Kay: 

Hey family. Welcome back. We’re here this week to talk all about values. 

Shi:

I’m so glad we get to bring this subject forward and examine it together this week. It’s one that’s often talked about, a word that’s used a lot, and sometimes it can become white noise. 

Kay: 

So you’re gonna hear us discuss personal values, business values, and then other kinds of values and how they apply to your life. 

Shi:

Wanna kick off talking about values, where understanding exactly what we’re talking about when we use the word values. Once we can all be on the same page, it’s easier to talk about a subject. And when you look up the definition of values, you see a person’s principles or standards of behavior, one’s judgment of what is important in life. 

Kay: 

Ooh, what a powerful definition. I just wanna focus on that ‘standards of behavior’ piece, because really what your values come down to are, what you hold yourself accountable for, and then how you act out your life. And as we know, our actions create so much of our world. So being able to kind of hone in on what’s dictating those actions can really be helpful for you.

Shi:

Yeah, when we look at that phrase in particular, Kay, ‘to standards of behavior,’ it’s not standards of ideals, right? Standards of best practice. It’s standards of behavior, which means you can tell someone’s values if you examine their behavior. What are the results in their life? How do they behave? How do they conduct themselves? This is going to reflect what their actual values are rather than what their stated values are. 

Kay:

So whether you like it or not, your values are dictating your decisions. And when you can get a hold of your values and understand them from a personal art business–you’re gonna hear about some of the other kind of group values that we have–when you’re able to figure out what those are, you’re able to be more intentional in the way that you create action in your life. 

Shi:

Right. Let me ask you a question, right? Have you ever had a moment where you would probably agree that you’re not proud of the way you behaved? Maybe you told a lie, maybe you avoided somebody, maybe you acted in a way you weren’t proud of, but you are the kind of person who would say that you value integrity or you value connection, or you value honesty. That this is one of those areas where you can see sometimes our stated values are different than how we behave and act. And once we bring awareness to that, then we can really start to play a game that for us has been deeply fulfilling and extremely rewarding. 

Kay:

Well, we’re excited to talk about someone who we think has a great deal of values in their life, but who is also someone who recently acted in a way that he wasn’t super proud of. 

Shi:

We are talking about Will Smith. Everyone knows him, the world famous superstar. We recently even talked about his book in a previous episode, we both read it this spring and we loved it. We loved getting to know the character of Will Smith in person. He is just as large of a character as he seems to be in the public eye. And it was really amazing to hear some of his stories and hear him talk about some of the decisions he’s made along the way and how they reflect his values. 

Kay:

So as we reflected on Will Smith’s story and the actions that he took throughout the book, we really kind of identified a few of the values that we think come forward for Will. Now it seems like he really values family. He clearly values fitness. He’s very dedicated to his routine. He values protection, loyalty, and of course, achievement. I mean, he’s one of the biggest superstars in the world. 

Shi:

He talks a lot about this too. You know, if we’re gonna look at his standards of behavior that he’s held himself to, as you read the book, you’ll see he’s got all of these different instances in his life and scenarios where he’s demonstrating these values, even sometimes when they’re destructive, like the slap heard around the world.

Kay:

Ah, the slap heard… reverberating… A lot happened with that slap. Maybe you haven’t been anywhere near the internet within the last two months or three months. Yeah. You might not know that Will Smith got up on stage at the Oscars and slapped Mr. Chris Rock across the face after he made a joke about his wife, Jada, who suffers from a disease called alopecia, which causes hair loss. And she’s been open about this in the public eye and Chris Rock made a joke about her being bald. But as we’ve gone through Will Smith’s book, and now reflecting on how his values were dictating his actions, understanding that he values family and protection to the point where maybe he acts in a way he’s not proud of becomes way more understandable. 

