Category Archive for Friends Who Want to Help

The Clean and Green Club, November 2015

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, November 2015
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Do you have five minutes to help me better understand and serve your green/social change business needs? Please fill out this quick survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9NHHMQ8

Now Through the End of the Year: Print Editions of Two of Shel’s Best Books (and an award-winning novel by his wife) for Just $4.95 per Copy


Perfect holiday gifts for the entrepreneurs, managers, marketers, and business students in your life—and for your own personal library. Also great to buy in bulk and donate to your favorite educational institutions and charities.
Nobody has to know that you only paid $4.95 each (plus shipping) for these award-winning and classy books from respected publishers. Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World (Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Finalist)(Chelsea Green) retails for $22.95, and Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green (Independent Publisher Magazine Groundbreaking Indie Book)(John Wiley & Sons) retails for $21.95.

My wife, award-winning novelist D. Dina Friedman, decided to join the fun and make one of her novels available at the same price (and hers is a hardback!). Playing Dad’s Song, published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, tells the story of a boy who faces crises ranging from a school bully to the death of his father in 9/11, and finds his way back to his center through music. It’s perfect for kids aged 9-15.

Because we’ve recently taken the rights to these books back, you can have print editions of these critically acclaimed books for less than a quarter of their original prices. Sometimes, there is more power in spreading a message widely, and low prices can make that happen. Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, especially—with its message of business success through green and ethical business practices—has a role to play in changing the culture, and I want to see that change ignite.

The holidays are coming and everyone loves easy, frugal, useful gift ideas. (Note: if you’d like to be more generous, the gift of a strategic green/social change profitability consultation or copywriting project from me could be life-changing.)

Read more about these amazing books at
https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/ (Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green) CODE: 4.95guerrillabook
https://frugalmarketing.com/gmtoc.shtml (Grassroots Marketing). CODE: 4.95gmbook (it comes with a two-chapter update covering social media, no extra charge)
https://ddinafriedman.com/dinas-books/playing-dads-song/ (Playing Dad’s Song) CODE: 4.95pdsbook

Then visit https://shelhorowitz.com/shels-green-products-and-services/ to place your order. Make sure to use the proper coupon codes.

Note: Paperback only; ebook editions are available at the usual undiscounted price (still a great value). Quantities are limited to what we have in stock. If you’re interested in a bulk purchase, let’s talk. If you’d like your books signed and inscribed, please tell us what to say.

This Month’s Tip: Two Books That Changed My Life—And How I Seized an Opportunity
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Yes, I do have a main article for you—but not here. The article is in two parts because I want you to think about the first part, draw your conclusions, and then examine the second part. I don’t know a good format to do that in an email newsletter, so I’ve put it on my blog. You will find it very worth the trip: https://greenandprofitable.com/two-books-that-changed-my-life-and-how-i-seized-an-opportunity/ (be sure to click to the second part after you’ve read this part).

Oh, and by the way, let me know if you like going to the blog. If the feedback is good, I might do it more often.


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About Shel & This Newsletter

As a green and social change business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriteraward-winning author of ten booksinternational speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His award-winning 8th book Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet was a category bestseller for at least 34 months (and is now available exclusively through Shel). Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”

Friends Who Want to Help


The Coming Business SHIFT That Could Change Everything

My friend Yanik Silver’s new book Evolved Enterprise impresses me a great deal. In fact, I blurbed an advance copy and got him to let me reprint one whole chapter in my own new book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.


I’m half-way through reading the final version, which I’ll review next month. Meanwhile, he sent this blurb:

It’s time for evolved entrepreneurs, visionary creators, and change makers to rewrite the rules of business for the 21st century.”

Imagine a whole new way for your venture to align purpose and profits, merging head and heart (and maybe even a bit of your inner child).

This is a counterintuitive blueprint to create a “baked-in” impact across your entire company by delivering an exceptional customer experience, creating a culture of fully engaged team alignment, and actually driving your bottom line!

Get Yanik Silver’s new book Evolved Enterprise here – www.EvolvedEnterprise.com

Hear and Meet Shel
I’ve been so busy getting the book done that I haven’t been booking talks lately. But that’s about to change! As the book launch draws closer, I expect to have several engagements. And remember—if you connect me with a paid speaking gig (OR a sponsor who will fund no-pay engagements), you can earn a very nice commission. Please write to me if you would like to help.

Preorder your copy of Shel’s newest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World


Learn how the business world can profit while solving hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change (hint: they’re all based in resource conflicts). Endorsed by Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin, and many others. Release date is April 19, just in time for Earth Day, and you can now preorder from several major booksellers (or get autographed and inscribed copies from me). Learn all about this powerful book at https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/guerrilla-marketing-to-heal-the-world/
Another Recommended Book: Be Audacious
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Be Audacious: Inspiring Your Legacy and Living a Life That Matters, by Michael W. Leach (Graphic Arts Books, 2015)

This may turn out to be a more personal review than my usual—because I’ve been pretty much living a lot of the principles Leach espouses, for decades, and because it’s been many years since I’ve reviewed an inspirational self-help book in this space. I think the last one, many years ago, was Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer’s amazing The Success Principles.

Yes, we arrived in the same place. However, our paths to this epiphany—our experiences and our perspectives—are very different. Leach is a former athlete who faced unimaginable physical problems, including a near-death illness. He had undiagnosed learning disabilities and was slow to discover the power of reading. He’s a Montana native raised in a rural area, and at publication time, he was 35. And he writes to a generation younger than his own; much of the book uses language that resonates with teens and 20-somethings. And he’s someone who—despite his decision to break away from them—seems to expect “haters” who will dump on him for taking the road less taken, and who call him irresponsible for bypassing the traditional 9-to-5. He seems to encounter them constantly.

By contrast, I’m a whole generation older, at 58. Though I’ve lived in the country for 17 years, and in a small college town for the previous 17, I was raised in apartment buildings in the Bronx (a crowded part of crowded New York City). I was an avid reader who got through a tough childhood with the help of books. And I never found a team sport I wanted to play. When forced to play baseball, I was picked last or almost last, and exiled to the outfield where my low abilities wouldn’t do much damage.

I gave up trying to conform to other people’s expectations in my thought patterns by the time I was 13. I do conform on some of the things that don’t really matter, like what I wear and how I keep my hair—but I think the biggest strength I bring is my ability to think differently, to see both the forest and the trees, to see opportunities for my clients that arise out of completely different situations or industries.

And I’ve found that the more I’m in integrity with my life and my message, the more people respect what I’ve done already, what I’m doing, and what I hope to do: use the profit power of business to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. (Is that audacious enough for you, Michael Leach?)

Where we have common ground is in our dedication to preserving and improving the environment, growing out of our mutual love of nature. In our desire to think bigger and act bigger so we can have real impact on the world (a lesson it took me much longer to figure out than it did Michael). And in our adoption of the principles he lays out. To name a few:

Embrace Multiple Passions/Use the “Slash” Model
Michael’s book (his second) could be categorized as self-help/inspiration/memoir. He uses his own experience as a teaching tool throughout the book, as well as case studies from the kids he’s coached, the people he’s encountered on his speaking tours, or those he guided through the wilderness.

Michael doesn’t fit neatly into little boxes. He uses lots of slashes to join together his different parts into a “renaissance soul” (a term coined by my late friend Margaret Lobenstine to describe a Ben Franklin/Da Vinci/Oprah/Buckminster Fuller/Thomas Jefferson type who explores numerous interests and passions. He describes his own set of slashes (ranger/naturalist, fishing and wildlife guide, freelance writer, basketball coach, and founder of a nonprofit) several different ways in the book, and even breaks down the nonprofit role into “executive director/programming coordinator/chief fund-raising coordinator” (p. 178).

My set might look like this: speaker/writer/consultant/practical visionary/social change activist/community organizer/marketer. Or I could apply a completely different set of labels (parent/vegetarian foodie/traveler/student of cultures—to name a small slice of the possibilities) that would be just as accurate. But for me, it all boils down to the core mission: I help people understand that doing the right thing is an opportunity, not a sacrifice—and I model the possibility of environmentally and socially conscious life and work.

For both of us, all of these slices of ourselves are based in passion—in “permapassion,” to use a term called by Leach’s friend Scottie B. Black. I love this word’s linguistic combination of permaculture and passion. And those passions have to go beyond pure hedonism. Yes, take joy in what you do. And at the same time, keep sight of your higher purpose; channel your energies toward the passions that can change the world.

“If Your Self-Talk Isn’t Helpful, Change It” (p. 103)
While it certainly isn’t the whole story, the idea popularized in the book/movie, The Secret, that our thoughts control our destinies has some truth. If you hit yourself over the head with all the reasons you can’t do a thing, you’re not likely to get it done. But if you focus on the reasons you can accomplish what you want to, those paths have a way of opening. And if you dream those big, audacious dreams, you have a responsibility not to sabotage yourself.

