YOUR WHY BEFORE YOUR WHAT

By: Lisa Slagle
Wheelie has grown, with offices in Denver and Whitefish now. This is exciting. Like most athletes-turned-business owners, I thrive in risk and challenge. The stakes are higher, projects bigger, and cameras smaller. 

Something I quickly realized with growth though, is that everybody at your company has to know where the ship is going or they start rowing in their own directions.  I revisited my favorite business book, Traction.

If you own a company or run a marketing department or athlete team or whatever, you’ll probably find value in this vulnerability I’m about to drop.

I sat down with a few longtime employees to revisit our company’s values. 
I went into this exercise with the mindset of completing the task and moving on, unsurprised. “I could tell you in my sleep where Wheelie is going as a company. It takes up most of my brain power daily. My longtime employees definitely know the answer to this, too.”

Wrong. 

​Do this with your employees/core crew. Your world will be rocked, too.

1. I kicked off the conversation with, “Where do you think Wheelie will be in ten years?”

​Everyone had a different answer ranging from a warehouse with a mini ramp and foam pit to working with brands that haven’t been invented yet to mobile offices out of Sprinter vans.
​Wildly different answers, but at least they had the same spirit.

2. I asked another question, “Why do you work here instead of any other company in the world? What made you send in a resume in the first place?”

This conversation was fascinating to me. It revealed that we all work at Wheelie because our biggest belief is that this is our life, and we want to LIVE. 

Our company culture does put a massive emphasis in LIVING.

• We’re closed on Fridays because every weekend is a three day weekend. 
• After working for a year, employees can opt to work remotely from wherever they’d like for up to three weeks per year as long as they have strong wi-fi. Plus two weeks of PTO.
• We believe in bringing dogs and occasionally kids to work.

We also all believe in real connections with real people, that life is meant to be shared. 
We also believe life is best lived outdoors.
​
This strong mindset prompted us to rewrite our mission statement around WHY we do it, not WHAT we do:

Life should be lived, felt, and shouted from mountaintops.
Wheelie is a new school creative agency for people who thrive outside.

3. Try to write your mission statement focusing on WHY and then WHAT. 
(It’s really difficult.)

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Next, because our approach to marketing, branding, and video production is largely human, we went through the values every employee and client should have at their core in order to be a good fit. We came up with three groups of two:

This exercise was surprisingly difficult. I would call it almost as in depth as an internal rebrand. 

4. Try it. List 6 words every employee and client must own.

Growth is good. It’s important to take a moment a reset, reexamine, and write down your company’s vision. This way everyone rows in the same direction. 

​Give it a shot.
If you want to talk about your experience with this exercise, shoot me an email.
It’s currently my favorite topic: lisa@wheeliecreative.com

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