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Many of us are getting alarmed with the effects of global warming already being manifest in some parts of the world – and with the scientists warnings to us about even more dire consequences in the future if we don’t take responsibility for our environment, since it is environmental degradation caused by human activity which is the main cause of the global warming.

Many people, unfortunately, hold the view that is up to the leaders of the world – the G8 club presidents and their ilk – to work out solutions to the climatic degradation facing the world. Many of us feel powerless and wonder how our action (or inaction) can affect the world climate, as we perceive the world to be such a big place ‘out there.’

The true position, however, is that the world is the aggregation of the 6 billion or so people who make it, and it is the actions and the inactions of each individual among these 6 billions that contributes to the mass effects that we see in the world like the global warming previously mentioned. There is therefore very much something which you, as an individual can do to save the world.

As an ‘ordinary’ office worker, you might wonder, what surely can I do to save the world? Well, plenty. You can start by, for instance, initiating steps to get the cartridges that you use in the office recycled, rather than disposed off anyhow, seeing that it is things like these cartridges that have the worst effects on the environment as they are non biodegradable which is to say that they cannot rot. Rather than just disposing used cartridges any-howly, you can, for instance consider donating them to the various recycling programs that have been set up for that purpose. If you are not aware of where you can get such a recycling program, all you have to do is enter the term ‘recycle ink catridges’ in your search engine – and you gain access to a wide array of such recycling programs. The folks in the program are usually more than willing to come fetch the used catridges once you inform them that you have such ink catridges, but even if they are unable to come and fetch from your premises, you can still take the catridges to them, and walk away with the satisfaction of knowing that you have played your small part towards protecting the world climate.

Another way to get used catridges recycled is to sell them – if you can access the people who buy them. Such used catridge buyers are all over nowadays and they are people from whom you can make some money, while at the same time knowing that you have played your part in protecting the world climate. These people who are in business of recycling used catridges buy the empty catridges, clean them up, repair any parts that might be damaged, and then refill them to sell them again, usually at a lower price than what brand new catridges go for.

Quality usually comes at a slight premium – and many of us wonder why we should pay more for a product we could get cheaper somewhere else. Nowhere perhaps, can this question get more pertinent than in the purchase of office products – and especially office furniture like office chairs, office desks and workstations. The nature of these office products is such that the price difference between the top quality products and the lowest quality products can be so significant that even the most price-insensitive of us gets to notice the difference.

Of course, not every office equipment brand being sold for a higher price is necessarily of higher quality, and it worth making this distinction right from the outset. There are indeed some instances where by paying the higher price, you are paying for nothing more than the vendor’s huge brand name – and this is something which is unadvisable to do, because you should be getting something extra for every extra dime you have to spend.

But in the instances where office products are being sold for a premium because of their higher quality, they often make a very worthwhile investment.

For one, higher quality office furniture is likely to last for longer than mediocre furniture, and sometimes the difference in durability can be often worth the little extra you have to pay for the quality office furniture. In line with the well worn adage ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ you might find yourself paying what to you appears to be a cheaper price for a piece of office furniture, only for you to end up having to buy another similar price a few months – or even weeks in the worst case scenarios – down the line. In this case, you end up spending what you thought you saved by purchasing lower quality office furniture – and perhaps even a little more. If durability is one of the qualities vendor of high quality furniture are touting for the product, then it is worthwhile for you to consider buying that particular piece of office furniture, especially if you can verify the vendor’s claims of its durability with users who have had a good experience with the furniture.

Secondly, higher quality office furniture sends out the message that you are an organization that values quality. This can be an important message that can pay great dividends if it gets well passed over, because people will usually be more willing to do business (or to get served in the case of non-business organizations) by an entity that values quality. Remember in business, image is everything and if your prospective customers perceive you as an organization that values quality, then their perception becomes their reality. Even when you come to business negotiations, if you have managed to convey the idea that you are an organization that values quality, you will find your customer getting a bit shy of quoting too low a price – in line with your ‘classy’ appearance. It is all about leveraging on image to influence the customer’s psychology, and it often works.

