Category Archives: small business

Hot Marketing Tips for Summer

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Summer is rolling in and it’s time to think about what you’re going to do to get your business heating up! As with holidays, summer is full of opportunities to entice your customers. From Fourth of July sales to summer-friendly promos, you won’t want to miss out on all the fun. Here are some tips so you can jump right in:

Let the thermometer drive your sales up

So you’re smack in the middle of a heat wave. Even though your seatbelt is giving you third degree burns every time you get in your car, it doesn’t mean that you have to be a downer about everything. Use the heat to your advantage! Give your customers a special deal for every consecutive day that the heat exceeds a certain number on the thermometer – it depends on where you live! It can be as simple as posting up a coupon code on your business’s Facebook and Twitter pages and sending out an email offering a free summer gift to those who visit your business during that time. Get creative with it!

Get outside

People spend a lot of time outdoors in the summer months. Find out what local events are going on and become a part of it – become sponsors or provide fun activities or products such as food or balloons that are branded with your logo. Be seen spreading summer fun and you will be remembered. Or, if you have the space and capability, throw your own bash for your loyal and prospective customers. If you go for that idea, then be sure to use social media to help spread the word. Fill your customers in on hashtags they can use or offer gifts or discounts for those who “Like” you or talk about the event.

Show some seasonal appreciation

Maybe your business works with a few key clients who really keep the roof over your head. Let them know how much you appreciate their business by taking them out to a baseball game, or a round of golf, or other activities. It will remind them why they like working with you so much, and it will be a nice way to spend a summer day or evening.

Embrace what the summer has to offer, understand what your customers enjoy doing and how you can become a part of those experiences for them. Everyone will benefit from a little bit of creativity and generosity on your part, so have fun!

Danielle Pacelli is the Marketing Coordinator at MycroBurst/Logo Design Guru. MycroBurst is based in Langhorne, Pa. and is an online marketplace for graphic design. MycroBurst provides custom designs through crowdsourcing. Follow Danielle and MycroBurst on Twitter @MycroBurst.

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Time is Money: How to Set Up a Small Business Network

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For small business owners, a business network can make life much easier. The network allows for seamless sharing of files among all of your employees and is much easier to set up than most people realize. It also speeds up the productivity of your office due to the faster transfer of information and isn’t too expensive to install a small business network in either. You can do it yourself with minimal instruction and background experience. The next few steps will lay the basic blueprint for setting up a network in nearly any small business environment.

The Basics

First and foremost, you are going to need a router. Routers transfer information between computers on the same network. It is the central hub for your network. Preferably, you are going to want a business grade router, so you can use all of the advanced security features.

The wireless against wired route is a bad example, since you are never forced to use one over the other. However, a wired network provides more security. On the other hand, a wireless network allows for laptops and Wi-Fi capable desktops to connect without the hassle of wires. You can have both networks on one router, so you will never be lacking in connectivity.

Types of Networks

You can do either a peer-to-peer network or a client-server network. The only difference is in the way the files are transferred.

Peer-to-peer networks allow the transfer of data directly from one PC to another PC. However, it also has the potential to be less secure and has fewer features than a server-client setup.

A server-client setup allows you to transfer data between computers too, but all of the information goes through a server that is located on the premises before it arrives on another PC. It effectively adds another layer of security on top of your existing system and oftentimes large businesses prefer this setup.

Security

Security is the next important measure in a business network. A good security system prevents users from accessing your network without your permission.

Typically a secure network is successfully set up by following these instructions. First, you install a WEP password onto your router. This can be done through the router’s firmware, which is accessed by typing in the router’s IP address. Next, you choose a password. It translates into four strings of hex code that protects the password from outside sources. Finally, you must input the password on every wireless device that connects to the network. In some cases, you will also have to do it for computers that have a wired connection to the router.

Additional Useful Features

You may want to use VPN, or virtual private network, software for accessing your network from places around the world, assuming you have an internet connection.

