I ended up staying up way too late last night writing this Jerry Maguire-esque “mission statement,” but it was important to me. Over the last few weeks, I’ve witnessed a lot of poor conduct in the small business community and I’m just shocked to see what people are willing to do to earn a buck. Not to say that we should all forget about making money and start running charities; for most of us, profits aren’t optional and our families depend on our businesses just as they would depend on our employers if we were regular old corporate guys and gals.

But that being said, can anyone give me a legitimate reason NOT to conduct yourself in an ethical manner? Is it so tough to make money AND do the right thing? I am not perfect (far from it) but I do make an effort every day to run my business in a way I can be proud of. The truth is that, no matter what business you’re in, running it with high moral standards is not only easy and emotionally rewarding, but also a point of differentiation in a marketplace that seems — increasingly, in my opinion — less than concerned about doing right by their clients. And if that’s not enough reason to pay attention, I also believe that being a good business citizen is also profitable. After all, long-term customer relationships are built on trust and if your customers can trust and respect you, they are likely to keep you around longer.

Every business is different, but I definitely suggest that all business owners take the time to define the elements key to ethical conduct in their businesses. Seeing what I’ve seen recently, I’ve taken my own advice and started writing down the most important guidelines in ethics and fair dealing that we’ve incorporated into the business here at Zero-G. A lot of these have been part of the business since day one; some were learned later, “the hard way.” Below are the top 10, in no particular order:

1. Help the client make the best possible decision for them — even if that means NOT hiring us: Bottom line, if you are not a good fit for us, we need to stop trying to sell you something that you’re not going to want and instead shift gears and try to help you get what you need someplace else.

2. Don’t “nickel and dime” the client: If we quote a project and the scope/expectations don’t change, the price shouldn’t either.

3. Focus on core competencies: It seems that every day we’re approached by someone new who wants to share a fantastic reseller or affiliate opportunity that’s going to make us “tons” of money every month. While Zero-G does resell some services like web hosting and printing, we do so primarily because sourcing these items is a convenience to our clients and improves our efficiency in completing projects which saves time and ultimately money; a savings which can be passed back to our clients. We will not sell products or services though that do not help make us a better agency, that compromise our neutrality and that may potentially create conflicts of interest as we serve our clients.

4. Don’t cut corners: This one is easy… If we can’t be proud of what we can accomplish given the tools, budget and people we have available and in the time given, we should pass on the opportunity. Doing otherwise is not fair to anyone.

5. Believe in the client: If — for any reason — we are not comfortable with a client’s business model, we will pass on the opportunity to work with them. In our business, we’ve been offered a variety of “interesting” projects and if they challenge us ethically, create conflicts of interest, or we simply can’t get behind them 200%, we decline.

6. Treat the client’s business like it’s our own: This is a variation on a phrase that my CEO at my last corporate job used frequently — and I still believe in it. To me, this means being honest, making responsible decisions with the client’s time and money and doing whatever it takes (within legal and practical limits of course) to influence their success. Sometimes that means telling your client something that they don’t want to hear and sometimes it means leaving potential revenue opportunities for us on the table to better serve the client’s interests.

7. Contribute positively to the community: For me, this is twofold. I think it’s important to contribute positively to the community as a whole by engaging in charitable/philanthropic activities (Zero-G donated about $10K in time to a local charity last year and we have plans to do something similar this year) — but it’s also important to impact your small business community. I think it’s wonderful when small business owners can be generous with their time and lend their experience to a fellow entrepreneur who could use a little helpful advice. I do this as much as I can. And as much as I enjoy helping small business owners in general, I have a special place in my heart for people getting started in the design and web business. I’ve done a lot of coaching for graphics folks and programmers trying to establish themselves and that has been very gratifying.

8. Never use ignorance as a sales tool: Many small business owners haven’t done a lot of marketing; they don’t always know what they need and may not have the right experience/tools to make a good hiring choice. Pushing the sale without providing some level of education beforehand is irresponsible. If they don’t know HOW to make a good decision on how to move forward with a particular initiative, I need to provide that information before they invest in me. Having all the facts may lead them in a different direction or possibly even cement my firm as the front-runner. Either way is fine. As long as I can provide a client with a great experience in the meantime I never feel as if my time is being wasted.

