Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Building a Purpose-Driven Business | Entrepreneurship | YAPSnacks

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Since the 1970s, we have viewed business as a way to make money, not make a difference. However, the way we view the role of business is changing. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs believe that purpose is the primary function of business, not profits. If your career and your organization exist solely to make money, you will likely lose motivation to keep going after you’ve met all your major milestones.  When we infuse purpose into every level of our businesses (and lives), we are building more fulfilling careers and inadvertently becoming more profitable. By aligning your organization with a mission, you attract customers who want to uplift that mission.  Plus, the profits generated by those customers will satisfy your stakeholders, so it’s a win-win!  On today’s YAP Snack, I want to explore how to build a purpose-driven business by sharing wisdom from entrepreneurs who have successfully aligned their companies with a powerful mission. Tune in to hear what John Mackey, Derrick Kinney, and Darius Mirshahzadeh have to say about purpose, conscious capitalism, core values, and using your money to fuel your purpose.  Topics include: -What is conscious capitalism?  -The Good Money Revolution  -The importance of purpose in business  -Using core values to create accountability  -Love in entrepreneurship -And other topics… Sponsored by -  Indeed - Visit Indeed.com/YAP to start hiring now. Bambee - Visit bambee.com/profiting The Jordan Harbinger Show - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Join Hala's LinkedIn Masterclass - yapmedia.io/course 

You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halitaha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of ex-FBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and best-selling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, how to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the sub-examination.

button because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. Hey everyone, you're listening to Yap Snacks, a series of bite-sized content hosted by me, halla Taha. Today we're going to be talking about how to build a purpose-driven business. Over the past year, we've talked to a lot of guests on Yap about conscious leadership and creating a purpose-driven organization. That's because business leaders are challenging old ideas about the function of a business in society. For a long time, we viewed businesses as nothing more than money-making machines. In fact, in the 1970s, the notorious economist and free market advocate Milton Friedman argued that the sole

purpose of a business is to generate profits for shareholders. Well, fast forward to 2022 and entrepreneurs, employees, and customers alike are changing their minds. People now argue that purpose is the primary function of business, not profits. In fact, Zeno conducted a study in 2020 that measured the importance of purpose and business. It evaluated over 75 brands and found that global consumers are four to six times more likely to trust by champion and protect companies with a strong purpose over those with a weaker one, and not to mention the positive impact that a company purpose can have on employee recruitment and retention. Conscious business or purpose-driven businesses is more

relevant than ever and has been a hot topic on Yap all throughout the past year. So today we're diving into how to build a purpose-driven business by sharing advice from John Mackie, Derek Kinney, Ryan Blair, and Darius Marshaasaday. We're going to be discussing conscious capitalism, leading with purpose, the qualities of a conscious leader, choosing the right core values for your company, and so much more. While there's a lot of great content on the value of being a purpose-driven organization, there's also a lot of fluff out there. Many entrepreneurs are aware of the benefits of having a company-wide mission, but they don't know how to actually put that knowledge into practice. This episode is going to be featuring actionable advice from four successful purpose-driven entrepreneurs that you can start using in your business right away.

And if you're not an entrepreneur, I still advise you to keep on listening to this episode because I believe that everyone can benefit from entrepreneurial thinking. Let's kick it off with some wisdom from John Mackie, who was featured on Yapbeck in episode number 166. John is the founder of Whole Foods and the author of Conscious Capitalism. John's leadership philosophy is rooted in purpose, charity, and using businesses to uplift communities. And Whole Foods is a prime example of this. Their mission is to nourish people and the planet. To execute this mission, John has founded three different charities through Whole Foods, and these organizations use Whole Foods profits to fund their initiatives.

For example, providing struggling families with microcredit loans so that they can buy their first house. Let's listen to what John Mackey has to say about the pillars of conscious capitalism and how he practices them at Whole Foods. And let's also find out what the enemies of capitalism are getting wrong about the potential of business. So let's transition to the main topic of today's episode, Conscious Leadership. I thought a great way to start this off was for you to explain the philosophy of conscious capitalism,

which from my understanding, that's where the idea of conscious leadership really stems from. So you wrote a bestselling book called Conscious Capitalism. Can you unpack that idea for us? Sure, I can. The first thing is conscious capitalism is basically it's capitalism. I'm going to state that very clearly. It's not some kind of socialism or some type of utopianism. It's based on capitalism.

And it just recognizes that some things that are taken for granted or not ordinarily seen in business, that number one, the four pillars of conscious capitalism are the first pillar is that every business has a potential to have a higher purpose. It's like if you go to a party sometime and ask people, what do you think the purpose of business is? And people will look at you kind of odd with oddly. It's like, what do you mean what's the purpose of business? Like everybody knows the purpose of business to make money. It's like, that's an odd answer. If you ask what the purpose of a doctor is, they're very well paid.