On a VPN, your computer is treated as a computer that is in the network. There is one key difference: speed. The speed of a VPN network depends on the speed of the internet service you are using.

However, a VPN provides a business with a means of accessing their network from around the world. This is obviously extremely efficient and helpful because it allows business professionals to access their network without physically being at the office.

As a small business owner, you can install all of these systems yourself. In turn, this helps to save you money and provides you with a secure network. It is simpler than it seems for small networks, but it gets tricky when inputted on a larger scale. It is pretty convenient to obtain more extensive knowledge about these topics with a Management Information Systems Degree, as well.

Blake Pappas has a bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University and is currently pursuing an MBA. 

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How Taking Minutes Can Bring Small Businesses to Success

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With technology ever evolving and online collaborations on the rise, minute taking can seem like an old-fashioned approach to recording a business meeting. However, it does still have its place and can benefit a business in numerous ways, especially those who are new to running a company and start-ups.

As a quick refresher, minutes are notes recorded by an allocated individual, often a PA or secretary, in order to summarize what has been discussed at a meeting. Done correctly, they will highlight the meeting chronologically and succinctly, including important information such as event dates, deadlines, who said what, budget concerns and suggestions.

Why are minutes important?

Minutes are important for a number of reasons. To begin with, it’s important to have a record of meetings that have taken place in order to act on information. Often, once out of the meeting, important information may be forgotten, so having that record gives everyone involved a reference point when it comes to carrying out what has been discussed.

For those employees who don’t attend the meeting, but will be working on some of the things discussed, it’s a valuable record to use as a starting point for carrying out their job. Further to this, it means that workers can effectively stay on track, with clear deadlines and definitions, without the need to ask others in the office or type up their own notes.

Minutes are also important for absent members of staff and as a tool to avoid arguments over who decided what and when.

How they can help avoid failure

Record keeping is an important aspect to every business and keeping minutes is just another instance of this. By looking back at previous meetings, managers can track the success of certain projects by seeing instantly what was discussed and imagined for each one.

Budgets can be examined to see where they can be improved, or when funds can be added to improve various aspects of the business and information from minutes can be included in the company’s annual report, giving an effective yearly overview, which has all of the necessary information included.

The performance of suppliers can be tracked too, using information such as when they were first used, how much budget was allocated and how they have performed any work for the company. This kind of information is invaluable for keeping tabs on suppliers and service providers to ensure the company is getting the best deal.

Communication

In business, another important factor is communication and this is where minutes really come into their own. Without minutes, everybody would be required to remember what happened during a meeting and non-attendant staff would receive a watered down version, often which will have changed from what actually happened.

Taking minutes and having a clear and concise overview of everything discussed in a meeting will make for a happier team, who are more productive. It also promotes effective collaboration as everyone is on the same page from the start.

Collaboration is a bit of a buzzword at the moment and this is because it’s very effective and has been proven to increase productivity. For a company that is just finding its feet, this is priceless, as a productive and happy team will always be an asset to any business.

This has recently been further confirmed by the introduction of social intranet where an office network has its own kind of social network, something on which minutes can easily be distributed and collaborated on with little fuss.

Minute taking has been an invaluable business tool for many years and should never be discounted because of advances in technology. By capturing an organization’s most important decisions, communicating them clearly and keeping a concise record, businesses can safeguard against any problems they may experience in the future.

Effective record-keeping, communication and productivity increase, budget tracking and the well-being of employees are all key take-out points that every new or small up and coming business should bear in mind and apply when it comes to a building a successful company.

Written by Ellie Boyd- Video and writing journalist for Payday Angels- A small company who are taking it upon themselves to tackle the financial crisis within the payday loan industry.  We review other payday lenders- for example read our Payday UK review here. As we are new to building our company up, we have relied heavily on tracking our every move, in order to develop business more efficiently and learn from previous mistakes made. 

