Aviation of Business

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Dec 4

Aviationofbusiness.com just joined RSShugger - a new web-based program to help bring more readers to your blog. They have a top 100 list of blogs that resets every month, giving you the opportunity to grow your reader base even more quickly!

Currently, RSSHugger only has 269 feeds, so your chances of getting on the top 100 are more than 33%! Also, listing your blog on their site is completely free, provided you are willing to do a review of the site on your blog (such as this one). If you don’t want to do a review, you can also pay a flat fee of $20, or $2/month. This would be a good option for blogs whose readers wouldn’t appreciate a service that will attract more people to their blog.

I will probably be listing my new blog - www.environmentastic.com - on the RSShugger site as well, but since my readers on that site are looking for information on becoming more environmentally-conscious (and not necessarily looking to attract traffic to a blog), I’ll probably pay the $20 for that blog.

On THIS site, however, you are here to learn how to take your business to the next flight-level, so this kind of post is more appropriate for you!

Check out RSSHugger - it might be worth getting registered and listing your info with them!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Apr 21

Here’s something interesting: Small Business Week coincides with Earth Day.  I don’t know if that is the case every year, but in 2007, here we are. 

President Bush has praised small business owners in the days preceding Small Business Week, but he has not latched on to the opportunity these shared celebrations present.  If you would like to read the full text of the President’s proclamation, click here (HTML) or here (PDF). 

Here’s the thing: we all know that the environment is in dire straights.  We’ve heard the hullabaloo about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (both a book [aff] and a movie [aff]) and have seen the many recent reports on Global Warming (or Climate Change - choose your poison), a topic which has finally hit the mainstream as it deserves.

So what is to be done?  Bush missed a BEAUTIFUL opportunity to link Earth Day with Small Business Week.  According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), small business represents 50% of the United States’ private, non-farm gross domestic product (GDP).  In fact, small business ranged from 18 to 85 percent of each sector of the US economy!

Imagine what could happen if there was a strong call for small business to usher in a “green revolution!”  What if all small businesses began to run in an environmentally-friendly (even an environmentally-enhancing) way!  How great would it be if the ideas laid out in books like Green to Gold [aff] and Natural Capitalism [aff] were truly brought to fruition by the ingenuity and creativity of entrepreneurs and small-business owners!

Now think about what WILL happen if no small businesses think about the environment.  Nothing will change.  We’ll continue on exactly the same path we are already on - and, as we entrepreneurs know, avoiding change is not an option.  The status quo is a death knell for business.  In this case, the death knell would only warn us of the impending doom from climate change.  It may not end things, but it would DRASTICALLY change life as we know it.

So if President Bush won’t do it, I will.  I (and Aviation of Business) challenge all small business to try to think “outside their box” and “think globally while acting locally.”  And putting the clichés aside, I truly do believe that small business is up to the challenge of redefining what business can be.  I believe that small business, with its ability to change quickly and with its creativity and ability to mitigate risk (even though it can never be completely eliminated) is more likely to cause the environmental revolution than big, bumbling, slow conglomorates that slog through committees and make tiny, incremental changes so as not to misstep and (god forbid) make a mistake! </rant> Small business entrepreneurs know that mistakes are lessons, and that “incremental” actually means “slow and scared.”

So take the challenge, please!  Find any and every way you can make your business “green.”  Then let ‘er rip!  Leave a comment telling us how you currently “green” your business, and come back and add to the list if you hear about or think of a new, creative way to increase the “greenness” of your company!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Apr 1

Aviation is one of my passions.

Another is the environment.

An odd combination?  I don’t think so.

Most people look at aviation as a polluting, wasteful industry.  And, looking at aviation operations as they have been for 100 years and are currently, they are probably right.  However, I think that aviation as an idea is about the most environmentally-friendly thing there is… to fly, an airplane and pilot must adhere to the laws of Mother Nature.  She alone decides whether an airplane will fly.  Any one who attempts to defy nature in an airplane and do something that goes against the physical laws of nature will learn the hard way who is in charge.  I also believe that aviation can and should be a far less polluting industry than it is.  I believe that aviation can be successfully environmentally-conscious.  I challenge everyone in the industry to pay more attention and get more creative in reducing aviation’s impact on the Earth.

In that vein - I ran across a contest this week in USA Weekend in my Sunday paper.  The Smithsonian National Zoo is having a contest - asking kids to suggest creative ways to “Stomp out carbon.”  Click here to go to the press release on the zoo’s website.

By the way: Earth Day is every April 22nd. Celebrate Earth Day this year by leaving a comment telling us what you do to reduce your ecological “footprint!”

Fair Winds,
Andrew