photo credit: Choubistar

In today’s global market place people are looking to go green for many reasons.
One good reason is the environmental impact going green has.

If you consider the impact of fuel burn in the daily commute to work the overpowering reason to go green is the cost of gasoline.

More and more the ability to stay at home and telecommute is taking first choice for many people.
Inter the home business arena and the ability to have family time when you want it, work in your sweats and slippers, not have to suck the exhaust fumes of the traffic ahead of you on the daily commute is another environmental plus.

Now the dawn of going Green really makes sense to the stay at home business. With the event of webinar conference calls, instant messaging, email, the access to the internet on every form of communication and the blossoming down turn of corporate jobs has awakened the drive of many home businesses.

The ability of high technology to interface with down home values has driven one home business to record setting growth. This is good news to those looking for a home business in this maze of global confusion.

To have a successful green home business you want to be sure that you do not jump on the wrong ship. Several things must align for green be effective.

The product should be toxic free with a wide range use (usable for animals and humans alike).

The return on your work should be substantial with no hard qualifying to keep your check coming in each month.

There should be no breakage on commissions that go to the company ever. Avoid the company that says in their income statements “we pay Up To” a certain amount this is a sign that they may not pay that much unless you qualify.

The company should have a strong vision of where they are going long term and should have a strong policy of enforcement.

There should be a global bonus pool that all the top distributors can share in which helps the many groups of distributors work together for the common goal of the company (IE, they all share in the global growth eliminating competition.)

Last but not least there should be many events tied to the internet for training the new growing business builders who want go green and make lots of green from home.

One company has accomplished all of that in one sweep. Growing at a rate in its first four years faster than Wal-Mart, E-bay, and if you think back that far even Microsoft.

This going green and high-tech for this company had created some income figures that out pay some if the top government paying jobs in the white house. This company has made more millionaires than the famed show Deal or No Deal. Going green can really change your life and life style. Try it you might like it!

Keith Hiebert has over 25 years of experience in the home business arena and as aligned himself with Xango a company that in five years is doing business in twenty five countries so far. Keith Hiebert can be reached by accessing his web site http://StreamLineQuick.com

photo credit: myuibe

A Green Business is something to be proud of. By establishing such a business you are contributing to the well being of the Planet and of your fellow man. It doesn’t matter if you are a consulting firm that advises others on the best ways to Go Green or if you sell merchandise that is “green”, by adding your voice and your resources to the Eco friendly movement then you are doing the world a great service.

As the Green Movement gains momentum and more companies are joining the fold it is important to make certain that your business does not become another tree among the ever growing forest. You have to market your business in such a way that it is noticeable and necessary while maintaining the right to be Green.

It’s not easy being Green especially if you are a small business just starting out in the Eco friendly business market. Consumers that are environmentally concerned are also environmentally savvy and know what to look for when shopping for goods and services that boast about being good for the environment.

Greenwashing is a negative term that you never want attached to your business. It means that a company claiming to be eco friendly and green is exaggerating and in truth, their practices of going green just do not hold up under closer inspection. Your business can avoid being accused of Greenwashing by practicing what you preach.

If you deal in energy saving light bulbs, use them in the office, the break room, where ever you can. If you trust the product enough to sell it then use it. If you’re company advises others on ways to Go Green then follow your own advice. Recycle, reuse, install solar panels, water saving products, and whatever else you tell your clients to do.

Remember, no matter how well you advertise your business and market your products, if consumers have no faith in it then you will simply not make a profit and your business will become untrustworthy and a laughing stock.

When it comes to marketing your business and goods look for ways to reduce waste associated with traditional advertising techniques, including the newspaper and other print publications. More newspaper companies are using recycled materials, so if you plan on using the print media make sure your ad appears in a paper that is proud of being recycled. A popular alternative is using online services as a way to market and advertise your business. There are several methods and ways to do this, from creating an entire website devoted to your business, to using ads such as pop up ads or text based ads that appear on websites. A new addition to the online advertising game is sites devoted to marketing Green businesses. These sites allow consumers a place to go to and search databases based on location and products that are eco friendly.

The key to marketing your business and your green products is letting consumers know that it exists. Advertising such a business can be tricky as you will certainly not want to waste resources which may be mistaken as Greenwashing. Get your name out there by word of mouth, through online ads, and with any other innovative and clever method you can think of.

Other ways to market your Green Business can include: offering free recycling at the business location, or offering free seminars on how to go green. Become a positive voice in the community and encourage others, including the city to go green.

Marketing your green business will require extra effort but the rewards are well worth it not just for your profits but for the Earth as well.