9. My responsibility to our clients extends beyond my contract: If I sit back and allow my client to spend money with a firm or individual that I know won’t deliver or can’t deliver what they are promising, I am not doing my job. My clients are solicited all the time by phony SEO and social media experts, people selling “too good to be true” advertising schemes and a variety of other marketing industry parasites. Sometimes my clients are already in a dysfunctional relationship with a service provider when I get there. Either way, it’s my responsibility to give them a “heads up” that spending money with certain folks is a bad idea, even though my firm may not have been hired to offer those opinions. The final decision is always in the client’s hands but I can’t withhold valuable information. In my opinion, it’s analogous to witnessing a crime but not calling the police.

10. Do unto others: I spent years as a corporate guy and, as such, played the role of “client” every day. And during that time, I was subjected to more than a few bad vendors. I need to conduct my business in a way that — were I the client — I would not want to fire myself.

I am not a saint and as I said before I am far from perfect. As with all firms, our batting average is less than 1.000 when it comes to delivering complete customer satisfaction. But I am an honest marketer and a fair businessperson who works hard for the benefit of my clients — and I believe strongly that this fact along with guidelines like the ones I’ve detailed here have been a major driver in the success of my company. I am certainly not “unique” in using a moral compass to guide my business principles, but it does feel sometimes that I’m among a dying breed. To me, that’s a real shame.

And by the way, I know I said earlier that my “top 10″ were guidelines in the business. As I’m wrapping up this novella of a blog post though, I now realize that’s not good enough. As of this writing, these 10 principles are now a business mandate and from this day forward I will invite and encourage any client to hold us to them.

If anyone wants to comment, I would really enjoy hearing about how other entrepreneurs have built strong ethics into their businesses. This  is especially important today, in an age where our economy was nearly destroyed by corporate greed and millions suffer as a result. It may be big firms that get all the press, but our country is built on small business; companies with less than 500 employees represent more than 95% of all American firms. We should be setting an example for everyone else, we should be the ones taking the driver’s seat right now and showing the mortgage lenders, the investment banks, the special interest groups and a certain oil company how things should be done. I might be an idealist, but I honestly believe that we can all make a difference.

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If he were a Bond villain, they’d probably call him “Perfecto,” the criminal so devious, he would never make a move until he had everything arranged just right. Unfortunately though, Perfecto could never make it into any of the films; he’s always too busy tinkering to make a real move.

Perfectionism is a REAL problem for entrepreneurs, especially first-timers. We all want our business launch to be absolutely spectacular, we want it to be — well — perfect. The problem is that we’re willing to keep our business in the workshop, hidden from the eyes of the public, until that magical moment of perfection has finally arrived.

But who are we achieving perfection for? Our customers? Sadly, no. The longer you keep a project to yourself, the more time that passes before a real customer sees anything and the more time that passes before you can gather any meaningful feedback as a business owner. The truth is that when you keep a business on the shelf while you wait for them to be perfect, the only person you’re trying to please is yourself.

There is absolutely no shame in putting something out there before it’s completely ready for prime time. Google does it all the time, which is why so many of their apps and services come with the “BETA” mark next to the logo… Google wants you to enjoy their product while managing your expectation that it may still be buggy. It works in service businesses too; at Zero-G we took on beta clients before we even had a logo. When we did launch, we had valuable feedback and some important insight into what our customers wanted (and frankly, what their objections were).

We had technology entrepreneur David Eckoff on Gravity Free Radio last week and he had some great insights into the “perfectionism” issue that a lot of startups face. Listen here.

Gravity Free Radio, a weekly national radio program — hosted by Zero-G Creative’s Erik Wolf and Stephanie Frost — is sponsoring an exclusive workshop with author, blogger and nationally-recognized entrepreneurship guru Pam Slim (@pamslim on Twitter) in Atlanta on Saturday, August 15 2009.

Pam’s workshop will be a lively and interactive event with presentation integrated with lots of Q&A. During the day-long workshop, Pam will discuss how to select and evaluate business ideas, how to build a winning personal brand, how to replace the need for a large budget with a focused effort, how to build a supportive team of peers, mentors and teachers and, maybe most importantly, how to manage the doubts and fears that get in your way.