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Business Basics – Corporate Audits

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Regular, thorough audits are a very important tool for running a compliant, successful corporation. These audits help uncover problems that might have otherwise gone unnoticed, stopping them from evolving into serious issues. Corporate audits are thus typically handled and paid for by the corporation being audited to help them spot those types of problems. But why do corporations need to complete internal audits? And what exactly goes into an audit?

What is a corporate audit?

Well, in a nutshell, a corporate audit is simply a close examination of the practices of a corporation. However, there are multiple things that can be audited. Financial records, business decisions, regular operations, safety compliance, management – the list goes on and on. Publicly traded companies are also held to higher standards, and both internal and external auditors often refer back to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed in 2002, when deciding whether or not a corporation is in compliance with the law. An internal auditor, however, is typically hired by the corporation to perform an audit, and an external auditor is an agent paid for by some outside organization, like the government.

Why should corporations audit themselves?

For publicly traded companies, internal auditing and reporting is required by law. The idea is that, if the CEO and board of directors are briefed on the findings of these audits, they cannot claim ignorance of any wrongdoings and can act quickly to solve problems before they get out of hand. But beyond legal compliance, an internal audit also help keep those who run the company aware of how different parts of the corporation are running. Of course if your corporation is made up of only ten employees and you, you probably have a good idea of what is going on. But as the company grows and you are forced to narrow your focus to running the business, these internal audits help keep you on top everything. They can also be invaluable for risk management, especially if you are in an industry where employees could get hurt on the job, like in construction. The last thing any business owner wants is to see their employees hurt, and safety audits help avoid accidents.

How do you perform an audit?

If a corporation is big enough, there is typically an entire department, headed by a Chief Auditing Officer, that is dedicated to performing corporate audits. Smaller corporations, on the other hand, typically do not have the resources for an entire auditing department. Instead, they hire a single internal auditor to look over their records. Alternatively, they can contract an outside business to send in their own auditor, who then acts in the same way an internal auditor would.

What do you do if they find something?

If the company is small enough, there shouldn’t be very many findings in the audit report, and what is found should be easily fixed. However, larger corporations may wind up with a list of issues. Part of the Chief Audit Officer’s job is to highlight critical issues and present their findings to the audit committee of the board of directors. Appropriate action is then taken to solve whatever problems need to be handled.

For publicly traded companies, corporate audits are one of the requirements for staying in compliance with the law. But even if your corporation isn’t traded publicly, it is still a good idea to have an auditor come in and take a look at your company to help you manage risk and avoid the types of problems that could seriously impact the state of your business.

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How to Actually Save Money When Buying in Bulk

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If you’ve ever shopped at Costco, Sam’s Club or any other warehouse-type store for home goods, you know how easy it is to get carried away with the tantalizing prices of bulk items. “Twelve dollars for 20 bars of Dove soap? What a steal!” Then you get home and remember you don’t even use Dove soap, and it just sits in the back of your bathroom storage cabinet.

As tempting as some of the prices might be, buying in bulk isn’t exactly as cut-and-dry as it seems. When it comes to bulk-buying for business, things can get even more complicated. Read on for some tips on how to really get the most bang for your bulk buck.

Stick with Non-Perishables

Unless you work in a restaurant, buying perishable items in bulk can be a disaster. However, even non-perishable bulk-buying can be a bad idea if you’re spending money on items you don’t regularly use. For example, printer ink might be classified as a non-perishable item, and it’s something that seems justifiable to buy in bulk for your business. However, if you deal largely with electronic communication, this seemingly non-perishable item can eventually dry out and go to waste. Plus, even when buying in bulk, ink isn’t cheap!

Consider Your Space

Small businesses could save a lot of money by purchasing huge packages of office supplies, toilet paper, and other essential everyday items in bulk. But when working in a small setting, you also have to consider how much room you have to work with. If your storage room—or, worse yet, your entire house—starts to look like an episode of “Hoarders,” it might be time to take a break from bulk buying. Remember that you only have so much space to work with, so use it carefully and avoid getting too carried away.

