Keeping passion and values alive in your business

Executive overview

Purpose-driven businesses outperform those built on financial goals alone. When mission, values, and individual strengths are aligned, passion becomes self-sustaining — not something to chase.

Joe Apfelbaum (CEO, Ajax Union) and host Bill Gallagher draw on an ancient framework to identify seven practices that keep culture alive across time: teach values, talk about them constantly, recite them daily, wear them proudly, keep them visible, post them at entries, and build incentives around them.

Culture sustained by deliberate ritual beats culture left to drift.

Setting intention before the day begins

• Passion ignites when purpose aligns with personal values and strengths — not just financial goals.
• The evening before is more important than the morning itself: what you set your mind to before sleep shapes how you wake.
• Sleeping on key questions (e.g. quarterly priorities) lets the subconscious work; you wake ready to act.
• Goals fire motivation when they are specific, values-aligned, and slightly audacious.
• "Intentional" goals differ from accidental ones: seek them out deliberately, with a plan for when and where they happen.

Building a morning routine that holds

• Motivation is unreliable; environment design and checklists make the routine automatic.
• Lay out exercise gear the night before — removing friction is the difference between doing it and skipping it.
• A checklist replaces willpower: journaling, prayer, meditation, physical exercise, and creative work all before the working day begins.
• Hydration over caffeine: a 5% drop in hydration causes a ~30% drop in energy; 12 oz of water per hour sustains energy without the crash.
• The goal is to reach the office having already completed your top priorities — the rest of the day is a bonus.

Keeping energy alive with the team

• Every meeting agenda starts with "drink water" — a signal that physical state matters.
• A daily 9:30 huddle ("daily training") opens with an icebreaker, covers industry news, and includes a short staff presentation; recorded for those who miss it.
• A Slack check-in captures gratitude, wins, roadblocks, and ideas — keeps the team aligned without email overload.
• A weekly all-company meeting and a separate Monday strategy session reinforce vision and values at a regular cadence.
• StrengthsFinder (Gallup, 34 strengths) is used for every hire: match people to roles that play to their strengths, and frustration drops while passion rises.

Seven practices for sustaining culture — the ancient framework

The practices below are drawn from a millennia-old tradition for keeping culture alive; applied directly to business:

1. Teach them — onboard every new hire on the mission, values, and BHAG from day one.
2. Talk about them — put values on the website, mention them in every meeting.
3. Recite them daily — build a values recitation into the daily huddle so they become memorised.
4. Wear them proudly — uniforms, badges, or any outward signal that makes values visible.
5. Keep them in front of your eyes — rotate screen backgrounds and screensavers to reflect the current theme.
6. Post them at entries — visitors and staff see the values on the way in and out.
7. Create incentives and consequences — reward adherence; tie bonuses to values-aligned behaviour.

Routines as liberation, not constraint

• Visionary founders often resist systems; the reframe is that the right routines create space to innovate freely everywhere else.
• Pilot analogy: checklists are mandatory for takeoff and landing; once airborne, you can fly however you want.
• Too few processes create chaos; too many create rigidity — the goal is the balance between the two.
• Processes borrowed from culture or family are not enough: build routines intentionally from your own values and strengths.