Work like an Onion (p. 177), and work yourself out from the your soul to the wider community.
I might flip this one inside-out. Yes, work from the inside out, but also from the outside in. Keep going deeper and deeper until you find the inner truth.

See Happiness not as Entitlement but as Opportunity (pp. 241-242)
You can start creating happiness in others—and in yourself—by doing little good deeds, as simple as smiling or holding a door open. As you learn to think and act bigger, more exciting changes will arise.

Leach focuses a lot on adversity creating resilience. And he’s experienced a lot of adversity. That’s one path; I’ve found plenty of other ways to build resilience. Again, there are many paths.

I could say much more about this book, but this already is longer than most of my reviews. Go get it and decide for yourself.

The Clean and Green Club, September, 2015

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, September 2015
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Can a Book Launch Change the World?
Only if…
1. The book contains powerful new ways of looking at the world, powerful solutions to make and spread change
2. Enough people read the book and start discussing those ideas

Books have often changed the world. Think about The Tipping Point, In Search of Excellence, or even way back to Silent Spring, Tom Paine’s Common Sense and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I could list hundreds more examples.

My forthcoming 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, can change the business world—with your help. It scores well on #1, showing how businesses can not just go green, but actually make a difference AND a profit turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.

I’d love your help with #2! And there are several incentives to participate. Please visit https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/will-you-help-business-transform-the-world/ for all the details.

A bit more about the book: Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, my second collaboration with the legendary Jay Conrad Levinson (Father of Guerrilla Marketing), comes out in March, with endorsements by Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup, Seth Godin, the founders of BNI and GreenBiz.com, the author of The New Rules of Green Marketing (among others), and essays from the authors of Unstoppable/Unstoppable Women and Diet for a Small Planet as well as marketing superstars Yanik Silver and Ken McArthur.

This Month’s Tip: Types of Partnerships
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Every entrepreneur wants new sources of revenue with almost no risk, yet only a small portion understand how the magic of a good partnership can bring this about. As an example, many partnerships are built around payment for results; rather than paying thousands of dollars to advertise in the media with no guarantee of results, you only pay your partners commissions for the sales they actually achieve for you.

Open your mind to infinite possibilities! Last month we talked about who makes a good partner. Now, let’s look at the myriad ways to structure a partnership.

Partnerships can be extremely simple, or very complex. Either way, they typically fall into three main categories, with thousands of subgroupings. So obviously, this is not a comprehensive list ;-):

Marketing, Branding, and Fundraising

  • Referral, with no commission (see the example from my own early days in last month’s newsletter)
  • Referral, with commission
  • Affiliate (where software tracks commissions for you)
  • Package stuffers: you include an offer from another business when you mail out your orders or bag them at a retail counter (with or without a tracking code)
  • Co-marketing multiple products and services from multiple vendors, as individual offerings
  • Co-marketing multiple products and services from multiple vendors, as a single value-added and/or discounted package (as the separate companies with a word processor, spreadsheet, and database did years ago when they created a suite to compete with Microsoft Office)
  • Partnering with a charity/NGO to donate a percentage of sales, time-limited (“dine with us Tuesday and we’ll donate 10% to the food pantry”) or otherwise conditional (“every 50th caller raises another $100 for United Way”)
  • Partnering with a charity/NGO to donate a percentage of sales, ongoing (“portion of the proceeds will be donated to Rainforest Action”)
  • Producing the same product under multiple brand labels (supermarket private-label brands, car companies)
  • Organizing events with a charity partner and bringing in media partners (radio and TV stations, newspapers, popular Internet sites) to publicize the event at no charge
  • Joining forces to create and promote theme-based events, geographical groupings, or other promotions that benefit all participants (maps showing groups of artisanal food businesses or antique shops, themed festivals for craft beer or renewable energy, Taste of the City/Neighborhood restaurant fairs
  • Similar efforts for geography-based communities, neighborhoods, or even individual streets without an overriding theme, such as this example of a street in St. Augustine, Florida: https://www.facebook.com/AvilesStreet

Operations and R&D

  • Joining forces to address different parts of a complex project (the massive energy efficiency retrofit of the Empire State Building involved companies with expertise in window remanufacturing, temperature controls, insulation, and overall green building design)
  • Co-creating new products and technologies (the PowerPC computer chip that ran many computers in the 1990s was a joint project of Apple, IBM, and Motorola)
  • Engaging corporate and NGO leaders in a joint visioning/revisioning process to develop much greener, more socially conscious approaches in business (this month’s recommended book has dozens of examples; I also consult on this)
  • Presenting a unified front to address big problems (as European car manufacturers did when they agreed on strategies and processes to take back used up vehicles at the end of their useful life and reuse the parts, pointing out to the government that having their cooperation would work better than an adversarial relationship)
  • Mergers and acquisitions

Financial

  • Cooperative ownership
  • Pay-upfront memberships such as CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms
  • Stock options/employee ownership plans
  • Traditional financial partnerships, such as silent partners, angels/VCs, and IPOs—and the more consumer-oriented models such as mutual funds that create partnerships with thousands of members
  • Issuing scrip; your customers and neighbors can buy “currency” usable only at your business, typically for 10 to 20 percent less than the face value
  • Local currency networks, such as Ithaca Hours (Ithaca, NY and vicinity) and BerkShares (Berkshire County, MA)
  • Computerized barter networks
  • Time trade networks, where an hour of a doctor’s labor is worth the same as an hour of a babysitter’s

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About Shel & This Newsletter

As a green and social change business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriteraward-winning author of ten booksinternational speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His award-winning 8th book Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet was a category bestseller for at least 34 months (and is now available exclusively through Shel). Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”

Friends Who Want to Help

30-minute no-charge session with a master business and life coach
Posting this on behalf of my friend, colleague, and masterful coach Oshana Himot. I have benefitted enormously working with her. She’s really helped me crystalize the idea that I can shift my focus to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance—through the profit motive. Without her, I wouldn’t have done my TEDx talk, “Impossible is a Dare” (hear the talk and see the slides at https://www.business-for-a-better-world.com/tedtalks/ )
nor would I have written the new book.

She writes: “If you work to change society in positive waysI’m a skilled coach who can help you work through the stuck places and go forward… With a mix of both business and life coaching skills, and MBA, and a diversified set of tools, I work with you as the unique and wonderful person you are–and the amazing, powerful person you’d like to become. What you would like to achieve.

“How can this work can benefit you? Schedule a complimentary 30-minute session and find out. You can reach me at 602-463-6797 or through email at: oshana@oshanasjoywork.com.

Debbie Allen’s new book on Positioning—Yours at NO Cost
I’ve got an exciting gift for you! Download my friend Debbie Allen’s brand new book, EXPERT POSITIONING: How to Dominate Your Competition and Gain High Paying Clients at no cost. Expert Positioning is a great way to stand out and market your business; I’ve personally built my business with it. Debbie’s been in the expert space for decades. Her new book walks you through the process to setting up your expert business so you can easily gain higher paying clients and make more sales. Get your free copy now at www.ExpertDomination.com 

Hear and Meet Shel
I’ve been so busy getting the book done that I haven’t been booking talks lately. But that’s about to change! As the book launch draws closer, I expect to have several engagements. And remember—if you connect me with a paid speaking gig (OR a sponsor who will fund no-pay engagements), you can earn a very nice commission. Please write to me if you would like to help.


Just announced: a stellar looking Guerrilla Marketing Reunion with a lineup that includes Seth Godin, Jay Conrad Levinson’s widow Jeannie Levinson, Joel Comm, Loral Langemeier, and several other luminaries, November 2-4 in Orlando. Price is very reasonable. I’m going; how about you? https://guerrillamarketingfamilyreunion.com/ (Oh, and let me know if you’re a nonsmoker who’s interested in sharing a hotel room.)
Another Recommended Book: The Necessary Revolution
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The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations Are Working Together to Create A Sustainable World, by Peter Senge, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, and Sara Schley

Most of the books I’ve been reviewing the last several years have been published relatively recently, often within three years. With a 2008 copyright, this book is outside of that pattern. And while there are pieces of it that are a bit dated—for instance, evaluating and praising BP’s actions on behalf of the environment pre-Deepwater, and of course the dramatic shifts in the fossil fuel climate due to new (and very invasive/destructive) technology and the concurrent shifts in the economy following the recession.

Yet about 90 percent of this book is still intensely relevant, and the orientation toward holistic approaches and working together from different sectors on common goals (e.g., corporate and NGOs or corporate and major government regulators) yields terrific examples and remarkable insights. I like the way it pays attention to both results and process, and demonstrates repeatedly that inclusivity —when combined with holistic thinking and powerful visioning—creates better, longer-lasting, more future-focused results. In other words, it’s not about being less bad, but about rethinking an entire way of doing things to create a greater good in the first place; they see the solution as based in innovation, not coercion—something Buckminster Fuller, who suggested that we humans learn to live on our energy income (i.e., renewables) rather than energy capital (fossil fuels), would agree with (p. 8). By working backward from the world we want to achieve, rather than patching the failures of today’s world, we can leapfrog the incremental small gains and totally rethink and reshape the business world, and heal the planet. So give it a whirl, even if you think 2007 data is too old.