The purpose of a doctor is not to make money. The purpose of a doctor is to help heal people. If you ask what the purpose of a teacher is, it's to educate. The purpose of an architect designs buildings, engineers, construct things. Every one of the professions refers back to some type of value creation that they are doing for other people. and business put in this very narrow box, which is not flattering at all, which is it's just about the money. That's all business people care about is profits and money. And it's like, gee, really not.

Business is actually the greatest value creator in the world. Business creates far more value for other people than all the nonprofits and all the governments combined by exponentially more. And yet it doesn't get credit for it because the enemies of capital, have put this label on it, it's just about profit. It's greed and selfishness and exploitation. So the first thing about conscious capitalism is to say, you have this potential for a higher purpose. And every business has a higher purpose, whether they're conscious of it or not. And that higher purpose comes into their value creation that they're doing for other people. So like Whole Foods is higher purpose is to nourish people on the planet.

Amazon's higher purpose is to be the Earth's most customer-centric business. Google's higher purpose is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. All the companies that you most admire have an articulated higher purpose, but they're generally not given credit for it, and they're generally continued to be criticized. So purpose was first, and the first chapter of conscious leadership, I might add, is put purpose first, and we'll get back to that. Second pillar of conscious capitalism, though, is all stakeholders matter. and by stakeholders.

Now, this is a tricky word because it's been hijacked by people who hate capitalism, and they're trying to use it as a weapon. It's been weaponized. It just means that the business has stakeholders that it creates value for. It has customers.

It creates value for customers. It creates value for employees. It creates value for suppliers. It creates value for investors. And it creates value for the communities that it's part of. And once you see this clearly, and then you can begin to see

that there's an inter-deprients, between these stakeholders. For example, at Whole Foods Market or retail business, so management's jobs to first hire really good team members and make sure they're well trained. And then once they're well trained, their job is to help them be happy because if the team members are happy in their jobs, they're going to naturally create more happiness for the, they're going to serve the customers better and therefore help them to be happy. And if the customers are happy, the business flourishes. And that's really good for the investors. So, and you can't really do any of this without having creating value for suppliers because they're the ones that produce everything that we're

selling in our stores. So they're a very important stakeholder. And so it's like conscious capitalism says you, all the, all the major stakeholders matter, manage the business in a conscious way, so all the stakeholders are benefiting. They're all flourishing together. And you have this upward spiral, higher, and synergies begin to happen. It doesn't mean everybody has equal ownership of the business. No, the business is owned by the investors. Investors, they want returns on their capital investment, but maybe a good way to put it to show you how profits been misunderstood is the founder of stakeholder theory is Dr. Ed Freeman, who I consider a good personal friend. He's had a massive impact on me over the years. And Ed says that, you know,

it's like my body has to produce red blood cells or I'll die, right? It doesn't follow the purpose of my life is to produce red blood cells. Similarly, business must make profits or it will fail. It will die. That's a simple fact. If it doesn't have profits, it's not going to be able to mean its payroll. It's not going to build to buy a new inventory. It's not going to pay the rent, pay the taxes. It's going to fail. So profits are essential for a business to exist. But it doesn't follow just because business must produce profits, that that's why it exists. No, that may be how the shareholders and investors see it, but that's not what's interior to the business. What's interior to the business is its higher purpose, whatever it is, whatever its major value creation primarily for customers

is all about. That's where the higher purpose leans. And every business should articulate that very clearly. If we want to defend business and capitalism, it starts with purpose. And then it starts with realizing all the stakeholders matter. That leads us to the third pillar, which is conscious leadership. I know we'll talk a little bit more about that, so I'll just skip on now to conscious culture. Conscious culture is very simple. Look, we're going to spend a lot, a high percentage of our lifetime at work. We should create cultures that really help people to flourish, help people to learn and grow, that are fun, that people are better off for being part of that culture that when people leave Whole Foods, we want them to be, well, hopefully many of our people

work with this for, you know, they just found their tribe and they never leave. But others, we want them to look back and say, you know, one of the best learning experiences I ever had was Whole Foods. That was a great company to work for. And I think Whole Foods does have a great culture. We were named one of the 100 best companies to work for for 20 consecutive years leading up to the merger with Amazon when we were no longer an independent company, so we really weren't eligible any longer. So that's kind of what conscious capitalism is about. It's purpose, stakeholders, leadership, and culture. Those are the four pillars that we built it around. Amazing. And I really, obviously, we're going to get into leadership and dig really deep on that.

