Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Starting A Business in 2023 | YAPSnacks | Part 2

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

In Part 1, we discussed generating passive income to fuel your business, testing your business idea before launching it, identifying a viable market for your product, and why you shouldn’t focus entirely on revenue when you’re first starting out. In Part 2 of this YAPSnacks series, you’ll learn more about picking the right price for your product, a simple marketing framework for businesses of all sizes, the five pillars of scaling your business, and how to establish your company’s core values.  Featured in this episode are Alex Hormozi, founder of Acquisition.com and Gym Launch and author of $100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No; Donald Miller, CEO of StoryBrand and author of Business Made Simple; Allison Maslan, founder of Pinnacle Global Network and the world leader in scaling businesses to nine figures; and Darius Mirshahzadeh, author of The Core Value Equation.  In this episode, Hala and various guests will discuss: - Solve problems for a specific audience  - Vicious pricing cycles vs. virtuous pricing cycles  - People ascribe more value to higher-priced commodities  - StoryBrand’s unbeatable marketing framework  - These 7 things happen in every story  - Incorporating storytelling techniques in marketing  - 5 pillars of scaling your business  - Batching your time to maximize productivity  - Using viral and sticky language for your core values  - Picking the right core values for your business  - And other topics… Resources Mentioned: Alex Hormozi: The Value Equation, How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No | E199: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-hormozi-the-value-equation-how-to-make-offers-so/id1368888880?i=1000588801031  Donald Miller: Storytelling for Business | E120: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/donald-miller-storytelling-for-business-e120/id1368888880?i=1000527069775  Allison Maslan: Scale Your Business | E170: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/allison-maslan-scale-your-business-e170/id1368888880?i=1000561549471 Darius Mirshahzadeh: The Core Value Equation | E177: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/darius-mirshahzadeh-the-core-value-equation-e177/id1368888880?i=1000568710829  LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Go to yapmedia.io/course and use code PODCAST to get 40% off the masterclass! Sponsored By:  Shopify - Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/profiting 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/

Hey everyone, you're listening to Yapsnacks, a series of bite-sized content hosted by me, Hala Taha. This is part two of a two-part series on how to start a business in 2023. In part one, we covered transitioning out of a regular job to start a business. We learned about how to test different side hustles and business ideas, why it's so important to make sure you have demand for your business idea, and what to think about when picking your market you want to sell into. Part one is definitely a precursor to this, so if you haven't yet, I highly highly

recommend you go back and listen to Part 1 first. And in today's episode, part two of this series, we're going to get an overview of other core business topics like pricing from Alex Hermosey, marketing from Donald Miller, growing your business from Allison Maslin, and lastly, creating mission, vision, and values for your business with Darius Murshazadeh. So let's jump right into pricing strategies with the amazing entrepreneur and CEO of Acquisition.com, Alex Ramosey. So there's really two pricing strategies. And this is a gross simplification, but like you can be the lowest price leader or you can be the high value leader. Like those are really the positions in the marketplace.

Now you can make an argument for a third which would be luxury, but in like business services that doesn't really exist as much. And so either your entire strategy is built around being able to provide the same value as the rest of the marketplace, which is commoditized, and do it for less. That is a strategy. But there's only one guy who can have that spot. And most people don't start with that strategy. They're like, they look around, they see whatever else is charging. They take the average and they say, I'm going to do the same thing they're doing and do a little bit better.

I'm going to do a little bit more for a little bit less. And then the thing is that everybody, because of the marketplace, tries to do a little bit more for a little bit less until eventually you can't do any more for any less. And so you end up being a nonprofit, which is what most small businesses are. Most small businesses are not making any money. And it's because of that kind of mindset. And so it's solving for a different outcome, which is how do I provide the absolute

most value to a very specific type of customer? Because if you talk to that specific customer and you can really help them accomplish their dreams, they'll pay you as much as you want. But the thing is about stacking the other side rather than trying to cut the price, it's just trying to increase the value. And then by extension, with the increase in value, you get a corresponding increase in price that you are able to charge. And by doing that, you enter a virtuous cycle of price rather than a vicious cycle of price. The vicious cycle is you keep cutting your prices, your margin drops, you can't spend as much to fulfill each customer, your service drops even lower, your salesman aren't convicted, because they see all the complaints. You have really low reviews.

