Business Ethics And Profit

Every time you open the newspaper you find reports about controversies on business ethics of large corporate houses and even government organizations. Today, ethics seems less important than making profit, which is the ultimate goal all over the world. In this scenario a question raises its head with timidity: ‘is it not possible to make profit ethically?’

Ethics and profit – complementary or opposites

In certain countries ethics comes on a poor second when it comes to doing business successfully. “Successfully” here means generating large amounts of surplus. For this purpose the business houses need to expand their territory, coverage and products to capture large chunks of the market.

Creating a base for such activities can be done in two ways:

(1) go the hard way – advertise, consolidate, build brand and image in the national and international market segment you prefer. This involves money, effort and tremendous perseverance
(2) go the easy way – bribe your way through government and other corridors which would help you create a niche market almost overnight. Often the amount of money and efforts spent on bribes is less than

Which would be the best way, in your opinion? You would say, ‘the ethical way’, of course. But you would be amazed at how many would still go the other way. Why? Because, the keyword today is “results” and here “results” means profit. Corporate houses feel that their stakeholders would appreciate the fact that they generate wealth for them – by whichever means.

While it is true that the public does like a hike in the profits, the ‘by whichever means’ acceptability is debatable. If you go down to the grassroots, ethics is still an important threshold in the values of the common human being.

The general public still values basic business ethics more than profit, though globally the consumerism movement makes it seem otherwise. Ethics to most is synonymous with trust and truth without which no real value addition can be expected or enjoyed.


I hope this helps


Placida Acheru
Personal/Business Coach
http://www.thebusinessonlinedirectory.biz/

How To Start A Business With Zero Finance

Can you make money out of nothing? Do you want to know how to start a business with zero finance? Is it possible? Do not be surprised because the Net makes this not only possible, but also easy-to-do for everyone. Do you need to be a computer guru? The answer is NO! You need not be a computer expert or Internet marketing specialist. All you need is a fire in your belly to achieve success and an ongoing desire to learn. We are going to look at 3 simple steps and will expand on it later.

How?

This is the million-dollar question, right? Well, let us take it step-by-step:

Start a blog – once upon a time, to launch a business the minimum needed was an investment to create a professional looking website. Today also, a website is a great asset when you start a new e-business. However, it is not the only way to do so. You can also use a blog. A blog is free of cost and an excellent way to launch your business with zero investment. You can add everything you need on the blog including a shopping cart, autoresponder and all the paraphernalia required to run a modest yet efficient website - all for free although you have the option to upgrade the services you receive from whatever provider you choose.

There a few out there :-
1. Blog spot/Blogger
2. Word press
3. Type pad


Affiliate marketing – This is an exceptional way to establish your business for free. What this means is you advertise other people’s product and get paid a commission for it. In some instance depending on what you are promoting the parent organization of which you wish to become an affiliate would not only offer you a free and well-designed website, but also all the tools and assistance you need to market their product. In addition, you would get a percentage as commission for every sale you make through your website. I’ll discuss more about this and give you a detailed picture of how it works.

Free advertisement – In order to make yourself known on the Internet you need to advertise your presence heavily and persistently. This too, can be achieved free of cost. All you have to do is write a few informative and interesting articles and submit it to free article directories or ezines. This process would help you build an enviable traffic to your blog almost overnight and your business would show profit in no time.

So thinking of starting a business and have no money, do not despair you can. The ingredients for success are these three simple steps, a positive attitude and an unquenchable thirst to succeed. I will be expanding on the topic so look out for the next blog post.

Placida Acheru
Personal/Business Coach
http://www.thebusinessonlinedirectory.biz/

6 Powerful Ways Training Will Ensure Your Company Survives The Credit Crunch!

Times are tough and everyone is looking at how they survive andthrive through the financial downturn. Unfortuantely, training isoften one of the first areas to be cut. In the short term this canfeel like a quick win. It cuts spending and there may appear to beno immediate effects. But is this really true? There is asayingthat if you think training is expensive, try ignorance. Tosurvive any tough time, a business needs to provide a higher levelof service, deliver on its promises with greater consistency andensure that it beats the competition. Training is a core part ofthat bid to succeed. Here are 6 critical ways that trainingwillhelp you survive in the Credit Crunch!