Shi:

Yeah. And he talks about it in the book. Even from a young boy, he always wanted to be in a monogamous relationship where he could be the hero, where he’s the protector. He just wants to spoil a woman and love her to death. And that’s been his quest romantically forever. And you saw that play out in the clip and during that moment for him, and obviously, not as the proudest moment, but it is reflective of his values. And so it’s just interesting to see that they can both help us and sometimes steer us in an emotionally charged direction if we let them. If we let ourselves succumb to that emotion. But coming up next, we are looking forward to talking about how figuring out our own personal values has really helped us transform the way we make decisions. 

/****/

Shi:

All right. Back here in segment two of Values Matter week. And right now we wanna talk about our personal values and our experience with discovering what they were and then rearranging them. 

Kay:

Now, we had already established business values that–before we attended a conference called “Date With Destiny” with Tony Robbins, and we had done this for our business–we had worked with our team and we’re gonna talk about that in the next segment. We had established them for the business and then going to hear more about personal values and how they play out in your life at “Date With Destiny.” Shy, I don’t know about you, but I was kinda like, “Duh, like how we have not done this?” 

Shi:

Oh, totally. I knew that it was important. And I know we were both excited to get to that conference, “Date With Destiny.” Let us just paint a little bit of the picture here for you. If you’ve seen “I Am Not Your Guru” on Netflix, that is the conference that they follow Tony through. It’s a six day conference, it’s in West Palm Beach. We have been so excited to go and we kept talking about leading up to “Date With Destiny.” Who are the women that walk in to “Date With Destiny,” right? We did a lot of personal growth and development to get us into that door so that we could be in the right space and it was six intense days. You’re dancing all day. You’re up late. You’re digging deep. It’s freezing. It’s this whole hodgepodge of experience while you’re there. But you get immersed in the material and the experience so that you can be most open to talking about what those personal values are for you now and being in the right state and going through the right process in order to discover those and then getting to decide, “Well, what is the person I wanna be and the goals that I wanna achieve? And do my current values allow me? Are they in alignment with that? Do they allow me to achieve that outcome?” And that was really huge for us. And then it’s so fun to pick your new values, come on. 

Kay:

It is such a good time. You get the opportunity to dig deep and dive in and figure out, “Okay, well, if my values dictate how I act, how do I want to act? How do I want myself to show up in the world, no matter what, right?” Defaulting to the behavior that you’re looking for, the behavior that you want and being in this environment at the “Date With Destiny” conference. I mean, gosh, it was so fun. I literally danced my toenails off.

Shi:

Yes, you did. That is a true statement. 

Kay:

A literal statement. Very, very literal. That happened, true story. But the values that we sat forward have really helped. So my five values are vibrancy, grace, flow, presence, and love. So five values now that are at the top of my list, that help me to personally act out in a way that I’m proud of. 

Shi:

It’s helped me transform as well. You know, as I designed the character of who I wanted Shila to be and what I think my potential can be at that conference and thinking into that. It actually took me about a year later to take everything we did there and distill it into the words that I really liked, but I kept working on it through the year. And mine came out to be eight and I put them on a values vision board. In fact, both of us did, and we made these boards during another Tony Robbins conference, but that’s a story for another time. But mine, I put mine on a board and in the center of the board I said, “Let your values dictate your decisions.” And then I’ve made mine into a little mantra, so I’ll say it for you all so you can hear the values that I hope to make all my decisions through and that’s to “Be heart-centered and active to learn and grow, and articulate. Be energetically right and appreciate experience, value others, be here now.” 

Kay:

Okay. I am feeling the energy from that. Oh my goodness, how fun! I love that you made that.

Shi:

Yeah. You’re actually doing the hand motions together. You can’t see it, but there are hand motions and we were doing this. 

