What are your Impact Mantras?

Foreign select phrases that guide culture, behavior and service as you scale impact and profit welcome to today's Force for Good Masterclass.

It is my honor to support and serve you.

I am your host, Coco Selman, five time founder and impact investor and creator of the Force for Good Business system.

Today we are talking about Impact Mattress, which is one of the shortcuts to creating a culture ready to scale and perform.

Ask yourself, do you long for a culture where every decision reflects your deepest beliefs without micromanagement?

Is there a gap between your company's values and how your team actually behaves day to day with customers and each other?

And would your newest hire and most senior leader describe your culture the same way?

Do you have shared language that unifies, uplifts and empowers your team even as you scale?

If your vision is to grow a thriving company where kindness and performance go hand in hand, impact mantras can help you make it real.

So what are Impact Mantras?

Impact mantras are short, repeatable phrases your team uses internally to guide culture, decision making and behavior.

They shape how you speak, serve, decide and lead, especially in moments of stress, growth and uncertainty, grounded in your core pipe, purpose, vision and values.

These phrases aren't aspirational, they're operational.

They're cultural commitments or spoken truths that make your ideals real in everyday work.

And when you use impact mantras consistently, they help you grow a thriving company where both kindness and performance go hand in hand.

What makes a mantra?

They are short, repeatable phrases used internally with your team, and they're designed to be emotionally resonant and easy to remember.

They become shorthand for how you solve problems.

They prompt aligned action in moments that cause stress or conflict or when you're trying to grow.

They guide people into making decisions and showing up with each other in times of stress.

Some impact mantras may remain constant in your company forever, while others may evolve for a specific challenge, season of growth, or particular campaign.

These mantras allow you to align your team quickly on how to act and behave.

They guide how your team speaks, decides, serves and leads.

Impact mantras make culture operational, not just aspirational.

As a founder, you are shaping more than a company.

You're building a micro society, a living, breathing culture that can operate with more kindness, coherence and excellence than the larger society in the world.

Impact mantras give you, as a founder and leader, the tools to create an elevated culture.

You offer your team a new way of operating, a new blueprint, a way to work that honors a person's brilliance, fosters true belonging and Aligns success and prosperity for all.

This is the opportunity you have as a founder.

When you choose and pursue Impact Mantras, you're asking deeper questions.

1.

How do we believe we can work together?

2.

What brings the best out in all of us?

3.

What kind of culture do we want to scale?

As you ask those questions, you start to come up with Impact Mantras that help you embrace and define where you want to go and how you want to work together as a team.

Where does this fit?

Fun the Larger Force for Good Model Today's core growth element is Impact Mantras.

We are going to be using the Impact Mantra Developer which you can download now at a forceforgood Biz weekly tool for free for this week.

Today we're gonna use this developer to help you define Impact Mantras and also find ways to activate and implement your mantras through a habit and a high potency action.

By the end of today, you'll leave with words that can guide your team through challenge.

Growth and Impact does this live on the four page Growth Plan?

The four page Growth plan is in four pages.

Everything you need to know to unlock the puzzle of growth in your company.

On page one of the four page Growth plan, you can see the section here.

Know your purpose at the top and then know who you serve.

At the bottom you'll see the very bottom center of the page is a place to put Impact Mantras we're going to define today.

Five to eight Impact Mantras.

They translate your values and vision into language that scales.

They serve as a cultural anchor and a leadership amplifier.

Let's talk about how are Core Values and Impact Mantras similar and different?

They are different.

They fulfill a different purpose.

Core values are how you do your business, whereas Impact Mantras help you live that way daily.

Core Values we try to have three.

In some cases you might have four or five, but fewer is better.

They are core convictions that you keep in your business forever.

Impact mantras they're five to eight resonant phrases.

Start with five to eight and over time you might grow up to 10 or 20.

They become how you speak within your company.

Core values are timeless and unchanging.

Impact Mantras.

Some are fixed while others are adaptive.

Core values are for internal and external use, whereas Impact Mantras are intended to be used internally.

Core values inspire long term behavior.

Impact Mantras prompt the action in the moment.

Like stop, drop and roll.

Tells you what to do when they're in the fire.

Right now.