The event will be help on Saturday, August 15 from 9AM to 4PM at the GTRI Auditorium at 250 14th Street in Atlanta, 30318. Attendance is being capped at 200 attendees, so be sure to register in advance. Tickets are $79 in advance or $99 at the door (if available, bring your checkbook).

For more information and advanced registration, be sure to visit PamSliminAtlanta.com.

Pam will also be signing copies of her book Escape From Cubicle Nation for all attendees so be sure to pick a copy up at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com before the event.

Hosted by Erik Wolf + Stephanie Frost, Gravity Free Radio is for entrepreneurs who don’t like being weighed down by old ideas. Our show features both locally and nationally prominent authors, experts, journalists and entrepreneurs discussing issues relevant to success to small and mid-sized businesses and offering free advice to listeners. Gravity Free Radio is broadcast live from our Atlanta studio every Tuesday morning at 10AM EST. Listen live or browse our complete archives at GravityFreeRadio.com.

The Pam Slim in Atlanta event is being co-organized by Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs, Atlanta Web Design Group, Atlanta Social Media Enthusiasts, StartupChicks and Women Intelligently Networking.

We joked on the radio show a couple of weeks ago that we might need to implement some kind of “swear jar” to keep us from talking about social media. But let’s face it, this topic is everywhere and it pops up in discussions constantly. Over the last week though, the big concern that a few of our clients have raised is around how social media strategies can be implemented in their organizations without exposing too much — especially when it comes to the personal lives of their employees.

The idea that a company’s clients or partners could be friending/following/linking with its employees is a frightening prospect for many business owners. After all, we can’t control our employees online like we can in the office… Even though enough precedent has been set, most folks aren’t concerned about disciplinary action at work when they go online and spout off abut their political views or post weekend party pics or inappropriate cartoons. So what do you do and how do you approach social media, if at all?

Here are three realities that we all need to deal with in this new atmosphere of openness that social media and the Internet have conspired to create:

1. Any expectation we might have had previously about a clean “separation” of our personal and professional lives is gone. We used to be able to compartmentalize these things fairly easily, but social media has completely shattered that. Some would argue that it’s made us all more whole and more human in a lot of ways as it allows you to add a lot of dimension to your relationships, but this is exactly what scares so many employers. The people who connect with you online have the opportunity to learn a LOT about you and very quickly. Be prepared for that.

2. The online “bond” between your company and your employees already exists as soon as someone self-identifies themselves as an employee online — and keep in mind that many social media platforms encourage users to add their current and past employers to their profiles. Bottom line? This WILL happen. Expect that over time a large number of your employees, both present and past, will have your firm’s name on their profile and expect that you will be permanently linked, even after that employee moves on.

3. Your company is going to have a presence on social media whether you want it to or not. The toothpaste is out of the tube so to speak and it’s never going back in. Your only two choices are to A) participate or B) try to ignore it. If you’re wondering, B is not a smart choice. Even if you aren’t thrilled with the idea of trying to use social media in your business, at least participation gives you the opportunity to influence what is being said about you.

Hopefully we all understand that we’re all in this social media thing whether we like it or not… So how can our businesses participate without the risk of being embarrassed by our employees? We can’t. Unfortunately, the risk will always be there. But at the same time, the risk has also always been there that our employees might embarrass us at meetings, sales calls, trade shows, networking events, via email and over the phone. When these situations occur, managers tend to use them as opportunities for coaching and professional development unless disciplinary action is required. Social media is no different.

As business owners sit squeamishly, wondering how long it’s going to be before this social media business leaps up and bites them,a lot of us tend to forget a simple truth about people: they are ruled by self-interest. Ultimately, this is your only and most powerful defense against social media transgressions. It’s in your employees’ self-interest to behave appropriately online. The problem is that not many have taken the time to consider the larger implications of who they associate with on Twitter or what kinds of pictures they post on Facebook. Nobody has outlined expectations of professionalism or given them a friendly heads up that — if they aren’t careful — their social media activities could cost them their job or help prevent them from getting another in the future.

For many of us, I know, this is just common sense. But now there’s a younger generation that grew up into MySpace and Facebook the way myself and a lot of other late Gen X’ers grew up into email. We’ve got young professionals that have been managing profiles on sites like these since they entered college — or perhaps longer if they were early blogging adopters. These young whippersnappers probably don’t understand the traditional separation of personal and professional because they never experienced it. The best way, in my opinion, to ensure a seamless and relatively surprise-free entry into social media is to talk about it and try to prepare employees for it, just as you would prepare them for a big meeting or a trade show. And if things don’t go as planned, a conversation needs to be had.

