Eco Tourism is becoming ever more popular, if we are to travel abroad responsibly, wishing to remain as sustainable as possible, even if choosing to take the air plane route, rather, than the bus, train and ferry. There are still places we can go to minimise our impact.

Within the last month I was fortunate enough to travel to such a place in Turkey that offers as much a clear conscience as you could wish for if choosing to travel at all.

Yuva is a yogic retreat centre offering vegatarian and vegan food, solar powered showers and electricity, plus wood burning stoves for the coolness of an April evening. It also offers as much natural entertainment as you could wish for, secluded coves, snorkeling in turquoise waters, great walking, bus rides to local market towns, stunning coastal views and spectacular wildlife.

If you like entertainment on the quiet side, where you can relax, read plenty of books and meditate in the heart of nature I can highly recommend Yuva for a restorative independent break. A pretty authentic operation especially with the hire of its predominantly Turkish staff complete with their own traditional cuisine and various holistic therapies.

Why I think Independent Utilities (IU) is an authentic business is because I believe they are trying to take the cover off the utilities market making it more transparent and in difficult times saving us all money.

There is a high chance that a large majority of us are paying too much for our utility supplies just by being on the wrong tariff. IU will soon tell you if you are, once more it won't cost you a penny and you'll get totally impartial advice in the process.

They are currently working with SME's, to reduce their energy usage and are committed to cutting energy consumption, carbon footprints and more importantly business overheads.

As the largest independent energy consultants in the South West they are proud to offer commercial users an innovative and hassle free service to help manage and reduce current energy costs

Providing year in, year out proactive advice through dedicated account management, they offer a comprehensive package, which includes; free energy review, invoice validation, energy performance certificates, water usage reduction, meter reading services, environmental audits and energy compliance.

Their services are totally independent, FREE and impartial. IU work with you to find the best solution and in most cases you do not even need to switch supplier.

They have already provided a number of their clients with massive savings, such as The Duke of Cornwall Hotel Plymouth (£25,000 on gas, £7,000 on electricity); Plymouth Argyle FC (25% reduction across all sites); Plymouth Albion (35% on gas) and many more.

For a free energy review and to find out how they can start saving you money, please contact them on 01752 262626 or visit their website by clicking on the link below.

Over a ten year period 99/09 Innocent Drinks went from a place of having only one retail outlet with 3 employees, zero market share and only selling 20 smoothies a day, on day 1. To 10,000 outlets, 275 employees, 82% of the market share and 2 million smoothies being sold in a week.

How did they get there? Primarily through authenticity, being themselves, selling a very natural, healthy product, giving you two of your five a day and communicating in an equally natural and transparent way too.

There is no arguing the success of Innocent as an authentic business and brand, and if you have 5 mins of your time why not click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kta2upHMMtk and let the founders of Innocent themselves tell you how they built their authentic brand.

This film will hopefully make up part of any future presentations that I make on Authentic Business and how to evolve a more authentic brand. I hope to be speaking to local business leaders about the subject of authenticity and moving from a conventional business to a more authentic one in the very near future.

Of course success can attract success and a company such as Innocent can attract all sorts of investors when it comes to expand further and further into wider and wider market places, needing capital investment to facilitate that growth, especially when one enjoys such a sustainable competitive advantage as they have done since starting up in business.

And so Innocent also provides us with a timely reminder as to how our own authenticity can be influenced or slightly tainted if being backed by the wrong partner. The two factors that can govern our continuing authenticity can be external funding and internal recruitment.

Recently Innocent accepted a £30M bid from Coca Cola for a 10 - 20% stake in their business. Coca Cola's ethics in the past have obviously been quite different to that of Innocent's and it will be interesting to see how the public continue to view Innocent as they go forward and if they are able to retain their core values they started out with, not being accused of green washing a larger organisations ethical code.

Obviously the temptation of gaining a potentially huge sum of money for part of our business, any business, once we have proved ourselves successful can prove to be very thought provoking, if not irresistible. When our continued authenticity is brought into debate however, upon the decisions we make, we obviously have to think very carefully as to what is best for ourselves and our business in order to keep our conscience clear and retain our credibility.