How we behave.

We stop, we drop.

We roll.

Core Values Everyone on your team needs to know your core values by heart.

Anyone on your team should be able to say these are our core values.

1, 2, 3.

And that's essential because otherwise they're really not core values.

It's also the reason I always recommend three over four or five because it's hard for everybody on the team.

Especially the if you have a team of 500 or a thousand or 20,000, how are you going to get everybody to remember?

But when you have three people can remember three impact mantras, everyone on the team at least knows some of them by heart and they've heard all of them.

There'll be some that become catchy within certain teams or within certain groups or individuals.

They become shorthand on how to operate in your company.

Core values live in handbooks and on websites.

Impact mantras live in moments.

They live in meetings.

They live on agendas.

They live in your slack channel.

They live in your one on one communications when you're coaching your team or talking to someone about a challenge they're facing.

Core values answer the question, how do we succeed?

How do we deliver our corporate value?

How do we achieve our 100 year vision and our 10 year impact goal?

What are the three core beliefs or convictions we must foster to succeed?

That's what our core values are.

The three most essential things we need to live our purpose.

On the other hand, impact mantras answer the question what do we say to each other when it's hard to remember who we are?

What do we say in moments of stress, conflict, growth or uncertainty?

How should we speak, decide, serve and lead?

These are prompts that help us shorthand stop, drop and roll that tell us what to do moment to moment in our business.

Why don't teams bother to create impact mantras first, it's not something that everyone does.

It's sort of a force for good thing.

People don't even think to create impact mantras.

They think, well, we already have values, why do we need more words?

Or maybe they think, boy, impact mantras feel kind of cheesy.

There might be that kind of resistance.

They also say they should just know what to do.

Anytime you hear somebody say they should just know what to do, that's putting a block in being able to create an environment where people can learn.

The next reason is we're too busy.

Another reason people think, well, culture happens organically, right?

We want to amplify the things that will really help.

Also another reason is can short phrases really change anything?

And I would say absolutely.

You'll see how by empowering specific language and Using it again and again and putting it in agenda so it shows up will help you.

These beliefs cost your company alignment, morale and momentum.

Why you need them.

It turns abstract values into repeatable language.

They make your culture operational, not just inspirational.

They align your team without micromanagement.

They function as decision making GPs, especially in stressful moments.

They build culture consistency as you scale emotionally.

They rewire your team for kindness, ownership and service.

You'll scale faster and more sustainably when your team knows how to think, act and speak together.

Here's some illume examples we had Surround every person with remarkable care.

Somebody came to us upset.

We'd say surround them with remarks.

Remarkable care.

Somebody is upset on the team.

How can we surround them with remarkable care?

Somebody has a tragedy in their life.

How can we surround them with remarkable care?

This was powerful.

Another one we had was catch people doing the right thing.

So when we're trying to develop members of our team in the field and we're seeing that some performers are doing really well all the time, but others are struggling to be the top performers, it's tempting to always want to acknowledge the winners.

And then the people who are trying to get there but aren't become disincentivized.

So we decided we would touch people doing the right thing.

We would make it part of a culture to touch people making small improvements.

Catch people doing the right thing so they could feel valued, appreciated and cared for.

The other one we had that we used a lot.

We had several.

But this listening for unspoken needs.

We had patients who are non verbal.

All of our patients were non verbal.

So how do you listen for their unspoken needs?

With our team, people are always having unspoken.

It was important for our culture because we had people working in the field and didn't see each other.

So how do we know what their needs are?

All of their needs are unspoken.

When people come to us or from the field on our team and be upset or even interdepartmentally, right?

We would be listening for unspoken needs.

She's upset.

Listen for her unspoken needs.

So these are some examples.

Start to think about for your company.

What are those words that you use and what do you want to guide people given your particular company?

How women Lead is another great example.

This is actually the words of the credo.

There's three of the four that are in the How Women Lead credo.

This is the reason why I got involved with How Women.

Okay, so that's it.

It tells us this is the culture that we're deciding to be in and we're Saying the things that are contrary to what goes on in regular society or what sometimes doesn't go well in regular society.

Which phrases really need to be implanted?

