Living Purpose isn’t easy. How it’s done.

I’ve written a lot about “Brand for Good” and how I believe brands can and should be purpose centered. Yet, at the beginning of the year, I worked with a company that from the outside looked like it was led by purpose but had not yet put in place the systems to embed purpose into the organization and have it operate in an authentic way as the company scaled.

The lesson – it’s easy to talk about purpose. It’s hard, but achievable, to live it in the early days of building a business. But it’s hardest to continue to be governed by purpose as you move beyond the central people who built the business when a company needs to bring others onboard to help the business grow.

I had the opportunity this past month to hear Seth Goldman of Honest Tea and Executive Chair, Board Member of Beyond Meat speak about those companies’ success and how you can connect values to a business agenda.

Seth spoke to the importance of having clarity around a company’s purpose and how that taps into people’s intrinsic motivations. At Honest Tea, he said that “every employee was in it for the mission.” In the early days, he shared, they certainly weren’t there for the pay. He added, when speaking to purpose-led start-ups, many of which fail just like any start-up, “If you do something you believe in, it’s never a failure.” I’m sure his early employees embraced this concept.

When asked how to keep a business centered around a purpose and mission once purchased by a large corporation (Coca-Cola in the case of Honest Tea), Seth shared what worked for them:

• Embed and ingrain the mission into the DNA of the brand.

• Utilize third party verification, such as the products’ USDA Organic and Fair Trade certifications.

• Keep the founder onboard and involved over the course of the life of the business.

There’s enough evidence out there that purpose can contribute to positive business results, support a positive work culture, and keep employees engaged. But how do you live it? Companies need to make a concerted effort to not just articulate Purpose and Values, but ensure they get embedded into a business to have them endure and have the impact over the course of a business’s lifetime.

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