85. Bringing Your Values to the Forefront with Racheal Cook
Aligning Your Brand with Your Values
Being explicit about your values in your business used to be frowned upon, but it’s vital to how you market your brand, how you build your company culture, and how you relate to your clients.
Building a values-aligned business and making those values explicit can feel like a daunting task, but the effort to articulate your values and show up with them has its rewards. And silence is a message of its own.
In this replay of a 2020 conversation on Racheal Cook’s Promote Yourself to CEO podcast, Racheal and India discuss infusing your values into all aspects of your business, addressing mindset challenges and fears when it comes to getting explicit, and Racheal’s own experiences with making her values known.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How marketing with your values as the starting point helps differentiate your business
Why it’s vital to understand the ways that consumers are voting with their dollar
Leaning on your values to guide how you show up in public
Taking steps to articulate your values
How leading with your values builds connection and community around your brand
Profitability without Hustle and Burnout
As an award-winning business strategist, host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast, founder of The CEO Collective, and best-selling author, Racheal Cook is on a mission to end entrepreneurial poverty for women. Over the last 12 years, she has helped thousands of female entrepreneurs design predictably profitable businesses without the hustle and burnout that doing #allthethings inevitably accomplishes. In fact, Racheal is a sought-after speaker on entrepreneurship, marketing, and productivity and has been featured by the US Chamber of Commerce, Forbes Coaching Council, Female Entrepreneur Association, and more. Her real passion, though, is supporting savvy, soulful women as they implement the strategy, systems, and support to uncomplicate their business so they can work less and live more.
Making Your Values Explicit
On the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast in 2020, Racheal Cook (she/her) says that it’s become vital to make your values explicitly clear in your brand, business, and in the culture of your communities.
She says that when she was pursuing her MBA in the early 2000s, there was some talk about vision, mission, and company values, but much of the conversation was generic. But there has been a significant shift since then, “and [2020] has been a turning point, I feel, in companies who have clear values that they are leading from, that they’re communicating from, that they are making decisions from.”
She notes that she has been working with India and Erica Courdae on making her own company’s values clear and explicit and that this work has transformed how she shows up.
“I’ve been able to step into next-level leadership. I’ve been able to lead conversations that are so crucially important.”
She says that for a long time, she thought her values were clear and obvious, but through working with India and Erica, she found ways to make her values “crystal clear” in her business from the images she puts on her website to the way she onboards new clients and how she hires employees.
Marketing from the Outside
India says that as she was on her journey from being a model in front of the camera, to being a photographer, she witnessed many people “adapting these identities that were sellable, but they weren’t authentic, and they weren’t necessarily considering their long-term legacy and reputation.”
As she developed her photography business and helped clients craft their images, “I really began to dig deeper with them, like, is this what you really want? What do you really want to be known for? And then let’s begin to build the image, the marketing and the branding, and create the relationships that you need to actually get there.”
Racheal notes that in her experience, when she’s worked with people on marketing or branding, there have been a lot of prescriptive archetypes for how you show up.
“Often we look at everyone else and we’re like, oh, that’s what I have to look like in order to succeed. And we don’t think about well, how is this actually gonna help you? Is it going to help you long term? And is it real? Is it actually who you are?”
India says the challenge with that mindset is that it puts you into a box where you can’t stand out from everyone else whose branding is just like yours and it creates a lack of diversity in the marketplace.
“Part of how we got there is we started out from a branding perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a business structure perspective, looking at what we are selling and who do we want to sell it to instead of actually who are we and what kind of impact do we wanna leave on the world?”
Racheal agrees and adds that “When we’re branding from the outside instead of from the inside, it does lead to challenges…We want people who are working with us who are really on the same page, who appreciate what we have to say, who really understand where we're coming from.”
Voting with Your Dollars
Racheal says that discussing her values and being open and explicit about them in the context of her business has been a challenging journey, “coming from a very traditional business background where it’s like church and state, you don’t talk about your personal beliefs.”
But she says that her business is an extension of herself and the culture she is building is an extension of herself, so it’s important for her to be vocal about her values.
India says that if people find it difficult to get out of that “church and state” mindset, or feel like they’re not sure why or how they should do it, they’re not alone.
“Most people have a challenging time with taking their implicit ideas and values and being explicit about them.”
India says part of what has changed that makes it matter more now than ever before is that consumers have changed in the face of so many options. People have decision fatigue about products and services all the time.
“So when we have to make the decision of what coach, or what service provider, or what product we’re gonna invest in, something has to differentiate them beyond just the product itself.”
As consumers, every time we make a purchase, we’re voting with our dollars, and “if I am voting with my dollars for something, then I wanna feel good about the choices that I’m making…And I think many people are starting to feel that way.”