You can't pay people well. You have to lower your price. You have less profit. And it just goes around and around. It's a very terrible existence and I've been there. The flip side is like you charge more. And so the people that are buying are more convicted that you can actually help them.

They're more invested because they paid more. And if you have any kind of business where somebody has to do something in order to be successful, which basically many service businesses, the client has to do some stuff. The more invested the client is, in a very real way, the more valuable your product. because if you get somebody who's super invested and does the stuff, then you deliver a better outcome.

The next thing is that people actually perceive the value higher. So they've done a study with this where they had three bottles of wine, low, middle, and expensive wines. And they had people taste them and they had them rate them. And unsurprisingly, people rated the low wine, the lowest, the middle wine, the middle, and then expensive wine the best. What they didn't know is that all three wines were the same. And so in a very real way, the relationship we value in prices bidirectional. People ascribe value to something based on the fact or partially based on the price that is there. So if you charge more money, people will also perceive your thing as more valuable. But with that excess profit, you can also fulfill in that purpose. So now you can hire the best people. You can spend more in marketing

to acquire customers. You can treat them with the little do-deads that you probably wouldn't be able to do if you were trying to be a low-cost leader. And so you enter a virtuous cycle where people get more value. They tell their friends, they stay longer, they pay more, you can market more, and then around, and then it spins the other way. It's the scariest thing for entrepreneurs, because we've done this with portfolio companies. We had one portfolio company. We did a ton of research,

to look at the marketplace, et cetera. And after all the research, the very first thing we did, which is not common for us, is we made a price change. We said, we're going to do nothing different. We're just raising the price 50%. I had to get on nine calls with the CEO

to convince him to do it. Nine. Be like, it's going to be okay. If it doesn't work, we'll switch it back. You know what I mean? He made the change. We tripled the profit of the business. And this was a big business.

business. Tripled. And here's what's crazy. Most times when you increase the price, you sell fewer units. It's common. But it's okay because you make, it's a curve. Like if you charge 10 times as much and you sell one third fewer customers, you make way more money. And so in this particular instance, we actually sold more people because people perceived it. This was a medical professional, et cetera. And I was like, I think you're mispriced. Like people expect it to be higher than it currently is because of your medical background. And so we made the price change and then, you know, tripled the profit of the business in three months. So all that to say, most people are competing as commodities. There's two people in the marketplace. People can't tell the difference. They pick the

cheaper one. The idea is how can we make our price so much more expensive than everyone else in the marketplace that people have to pause and think, huh, there's something different happening here. I should think more about this. And then you stack that with all of the other value that you're going to provide them that ultimately makes them choose you, even though you're not the cheapest person. Yeah. Like you said, there's benefits to actually increasing your pricing. The client can actually get a better result because they're more invested. And also, they think it's worth it because they're like, oh, it's priced higher. This must be really good, right? So what are the other things that make people feel like they're getting a good deal? So, I mean, one of my favorite things from Warren Buffett is

price is what you pay value is what you get. And so the ideal is that we still want to always give people a bargain. Right? Everyone wants a bargain, but it doesn't mean cheap. And so that's the big difference, right? Like, you can have something that's very expensive. So if I said, hey, here are the keys to my my brand new Ferrari and you can have it for 50 grand. A lot of people would find a way to come up with 50 grand like that if they knew the car was worth 600. And so the idea is how can we make our service very clearly worth 600 and charge 50 rather than try and sell a crappy Honda for a little above market. That's where everybody messes up. They take a shitty product. They raise the price, and then they get more upset customers. So it's like if I spend $100 in cost to deliver $10,000 of value and charge $1,000, then I have 90% margins. They get 10 times the value, and everyone wins. And that is a wonderful business. And that's what we try to create, is we look at how much value, like when we're looking at