Some of what you’ll learn will be about the changes brought about by the 20th century industrial model—like the shocking statistics that the number of cars in the world leapt from 50 million in 1950 to 800 million less than 60 years later (six times the growth in population), or that (as of 2007) 90 percent of all raw materials ended up as waste (p. 16).

But that second statistic is cause for hope, because it opens up the possibility to use resources far more effectively. If we can bring that 90 percent down to, say, 10 percent, that means we need far less mining, fewer landfills, less energy and water in manufacturing, use, and disposal, and many other benefits.

You’ll also learn powerful stories about individuals who led their organizations not just to a new understanding of how business can profit while serving a higher social and environmental good, but to new products and services—as well as new corporate structures and partnerships (with competitors, trade associations, NGOs/nonprofits, and government agencies), new tools for inclusive decision making and product creation, and new ways of doing business—based in that understanding. If you’ve followed what I’ve written about practical visionaries like Amory Lovins and Dean Cycon (both cited) over the years, or what I’ve written about partnership success strategies, it will not come as news.

Let’s make that hope much more concrete, by sharing just a few of the numerous case studies in the book:

  • After a bunch of folks from Xerox went on a guided wilderness retreat, they saw a Xerox copier rusting in a landfill. This caused an epiphany: they could design copiers that sent nothing to the landfill. Putting this into action meant addressing such issues as product lifecycle and energized the group to reinvent copier technology. While the defunct copier they saw had more than 2000 parts and was not easily disassembled, the Lakes Project model this team developed had just 200 parts and came apart easily for reuse and recycling, and kept 122,000,000 pounds of material out of landfills in a single year (pp. 288-289).
  • BMW, which had been developing plans to collect and recycle worn-out cars, expanded to create a consortium of all car manufacturers in the European Union, developed practical methods to design cars for eventual disassembly and reuse, and then went to the EU government as a united front, with workable plans for the makers to take end-of-life responsibility for their products. The EU adopted their recommendations, which avoided certain regulations the manufacturers felt were unrealistic or too restrictive while accomplishing the agreement to collect and recycle with essentially no pushback from industry—because industry designed the program (pp. 230-232, 248). 
  • Alcoa piloted a massive water reuse project in one plant, and saw an 85 percent reduction in water consumption (p. 182).
  • Meanwhile, Coca-Cola partnered with the global environmental group WWF to examine its total water footprint—including, for instance, the huge amount of water needed to grow its sugarcane. (It turns out that other beverages, including coffee and milk, also have enormous water footprints, once we factor in inputs like the amount a cow drinks.) This initiative got urban corporate executives, environmentalists, residents of environmentally sensitive areas, bottlers, and farmers talking to each other in new ways. (pp. 77-95; the case study doesn’t really address the results of the initiative, which was pretty new at the time).

Senge et al tell us it’s crucial to dream big, and to work from a primarily positive vision—that falling a few points short of a massive, world-changing goal is a much greater success than meeting a goal that’s too easy and doesn’t build change (pp. 293, 325-326).

A key point is that innovations, and movements, typically don’t originate at the centers of organizational power—there are exceptions, of course—but at the periphery, with production workers, managers of small units, etc. (p. 364), developing “creative tension” (pp. 294-296). Often, meaningful change happens when one employee champions the cause and makes it happen. Thus, the book features multiple Toolkit sections, which provide an illustrated overview of specific tools that help organizations grapple with these issues—including companies unaccustomed to giving line workers or unit managers a meaningful say in policy. One example is the five pages about understanding when participants are taking on any of four different roles in a meeting (pp. 276-280).

The authors include a zinger at the very end that could be its own book: a brief section (pp. 374-377) on the need to take these group process skills out beyond the human experience, and to not just take the needs of other species into account, but to design processes that include non-human partners. Reading about Amory Lovins’ active collaboration with apes who had learned to communicate with humans, co-designing an ape-friendly living environment, made me jump out of my chair and yell “Wow!”

There’s much more in this book. Go out and get it, read it carefully, and take lots of notes (I took five pages, and I have tiny handwriting).

The Clean and Green Club, July 2015

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, July 2015
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Discounts on My Two Best Marketing Books—Yours for Just $15 each

Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green was published originally by Wiley. It was named a Groundbreaking Indie Book by Independent Publisher Magazine, republished in Italy and Turkey, and on the Amazon category bestseller lists at least 33 different months). 236 pages of great information on marketing green businesses, plus a bonus package worth hundreds of dollars. Originally priced at $21.95.
Learn more: guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/
Order: https://shelhorowitz.com/shels-green-products-and-services/
Use the coupon code: GMGG15

Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World was published by Chelsea Green, at $22.95. A Finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award, this large-format paperback has 306 pages of information to help any business or organization market more effectively and spend less money doing so. It includes a bonus two-chapter ebook covering social media and other new developments.
Learn more:
https://www.frugalmarketing.com/gm.shtml
This Month’s Tip: Make It Viral, Part 3
Successful Examples and Ideas

I’d hope to fill this whole issue with subscriber success stories. However, only two of you wrote to me with your experiences. I am pretty surprised, as publicity is one of the best ways to make something go viral, and I was offering no-strings-attached publicity.

It may be that viral marketing success is a lot rarer than the gurus make it out to be. In any case, I will fill out the article with other examples.

Participate in Relevant Twitter Chats/Post Exciting Topical Content
Find hashtag Twitter chats that relate to the idea, product, service, or cause you wish to promote. (A good resource is @chatsalad.) Engage in lively conversation with like-minded people on related twitter chats. Ask and answer questions *related* to the topic being discussed. Respond directly to what others say. Be genuine and heartfelt. Do not distort the focus of the dialogue to blast your notices. Keep it very personal. If you contribute something unique, eye-catching, inspiring, or provocative, it’s likely to get retweeted and spread out.

I do best with the chats that have a large audience, hundreds of people. I’m making friends and building relationships. I got really involved in a discussion of the ethics of content marketing on #contentchat. People mentioned, retweeted, and responded. The lively conversation drove up my Klout score [editor’s note: a rough measure of your authority on Twitter].

Also, respond to trends. Within a day, I had 170 comments across social media on a post about Hillary Clinton hiring a Monsanto lobbyist to help her win in Iowa.
–Judah Freed (@judahfreed)

Do a Long-List Blog Post
I consult with people who are looking to come off or find alternatives to medicinal psychiatrics. I wrote a very long list of things people could try before taking them. This was my most successful blog post on my own site ever. It was shared on Facebook over 900 times (I’ve had articles shared more than that, but on other more popular sites). It got viewed 1183 times the day I posted it.
–Chaya Grossberg, Intuitive Healer https://chayagrossberg.com/

Grab Onto a Universal Meme
Dave Carroll and his band the Sons of Maxwell grabbed onto the popular theme of corporate indifference to the trouble they cause ordinary people with their Youtube video, “United Breaks Guitars.” More than 15,000,000 people have watched the main posting of this video as of July 1–and that doesn’t count the gazillion spin-off videos and reposts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Blow the Doors Off People’s Expectations
When an unemployed housewife in a frumpy dress, looking 15 years older than her actual age, walked onstage of “Britain’s Got Talent” six years ago, it was clear that no one expected much. Then she started singing. And Susan Boyle got the singing career she wanted. An astonishing 171,861,870 people have watched this. If you’re not one of them, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

Be Irresistibly Cute
This commercial for Google Android featuring lots of cuddly interspecies friendships has attracted 18,251,438 viewers on Youtube (and probably many more on regular TV). What it doesn’t do, in my opinion, is sell phones (or anything else). I don’t see anything relevant in the song lyrics, the tagline message, or the visuals that does anything to brand Android as my phone of choice (and I own one).

Be Irresistibly Useful
Let’s stay with the Big G for a moment, and go back to its earliest days. Do you remember the first time someone showed you Google’s search engine? The combination of a clean interface, instant results, and a very strong degree of relevance blew a lot of people away, including me. It was lightyears ahead of Alta Vista and Yahoo and Excite, and spread like wildfire. The company was incorporated in September, 1998, and two months later was heralded by PC Magazine as the best search engine, with “an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results.” By the time the company started monetizing by selling advertising, a couple of years later, Google utterly dominated search—as far as I know, without buying any paid advertising about its search services.

Create an Unstoppable Movement
I told you about Save the Mountain, the environmental group I formed in 1999, in the May issue. The viral nature of our success was a lot about noticing a moment that was ready for change, and positioning our group to ride the wave. 


In the aftermath of the June United States Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, you probably discovered a lot of your Facebook friends had “rainbowized” their profile pictures as a way of celebrating. This was another right-place/right-time movement. I would have never predicted in 1979 when I first attended a same-sex commitment ceremony that gay/lesbian marriage would be legal anywhere in the US within my lifetime. Even after my own state of Massachusetts became the first in 2004, I never thought that 11 years later, it would be the law of the land across the nation. 

