Guiding Your Business to Success: The Importance of Establishing Core Values with Jennifer Smith

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape tyranny of Contractor Prison and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so that you can have the time, money, and Freedom to live your life with purpose beyond your business.As the owner of a multi million dollar home improvement company and certified human behavior consultant, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you. Help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and the life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.Let's go. Jason Phillips: Hey friends, today we are gonna be talking about core values and what they are, what they're not, and why they're important, how to use 'em.And I think you're gonna, I think you're gonna find some value in this. I have with me today, Ms. Jennifer Smith. Who is one of my senior leaders at my company [00:01:00] Tell all our friends about you. Who was Jennifer Smith? Jennifer Smith: Okay. I'm the HR manager here at Phillips. I also manage the fleet, do a little writing for marketing, which is a love of mine.I was actually originally hired here as your communications person, and I definitely still do a lot of communicating and I do a few tasks here and there. For you to help you out, and that's fun for me. I'm also a human behavior consultant and love that because I love people, I love personalities, and I love helping people find their fit.Jason Phillips: That's pretty amazing. You said you do a few tasks for me here and there. That's an understatement. Actually. I don't know what I would do without you. I'll talk so much about leadership and culture. I get a lot of questions. On core values, and I've even recently been in contact with a number of small business owners, painting contractors in particular that are trying to [00:02:00] clear up some or rewrite, or revise or draft from scratch some core values.So I thought we might just share the journey. You and I have done a lot of work. Yes. On that very subject. Yeah. It's important to us here. So there's things we value. Right, but they're not necessarily always core values. Mm-hmm. And then there's let, can we just talk about the types of values? What's your take on that?Jennifer Smith: Well, I think there are some values that are more core than others, and I would call those foundational values such as honesty. Integrity. Those were pay to play values here at Phillips. If you're not honest, and if you're not a person of integrity where we know that your word is your bond, that what you say, we can count on being true, then we don't even need to start having a conversation with one another because we are not gonna fit.Okay? So those are foundational pay to play values. Then there are these other core [00:03:00] values that are unique. To us as a company that set us apart, that kind of tell other people out in the world. Who is Phillips Home improvements And those are the values that we call core values here that we hire on, promote, on, have conversations around and that that make us unique at Phillips.And I'm sure we'll talk about more of those, but one of those values is people that we really value people. In other words, Vendors and employees. And all people. All people. Absolutely all people. And yeah, that's one of our big four. Jason Phillips: You know, that's really good. Our company Core values, friends at my company, this is our team, right?Our faith people. Teamwork and the pursuit of excellence. So those are [00:04:00] also my personal core values and my, this organization, my company was started on the premise that . People deserve more because I saw so many, I'm gonna say injustices in the home improvement industry, painting in particular, people cutting corners, not, not fulfilling their word, leaving things undone.Cheating customers and cheating vendors, mistreating the immigrant workers in the field, and even the employees and such. One of my values is people, because I get my values from the Bible. And my ultimate leader example is Jesus servant leader, right? And the Bible teaches me and teaches us that God gave his only son for people that didn't even love him.And to me, that just shows such an amazing value for people. And if I'm going to reflect him, I need to value people as well. So that's one of my core values. And then I saw homeowners and people connected with the home improvement industry that were being [00:05:00] mistreated. And I started the company likePeople deserve more than this. I can do better than this. So that's how our core values came to be, right out of my own core values. Now, when you start talking about your core values, think through that process, right? If let's just say that you're working on, Hey, I want to establish core values for my company, or I've got some core values, but they're nebulous or nobody knows them.There's so many things, but l Jennifer, why don't we talk for a second on what are core values, not.Jennifer Smith: They're okay. First of all, they are not a hope, a dream, a wish. They're not aspirational. They are solid values that can be seen consistently throughout your team. they are what you would be characterized by.Rather than something that you hope others would see you as. And they really tru are truly are [00:06:00] at your core, who you are. And we want everyone at Phillips to have those same core values. Jason Phillips: So what we're saying here is that your core values are things that already exist Absolutely. In your life and on your team.Not things that you wish existed Exactly. Or even things that you're working towards. Making a reality. They're already a reality. They're already a reality looking at our companies and our teams, that can be very disturbing. If we have a, if we have a track record of hiring and acting, behaving as a company without guiding principles, we could be in a mess.Have you ever felt like you're in a mess? Hey, give us a thumbs up if you're watching. By the way, I would love to hear you throw some comments in there. If you have any questions, I'll try to grab your questions too, and we'll try to answer your questions. So core values, you mentioned that they guide our decisions.One of the things I feel like also along those guiding decisions, it's [00:07:00] when you don't know exactly what to do, you can back up to the very most basic thing of core values and all of a sudden, A lot of tough questions. The answer becomes obvious, not easy, but obvious. Yes, there's been a number of times through the years where we've made some tough decisions.For instance, we believe that people in relationships are more valuable than money. There's times rather than run to save, to, to act in a way to prevent losses on a project. A lot of companies would tuck tail and run when things go bad, when a customer's unhappy and just to protect their losses and burn a relationship and burn a person.And in reality, they're not just burning that other person, they're burning their own integrity. Yes, core values really help us make, help me. I'm telling you, ma, help me make a, uh, make some very tough decisions. So Greg says, oh yeah. Hey Greg. Greg o [00:08:00] O'Donnell. Thanks for joining us by the way. Thanks for joining us.They help guide tough decisions and they help make it easy to make the same decision or similar decisions consistently. Yes, they're really good for that. What about they, in addition to, how do you feel, Jennifer, that the core values help direct just the general direction of a company? Oh, Jennifer Smith: wow. If we are truly, for example, valuing people, Then all of the decisions moving forward with our company are gonna move in that direction.They are gonna be decisions that would honor people. Um, and so if our core value is teamwork, then moving forward when we're making a decision, we're gonna ask ourselves the question, are we acting as a team? As we're making this decision, are we moving together in tandem with one another as a team?Consistency with our core values [00:09:00] means that we're gonna act the way that we say we are. We're gonna act in that direction, and so we're gonna make decisions in that direction Jason Phillips: so we can hold ourselves as a company and as individuals, as a team accountable, absolutely. To our core values. Absolutely. I love that, Jennifer.That's really good. No, they say we, we say a lot of people say, That culture is like the personality of your company. Yes, but core values are the heart and soul. Heart and soul of your company. So think about that when you're, maybe, I wanna say younger in business. It's not really about how long you've been in business, but maybe it's about the type of problems and things you're dealing with every day.You might not see core values as something that's real important. And it's just like things like leadership and management and systems. All of a sudden you have problems later and you realized, [00:10:00] wow, I should have really lined this out. Years and years ago, and I just wanna encourage you guys and gals, if you don't have a solid list of core values that I'm gonna, I wanna say define who you are, but no, they don't really define who direction maybe that they, it's who you are and they're, it's identifying who you already are.If you don't have a, a simple list of core values, then this is a...