Transcript

I am Steve Stout, author of the book *The Tanning of America*, founder of United Masters, aswell as Creative Solutions Company Translation.

So, when we talk about building a company, most companies have core missions and values that the CEO or the founder has. That's going to be the DNA of the company. It leads to how the kind of people you hire, your expectations, your ambition. It's the things that's most important: that if you don't have those ingredients, if those aren't the framework in which the company operates in, then you're going to attract the wrong talent, and you're going to lose sort of your north star, what you're trying to obtain, and I think that that is the CEO's responsibility. How you go about coming up with these values out of all the things that you feel are important—what are the top five, six? I would say no more than seven things that you need every employee to fully understand and embrace and use that as the guiding principles on how you operate, and everyone has that, that, that shared understanding.