What Are Your Core Values?

• What do you stand for?
• Why did you get into this business?
• Where do you fit in this world?

When was the last time you asked yourself these questions? Once you have the answers, how are you communicating these core values to your clients and customers?

Running a small business is incredibly hard. We feel your pain. We’ve been bootstrapping BookedIN since 2010 and our founder Mike is funding the entire thing. As we grow, we’re slowly adding one staff here, another staff there. All of us wear many “hats” and time is incredibly scarce.

Sound familiar?

As a result of this time-scarcity, it can be difficult for any company to justify working on high-level branding. There are literally a thousand things fighting for your attention. But as Steve Jobs put it so effortlessly,

“Even a great brand needs investment and caring if it’s going to retain it’s relevance and vitality.” 

It’s About Values (not features)  

Ask anyone on the BookedIN team about “core values” and you’ll get a very focussed explanation. We know who we are and I think that’s why our team has such low turnover rate.

We all seem to possess this unexplainable, deep-down desire to help people. To serve. Helping is what makes us happy. And we just so happen to be good at building software! So here we are.

However, somewhere along the road we realized our website does a pretty bad job of explaining our core values. We explain what our app does, why it’s awesome, the feature list, the bells and whistles, etc. But what about our purpose?

For your business it might be exactly the same. The magic is primarily happening behind the scenes. At your shop, and with every client you meet. It’s that sparkle of something special that happens during a really great appointment. You know the ones. When your client leaves with a huge smile on their face and maybe even gives you a hug. A new relationship is born. That moment where you feel pure joy in what you do, and you know exactly why you do it.

Does your website explain this feeling? This “why” factor?

If not, don’t feel bad. Ours doesn’t either. (yet)

BookedIN’s Core Values

Recently we asked for some help and hired Alina, from The Rectangles a talented designer with a background in psychology. She interviewed our team and helped us to uncover our core values. We learned a lot about ourselves and the process was incredibly motivating. Thank you Alina!

Below you’ll find our core values and my preliminary explanation of each one. Take a read, check out the summary doc, or just skip down to the comments and tell me all about your business. What are your core values? What makes your business unique? I’d love to learn more about you. 😃

1. Empathy

“How can I help?” 

This is a phrase you’ll often hear at BookedIN. For the scope of our code-base, our team is incredibly small, (6 full-time, 4+ contract). This means time is extremely precious, so we strive to help each other to prioritize and get things done.

We know the pain of running a small business. So when it comes to helping BookedIN users, we get a thrill out of helping people save time. We want our software to make your work more enjoyable. We want to help you save time so you can devote it to more important and rewarding things.
By helping people and understanding the pain of booking clients (it’s like herding cats really) we know exactly how to make appointment scheduling more enjoyable for the world.

2. Responsibility & Sense of Fulfillment

“We believe serving others is the most fulfilling work on earth.”
-Mike Iwasiow, Founder of BookedIN

The BookedIN team comes from a variety of backgrounds and has an impressive history. We could land jobs almost anywhere, but have chosen this company specifically because it gives us great freedom and satisfaction. Most of our team works remote with minimal supervision. We are our own boss in our specific areas of expertise. This sense of responsibility and being in charge of our destiny makes us happy. We enjoy building BookedIN because it gives us independence, work/life balance, and most importantly a feeling of satisfaction from helping our software users.

These things are INCREDIBLY important to us so we have dedicated our careers to building tools that help people achieve the exact same things: to give you control and feel more fulfilled in your work.

3. Candor & Trust

Candor: the quality of being open and honest in expression; frankness.

Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

When communicating, we believe it’s better to be direct, honest, and to-the-point. Don’t hold back. Freely explain your ideas.

Sometimes this can be painful, and believe me, we’ve had MANY heated debates (especially Mike & myself) but it all comes from a good place. Everyone here cares a great deal about making things better, so battles are bound to happen.

This is our special brand of team work. We speak freely, and we trust each other.

Therefore when it comes to our users, we try to extend the exact same attitude. We’re trying our best to make you a part of our team. We’re incredibly grateful for all the open and honest feedback we receive. By listening to the good, the bad, and the occasional angry customer, we’re able to figure out exactly what we need to work on next.

What are your top-3 core values? Please share with us in the comments!

Not sure what your company core values are? I encourage you to take some time with your staff and think deeply about who you are. Call a staff meeting or do an email survey with your team. Watch the Steve Jobs video above together, then try to pinpoint what makes your business unique. An easy place to start is to create a list of adjectives that describe your company. Please share your list in the comments, I’d love to learn more about you.

If you don’t have online booking set up yet and you’re wondering how to get in on the action, you’re in luck. Get started for free today. BookedIN’s appointment scheduling software will help you save time, and get back control of your booking chaos.