The Green Pages is the leading environmentally friendly directory for people who want to shop smarter to help the environment. To help Mother Nature, please visit Eco Services.

photo credit: thingermejig

If you own a small business, you know that profits depend upon two things: income and expenses. Energy costs can be a significant expense and many business owners are taking a new approach to energy to both lower their costs and move to a more sustainable green approach. With the right information you can improve your company’s financial performance by reducing energy costs and energy waste while protecting the earth’s environment.

Businesses need energy. Whether you are a tenant or you own your building, you typically need lighting; heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC); power for office equipment; and other services to stay in business. How can you create an energy plan? Here are some ideas.

Contact your utility company. Ask if they offer free or inexpensive energy audits and/or rebates for energy-efficiency upgrades. Undertaking a comprehensive energy efficiency program, with the assistance of a professional if needed, can yield impressive savings. A useful website is Energy Crossroads, created by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a member of the national laboratory system supported by the U.S. Department of Energy through its Office of Science. The site (http://eetd.lbl.gov/einfo-links.html) provides links to dozens of agencies that provide resources for energy conservation.

You can take action yourself. There are many reliable, high-return, low-risk, strategies that you can implement with little cost. Some are very simple, while others may take some investment.

LIGHTING

• Turn off lights and other equipment when not in use. Even “vampire energy loss” from computers and equipment in passive or standby mode can account for significant energy loss.

• Replace incandescent light bulbs with Energy Star compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), wherever appropriate. CFLs cost about 75% less to operate, and last about 10 times longer.

• Adjust lighting to your actual needs and use free daylight.

• Do not “over-light.” Too much light can be counterproductive, and it costs a lot more.

• Install switch plate occupancy sensors to automatically turn on lights when rooms are occupied, and off when people leave.

• Upgrade fluorescent lamp units to T8 (1″ diameter) tubes with solid-state electronic ballasts. These are more efficient than older T12 (1.5″ diameter) tubes with magnetic ballasts.

• Install Energy Star exit signs. These long-lasting exit signs can reduce lamp replacement and can save up to ten dollars per sign annually in electricity costs while saving up to 500 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

• Purchase Energy Star qualified products for your business. You’ll have the most efficient computers, printers, copiers, thermostats, ceiling fans, refrigerators, televisions, windows, and other equipment and appliances.

WATER

• Fix water leaks. Even small leaks add up to many gallons of water wasted each month.

• Use water-saving faucets, showerheads, toilets, and urinals.

• Install an insulation blanket on water heaters, and insulate at least the first three feet of the hot water “out” pipe.

• If buying a new water heater, consider a “tankless” water heater to reduce standby costs and waste.

• Set water temperature according to your local board of health code-usually between 110 and 120 degrees.

• Landscape using plants native to your region that require minimal watering and possess better pest resistance. If local code allows, consider diverting gray water for watering.

HVAC

• Maintain your HVAC system with an annual maintenance contract. Your system may last years longer and use less energy when properly serviced.

• Regularly change or clean HVAC filters during peak cooling or heating season.

• Control the amount of direct sun passing through windows according to the season and local climate. During cooling season, block direct heat gain from the sun shining through glass on the south side of the facility. Solar screens, solar films, and even old-fashioned awnings and vegetation can help. During heating season, these same south-facing windows can contribute solar heat gain during the day.

• Install an Energy Star qualified programmable thermostat to automate your HVAC system. A programmable thermostat can optimize HVAC operation based on your schedule, and can be overridden for unscheduled events.

• Use fans. Moving air can help delay or reduce the need for air conditioning, and a temperature setting of three to five degrees higher can feel as comfortable with fans. Fans can improve comfort and save energy year round.

• Plug leaks with weather stripping and caulking. You don’t need air-and heat-escaping through your leaky building.

THE NEXT STEP: GREEN POWER

Green power is electricity produced from renewable resources including solar, wind, low-impact biomass, geothermal, and low-impact hydro. If you want to be proactive about becoming a green facility, check out the Green Power Partnership, a voluntary program offered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Green Power Partnership (http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/) supports the development of green power by offering expert advice, technical support, and resources.

For instance, do you know what fuel is used to generate the electricity used by your business? The EPA does. In just a few minutes you can enter your ZIP code and your power supplier and find out what mix of fuel is used by your supplier: non-hydro renewables, hydro, nuclear, gas, coal, or oil. The answer may surprise you.

Using EPA resources can help your business lower the costs of buying green power, reduce your carbon footprint, and demonstrate community leadership. Buying green power is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve the environmental performance of your business.