It's the ones we want to train our people to follow in moments of stress in helping us become better.

So how women lead Be fierce advocates for each other.

In a culture that often puts women opposing each other, say yes to helping each other.

So when somebody reaches out, say yes.

This was quite a novel kind of extraordinary.

Reinforce her voice.

So when you're in a meeting and there's only two women and lots of men, reinforce her voice.

She says something, repeat it, make sure it doesn't get lost.

So these are examples that show you what the impact mantra is.

Another one is Title nine I love this woman.

Founded company that has grown to quite a size.

I believe they're around $30 million in annual revenues and fully owned by Missy Parks.

She has on her website core values and several phrases they use internal.

So our models have day jobs is one.

So this is a whole statement around who we are as a company.

Title 9.

We're not hiring people that don't look like women.

We're hiring teachers, mothers, performers, real women with real bodies and real athletes.

The second one is not all things that count can be counted.

This is looking for those things that in a business culture might only be thought of in metrics.

And, and they are saying model things that count can be counted.

So let's see, is there other things that count here?

Lead with strength, follow with heart.

So this again is saying be strong, be kind.

So what are the phrases that you're going to want to insert into your community, your company, your micro culture, your microbe society.

Let's also talk a little bit about the neuroscience of impact mantra.

So there's a reason why they work and it is neuroscience.

So repetition using that same phrase over and over again, stop, drop and rule, surround them with remarkable care, builds neural plasticity and that creates new neural pathways.

So when you say advocate for one another versus fight with one another, you're rewiring to use those words all day long.

When you use phrases over and over again, they move from short term to long term memory.

They become part of what you think right away in your long term memory.

Impact mantras become self talk by the default mode network of your brain.

They also reduce uncertainty and increase safety because everybody is using these same common words and phrases now.

They know how to behave with each other and it just brings the stress down down.

It causes everyone to just live and breathe.

And function.

It also activates mirror neurons, team resonance.

How can I support you?

Was another mantra we use.

Whenever somebody was upset, whether it was a customer or a team member, it creates that neurons.

We all know.

This is what we say.

How can we surround them with remarkable care?

Oh yeah, we know what that means.

It creates the same response from everybody in the team.

It emotionally embeds experiences through dopamine and noradrenaline by causing that connection.

When you start to use them over and over again, it creates a feeling of connection and belonging and it continues to virtuously recycle these things.

So it starts to create this moment where every time you advocate for one another, it creates dopamine.

It automates behavior under stress, same thing as stop, drop and roll.

It becomes where you go in times of uncertainty.

Because in times of uncertainty, stress and conflict, what we usually do is fight, flight, withdraw, and that is never the best response for your team.

We always want to create new behaviors that are contrary to that.

So that's why the impact mantras are so powerful.

They reinforce your most essential truths, they guide your team's behavior, they build cohesion, they strengthen identity, keep your values aligned, and they are the multipliers for your culture and growth.

So let's go ahead right into the Impact Mantra developer where we're going to contemplate and discover.

We're going to ask, what do you believe, especially in hard times?

Next we're going to ask how do you show up no matter what?

Then we're going to ask, how do you serve at your very best?

Then you're going to select five to eight impact mantras and then you're going to activate them.

So today we're going to look at some examples.

We're going to use the savvy kids example.

It's a fictitious company we use often in our master classes.

It's a company Savvy kids that specialize in shoelaces, that help kids learn to tie their shoes.

And they're planning to launch other educational tools and skill building toys over time.

We often use the shared avatar of Julie, mother of five year old Pearl, who longs to help her daughter learn to tie her shoes so Pearl can feel confident, capable and successful.

We're going to use savvy kids as an example.

I'm going to open up the Impact Mantras developer that has savvy kids as the center of the conversation.

Let me go there, take this one off and add this, this beautiful one.

See if I can get.

Aha.

All right.

Savvy kids so we've got the Impact Mantras developer now in front of us and we're going to use it right now to help you come up with five to eight.

So we're going to scroll right down.

Part 1 Contemplation and Discovery There are 12 questions I'm going to invite you to consider.

As you answer those 12 questions, you're going to put your answers on the following page.

I'll give you some examples for savvy kids.