We're also going to touch a lot about culture, which are super interesting facets of everything that you talk about. So talk to us about why is it important for leaders to align to a higher purpose? And what higher purpose do you have at Whole Foods? Well, the higher purpose of Whole Foods is to nourish people on the planet. And there's a lot, if you unpack that, nourish is a very powerful word because you can nourish people with food, but you can also nourish them with love. You can nourish with them with attention and appreciations, and there's lots of ways to nourish. The people, that refers to all the stakeholders.

All the stakeholders ultimately are people, right? And then the planet, that means that's an environmental call, but it's also thinking about the larger planetary impacts on animals, on people that live in other countries. Whole Foods, you know, we purchase from, God, I don't know, 80 different countries. So we have a connection to them and how we do business in those countries makes a difference. So imagine for a minute that you think your purpose is to maximize profits. Okay, so let's say you're doing your orientation for your employees. Now you've got a new crop of employees, new crop of team members at Whole Foods. And it's like, hey, so glad you decided to come work for Whole Foods.

I want to know why you're here. Your purpose is to maximize profits and get our stock price up as high as possible. Anybody have a problem with that? Is that okay? That's what we're going to be doing. So whatever it takes, whatever it takes. How inspiring is that going to be to people? I think they're going on it.

It's like, oh, boy, I, I, I love working for Whole Foods. They're just trying to make as much money as possible. I wish you think is going to inspire people more, that we're trying to nourish people on the planet. We're literally trying to sell the healthiest food in the world. And you're helping to do that. You're helping to sell food from a higher degree of animal welfare.

You're helping. We have our Source for Good program. When you're working for Whole Foods, you're working for a company that really does care about these things, and you're helping us to do more good in the world. that's far more magnetic. It happens to be true. So I'm not saying that you should say these things that they're not true, because they'll

know if you're authentic or not. But if it's authentic and you mean those things and you walk the talk and you live it, well, that inspires people. People are going to work harder and do a better job. They're going to be more creative because they align with the mission and purpose. I've had many debates on this purpose question with people that think purpose, business, maximize money. And there are almost never people that are entrepreneurs running a business.

They're intellectuals or they're economists or whatever. And I would say, you know, I wish I could compete against you because there's nothing easier than competing against a business that only cares about making money. And you will lose in the long run. That's the paradox of it. And if you want to maximize long-term profits, don't aim for it. And I use a metaphor to prove my point, or at least to give evidence for it. If you believe the purpose of life is to be happy, you've made a huge categorical mistake.

If you pursue happiness as your goal in life, I almost guarantee you you will not find it. Because what happens when you pursue your own personal happiness is you're thinking about yourself primarily, and you're kind of in a narcissistic world. And that does not lead to happiness. What leads to happiness is love and caring about other people. and having a purpose that makes a difference in the world, that you're creating value for other people. Purpose and love, they lead to happiness.

So when you make happiness the primary goal, you've made a mistake, and you will not find it. But if you're just striving to fulfill a higher purpose and you're just trying to be loving and helping other people, then you will find happiness. It comes indirectly. It ensues when you don't directly pursue it. Well, that's the same way with profits.

Ultimately, your profits will come about better as a result of fulfilling a higher purpose because you're going to then create the value for customers and that will lead to more profits. If you aim and make profits your primary goal, you will suboptimized in the long term. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees.

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Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. Your purpose should be infused in every aspect of not only your business itself, but you your business's impact on everyone and everything it touches. For John, that means cutting his annual salary down to $1 and giving that money back to the communities that need it the most. While you don't need to go through these extreme lengths to prove that you care about your company's mission, make sure that you are prioritizing it. As an entrepreneur, it's your job to find out where you can enrich the lives of others within your business. Look at where your

business can truly make an impact on other people, both through your product itself and through what you do with your success and focus your efforts there. Some people call the concept of conscious business or purpose-driven business a generosity purpose. And this is a theme that I've been hearing all year at Yap. The person who coined the phrase generosity purpose is former Yap guest Derek Kinney. Derek is a trusted business growth educator who released his first book, Good Money Revolution earlier this year, and it was a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller. I love his book. I highly recommend it. And Good Money Revolution outlines how to make more money

and how to add meaning to the money that you make. Derek believes in putting purpose over profits. I pulled out some key excerpts from our interview to share with you today about identifying your generosity purpose and using your money to serve the greater good. Listen to what Derek has to say about turning your hard-earned money into that good money. This is the perfect segue to chapter five of your book.

So that's called generosity makes you wealth. And in it, you told the secret to making more money, and that's actually giving it away. And you call this the generosity purpose. For me, this was the biggest takeaway from the book and really hit hard for me because my late father really embodied this. He was just such a generous man. And I noticed from a young age, and he would tell me,

you know, if you give your money away, you're going to get it back tenfold. So I love this concept. And I would love to hear some examples from you in terms of sharing a story of someone who became wealthy because they actually gave their money away. Yeah. So first of all, what you just shared with me really hit me hard because when you see people who model it and live it and you see the impact in people's lives, I mean, that is so powerful, Hall of that. That's just such a legacy that you were able to see. And I really admire that. Let me tell you about a gentleman named Dave. Dave was a longtime client of mine. And you know those relationships you've got where you can just tell something's bothering somebody before you didn't have to ask them any questions?