Measure Consumption

Sure, you might technically find a use for 50 rolls of tape, but how often do you really use this item when you don’t have loads of it hanging out in the storage room? Perhaps a worse offense than letting items go to waste is needlessly consuming them. You think you’re saving money because everything’s being used, but be wary of careless consumption of a product just because you’ve got a huge reserve.

For example, it’s good to have a stash of battery-operated flashlights and batteries around the workplace, but employees shouldn’t be using them to play shadow puppet games or on their weekend camping trips. Before you start buying items in bulk for your business, be sure to keep a long, detailed record of the typical consumption levels in the workplace. Continue to monitor these levels after you start collecting a reserve to keep track of your consumption habits.

Too often, financial experts will advertise the benefits of buying in bulk without emphasizing the importance of not going overboard. Believe it or not, the practice isn’t as intuitive as it might seem. In fact, it’s more natural to get greedy with high volumes of supplies than it is to use sparingly. However, with a little practice and an application of these fundamental rules, the benefits of buying in bulk can far outweigh the risks.

Felicia Baratz is a freelance writer, graphic designer and social media addict living in Indianapolis, IN. As a contributor to ProfessionalIntern.com, Felicia discusses new, innovative technology and it’s relation to the business world and social media marketing.

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How to Reinvent a Dead Brand

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Rescuing a dead brand and nurturing it back to life is a special kind of business art that requires enterprise, vision and a bit of psychological savvy. Building a brand from scratch is easier, but it lacks the historic richness and recognition of a long established brand. Brands with history are already embedded in the public consciousness; whether memories are bad or good, the presence of any memory can be a marketing boon.

The burden of a brand revivalist is to rewrite the memories and reputation, erasing negative connotations and associations by reinforcing good brand qualities and rolling out new, impressive features. Following are typical strategies to reviving any brand.

Get a Second Opinion on Your Brandable Skills

Brands often fail due to the mismatch of skills of between brand and entrepreneur. Whether you are the original brand owner or the adoptive owner of a purchased and lagging brand, begin the reinvention by refocusing your identity. Get feedback from peers, former bosses, clients, professors and other evaluators about what your strengths are as well as your weaknesses. This can be done in individual interviews, emailed surveys or, preferably, in an all-day brand development conference. Be honest about how other professionals perceive your personality highlights and deficits.

Rather than forcing yourself to live up to a brand and, by extension, an impossible identity, tailor the new brand to fit who you are and your valuable traits. Let it be a distinct, custom brand that only you can present because it conforms to your experience, talents and skills.  In this way, the new brand identity is unique, memorable and in harmony with your identity.

There are situations, of course, when you need to completely change fields and markets; in those cases, you might need to undergo training for new skills but these should not be so beyond your natural aptitude that you feel ill-prepared as the executive behind the brand.

Create a Legend

Once you have your identity, immortalize it. Every reinvention needs a good narrative. This story must be truthful and it should narrate the crash and fall of your previous life, career or business in such a way that it emphasizes character and the values of your new brand. The general public loves a back story and can relate to underdog entrepreneurs who struggle to get back on top.

Once polished, this story can be disseminated through brand literature, advertisements, word-of-mouth and social media. Have a short-hand, pithy version of the story that can be used to influence your brand elements; the image in the logo, the colors, the slogan should all pay homage to the themes and motifs in the legend. Do not make the narrative too personal; the goal is tell the tale of how a brand, not your ego, got reborn.

Modify and Expand the Brand

Dead brands typically have a dearth of public interest, profit and innovation, generally because they failed to grow. They stayed unchanged while competitors in their midst evolved with the times.  Upon revival, zero in on nostalgic aspects and the few remaining selling points of the brand.

These features can attract brand loyalists and be used as a foundation that keeps the brand recognizable so that the public gets a sense of the business as the same but vastly improved. The improvements come from modifications, such as an expanded product or service line, a new building or atmosphere, a new style of marketing or a new community and social media presence.  All alterations should present the brand as fresh, in-style and contemporary.