companies we want to take on, is we look at the core product, how much value are they really able to provide a customer? And then we can reorient the monetization and the productization of the business and the services in such a way that we can maximize how much money we make and then ultimately spend more to acquire our customers, hire better talent, et cetera, et cetera, and that's how we can scale it. Next up, we have several-time Yap guest Donald Miller, branding guru, and CEO and founder of the popular marketing firm Storybrand. One of the reasons why I love Donald Miller's story brand marketing framework and why I chose it for this episode is that it's so easy to use and because

stories are so important for the digital world. When it comes to retaining information, Our brain likes to use stories as a way to store important information. And Donald Miller's story brand is based on storytelling principles. When we use stories, it keeps people engaged and interested and people remember things better when they're told in stories rather than stats and facts. And so really, it's the words that sell your products on your websites, your proposals, your social media posts, and so on. Donald's story brand framework can be broken down succinctly as a character,

your customer, who has a problem, who meets a guide, which is you, who has a plan and calls them to action. Let's hear the story brand strategy straight from the marketing guru's mouth, Donald Miller. These are the seven things that happen in every story. And because they happen in every story, we know it's a formula. And we know it's a formula that works. I mean, this formula is going to get people's attention and cause them to pause and pay attention to you as a leader or you as a brand. The first thing that happens, there's a character. That character wants something. and they have to want something specific. They can't want too many things,

and they can't want something elusive. They have to want something. They want to marry the woman. They want to win the championship. They want to disarm the bomb. They want to find their way back home. Whatever. The movie is about something.

It's about a girl or a guy who wants something. And if you add too many things, it's not going to work. So that's the rule. What that means is we need to identify something our characters want, our customers. What do they want? I own a company called Business Made Simple. We do small business coaching.

I don't actually coach you, but we certify coaches who can coach you. So we know our customer wants to be coached, right? And then the next thing that has to happen is there has to be a problem. And I already talked about this in this interview. The problem has to be very frustrating. And it's causing people to want coaching or whatever. They feel like they're spinning their wheels. They feel like they can't – they don't know how to scale up.

They feel like business is a mystery. You know, whatever it is. but we need to identify that problem and talk about it because it's going to cause them to want the very thing that we offer. And then we are able to position ourselves in the story as the guide. And we're able to do that by saying, business should not be like a mystery to you. It should be very simple. You should look at a business and be able to understand what's wrong with it within five minutes. There should be no mystery because there isn't.

And there's no mystery in my business and I can teach you easily how there can be no mystery in yours. You shouldn't be struggling like this. That's me practicing empathy and demonstrating competency. I position myself as a guide. Then step four is you want to give a plan, and I like personally three-step plans. So, Hala, in order to work with you, step one is this, step two is this, step three is this. And what we find is that when we give people a path to follow, they actually take the path. But if we ask them to jump across the creek, they don't do it because they're afraid they might get wet.

So you want to give them a three-step plan. And then a really strong direct call to action. You know, subscribe to our platform today. Hire one of our coaches today. They need to be very specific calls to action that people can take in order to solve their problem. And then there's two more. One is success and one is failure.

We have to give people a vision of what their life can look like if they do take action and also a vision for what their life is going to look at. like if they don't, because if there's not stakes in the story, that is, if nothing can be won or lost, based on whether or not I do business with you, nobody will do business with you. I'm only doing business with you to achieve something good and keep away from a negative consequence. But as a business, if we've not spelled out what the something good is and what the negative consequence is, I wouldn't expect anybody to do business with us. Now, what's interesting about those seven steps that I just identified is those are the seven steps that exist in

every movie that you're going to watch. And when you really look at a very good brand, a brand that's making millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, you will see those seven steps and those seven pieces of communication in everything that they say. And in my opinion, those sound bites that you derive from those seven steps of story are the sound bites that you want to repeat over and over in your messaging and your marketing. That is how you make the customer the hero, and that is how you invite customers into a story. So that's all really, really helpful. I guess the one question that I have is, do all seven elements need to be in every asset? So like, okay, so how do we do it? Like, how do we know, do people need to get it in order? Like, how does that work? You don't need it in order.

