So you want to start an ethical business selling something – but not sure what? It’s one thing to want to change the world – a noble objective for all of us – but the real challenge lies in matching a product to your market so that people will actually buy it.
And if you talk to anyone in […]
Running a business in what we would call the ‘right’ way can be challenging to set up and comparatively more expensive to run, in comparison to your competitors.
It can be hard, knowing that your competitors can provide a similar product to your pool of customers at a lower price than you are able, simply because […]
‘Team culture’ is a major buzz-term of 2015, as startups everywhere try to attract the best talent through incentives and gimmickery on a scale unforeseen since the great bubble of the late 1990s.
All over Silicon Valley, free lunches, isolation pods, gym memberships, dog creches and flexible time have become the standard.
But don’t think that just because you can’t compete with Facebook for staff you can’t benefit from developing a strong culture within your business.
In many ways, it’s more important to focus on this with a remote team of contractors, because while they come for the money, they stay for the culture.
Mel and I have been operating our businesses with a large virtual team for the past three years. During this time, we have had over 60 staff members work with us, for periods of time from an hour to eighteen months.
Needless to say, we’ve learned a lot in this time.
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So the start up world has been abuzz this month with news of the sudden and, to many, shocking closure of Zirtual – a large and obviously financially unsteady virtual assistant employment platform.
I’m not going to take the time to go into the details of why it shut and why it’s unfair to the workers, the customers or any of that.
There are great articles on the situation here and here, and lots of other places – for those interested.
Needless to say, a few things are obvious from reading about their situation, including that the CEO, Maren Kate Donovan, handled the process about as poorly as any corporate meltdown/change/product launch anybody has ever seen.
To an outsider, it was Zune-worthy. It was the Hindenburg of corporate communications.
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When we started our tailored suits business, we investigated a lot of options for a base of production. China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia were all in the mix. We considered factors like cost (naturally), quality of production, fair wages and likelihood of exploitation of workers. It’s hard in some of these countries to get […]
In mid-2014, the Guardian (probably my favourite news outlet of recent times) published an article quoting a ‘groundbreaking’ study into Fairtrade International, claiming that its findings indicated that, not only do the profits of the fair trade enterprise not trickle down beyond enterprise managers, but, moreover, the workers on ‘fair trade’ certified farms are, in […]
Mel and I are on a quest to lessen the impact we have on the world. We want to reduce our footprint in all kinds of ways, from environmental impacts to social impacts, and everything in between.
The impact of ‘externalities’ from modern life are tremendous. When I was in 3rd year at university I watched […]
I need to start this post by acknowledging how little expertise I have in this specific area. I am, like most people, conflict-averse and acutely sensitive to personal difference and the individual needs of others. I suppose that is what 5 years of working for the Government will get you.
When you are busy working 12 or […]
Mel and I are on a quest to lessen the impact we have on the world. We want to reduce our footprint in all kinds of ways, from environmental impacts to social impacts, and everything in between.
The impact of ‘externalities’ from modern life are tremendous. When I was in 3rd year at university I watched […]
So Oxfam recently released a report on global income inequality, which found that the world’s 85 richest people have a higher combined wealth than the world’s bottom 3.5 billion people (that’s with a ‘B’).
I can’t fathom the enormity of this statistic, but I’m trying to. On average, each of the top 85 has more wealth […]
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