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Hello Friends!

I have been researching ways to streamline my home office area and make it as environmentally friendly as possible. Here are 5 easy steps I took to make this happen:

1. Purchased Used Equipment & Furniture: I donated or recycled my old PCs and switched to an entirely Mac platform. The Macbook I purchased was pre-owned so I paid about half of what I would if buying it new. I run both Windows and Mac OS X on it so I get the best of both worlds for a fraction of the cost. I also purchased a used table and chair from a local thrift store saving me money and the lives of a few trees. While I did save a ton of money what is important is I got rid of an outdated machine in a responsible way that is safe for the environment and gave new life to an old desk.
2. Use Only Recycled Printer Paper: According to Bay Area Recycling.org for every 20 cases of recycled paper you buy you save 17 trees, 390 gallons of oil, 7,000 gallons of water and 4,100 kWh of energy. Enough said!
3. Electronic Invoicing  for Clients: Instead of sending out paper invoices each month I opt for electronic invoicing. This can be done through software products such as Peachtree Accounting or online  via payment processing sites like PayPal or Google Checkout. I use Intuit Business Manager which is a free web-based invoicing solution. Furthermore, I also encourage clients and friends to be more responsible by printing only when necessary.
4. Use Energy Star Products: My Macbook, printer, monitor and every other electronic product I use is Energy Star certified. These products increase energy efficiency and use less toxic materials in their manufacturing.
5. Purchase Eco-friendly Office Supplies: From pencils made from post consumer materials to a stapleless stapler, all of my office supplies environmentally safe and just as durable and useful as their non-environmentally friendly counterparts.

Do you have any suggestions for a green home office? Feel free to share them!

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Greetings Friends!

If you are in the LA area and looking for green industry jobs then the Go Green Expo is where you need to be! It takes places January 22nd through the 24th 2010 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The expo will feature more than 300 companies from various industries including:

• Business and Electronics
• Health, Beauty & Fashion
• Energy, Conservation & Recycling

Participants can interview with companies such as Best Buy, Coca Cola Enterprises, California Solar Innovations and ITT Systems. For 50% off tickets use code: GREENJOBS and pay only $5!

A Few Tips for Attending the Expo

• Dress to Impress – Be sure to dress professionally when attending any expo, interview or job fair. Wear contemporary professional attire that is clean, pressed and reflects that you mean business.
• Brings Lots of Resumes (This is actually a requirement for the Expo’s career fair) – Bring a minimum of 15 resumes as you will likely interview on the spot with the companies attending the expo. Update all your contact information to ensure employers can contact you. Also, be sure your employment information is current.
• Smile! – A smile goes a long way toward your efforts to empress potential employers by showing you are confident and cheerful.

About Go Green Expo:
One of the nation’s most invigorating & diverse eco-friendly events, Go Green Expo will be at the Los Angeles Convention Center from January 22nd to 24th, 2010. Sponsored by CBS Television, The Los Angeles Business Journal, Natural Health Magazine, the Daily News, LA Weekly, Natural Home, Spirituality & Health Magazine, Mother Earth News, Kiwi Magazine, Green Lifestyles Magazine, Whole Life Times, The Sierra Club and over 25 other organizations. Go Green Expo is sure to have outstanding exposure and reach in its efforts to educate and enlighten business owners & consumers on the latest eco-friendly brands.

Hundreds of exhibits will encompass a wide variety of green products & services ranging from solar panels, hybrid & electric cars, organic personal care products, eco-pet supplies, greener gadgets, eco-fashion, and home and building supplies that will help us live a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle.

Eco-Celebrity speakers, authors & thought leaders such as Ed Begley Jr., Mariel Hemingway, Paul Pelosi Jr., John Picard & Eric Corey Freed will lead informative discussions! Don’t miss Los Angeles’ ultimate eco-extravaganza! For more details or to register please visit http://www.GoGreenExpo.com and let them know you heard about the event from Dharmapreneur!