Thomas Hauck Communications Services provides writing and editing solutions for businesses and nonprofits. Visit us at http://www.thomashauck.net/ for information on how THCS can impact your bottom line.

photo credit: MK Media Productions

Adopting environmentally-friendly business practices has become more than a passing trend – companies and organizations are rapidly learning the importance and benefit of becoming green. Not only will you do your part to encourage and support eco-friendly habits, but you may just find you have more greenback in your wallet by going green.

Recycle and Reduce

Take a good look at what your company consumes and see what (if anything) can be recycled and reduced in use. Recycle all paper products, bags, and cardboard, and other applicable business products. Try and print less and communicate electronically whenever possible.

Reduce Emissions

One of the biggest contributors to global warming is emissions from vehicles. Encourage employees to carpool. Allow them to work from home a couple times a day or work a 10-hour 4 day week to reduce gasoline consumption and emissions.

Power Down

Turn off your computer and other office electronics at the end of the day. The EPA estimates that simple act can save nearly $75 every year.

Recycled Products

When you can, purchase recycled products or those with the “post-consumer” waste seal. If you’re a retailer, sell organic or environmentally-friendly products.

Go Paperless

If you send out statements or invoices to customers, offer them the option of electronic notification and direct debit payment or automatic bill pay.

Replace High-Energy Fixtures

Use CFL light bulbs and upgrade your old equipment to more energy efficient models.

Get Some Fresh Air

If you can, open your windows to get fresh air instead of turning on the air conditioner.

photo credit: MSFP

Sometimes it takes one event or trigger to change your life or the direction you are going. I have been very much in my element the last 12 months trying to develop more and more content and services for consulting and coaching clients. I have had clients on a regular basis, even though I always feel I should have more, based on all the time I spend finding them.

As any good coach and entrepreneur should, I keep up on the developments in the industry and believe in the concept of “paying it forward”. The developments in our economy didn’t really help my relatively new company.

Like a small, little seedling, it has been pelted by the storms of uncertainty, increasing prices, tightening of disposable income, and the possibility of a recession.

Digesting lots of training materials and marketing advice showed that a focused, niche approach is important to find the right clients. I thought focusing on top-performance for individuals and companies would be a narrow enough niche.

Have you ever lived through a period of time where you felt you are working hard, helping people, providing good content, being available for others needs, and generally follow what you believe the experts recommend – only to find out that you don’t generate nearly enough income?

A friend of mine send me a message stating: “While working with my hands this weekend, instead of using my head, as I normally do all day, I realized that I didn’t create a business but a job for myself that pays less than what I would make in a corporate environment and bears much more responsibility. I want to change that.”

I thought about this statement and came to the conclusion that she was right. Being in business and working long hours with no vacations is supposed to be a price to be paid for a limited time to get the business going, but not a decades-long state of affairs.

I realized that I had created a job but not the success I wanted to achieve for the company, it’s team members and myself. What I found I was missing was more focus for my passion of coaching.

I asked a few friends earlier in the year how I would know that I have discovered a new, deeper level of focus within my passion. All they said was: “You will know when you experience it”.

For me that moment came the day after I participated in a webinar about everybody’s Green Potential. I felt that I wanted to combine what I had done so far with issues of the environment. That’s how the term “Eco-Conscious Coaching” was born and I am excited to develop all kinds of services and products around it in the near future.

At the start of something new, I think it is helpful to have some definitions to achieve clarity for readers, interested participants, clients, and companies contemplating to adopt what we will have to offer.

The short form “Eco” stands for the word Ecology. Ecology (from Greek: ¿¯º¿Â, oikos, “household”; and »Ì³¿Â, logos, “knowledge”) is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their natural environment.

In the context I am using “Eco”, it goes back to a more business and work oriented view developed by the German biologist Ernst Haekel. He came up with the term “Oekologie” and defined it as the relationship between an organism and the environment. For me, this organism is the human being.

The term environment is applicable both as the immediate space something occupies as well as the environment in the sense of nature as a whole.

Consciousness is a little harder to define and allows for more variety. I apply it in this way: Consciousness = self-awareness, and the ability to perceive a relationship between oneself and one’s environment”.

Put together I would define: “Eco-consciousness is the awareness of the relationship one has with environment (nature) as it relates to the impact of our actions and decisions.”

When looking at eco-conscious coaching and consulting, I want to bring this awareness of our actions into the field of life- and work- improvement. As an example, let’s take the attribute “Motivation“. When helping others become top performers this attribute plays an important role, both for the leader as well as the follower.

When the eco-conscious aspect is added, we can not only talk about the things it takes to motivate oneself or others to do certain things or be aware of certain circumstances, but now we can add the ecological aspect. I can motivate someone to be better organized, thereby achieving higher efficiency.

