Most aspiring entrepreneurs who start a business jump into it thinking that if they can just make a great product or service, it will be smooth sailing and everyone will instantly buy into it. However, great products and services don’t just fall from the sky. Company success from the beginning depends on having a vibrant culture, and that, in turn, depends on identifying clear values right from the get-go.
Ultimately, there’s no right or wrong about what values should matter to you. Every company is going to have its own set of ideologies that make it tick. But, looking at what other companies build on can inspire you toward your own success. So, let’s break down what our team at Glew has been striving for.
Capacity for Empathy & Understanding
When we first started building out our development team and creative department, we quickly realized that many developers weren’t as aware of the social media influencer world as we were. Though many top prospects met all the qualifications, we identified a disconnect between who we were speaking to and our overall company mission: connecting people who need influence with those who have influence.
Much of this disconnect came from a lack of social media interest and presence from prospective employees. We hit the drawing board and decided to redesign our specifications. At the top of the new list was our mission redefined into an open-ended question: How would you get a new product out to a millennial market? The answers quickly showed who was qualified and understood the marketplace.
From there, we began building our team up, composed primarily of social media savvy individuals and developers. The ball began rolling, and the chemistry started to flow. Since our core team was so aware of our marketplace, we could go from idea to implementation at rapid speeds. Without having to write the book on “How to rewire your brain to think like a millennial” for our team, we quickly began crafting the book on “Things all millennials inherently know that you should know, too” for those who didn’t understand.
When building a company for a specific demographic and niche, we learned that it helps to have the product(s) built by qualified workers that intimately know, understand, and can empathize with that demographic and niche.
Availability
A lot of the time, when you interact with a business, you can just tell they’re corporate. Even their social media pages look like they wear a suit and tie to work every day and act too professional to talk to anyone outside their office. You can’t direct message them or reach out even just to say that you like what they’re doing. It’s hard to decipher whether they won’t respond because they’re simply too busy — or because they just don’t care to interact.
We didn’t want people to see Glew like that. Our whole product was built with the goal of satisfying our customers, not just picking something to sell because it makes money and then hiring someone to say how awesome it is. In order to make and sell the best product or service possible, user-feedback is absolutely critical. That’s why, for us, connection is crucial. If our users can’t be heard by us, if they don’t have the ability to directly reach out to us at all times, then we’d fall down as yet another company that just went corporate.
So, one of our focal points is to make sure that people can come to us with real-life issues. We want them to know they can collaborate with us and that we’re here to help make their ideas attainable. If our users can actually interact with us and understand that we’re just a group of other like-minded people building something to benefit the lives of all of our users, then we’re happy.
Purpose
We know, we know. Companies are supposed to make money. Obviously, that keeps the lights on and the Macbooks charged, but we need more than just money to make this work. From day one, our main focus was to accurately represent our purpose through our culture.
For us, purpose means being able to say that we were the ones that pioneered a platform that helped other young people in the social media space get paid for their work and be their own boss. It means having a real impact, not just hauling in a bunch of cash. To achieve that and fill a real market gap is an honor you just can’t put a price tag on.
Company culture makes an enormous difference in how competitive and successful your business can be. It’s healthiest when you build it on values that everyone can share and feel proud of. Pick the unique beliefs that can be your foundation — paint them on the wall if you need to. Do whatever you can to never stray from who you are at your companies’ core.