The longer I spend as a CEO, the more often I find myself thinking—shit, they were right.

When you're in an individual contributor role, it’s easy to look at all of those ‘culture-building’ activities as extras. Just let me do my job. Culture-building comes across as fluff.

Even in my previous Head of Social position, most of my role was sitting in my corner with my cold brew ripping content. I miss it sometimes.

But in the 15 months since starting Compound, I’ve realized culture sets the standard for our team. Culture is how I scale excellence in our organization. It’s not a nice to have. It’s a necessity.

Our team is nine deep, and only growing. More and more tiles occupy the Google Meet on our weekly All Hands. It’s wild. But it’s just the beginning.

We’ve surpassed a seven-figure run rate, and getting to the next level of the video game that is agency life requires a locked-in team.

So, I spent some time over the past 2-3 weeks sitting down, highly caffeinated, getting our core values out of my head and onto paper. After a painful amount of revisions, I think I got it. Rolled these out to the team last week. I want to share them with you now.

The following is pulled straight from the Onboarding section of our ClickUp knowledge base.

The Compound Core 7

What are our core values at Compound?

• Obsession with content quality.

• Immaculate attention to detail.

• And a bias for action.

• Ownership mentality.

• Constant learning.

• Integrity.

• All of the above allows us to provide a world-class client experience.

We’ll refer to these as the Compound Core 7—because naming things make them stick. Cool? Cool.

In this section, I’ll walk you through each of these values in more detail.

I. QUALITY

We have an obsession with content quality at Compound.

Consistently producing high-quality content for our clients solves a lot of business problems. Clients stick around longer. Sales gets easier. Referrals come around more often.

And of course, we attract more people like you, who are also obsessed with creating outstanding content.

Our standard is high, and the bar doesn’t bend, but the type of people who work at Compound appreciate that standard.

II. PRECISION

We have immaculate attention to detail in everything we do here at Compound—from content, to client experience, to team-building.

We obsess over the hook of a post. We spend the extra time to clean up grammar slip-ups. We adhere to deadlines for clients.

This doesn’t mean things won’t break…that’s going to happen at an early-stage company. But we strive for precision every day—and don’t make the same mistake twice.

III. SPEED

Speed is a competitive advantage at the company-level and the individual level.

The speed at which we identify and solve problems influences how fast (and how much) Compound can grow, and how rapidly you grow in your role.

Think about it like a content strategy. Client A posts 2 times in the entire month. Client B posts 5 times per week. Over the course of the month, Client B has 4x more data on what works—which will influence the performance of the content in the next month. See how that works?

When given the option to solve a problem now **or next week, we opt for now.

IV. OWNERSHIP

Our team has an ownership mentality. We take responsibility for the projects we’re on. We’re proactive, not reactive. If you need material from a client, you ask. If you need feedback from your manager, you ask.

When we surface problems, we also come prepared with proposed solutions.

We take pride in the projects we own—whether it’s a client account, an operations project, etc.

V. EDUCATION

Content marketing is always changing. It’s our responsibility to stay in the know on what’s working.

Our team is made up of content nerds.

We read newsletters and watch YouTube videos on this stuff for fun—because it is fun. Or we see it that way, at least. Maybe we’re weird.

VI. INTEGRITY

We are playing the long game. We never do anything that would hurt the agency in the long run, and we take the same approach to working on client accounts.

No sketchy growth hacks, no scaling irresponsibly.

The fundamentals done well, over a long enough period of time, make winning inevitable. There’s a reason why NBA legend, Kobe Bryant, practiced the same, basic moves over and over and over again. The fundamentals are our foundation.

VII. CLIENT-FOCUSED

Living by all of the above allows us to provide a world-class client experience. And bringing this full-circle—a strong client experience solves a lot of ‘business problems.’

When clients have an amazing experience, they stay longer.

When clients have an amazing experience, they give us more latitude for experimentation.

When clients have an amazing experience, sales presentations come across more confident—because we know what we can do.

Operating by the core values above accomplishes 2 things:

• It makes it unreasonable for Compound to lose as a company.

• It makes it unreasonable for you to stagnate in your role.

The decisions we make at Compound are filtered through these core values. Who we hire, how we approach client services, what our company roadmap looks like.

We hired you because you showed these traits during the interview process. And you’ll have a prosperous career here as you continue to exemplify the seven core values above.

Okay, back to present-day me writing this piece.

Riding the red line between quality in speed is the dilemma I’ll forever be trying to crack as CEO of a content agency. It’s hard. It’s a moving target. But the best way to do it is to build a team of certified assassins who are obsessed with content. Obsessed.

I’m proud of our body of work so far. Our client results speak for themselves. I’m prouder of the growth I’ve seen in several of our early team members. The high standard we have compresses the time it takes to become a better marketer.

I hope this piece serves as a bat signal to writers & marketers who are dying to be a part of a high-performing, cohesive team. Agency life isn’t for everyone. It’s fast-paced. High volume. Jarring, even. But the right type of Type A creative thrives in it.

We’re actually in the process of hiring right now. If Compound sounds like the company you’ve been wanting to join, check this out. Would love to chat.

If you're reading this at some point in the distant future, all good. Check out the LinkedIn jobs page for openings. Hope to chat soon.

Reading list 📚

Here’s a quick update of what I’ve been reading and watching over the past couple of weeks.

• The key to growing as a creative by Oren John 🎥

• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami 📚

• The Will of the Many by James Islington 📚

• pov: a 26 y/o entreprenuer investing in a tech company by Daniel Dalen 🎥

I’m excited to start documenting more here. I won’t share everything, as I don’t think sharing exact revenue numbers does anything for you and me. But I will share as much as I see valuable.

Right now, team-building and recruiting are the skills I’m focused on most. If anyone reading this happens to be a more seasoned founder or CXO, hit me with your favorite resource for this stuff. I’m all ears.

Keep compounding,

Tommy Clark

PS: If you want more content and marketing strategy material, Social Files is where I talk about that stuff.