Dave was one of those guys where he sat down in the office and you could tell the weight of the world was on his shoulders. We had some small talk and I said, Dave, look, let's just cut to the chase. What's bothering you? It's obvious there's something bothering you right now. He said, you know, Derek, you know, I was in here about a year ago talking with Hugh, but I've lost my interest in running my business. He had a small manufacturing company, had his kids as part of the business, but he just said, Derek, I no longer have joy going to the office anymore, just not fun anymore. And for some reason, the words just shot out of my mouth. And I said, Dave, is there a cause that you care deeply about?

Well, I could tell the question kind of stunned him. His eyes got his biggest saucers. And he said, you know, a couple years ago, my wife and family and I went overseas on a trip. And this particular village we went to had a void that needed to be filled. And that was they needed a schoolhouse built to properly educate all the young people. There was really holding back this entire village economically. And he remembered exchanging a glance with this wife about, you know, when we get back to the states, we need to do something about that problem.

Well, they got back, things got busy and so forth. They got back into their business, forgot about it. But my conversation brought it all back. And I said, Dave, what if you did this? what if over the next six months you set a goal a sales goal and you took half of that increase and you used it to fund the school? Well, he was pretty surprised by that question and we exchanged some more small talk and he left. So he comes back in three months later. He looks younger.

He looks reinvigorated. He looks all in. And he says to me, Derek, I need to be honest with you. I was a bit skeptical when you told me to go increase my sales and give half. half to that school. But I got to tell you, we've already funded half of that school. Now, I've got to tell you, while I hear we're two grown men, I'm not an overly emotional guy, but you feel it when you're seeing potential be extracted from somebody right in front of you. And what he did was he really had a cause about helping clean up the oceans and helping make

the world better. And so he went back and he told his very best customers that going forward, and our generosity purpose is that we want to take a portion of our profits and help make the world better. And here's how you get to play a part in that. So keep in mind, these customers could work with anybody. But they chose to work with him because not just the great service he provided, but now they were part of something bigger. And what it did is it grew his business. It was almost a five-fold increase over the next five years,

all because he tied in a passion he believed in and helped. helped service clients. So now imagine he's loving going to the office because he loves his customers. They're actually paying more to provide and get a premium level service. And he's helping impact the world every single day. So no longer is giving just about if I give, I lose and someone else wins. It's instead I use giving as a motivation to make more money so I can give more money, but I'm still making more money. So it's a beautiful concept that we've sort of flipped up. side down, thus the revolution. So, so interesting. I was going to say my biggest takeaway from what you're saying, you said it at the end, was giving away your money and tying your profits to a

purpose, so to speak, as you say it can motivate you. It motivates you to feel like you're doing something beyond just making money. And then like you said, it actually helps the bottom line, because your customers also feel like they're getting more purpose out of their spending their money and want to spend more money with you. So it's a beautiful cycle. It is a beautiful cycle, and even research supports this in a couple of ways. First of all, you know, you think about companies like Bomba socks or Tom's shoes. It's kind of the buy one, get one type of model. And one thing we know about the millennial audience, which I love how millennials think about money

because they're so purpose driven, they're actually willing to spend more money when there is a cause associated with a product or service they believe. Now, let me be clear on this. What I'm not saying is use giving a generosity to cover up for a really bad product. Okay. You need to provide great value and you need to really overwhelm people with such solving of their problems that they want to work with you. The fact that they're part of something bigger, a cause you believe in, or you might even

pull your customers and say, what would be a cause that you care deeply about? The fact that they get enrolled in your story, something bigger, really can help drive businesses and I'm convinced to that too it helps decommoditize yourself so many people can work with any real estate agents CPA attorney salesperson and there's really no differentiator I mean let's be honest about it but if you can provide great value you're a great negotiator you provide great money advice and you're tying in here's how we're going to make our local community better you will be the advisor of choice, the relator of choice, the CPA of choice, the business owner of choice in your local area because people crave wanting to be part of something bigger than themselves.

That's such a great point. I never thought about that. Use it as a differentiator and decommoditize yourself. That's brilliant. I love that. Okay. So this is the perfect segue to your seven step good money framework. We don't have time to discuss all seven steps, but let's get to the first framework, and that's to discover your generosity purpose. We just gave some great overview in terms of what it is. Now I'm wondering, how do we actually go about finding our generosity purpose? Yeah, so so many people start off with their financial planning, with their advisor, or by themselves, and they say, when do I want to retire? How much debt do I want to pay off? What goals do I have? Where do I want my kids to go to college? And those are all really admirable goals.