Stage a Major Reintroduction

Once you’ve designed your elements, retooled your identity, salvaged the remaining positive brand features and expanded the offerings, now is the time to capture the interest of the public. The reintroduction campaign should be designed to impact offline and online audiences, local and remote audiences.  Activities can include the unveiling of a new website, blog and social profiles, special promotions and marketing campaigns, viral videos or memes, contests and old-fashioned live events in multiple locations.

Launching by partnering with related businesses to roll out bundled services or products has also been an effective reintroduction practice. Furthermore, if a formerly dead brand still has a warehouse of stock, interest in the brand can be revived months before the re-launch by selling these items as limited, commemorative pieces and collectibles.

Willie Pena is a freelance writer, video producer, visual artist, and music producer. Willie writes about marketing, branding, innovation among other topics. In addition to writing for firms such as IBM, Colgate, Transunion, Webroot and a multitude of private clients and websites including Cloverleaf Innovation’s website. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

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4 Risks and Payoffs to Running Your Own Small Business

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For most of the risks that you face in running a small business, there tends to be a corresponding payoff that goes hand in hand with it. Business insurance will deal with some risks that can damage your company and work on ways to mitigate them, but there are more general risks that a business faces that are far from insurable. Luckily, these less insurable risks do normally come with a silver lining to balance things out.

Risk: No financial security

If you run your own business, you are the one that pays the wages. This means that your financial security is far from guaranteed. You have a responsibility to keep your staff in employment and to nurture their development, all the while being careful not to overwork them and drive them into the ground. Not only that, but you will answer to a higher power if you have share holders who should be breathing down your neck to make sure you are doing the best you can in maximizing their investments.

The lack of financial security will really hit you when you realize that holidays and sick days are less of an option. When you work or yourself, it can be difficult to schedule that kind of time off and keep the business afloat at the same time.

Payoff: No fear of losing your job

Of course, you could argue that while financial security might be in short supply for you, job security is in fact much better. Working for yourself does ensure that you won’t be made redundant.  That might sound like an issue of semantics and psychology (a journalism tutor once described to me the fine line between “freelance” and “out of work” in that there is so very little practical difference between the two but one is a more positive state of mind than the other) but running your own company makes you the master of your own destiny when it comes to continued employment. You might have to work harder and for longer periods of time, but at the same time this should be easier because you’re doing something that you’re passionate about and you’re able to better act on your own ideas. That has significant advantages over working for someone else in an area that maybe you have less interest in.

Risk: Burnout

What started as a passionate effort that you find yourself pouring all your time into can quickly turn into a soul destroying struggle to stay committed if you start to burn out from it. The burnout can have the added impact that comes from knowing you’ve destroyed a genuine passion through all work and no play in an effort to get your start-up off the ground. Burnout can strike at the most inopportune times and cripple a business with significant potential. It is most likely to hit you if you have bitten off more than you can chew and find yourself facing a seemingly insurmountable workload. A company that burns out can survive, but it risks a demoralized staff and could sack its reputation if it fails to deliver on promises. Additionally, once things plateau in terms of progress, it can be difficult to get that ball rolling again.

Payoff: Relative freedom

Running your own business does give you a remarkable amount of freedom. Although declarations of being able to do whatever you want might be overstretching it a bit as they ignore the commercial realities of your situation, you really can run the show the way that you think is best. Your potential to adapt and change the way you do things is an ideal counter to stave off burning out or address it if it hits you.

Risk: Not enough clients or business

Struggling to drum up enough business or clients can be a significant problem for small businesses and the self-employed. Larger businesses might have larger contracts and longer running agreements whereas your business might take a lot more short term work which can quickly dry up depending on your trade or profession.

Payoff: Choosing your clients

Which clients you take on is entirely up to you when given the option to pick between those interested in working with you. It is your responsibility to maintaining new and recurring business and keeping your schedule full, but if there are contracts that you would rather pass up on, that’s entirely up to you. Small businesses still in their early start-up stages might be a little more under pressure to take on anything that comes their way, but ultimately once you find yourself more established and in more of a selective position, the direction you take your business and who you want to work with is your decision.