It is not until they are well on their way to graduate school that many people start to think about their career prospects more seriously. As it were, when people first sign up for undergraduate studies, they usually don’t give too much thought into what they are pursuing and what their career prospects with it are, since the idea in most undergraduate study programs is to build the student’s general knowledge base anyway. It is therefore only after their undergraduate studies that the business minded go on to business school, with the kind-hearted (or increasingly the money-minded) going to medical school, the godly going to bible school and so on and so forth. Along these lines, a trend that is increasingly being noticed is where people are pursuing Master’s degrees in project management after their undergraduate degrees – or where people who have a Master’s degree in other fields, say MBAs are looking for additional qualifications in project management – say project management certifications.

So why would anyone go for a Master’s degree in project management?

For one, a master’s degree in project management – or at least some project management certification – is just what the employers are looking for. In today’s world, and especially after the release of highly influential literature and programs like David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done,’ everything in the corporate world has come to be viewed as a project, and a person who doesn’t know anything about the mechanics of project management runs the risk of alienating themselves from today’s ‘project-minded’ workplace.

Go through any forum where jobs are being advertised – and you will always find a clause somewhere in almost every advertisement requiring some knowledge in project management. And although some project management content tends to be included in almost every university business course, a person who has a specific project management certification, or better still a project management degree will always have an upper hand over people who lack the same qualifications. This is because although every business graduate is expected to have some knowledge in project management, having specific certifications in the same is seen as a sign that the candidate in question has real in-depth knowledge in project management. Even in jobs where a project management knowledge is not a direct requirement – for instance in medicine – a professional who goes ahead to acquire a project management certification or even better a project management degree makes themselves a more attractive prospect in the job market, because although they might not explicitly demand it, employers are likely to be impressed by a project management certification, and are also more likely to cherish the prospects of having a person with knowledge about project management around their offices.

The beauty of a Master’s degree in Project management is that it is not too demanding, especially for a person who got good academic grounding in their undergraduate schooling. For this reason, people have been known to pursue Master’s degree in project management as their second master’s degrees – and therefore gain the professional esteem which comes with being a multiple master’s degree holder.

There is so much available in terms of advertising channels that business owners often find themselves at a loss when shopping for advertising. For a given business owner, the range of advertising channels available might so wide as to include traditional ones like radio and television as well as modern ones like the Internet and the electronic displays that are to be found at strategic locations in all cities nowadays. Traditional advertising channels offer advertisers huge audiences though they tend to be rather expensive, while the modern advertising channels like the Internet tend to offer advertisers smaller audiences which are however much better targeted (and therefore much more likely to be responsive to the advertising messages), at a much lower cost than the traditional advertising channels.

The business world has in the meantime becomes so competitive and unforgiving that a business that does not invest adequately in good advertising runs the risk of getting pushed out of business. Indeed the question nowadays is not whether to invest in advertising (that is already a given), but rather how to go about investing in the advertising. Even organizations that are not directly involved in business ventures are finding themselves having to jump onto the advertising band wagon, if only to tell the public what it is that they are doing.

The key to getting suitable advertising is going for a channel that offers a reasonable return on investment. This boils down to the cost-benefit analysis taught as part of every introductory business course. This is because contrary to what many people come to believe after frustration with the various advertising programs available, advertising still has to happen with the business framework of cost minimization and profit maximization.

Granted, every effective advertising channel is bound to give some results – maybe draw some customers to the business and create some sales. The question, however, is whether the benefits, in terms of sales for instance, that a given advertisement channel yields are commensurate with what the business has to pay for it. This has to be judged objectively, however, using a metric that matters to a business. For instance, just getting many people to know about a business might not be good enough- they have to be the kind of people who have the both the will and the means to buy whatever products the organization offers.

Of course, it also matters how fast you want the results from advertising to be. Some advertising channels can be extremely effective in the long run, but utterly ineffective when it is quick results you are looking for. But then again, as you go about looking for quick results in advertising, it helps for to soul-search deeply, and work out whether the results you want are realistic – because many people expectations, when they first approach advertising, are usually so unrealistic that they irrevocably set themselves up for failure.

The audience that you target for your advertisement also matters in the selection of a suitable advertising channel. Indeed it is the potential to reach your intended audience that qualifies a given advertising channel to be considered suitable or unsuitable.

