At Cardone Ventures, our values are inescapable. No, seriously, you can’t miss them. When you walk into Cardone Ventures headquarters, the very first thing you’re bound to see are our six core values displayed on the wall. It’s because we’re proud of what we stand for and who we work with. But there’s something even deeper and more intentional at play here.
We make our core values as prominent and as visible as we do because we want everyone to see them, to absorb them, and to think about them, because if you’re a part of the Cardone Ventures team we want you to live them through your work. Their placement acts as a daily reminder about who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish together.
In order to illustrate my point, let me share with you what our core values are, and what they mean to us.
Cardone Venture’s six core values — how they apply to our entire business
- Inspirational — We look at how we conduct business in a very specific way. Everything that we do is bigger than we are. What do I mean by this? Well, we don’t show up to work every day just for ourselves. We show up to accomplish the things that will make our team more impactful, our client’s businesses stronger, and to chase our potential so that we can achieve our personal, professional, and financial goals. Having an inspirational mindset helps make that possible.
- Disciplined — We do the things we say we’re going to do, without exception. This dedication to discipline starts at the individual level. But we don’t just think or talk about discipline, we pursue it through our actions. At Cardone Venturese, we train every single day in order to continue learning and growing to reach and then further stretch our potential. There’s really no getting around it. That’s how we make ourselves better. That’s how we make our clients better.
- Accountable — Accountability is central to success. We’re in the business of holding ourselves and our clients highly accountable to their goals — because that’s how they’re achieved. True growth doesn’t happen by accident. We believe that extreme accountability yields extraordinary results. And I think we have the track record to back that belief up.
- Transparent — We’re an organization that has big goals and we move quickly. Breakdowns in communication can result in a failure to achieve those goals, so in order to prevent that from happening, our team has full transparency — across our departments, our clients, and organization — so that we can prioritize the work we do in order to get closer to achieving our goals.
- Aligned — This value is my favorite. We only hire growth oriented people. Cardone Ventures can’t grow if our team members aren’t serious about their own personal, professional, and financial growth. When we’re all in alignment about goals, opportunities, areas of improvement, we can all win. Our teams, our clients, our entire organization is poised to win when we approach our business with an aligned mindset.
- Results — At the end of the day, we’re a business. Our clients hire us to 10X their businesses, so every product we create, every service offering we provide is designed to do one thing: deliver results. Being results-oriented as a core value focuses our thinking and helps us make good decisions when we’re in the development stage of anything that we produce.
Make them clear, make them flow, make them memorable — and use them in your business
These are the Cardone Ventures six core values. Did you notice anything special about the way in which they’re ordered? Because that is intentional, too. When you’re developing your own core values, you need to make them clear and easy to remember, and you also need to think about their structure and flow. Our core values support each other. Each one leads into the next. Even their definitions are interconnected. No value lives on its own.
But these values also work because they’re clear in their intent. There’s nothing esoteric about them. They state in no uncertain terms what’s important to us. They set expectations when we’re interviewing potential teammates, and they can also be used as instructive tools in the annual review process. Core values either shine a light on a team member’s ability to manifest our values through their actions in the business, or they showcase an area of opportunity.
Three to seven core values is the perfect range of to aim for in defining your business’s values. It’s enough to communicate the range of things that matter to your business, and it’s a small enough number for people to be able to memorize them. Your clients and team members should never question what you’re about, and if you have too many values to remember, then it’s almost as bad as not having any core values to point to at all.
Everyone is responsible for maintaining a company’s culture, but it’s your responsibility as a leader to be crystal clear in how you expect your organization to elevate the business. If you’re not crystal clear on the type of environment you want to create, how can your team be expected to meet your expectations?
In summary
- Make your core values clear and simple. Make certain your core values work together! Contradiction creates confusion.
- Limit them to 3 to 7 values in total
- Core values aren’t just about who you are, it’s about the overarching culture you’re seeking to create and how your business operates — make them easy to understand, memorize, and act upon
- Make your core values prominent. They are designed to apply to your entire business