Kay:

Oh my gosh. Well, I love it. And being able to now see these values act out more so within our lives, over the course of the past–now it’s been almost–three years since that conference has been amazing. And sometimes they’ve acted out in ways that we’re not proud of, but most of the time they’re in ways that do benefit who we wanna show up as in the world. And so we would highly encourage you to, first off, if you can attend a “Date With Destiny” or an “Unleash The Power Within” event with Tony Robbins, it’s absolutely worth it. And spend some time working on your own personal values, put that list out. What are the things that you value? And if there are things on the top of that list that maybe are having you act in a way in your life. Remember that we’re not talking about what you want to value, but what you actually value. If something in your life isn’t going the way that you want, chances are you can fix it with a repositioning or reframing of your values. So next up, we’re gonna talk a little bit more about how values play out in your business. 

Shi:

As you know, we are originally from, and still a restaurant family. 

Kay:

We are so proud of the values that we built inside the Squeeze In restaurant community, and how they play out in the actions of our team. 

Shi:

Imagine a pancake stuffed with walnuts and topped with sauteed bananas and butter. It is the best thing, it’s called the Jack Johnson pancakes. And you have to get one next time you’re at a Squeeze In.

Kay:

Now, these pancakes are served by some of the most delightful and energetic people in the world who will treat you like your family, like you’re royalty every single time that you’re in. So if you’re in Nevada, in California or in Idaho, we encourage you to check out the Squeeze In restaurants. And hey, if you’re interested in maybe owning a business like this, you know, one that’s centered around values, we encourage you to visit squeeze in.com to find out more about franchising. 

Shi:

And remember, it’s Squeeze In with one N at the end of the word in Squeeze In.

Kay:

Squeeze in.com. 

Kay:

All right, next up we’re talking about how values play out in business and how maybe if you’re a leader, they can play out in your team. 

Shi:

Now, I think when most people hear the word values, they traditionally associate it immediately with family and personal values. But for us, we are from an entrepreneurial family and a small business family, so it was more applicable for us at first in the business setting, which is where we were most comfortable talking about values for a long time. We have a lot of experience with values in the business realm. And we brought the concept early on into our restaurant business. They’ve evolved a lot over time and that process has been really rewarding, both in a fulfillment sense and in a bottom line sense. 

Kay:

So Shi the first time that these values were created was actually at a format, right? 

Shi:

Mm-hmm.

Kay:

So in our company, we’ve got once a year–we don’t like to call them retreats–but advances where we take everybody to a remote location and we do some leadership training. We work together, and at this particular format, where were you guys? 

Shi:

I think we were up in South Lake Tahoe. And we were talking about bringing in values into the restaurant. And what we did was talk about all the things that are the standards of behavior, the standards of the experience within the restaurant walls. And then, as you know, having fun family memories, signing the walls, delicious food, great service, feels like home. As we were taking all of these things that everyone was saying, we distilled them down to four, beautiful essences of exactly what the standard of behavior and experience is at the Squeeze In. And one thing that was really important to us during this values exercise was to make sure that we worded all of these values in the verb tense. In other words, using action words, words that end in ‘-ing,’ right? Why was this important? Because these are things that can be demonstrated. If something is a verb, then we know that we can observe it. If something is noun, it’s a thing, it’s a concept, right? If you value vision, that can be really hard to demonstrate and to point to, and if you want values to be something that you use decisions out of, you’ve gotta make them action words that you can demonstrate. 

Kay:

I love it because really what we’re demonstrating is those standards of behavior, just like the definition says, and when you put it into the verb tense, you’re able to clearly put the two things up to each other. Do the actions match the standard of behavior at which we brought forward? So the values for Squeeze In are, “Live to serve. Show the love. Provide an experience. And grow.” And these four values act as–what we like to call–a decision making matrix for our teams to then execute on. And because this was cultivated from an exercise of people who came together, who loved Squeeze In, who knew Squeeze In, who were steeped in it every single day, that it is able to now be true for many more years to come. And I imagine, at some point, that they will shift.

