Most businesses have a mission statement that, with varying degrees of earnestness, they try to live out in their daily transactions.

The degree to which a business sincerely accomplishes that is one test of its true success. A health food store’s mission statement—and living out that mission—gets to the core of why we are involved in natural health.

When selecting and deciding on your mission statement, it may make sense to tailor it to your store’s market, demographics, location and local history. You’ll also want to choose something that’s easy to remember and use in promotional materials and on your website. But once that’s all decided, it’s most important to check in with yourself and your team to ensure you are living out that mission.

With that in mind, whether you have an existing mission statement or are planning to craft one soon, here are three useful questions to keep in mind:

How Do You Treat Your Customers?

Living your store’s mission statement begins by acknowledging each person who walks through your doors. Not only because every single one has the potential to be a lifelong customer, but because it is simply the right thing to do, and the way we’d all like to be treated.

In my experience in health food store retail, I can tell you taking an interest in your customers, and actively listening to them, goes a long way to ensure repeat visits. Your customers aren’t just buying products—they’re coming to you because they’re looking for someone who will understand their needs and help them.

There’s no doubt that sometimes this can be a challenge. We all have busy days, made even busier by unexpected circumstances: someone called in sick, a delivery showed up when everyone was at lunch, or your internet access went out, making credit card purchases a long process.

These are the days when your store’s mission and mission statement will either ring true or sound out of tune. If your store’s statement is something on the order of “focusing on every customer’s good health” or “providing the best that nature can offer” or any other well-intended phrase, these challenging moments are when that gets put to the test. But that’s the time to remember your mission and keep it top of mind. That’s when you need to settle your thoughts long enough to remember that each customer is an individual with their own needs, their own busy day, and very likely, their own personal trials that they’ve brought into your place of business. Part of your job is letting them let that go and enjoy their experience while they are there. Please don’t let a temporary period of chaos create any lasting damaging impressions that sell you and your store short.

How Do You Treat Your Team?

Your staff is the literal face of your business, and selecting people who bring passion, enthusiasm and dedication to their work creates an energy level that your customers will pick up on instantly.

But that can be hampered if your team feels underappreciated, underpaid or undertrained. So, how do you ensure you have the right people for the job? First, be sure to hire and retain the best. That probably sounds like a no-brainer to most people, at least in theory, but living it out in practice is harder. It requires a style of leadership that cultivates the best in people, mentors them along the way, and allows them the freedom to do their best for your store’s customers.

That coaching—along with good wages that recognize their contribution to the store’s success—is key to whether your store remains a destination for the long haul.

Additionally, recognize their value with wages that reflect it. If you pay a marginal wage, you get marginal people and marginal results. The important thing is to hire excellent people, mentor them well, and pay them what they’re worth.

Third, place a premium on education and training. Training is a must, even for employees you consider experts before you bring them on board. Being well-trained and tuned to a store’s philosophy and approach allows your team members to feel confident when they talk to customers. They feel more invested and in the know, because they truly are.

And because of their training and expertise, your staff will know they have support from you and the managers to exercise discernment about how to best help everyone who comes through your door. If that means they need to take time away from stocking shelves and other routine roles to nurture relationships with customers, so be it. Trust the experts you hire, and they’ll deliver results.

What Kind of Environment Do You Create at Your Store?

One effective way to understand what kind of environment you create is to approach your store as though you were a new customer seeing it for the first time. Put yourself in a customer’s shoes and ask yourself what you’d like to see in an ideal retail environment. What are your first impressions of the look and feel of your store? It’s easy to look past a disheveled display when it is your own, but how would it feel to see it if this was your first time entering these doors?

If that’s just not possible, enlist an honest friend to drop by and tell you what they think. Remember that while you may have the inside story as to why a display is only half finished, or why the floor isn’t swept, your customers won’t—they only have their first impressions. So, the overall attitude that your store and staff project is paramount. Does it feel good to be there and would someone feel comfortable enough to linger for a while? Does your team exude a friendly, approachable confidence, or do they seem aloof on the one hand or overbearing on the other? Nobody likes feeling invisible, but no one likes feeling “watched” either, so it’s a delicate balance. You want to maintain a sense of competence and attentiveness, but enough of a relaxed mode to allow customers to browse and feel comfortable.

Living Our Mission in Business and Life

Ultimately, our store mission statements are just re-phrasings of “the Golden Rule” that we should practice in business as well as in life. And whether you’re in a retail setting, an office, a manufacturing plant, or any other endeavor, we should live out that mission–treating others as we wish to be treated–with everyone we meet.VR

A highly regarded leader in the natural products industry, Terry Lemerond is founder and president of EuroPharma, Inc. He also founded Enzymatic Therapy, Inc. and PhytoPharmica, Inc. and is currently co-owner of the Terry Naturally Health Food Stores in Green Bay & Suamico, WI, which recently won its eighth consecutive consumer choice award as “Best of the Bay.” With more than 50 years in the natural products industry, Lemerond has researched and developed more than 400 nutritional and botanical formulations that continue to be top-selling products in the market. Lemerond shares his wealth of experience and knowledge in health and nutrition through his educational programs, including a weekly radio show and newsletter, podcasts, webinars and personal speaking engagements. He is author of 13 books, including Seven Keys to Vibrant Health, Seven Keys to Unlimited Personal Achievement and 50+ Natural Health Secrets.