1. Training embeds theskills that ensure business success A business simply will notsurvive long if it can’t deliver its service or product up to itscustomers’ expectations. That’s pretty clear. Yet many businessowners think they can get away with meeting the very lowestexpectations. In the current climate such companies will notsurvive. The companies that prosper will be those that recognisethat they need to continually empower its staff to deliver companysuccess is the way forward. One way of ensuring staff can performis through training them to a higher level with the skills andknowledge they need. Training ensures that allthe skills needed to deliver above and beyond customers’expectations are in place and in action. ‘And in action’ iscritical. Training is all about changing behaviour and outcomes –it should make a positive difference to the company and provide areturn on investment which is measurable.
If not then it shouldn’ttake place. Know the value that the training will add to yourcompany is crucial and should be weighed against the cost. Butequally, you need to think about the other side of the coin: thecost of not providing the training. In other words, what businessor outcome could be lost if the training isn’t provided and thestaff can’t perform to the level needed? One thing is certain. Yourstaff must have the skills to do whatever their job entails andtraining is a key mechanism for ensuring that they have them. Anycompany that fails to ensure that staff are skilled are going toface a very tough time indeed.

2. Training can motivate and createpowerful focus Training is a powerful wayof demonstrating to staff that the future is good and that thereare things to be achieved. Training conveys a message that staffhave security, purpose and goals. Afterall, who would train peopleonly to sack them a few days later! Let’s face it, we are all humanand have peaks and troughs of motivation. And, of course, aworkforce is no different. Habit, task repetition, ‘same old, sameold’ all sneak into our way of looking at our work from time totime (or even very often in some cases!). Training can helpalleviate this by adding fresh impetus and a clearer sense ofprogression. OK, so training doesn’t set out to motivate.
Indeed,in the training field it is recognised that you can’t train formotivation. However, it is clear that training can producemotivation. The sense of purpose and direction that new skills, orfreshly embedded and reviewed existing skills, offers an employeecan lead to massive changes in morale. This new morale, determinedfocus and sense of purpose can lead to increases in profit throughthe higher quality output and application of skills. At the veryleast it will exponentially increase your ability to power throughthe Credit Crunch era.

3. Training can lead to identifyingweaknesses your business The process of training itself is a greatway to identify weaknesses in your business which could otherwisego unnoticed, impacting on the business profits for months or yearsto come. How does training identify business weaknesses? Through aTraining Needs Analysis (TNA)! This stage of training is oftenneglected. It shouldn’t be. A TNA analyses staff development needsidenfitying the gap between the desired outcome of the individualor team and the current performance. Using discussion, interviews,questionnaires and any other appropriate means of analysis, the TNAwill ensure that the broader issues of the performance gap areidentified. And it can be surprising what is uncovered! Theperformance gap may not be bridged only, or even at all, bytraining – there could be issues of processes, internalcommunication structures, recording and measuring results – indeedendless possibilities.
Importantly, it is the process of conductinga Training Needs Analysis that unearths these issues. And, ofcourse, knowing about it is the first great step to sorting it out.The TNA will leave you empowered to take the right steps, be theytraining or other, to improve weaknesses which, left alone, wouldimpact on your profit.

4. Training can give fresh perspective todevelop new ideas Training often acts as a catalyst for new ideasand new ways to do things to increase performance and profit.Because people are so often creatures of habit, work is oftenperformed on auto-pilot. Taking time out to learn a new skill orfresh knowledge can have a impact beyond the learning of thatparticular skill. It can impact across the skill-set of theindividual allowing them to see their role in a new light and withnew creativity.
You should harness this by a rigourous follow-upprocess from the training room back to the workplace. So, fortraining to achieve its best results it needs to be seen as farmore than a linear path to a skill. It is far better seen as a partof the holistic development of your member of staff which can havebenefits in unexpected areas. The key to this, however, is the“what next?” after training has taken place. Do not, whatever youdo, simply treat training as a ‘been there, done that’ exercise foryour staff. Explore the training outcomes with your staff and agreehow these will be used and what other knock-on effects they can seeit having.

5. Training helps retain the best staff Sometimes youdon’t know what you’ve lost until it’s gone. Never is that moretrue than with staff. Key individuals, feeling unvalued andunappreciated, can very quickly quit, leaving you high and dry. Intough economic times, there can be a temptation to assume staffwill remain loyal out of inscurity, fear and lack of externalopportunity. Possibly this is true, but business is a long termproposition and employees have memories like elephants! In theeconomic recovery, the payback could be swift as staff takeadvantage of opportunities elsewhere.
The axiom that it costs agreat deal more to gain new customers than to keep and growexisting ones has an equivalent axiom in staffing. Losing staffcosts money, recruiting costs money, training from scratch costsmoney, the lower performance of a new, learning employee costsmoney…. It is far more efficient for a company to retain its staffand help them become as effective and as motivated as possible.Salary increases and bonuses only every act as a short-termmotivator or, more negatively, as a longer-term solution in theform of staff being financially unable to leave. Either way, theseare not ideal forms of motivation for staff to remain in yourcompany.
We know that motivation based upon raising self-esteem andthe sense of being valued is much higher and more enduring. It ishere that training can be so powerful. Training helps staff feelpart of the company’s bigger strategy and valued as importantcontributors to success. As a consequence, retention withincompanies that consistently train and develop their staff is higherthan those that don’t.