Risk: Failing in your responsibilities

Being employed within a company can limit the responsibilities that you have in place. Depending on your role, you might manage a whole division or particular function of a company, but unless you are particularly high up the corporate ladder, the buck does not stop with you. With your own company, it’s all on you. You are responsible for pretty much everything that goes on as part of your business activity, regardless of the division and often regardless of delegation. There is a lot to stay on top of and be held accountable for and the risk is that you ignore a critical area which ends up landing you in significant trouble.

Payoff:  Direct rewards

There is a direct link between how much work you do and how much money you earn when you’re running your own small business. Other factors can sometimes work their way in such as favorable market conditions might mean you are on the right side of a boom in industry and simple good luck could also mean you inadvertently strike a virtual gold mine with your products or services, but when it all boils down to it, your rewards for hard work are much more direct than the vague commission structures and rumored promises of potential promotions that you get in full time positions.

Written by David Hing for YOUR Insurance a broker that understands insurable risks for small businesses and knows a little about non-insurable risks too.

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Is Your Business on the Right Track? Take the Quiz and Find Out!

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This guest post is brought to you by WePay – the easiest way to accept credit cards online.

How well do you know your company? You may think you know your company like the back of your hand, but every business owner needs a little reminder to take a look at the big picture. Take the following quiz and think where you’re headed and if that’s the direction you want.

Question: Who are my customers?

Yes, you know who your customers are as you have their order forms saved. But do you REALLY know them? Where do they live? What are their other interests? What websites do they go to every day? The more you know about your customers the better you can customize an experience for them which will make them ecstatic to do business with you. This can lead to more sales and lifelong fans recommending your business to everyone they know.

Question: Where does my money go?

Your business can only grow properly when you’re consistently making more money than you’re pumping out. This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to forget sometimes, especially when we get caught up in buying stuff we may not need. Start tracking every cent that goes out of your business and see how much you’re wasting. You may be surprised!

Question: Why am I in business for myself?

Every business owner has a unique story. Some get into business to get out of the rat race while others want to spend more time with their family. Yet others have a great business idea they know will succeed. Whatever the case may be, it’s important to always remember it. If you don’t, you may end up taking your company in a direction you didn’t expect…or want.

Question: How does the public find my business?

You’ve no doubt undertaken several marketing and public relations campaigns to spread the word about your business. Do you have any idea which ones worked? If not, it’s time to find out, as discovering the road your clients travel to get to you can change the way you do business. For instance, if clients mainly find you via social media, you would want to amp up those efforts rather than continuing to spend money on magazine advertising.

Question: How do people pay me?

This is another question that may seem silly and obvious. Why should you be worried how people give you money? The answer is it’s another way to nab even more sales. If your customers are clamoring for you to take credit card payments and you don’t listen, you’re missing out on money in your pocket.

Question: Where do I see my business in X years?

How far in the future have you thought about your business? Naturally nobody wants to imagine a time where they’re forced to hand over the reins when you have a company that’s your baby. However, it’s important to imagine what your “endpoint” is as it will arrive one day whether you like it or not. The more detailed your plans for retirement, the better off you’ll be when the time finally arrives.

How’d you do on the quiz? Is there one aspect of your business you really need to focus on?

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W is for Withdrawal

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Today on the ABC’s of small business we’ll be covering the basics, and the benefits, of what it means to file for a withdrawal for your company.

As previously covered here on MyCorp, corporations or LLCs that have previously foreign qualified in a state other than their home state to legally operate and conduct business in, file for a withdrawal in order to stop doing business in that state. By filing for a withdrawal, this ensures the business will have no further obligations to that state and the sooner the withdrawal is filed for review, the better. The more changes a business undergoes, it may become necessary to stop operating within certain states and expand to others instead.