It was only in 1969, with the Stonewall riot in New York City during a police raid of a gay bar, that significant numbers of gays and lesbians began demanding acceptance by the mainstream culture. Gay marriage pushed that movement to new heights, while at the same time, the mainstreaming of same-sex lifestyles pushed same-sex marriage. The two together created a synergy that neither one could have done alone. 

The bigotry that had been the “normal” treatment toward non-heterosexuals a few short decades ago is certainly not banished—but it *has* become socially unacceptable. And businesses are harnessing their support to their benefit.


Connect with Shel on Social Media
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About Shel & This Newsletter

As a green business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriter…award-winning author of eight books… international speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”
Hear & Meet Shel/Friends who Want to Help
As a panelist, I can get you tix to @KenMcArthur’s $697 Impact event, Phila, July 30 to August 2, for just $97: https://theimpactevent.com/97ticket (click the link on that page to see the awesome lineup of presenters, then return to the link above to get the deal). If you attend, be sure to say howdy.
Another Recommended Book—Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity

Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity by Peggy Holman (Berrett-Koehler, 2010)


Out of chaos, something different and better can often emerge—if we respond to disruption as a growth opportunity, at least.

From running a meeting to creating a revolution, Holman cites numerous examples of harnessing disruption, working through it to something more inclusive, easier on the environment, and more likely to create the world we want—even if getting to this wonderful destination can be painful. She encourages us to “embrace mystery: seek the gifts hidden in what we don’t know,” “choose possibility: call forth ‘what could be,’” and “follow life energy: trust deeper sources of direction.”
Change, she says, will be 10 times as rapid in the 21st century as it was in the 20th (which was in turn the fastest-changing period in history). This means recognizing that big change often starts with tiny steps…viewing problems not as something to fix, but as doorways to new opportunities…understanding that when we make space for divergent viewpoints and time not only to act but to contemplate, the whole group can go much deeper.

When we do move to action, she tells us to
• Compassionately disrupt, by asking possibility-oriented questions that lead to “a virtuous cycle of creativity and renewal”
• Creatively engage with people of different viewpoints and experience; get out of our own comfort zones
• Foster “wise renewal,” remembering that answers and solutions are likely to be nuanced rather than absolutes

Here’s a possibility-oriented question about asking questions: “How do we shape inquiries so compelling that they focus us on the best of what we can imagine, attract others, and connect us to realize what we most desire?” (p. 80).

Holman is a co-founder of Journalism that Matters, a group that seeks to keep journalism relevant and focused on the wider world. To the famous journalists’ 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why), she adds a sixth: “What’s possible now?”

With my focus for the past year on business solving hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change, I was particularly intrigued when Holman 1) pointed out the energy savings of peace; when we listen better, we fight less:

Wisdom seems to be emerging more often as evolution itself evolves toward increasing complexity, diversity, and awareness. Whether truth and reconciliation in South Africa or peace in Northern Ireland, intractable challenges are being settled peacefully. Perhaps wise renewal is moving us toward increased energy efficiency. Emergence through creative engagement no doubt uses far less energy than war. (pp. 175-176)
And 2), she described a session with Palestinian activists, who used a technique called Appreciative Inquiry to look beyond resisting the separation wall sealing them off from Israel—to harnessing the wall as part of the process of change. (pp. 119-120)

Until next month…

The Clean and Green Club, April 2015

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, April 2015
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Lots of Book News and Your Chance to Save
I’ve just taken the rights back for two of my award-winning books, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. In celebration, I’m putting them on sale this month. For the rest of April, you can get either or both of them for just $15 each, plus shipping. Because I’ve taken the rights back, you will not find these sold as new on Amazon or other regular channels. But I have a good inventory of them. And if you want to buy five or more, I’ll cut you an even better deal.

Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green was published originally by Wiley. It was named a Groundbreaking Indie Book by Independent Publisher Magazine, republished in Italy and Turkey, and on the Amazon category bestseller lists at least 33 different months). 236 pages of great information on marketing green businesses, plus a bonus package worth hundreds of dollars. Originally priced at $21.95.
Learn more: guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/
Order: https://shelhorowitz.com/shels-green-products-and-services/
Use the coupon code: GMGG15

Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World was published by Chelsea Green, at $22.95. This large-format paperback has 306 pages of information to help any business or organization market more effectively and spend less money doing so. It includes a bonus two-chapter ebook covering social media and other new developments.
Learn more: guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/
Order: https://shelhorowitz.com/shels-green-products-and-services/
Use the coupon code: GM15 

And Something Brand New: Green And Profitable is Now a Book
Green And Profitable, my 9th published book, is a compilation of the four years of my Green And Profitable monthly column, which was syndicated in the US, Australia, and Malaysia. It’s designed as an ebook, and I not only put together the whole anthology but also divided into four sections, each of which is available individually as a smaller, less expensive book:


• Book 1: Profitable Green Business Practices
• Book 2: Marketing Strategy/Messages for Green Businesses
• Book 3: Policy and Ethics Issues for Green Businesses
• Book 4: The New Realities of 21st Century Business
• Books 1-4: Compilation (your best value)

It’s available in as an e-book from Nook, iTunes, and Amazon/Kindle. If you want a paper copy, you can order one from CreateSpace.com. The electronic versions are just $2.99 for the sectional books and $9.99 for the whole thing ($5.99 and $12.99 for the paperbacks). And remember that if you’re buying the compilation, you don’t need the smaller books. This is the first time I’m playing in the sandbox of commercial ebook channels.

Order from Nook (Barnes & Noble): https://shelhorowitz.com/go/Gprof-Nook/
Order from Apple iTunes: https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GProf-iTunes/
Order from Amazon/CreateSpace: https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GProf-Amazon/
This Month’s Tip: Co-Solve It! Part 2: When One Solution Addresses Several Problems

How can we emulate nature in co-solving several problems at once? As promised last month, this time, we’ll look at actual examples of business offerings that confront more than one problem.


Many companies and organizations have come up with wonderful ideas, such as:

1. d.light, which markets solar-powered LED lanterns to replace kerosene lanterns in developing countries in Africa and Asia. The lanterns:
a. Eliminate fire risk (benefit: safety)
b. Eliminate toxic fumes (benefit: health)
c. Save money by eliminating the need to keep buying kerosene (benefit: economic)
d. Provide better quality of light (benefits: eye health, comfort, ease of accomplishing tasks
e. Allow children to work longer and more efficiently on school projects (benefits: education, long-term earning power through better grades)
f. Allow adults to do after-hours cottage industry (benefit: economic)

2. Urban Food Projects
a. Turn abandoned or empty spaces such as rooftops, vacant lots, traffic islands, median strips into attractive, living spaces (benefits: quality of life, and eventually attracting economic development)
b. Bring fresh, local food into poor communities (benefits: health, quality of life)
c. Create pollution-absorbing buffer zones, reducing asthma, emphysema, etc. (benefits: environment, health health)
d. Train local urban youth in food production, providing marketable skills, positive experience with collaborative problem solving, and a respect for the land (benefits: economic: job skills training, job creation; quality of life: reduction in vandalism, sense of purpose and of ability to change unhealthy/undesirable situations)
e. Decrease CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions (benefit: environment)

3. Kenguru, maker of a personal transportation vehicle for wheelchair users:
a. Replace heavy, bulky, complex wheelchair vans with light, compact personal vehicles (benefits: environmental: fewer raw materials; economic: longer road durability; maintenance: eliminating hydraulic lifts)
b. Replace gasoline or diesel power with electric (benefits: environmental: reduced pollution, reduced carbon footprint, potentially renewable energy sources; quality of life: reduced noise; health: potentially reduced exposure to contagious diseases from other riders)
c. Provide any-time, anywhere personal mobility (benefits: increased personal freedom, better time management by eliminating the need to wait for a paratransit driver and by shortening the time needed to load a wheelchair user in and out)

4. Israeli/Palestinian cooperative projects, e.g., Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam
a. Expose both cultures to the humanness of their “enemy” and debunk myths/stereotypes (benefit: peace)
b. Share best practices in desert agriculture and architecture (benefit: environment)
c. Increase fluency in the other’s language (benefit: economic: more employable
d. Form a constituency for long-term solution (benefit: peace)
e. Spread the benefits and knowledge through public outreach—speaking, performing, media, etc. (benefit: peace)

5. 3-D printing offers numerous benefits in both speed and cost:
a. Quickly replace a failed machine part without waiting weeks for a new one to be ordered (benefit: economic: work can resume much more rapidly)
b. Service a wide range of equipment without needing an enormous parts inventory (benefits: economic and environmental: money not tied up in inventory, real estate not needed to store the inventory)
c. Develop and test new prototypes at a fraction of the former time and cost (benefit: product development)
d. Customize devices to the user’s needs, affordably (benefit: customer loyalty)
e. Create one-off, individualized solutions to medical problems—or distribute more widely applicable technology quickly and cheaply (benefits: health, economic, more efficient hospital/clinic utilization)
f. Make generic products available in communities that could not afford them in the past (benefits: economic and environmental)

Hear & Meet Shel
Celebrate Earth Day!
Shel will be a guest on Green Divas Radio, talking about being green and profitable AND how business can solve hunger, poverty, war, and climate catastrophe. TheGreenDivas.com, Tuesday, April 21, 3 pm ET/noon PT.