Shi:

And, you know, a more recent example as well. You know, we’re partners with Joseph McClendon III, a dear human being and an incredibly well-accomplished, well-educated individual in Neuroscience and Neuropsychology. We have co-founded the Neuroencoding Institute with him, and we brought forward this idea of values, and putting them into the verb tense as we formed the Institute. Actually, as we were coming into almost our first year, but brought out same thing, brought all of our instructors together, got Joseph together, got our key team members together, and talked about what were the things that were the essence of the Neuroencoding Institute. And then how do we turn them into verbs so that we can see them demonstrated, use them to dictate the decisions that we make and use them in our marketing and as our foundations for the cornerstones of what we offer. And since doing that, even just six months ago, the placement of these values in this organization has been transformational. 

Kay:

It’s been incredible to see the way that people have embraced the values for themselves, that we’ve been able to use the values in communicating what it is that’s different and special about the community. And it’s been really incredible. These are values like, “Assassinate complexity.” We totally took “grow.”

Shi:

I think that for us, that is a core DNA. “Grow” is always going to be in there. 

Kay:

We’ve brought it over. We’ve got “Embrace the proven process.”

Shi:

We’ve got “Champion celebration.”

Kay:

Well, I think that’s my favorite one. 

Shi:

Well, I like “Activate.”

Kay:

Oh, that’s a yeah. 

Shi:

And then “Grow.”

Kay:

Absolutely.

Shi:

So those are our five values for the Neuroencoding Institute. And as you can hear them, you can feel the energy of the Institute, right? Don’t mind our notification in the background there, but what you should mind is this teaching on values and how they can be applied to a business setting and help so tremendously. 

Kay:

So if you are a leader of any kind, we highly encourage you to work on reverse engineering your values. Look at the actions that are demonstrated by the team that’s in place. Take what’s good, what’s special, what works, and move it into a value sense that everyone can rally around, that everyone can act upon. And remember, it’s best if they’re in verb form. 

Shi:

All right, next up, we’re gonna talk about other kinds of values. They come in quite the variety and we’ll see you there.

/****/

Shi:

All right, to end off our official series here on values, we wanna talk about the variety of other values. When we think about this word, we can see it demonstrated anywhere where people are behaving. We’re gonna see standards of behavior emerge, which means in our groups, in our society, in our family, in our ideologies, like religion, we’re gonna see standards of behavior arise. 

Kay:

Now these standards of behavior, again, if they don’t have them already set forth, or if they have some set forth that they aren’t congruent with, and if you wanna know what that is, what the values of the organization, the family, the group, or whatever it is that you’re involved in, look at the behaviors. How do they act? How does the group act at large? What are the energetic emotions or the emotional undercurrents that are at play within the group, right? Because a business can value integrity, but also be acting without integrity in how they treat their employees, or treat their customers or their guests. So understanding that this isn’t what we say, again, but what we do and what you routinely do within a group or an organization, or a family really influences how you, the individual, act as well. 

Shi:

Right? Probably the first place all of us are exposed to values is within the institution of family. We all came from some kind of primary group. Most of us, that’s a mom and a dad or some combination of parents and step parents. But this is where most of us first encounter values, these standards of behavior, right? If your parents–because they are the ones that dictate the standards of behavior and the values in, in your world–if they value significance in being seen as achievement-oriented, then they’re gonna be in that ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ type of behavior, where you’re always seeing new additions or new cars or those kinds of things. And so you learn and usually it takes that value into your life with you, and if you never take the chance to examine them–like you heard us talk about earlier in the show at our experience at “Date With Destiny”–you can just end up playing out that same value without even realizing it’s part of you. 

Kay:

And we were really lucky growing up, our mom and dad had some pretty dang solid actions toward one another. And you know, we certainly weren’t perfect and we still aren’t, but they really were able to demonstrate the actions, like not going to bed angry, talking things out, laughing a lot with one another. Family first.