Really what those seven steps are, if you will, they're like chords on a guitar. Now, if you know those seven chords, do you have to use all seven of them in every song? No, you can use three. You can use one. You know, if you're Tracy Chabin, you can use two and write incredible songs. You know, so there's, you know, the seven chords are science. What you're asking a question, the question you're asking is, how do you create art? And I would say, well, you use those seven chords and everything else is subjective. You know, so should your tagline be the problem? It can be.

There's not a formula for it. But I will say, as soon as you use a chord that isn't a real chord, everybody in the audience is going to know it because it's going to sound terrible. And those are the only seven chords. There are no others. And as long as you're communicating in a Facebook ad, in a podcast intro, and as long as you're communicating something from those seven chords, you're going to connect with the audience. But no, they don't all have to be there,

and they don't have to be in a specific order. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with 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. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world.

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to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash profiting. Just go to Indeed.com right now. and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. Okay, so let's get a real life example of these seven soundbites.

Like, give us maybe pantine, chickfil-A, like walk us through one of the companies you've worked with or any company and what their seven soundbites are like. Yeah, well, you know, right now the company, I look at my left and there's a big whiteboard over here is to be Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. So Berkshire Hathaway has 51,000 real estate agents all over the world, and we are helping them transform so that they are the guides and the customer is the hero. So one of the things we do is we say, okay, well, you need to do a little intake. If somebody's looking for a home, one of the first questions that you want to ask or you want to find out in the intake interview, what problem are you trying to solve? And so if Nancy, our homeowner, is absolutely sick of only having one sink in the master bathroom.

You know, she shares the sink with her husband. Not only that, they have kids who are running in and out of there. It's one sink and it's too clogged. Well, I'm listening to Nancy, and I'm going, okay, I know Nancy's interested in a good mortgage rate. She's interested in being a good part of town. But I think what she's really interested in is two sinks in that stinking bathroom. That's what she's interested in. And then I hear the story of Greg.

Greg is Nancy's husband. and he got up at three in the morning one night, realized that he let the dog out to use the bathroom, but the dog didn't come back, and they don't have a backyard fence. And he got up 10 degrees, and in his pajamas in a flashlight, looking for that dog,

and finally found him three houses over and brought the dog back. So Greg needs a fence. Now I know what kind of house to sell Nancy and Greg. Two sinks and a fence is what we're looking for. But really, so now I know the problem they're trying to solve. I position myself as a guide, and I'm just going to say to them, you know, Nancy, if you find a house with two sinks,

if I can find a house with two sinks, I think we've solved your problem. Greg, I think, you know, I want to empathize you should not have to deal with one sink. Nancy, that is a crime. Nobody should have to deal with one sink, especially with a husband as big as Greg. He's like a bear in here. Right. So, and then Greg, you should not be walking around two in the morning in your pajamas. You need a fence. You're going to love having a fence. I want to be able to really help them understand, I have heard your problem, it is now my problem, and I'm going to solve that problem. And when they hear that, rather than I ignore their problems, then I just think their problems are everybody else's. They want a good mortgage rate, and they want to be in a good school

district. But they're hearing me say, you're not listening. And in order to be guides, we've got to be really good listeners. So I've identified what they want. I've identified what their problems are. I position myself as the guide, and now I say, look, here's how I'd like to do this. Every first Saturday of the month, I'd like to get out and look at six homes, and we're going to find a home that's right for you. When we find a home that's right for you, we're going to have the paperwork ready, and we're going to be able to make an offer very quickly on that home and steal it from anybody else.