Again, they have shoelaces that help kids learn how to tie their shoes.

Hopefully this will inspire you how you can answer the questions for your company.

What words or phrases already live inside your company?

Write them down.

Examples for savvy kids are things like every child can learn.

Let's make it fun.

Confidence starts with small wins.

Tools that teach and delight.

Simple moments.

Big milestones.

Right now, just write down words that already live inside your culture.

Second Question what do you want your team to remember when no one is watching for savvy kids they say we're not just selling toys, we're building confidence.

Customers are moms in moments, not just metrics.

A tiny success can be a lifelong memory.

So what do you want your team to Remember when no one is watching?

Action.

Question 3 what do you want your newest hire to feel on their first day and your longest serving team member feel at their hardest moments?

For savvy kids, we want them to feel inspired by the mission.

Want to have them feel proud of the purpose.

We want to have them feel connected to our impact.

We want to help them feel supported and seen.

Question 4 When your team faces failure, what mindset should guide how they respond?

For savvy kids, they learn out loud.

Try again.

Just like our kids do.

Progress over perfection.

Make it lighter.

Make it kinder.

What do your customers feel when your company is at its best?

What do your customers feel when your company is doing its very best for savvy kids?

They feel encouraged.

They feel seen.

They feel like I've got this.

So does my kid.

What do you want your customers to feel when your company is really doing its best?

What do you most admire when you witness one team member supporting you?

Savvy kids wrote they celebrate the small wins.

They lead with laughter.

They listen with heart.

What do you most admire for your team when someone on your team supporting someone else?

Kindness?

Is it respect?

Is it amplification of their success?

Celebration?

What would your most values aligned customer say about what makes your company Savvy kids made something that makes life easier.

My child feel proud.

This product actually teaches and it's fun.

Get what it means to be in the season of life.

So these are some of the questions to ask.

What would your most values aligned customers say about what makes your company different?

Question 8 what do you want your team to feel proud?

Saying out loud we help kids believe in themselves.

We help parents breathe a little easier.

We turn everyday struggles into joyful wins.

Question 9 what simple behaviors, if repeated daily, would create the culture you long for?

Celebrate progress, not perfection.

Make it fun.

Always ask is this helping a child grow?

Say thank you often and out loud.

Question 10 what do you want your company's legacy to be?

Not just in what it builds, but in how it builds it?

Company that grew children's confidence and reminded parents that they were doing a great job.

A brand that centered joy and learning.

A culture that was kind and curious.

Question 11 how would you want your team to respond to a customer who is upset, afraid or confused?

Start by listening with empathy.

Affirm their good intentions.

Offer real help simply and kindly.

And question 12 how would you want one team member to respond to another who is struggling?

Savvy kids step in with encouragement, not ego.

Normalize asking for help.

Celebrate the courage to try again.

These are all answers to your questions.

You're just brainstorming right now.

So look through your list of whatever you just wrote down and highlight the words or phrases that most resonate.

And some of them might not be put in the format of an impact mantra.

We're just looking for the things that matter to you, that are part of your company DNA, speaking both to who you're serving your customers, but then also how you need to create a culture.

You're going to create a culture that is friendly, fun, forgiving and kind to your customers.

And probably you need to create that in your existing business culture as well.

All right, so part two.

Now you've taken a moment to brainstorm and ask some questions questions and discovered.

Now the question is, what do you believe, especially in hard times?

Here's where you bring to mind your core purpose, your vision, your impact goal.

These define the why and where of your company.

So now articulate the core beliefs that anchor you in moments of uncertainty, growth and change.

What do you believe to be true even when times are hard?

Consider challenges you've already faced as a company.

Maybe the pandemic, maybe going through changes in tariffs, Maybe AI has created disruption, maybe something else, right?

Maybe there was a fire in your space and something happened.

So consider the challenge you've already faced or ones you can see on the horizon.

What do you want to remind yourself and your team during the hardest moments to keep everyone on track?

Write them down.

During COVID I turned back to our core purpose, which was remarkable care over over during COVID at Alume, we were saying, how do we surround those nurses that have no ppe?

How do we surround people who are making masks?

How do we surround the families that are scared?

How do we surround the scheduling people in our office who are taking all kinds of phone calls from nurses who are worried?

