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Why Small Business Owners Need Northstars (And How I Found Ours)

By Nate Riggs on October 12, 2015 |

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Nate Riggs - small business ownerAs a business owner, it took me a while to get my head around NR Media Group's core values.  

I've spent years helping clients develop these guiding principles as an objective partner standing outside of the fishbowl and looking in.

But building them from inside your own fishbowl is a total different experience.

Why Small Business Owners Need Northstars

In business, core values are somewhat like a compass that guides everything from who the company hires to how it conducts business with customers. While the idea of establishing core values has been around for years, recent company culture examples from businesses like Zappos, Twitter and Southwest Airlines have put a new energy behind the importance of defining and rolling out core values in any size organization.

We spent the first year-and-a-half in business absent of any solidified values. The result was a lot of poor hiring decisions, delayed firing decisions and a slew of confusion around what the right decisions were in a variety of situations and how and when to make them.

Book Inbound Marketer Nate Riggs

If you're a small business owner and you haven't taken the time to develop your own list of core values, take advice from the trenches - once you do it, you will be amazed at how much focus it brings to your business.

Our First Try

Once I decided that we needed to define what our values were, we held a few internal meetings and worked through a brainstorming session to determine what was important to us collectively as a team.

The work resulted in the formation of 6 statements that reflected what we felt we wanted to be as a company. We packaged them up, defined them clearly and put them as a note in our project management software, since it was the place where my team and I spend countless hours each day.

We then went about our business as usual, and promptly forgot every single one.

In fact, only a few weeks after, I tested myself on listing out our core values and the short definitions we had produced. I failed miserably, only being able to recite two of the six. I then went to each of my employees and asked them to do the same - list the core values and tell me what they mean.

Same result.

Frustrated, I turned to my long-time friend and coach, Keith Speers.  What he said next changed everything.

Me: "I don't understand - we did our diligence as a team on these values but they haven't stuck. What went wrong?

Keith: "Your values look like everyone else's, and so they are not really yours."

Me:  "What do you mean?"

Keith: "It's your company right?"

Me: "Yeah."

Keith: "Then your company's values need to come from you. They need to carry meaning for you and you alone. Then, your people need to be on board with your values. If they are not, they're not the right people."

Whoa.

Finding the Light Bulb

With head hanging low, but knowing that Keith was right, I took these stripes and went back to work. As a business owner, I respect the hell out of Heather Whaling and what she's built over at Geben Communication.  

Upon Keith's advice, I took a look at Heather's house rules and was inspired by how genuine they were. I've known Heather personally since about 2009 and could literally see her personality reflected directly in the 10 statements that govern her boutique PR firm - a firm which also happens to be one of the leading small PR firms in the country.

What came next was unexpected.

At the time, Heather and Geben had announced that they would be bringing on Tyler Durbin, another mutual marketing friend. Out of chance, I happened across a LinkedIn post from Tyler that detailed why he chose to work at Geben and his own personal principles.

In side by side fashion, Tyler laid our Geben's House Rules next to his own and showed the alignment of the two.

Tyler, being a highly-talented professional, was savvy enough to commit the head time to write down the ideals he stood for personally. He made his principles tangible and in doing so, took ownership over them. His principles were a critical factor in his next career move. 

This was when the lightbulb went off for me.

Back to My Drawing Board ... Alone

So, I went back to work, inspired and refreshed.

Keith encourage me to start by free writing the vision of my ideal company - a place that I would wake up excited to go to work every day. Per his advice, I set a timer for 10 minutes and went to town.

Next, I developed a mind map of anything I could think of that was of importance to me personally.  

Old team sayings from high school, personal mantras, motivating statements, personal beliefs - nothing was off limits.

With a bit of editing from these two documents, I developed a list of NR Media Group's Northstars - the guiding principles that align my team with my vision and personal beliefs.

So far, no one has quit.

NR Media Group's 9 Northstars

At NR Media Group, our company is guided by Northstars.

These short statements represent a set of principals that impact who we hire and our expectations of employees. They govern the way we interact with each other and our clients. They serve as the basis for our quarterly reviews, compensation and opportunities for employee advancement.

As a business owner, I am learning to use these Northstars as the litmus test for every decision I make. In the coming months, I'll challenge myself to pick these apart on this blog, one by one, going into greater detail as to the meaning that each one carries.

nr media group northstars

Nate Riggs

Written by Nate Riggs

Nate Riggs is the Founder and CEO of NR Media Group, a Certified HubSpot Partner and inbound consulting firm. He leads a team of experienced strategists, content marketers, creatives and technologists that help organizations deploy and use HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and service software to operate more efficiently and accelerate growth. Nate regularly presents keynotes and workshops at top industry conferences like INBOUND, Content Marketing World and Oracle’s Modern CX. In 2017, Nate was recognized by HubSpot for his contributions to the development of the HubSpot Education Partner Program. Nate regularly presents keynotes and workshops at top industry conferences like INBOUND, Content Marketing World and Oracle’s Modern CX. In 2017, Nate was recognized by HubSpot for his contributions to the development of the HubSpot Education Partner Program.
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