Then, the next day, which actually IS Earth Day, Shel will be talking about different income streams for writers with Janice Campbell of NAIWE. PLEASE NOTE SCHEDULE CHANGE. https://news.naiwe.com/2015/03/10/shel-horowitz-multiple-streams-of-income-for-writers/
Multiple Streams of Income for Writers. Janice Campbell of NAIWE interviews Shel.

This is a new program. Here’s the description:

With eight nonfiction books under his belt, including the long-running bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and award-winners Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers and Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, you’d think Shel Horowitz might be one of those people who makes a living selling books.

But actually, book sales are only small pieces of a diversified income, all of it involving the same analytical and communication skills he uses to write his books.


This call will explore several income streams writers can pursue, such as:

• Speaking

• Consulting on the publishing process
• Consulting on your field of expertise (in Shel’s case, profitability and marketing for green/socially conscious businesses as well as authors and publishers—and with companies that want to turn hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change into sufficiency, peace, and planetary balance)
• Commercial writing for business: marketing and informational copywriting, correspondence, company histories, executive biographies, speeches, social media feeds, etc.
• Commercial writing for individuals (from resumes to thank-you notes to social media profiles)
• Foreign and subsidiary rights sales
• Product sales other than books
• Ads on your website
• Teaching and training
• Event organizing and facilitation
• Article, blog, and newsletter writing
• Radio and TV work as on-air personality, pundit, analyst, etc.

So here’s the good news: you can be a writer and make a living, even if the obvious ways aren’t working for you. Shel started his writing and consulting business back in 1981 as a typing service, “to hold me over until my freelance magazine and newspaper career took off.” The business kept evolving and is now an international copywriting, consulting, and speaking enterprise with clients on five continents. (He hasn’t typed a term paper in 25 years, and hasn’t had an outside employer since 1981.)

Shel will be Katie Curtin’s guest on the Creativity Cafe,
Wednesday, May 13, 8 pm ET/5 pm PT. I don’t have the listen link yet, but you can probably find it at www.creativitycafeonline.com–or check my Twitter feed (@ShelHorowitz) that day. Oh, and if you follow me, please send me an @ message telling me you’re a subscriber. I’ll be sure to visit your profile.

Connect with Shel on Social Media
Follow on Twitter

Facebook Profile

LinkedIn

Blog

Green & Ethical Marketing Facebook

Google+

About Shel & This Newsletter

As a green business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriter…award-winning author of eight books… international speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”

Friends who Want to Help

As Promised Last Month—The Shift Network’s Earth Day Summit

On April 22, more than 30 indigenous wisdom-keepers, green pioneers, innovators, activists, scientists, artists and visionaries are coming together to share what we ALL can do to awaken humanity for a healthy, sustainable and thriving planet.

Join Arkan Lushwala, Chief Phil Lane, Jr., Drew Dellinger, Andrew Harvey, Esperide Ananas and others for this free online event – and learn what you can do to foster a sacred connection with the Earth.

You’ll discover:
• How the Earth is alive and how that impacts who we are and our sense of purpose
• How we can look to the natural world for guidance in these challenging times
• The wisdom that indigenous elders have for us at this critical time
• What humanity is evolving into as a planetary species
• How the natural world reveals the secrets to successful and sustainable economic models
• What gives us cause for hope, given the daunting chaos of our time 


April 22 – https://shiftnetwork.isrefer.com/go/eds15GP/sah/ 
Another Recommended Book—Getting A Grip

Getting A Grip, by Frances Moore Lappé


This remarkable little book was autographed to me back in 2007 and sat on my shelf unnoticed until early 2015. Wow!

Part of me wishes I’d read it earlier—but part of me understands that I am much more ready to ACT on its message now than I was seven years ago—it fits in perfectly with the work I’m doing around showing the business community how to profit by developing products and services to address hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change.

For decades, Lappé has worked on both food democracy and grassroots citizen democracy, which she calls “Living Democracy”—something much larger and deeper than the “Thin Democracy” embodied in our electoral process. This book continues the tradition, and really looks at the powerful, empowered, vibrant, fun-to-live-in world we can create.

Yet the book starts very pessimistically, with a Spiral of Powerlessness infographic on the inside front cover. Knowing a bit about Lappé’s thought processes (I’ve been following her since I came across Diet for a Small Planet in the 1970s and have heard her speak at least twice), I immediately flipped to the inside back cover, relieved to find the counterbalancing Spiral of Empowerment infographic I’d expected.

The content of the book, overall, is a lot more empowering than the inside front cover. Democracy, she says, is not something we have, but something we create. Lappé’s focus is actually on creating a world that we can be proud to live in—a world where all of us have found our power and have used it to make important changes; action actually inspires hope. Often, these changes look small at first, but they ripple out society-wide, and the cumulative impact of these often-voluntary steps is vast—even when we can’t see it right away. Not only that, but when we get corporations to make concessions around quality of life and the environment, often their profits go up too. Win-wins are nice, aren’t they?

A lot of this is about decentralizing power. Lappé points out that the decentralized Aztecs were far better able to withstand the invasion of European soldiers (and held them at bay for 200 years), while the hierarchical Maya and Inca societies quickly crumbled before the Spaniards. Similarly, she sees top-down approaches to today’s assorted crises as far less likely to succeed than building democratic movements.

In her view, power and fear have been far too intermingled. Either we’re afraid of people who have power, or we fear taking our own power. Fear too often paralyzes us—but it can just as easily be converted to energize us. And she points out the difference between power over others and power we get working in community to improve our world. Our choice, she says, is not whether to change the world, but how we’ll change it. A movement always starts with just a few people, or even one person, and spreads outward, even if we fail to believe in our own power.

Lappé sets an ambitious agenda where we might engage our democracy, harness our power, and improve the world. A few of her goals:
• Seeing food as a human right (she notes that there is enough to go around)
• Ending the $700 billion in worldwide fossil fuel subsidies
• Ensuring that manufacturers take back their products at the end of their useful life (this concept is often called “cradle-to-cradle”)

And she sees hope all over the place: in the rise of the co-op, fair-trade, and buy-local movements…in resistance to economics that put corporate profits ahead of people’s needs…in a Clean Elections law in Maine that then enabled passage of a cradle-to-cradle law…in the 63 million Americas who now factor social and environmental criteria into their purchasing decisions…in organizers’ ability to take a large scary issue and find an entry point to ignite passions and change minds.

It’s one of the best books on citizen empowerment and deep democracy that I’ve come across (and I’ve read quite a few). Put it on your must list.

The Clean and Green Club, March 2015

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, March 2015
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Your Chance to Gain Great Green Business and Social Change Skills—In a Beautiful Setting, at a Very Affordable Price


Come to Massachusetts in the beautiful spring and immerse yourself in the world of marketing for green and social change businesses. May 22-24, I’m hosting a three-day Green Marketing and Social Change Retreat at my home in the beautiful 18th/19th century ecovillage of Hockanum, in Hadley, MA (I think it’s the oldest solar home in the US). You can get small-group training (12 people, maximum) and learn to:
  • Identify three distinct audiences for your green/social change products and services, and develop talking points to reach each of them
  • Harness your core expertise to transform social problems into profitable solutions; make money as you turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war and violence into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance
  • Sharpen your marketing chops by working together on marketing ideas for a real-world product
  • Determine media angles for your organization, create a press release, and begin your marketing plan—and benefit from Shel’s post-event feedback when you complete it
  • Receive media training, captured on video so you can watch and study as often as you need to
  • Reach out to and partner with the best possible ambassadors: people and organizations who already reach your best prospects
  • Learn how to fit your own advances in sustainability into our collective power to shape a better world
Early-bird pricing during March is just $795 (a $200 savings), and if you use the coupon code, ShelSubscriber, you can take an extra $50 off. That even includes four home-cooked gourmet vegetarian meals. Visit https://makinggreensexy.com/come-learn-with-shel-3-day-green-marketing-intensive-in-beatuiful.html to learn more (including all the fun activities on the agenda)—and https://shelhorowitz.com/shels-green-products-and-services/#intensive to register. There’s also a three-payment option, and you can even bring a friend for an extra $100 off the combined registrations. Be sure apply the coupon code and set the shipping to “Downloads Only—No Shipping” before you advance to the checkout screen.
Shel and his wife, Dina Friedman, outside the site of the Shel’s May 22-24, 2015 Green Marketing and Social Change Retreat
This Month’s Tip: Co-Solve It! Part 1: When One Solution Addresses Several Problems

Imagine that you’ve developed a product or service that helps to fix poverty or war at the same time it makes a difference on climate change. Imagine that this product is cheap enough to reach the poorest of the poor, yet profitable enough to build a business.