Filing for a withdrawal provides more benefits than simply being able to stop conducting business within that particular state you withdraw from. Additionally, you’ll be able to prevent late fees and additional changes and avoid paying unnecessary taxes and annual state fees for your business within that state. Once your withdrawal order form has been filed and approved by the Secretary of State, you will have terminated the corporate existence in that state.

As a quick side note, before you start filing, remember that all required fees, penalties, and costs must be paid in order for the application for withdrawal to be considered complete with most jurisdictions.

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10 Things Businesses Can Do To Go Green Right Now

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In today’s environmentally conscious social environment, building and operating a business that implements as many green practices as reasonably possible is not only healthy for the environment, it’s also a case of excellent PR. Numerous companies have actually boosted their sales revenues and client retention rates by through implementing eco-friendly practices and publicizing this fact.

In some cases, clients are even willing to accept slightly higher costs of doing business if they’re made aware of the fact that your company is honestly attempting to ease the footprint it leaves on the environment.

Given these benefits and the fact that you will be leaving a small but important mark on the world, there is no reason not to adapt at least a few key green strategies in your own start-up or established business. Let’s cover a few.

1. Use Video Conferencing and Lower Your Carbon Footprint

Video conferencing technology lets you communicate with partners, employees, outsourcing providers and even clients anywhere in the world without all of the associated physical travel costs. There is no simpler, quicker and cheaper way to dramatically decrease just how much resource use you and your partners contribute to.

2. Implement Paper Free Policies

Using cloud storage, USB sticks, email, digital signatures and a whole plethora of digital data sharing mediums, you have almost no reason to print physical paper documents on a regular basis. Implement this as a general policy that’s used whenever is reasonably possible in your company and you’re sure to save more than a few trees somewhere down the supply chain.

3. Turn Off Unused Equipment

By turning off all equipment that won’t be used for awhile and turning off all of your office computers at the end of the day instead of letting them run will garner energy savings of as much as 50%. Good for the planet and good for your wallet when the power bill comes.

4. Buy Used Office Equipment

Some of your business tools will definitely have to be new, but wherever possible, opt for carefully used alternatives; especially when it comes to furnishings and basic office technology.

5. Recycle Office Waste

Even the cleanest office is going to produce some paper waste and trash. Instead of tossing it, recycle as much as possible. Also, encourage your staff to buy only from suppliers of recycled goods wherever possible.

6. Create Your Own Sustainable Power

This may sound crazy to some people, but why not? If your business is located in an area where natural sources of sustainable energy like wind and sunlight are plentiful, why not invest a bit of extra money in solar cells or wind turbines outside your office location? Even if you don’t leave the grid entirely, you’ll at least be reducing your resource use and with the added benefit of making your office more resistant against power outages in which the competition suffers.

7. Change from Incandescent Bulbs to CFL Lights

Want a quick way of spending 75% less energy on lighting your office? Use CFL lights instead of regular light bulbs. They’re more expensive, but the power savings and longer lifetime work to your advantage.

8. Avoid Toxic Cleaning Materials

For those moments where you need to clean the office, do it with non toxic alternative cleaning substances. Some of these can even be made at home, saving you some money in addition to saving a bit of the environment.

9. Encourage BYOU

Bring Your Own Utensils: instead of wasting plastic on cups, plates and spoons or forks in the office kitchen, simply ask your staff to bring their own real utensils in, and wash them regularly.

10. Create a Location Free Office Through Telecommuting

In our wired world of powerful digital communications, there might not be any reason for your employees to physically show up to work. Help them save money and resources by letting them do their jobs from home whenever possible; create a delocalized office!

About the author: Stephan Jukic is a freelance writer who generally covers a variety of subjects relating to the latest changes in white hat SEO, marketing, marketing tech and brand promotion. He also loves to read and write about subjects as varied as location-free business, portable business management and anything to do with advertising or strategic marketing tricks. When not busy writing or consulting on marketing and digital optimization for Intercall, he spends his days enjoying life’s adventures either in Canada or Mexico, where he spends part of the year.

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