SECRET TO A SUCCESSFUL, ENDURING BUSINESS

What makes an Entrepreneur successful begins not with fancy corporate jargon or a client roster of well known brands, but with the people at it. Choosing who those people are and

who they collectively can be is a daunting challenge overall, but impossible without knowing what you stand for. 

That’s why core values are so important. At Cread Hub Resources, our core values are part of employee reviews – and we’ve turned down many, many people who look good on paper but they weren’t going to be a good fit based on values.

Core values help you to implement the essence of strategy: knowing what to say no to. Without them, you’re a car without a GPS, and you’re just as likely to drive into a bad neighborhood as you are to get where you want to go.

If you want to learn more about what the values mean, read this series and how we interpret them.

Honorable

One of the most difficult values to define. We joke all the time that you recognize things that are dishonorable, but it’s hard to find things that are honorable. Honorable is doing the right thing, even when you know that it’d be easier to do something else, to hide something, or to not do something that you know you must do. 

Honorable tends to be the harder thing to do, but you know it’s the right thing to do. For example, when we work with a client that’s competitive to a former client, we don’t re-use anything at all. All client-specific things are destroyed on contract termination anyway, but even generic stuff like ideas, we don’t re-use. It’s harder, but we want to help the current client win their battles in an honorable way, in a way that doesn’t feel like “cheating”.

Dedicated

Is going to, above and beyond. If you have an idea, you work the idea until it’s done, until it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. That might mean working late, working extra, whatever is needed of you by your team to get it done. Dedicated can mean seeing a news story on at night and you have this “always on” mindset, have this idea that you jot down or send off to your team even though it’s late at night.

Connected

When it comes to finding people to work on the team, what I’m looking for is someone who’s connected to journalists, publishers, and media. Perhaps the person is linked on LinkedIn or is being followed by these media personalities on Twitter, so that when we have good story ideas, our team members can get the ideas placed in great outlets, from traditional to social and more.

Beyond that, connected means that team members are connected in a business sense and community sense. They help to generate new business opportunities for the agency by going out and being a part of the community, attending networking events, participating in the community as a whole. One of the top questions I ask during the interview process is, “What was the last networking event you went to?” and I look for strong answers. It’s not just new business, either. Being connected means knowing your peers and helping us find the best possible recruits, the best possible hires in the community. We want people to help us build an even better team – great minds think alike

Creative

Creative can seem fairly cut and dried, but it’s actually another one of those “you know it when you see it” qualities.

In an interviewing scenario, I always ask candidates about the most creative campaign you’ve done or the craziest idea you’ve ever had. Or tell me about a situation that was really hard and how you found your way out of it. I’m looking for a creative solution versus a more standardized approach, something that shows you can think a little differently, or out ofthe box.

Ballsy

Fearless goes with creative to some degree. What’s so creative, so ambitious, so out there that no one would have dared to do it? You’re gutsy in what you do, in what you want to do. You tend to ask for forgiveness later rather than permission first, taking no prisoners – within of course, the boundaries of what’s professionally acceptable. You’re persistent, forward, and assertive.

Positive

Positive doesn’t mean being happy or agreeing all the time. What it means, what we need people to do, is bring energy and enthusiasm to their work. It means being supportive of others, being supportive of the processes we use, of the clients we work with, and of the firm. You don’t always have to have a smile on your face, but you do need the spirit and energy of “we’re in this together and moving stuff forward”. People who lack that spirit can be detractors to the organization and can ruin not only a working environment, but a client relationship too.

Smart

I will say that people come in here all the time and we learn that they’re not smart in the way we’re looking to be smart. They struggle to keep up, they struggle to understand the client’s messaging really quickly, learn everything about multiple clients quickly and keep them separate, but work different stories together.

They will need to look at something right away and make fast judgement about whether it’s good or bad, whether it needs tweaking… being able to analyze things quickly, being able to learn things quickly, being a natural student and wanting to learn more all the time./

If you want “the secret sauce” to longevity as a business, it’s adhering to values like these, especially when the temptation to do something easier or more profitable arises.

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