How do we surround everyone with care?

So what is the way you want to have everyone respond in hard times?

Here's some examples.

Purpose fuels profit.

People over process.

Do the right thing, not the easy thing.

Keep moving forward.

Confidence starts with small wins.

Let's make it fun even when it's hard.

Try again, just like our kids do.

Make it lighter.

Make it kinder.

As the savvy kid, decide what those statements would be that you would like to use if you're not already using them.

Part 3 Now you're going to look out for mantras that help you answer this question.

How do you show up no matter what?

So we looked in the first in this Part two, what do you believe?

Especially in hard times?

We looked to core purpose, hundred year vision and 10 year impact goals.

We looked for the why and the where of your company to help us define what those ways of operating are.

How do we want to show up in hard times?

In Part three, we're turning to our values.

What are our core core values?

How do we want to show up no matter what?

How do we want everyone on our team to behave, especially when they're under pressure?

When someone is upset, someone makes a mistake?

When you're tired and want to give up and no one is looking.

So write down what you would want your team members to do.

What would you want them to remember?

What would be the statement that would tell them how to behave?

Assume best intent.

Speak truth with kindness.

Catch people doing the right thing.

Own the outcome.

Savvy kids celebrate small wins.

Say thank you often and out loud.

Normalize asking for help.

Offer real help simply and kindly.

So you might look back on the Pages from the first part and see your 12 questions that you answered.

Maybe look there and see how you want everybody to show up.

You might find some phrases from there you want to drop into Part three and this is where you're brainstorming impact mantras that might take the stage.

Next we go to Part four.

How do you serve at your best?

This section centers on the Emotional, cultural, and relational environment you want to create in your company for your customers and your team.

Your mission describes what you do every day to advance your purpose and mission, but how you do it.

Tone, care, intentionality creates the actual experience of your company.

What fosters great work?

What helps people be creative?

What inspires collaboration?

What do we all need to thrive and serve with excellence?

So at Illume, we had the 10 steps of remarkable care.

And the first step was to fill up your cup.

So before you would go in to the world and serve, you would fill up your cup.

That was one of our impact mantras.

First, fill up your cup.

Reflect on what motivates your team to take initiative, what makes it emotionally safe to take risks and try again.

What words make room for both ambition and care, directness and cleanness.

How do we care for ourselves and each other so that we can serve from a place of abundance and not scarcity and depletion?

I had a sign in my office that was one of our impact mantras that said, please take care of yourself.

Please take care of yourself.

Because if everybody takes care of themselves, it becomes possible for us to care for others.

Surround every person with remarkable care.

How can I support you?

Make it easier, make it kinder.

Listen for unspoken needs.

Refill your cup first.

Be generous with grace.

Celebrate progress, not perfection.

We rest so we can rise.

We turn everyday struggles into joyful wins.

Help others feel purpose loud.

I've got this.

You've got this.

Encouragement is our default setting.

So what are those words?

Write them down.

All right, You've gotten a lot of ideas, right?

Go back through all that you've written down, all that you've brief brainstormed, and pick five to eight that you feel inspired to move into over the next couple of months to make part of your culture to start repeating every day.

Maybe you want to start with three.

That's fine.

Start with a few that help you really articulate, and you want to repeat those to yourself and to others.

Savvy kids chose let's make it fun.

The challenge comes, they say, all right, guys, let's make it fun.

Confidence starts with small wins.

All right, we've been going backwards on these metrics.

All right, we need to create a small win.

Confidence starts with small wins.

Try again.

Just like our kids do, we turn everyday struggles into joyful wins.

Help others believe in themselves.

Offer real help.

Say thank you often out loud.

Over the course of the experience, savvy kids drilled down and saw those phrases that kept coming up again and again.

That's how they chose their individual impact mantras.

Go ahead, choose yours and congratulate yourself.

You've just crafted your first list of impact mantras.

Be sure to add them to the bottom of your four page growth plan.

And now let's go to part six where you activate your mantras.

The final step is to select three ways to activate your mantras.

Bring them to life that make them real.

Use them every day.

So here are a few examples.

Pick three.

Write them down and put them in your calendar.

