How the Business Ethics Pledge is Growing My Own Business

Last summer, I launched an international grassroots campaign to prevent future Enron scandals by creating a mass movement toward ethical business practices. My goal: 25,000 business leaders signing an ethics pledge, and each agreeing to contact at least 100 others. (Bless their hearts, some signers have e-mail lists of many thousand, and have run notices about the campaign.) Together, we could create the “tipping point” to make business slime as socially unacceptable as slavery. Knowing that it took the Quakers 100 years from the time they began their campaign against slavery until slavery was eliminated in the US–and they had very little training in community organizing and, of course, no access to modern communication tools–I set myself a timeframe of ten years. As a volunteer, I’m doing this on essentially zero budget, other than paying for occasional bits of my assistant’s time to set up web pages, and a few dollars here and there for press release distribution. But then again, I’ve been writing about (and practicing) low-cost marketing for over 20 years, so that oughtn’t to be difficult, right?

I knew this would be good for the world. And I also knew it would be good for the people signing, who could use the Pledge in their own marketing.

What’s been pleasantly surprising is how in just these first few months, it’s already started changing the shape of my own business, and not in ways I’d have predicted.

I did think the pledge would make it easier to get speaking engagements; so far, that hasn’t been true.

But…

* I’m in dialog with a very prestigious magazine in the ethical business sphere, which has contracted for an article. If they like my work, they’ll have me do that department every issue. While I won’t be writing about the pledge, my blurb will identify me as the author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and the founder of the Business Ethics Pledge movement.

* Several new clients and prospects have approached me, specifically citing my stand on ethics, and usually telling me they found me through a link about the campaign. At least two of these will be long-term clients who will generate substantial revenue in copywriting and strategic marketing planning projects.

* I got an inquiry all the way from the Philippines about buying 500 copies of my book. Once again, the ethics campaign was a factor.

So apparently, it really is true: follow your dreams, your loves, your passions–and our abundant universe provides for you.