Shi:

Yeah, physical affection was another one, demonstrating and showing love. And these were all of their behaviors, which were our family values. And we’re so grateful to have gotten so many wonderful ones from our family, especially knowing that on our mom’s side, it was a lot harder for her when she was growing up. So kudos to you, mom, and shout out, you did great! But values are demonstrated outside of the family as well. If you think about, Kay, we were talking before recording about how we come together in groups. There’s this concept of the third place, right? Like most people feel most integrated into their community and happy when they’ve got three places. Now two of these places in your life are pretty much determined for you, right? It’s where you spend your nights and it’s where you spend your days, a.k.a. your home at nights. And then if you’re in school, then that’s your secondary place. If you work, then that’s your secondary place. But having a third place, like a church, like a gym, like a coffee shop that you belong at is really one of those secret formulas for people to feel most integrated and least lonely. But it’s also another place where we see values demonstrated.

Kay:

You know, for quite a few people Squeeze In is a third place. 

Shi:

Yeah. We love that. 

Kay:

Shout out to our regulars, if you are one of them. Because we know that the third place is so important, we try to create a really good environment for people, so that third place can really be like the family in the way that the values that they demonstrate–remember, the actions, not what they say–can affect you one way or another. Now the third place can be a positive influence on your life, maybe you’re part of a CrossFit community and the people there are really dedicated to going to the gym, and this is something that helps you stay fit, knowing that you’re gonna see your friends in the morning, knowing that you’re gonna work out with a trainer that you like, having those kinds of things in place can be really, really good for you. Similarly, if maybe you’re in a group environment, like–I don’t know–you join a local, popup sports team and you’re in a softball league, but the people on the league are crap talking one another, or are very negative, and the actions that they demonstrate–maybe they’re engaging in regular bad habits like drinking after every single game or getting too drunk at those affairs–those things can rub off on you too, and end up impacting you negatively. 

Shi:

Another way that we see values demonstrated is on that macro level. You always know I’m gonna bring it back to Sociology and seeing things through that lens, but we’ve got societal values too, right? Cultural values. Where you were raised has different standards of behavior versus other places. You know, there’s a lot of variety around the world of ways of behaving, of ways of dressing, of ways of speaking, of ways of communicating. In Japan, it’s very rare for men to tell their wives that they love them and show any physical affection. There’s even movements now of “Say, you love your wife day” and men will stand on the hill and shout that they love their wife. It’s a completely different culture because there are values that are matrixing, their decisions look a lot different. And so as we consider these kinds of values, we see that there’s just a lot of variety there. And when we are aware of the societal values, then you get the chance to bring some intention to whether or not you want to embrace that value or maybe not. 

Kay:

You know, we’re West Coast girls, but Shi, you married a Southern boy. 

Shi:

I did. I did. I did. 

Kay:

And I know that when you very first went and visited his family in the South, you were kind of shocked when you realized that everybody has a deep fire in their kitchen. 

Shi:

Yeah. And I had never had avocado before. And the produce section was much more muted than here and less vibrant. And it was just really interesting. The health options were much more limited and seeing that value of more vibrancy and raw foods here on the West Coast versus the Southern Coast was definitely a great one to bring up. 

Kay:

Right. Well, in the South, I’m sure that they value deliciousness. Right? 

Shi:

Right. 

Kay:

They come around together. It’s a celebration, it’s a coming together. Right? So the more delicious the food is that’s at the table, the better for everyone’s experience. And here on the West Coast, you know, sands, the frier… you might find juicers. Now is green juice necessarily delicious? No, but is it really good for your body? Yes. It is healthy that the values of the regions play out, meaning delicious coming together or more helpful options, even if you’re sacrificing on taste.

Shi:

Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into values. They are in action, whether or not you acknowledge them. So we always know that shining a light on something can help you just bring any attention or areas of work that need to surface and to light. So we hope that you enjoyed this and we look forward to seeing you again, on the Kay and Shi Show.

Kay:

We are in your corner. And remember, we’re rooting for you.