In the early years of the computer revolution that took place between the early 80s and the late 90s, there was a fear that there would come a day when electronic media would overrun the paper media we had before then. A ‘paperless world’ was one of the phrases associated with this incident, when communication would take place through electronic channels so seamlessly that paper would turn into an object for the museums.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and ten years into the century – and in spite of the remarkable advancements witnessed in information and communications technology – the ideal of a paperless world is yet to be witnessed. On the contrary, the power of print in things like advertising (which was supposed to be one of the first places where the paperless world would manifest) is still felt to this day. In fact a business that attempts to do without the power of print for advertising risks not reaching a considerable number of people it would surely like to reach, the presence of the other available advertising media notwithstanding.

Most of us can only think in images – and therefore using the images often turns out to be the best way to get your message across to an audience if one wants that image to be widely assimilated and acted upon. The fact that a picture is worth a thousand words has surely never changed.

In a business setting, the best way to get your message across to your audience in image form is usually through brochure printing. Printing colorful brochures – with beautiful images of the results that customers are likely to get from using your product is one thing that is likely to appeal to the customer’s deepest emotions, which is a significant thing given that most people make their purchase decisions based on emotional reasons rather than logical reasons. And thanks to the technological advances of the last few years, printing brochures is no longer the difficult or expensive undertaking it used to be. On the contrary, with aid of freely available software, you can print impressive brochures from the comfort of your office desk.

Flyers are yet another tool through which you can exploit the power of print for advertising. Flyers are meant to handed out to people on a street or to be placed at a strategic position where people can help themselves to one as they come in and go out. Generally, the costs of printing brochures will tend to be lower than the costs of printing brochures. Flyers, however, tend to be smaller than brochures, and there is therefore only so much that you can communicate through them. Of course, you stand to make up for what you miss in size by opting to print flyers by printing them in so huge quantities that you get your message to as many people as possible. Like brochure printing, flyer printing too has been a major beneficiary of the technological advances made in the last few years, and today it is possible to print huge quantities of flyers for mass communication at a fraction of what it would have cost you some years back.

By donating business equipment to charity you get the opportunity to kill two birds with the same stone. Firstly, you get the opportunity to give to a worth cause – which can be a source of fulfillment to you as a business owner or manager, (and which you can also quote as part of your corporate social responsibility), and secondly, you also get access to some tax benefits on account of your having donated business equipment to charity.

The business equipment you donate to charity need not be anything fancy. If you can afford to give a used business van to charity, well and good. But if all you can afford to donate to charity is a computer, a printer or a scanner, then that too will usually be appreciated (the charity can always sell gifts it can’t directly use) and whatever the gift, you will still usually be in a position to ask for a tax deduction on its account.

Governments, in a bid to encourage people to donate more to charity award considerable tax deductions to businesses that donate to charity. This the governments do out of an appreciation of the fact that the activities which the charities are engaged in are activities that the governments would be forced to undertake in the absence of the same charities. In this way, charities are seen as partners with the government in the provision of the services which they provide- which could be anything from care of orphaned children, to running soup kitchens where the destitute can get something to eat to running home for the aged and shelters for the homeless. All these are activities which the governments (ideally) should be providing in every society, but the reality is that the needs tend to be so overwhelming to the governments, to the extent that some individuals or organizations (the charities) have to chip in to provide these often desperately needed services.

In many countries, the tax advantages of donating business equipment to charity are calculated in a graduated basis, such that for the first so many dollars, you are given a certain tax deduction (usually quoted as a percentage of the value of whatever you have given to the charity) with the tax deduction progressively going up with the gift you give to a charity, up to a certain level from where it is constant.

The tax advantages that accrue out of donating business equipment to charity are usually not automatic, and you normally have to request for them in your tax returns, because the government has no way of knowing that you gave to such and such a charity (and how much you gave to the charity) unless you alert the government to the fact.

The tax advantages that accrue out of donating business equipment to charity are open to abuse, and in view of this governments usually require some form of audit to crosscheck the facts. This audit should not be off-putting though, because the governments try to keep it light and nice to avoid a situation where they dissuade people from giving to charity.

A well designed email marketing campaign is one of the tools you can use to take your business to the next level. As it turns out, however, an email marketing campaign is not just about getting people’s emails and then shooting haphazard mails to them. A successful email marketing campaign depends on your crafting a suitable strategy for it and executing the strategy.