Image by the Bergman Group/Darren Wamboldt

Stephen Hinton, managing director at Hinton Human Capital, recently made a post containing the 27 areas of potential job growth in the green economy. Some of these include:

• Architecture
• Environmental Engineering
• Landscape Architecture

The post was very informative and gave some very interesting examples of green jobs that I did not know existed like environmental information systems and resource efficiency managers. I’m curious to see what other green jobs will sprout as the year moves forward.

Do you know of any interesting green jobs on the rise? Are you employed as a green professional? Sound off below with your take on the green job industry.

Defining Ecolism

The best definition of Ecolism comes from Lee Whitfield over at the Ecolism.org blog; it has been altered slightly for clarity:

Ecolism is political system in which the cyclical nature of existence is embraced and rationalized into a socio-economic structure. All processes and activities are based on renewable and sustainable practices as opposed to those based on continual expansion.

According to this definition Ecolism can be see as a replacement for or complimentary component to  conventional capitalistic practices with a shift in focus from accumulating excessive profits to acquiring wealth with the intent to better all of humanity.

Converting to a complete or complimentary acceptance of Ecolists principles would have some profound effects. One such outcome would be an elevated level of ethical and moral accountability. Another may be an increased awareness of the future global consequences of one’s business activities.

If ecolism were to flourish who would develop and implement such a dynamic system?

Enter the Spiritual Entrepreneur

In years past the accepted form of entrepreneurialism consisted of wheeling and dealing by any means necessary to secure a deal and turn a profit. If people, communities, nations or the planet fall in harm’s way it is not anything a well paid PR person or an immense monetary settlement could not handle. As Greg Mullera over at Grape Thinking expressed it: “Capitalism needs a major upgrade … I believe it to be Ecolism”.

If Ecolism is the way then spiritual entrepreneurs are its messengers. They are not out to make money for the sake of acquiring power or status. They are not concerned with obsessive materialism. A spiritual entrepreneur’s focus rests on how his or her enterprise benefits mankind with as little damage to the environmental possible. Their philosophy and business practices reflect a well honed inner knowledge of the interconnectedness of things and they hold everyone in the organization accountable for their ethical and moral contributions to relationship building with customers, fellow employees and the environment.

Moving Forward to an Ecolist Business Model

Fortunately, there are plenty of businesses that follow and ecolist type business model or have begun exploring and implementing sustainability protocols in their companies. President Obama, favoring the efficiency and sensibility of sustainability has set sustainability goals for federal agencies to complete by 2020. No doubt that with the world looking for a better way to do business Ecolism will attract increased study in the months and years ahead.

Is Ecolism the solution to our country’s economic and social woes? It surely cannot hurt to give it a try.

To Your Limitless Success

Michael Stagg AKA The Dharmapreneur

For the spiritual entrepreneur, these eight principles can  assist in governing the business in an ethical and moral way.

The eightfold path for a business may read something like this:

Wisdom can be attributed to the management systems of a business. The CEO, board of directors and senior managers all must share the same vision – the right view – for the company. When the management team is in harmony they collectively share right knowledge which leads to a better understanding of the business, each other, the customer and the market as an integrated whole.

Right intention by the management team works to establish harmony with any obstacles to the success of the enterprise. This could take the form of overcoming interdepartmental rivalries, negotiating on a particular issue between shareholders and company owners, or who gets the parking space closet to the building. Cultivating right intention leads to right liberation – the ability to be free of the things which threaten to chip away at personal and group success such as ignorance, greed and unhealthy competition.

The next three steps on the path to a better business deal with are akin to the ethics policies of a business.

Right speech basically equates to telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For a business to function at maximum efficiency it is imperative for everyone, from management down to the mailroom, to communicate effectively. This means that everyone must be mindful of not only what is said but also how it is said to fellow employees. Being thoughtful of how we communicate with each other and avoiding deceitful, harmful or spiteful comments goes a long way to keep the peace in any company.  Conversely, taking time to offer a compliment to a hard-working employee or a an encouraging word to a fellow employee helps to boosts moral and promotes better performance.