In nature, and in our bodies, many things have more than one purpose, and nothing is wasted. As an example, think about trees. Trees provide a number of “ecoservices”:

  • Food for people and other animals (fruits, acorns, nuts, leaves, maple or birch syrup)
  • Oxygen for us to breathe
  • Shade to make us more comfortable in summer
  • Light modulation, allowing more light to reach the forest floor at the times of year when it’s most needed
  • Habitat for a large assortment of birds, bugs, fungi, and mammals
  • Construction material (wood)
  • Heat energy (when burned)
  • Paper
  • Soil rehabilitation (as leaves drop in the fall or rotten branches fall off and are composted)
  • Rainwater and groundwater management

That’s ten different functions, and probably there are others. Seven of these happen with no need for human intervention, and with no need to remove the tree.

We can frame co-solving at least two ways:

  1. Bringing DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES TO DEAL WITH A SINGLE ISSUE (discussed below)
  2. Addressing MULTIPLE ISSUES WITH ONE SOLUTION, as the trees do (in Part 2, next month, we’ll share some actual business examples)

In both, we use fewer resources to get more done, more effectively—and we share those resources so they don’t have to be expensively duplicated.

The corporate world talks about “getting people out of their silos” so Marketing, Sales, and Engineering can all brainstorm together. Academics gather in “interdisciplinary teams” to study phenomena that might include astrophysics, biology, and sociology. Nonprofits and government agencies understand “partnerships” such as public-private collaborations and cause-related marketing. Online marketing masters organize “joint ventures (JVs)” for massively successful product launches. Community organizers “build coalitions” with other groups, coming together on the issues where they agree, and separating when they diverge. Just as co-solving itself brings people from different spheres together to solve one set of problems or address one set of issues, these different but overlapping perspectives all teach us something. We can create win-win syntheses of the best of all this thinking, and use that power and synergy to address—and solve—even the most intractable problems.

Next month, we’ll look at the second category—with actual examples of business offerings that confront more than one problem.

Hear & Meet Shel

April 15, 3 p.m. ET/noon PT: Multiple Streams of Income for Writers.” Janice Campbell of NAIWE interviews Shel.

This is a new program. Here’s the description:

With eight nonfiction books under his belt, including the long-running bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and award-winners Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers and Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, you’d think Shel Horowitz might be one of those people who makes a living selling books.

But actually, book sales are only small pieces of a diversified income, all of it involving the same analytical and communication skills he uses to write his books.
This call will explore several income streams writers can pursue, such as:
  • Speaking
  • Consulting on the publishing process
  • Consulting on your field of expertise (in Shel’s case, profitability and marketing for green/socially conscious businesses as well as authors and publishers—and with companies that want to turn hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change into sufficiency, peace, and planetary balance)
  • Commercial writing for business: marketing and informational copywriting, correspondence, company histories, executive biographies, speeches, social media feeds, etc.
  • Commercial writing for individuals (from resumes to thank-you notes to social media profiles)
  • Foreign and subsidiary rights sales
  • Product sales other than books
  • Ads on your website
  • Teaching and training
  • Event organizing and facilitation
  • Article, blog, and newsletter writing
  • Radio and TV work as on-air personality, pundit, analyst, etc.

So here’s the good news: you can be a writer and make a living, even if the obvious ways aren’t working for you. Shel started his writing and consulting business back in 1981 as a typing service, “to hold me over until my freelance magazine and newspaper career took off.” The business kept evolving and is now an international copywriting, consulting, and speaking enterprise with clients on five continents. (He hasn’t typed a term paper in 25 years, and hasn’t had an outside employer since 1981.)

May 22-24: 3-Day Green/Social Change Business Intensive in Hadley, MA: Learn lots of cool stuff about marketing, product development, and profitability for green, socially conscious enterprises and have a lot of fun in a beautiful place. See description and link at the beginning of this newsletter. Again, the registration link is https://shelhorowitz.com/shels-green-products-and-services/#intensive (Note: expect prices to be substantially higher for future Intensives).

Some of the neighbors’ cows at the site of the May 22-24, 2015 Green Marketing and Social Change Retreat led by Shel Horowitz

Connect with Shel on Social Media
Follow on Twitter

Facebook Profile

LinkedIn

Blog

Green & Ethical Marketing Facebook

Google+

About Shel & This Newsletter

As a green business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriter…award-winning author of eight books… international speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”

Friends who Want to Help
Save the Date: Earth Day, April 22, and a Great Program from Shift Network


The Spring of Sustainability’s Earth Day event on April 22: Earth Day Summit & Initiation: Radical Times Call for Radical Transformation.

During this important 1-day virtual event, experts will share the most cutting-edge information about what is REALLY happening in the world of sustainability and what we can do to become part of the change we want to see. Next month’s newsletter will have the no-cost registration link.

Another Recommended Book—Deepening Community

Deepening Community, by Paul Born (Berrett-Koehler, 2014)


I don’t know if the author would call this a business book, but I’d call it one. To me, understanding community is key to understanding things like:

• buyer behavior—individually and in groups
• transmission of ideas (and products) through the culture
• changing behavior patterns

As an example of the business utility of communities, it was a local librarian who first showed me a Google search, in 1998 (the same year Google was incorporated). Google’s status as our go-to search engine came about because it spread through communities, just as the librarian showed it to me. Better results, delivered faster, and through a much cleaner interface—what’s not to like? So people who had discovered this amazing creature shared it with their friends, neighbors, colleagues, and other networks—with their communities; within a year or two, it pretty much owned the search market.

But let’s put this in perspective; the business use of community is a small fraction of the whole. While many companies have attempted to build communities among their product users, and a fair number have succeeded wildly, from Apple to Harley-Davidson, true community is not about creating shared shopping experiences. It’s about people helping their neighbors, breaking down barriers, caring.

I was particularly moved by Born’s story of first living in a neighborhood where nobody interacted, then discovering what it was like to live in a neighborhood that had created a vibrant and genuine community, to moving back to another hollow neighborhood and taking the initiative to build that sense of community. It turned out to be a lot easier than you might think, and the results were awesome. So another lesson to take away here is that each of us has the power to build community where we live, where we work, and where we interact with others. We don’t have to wait for someone else to do it.

But why make the effort? Because “collective altruism” has positive benefits for those who participate. People feel motivated and rewarded in doing good things for others, and it’s an extra bonus that they experience direct benefits too. Thus, we see communities built around bringing food to an ill neighbor or rebuilding a fire-damaged building.

In other words, you might say, altruism is in our self-interest.

Born identifies three different types of community: shallow, fear-based, and deep (not so different from the three kinds of buyers for green products and services that I discuss in my “Making Green Sexy” talks). Of course, his focus is on achieving deep community. He recognizes that communities may be geographic, but also may be focused on common interests. Some of the others are less-than-healthy, such as fear-based communities organized around keeping out those seen as different. He responds with good suggestions about how to transcend evil by working to do good together. And he points out that this actually goes back at least as far as Charles Darwin, who in his later years modified his ideas about survival of the fittest to determine that cooperative communities of organisms (animal, plant, even bacterial) are “fit” and appropriate in his worldview. Born even uses the phrase, “survival of the kindest.”

Within the framework of deep community, Born highlights five different purposes of successful communities (with a chapter on each)—as:

  1. Identity
  2. Place
  3. Spiritual
  4. Intentional
  5. Natural living system

He reminds us that each of us have a role to play, as communities develop. He recommends starting any meeting by letting people answer this question: “Why is it important that I am here today?” And one of the things I love is his axiom that community is not about engaging with people who are like us, but with those who are engaged by the same things that engage us.

But even as he cites a successful example of a teen who created deep community via Facebook, he regards nongeographic communities (and particularly online communities) with a certain wary skepticism. And that’s one of the places where I disagree with him. Over and over again, I’ve seen deep communities from online, and I’ve also seen the ability of an online community to provide very firm support to offline communities. Two examples of the latter: the two online discussion groups that gave strength to a community organizing campaign I founded, and the Facebook group serving members of my high school class year—which not only helped us organize our 40th reunion but keeps us actively in touch between events, providing some lubrication to the very rusty in-person relationships.

Ultimately, he says, community is about permanently creating joy—which he defines as “the deep satisfaction that we are living a life of purpose and meaning with and for others…showing and receiving compulsion and kindness.”

The Clean and Green Club, November 2014

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, 

November 2014

This Month’s Tip: Do You Pay Attention When Key Contacts Drop Into Your Lap?

You know by now that my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, was published by John Wiley & Sons, a major business publisher. But you probably don’t know how that came about.

It started ten years ago, when I got an order for my ebook on having fun cheaply from someone I recognized as an Internet marketing superstar.

So I seized the moment. Along with his ebook, I sent a note saying that I admired his work and offering him, as a gift, a copy of Principled Profit, my original self-published book on business ethics and green practices as success principles. Luckily, I didn’t know that he was living in New Zealand at the time, or I might never have made the offer.