Social media is today what email was 15 years ago — a technology that’s cutting edge (albeit overhyped), heavily consumed by young people and EVERY DAY being adopted by businesses in greater numbers. Your firm NEEDS to particpate or be left behind. Don’t let the risk of being embarrassed by your team be the excuse that keeps you on the sidelines.

We also had a great discusssion on these topics on Gravity Free Radio this week. You can find the podcast here.

I once worked at a company where marketing communications was looked upon as “fluff.” Management looked at us to “spin” things in a way that made it appear as if our products had some sort of added soft benefit whether they did or not. Hey, it’s just “fluff” and it’s something we need to do to sell, right? And who cares if we’re writing checks we can’t really cash… No one actually expects the stuff they read about a product or service to be entirely true and free of creative embellishments, right?

In this economy, these types of transgressions and basic violations of trust with your customers and prospects just don’t fly. Now is the time for companies to really focus on creating true value for their constituents. Ways that you can save them time or money, ways that B2C firms can help their customers balance their lives at home, ways that B2B firms can contribute positively to their clients’ success.

Creating value in a down economy makes your company an easier choice for your customers to invest in; it makes you more indispensable to them and sets you apart from your competition.

Let’s face it, most products and services out there are commodities and there will always be someone out there willing to undercut you on price and there will always be someone willing to deliver faster. Trust and true value are much more difficult to replace.

As I prepare for a talk that I’m giving tonight along with some of my business associates, I’ve been looking hard at one of our topics for this evening: crafting a truly unique value proposition. I don’t think I really need to get into why this is so very important given the nature of competition these days coupled with the stress that comes with the perpetually bad news about the economy (and if you haven’t seen our post this weekend about how the economy will be saved, please do!).

Instead, I’m going to give you an idea about where your differentiation as a small business REALLY comes from… The reason that your clients should buy from YOU and not your competition. And, by the way, it isn’t your pricing, it isn’t your assortment of products and/or services, your infrastructure, your web site or the terms of your contract.

Those things are all important but when searching for true differentiation, most entrepreneurs really just need to look in the mirror. It’s YOUR vision that makes your company unique, YOUR background, YOUR body of work, YOUR ability to care for a client. The most significant ingredient in your Unique Value Proposition is YOU.

Don’t be afraid to leverage yourself in your sales and marketing efforts. Small businesses can’t afford to be faceless, impersonal entities like Fortune 500 companies. Take credit for the pieces of you that have been invested in your business. It’s the one thing that your competitors really can’t replicate.

In my line of work, we meet a WHOLE lot of first time entrepreneurs and we’ve seen a whole lot of successes and failures. If you are one of the dreamers out there with a $100 million idea in your back pocket, here are three easy ways I’ve found to help improve your chances of success:

1. Learn everything there is to know about your audience. A product is useless if it doesn’t appeal to the people who you want to sell it to. Stop getting hung up on what your product does, how it works or what freebies you can toss into your new service offering. The right questions to ask are from your audience’s point of view… How does my product/service benefit my audience? How can I make my product more relevant to them? How does it save them time or save/make them money? Savvy entrepreneurs study their customers like scientists.

2. Make a list. The details that are important to you may not actually be the details that are important to the success of your business. Before you spend hours agonizing over the precise shade of red that you’re going to paint your product or the minutia of your service contract, consider all the factors that could cause your business to actually fail and make a list. Sure, some of them are probably product/service development related, some are likely legal, some operational, but you’ll probably be surprised at how many of your “fail factors” are actually marketing related. Like “what if no one gets it?” or “what if I can’t get the word out?” or “what if my audience just isn’t interested?” Make sure you address the BIG problems before you dig into the little details.

3. It’s OK to compromise a little. Sure, everyone wants to launch with a perfect 10 product/service/web site/everything. But that’s not always realistic. Staying 100% true to your initial concept can sometimes come at the cost of your business. Sure, an “imperfect” 7 may not be ideal but consider the upside: it gets you to market sooner (and therefore gets you revenue sooner) and it gives you an opportunity to get your product into the hands of real live customers, allowing you to base improvements and subsequent launches on THEIR feedback rather than YOUR initial idea.

