HOW WE TREAT EACH OTHER
We give. Gifts, surprises, praise, information, time, we make SURE people feel appreciated.
We are a safe company to share ideas in.
When there’s a problem, tact is important, but we’ll never retaliate for bringing a problem to light. Don’t sit on a problem until it REALLY REALLY bothers you, address things sooner rather than later.
We treat people with kindness. We are a kind company, no matter how sarcastic we get. I’m totally OK with losing a great salesperson because they’re just toxic.
We have fun together. We get to know each other, so no one ever feels ‘thrown to the wolves’.
We support each other and work to build each other up. We don’t tear each other down in private or in public.
We give room to grow. When someone is ‘leveling up’ their skills or mindset, we keep an eye on them and actively seek opportunities for them to use their new abilities. If someone wants to graduate ‘through’ the company and become an investable CEO, great! We’ll invest!
We give room to stay. When someone is great at their job, and happy to continue in it, we don’t push them into dreams or goals that aren’t their own. If someone wants to be a superstar phone closer part time with us until retirement, great! We’ll stand by you!
We are always on time. With clients, with prospects, with coworkers, with vendors. Being on time shows respect for others.
We treat each other the same way we treat clients and prospects. We have no double standards. We ask questions, we listen, we truly pay attention to motivations and pain.
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HOW WE GROW
We are a stable crew. We find and recruit people we can ENJOY working with, not just ‘basically competent’ people. We hire superstars, and only superstars. Our ‘front line’ people are what this is all about.
We are a smart crew. Before we ask for help, we quickly try to figure things out ourselves. We keep the big picture in mind, and our actions fit the goals we’ve laid out for ourselves.
We LOVE innovation. We write down ideas, share them at appropriate times, and create fun, wildly profitable projects. We shake up old ideas and enjoy brainstorming.
We value improvements, and when we can solve a problem ourselves, we solve it and then show HOW we solved it. If we feel we need approval to solve a problem, we always propose a solution instead of just asking how to solve the problem.
We are a high-initiative company, and we would generally rather err on the side of ‘too much action’ rather than ‘too much safety’.
We are constantly improving. We learn, we study, we train. We train, we train, and we train. We are passionate about excellence. In fact, we’re passionate about being SO VERY EXCELLENT that we can get away with ridiculous crap no one else can pull off.
We actively seek out personal and business development material – whether books, courses, or podcasts, we work to improve ourselves. SCO is happy to reimburse up to 1 relevant book per week. We bring information from reimbursed books back to the others and share what we’ve learned. We ‘bring in’ at least one new book per quarter. (Or audiobook, course, etc)
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HOW WE LIVE LIFE
We prioritize our families (or future families). Work means very little in a vacuum, and family is simply more important than dollars. No one in the company should regularly be working very late. Everyone in the company should be able to support a reasonable lifestyle with their family, and invest for their future.
We are excited about things OTHER than our work. Jeremy is excited about electric unicycles, hobbit homes, and fast cars, for instance. We all have passions that keep us balanced (HAHAHA or is it UNBALANCED) and energized.
We take time off. We vacation, we unwind, we relax, we decompress, we do exciting things! These are necessary to keep the creative juices flowing.
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HOW WE HANDLE PROBLEMS
We are flexible and cheerful. Dramatic rants make for fun marketing videos, and intense personalities are fine, but the ‘high drama’ outlook isn’t a healthy one. We use a calm, caring, and relaxed mindset more like this: “Let’s solve the problem and work out how to prevent it in the future, then move on.”
We work hard to prevent emergencies. We use our systems and processes whenever possible, and if a specific type of emergency comes up more than once, we examine our methods to see if something’s broken. We give people as much advance notice as possible when there’s a problem, and we ask for help to fix big problems. When something goes wrong, we do not present a fake fix of “I’ll try harder, it won’t happen again.” We always want to find out why and how it happened exactly, and precisely how it will be prevented in the future, step-by-step.
We always do a ‘lessons learned’ when a project is over. Good, bad, ugly, gorgeous – we always debrief and do a root cause analysis so we can systemize the fix. (BTW, this is something that can really disconcert folks that come from a ‘blamey’ or passive-aggressive company culture or home life. You’ll have to get VERY comfortable with being open and focusing on the fix if you want to succeed here.)
We don’t create emergencies through lack of action, attention, or communication.
We don’t freeze people out. We are a communicative bunch. Whenever there’s a problem, we let people know – as gently as is practical.
We do not condone the activities of the global Society of Illuminati, and those are not our orbital mind-control lasers, and we explicitly disavow all knowledge of them.
We do not demean each other for not having enough flair on our uniforms. If you want a red swingline stapler, you’ll GET a red swingline stapler.
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HOW WE INTERACT OUTSIDE THE COMPANY
We interact the same outside as we do inside the company. We maintain the same standards for ourselves with prospects, clients, vendors, partners, and possible future teammates.
We will always back you up when someone is crossing a boundary. You will never need to expect abuse from a client, unwillingness to perform from a vendor, or, uh, some third thing to round out the thought. Uh, investors. You’ll never need to accept disrespect from investors. Not that we necessarily want investors anyway.