Many businesses exist not just to create profits, but to serve a higher-level purpose.

A company's mission statement lays out the ambitions it ultimately wants to achieve. It typically describes a desired improvement to the status quo: whether that be making life easier for customers, innovating with new technologies, or even seeking a bigger-picture societal impact.

The mission statement can also influence how the business itself operates. It often serves as the conscience that steers acquisition or capital allocation decisions. It can set a unified company culture that impacts hiring, and can and even can be a guide for specific projects. Examples of famous mission statements include Alphabet's quest "to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful" or Chipotle's goal "to provide food with integrity."

We recently put some deeper thought into what role these mission statements should play in our objective investing research. Are there specific things within them -- either good or bad -- that we should pay closer attention to when searching for stock market opportunities?

In this month's 7investing Team Podcast, our advisors describe how mission statements influence their investing research. We also provide a few companies whose mission statements are particularly compelling.

And in the second segment of our podcast, we play a game of "Bullish or Bearish". Each advisor shares their thoughts about recent developments in an investing space they closely follow.