A successful email marketing campaign – like any other sort of business campaign has to start with a goal-setting and planning phase. You need to work out what it is exactly that you want to achieve through your email marketing campaign – which constitutes goal setting – and then decide the specific steps you will take towards its achievement, which constitutes planning. Planning is basically defined as deciding to what to do in advance, and as the sages always told us, failing to plan is planning to fail.

When you get to actual email composition, you have to ensure that everything that goes into the emails is consistent with your goals for the campaign. And this includes the subject line. It is amazing how many otherwise good email marketing messages get ignored just because of a poor choice of an email subject line. Seemingly unknown to the creators of these messages is the fact that most of the messages that get into our inboxes don’t get read – and the decision as to which ones to read and which ones to ignore generally has much to do with the author’s choice of message subject line.

Past the email subject line, you need to compose the body of the emails keeping in mind that email – and the web in general- is a communication channel that is really meant for skimming rather than concentrated reading, and therefore ensure that your core message stands out in your message. Generally people give their full attention to the first few lines of a given email message, before skimming through the rest of the message, and you therefore need to ensure that you put what you consider to be most attractive facets of your message right at the beginning of the message.

Still on the e-mail bodies, you need to personalize your message if you are to make any impact. It is only by personalizing the email message to the interests of the reader that you get any chance of selling anything or any idea to them. Otherwise, all your emails run the risk of getting into that category of mails that are simply read – or rather skimmed through – and then promptly put on their way to the ‘trash’ folder.

It pays for you to follow up on the emails you send in your email marketing campaigns – but don’t overdoing it – or you will be running at a risk of being labeled a spammer and being blacklisted from many people’s mailboxes.

Beyond the specific emails you send, get into an email campaign knowing that you might not succeed at first attempt. The key to success here is what success gurus call failing forward – where you use your failure to learn what works and what doesn’t work – so that you can use the experiences you so gain in future email marketing campaigns.

Whether it is a new business you are starting from scratch or an extension you are seeking to make an existing business, one thing you will need for it is a proper business name. Many of us, when considering setting up a business, work hard on all other details but the name of the business. With so many business names available, we reason, choosing a business name will be a breeze. Those who struggle with business names, we further reason within our minds, are those who are simply not creative.

It is not until we get to the actual selection of a name for a business that we encounter real hurdles – and a reality check to let us know that the people who struggle with a business name choice are not necessarily those whose creative faculties are challenged. This first becomes obvious when it is clarified to us that our business name will have to be unique – or otherwise we run the risk of being sued for infringing on other people’s trademarks. And while this is usually common knowledge that we might have even before we go looking for a business name, the real problem rears up when we realize that almost every possible business name has already been registered. As it turns out, there are people who are wholly in the business of registering business names they know someone will come to need at some point in the future, hoarding such names, and then later putting them up for sale when someone in need of the same name shows up later.

So how is one to go about looking for a business name?

Firstly, you need to get rid of the idea that you have to go for the most obvious names. In fact, you can choose a name that doesn’t make any sense to anyone – and create buzz around it to an extent that the name comes to associated with whatever you are using it to sell. Look at people like Yahoo. These guys chose a name that cannot be associated with mail in any way, something that would have seemed a non-starter name, and created a buzz around it to an extend that the name Yahoo today rings a bell in everyone’s mind, and where everyone who hears about Yahoo remembers their e-mail inbox. And don’t argue that Yahoo had a lot of resources to create a buzz around the name. They didn’t when they started.

If you are choosing a name for an online business, it is advisable for you to go looking for a name for which you can find an unoccupied (unregistered) domain for. But then again, this is not written in stone and if you find a good name but can’t find an unregistered domain for it, you can always opt for another name, with a nonsensical domain if need be, and then create a buzz around it.

Of course, it helps for you to choose a business name that can withstand the test of time – rather than one based on a current fad that will fade once the fad is over. A business name that is easy to remember as well as a business name that can be easily associated with whatever you are doing (if you can get your hands on one) can also do you a lot of good.

There are times when a business or a non-business organization has to go out and meet the people it serves.