But what I find is when push comes to shove, or God forbid, that if one global event lead you to lose your job, suddenly you're back to zero again. And what I find is people stay motivated when there's a cause they care about. You know, for example, you read all these stories about if you had a sick son or daughter and you had to go work a couple jobs to pay for their care, you would find a way to do it. I mean, that's just how we're wired as humans is we want to take care of the people we care for love and that's why I wanted to flip this script of you know use your generosity purpose find that cause that injustice the wrong you want to write and let that be something you give maybe one percent

to maybe you five dollars to ten dollars a month 25 a month the dollar amount doesn't matter it's about what impact you can have with that money and especially people listening right now that may feel like there's more month left than there is money this is your one chance to have control of your money, even if it's $20, you could give that $20 to the homeless shelter or to the food pantry, help stop sex trafficking, whatever the issue is for you, clean water. And now in a moment, you have control over that and you've impacted at least one person's life. It's a powerful emotion, but it can drive people to become really, really wealthy. Yeah. And like you said, it makes you happier, right? Because you're giving your money away and it actually makes you happier than

spending it on yourself. You're getting more motivated because you've tied your cash to a cause, your profits to a purpose, your money to a movement, right? So now you're more motivated to get things done. And your customers are more bought into you because they feel that they're doing good as well. And everybody wants to do good. It makes you feel good. That's right. You know, even it's interesting, thinking back to when I started my financial planning practice 25 years ago, I didn't realize what was happening, but I wanted to be a mentor to people in high school. school that I didn't get to have. And so I went back to my alma mater and I began to recognize a student of the month and a teacher of the month. I gave them like a $25 gift card and the teacher

was a $50 gift card. It was nothing. But to them it was like winning the lottery. And what happened was, is I began to put that picture in the newspaper, let people know about it. Calls began to come in. People began to want to work with me not because I could provide them great financial advice, but because they wanted to be part of something bigger. And it taught me early on. And it taught me early on. When you can align with the customers who need your service and love the cause you believe in, you will grow your business in ways that you never thought possible. Using your money for something bigger than yourself or even your business is crucial in today's economy. Your customers want to give their money to a mission, not just a business.

But how do you create a company culture that surrounds your mission? Darius Mershazadei believes the answer lies in your company's core values. Darius is a high-growth CEO, serial entrepreneur, and culture-building mad scientist who was ranked ninth on Glassdoors list of top CEOs of small and medium companies in the U.S. He's also the author of the bestselling book, The Core Value Equation, and the host of YAPMedia Network's The Greatness Machine podcast. Darius was featured in episode number 177 of YAP, where we talked about building a core value-driven organization. His use of core values helped to evaluate your company's mission,

by making sure everyone working for you and with you understands what your company stands for and how you execute that mission. Here how Darius started working with core values and why he believes they are so fundamental to your business's success. How did you first get introduced to core values? And what did they mean? Yeah, so in 06, when I was running my first company, I was getting my teeth kicked in. I had about 40, 50 employees. I was really young. And back then, by the way, if you're an entrepreneur, like there was way less resources for entrepreneurs. Way, way, way less. Like, now, like, everyone's an entrepreneur.

You know what do you do? I'm an entrepreneur. I'm like, no, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. So back then it was like nobody was an entrepreneur. There was no resources, especially a young entrepreneur. There was very minimal resources. I mean, this is like pre-Twitter and like Facebook was barely being used at this point. This is like MySpace times.

So just to put it into context. And so I found this. program called Burthing a Giants at MIT, which was put on by a guy named Vern Harnish, who has this business called Scaling Up. And I got it in the program and I was introduced to core values. And I don't know what it was, you know, maybe going back to this thing with my dad, but like, how do you live and engage life? Values is a big part of that. And it just resonated with me. And year three at graduation, we did this exercise where these two founders who had this really successful company in Vancouver called Nurse Next Door, they said, please stand up.