He responded enthusiastically, I sent the book, and (as I’d suspected) he loved it. He wrote me a blurb, and we began collaborating on a few projects. I blurbed his next book, and then he asked me if I’d write an essay for it. I did, and invited him to be a guest on the business radio show I hosted at the time. We corresponded on various ideas about marketing and social change for several years.

And then one day, out of the blue, I got a note from him asking if I’d like the contact information for his editor at Wiley. It took me about eight nanoseconds to say yes, thank you. By that time, his editor had actually been promoted to Publisher. So I had a personal introduction to the head of a major New York publishing house from one of its best-selling authors, all because I had made a gift when serendipity dropped him into my inbox. Remember, he did not originally contact me for anything to do with marketing or social change. He wanted my book on having fun cheaply. (Years later, I found out he had bought it as a gift for his then-wife.) And so I pitched Wiley on an updated, expanded edition of Principled Profit.

While Wiley was considering my book proposal, I got a brainwave: if Wiley said no, I’d approach Jay Conrad Levinson, founder of the iconic Guerrilla Marketing brand, to be my co-author. If Jay said yes—and I thought he probably would based on some of his writing that showed sympathy to the green cause—it would be easy to find a publisher. When Wiley finally said yes, I realized, duh, I could still ask Jay. So after getting my Wiley editor’s approval (“oh, you mean we get TWO marketing geniuses? Yes, we like it.”), I approached Jay, using an ancient AOL address I had from interviewing him about 12 years earlier. Amazingly, it still worked. Not so amazingly, he was eager to participate.

I’ve reached out over the years to many people who have considerably more fame than I do. Some have responded, including former US President Jimmy Carter (who declined to endorse Principled Profit but added me to his holiday card list–and his beautiful cards always include a his own art on the cover), Jack Canfield, co-creator of the Chicken Soup series (who DID endorse that book), celebrity musicians including Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Paul Winter, and Arlo Guthrie (all of whom I’ve interviewed for local newspapers), leaders in both the green and marketing worlds including BNI founder Ivan Misner, comedian Swami Beyondananda, green economist Hazel Henderson, and green business leader Joel Makower, all of whom I’ve interviewed for either my teleseminar or my former radio show, and Stephen M.R. Covey, the best-selling author who generously agreed to write the forward for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

With the exception of Swami, for whom I’d organized a live event when he mentioned in his newsletter that he was looking for a gig in New England, I approached these folks cold, through public channels.

There are other ways, too. I’ve also approached well-known authors at conferences, and usually gotten their contact information (sometimes some quick informal no-charge consulting, too)—and occasionally an ongoing relationship. Another way is to comment (appropriately, please–absolutely do not spam them) on your chosen celebs’ articles, blog posts, videos, and social media presence. I’ve cultivated these types of relationships with many movers and shakers, sometimes maintaining the correspondence for years before I ever ask for anything. Just last month, I saw a Facebook post from an author I’d read decades ago, commenting on a mutual friend’s post. I immediately friended and corresponded with her, and she’s likely to become a client!

Some have not written back. I asked both the Dalai Lama and the late Nelson Mandela if I could interview them for a book project I was thinking about, and never heard from either one. But what did I have to lose by trying? Only a few minutes of my time. What if they would have said yes if only I’d asked, as those others did?

Next month: how to approach celebrities so they say yes.

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help
Reminder: Business For a Better World Telesummit is Replaying NOW

You got a mailing on this on Monday, November 3—still seven more calls to listen to at no charge, starting today:

Nov. 17 Allen Rathey: Healthy Green Homes/Green Biz in Conservative Places


Nov. 18 Christophe Poizat and Tsufit: Building Successful Internet Communities

Nov. 19 Ivan Misner: The Ultimate Face-to-Face Marketing System

Nov. 20 Harry McAlister: Animations with A Message

Nov. 21 Ana Weber: Loving Mondays, Finding Passion, Shifting Hats 

Ongoing Shel Horowitz: Business For a Better World (interviewed by Tom Antion)

Ongoing Shel Horowitz: Overview: telesummit +8 bonus calls

Listen to each call on its appointed day, no charge.

And of course, you can get unlimited access to the entire series of 17 calls, plus eight bonus calls not available any other way, for just $49.95. You’ll get to here from world-class marketers, including:

  • Jay Conrad Levinson, who created Guerrilla Marketing, the most successful marketing brand in history (and my co-author for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green) 
  • Michelle Shaeffer, who went from a stay-at-home teen mother to a celebrity blogger diva in the work-at-home-mom and homeschooling niches
  • Ivan Misner, founder of BNI, a networking organization whose members pass each other $6 billion in referrals every year
  • Marcia Yudkin, one of the world’s leading experts on marketing to and for introverts (and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met)–her insights on the size and power of this market will shock you

As well as top luminaries in the green business world, such as:

  • Joel Makower, founder and chief reporter/conference organizer for GreenBiz.com, a man with an in at every major company in the world
  • Hazel Henderson, who evolved from a children’s health and safety activist to one of the foremost experts on ethical business vs. traditional economics (I’ve been following her work since she published Creating Alternative Futures in the 1970s—what an honor to interview her for an hour)
  • Dean Cycon, the very creative CEO of a coffee company that is so successful, it can afford to give 50% of profits to village-led community development projects in the coffeelands

$49.95 gets you all these and quite a few more.

Visit https://www.business-for-a-better-world.com/telesummit/ to register for the freebie calls, listen to the two unlimited-access calls, and buy your recording package.


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About Shel & This Newsletter

As a green business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriter…award-winning author of eight books… international speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”
Another Recommended Book—Recommend This!

Recommend This! Delivering Digital Experiences That People Want to Share, by Jason Thibeault and Kirby Wadsworth (Wiley, 2014)

Here’s the perfect follow-up to last month’s review of Story Based Selling. Recommend This! incorporates the idea of the story, but wraps it around the lens of ongoing relationships. Whether in person at a retail store or digitally through top-quality content, you build relationships that move people along from prospect to customer to loyal fan to ambassador. Thibeault and Wadsworth don’t talk much about turning your customers into ambassadors (your unpaid sales force, as I call them in one of my own books)—but they do talk about building a relationship that could last decades.

And in the relationship economy—they coin the term “relawatts” to measure it—the true currency is attention.

Yet, it’s challenging to grab attention when we have access to—and use—a nearly infinite number of channels, and have limitless numbers of contacts. In the old days, people researching a major purchase might have consulted an issue of Consumer Reports; now, they go on the Web and read product reviews, talk to their friends on social media, pass through Google a bunch of times, and probably finish with a trip to the company’s own site (or Facebook page)—and they could be doing this from any mix of desktop and laptop computers, tablets, and phones, sometimes simultaneously. It’s a nonlinear pattern that looks random. And you have to engage people on these outside sites—but the goal of your interactions on social media should be to bring the visitor over to your own website, where you can control the process and mine the data.

Meanwhile, the old Dunbar rule about people managing about 150 connections is totally out the window. We might have thousands of people we’re connected to, but those connections are far shallower than in the past.

And they point out that a relationship has to be two-way, if the prospect or customer wants that. Which means customers and prospects have to have ways to interact with you, even if they’re just visiting a website or downloading a white paper. However, not every prospect wants to be interacted with, and smart businesses allow users to stay anonymous. Google, for instance, is based on a pure (non-monetary) transaction. The visitor is “just looking”; Google provides the desired information, which the visitor clicks on. Google does build more of a relationship with its real customers, such as its advertisers—but not necessarily with the causal visitor seeking information.

Thibeault and Wadsworth suggest that the way to solve all of this is by becoming a thought-leader, and they see four key mindset shifts that marketers must make: from firing messages at prospects to talking to (I’d say with) them; from transaction to engagement; from sales-oriented to helping-oriented, and from just-another-vendor to highly credible, trusted information source.

Forget about push-style selling, sales funnels, and such. Become an expert curator. Provide information, solve problems, and yes, tell stories—not so much about the brand, but about how its customers solved their problems by using the brand (a crucial distinction).

And let customers and prospects talk not just to the marketing staff, but to the product experts–including other customers. They see that two-way communication as conveying a major advantage to the digital world. When active users comment on your product, or even on your white paper, they become part of the curator world, and have elevated themselves beyond mere transactional interaction; they feel invested in your stuff.

But companies can go farther, and harness available technology to provide a first-class user experience. Thibeault and Wadsworth believe in websites that respond differently not just in adjusting to and optimizing for the users platform (what browser, what device), but in the content of the responses to visitor queries. Taking it even further, companies can start and nurture their own online communities. A well-run community, Thibeault and Wadsworth say, can be a powerful competitive advantage.

