Conversations on Website Conversion discussion

Your goal after reading this chapter should be to write your green mission statement. This statement should make clear the environmental goals of your business. It should be proactive and motivational, lay out an action plan, and not be limited to the very immediate future. After you write this statement you have to critically analyze the “greenness” of your business and see where you need to improve. This chapter advocates conducting an analysis called a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). The first two are an internal analysis of your business, and the last are measures of outside factors that can have an impact on your green potential.

Writing the green mission statement may have to wait until we have finished reading part 2 of the book, where specific aspects of going green are discussed. A SWOT, however, you can start thinking about right now. What internal and external factors are going to impact your efforts in going green? What are your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats?

Lead by example: I like how this chapter demonstrates how you can make going green viral. Your internal practices may not be obvious to your clients and customers; what you give to them can carry the message though. We offer free digital books - our marketing group could encourage those downloading the book to not print it, but rather to keep it in digital format to enjoy over and over again, perhaps on their laptop under the shade of the tree they saved.

Let's face it small businesses are going to have to make the changes sooner or later if they plan on growing. Any small business that has the hope or intention of increasing its operational footprint, and perhaps even going global, will eventually have to deal with increasingly complex environmental regulation, emissions reporting and/or emissions caps depending on where it plans on doing business. Not to mention, public scrutiny of just about everything that they do.

Small businesses would be wise to take advantage of programs and incentives that are being offered now. It gives us an image boost in the short run, likely wins some new loyal "green" customers and sets us up well for growth over the long term compared to our less green competition because we've already begun planting the seeds of green.

Clearly, internally there is the financial short term cost of implementing the changes but within a few months/years it will pay itself off.