up if your company has core values. So with graduation night of birthing and giants at MIT, and everyone stands up. And they say, please stay standing if you know your company core values and come saying them off the top of your head. Everyone sits down. I'm sorry, excuse me, half the room sits down. Then they say, please stay standing if your employees know your core values. Half the room sits down. They say, please stay standing if your customers know your core values. Everyone sits down. And I'm looking at this room of 60 entrepreneurs. I mean, some of them like, Kendra Scott graduated from this program. I don't know if you know she is, but she's a famous entrepreneur. So there's a lot of like the guys that did like one-hander flowers and rack space. I mean, there's tons of

amazing entrepreneurs that go through this program. And they're all sitting down. And I'm like, well, we're all the CEOs. Like, what do you mean we're all sitting down? Like, that doesn't make any sense. And that was the pivotal moment for me. I realized that like, they say you have to have mission, vision, vision values for your business, but nobody really knows how to do that. And I spent the next few years kind of obsessing. And what I realized was that building a core value or core purpose driven organization, most people just think it's like a box. you check, like it's when you get your, like a thing you do through your MBA program. And my take is, yes, you have to figure out what's meaningful for you and you've got to check that box, but you have

to design it to be viral and sticking in your organization. During those five years of me getting my ass kicked in business, I spent a lot of time experimenting. And I figured out, how do you design values and purpose and mission? You have to design it so people can actually use it. And the book is really a step-by-step manual on how do you build a core value-driven organization? Because my belief is, is that core values of the opportunity to be the language of accountability for your organization. And when it does that,

it starts to attract people of like mind and like belief. And again, values are the fundamental beliefs of an organization, the personality, the organization. So if I could get a bunch of people to show up who believe what I believe, who talk the way I talk about these beliefs, I have a much higher likeness of them doing things

like working the way I work and caring the way I care, all these soft skills that are so meaningful to execute properly, but people don't know how to do, it. So the book is really a step-by-step process and how I learn to do it and how I teach people to do it. I find it super, super interesting. So for me, when I had a company of 10 people, it was super easy to run. You know everybody. You get to hand train them. But now we're a company of 60 employees at

Yap Media and we need things like this, designing a mission, designing core values because I don't even know everybody who works at my company anymore. And that's why you need like that structure. So I find this super valuable. So one of the quotes in your book that you say is, that companies do not have core values. People have core values. Can you explain what you mean by that? So core values have the opportunity, again, to become the personality or the language of accountability for the organization. It's not like it's like this thing, like until it becomes a thing, it's not a thing, right? So what ends up happening is a company like Yap Media, you have 60 people and they all have their own individual values. And if you don't define what Yap Media stands for and then hold people

accountable to it and create a system where that can scale, what ends up happening is you end up getting kind of this like hodgepodge of values. And their values will show up in their actions consistently. And so once we pay homage to the fact that, hey, look, if the company doesn't have them, you're going to get what's there just by default because individuals have their own values. My belief is, is like, they still have them, even if you define what you are and screen for them and make them come to life. But what they do instead is they attach their values to your values. So in core value equation, we say core values, you need to discover what's authentic to you, discovering your values. You need to design them to be viral and sticky. Then you need to roll them out

so you need to teach people what they are and doctrinate them into them. And then you need to implement them ongoing. And then you need to measure for efficacy and do that consistently. And so the process, the book really teaches how do you do that? When I get that individual that shows up that has their individual values, that they figure out how do they leverage their individual values and we do that as part of the rollout? How do you leverage your individual values to make the company values become more alive and well. And the answer is this. It has to happen organically. But you have to have a process to create that organic interaction, which is essentially what I figured out, is you got to make it easy. You got to make it organic. It's got, it takes time. It's like, again, like you don't

learn a language overnight. So it takes time. But you have to create those opportunities. And it has to be easy. And so really the book Core Value equation walks you through how do you do that step by step. Yeah. I like that you kind of give everything a catchy, secondary name so that it's super memorable. And I think this is super important for organizations because when it comes to building a community, having a common language and things that you guys only know about is really important for bonding. So tell us about why you say that you need that like sticky version of the core value as well. Again, if you believe that core values the language of accountability, then the language matters. Words matter. Like literally like empires have grown and fallen because of

words. I'm reading a book with my son and we're reading actually about the, it's about the history of the world, and we're on the chapter about Islam right now. And you realize that Muhammad basically built an entire empire, the Islamic empire, off of just words. Like, he went on and talked about Allah, right? And that created this entire empire that got all the different tribes to come together. So words are so powerful. That's just one example. There's been empires built on words. Like, you look at the United States of America built on the words of our founding fathers, right? So why would you not pick viral sticky language that stands for what you stand for? Or you could be like everyone else and pick boring words like integrity.

It's like, well, yeah, everyone has integrity in their core values or driven or, you know, excellence. It's like, well, what's the difference between Yap's excellence and the guy down the street? And I'm like, how about to say it a different way? It makes it where it sticks in people's minds. There's a reason people do it in branding and there's a reason that you should do in core values, which is like, if it's going to be language of accountability, let's give them some language to work with. And I love viral sticky language. Okay. So here is some advice that I'd love you to give.

