The 10 Golden Rules for your business

Do you have a set of rules that you run your business by? One of our most successful tools is working with your team to come up with an agreed way of doing business. We start with a focus group of your employees that discuss what does and does not work at your company, and work with them to develop a list that highlights how you want all employees to work together as a team. At the end of the process your employees will realize that they are part of the change process and will welcome the new way of doing business. We developed one of these for a company that has since expanded two-fold and just had a lucrative buyout. Bob Phillips

10 Golden Work Rules

We the employees and owners will:

1. Have a Positive Attitude while interacting with fellow Employees and Customers

2. Be Punctual and strive to always be on time at work and with our Customers

3. Be Considerate of our fellow employees

4. Always Plan and Organize our Time efficiently and effectively

5. Seek Clarity of Direction and Explanation of Tasks when required

6. Ensure Expectations and Obligations are fulfilled as much as possible

7. Work with Safety in mind and Respect the use of personal and company Equipment

8. Always conduct ourselves in a Professional Manner and with a Strong Work Ethic

9. Continuously be Willing to Learn, to Teach and be Taught

10. Be the Best that We Can be

Developed by Mike, Bob and the Team – March, 2002

Greenways and Blueways in Canada, the USA and Mexico

Bob Phillips is the Executive Director of the Greenway and Blueway Foundation, a non-governmental agency that has been involved in the development of Greenways and Blueways in Canada, and has received funding from the Government of BC. When he has a few extra minutes he provides free consulting to locally based community greenway projects. One of his long term goals is to continue to provide long term advise to similar organizations, and he has a special interest in promoting Blueways along the Pacific Coast from Canada down to Mexico.


One of the more interesting new organizations is Community Greens. Prior to directing Community Greens, Kate Herrod was the Deputy Director of Development for The Nature Conservancy and Vice President of commercial real estate at Citibank, Chemical Bank, and Security Pacific Bank. She now spends her time looking for partners in various cities to champion the creation of community greens. Take a look at her thoughts:
Community Greens - Green Infrastructure & Community Revitalization

Tom Peters gives us Great Ideas for the New Year

See if you can find at least half a dozen great ideas for your company. I like "Dream...Big!", "Pursue Adventures in every task", and "A little (or more) boat burning would do many enterprises a world of good." Fortune calls Tom Peters the Ur-guru of management and compares him to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and H.L. Mencken. The Economist tags him the Uber-guru. His unconventional views led BusinessWeek to describe him as "business' best friend and worst nightmare." Tom describes himself as a prince of disorder, champion of bold failures, maestro of zest, and professional loudmouth. Tom Peters

Plan where you are going before you start!

One of the most important things you can do as a business owner is to plan where you are going. Don't wait until you have a new company, division or project up and running to decide your goals. It is like skiing...you need to know where to point your skis and plant your ski poles, or you are going to need the ski patrol to fix you up.

Guerrilla Marketing Ideas

I can remember the first Guerrilla Marketing idea I ever used, and this was in 1976 long before the term was first used. I was a university student promoting my first company, Canadian Wilderness Adventure Ltd. We were running canoe trips on the Churchill River in Northern Saskatchewan and cycling tours between Jasper and Banff. I had called the Edmonton Journal and asked them if they wanted to do an article about the new company, and they said they needed something special for a picture to go along with a short news article. I had to think on my feet and I said, "What if you could get a picture of me cycling down the street with a canoe on my back?" The reporter didn't even have to think - he replied, "You're on." I had no idea whether I could do it but later that day I portaged an aluminum canoe onto my shoulders and cycled a short block for the camera. That one picture made the company. It was carried all over North American and we had the publicity to start our first summer. Bob Phillips

The Guerrilla Marketing Guru, Jay Conrad Levinson, serves up 93 examples of unusual, quirky, and downright effective ways you can catch people's attention. Guerrilla Marketing

Financial Fitness for Entrepreneurs

As we travel North America many of our clients want to know the most important financial things they should be doing right now. Brad Feld, a well-respected venture capitalist and Managing Directory at Mobius Venture Capital lays out the fundamental financial tenets that all entrepreneurs should know by heart. Financial Fitness

Evaluating your Team

One of the biggest problems business owners have is the problem of how to evaluate their managers. Do you know how to evaluate your team? And how does your team evaluate everyone that reports to them? For some ideas check out The Talent Myth Are smart people overrated? by Malcolm Gladwell.

The Road Less Travelled - Bob Phillips

Fellow business owners and consultants this is the start of a new adventure for all of us. Please use this site to help improve your business and let us know what is succeeding for you.