Key Takeaways:
- Vague values like “integrity” and “excellence” sound good, but don’t do anything. Every company already claims to have them.
- A value only earns its place on the wall if it tells someone what to do in a real moment.
- You need about 90 minutes and the right questions to narrow down a company’s core values.
- Defined values are the foundation for strategic conversations and decisions.
How many times have you seen “innovation” or “excellence,” or our personal favorite, “integrity,” listed as a company’s core values?
What do those core values tell prospects and employees about a brand? Because nobody’s building a business around stagnation, mediocrity, and dishonesty on purpose.
That’s the problem with most core values work. A founder pays a consultant to run interviews, build a deck, and hand back three words: integrity, excellence, innovation. Everyone nods. The words go on the wall, but nothing changes with how the company operates.
If you’re building a marketing strategy guided by generic values like that, you’re always going to run into roadblocks.
What Core Values Do (and What Most Companies Get Wrong)
A vague value is easy to agree with, and that’s exactly why it doesn’t work. If nobody can argue against it, it can’t help anyone make a decision either.
Atlas Rose Licenced Marketer Jen Singer shared examples straight from her own businesses and client work in episode 9 of the Atlas Rose Podcast:
| Vague | Defined |
| “Integrity” | One of Jen’s clients, a ceremonial cacao company, landed on “raw” as a value. It meant something specific: unprocessed, ethically-sourced ingredients, and customers who feel safe showing up exactly as they are. |
| “Excellence” | “Motivation with Sophistication.” Jen used this one for Avid Caddie, her indoor golf simulator business. It decides what tech is worth buying: does it make players feel both impressed and pumped up, or is it just expensive? |
| “Innovation” | Jen led with “purpose-driven curiosity” at Medium Giant, a media firm where she served as Chief Connection Officer. This value made everyone answer two questions: what if, and why does it matter? |
The left column sounds nice while the right column helps leadership make unified decisions.
Core Values 90-Minute Framework
To a busy founder, core value workshopping sounds like a massive project: interviews, workshops, a rollout plan. Using the Atlas Rose Methodology, we’ve narrowed it down to 90 minutes, which keeps it a productive conversation. Everyone stays sharp and present, and you avoid going down too many rabbit holes.
- Send a short questionnaire first. The founder answers alone, so they’ve already done some thinking before you sit down together.
- Sit down for an hour. Discuss what’s fueling them, what they want their business to change in the world, and what they won’t compromise on.
- Bring back a readout. Tell them what you heard. Let them lock it in, or push back until it’s right.
It might sound quick, but in our fourteen years of doing this work, we’ve found that business owners already know their values. Whether they’ve articulated it or not, they built the business around them. It’s up to us to ask the deeper questions, then hand it back in a format they can actually use.
How to Get Leadership Buy-In
Defined values are often brushed off as a fluffy culture initiative. In practice, they’re the filter behind every decision a company makes: what to invest in, who to hire, who to let go, which products to build, and which policies to set.
Gallup surveyed thousands of workers in 2025. Among employees who feel a strong sense of purpose at work, 41% are job hunting. Among employees who don’t, that number jumps to 68%. Pay and benefits are a contributing factor, but aren’t the ultimate deciding factor for employee performance and retention.
CEOs, COOs, and especially CFOs know that replacing an employee impacts the bottom line: recruiting, training, months of lower output while the new hire gets up to speed. If you can cut turnover by a third, you cut that cost by a third too. Having defined values, and sticking to them, are one of the cheapest ways to get there.
What to Say When…
“This feels like an HR thing.”
Some owners will push back the second you bring up values, especially if they’ve gone through the process before. Instead of arguing about philosophy, show them the decision it’s going to change. For example, having core values dialed in determines which prospects you go target, and what the first 30 days of onboarding look like.
The COO sees marketing as risk, not growth.
Operations leaders are wired to protect what’s working. A vague marketing pitch reads as a threat to that, but a defined values framework doesn’t. Having a strategy built around core values gives the COO something concrete to evaluate.
The owner has never had a real strategic partner.
Most small business owners think marketing means flyers and social posts, because that’s all anyone’s ever shown them. Starting with values instead of a content calendar is how you signal, from the first conversation, that you’re not another vendor. You’re someone who wants to understand the whole business before you touch a single campaign.
Your Marketing System Starts Here
Core values are just one piece of a repeatable system for building trust with a leadership team, moving from tactician to strategic partner, and proving the value of marketing.
That’s the methodology we walk Atlas Rose Licensed Marketers through step-by-step. You don’t need to reinvent your approach with every new client. If that’s the system you’re looking to build your own fractional marketing practice on, we want to hear from you.
