Wether you want to or not, your values run trough your actions. In your personal life and in your job as a small business owner. And more often than not, they are largely overlapping. When you recycle at home, you’ll also recycle in your place of work.
Why should you do work on working out what your values actually are?
It feels strange if your values are not in alignment and it can cost you a lot of emotional labor and energy if they are at odds. If you have to burst out in song and dance every once in a while to offload some energy but you have to maintain a straight face all day at work, this can cause problems. It can absolutely be a choice and in some jobs it actually needs to be a choice. A swearing dentist would be very entertaining though… “Goshdarnit, when will you start cleaning your teeth the right way?”
But, if you are the CEO, the boss person of your enterprise, YOU get to decide what personal values you take with you to work and which can stay at home. YOU can decide to let your personality take up more space than if you were someone’s employee.
Your values are actually a big part of building your brand, it’s part of how you communicate inwardly to your team and outwardly to your audience.
Misaligned values in your branding can look like:
- Sending out emails in corporate, emotionless language while you hug and joke around with people that visit you.
- Soft tones and pictures of jewelry on backgrounds of silk fabric with peonies. With copy that sounds like you are a teenager; “These wack silver earrings with bad ass roses, will make you look like a mofo bro!” Ok I shouldn’t even try this. If my kids would read this they would move out of the room walking backwards slowly away from the weird person. But to make my point, if I were to send emails like that.. nope. Just nope. I however do really like to use humor and describe situations you can visualize.
Your values transfer to your branding. To the way you communicate, the way you sell, the way you design your shop or website. The way you talk to your business contacts.
You see, conscious decisions are important. What is important to you personally. What is important in your job, in the workspace, the way you handle customers, complaints even.
I talk about values a lot, about consciously running your business. It’s my job, it teach this 💩. You don’t have to. You can just make sure you know what they are and build your brand and business accordingly without even mentioning them, just living them. But in most cases you will use your values in your communication and marketing. Because getting clear on your values and sharing them will connect you to your audience. Don’t you love how all of this comes together?
Talking and teaching about consciously running your business can come across as wanting to take the moral ground. It can also awaken my imposter feelings. Luckily one of my values is ‘taking brave action’ because one of my biggest skills (another good thing to figure out as a business owner) is ‘taking action’. This means that when I take action I am in my happy place, when I take BRAVE action I do things that make me uncomfortable (a lot). But if this wasn’t one of my values… I wouldn’t have build my business in the way that I have. I wouldn’t have come this far. My values shape my business. And in this example the taking action aligns with my personal values but the bravery is something I add especially in my business. I go out of my comfort zone so that I can reach more people on my mission to reach my vision;
I want to help create a world where we don’t rely on fast fashion. Where we are happy to own less, better quality clothes that we mend before we toss them out. Making clothes ourselves or buy from responsible brands.
Where it’s easy to curate your conscious wardrobe that fits your values, size, shape and style. And we take responsibility by choosing the good brands and materials.
We’ll talk more about finding and designing your business vision and mission another time!
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☞ In the Building Better Businesses Circle Program (the BBBC) I mentor small creative business owners and guide them to a more organized, structured and focussed way to grow their business. My specialties include connection, branding, marketing, communication, goal setting and building community. With gentle, guiding influence, a sense of humor and a burning passion to stop the fast fashion industry I’ve started to invest my skills and energy to help small, independent businesses in the craft and textile industry to build a strong and holistic base that aligns with their personal life, building a business that is fun and easy to run so the conscious consumer can continue to choose better products and materials.
As a trained artist, marketer and business owner I have experienced first hand that passionate artists and artisans don’t often start with a business, sales or marketing education. I am here to bridge that gap and show you that these are not dirty words and that it can actually be fun and easy to level up and grow your business.
The BBBC offers a curriculum that is made to help busy business owners succeed. It consists of 4 modules with written and audio chapters, video’s and a workbook with exercises that -when completed- will be your future toolkit and roadmap. Weekly online meetups and accountability groups will motivate you to actually do the work. These meetings offer the most value of the program, connection and the power of community in a group of people that will become your board of trustees, your mastermind. The value of this program expands well into the future.
SIGN UP for the next cohort here!