So let's say you're a company like mine. My company like blew up so fast. What advice would you give in terms of the executives at my organization or any new startup to begin to develop their core values? Like what are the first things that we should do to kind of brainstorm and hit the drawing board for our core values? Well, I go step by step through my book. So you need to do the discovery process, which is there's so many different values you can stand for. So you need to really pick what are the top, you know, three to six, I say. Four is the good, I like four or five. This is a good sweet spot.

And there's a book called Built to Last by Jerry Porras and Jim Collins. And in that book that they went and studied visionary companies. And they found out one thing. Visionary companies stand for no more than seven and no less than three values. So, and this is studying some of the most iconic companies of the last century. So for me, it's let's pick out of that 100 in my book, We give a list of 105 words that you can in the book. If you pick up the book, it's in there.

And I highly recommend it and we'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, so it's in there. There's a guide for this. So we have a guide that we give when you buy the book. And so you just eliminate those 105 words. And you pick your top 15 and you rank them in order because values have a hierarchy. So you want to put them in order that now you've discovered what are your top five values? What matters most to you?

From there, you have to go through a design process, which is making them viral sticky and making them, I have some tests I put them through. Do they stand the test of time? Is there any negativity in there? Do you have product, remove product? So I have a laundry list of like checks and balances. But they have to be designed to be able to scale as you scale. In order to do that, they need to be designed so that they can become viral and sticky.

So you go through that process and then you got to bring them to the team and teach the team so that they learn what they are and create systems for that in the business. And in the book, I talk through stuff by stuff. How do you do all those things? Yeah. And I can't wait to take my team through this exercise. I'm super excited about it. And now a quick break from our sponsors.

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slash money. Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. By solidifying your company's core values, you are holding your employees accountable to specific standards. This helps establish how your companies can serve your higher purpose because they understand what is expected of them and carrying out that mission. Let's round out this episode with another clip from John Mackey, where he shares some of corporate America's false ideas about competition and winning and his two keys to thriving in business. So I want to get into conscious culture, but first I did want to get a little bit more detail about the qualities of a

conscious leader in terms of integrity, honesty, truth telling, authenticity, things like that. Yeah. Well, the first four chapters of the book sort of kind of sum it up. The first chapter is put purpose first, and we talked about that, so I don't need to talk about it anymore. The second one is lead with love. And love is, it's in the closet in corporate America. It's not talked about. And by love, I don't mean romantic love. I mean love in the sense of caring about other people, being compassionate, thoughtful, kind, generous. And it's in the closet primarily because people think love is weak. They think they're at war.

The metaphors we use in business are all hyper-competitive metaphors. It's all this competitive, you know, we've got to kill our competitors. We've got to let's roll. There's all these army war metaphors. Let's go to the war room and plot out our grand strategy here. Or they are Darwinian metaphors. It's survival of the fittest. It's a jungle out there.

Only the paranoid survive. Or they are hyper-competitive sports metaphors. And in typical sports, there's one winner and everybody else is a loser. So there's an obsession about winning. Winning isn't everything. Winning is the only thing. And so you get obsessed with winning. You get obsessed in defeating someone else.

And these are the metaphors that generally we use to think about. ones too. Now you have a lot of tech metaphors. But the metaphor structure our consciousness in the way we think about things. And most of the dominant metaphors are hyper-competitive metaphors. Love is the glue that holds a company together. That's that unites the teams. It's why customers keep coming back because they feel appreciated. They feel like you care about them. And if you get these two things right, Hala, I almost promise you you'll be successful in business. The first one is purpose, because if you put purpose first, you've got like your GPS going in the right direction. And if you lead with love, you're going to create such loyalty from the people that you work with, from the people that you're serving with customers, your suppliers.

When you take care of your suppliers, you become a customer they like to deal with. So purpose and love, people never want to leave your organization. Why would they? They've got the two most important things in life at work, purpose and love. And those are the things people crave. We crave meaning and we simultaneously crave. We want people to care about us. Of course, the secret to getting the people care about you is to care about them.

You get back what you give. And if you're focused on just yourself, like your own personal happiness, you're not going to find it. And the final thing I want to say on the conscious leadership, if we skip the culture, there's a lot more to the book, obviously. I am very, very high on our fourth chapter, which is find win, win, win solutions. I'm a great believer in win, win, win. And this is something that's not understood about business because we use these sports metaphors. In a sports metaphor, there's somebody that wins and somebody that loses. For every winner, there's a loser.

And people tend to think that that's the way businesses. Winners take all and that everybody else. But that's not how business works. That is a fundamentally wrong metaphor. Business is really a win-win-win-win game because you have all these stakeholders that are voluntarily trading with each other from mutual benefits and gain.

When customers come in, they're both winning. The company's winning and they're winning. Nobody's forcing them to trade with us. They have competitive alternatives in the marketplace. They come in because they like our particular combination of quality, selection, service, ambiance, and prices. Or they wouldn't trade with us. And in fact, most people don't trade with Whole Foods.