If, at the same time, I provide guidance for the use of environmentally friendly processes, procedures, policies, materials, and explanations to the why, I can achieve higher efficiency with a lesser impact on the ecology/nature/environment.

In addition, this consciousness in the form of increased awareness can be highlighted to the employees, the clients, and everybody in the market place.

Studies have shown that people want to be, live, and act in harmony with nature and their environment, if they have the choice.

In general, when people have the choice to pick between something natural, organic, environmentally friendly, and a similar item without these attributes, they overwhelmingly go for the environmentally superior product or service.

Studies have shown (I actually supported a very recent study directly) that more than 70% of people in the US want to work for eco-friendly businesses and like to act eco-friendly if the choice is of similar quality, price, or effort. The Unites States is just awakening to the Green revolution. There can be no doubt about the huge demand for information, solutions, services, everything involving eco-conscious approaches.

I believe individuals and businesses want to be more environmentally friendly but often don’t know how.

We will develop services and products to help fulfill this desire and offer new solutions to high performance at work and in private life. Most importantly, eco-conscious behaviors, adopted from coaching sessions , workshops, webinars, or home study courses will provide a more fulfilling and joyful life.

The combination of success and joy is what we all try to find, and a heightened level of eco-consciousness will lead us there. It will be mind-boggling and eye-opening to demonstrate that eco-consciousness means more fun, more success, mire joy, more comforts, and not less, as many officials have lead as to believe for way too long.

I am excited about the prospects and hope to receive a lot of feedback, suggestions and participation as we develop a range of services and products to help everybody lead a more eco-conscious life.

Axel Meierhoefer is an eco-conscious performance coach, author, and the founder of Axel Meierhoefer Consulting (AMC LLC). His motto is” Helping others help themselves achieve success”. If you’d like to get on his E-mail list for more articles, or like more insights, goto http://www.meierhoefer.net/blog or email AM@Meierhoefer.net

photo credit: Orin Optiglot

Everyone is concerned about the effects of global warming and protecting our environment, and avoiding the dangers posed by the continued abuse of the environment. Individuals and businesses are finding ways to be more environmentally conscious. The buzzword on being proactive for the environment is Green.

Go green with your business promoting. Show your customers that you are as concerned about conserving natural resources and protecting the environment as they are. Show them your willingness to do your part to reduce the amount of waste you create that ends up in land fills and adds further harm to natural resources and our environment.

No one who is in business would argue against the need for you to promote your business to be successful. They are under the same pressure as you to promote their businesses well in order to be successful and prosperous. Promotional mugs are the perfect and affordable way to promote your business while also demonstrating the green consciousness of your business.

The trees which filter pollutants from the air are cut down in disastrous numbers to make paper products like paper cups for coffee drinkers. Saplings are planted to replace the trees that are cut down to make paper and other products but it can take many years for a sapling to reach full maturity. Meanwhile, our environment is further compromised by pollutants because there are not enough mature trees to filter these pollutants from the air.

The rubbish created by paper products leeches unwanted manufacturing chemicals into soil and groundwater. It also overwhelms municipal resources for the retrieval and disposal of that rubbish. That is certainly not a green activity by today’s standards. Trees are not cut down for use in the making of promotional mugs. Go green in the name of saving vital tree numbers, making less rubbish that needs disposing of, and in the name of promoting your business in the best light. Do this by offering your customers and employees the better- for -the -environment alternative to paper cups for drinking coffee. Give them promotional mugs to drink their java from.

Promote your business in the glowing green light of integrity and customer respect with promotional mugs. You may be surprised to learn, but promotional mugs are actually a very affordable way to promote your business with. You can get ceramic, glass, and metal, promotional mugs for business promoting and gifting at very low prices. Rest assured that the low prices of these promotional mugs are not a reflection of their quality. On the contrary, these promotional mugs are made only with the most durable and highest quality materials.

Promotional mugs can promote your business beyond your customers. Promotional mugs can generate prospects for your business, and encourage them to consider you first when looking for the goods or services provided by your business. Promotional mugs are not difficult to tote around with you to give away when the possibility for earning a new prospect for your business pops up. A promotional conference bag would be perfect for toting your promotional mugs with you where you go. A promotional conference bad promotes your business even before you give a promotional mug to someone to take home. They also permit enough added space to carefully wrap and protect your promotional mugs.

Go green with your business promoting. Become environmentally proactive by using promotional mugs in place a paper drinking cups. This will show your customers your concern for the environment and your willingness to help protect it. Use promotional mugs to successfully promote your business the green way and an increase in greenbacks will find their way into your financial account.

Gareth Parkin is the co-founder of Ideasbynet.com, the UK’s leading online promotional mugs and printed mugs supplier based in the north of England.