Ethics in Business..A Lost ArtWritten by Sue and Chuck DeFiore
While watching Face Nation one Sunday earlier this year, Bob Schiffer discussed airline industry, his mother and ethics in business. Like Bob, I think it is a sad commentary today, that we have to police businesses. Whatever happened to going into business to provide a needed service, being loyal to employees, and keeping promises. It seems like no one today is concerned about doing good business or being ethical in process. Our forefathers would be ashamed at what this society has come to. I know I am. Chuck and I teach our students how to run a good business, by being ethical, and making sure that everyone is happy. We run our business using adage, “The customer is always right”. We know, however, from looking at others in business both on and offline, that we are in minority. For most it is all about making money. They don’t care who they have to step on, how many lies they tell, just “show them money”. As I pointed out in my article regarding “The Almighty Buck”, this should not be your only incentive for going into business, and if it is, you won’t be in business long. We see sites every day that you can’t find a telephone number on, an address for, they just want you to take it on faith that they are on up and up. Years ago, a business would never even think of operating this way. Their name, address, phone number, slogan etc. was very prominent on everything they did. Unfortunately today, you can’t take people on faith anymore. It’s very sad, but it seems if you do so, most of time, you will get burned.
| | Is Your Business Safe?Written by Sue and Chuck DeFiore
Well, is it! Do you back up your files on a regular basis? Do you have a back up plan in place? What’s important to your business and what isn’t? What happens if you get hurt, who will run your business? Do you have customers come to your business? What if they get hurt, are you covered? What about all equipment you have, is it covered?These are all questions a home based business owner, (in fact, any business owner) should have answers to and plans in place for. You must have a system in place to back up your files. Since most of us use computers today, be sure you back up at least once a week. If you really want to be efficient and make it easy on yourself, get a Maxtor hard drive with one button back up feature. For less than $200, you can not afford to be without one if you have a lot of files. If you don’t have that many files then a Zip drive will suffice. We have an I-Omega that cost us only $70. Ok, you say what should I back up? Anything that is important to you. Your customer database, templates you use on a consistent basis. If you are like us and sell e-manuals, and books, you need to have them backed up. We have all of our products backed up on disk, CD, and a mirror copy of our hard drive. We back up once a week. We use Maxtor drive with one button back up. However, if I am working on a project, I back it up every time I make a change. In fact, whenever I am working during day I use a working disk that I save to in addition to saving on my hard disk. When I save a document I am working on, I then go to save as and save it on my disk drive. This avoids not having an up to date document if my computer crashes. So your backup would consist of files you use a lot, customer database, your products, and anything else that is imperative to keeping your business up and running. Now what do you do with these back ups. Well, if you are smart you have a Safe that is fireproof, and you put your disk and hard disk back ups in Safe. When you do your weekly back ups you pull them out and just overwrite them. If you haven’t made any changes on your product disks then you don’t have to do them. You want to be sure your Safe is fireproof for at least 2 hours. We have a Sentry Safe. While not an inexpensive business expense, it is a very important one. Depending on how much you need to put in a Safe cost will vary. In addition to having back ups in your Safe, you should also have a set of back ups that are located off site. For example, a safety deposit box is a great place for back up copies, important papers etc.
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