And number three is I'm going to hand you the keys to that home. It's a three-step process. Nancy, Greg, it's actually very easy to buy a house as long as you let me guide you. And then I say, do you want to work with me as a real estate? I want to be the exclusive person that finds you a home. That's my call to action. And when they say, yes, I say, great, you're not going to have a home with one sink. You're not going to have a home without a fence.

And I think in about six weeks, we're going to be standing in a beautiful home that's the home of your dream. It's going to have two sinks in a fence. I promise you that. What I do, I just gave them a vision for what their life is not going to look like. And I gave them a vision of what their life will look like. All seven steps in one five-minute conversation. conversation. And so we're working with Berkshire Hathaway, 51,000 real estate agents to teach them how to do that. And they're going to, they're going to sell a lot more homes because of it.

So you just learned there are seven things that happen in every story and we can use Donald Miller's story brand framework to build simple yet effective marketing strategies. Once you've got your product, you set your prices and you're using marketing material to tell people about your product, your business is going to grow. Next step is Allison Maslin. She's an eight-figure entrepreneur and CEO of Pinnacle Global Network, and she's also the inventor of the scale it method. Let's hear her talk about the five pillars business owners need to be aware of

as they grow their business. Let's talk about your acronym for scale. So scale actually stands for strategic vision, cash flow, alliance of a team, leadership, and execution. And throughout each phase of scaling, we have to pay attention to this acronym scale. Could you take us through that and break it down for us? Yeah, so these pillars, strategic vision, cash flow, alliance of the team leadership, and execution have to be strong in order for your business to get to that next phase.

I mean, think of a pillar, it holds things up. And so if the pillar is weak, so if you have a weak team or your leadership is crumbling or, you know, you're struggling with cash flow, you know, it impacts every other area of the business. A lot of times people might be doing good in, you know, one or two areas, and then the others are really weak or non-existent altogether. But once you can strengthen them up and you start moving through those phases, you really have, you begin to have that team managed company that can run without you. What's your advice in terms of creating a strategic vision? Like how do you go about first thinking about your vision for your company? What is the process? Yeah.

So first of all, you know, we have tools in the scale-it method to help people do that. But the first is to give yourself permission to dream and to really think bigger than you ever have before. So I tell my clients, first of all, imagine that you have a $100 million company, you know. And a lot of times we, you know, we don't, especially as women, we don't allow ourselves to think that big. But it's really just a number. So first, let's even allow ourselves to think that way.

or else to think about what if your yearly goal was your monthly goal? What if what you wanted to make in a year you actually made every month? So I do exercises to help you think much bigger. And then if you could envision like your biggest dream possible and not worry about the how or what you actually have to do to get there, what would that look like? And just paint a picture of that in your mind. and then start to journal about it and really, you know, get yourself into, get into nature,

get away from the business and really dream. And that's where the vision begins is with that imagination. Then your job is to get others enrolled in that vision and then work with a mentor to reverse engineer it so that then you have the steps to make it a reality. So moving on to that second pillar cash flow, one of the things that I read in your book that was super interesting is that you say the one thing we can do to improve cash flow is to focus on sales for the first three hours of every workday. I loved this little hack. So could you share a little bit more about that? You know, as business owners come up with every reason to do everything besides sales, I got to work on my branding, I need to do a social media post, I need to, do a podcast, whatever it is, which, you know, all those things are important. But you don't go to

Starbucks and see a sign on the door where it says, hey, we're doing our branding today. We're closed. So you need to have sales going all the time. And you have a lot of businesses that are looking for investors and I need the money. Go make the money. Like when I think back to those days, that persistence picking up the phone. If you're creating sales, you don't have to pay anyone back. and you bring in investors, and I'm not saying not to at a certain point, but you're going to have to give up a portion of your business. People don't realize this. And the more you are out talking about your business, sharing it, the easier it gets, I love sales because I know if someone enrolls in Pinnacle Global Network or whatever business I have, I'm helping them. And if I'm not telling them about it, because I believe so much into it, then I'm being selfish. And so we really have to think of it as helping people and sharing and making a difference. Yeah, I totally, totally agree. Let's skip to L leadership. Something that I thought was super interesting that I think my listeners are really going to like is your framework for decision making. You call it the 10, 10, 10

