I’ve experienced one consistent thread through all my work with small business: the more ethically a business operates, the more successful it has been.

But we can’t just “have some ethics” and then expect that our challenges to be sorted.

We have to do our necessary work in an ethical way – we have to consider how our behavior and choices relate to our values in order to be successful.

Ethical values do not serve as a solution for business problems, but they serve as a necessary foundation for business success. So if you’re paying too much for your product and don’t make sufficient gross profit to pay for operations, merely espousing ethical principles does not magically solve the problem. But developing solutions in an ethical way – negotiating with suppliers, redesigning product, changing price structure, etc. – will lead to stable, long-term success.

On the other hand, trying to increase your gross profit while ignoring ethics (i.e., “we just have to down Red Bulls and get this done”), is a recipe for failure.

We need to consciously and deliberately hold on to ethical values at the same time we are solving problems.