Right action in a company can be thought of as conducting oneself in an proper way abstaining from objectionable acts as deceit and theft. For example, if a supervisor falsifies productivity scores for their team to avoid reprimand it will ultimately affect revenue – and most likely that supervisor’s continued tenure with the company. Right action could also allude to unwanted sexual advances for fellow workers.

The principle of right livelihood is a difficult one to uphold for a business. It would call for a business not to, directly or indirectly, conduct business in a way that is harmful to another living being. Some businesses, such as the pest control or the medical industry, would probably find it difficult to sustain this theory. Imagine a pest control business trying to survive without being able to simply kill the pests they are hired to exterminate. It would be possible to invent products that don’t kill pests but once they leave one residence where would they go?

Similarly, envision needing surgery to remove cancerous cells but being told it can’t be done because it will be harmful to cancer cells. This is a more difficult situation to discuss. Who deserves to live – the person who has destroyed their lungs with cigarette smoke or the cancer that’s doing only what it was created to do? I’m sure most people would say the person should live.

Fortunately, the many businesses are starting to use the principle of right livelihood by going green. By doing so they cut back on the environmental footprint left by the company’s business practices such as toxic waste and the leveling of forests in the name of expansion and profit.

The final three principles coincide with developing a superior customer service platform, cultivating a solid employee work ethics platform and quality control overall.

Where right effort is concerned, everyone is constantly focused on furthering the good and useful qualities within themselves, in their coworkers as well as in the overall practices, policies and procedures of an organization without thought to the difficulty or weariness involved. A supervisor constantly telling his team they are performing below acceptable standards while encouraging them to strive for higher productivity, an employee comforting a disgruntled coworker who’s had an off day or a manager resolving a conflict between an employee and a customer leaving all parties satisfied are examples of employing right effort in the workplace.

Right mindfulness would call for employees and managers to be completely aware of their personal contributions to what is being done at the company.  It’s a complete focus on the overall mission of the company and taking personal accountability for the company’s success or failure. Recognizing that more effort to developing a better marketing mix, improved treatment of employees leads to increased productivity and lower turnover rates or adding a daycare to decrease the amount of absenteeism by working mothers are ways right mindfulness come into play.

Lastly, right concentration would be very similar to right mindfulness. While right mindfulness deals with awareness of all aspects of business right concentration’s value lies in giving one’s total attention to a specific goal or task.There’s a saying that goes when you are at work, just work and when you are at play,  just play – never mix the two. It’s similar to being so absorbed in a good book or TV program that a person doesn’t realize someone has walked up next to them and they are started. That doesn’t mean that everything gets “tuned out” but rather a relaxed yet determined focus is placed on what is being done decreasing the time for completion and improving efficiency.

All of this is merely supposition. To my knowledge there are now books, or case studies on the subject. All I can say for sure is a person can’t do any worse by adopting at least some of these principles to their business. I have no doubt that it can improve any business out there just as it has progressed my own.

To Your Limitless Success!

Michael Stagg AKA The Dharmapreneur

It is no coincidence that you’ve visited this site; such things simply don’t exist. You are here because something within you and something on this site made a connection. Maybe you are looking for insight on how to develop your business on spiritually sound principles. Perhaps you could use some guidance on how to spruce up your resume or interviewing skills. Maybe you don’t know why.  Whatever the reason, I am grateful for the opportunity to connect with you and look forward to building a successful relationship with you.

This site is about building the business of your dreams by applying the spiritual principles of Buddha known as the Dharma. It is my sincere belief that you can attain anything you want in life by helping others get what they want. In doing so you set up a circle of reciprocity that is ever expanding and infinitely abundant. Thank you for visiting and feel free to connect with me at anytime.

To Your Limitless Success

Michael Stagg AKA The Dharmapreneur