You’re hired. But first, here are some rules.

Gratuitous picture of our new office.

For years, Fohr Card was less than 5 people.

This meant that every single employee we had was trained by either our co-founder, Rich, or myself. They sat next to us, drank with us, walked with us, saw our fights, shared our wins. They were an extension of our own brains and they ended up being pretty damn good at their jobs.

Then, as we started to grow beyond our small core, we felt it necessary to get down on paper a kind of manifesto of values, belief, culture and conduct. We call the resulting document “A Preamble to Your Success”, and it has a number of influences from people smarter than myself (some are just straight lifted from Ben Horowitz). It was written in collaboration with our existing employees from the start. We make every new hire, even part-timers, sign this document alongside their offer letter.

The Fohr Card team.

I believe it is vitally important to let new employees know the kind of people you expect them to be before you tell them problems you want them to solve. Otherwise, you might find they solve them in a way that goes against your core values.

1) Ask for forgiveness, not permission. We hired you because we like the way your brain works, please do take the time to use it.

2) If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t just stare at your computer. Rich takes a nap, James takes a walk. You take whatever you need.

3) Get a life and keep it. We are a tight knit group here, but it is important that you continue to develop and grow outside of work and your work life. If we can be of any assistance in helping you pursue a passion, we will do so within reasonable terms.

4) A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about. If you think we are fucking something up, please don’t keep that to yourself.

5) Work with trust. As a small business with big goals, this is of paramount importance to us. Without it, communication breaks and things fall apart. When we trust each other, we can trust that our individual actions all work towards the same shared goals.

6) Bad news first. If something is going wrong in your department, please share that bad news more quickly than you would good news.

7) Execute, execute, execute. We will win this market by a long series of small moves and advancements. Some will fail, some will succeed. It’s important that we are trying little things everyday on the way to success.