Delegate a person to take any parts of it that that you can.

You want to not do everything yourself.

You want to distribute the work because then others will become empowered and involved.

Begin each meeting with a mantra.

Add them to your onboarding and training.

Feature them in internal channels and on dashboards.

Print them on note cards, mugs or laptop stickers.

Rotate one mantra per week in team check ins.

Celebrate moments when someone lives them out loud.

Invite team members to submit new mantras.

Reflect on a different mantra each month.

Include them in customer service scripts or review tools.

Ask which mantra did we embody today?

All right, so go ahead, write down your three ways that you would like to implement.

So here we have for savvy kids.

Begin all team huddles with the mantra let's make it fun.

Followed by one story.

A joyful customer win.

We're going to add that to the huddle agenda.

See how specific this is.

We're going to delegate the responsibility to Marie to do that every day.

And this is going to start when?

Tomorrow.

Make it that specific so that you can be sure to get these impact mantras present in your company.

Now you have uncovered language already shaping your team.

You've crafted mantras that align behavior with purpose.

And you've strengthened your cultural foundation so that you can scale.

Watch and see if these are the words you're using today.

And as you add double your size, triple your size, quadruple 10x your size.

These words become the backbone of your business.

Notice how it's going to be so much better as you scale to maintain your culture and and help people keep doing the right thing.

Impact mantras are your internal GPS system.

They guide your team when you and the leaders of your company are not in the room.

Update your four page growth plan.

On the bottom of the first page, put your impact mantras.

Select a high leverage habit.

A repetitive habit, task or ritual that drives breakthrough results.

What habit could you focus on?

Impact mantras on a weekly or monthly basis?

Perhaps you could start every weekly leadership meeting with a mantra.

You could have a monthly town hall theme with a spotlight on a different mantra.

You could review one mantra in monthly performance conversations.

Maybe everybody meets with their direct supervisor or manager once a month.

You could have a single mantra that you talk about in each one.

You can have mantra moments on your channel.

You could rotate focus mantra each quarter and celebrate one story each week that brings one of the mantras to life.

You could select a team member of the week based on one of the mantras.

Pick one that inspires you.

Your culture doesn't need more rules.

It needs more repeatable language.

And be sure to have one high potency action one.

So you probably already created one from the worksheet.

So go ahead and select what that action is or reactions you're going to take.

And be sure to implement systems for your company to use these mantras.

So a mantra like Own it, Fix it, Learn can shift an entire culture from blame to bravery.

So decide how you want to make these mantras part of your culture.

We did a lot today.

Congratulations.

You defined impact mantras for your company.

You learned how to use the Impact Mantra developer, and you might see how it could be used with other teams, perhaps within your marketing team or your product team.

You could use this as an exercise to brainstorm and talk to each other.

Even just that first section could help you have a conversation.

You've integrated these new impact mantras into your growth plan.

You've identified a habit and an action to activate your mantras.

And your impact mantras themselves are now able to reconnect to culture as a growth strategy.

And they translate your values into language that scales your leadership without diluting your vision and serve as a cultural anchor so kindness and performance don't have to compete.

Impact mantras make them coexist.

So next is if you haven't already, make sure you get a copy of my book A Force for Good and learn more about impact mantras in Chapter 7.

You'll also receive the full toolkit.

All of the PDFs of the Force for Good toolkit come with it and you'll have access to the full Force for Good system.

Just go to a ForceForGood biz book to get it.

Second, if you're not already signed up for our Tool of the Week, every week we launch a new tool in Masterclass.

You can go to a forceforgood Biz weekly tool to make sure you're on that list and receive the new tool each week to boost your ability to create exponential growth in your company and install an elevated model of entrepreneurial success.

Consider the accelerator which helps you most efficiently install the Force for Good system into your company.

It's an exponential high impact, high growth system for your company.

12 modules.

It has videos, tools and assessments and you can do it without support or you can get support from myself or another integrator.

And the tiered pricing starts at just $599.

So you can get it at a ForceForGood biz accelerator.

Thank you for being here and thank you for taking the time to create impact mantras that can leverage success in your company as you scale.

Remember, the world is made better by women led business.

Let's go make the world a better place.