decision process to help ease the decision making process for leaders. Can you break that down for us? Yeah, we can be impulsive as business owners and you just get that sick feeling in your stomach and like, oh, I got to make a decision. Or else we can sit on a decision for years and years and years and not do anything about it and then nothing changes. And so, you know, sometimes it becomes this big thing and oh my gosh, what if I make the wrong decision? Well, what you want to be thinking about is, how am I going to feel about this in 10 minutes? How am I going to feel about this in 10 months? How am I going to feel about this in 10 years? Well, you probably won't even remember. You're making it a big deal now. And so that really helps you kind of separate from the energy of it and just,

you know, make the decision that you need to make. They say that the worst decision is making no decision. It's better to even make a wrong decision because that at least is going to move you forward and, you know, you'll have other doors open and other opportunities from there. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So one more question on the scale at method and then we're going to move on. So this one is about execution. So you have three P's of planning, prep days, pinnacle days and play days. Can you talk about how you streamline your days to be super productive? Yeah, I mean, again, in the earlier days, I was all over the place. And so that was part of my decline back then and downfall. And so time management, especially as a single mom, you really have to learn to manage your time.

And so I really learned, you know, how do I stay focused and get things done faster? Because it's not that we don't have time. It's really how we manage the time. And so I began to do things that were similar together. So if I had a lot of research that I was doing or writing or content creating or development, If I was doing that and then I would run and do trainings for people and make calls, you know, you lose your focus. And they say it takes five times as long to get things done.

And so I do all the things together. So the pinnacle days, that's when I'm on, like today. I got dressed up. I did my hair. I'm on. I'm in that frame of mind. And then those are the pinnacle days. Then the prep days are anything where I'm creating.

and I mark these in the calendar. And then play days, I'm off. I'm getting ready to go to Mexico in a couple days. And so I'm going to be off the grid and not doing any work when I'm there. And that's also really important as a business owner so that you're able to clear your head, get refreshed and re-inspired to come back and hit the ground running. Yeah. I think batching is so important for entrepreneurship.

And even if you have like a regular job, batching is where it's up because it actually takes 20 minutes for you to kind of switch gears on every single activity. It takes 20 whole minutes. So if you don't do that and you just bat, you end up saving so much time because you don't need to like refocus and spend all that time refocusing. In my discussion with Allison, for the sake of time, we ended up skipping over the A in scale, which stands for alliance of the team. But I didn't want to call out the importance of building a strong team. When you're scaling your business, it's essential that you treat your team as number one at all time. I always say you're only as good as your team. As a business owner, it's your job to lead your

team into greatness. If you believe in them, take care of them, and show your appreciation every single day, they're going to perform beyond your wildest dreams. If your employees feel like they're well treated, respected, and enjoy being a part of a cool company culture, they're going to take better care of your customers and your profits are going to inevitably soar. Happy employees equals happy customers. Last but certainly not least, we're going to talk about core. values. Now it's easy to overlook these when you're just starting a business because essentially when you're just starting out, your business values are pretty much your own values. But think about it. As you grow and you start hiring people, other people's going to contribute their own values to your company. There's going to

be other managers, other leaders, and it's not going to be clear on what the business values exactly are. You're going to end up with a mix of values, which is going to make it hard for everybody to work together and stay aligned as a team and grow. So next up, we're going to hear from Darius Mirzazadeh. He's an expert when it comes to core values. You wrote a whole book on it. He's also a Yap client. And we're actually going to be working with him next month to design our own Yap Media core values, which I'm super excited about. So let's hear him discuss the importance of core values and how to implement them in your business. I found this program called Burthing a Giants at MIT. 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 if your company has core values. So with graduation night of Burthing and Giants at MIT, and everyone stands up. And they say, please stay standing if you know your company core values, you come saying them off the top of your head. 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 100 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 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 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 and how do you build a core value-driven organization? Because my belief is that core values have 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. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. What's up, Yap, gang?