In the case of a business, the need to go out and meet the people could be motivated by something like the launch of new products – where the business wants to build some buzz around the new products. And although businesses always have the option of creating a buzz around new products using mass media channels, going outdoors in an exhibition and getting the product directly to the consumers comes with a number of benefits that a mass media campaign, while effective, does not have. In such an outdoors exhibition, for instance, one gets the opportunity to get instant feedback from the consumers regarding the product they are pushing, which would have been very difficult (if not impossible) to get in the case of a mass media campaign. In any event, the cost of an outdoors exhibition will tend to be far lower than the cost of a mass media campaign for the same effect.

A non business organization, on the other hand, could decide to go for an outdoors exhibition in a bid to build awareness about what it is doing. Even non business organizations need funding, which they usually get in the form of grants and so on – and which are usually allocated proportionally to the name that such an organization manages to build for itself and how many people it manages to get its services to.

Whether an outdoors exhibition is for the business purpose of promoting a product or for the non-business purpose of creating awareness around a certain cause, there are some tools which are considered necessary in order to have a successful exhibition. And outdoor PVC banners are one such tool, as are full color signs – which serve the purpose of catching and drawing the attention of people who happen to be near where the exhibition is being held.

As it turns out, outdoor PVC banners, especially the full color banners have this unique way of catching the attention of even the most indifferent person, which perhaps has to do with that shiny glossy look they come with. The difference between the full color and other varieties of outdoor PVC banners is that full color banners are made through large format printing (with specialized printers) whereas the other types of outdoors banners are made by pasting pieces of vinyl (a special kind of glossy paper) to pass on the message. The attention that outdoors PVC banners (especially the full color variety) command is in line with the whole goal of organizing the outdoor exhibition, which as mentioned, is usually to meet the people. Now it takes a tool like an outdoor PVC banner to get the attention of the people whom you can then meet and pass your message to. But perhaps even more importantly, it takes a tool like a PVC banner – which simply cannot be ignored, to pass the message to a passerby who might not have the time to come and meet you personally, but whom you would still like to get the message across to.

The outdoor PVC banners which are written upon by pasting vinyl come with the advantage that they can be re-used, and reusing them is usually as easy as removing the old vinyl, washing off the glue that attached the vinyl to the banner and then putting on new vinyl to get the new message you want to pass on out. This makes such outdoor PVC banners – which like the full color variety are also made to withstand the adverse conditions that being placed outdoors subjects them to – highly attractive to organizers of outdoors exhibitions.

Unknown to many people is the fact that success coaching – especially in corporate settings – is completely linked to effective goal setting.

To understand the link between success coaching and effective goal setting, it helps to first clarify that goal setting is considered effective only when the goals set are achieved, or at least seriously acted upon. Goal setting, contrary to what many people think is not just about stating what you want to achieve after such and such a period. Effective goal setting is a two (main) point process – starting with the definition of what you want to achieve – and then more importantly, taking the steps required to achieve what you want to achieve and ultimately achieving it – or at least learning why you didn’t in case it fails to work out, with what you learn in this case serving as guidelines for future goal setting.

Further, to understand the link between success coaching and effective goal setting in a corporate setting, it is essential to clarify that an organization is the sum of all its members. This means that the success of an organization is the sum of the individual successes of all its members, while its failure is the sum is sum of the individual failures of all its individual members. There is no better place to see the demonstration of this fact that in a football pitch – where the individual members of the organization in question, namely the players of the team in question, individually contribute to the success or otherwise of the organization and where the a slight failure by one member of the organization (a player) can often cost the team a victory, since games are usually won on very small margins. Of course, every team comes with a leader called a coach whose brief is to teach the members of the organization (the team) goal achievement strategies.

And although a business organization works in pretty much the same way as a football team, not many business leaders – be they supervisors, managers or chief executives – like to see themselves in a coaching role. Many of them describe themselves as business leaders (of course using whatever corporate title their climb has given them), but they don’t go as far as defining what that business leadership constitutes – which in essence should be success coaching.

In fact, it can be argued that the success or otherwise of a business organization depends on the extent to which the people in leadership positions in it see themselves as coaches, specifically coaching the people working under them success skills, seeing that, as mentioned, it is the sum of the individual successes of the individuals who make up the organization (in the diverse small roles in the organization) that will ultimate lead to the success of the organization. Of course for this to come to pass, the organization has to start by inculcating a sense of ownership of the organization to its members – so that they can come to own it the way football players feel the ownership of their team, hence their playing for ‘our team’ to win, as they usually refer their action.