Value led business.
Over the past year I have had the pleasure of going on two Power of Youth (POY) The Naked Entrepreneur weekends. The purpose of these weekends is to learn about leadership frameworks, self-development and how to make a better world through business. Over the course of these weekends I learnt a lot about how to incorporate my values into the business and how to utilise a network of like-minded people.
Most recently, I had the opportunity to attend the first POY RICAP event.
RICAP: Reflection, Inspiration, Connection, Acceleration and Purpose.
Its quite hard to describe what goes on at these weekends, but at NE2 I was able to meet a whole new group of people who share the same business and personal values as I do. Not only did I meet them that day (for the most part) but I was able to develop relationships with them all very quickly. Through the subtle but well thought out techniques imposed by the Power of Youth they are able to seamlessly integrate a load of like minded strangers.
Just this week POY have opened the doors to what they call – The Metta Network, a home for building a better world through business. From here you can join a community, create and attend events.
Being from a family with a strong belief in ethical business I believe that I have duty to continue this tradition, introducing values such as honesty and transparency to our constitution. From the beginning of our business journey I have looked to engage all our clients with complete transparency, which has led to strong business relationships. I was really lucky to start a business with other like minded people and as a result I feel that we have really flourished as a value-led business.
One of the obstacles we have faced though is that through being value led we have mistaken that with being personable as well, which, whilst important, is not without its drawbacks. I think I can speak for all our clients (mostly) that they have enjoyed working with us and would work with us again. However it has often meant we have found it difficult to strike a balance between this and the ‘hard nosed’ side of the business; driving price, negotiating and being strict with sign off criteria – this sort of thing can have a huge impact on us, particularly financially! Though its hard to measure how much of that is just down to being a new start.
I think it is safe to say that the past year there has been a lot of learning, developing and do-gooding (modest much).