this value." So, this is about, "Do you use these values, most of these values on a regular basis? Do you see them reflected in your work? Do you see them reflected in the amazing things that you've done? Have you been able to learn from them?" Stephanie encouraged Moo's employees to think about the company's values as a guiding light. Something they can interpret as they see fit. The important thing is that they feel a personal connection to the words. When people started to personalize the values, the transfer of those values went from something that the exact team owned to something that then the employees felt like they owned. At Moo's Boston office, there's a giant wall decorated with that maket acronym. It's a physical reminder of what they're all about. And according to Stephanie, Moo's employees are way more connected to those words now. But she knows that as a company continues to grow, getting new employees to feel that same connection requires an ongoing commitment. It has to stay for an mind for us, or a year or two down the road will find ourselves with potentially the same problem. So, I think that's the biggest challenge. Once you decide as an organization, you're going to commit to this. It's not a 12-month thing or a 36-month thing. It's your signing up for it. This brings us to our third lesson. Once you've defined your mission, you need to put it into practice. It's up to you to help your employees understand how those words translate to action in their daily lives. [BEEP] Hello? Hey there, it's John. How are you? Hey John, good to hear from you. Hey John. Back to our architects from the top of the show. It's been about a week since we got our space factory founders, David M, David R, and Michael into the studio to define their mission. At the end of the session, they came up with this. Space Factory. I wanted to check in with them to see how it's feeling. We've been, we have been using it, but somehow it doesn't quite roll off. Even though we like the line, we believe it. Right. It looks better as a slogan under our logo, then it feels actually speaking it out. God, why is that? It's a slogan, it's not a mission statement. My first stab would be just to elaborate on the how. So it's like to say we use smart technology and the Internet of things to bring buildings to life. Like to me, that just gives it a little more meat that would make it more mission statement-like, I guess. Just a little more detail, maybe. I'm digging that. It would be extremely encouraged by what we started. But it's just not over. And this brings us to our final lesson. When defining your mission, don't settle. This process can take time, especially when you're just starting out. Your mission has to feel right. Don't settle for one before it does. To recap today's lessons on how to define your mission, lesson number one, your mission statement must be clear, specific and practical. Think about how you'll actually live it out every day. Avoid jargon and vagueness. Lesson number two, the most authentic mission usually comes from within. Ask yourself why your business exists because the answer will motivate you and your employees, especially during the tough times. Lesson number three, once you've defined your mission, you need to put it into practice. It's up to you to help your employees understand what those words really mean and why they're important. And our final lesson, don't settle on a mission that doesn't feel right. The process can take time, but it's worth it, to discover a mission that feels true to the past, present and future of your business. [Music] That's it for this week's show on how to define your mission. To learn more, check out eBay.com/OpenForBusiness. OpenForBusiness is a co-production of eBay and Gimli Creative. We were produced this week by Julia Botero, Francis Harlow, RMW, Nicole Wong, Caitlin Bocawke, and Abby Rizika, with Creative Direction from Nazineen, Rafa and Johnny. We were mixed this week by Zach Schmidt, our theme song is by Volvedek. Thanks so much to Natalia Sforgenski of Within People. Next week on Open For Business, we take the show on the road. From eBay and Gimli Creative, welcome to a live taping of Open For Business. That's coming up next week on Open For Business. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Open For Business on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. And leave us a review and it really helps people find the show. I'm John Henry. Thanks for listening.