I’ve been working with a fair number of Founders lately who feel like they’re navigating particularly rough seas. Not that navigating uncertainty is anything new for startup Founders, but the added insecurity stemming from myriad world events is seemingly making the startup seas quite a bit choppier (read: many Founders have expressed they can’t even see land any longer). It’s during these times — the particularly uncertain ones — that values become even more critical to an organization.

When Hannah and I first articulated our values, we did it a little differently than most. We worked together for an entire year with multiple clients and then sat down one day to ask ourselves the questions, “Why do our clients love us, and what’s most important to us as a business now that we know what we’re doing?” Through that process, we came up with five key values statements (see below) that we live by. And when I say “live by,” I literally mean that not a week goes by where we don’t explicitly talk about at least one of our core values. They are the rules that we follow and the heart of what we do.