New Book Helps Small Business Owners and Solopreneurs Build Better Businesses and Save the World

San Francisco, CA, February 28, 2013 --(PR.com)-- For decades, major corporations and large businesses around the world have been integrating social responsibility (CSR) into their business operations with some success. While the dialogue increasingly includes smaller businesses, we still rarely think of the solopreneur or microentrepreneur as having a stake.

Yet small businesses can and do have larger, more far-reaching social and environmental impacts. In the U.S. alone, small businesses account for 99.7 percent of all employer firms and employ half of all private sector employees. Small businesses are a major part of our economy—and solopreneurs and microentrepreneurs are definitely positioned to be effective agents of social change.

Unfortunately, the drive to be both a good business (profitable) and good business citizen (mindful of its social responsibility and values) is often confounded by the lack of resources and scant knowledge base available to the average microentrepreneur. Too often, owners don't have the time to look for the resources that will help them learn what it takes to become a committed and yet pragmatic, socially responsible business.

Now, a new book shows that businesses of any size can align their values with their business practices to make a positive difference in the world. Small Business, Big Change: A Microentrepreneur's Guide to Social Responsibility (Night Owls Press, 278 pp, smallbusinessbigchange.com) by Susan Chambers takes small business owners through an easy step-by-step process to implementing socially responsible business practices.

The benefits for businesses can be far-reaching, Chambers points out. Not only is being a responsible business good for the world, but it’s also good for your bottom line. She writes: “A truly vibrant business generates its profits through a combination of ‘value’ and ‘values.’ Focus on both ‘value’—by creating goods and services that are useful and have a market—and ‘values’—by improving the lives of your employees, the life of your community at large, and treading on the planet as gently as possible in the course of doing business.”

Small Business, Big Change amasses the author’s own experiences as a solopreneur and her interviews with 21 other businesses around the world that illustrate the triumphs and challenges of transforming into a socially responsible enterprise. For the first time, sustainability strategies have been tailored in ways that make sense for the “little shop.” Overall, Small Business, Big Change empowers microentrepreneurs to be the best social change agents they can be—within their means—to not only improve their bottom line, but also change the world for the better.