How & Why to: Craft a Mission Statement.

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When I began Cleveland Flea, all I knew was how much love I had for the city that had become my home. Little did I realize that I’d need a mission statement and that this would become a cornerstone of my team’s mission.

Mission Statements are important to us for a few reasons:

  • they help us make decisions, both big and small

  • they help us explain to the world why they should support us

  • they help us further narrow our brand

  • they unite us as a team so that we can all row in the same direction

  • they let potential sponsors know if we’re a good fit for them

  • they lead us in choosing partners

  • they make us feel proud of our efforts

I intuitively lead my business without a mission statement for a long time, but when I began to scale, I needed to find a way to tell the world who we were and why we were different.

Our mission statement is 3 parts:

  • We help Cleveland love itself more.

  • We help creative business owners dare greatly to their best business selves.

  • We have fun doing it.

Crafting your own mission statement.

You’ve got to dig deep and decide who you are and what will guide all your decision making when you’re crafting your mission statement. Who are you? What truly guides your efforts? Why are you different than others who are similar?

All those are questions that are super important to answer when crafting your mission statement. This year, I printed our mission and posted it in the office so that we can be reminded of it daily.

The three parts of our mission reflect the people who are most important to us:

  • Our city / shoppers

  • Our vendors

  • Us

The last part was not a part of our lives until this year, but it’s crucial as we grow. I didn’t always get a chance to prioritize myself while I was learning everything I had to to keep this business afloat. But now, with a team on board (in the last year I hired 5 people), I wanted to make sure that we had values that protect all of us, so that each employee feels valued and important to the organization and our customers.

Now, as much as we love everyone else, we get to love ourselves, too.

Stephanie Sheldon