What Blue Kite Stands for as a Company

Four years ago today I became a full-time entrepreneur.

It has been an amazing journey so far, but I have never been more excited about the direction of Blue Kite than I am right now.

In the past few months, I have brought on two new team members — Reed Brandon and Abby Buter — who have helped me reshape the vision and direction of where we’re heading as a company.

Although we have always had strongly held beliefs and values, we have never taken the time to fully articulate them.

Because we always want to practice what we preach, we took a company retreat this past weekend to roll up our sleeves and nail down what Blue Kite really stands for as a company. (Here’s a pic from our trip!)

People want to work with brands they believe in. To create that kind of trust, you need transparency.

That’s why we didn’t want to create core values and post them on a wall. We want to share them so people know exactly what we stand for as a company.
 Sharing our core values and beliefs will help us create a much stronger partnerships.

It Starts With an Audacious Vision

Before we could develop our core values, we started by creating our vision of a company.

We have been working on defining this over the past two months. But, we have finally nailed it down to this:

Blue Kite’s Vision:
To make the world a better place to do more meaningful work.
 

We help organizations build a better brand. But ultimately, we want to influence and improve how organizations work.

Sadly, far too many companies have a terrible culture.
 Each of us
 have experienced first-hand what poor work environments look like.

We believe that organizations can make a bigger impact in this world by giving people a better place to work.

And it all starts with a well-defined brand.

The best branding takes an inside out approach. In other words, a well-defined brand positively impacts the culture, and ultimately, the marketing for the organization.

Blue Kite’s Beliefs

Our beliefs support our overall vision as a company. They are guiding principles that motivate us and how we work.

Blue Kite’s Core Values

Our core values support our overall beliefs.

We developed our core values to guide how we work every single day. Our core values guide our actions and shape the work we do — both individually and as a company.

1. Do the right thing.

There are definitely times when it would be far easier to simply give the client what he wants or only do the work we promised.

But sometimes,
 the work we promised is not what a client really needs. We need to do more. Or, we need to do something different. We need to dig deeper to find the right solution.

That’s what it means to do the right thing — we believe in treating our teammates, clients and partners how we would like to be treated.

It means choosing people over profits and long-term benefits over short-term gain.

2. Bring your best.

We have some pretty big goals as a company. If we’re going to do world-changing work, every team member has to show up ready to work.

Sure, we all have bad days and we might not always be 100 percent.

But, what we value most at Blue Kite is effort. We don’t require perfection, but we do ask that you give it your very best.

Our team, our clients and our partners deserve that. And when we all bring our best, we create better solutions.

3. Be remarkably curious.

 We think Albert Einstein had it right — there is tremendous value in curiosity.

Learning makes us feel alive!

If we’re not constantly asking questions, testing ideas or developing new skills, we’re dying.

Plus, we believe that curiosity makes us better creative partners for our clients.

A bias toward learning means we invest time to read regularly, attend conferences, listen to podcasts and look for ways to expand our knowledge and skills. We invest in ourselves so we can be better for our partners.

4. Work with purpose.

Oftentimes, the tendency in marketing and branding is to focus on creating beautiful, award-winning work.

The problem is that everyone wins — except the client.

We believe everything we do should have a purpose. Yes, we want to create beautiful work. But, it should be for the right purpose.

That’s why we routinely ask ourselves these questions:

• Is this necessary?

• Will this help drive results?

• Is there a better approach?

 Doing this means that we are focusing our resources on the right work so we can create a bigger impact for the people we serve.

5. Choose joy.

There are always times when work can be challenging or difficult. However, it’s how we respond to those circumstances that make the difference in how we work and the happiness of our team.

Complaining is easy. But, it’s disruptive and toxic.

Happiness is a choice.

That’s why we actively choose to look for the good in every situation.

We smile easy.

We laugh often.

And ultimately, it means we love what we do that much more.

What’s Next for Blue Kite

The development of our vision, beliefs and values reflects just some of the great work that came out of our retreat.

We’ve got some big things coming and I can’t wait to share them with you!

If you want to be the first to know what we’ve got planned, join our email list of Blue Kite insiders.
 You might even just get a hefty discount on a soon-to-be-released new offering!

We’re so excited for what 2016 has in store and we believe the development of our vision, beliefs and values is the first important step to help us get to where we want to be!