Showing Up with Your Values
Racheal agrees that consumers trying to make thoughtful choices has become more prevalent, whether it’s pushing back at corporations like Hobby Lobby or Chick-Fil-A or making commitments to sustainable, slow fashion.
But she says when we’re working with small businesses, consumers often don’t have as much information to go on to make those values-based choices.
India says that businesses being silent about their values sends a message in and of itself, and that matters to both consumers and for you as a business owner.
She says she will go down the rabbit hole of websites, social media, event participation, etc. when she’s vetting a brand to see if they are in alignment with her values.
But there’s also “an opportunity that if you really want to work with a brand and you’re not sure, to just start the conversation because sometimes it’s not that they don’t believe in something, it’s that they’ve gotten stuck in how to share that, and they don’t know what to do…People are afraid of being canceled for saying the wrong thing or putting it out there imperfectly.”
Racheal says that cancel culture “has made a lot of people very scared that they will be called out,” but that it’s important to show up. “I think when we’re afraid we’re gonna be canceled, that means first we’ve gotta do some internal work…We don’t all have to be panic-posting something when things show up in the world.”
India says that the first step is getting clear on your values. If you haven’t done that work as a brand, “then you don’t have that compass documented to know what you will say, what you won’t say, what you’re gonna support, what you’re not gonna support, and how you’re gonna respond to things.”
She continues, “It’s the values work. It feels really frivolous sometimes, and it’s something that I find people in the past struggle to sit down and make time for, but I can guarantee that once you’ve done it, it literally gives you a blueprint to say every decision I’m making…does this match the values I have on this list?”
And once you have your brand’s core values mapped out–and those values, she says, may be different from your personal values–you can get curious about why you are participating in a trend and if doing so really aligns with your values.
How to Start Articulating Your Values
India says that when you’re not sure where to start with articulating your values as a brand, to start with your personal values. From there, go to your team and your clients and ask them about their values and what’s important to them, which will give you clarity about the kinds of people you’ve attracted into your brand if they’re in alignment with where you want to be and go.
A big question she also suggests people tackle is “what do you wanna change in the industry that you’re in? Or what do you wanna change in the world?”
Racheal says that for her, thinking about what she wants to change and about what she disagrees with can help her clarify her positions and is an opportunity for differentiation.
India says that when you can answer what you don’t agree with and want to change, you can also answer the question of what your deal-breakers are.
“If you’ve assessed each one of these things and your deal breakers are on this list, now it’s easy to go and figure out which ones are the most important to be a part of the brand’s core values.”
Racheal says that clarifying her brand values also really helped to clarify the kinds of women and businesses she wants to work with, which has informed how she shows up in public, with clients, and with her team.
India adds that “as you begin to be more explicit about your values and infuse them into…everything that your brand touches, it’s going to shift who you attract. And you’re gonna attract more of the people that are like, yes, I’m here for these things and I love these things about you, and this is exactly what I wanna support.”
And it also weeds out some of the people who aren’t a good fit for you. “They’re making space for the aligned ones.”
Connecting Through Your Values
India says that she thinks that Racheal is doing a great job of being more explicit in her values in how she shows up publicly and how those values are infused in her behind-the-scenes decision-making. She also lists Cher Hale of Gingko Public Relations and ON1E Clothing as brands that are doing it well.
She says that a key way to make sure your values are explicit in every part of your business is to have someone from outside the brand do an audit of your visual and verbal branding, as well as day-to-day things like if one of your values is being eco-friendly, how are you packaging your products or gifts to clients?
“Those little things go a long way to resonate with your audience.”
Racheal says that in her experience of working with India and Erica auditing how her values were showing up in her business, “having that outside perspective I think is just invaluable.”
Inevitably, if you’re making your values explicit, you will bump up against people who disagree with you and will send you nasty emails over, and it’s something Rachael knows people worry about.
India says that “you can’t get the emails if you never talk about your values. So if you’re worrying about that and you haven’t actually done anything yet, let’s do something before we worry.”
She also notes again that silence sends its own message.
“So if that fear of being canceled, if that fear of getting the nasty email is keeping you quiet, remember that your silence sends a message too.”
Finally, she says, “even if you choose not to share your values, people are going to assume what they are, so you might as well let them assume that it’s the right things.”
Racheal adds that it’s “so important for us all as leaders to get more comfortable with that idea that we don’t just have to blend in out of fear of what might happen when we stand out. Because on the opposite side of that is that you attract amazing people, you resonate more deeply with them, and…you get more amazing clients in the door who you’re really excited to work with because you’re on the same page.”
Connect With Racheal Cook:
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Get clear on what matters. From Implicit to Explicit is a framework to get clear on what matters and how it informs the way you live and lead in your workplace.
This 3-hour masterclass helps you evaluate your personal and professional values, how those intersect with your team and your clients, and how those values need to show up in your brand.
Learn more at pauseontheplay.com/explicit