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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 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 indoctrinate them into them. And then you need to implement them ongoing. And then you need to measure for efficacy and do that consistently. You got to make it easy. You got to make it organic. It's got, it takes time. 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 love that tip. So talk to us about.

what a core value-driven organization looks like versus one that has no core values. Well, again, going back to your question before is, like, people have core values, companies don't unless you create them in your company. So what ends up happening is if you don't have a core value-driven organization, all that is is me defining what I stand for and holding the organization accountable to it consistently and making it drip throughout the organization. So what does that mean? Does that mean that you're always living those values?

No, it means you're always trying to live those values. and when you fall off, you fix. So you get back to center, the core, right? A non-core value-driven organization is someone that just shows up and does what I call BAU, business as usual. You get what you get. Oh, hey, Johnny over there has shitty work ethic, but Sally over here has great work ethic.

There's a value misalignment, by the way. You think that doesn't create friction? Your team will manage themselves to the lowest common denominator. So if you let losers hang out in your company, no offense, losers. But everyone else is going to be like, well, I guess Hala lets losers hang out here, so I don't have to try as hard.

Like, they put up with bullshit. And so my belief is, is like if you have a, let's say your values around work ethic or excellence, but you let mediocrity hang out, well, do you think you're going to really have excellence happen? The answer is absolutely not. You're going to have mediocrity. You have pockets of excellence that happen accidentally or you could do it my way and be super intentional and hold everyone accountable and the organizational accountable to this idea of excellence. And when someone shows up and they can't measure up to that, they get to leave.

And what happens then is you have accountability around the, those values. And the people that love those values, they'll be like, hell's, yeah, I'm in the right place. And the people that don't are going to be like, hell's no, I want to get out of here because they're going to find out that I don't like this. And it's not to say they're bad people. It's just not the right environment for them. So that's how I characterize it, at least. Okay. So here is some advice that I'd love you to give. So let's say your company like mine, my company like blew up so fast. What advice would you give in terms of the, you know, 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. And this is studying some of the most iconic companies of the last century. So for me, let's pick out of that 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. 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've 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 to all those things? Core values are super important, especially as your team grows. The bigger the team, the harder it is to get everybody to stay on the same page and moving in the same direction.

And as a leader, I recently learned from Randy Garn, who's coming up on the podcast. that you want to be principle-led, not rules-led. You don't want to dictate every single thing you want your team to do. You want to hire smart people and then give them principles or values to stand by so they understand how to make decisions and they understand the way of doing things at your company. And then you just sit back and let them do their thing. When you have everybody thinking on their own and pushing forward in the same direction

with clearly defined ways in which they should act and prioritize, that's when the magic really happens. All without you needing to micromanage your team. Having core values that everybody understands and aligns to generates a happy and productive, healthy environment, which I think is what we're all striving for when it comes to creating a business in 2023. So this concludes part two of our series starting a business. If you like this Yapsnack episode, be sure to check out all the full interviews that we featured today. That's Alex Ramose, Donald Miller, Alison Maslin, and Darius Mershazadeh. You guys can find the quick link in our show notes if you want a quick way to find those episodes.

And what did you think about this yaps next? If you enjoyed this episode, if you listened, learned, and profited in any way, be sure to drop us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. You guys can also give me your feedback on Instagram. You can just DM me. I'm at Yap with Hala. I love to hear your feedback. I'll definitely respond and chop it up with you.

You can also find me on LinkedIn. Just search for my name. It's Hala Taha. And if you like watching your podcast, check us out on YouTube. Every single interview I do is also uploaded to YouTube in a video format. So if you want to check out any of those conversations on video, check us out Young and Profiting on YouTube. Stay Young and Profit, y'all.

This is your podcast, Princess Halitaha, signing off.