We're 22 billion, but we got like a 3% market share of the United States. So 97% of the other grocery business is going somewhere else. So they do have plenty of alternatives in the marketplace. So every one of those stakeholders is benefiting when they trade. So business is the ultimate win-win-win game where customers are winning, team members, employees are winning, suppliers are winning, investors are winning, and the community that we're all part of is winning because philanthropy comes out of the success of the business,

taxes comes out of the success of the business that funds government and non-profits and government respectfully. We don't nationally think win-win, though. We don't think win-win-win, but the third win, by the way, good for you, good for me, and good for the larger community that we're all part of. And that's a way of framework. That's a way to think about the world. And it's a skill. And so whenever I'm making a decision, I always ask this important question, is anybody losing here? And if somebody's losing, if one of the stakeholders is losing, then it's probably not a good decision. I need to go back and be more imaginative. I need to look for the win, win, win, so that no one is actually losing, that all the major

stakeholders are winning. And then once you begin to think that way, you give your mind permission to be creative in that direction. And it begins to come up with solutions that you didn't know what were possible. Because if you just refuse to not compromise on the first solution that comes to mind, if it's a bad solution, it ends up hurting people or hurting someone, someone's losing. So business is inherently a win-win-win game, but we can do it in a different way where we don't make trade-offs all the time, where somebody else is gaining and someone else is losing.

We need to try as best as possible to move away from that trade-off mentality and ask the question, how do we make sure that all of us are winning together? Yeah, I love that advice because in business and negotiations, Everybody always assumes that there's a winner and a loser, but there doesn't have to be. If it's a good negotiation, they're both winning. There is so much love in entrepreneurship, love for your customers, love for your employees, love for your stakeholders, and love for your mission. Don't be afraid to lead your businesses with love because entrepreneurs who truly and

unapologetically love what they do are the ones that are leaving the biggest mark on the world. And that's a wrap, yeah, bam. these are some tips on how to lead a purpose-driven business from successful entrepreneurs who model the importance of serving a higher mission. So many people become entrepreneurs because they want to become millionaires. But those people usually don't make it because the purpose of business is not to make money. It's to make a difference. And when you want to make a difference, your business becomes magnetic. You can make a difference by tying your money to a movement and by using your business as a channel for your mission. Like Derek said, leading a purpose-driven

business will attract the right customers who want to fulfill that mission with you and ultimately will make you more profitable. Having a purpose driven business does not only help you generate more revenue. It makes your employees happier too. Whole Foods was named one of the top 100 best companies to work for for 20 consecutive years. And that's because everyone was working toward the same goal, nourishing people and the planet. And that goal made everybody feel good and made their work purposeful, no matter how much money they were making. So their employees, were happy. Think about John's philosophy of win, win, win. Leading a purpose-driven business can lead to all parties benefiting because when you're leading a business with purpose, you hire employees

whose individual values will complement your company's values and amplify them. And then your employees are aligned with both their individual values and your company's values. They're more eager to serve your customers with enthusiasm and compassion. And that leads to happy customers who buy a lot, which leads to happy stakeholders, which leads to you being able to execute your company's mission at a higher level and the cycle continues onward and upward. Help your business win on every level by aligning it with the mission that you care deeply about and then infuse that mission into your organization by carefully selecting your core values. And you want to make sure you choose core values that directly align with your organization's central mission.

Next, you want to make sure those values are known to everyone who engages with you. from your employees to your customers to your stakeholders. And most importantly, keep your mission top of mind in everything that you do and every decision that you make. And if you guys like this YAP snack episode, be sure to check out all the full interviews featured in today's episode. That was number 166 practicing conscious leadership with John Mackey, number 159, conscious business with Ryan Blair, number 177, the core value equation with Darius Marsha Zaday and

Yap Live, Good Money, Revolution with Derek Kinney. Thanks again for listening to this week's Yap Snacks. And if you enjoyed this conversation and these clips, be sure to drop us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. We've been getting a plethora of Apple podcast reviews lately. And it's been making my day. I read them every single day. If you want to thank us here at Yap, the number one way to do that is by dropping us an Apple podcast review or a comment on your favorite podcast platform. You can also leave a review on Spotify now. So if you listen there, I'd love to get your review. You guys can also reach out to me on social media. You can find me on LinkedIn. Just search for my name. It's Halata.

You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at Yap with Hala. And we're also on YouTube now. If you love to watch podcast videos like a lot of you guys do out there, we're on YouTube and our channel is awesome and growing really fast. Just search Young and Profiting on YouTube. And I'd love to have you as a new YouTube subscriber. Thanks so much to my amazing. and Yav team for helping me put on this episode. This is your host, Halitaha, signing off.