Anita Roddick the founder of The Body Shop passed away on September 10th and while I can’t say that I was a heavy user of Body Shop products, I was very aware of the Body Shop’s brand positioning. Body Shop was the first that I can remember, I am 28, practitioner and marketer of environmentally and socially conscious corporate practices. What I was not aware of till this morning, was that the Body Shop’s conscious was founded on 5 points that guided Anita Roddick’s development of the Body Shop into a billion dollar brand.

1. Take your business personally: Business has, traditionally, addressed the world with profits in mind, which is to say: impersonally. We can no longer afford this. More than any other generation – [today’s] business people are in a position to lead in making the world a better place. We must take more responsibility, which is to say, take it personally.

2. Be daring. Be first. Be different: Or no one will notice.

3. Be good.: Because you can.

4. Business is not beyond morality. Business is no longer a cold-hearted, objective, pseudo-scientific project to manipulate customers…it can’t be that anymore. The future of the world depends on us doing business with heart. Without ‘heart’ the creativitiy of the human spirit dwindles, too.

5. Business is like activism: It is a way of saying what kind of world you want to live in. Protest is not enough. You need a vision.

If you had come up to me on the street yesterday and asked me the maxims that drive PlansForUs, I probably would have given you a long winded answer that eventually would have described how these 5 points describe our business goals and vision. But now here they are, encapsulated in 5 neatly numbered sections that can serve to elucidate the goals ahead for PlansForUs. I will work on building out how PlansForUs achieves each of these points in blog entries to come. For now, enjoy the visionary genius of Anita Roddick,

by Tyler, CEO