6. Training trainers internally will reducethe external training budget and improve skills transfer Earlier, Iquoted the saying ‘if training is expensive, try ignorance’. But itis possible to tackle the issue of ongoing training expense bytraining your own trainers. These do not have to be full timetrainers – they may only deliver training as a part of their role.But giving them the know-how to deliver skills and knowledge inmore effectively provides a valuable resource for your company.
There are two aspects to this: You may have particular subjectmatter experts who need to deliver their knowledge and skills toother staff. Without effective training skills, they may only everycreate short term learning. Or they may find that the trainingtakes that much longer to embed. With the understanding of howpeople learn new skills, the training would be much more effectiveand the ability for staff to take the learning and put it topractice would be greatly improved. Alternatively, a member ofstaff could be developed to deliver some of the more regulartraining programmes whether they be people-skills, IT skills,administrative skills, health and safety etc. By creating a skilledoccasional trainer, you will drastically reduce your externaltraining budget, maintain your training programme and build valueand skills in your new trainer.
Conclusion So, training has a hugerole to play in the survival of your business in these hard times.These six reasons for using training are crucial to your success.Think how they could work for your business and then plan yourtraining strategy. See you on the other side of the Credit Crunch!
Author- Nick Bolton- http://www.thesmartschool.co.uk/

What is Blinkweb About?

As we all know, creating a website and displaying on the internet for the world to see, is a very complicated process for the average person. The website creation process was not designed for the average, every-day person. It was designed for people that have a knack for, and understanding of geeky computer programming languages. The end result, the average, every-day person is either stuck with a very poorly designed, boring website... OR no website at all.

The creators of BlinkWeb saw a great need to bridge the giant gap between the average person and the knowledge needed to create an attractive website, a website you can be proud of. So... they created BlinkWeb, the world's easiest website creation tool. Not only that, but they made it free. Now, the average, every-day person can easily create a professional/pretty looking website they can proudly show off to their friends.

BlinkWeb lets you build your own website or blog "in the blink of an eye". Enjoy!

Who says you can't !

There is an old mystic saying that “belief begets reality”, and although this is probably not exactly true when discussing ways in which to improve yourself, it does form the basis of a concept for ensuring you succeed in your endeavours more frequently.

For the purpose of this post, I am going to re-write this phrase a little and make it “doubt begets failure”, as this makes more sense in the context I intend it. Basically, what I am proposing is that many people fail in their personal and professional life because they doubt themselves. History has proven to us that individuals who believe in their own success 100% of the time, with no room for doubt, do indeed succeed against all odds with alarming regularity. Why is this? Simply because they were 100% sure they would succeed, they did not doubt it in any way, so if they were 100% sure of success, the prospect of failure was 0%, they could not fail to succeed. In effect they created their own reality.

Doubt has a way of creeping in, allowing people to find easy excuses for their failures, it has been argued that as little as 10% doubt will cut the percentage chance of success of a project to as low as 30%. This is due to many reasons, firstly because people dislike failure, it is an uncomfortable experience to go through, by finding one external factor that allows them to doubt their own success whilst attributing blame elsewhere, they have provided themselves with a safety net should their plans fail. So how can you minimise your doubts and maintain 100% belief of your own success? Try this few simple tips.

When considering risks to a current project or in achieving a current goal, never allow anything to become a negative. If you discover a cause that could lead to a non-success situation, solve the problem here and now, once it is solved it is no longer a reason for doubt.
Plan first, execute second, make sure your goals are defined before you start upon a course of action designed to achieve them. Unless you have clearly decided what is to be judged a successful result, you will never achieve one! Set your goal and work towards it.
If your goal or project is large, consider breaking it down into sub-goals, each of which will be a success in its own right. Each minor success will be a positive point along the path to ultimate success, instead of a barrier to your passage.
Be the judge of your own success, do not weigh your results against other people, or try to have them encourage or support you, doing so opens you up wide to their doubts. Set your own goals, and congratulate yourself on your success as you achieve them.
Ultimately it’s all a playoff, it is very difficult to maintain 100% belief in the success of a project or in achieving a certain goal, but by understanding that doubt is negative, and in many cases easily overcome, you can be assured that you are making your best effort in achieving success.