Entrepreneurs, please chime in: what did you learn along the way that kept your business from failing?

I will disclaim up front that I am not an environmental expert… My expertise is in marketing and branding and so I won’t comment on the size of anyone’s carbon footprint or attempt to quantify any impact that your organization can make on our environmental crisis (though I do know that every little bit helps). I’ll focus instead on the benefits to your customers.

Every business is different, but I’ve used my  compiled a short list of small “green” changes that we’ve made in the way that we’ve done business that have a positive impact on our position in the marketplace:

We don’t use presentation boards. This is actually a big deal. When I was running a corporate MarComm department for a consumer products company, I had a closet in my office literally FILLED with thick black presentation boards from various outside design firms that we had hired, with exactly one design idea on each one. And then in our production room downstairs I had a whole other closet filled with boards that we had used to present products to retailers. Using boards is expensive and extremely wasteful. By contrast, at Zero-G we present all of our concepts on a computer screen, whether online via conference call or in person. From a marketing perspective it’s a significant cost savings to us which we can pass on directly to our clients, and the use of technology makes us look savvy. And I hope we are, by the way

We send proposals via email. This isn’t original, we’re definitely not the first firm to do this, but it’s important. I’ve received some VERY fancy agency proposals in my time, hand-bound on an expensive paper stock, cut to unconventional “creative” dimensions and delivered wrapped in tissue paper inside a custom box. I never went this far, but I did print and bind multi-page proposals and present them to clients in person early on in my entrepreneurial career. And while I was never as prolific a proposal-maker as some of my big-agency counterparts, it was wasteful and time consuming nonetheless. Our email proposals come on a simple format, easy to read (it’s a true HTML email, not a PDF attached to an email) and easy to create. From a customer benefits standpoint, there are savings in cost and sweat equity, but I think the biggest benefit is that doing business this way has allowed us to turn proposal requests very quickly, showing the client that we’re committed to customer service.

We manage projects online. In my experience as a client, I had lots of meetings and conversations with outside firms that I really didn’t need to have. Managing the process online in a transparent fashion helps eliminate some of that wasted time for us and for the client. As an additional benefit, it makes the project available to the client even when we are not: in the middle of the night, early in the morning or on weekends, for example, when a lot of small business owners are focusing on their marketing initiatives because they didn’t have time during the business day.

We also do a lot of little things, like foregoing a traditional fax in favor of an e-fax, allowing people to work with us remotely, resisting the urge to print emails, maintaining paperless processes wherever possible, etc. But not all of these tie back directly to a significant client benefit so we don’t talk about them as much.

I hope this doesn’t come off as tooting my own horn — the moral of this story isn’t supposed to be how wonderful Zero-G Creative is. Truly, none of these things I’ve mentioned are all that interesting or all that innovative. But hopefully it shows that if you really examine your business and the “standards” in your industry that you might follow “just because it’s the way we’ve always done things,” you may find a few things that are actually worth changing. Inefficiencies or wasteful processes that cost you money, are environmentally irresponsible and have LITTLE OR NO REAL BENEFIT to your customers.

Truly, if you can create a value proposition that either saves or makes your clients money in a down economy and with a significantly reduced environmental impact, you’ll have a great story to tell next time you’re making a sales pitch.

Smart Wash, the company featured in the video above has been a client of mine for a couple of weeks now and they have one of the most incredible environmentally friendly offerings I’ve seen in a long time. Here in Atlanta, we’ve been mired in a terrible drought and we’ve had watering restrictions in effect for more than a year. That means that people aren’t washing their cars in their driveways and some even feel guilty about taking their car to a car wash or auto spa where anywhere from 30-100 gallons of water may be used to clean a single car.

But Smart Wash is a terrific example of what’s possible in the new “eco-conomy” of conservation and sustainability. They only use a quarter-gallon of water per car on average, which is over 99% more efficient than the best available commercial alternative.

What’s most amazing though about Smart Wash and many of the new green products and services emerging is that they do their job BETTER than the wasteful traditional washes. I didn’t believe it myself until I saw the video.

Smart Wash is having a Grand Opening today at their location in the parking deck at Colony Square in midtown Atlanta (on the blue level). Stop by and get your car washed if you’re in town!