The Clean and Green Club, October 2014

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, 

October 2014
Hear & Meet Shel
October 30, 6 pm, Holyoke, MA: I’ll be exhibiting Business For a Better World (and selling my books) at Pioneer Valley Innovation Nights, at the Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center, 100 Bigelow St, Holyoke, MA 01040—(a terrific facility—if you haven’t seen it, this is a great chance. It probably houses more computing power in one building than the entire world had when I was a teenager—and it’s powered largely with clean local hydropower.) Since it’s the night before Halloween, you get to dress as your favorite innovator (optional). No cost, but RSVPs requested. https://pioneervalley.innovationnights.com/content/pioneervalley-innovation-nights-pinsmass02

And *whether you attend or not,* please vote for my entry! Click on the products tab, go down to my blurb, and click the red “love this” button. (Note: this was not implemented as I go to press. Hopefully it’s working now.)

This is my first time exhibiting a concept as opposed to products and services—the idea that not only should we and can we solve hunger, poverty, war, and climate change, but business can make a good profit in the process. I feel like a 6th grader doing a science fair! If you live in Western Massachusetts, I’d very much appreciate it if you came by and said hi.

This Month’s Tip: Do You “We, We, We All the Way Home”?

Remember that old nursery rhyme, “This Little Piggy Went to Market”? Remember the last line, “And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee all the way home”?
 
Well, it might work for telling nursery rhymes to a toddler, but too many marketers try to adopt this line in their marketing. Instead of “wee, wee, wee,” they “we, we, we all the way home.”

You’ve seen it. You open up some brochure or webpage, and you read, “At ________ (insert company name), we think ___________ (insert platitude).

There are several problems with this, not the least of which is the way it shuts down creativity. It’s very hard to fill in that second blank with anything that’s actually interesting.

But the biggest problem is about perspective. This is all about THE COMPANY. But the Reader, the Website Visitor, the Prospect, or the Customer—I’m deliberately capitalizing this time, because I want you to perceive these people as people—doesn’t care about the company. That person, who you’d like to convince to buy from you, cares about his or her own issues. All your prospects have a need or desire to fill, a problem to solve, a goal to achieve—and they want to read copy that’s talking directly to them—helping them solve that problem or accomplish that goal. And blather like “At Acme, we care about our customers” isn’t going to cut it.

So when you “we, we, we all the way home,” instead of establishing yourself as the trusted expert, you actually turn that person away. Your prospect is left thinking, “all they want to do is brag. They’re not going to solve my problem. They’re not going to advance my goal.” And in today’s world, where attention and time are super-precious, they’re gone with a click, never to return. Next!

There is one big exception, though. If you can create copy that has the reader feeling that he or she is a part of your tribe, that you’re both in this together, the “we” is very appropriate—because THAT kind of we is inclusive. It draws in that reader—makes him or her feel special, valued, maybe even loved—and speaks directly to the problem or aspiration. Here’s an example:

“As one green business owner to another, we’ve all experienced the problem of trying to convince someone who just doesn’t get it about climate change. Maybe it’s time we tried a different approach.”

That example is rather general. More specific targeting would be much more powerful—for instance, rallying organic farmers against allowing the organic label on GMO foods (a real proposal, unfortunately) or getting renewable energy companies involved in preserving the energy credits that make their businesses much more viable.

And if you want help crafting powerful messages that speak directly to your prospect’s hopes, fears, and dreams, drop me a line or give me a call. It’s what I do for a living and if there’s a good fit, I’ll be happy to help. shel AT greenandprofitable.com, shel AT principledprofit.com, or 413-586-2388 (8 a.m. to 10 p.m. US Eastern Time)

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help
Global Oneness Day 2014, Friday, October 24, will be an amazing program with respected global leaders including: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Marianne Williamson, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Dr. Larry Dossey, don Miguel Ruiz, Ken Wilber, Jean Houston, Ervin Laszlo, Neale Donald Walsch, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Lynne McTaggart, Dr. Deborah Rozman, James O’Dea, Rinaldo Brutoco, Steve McIntosh, Humanity’s Team and AGNT leaders on the front line and many others.

I’ve personally learned enormous wisdom from Houston and Hubbard, in particular, and have benefited from several of the others. I feel so good about bringing this to your attention that I’ll be sending a solo mailer on that, closer to the time.

Come join Global Oneness Day and hear thought provoking discussion about our common bond, our Oneness with the Divine and all of life, and visions for how we will organize in the emerging new world. Join us and be part of the new consciousness that is transforming our planet and the way we live.

Register Now for Global Oneness Day
https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GlobalOneness14/


Connect with Shel on Social Media
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About Shel & This Newsletter

As a green business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriter…award-winning author of eight books… international speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”
Another Recommended Book—Story Based Selling: Create, Connect, and Close

Story Based Selling: Create, Connect, and Close, by Jeff Bloomfield (Select Books, 2014)

 
This is a basic book about selling to the right side—the emotional side—of the brain, similar to many books I’ve read over the years, starting with Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by America’s Best Companies by Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman and Tad Tuleja—which I read in 1988!
 
But Bloomfield’s advice is still worth paying attention to, because I’m still encountering salespeople every day who don’t have a clue and are still trying to sell with methods we knew about in, say, 1958. And because, unlike other human-centered sales books I’ve read, he bases his research in neuroscience, yet presents it very accessibly.
Borrowing from a minister named Nathan Hurst, he lists 18 characteristics of a great communicator. Some of these are left-brain obvious, like content, credibility, and preparedness. Others are decidedly right-brain: passion, intensity, and self-revelation. And others are just plain surprising: the ability to speak without notes, and to incorporate humor, and movement for instance. Storytelling makes the list, of course. And so do brevity, pauses, and asking the audience for some sort of personal decision to change something.

Right from the beginning, Bloomfield grabs the reader’s attention by saying “a character will always deliver a greater impact than a pie chart.” That’s an appeal to emotion, to the right-brain. He follows up a few pages later, presenting essentially the same conclusion but framing it in intellectualized, left-brain language: “We train people incorrectly…to sell features, facts, and statistics. These all appeal to logic and are interpreted by a part of the brain that drives skepticism.” He points out that great communicators “all speak to dreams and aspirations, not fear or anger.”

In a sales context, this means that you choose stories that will establish trust with your listener—and you’ll need to choose those stories individually, as a natural part of the conversation. You can’t just trot out the same canned stories in every sales encounter.

—> And this means you have to be a really good listener. Jamming inappropriate stories into your sales narrative not only feels inauthentic, it will repel your prospect. (The importance of listening well is made in every sales book I’ve ever liked.)

His basic point is that we hunger much more for connection than for transactional encounters, and telling stories is a great way to do that—particularly when you include personal illustrations, metaphors, analogies or similes, and visual aids or props. He also identifies five elements of a story: purpose, connection, barrier, “aha factor,” and of course, resolution.

But all is not Kumbaya. Bloomfield says the brain actually needs a certain level of conflict, and will reject anything that seems too perfect. In the sales process, this means listening not only for the spoken objections, but the unspoken ones. You can’t address them until you can draw those objections up to the surface, and you won’t make the sale while the prospect has legitimate objections. Showing your own vulnerability is one way to build that trust, to break down the prospect’s feeling of isolation.

Bloomfield concludes with the stirring advice to be willing to go off-script, to embrace imagination as an ally. He challenges his readers, “Do not check your right brain at the door when your workday starts.”

The Clean and Green Club, September 2014

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, September 2014
This Month’s Tip: The Green Marketing Buffet

For several months, my business coach has been working with me to expand my service line, to allow people to find ways of hiring me that are in perfect alignment with whatever they need at the moment, and lead easily down a path to hire me longer-term.
We’ve looked at a lot of different models, but hadn’t come up with one that seemed to make sense. Then, a few weeks ago, I came up with an “umbrella” that it all fits under, and since then, our work together took a quantum leap.

The umbrella is the image of a buffet, where people can pick and choose from a wide assortment. For now I’m calling it “the Green/Conscious Business Marketing Buffet.” I’m hoping this term encompasses the work I want to do in helping business profitably address not just the environment, but also evils like hunger, poverty, and war. This larger work is what I’m feeling called to do.

—> If you have an idea for me about this, I’d love to hear it! Drop me a line at shel AT greenandprofitable.com (and tell me whether I have your permission to acknowledge you by name).

Meanwhile—both to give a demonstration of product development and, quite frankly, because YOU might need some of these services—let me tell you about some of the new services we’ve come up with. This is a partial list; a more complete version is at https://greenandprofitable.com/introducing-shel-horowitzs-greenconscious-business-marketing-buffet/

Low-End Entry Points (zero to $525)
30 no-charge minutes on the phone with me, but only after submitting a questionnaire that allows me to qualify the serious prospects. (I’ve been doing 30-minute consults on and off for a few years, but hadn’t formalized the qualification process).

Subscriptions to my monthly Green And Profitable column, which is syndicated internationally. This is the lowest-cost item of any of my paid offerings, at $10 or less per insertion, in one-year or two-year packages. On my end, I’m already doing the work, so additional markets increases revenue but not cost or time beyond some very minor recordkeeping.

One-hour marketing assessment, in depth, on a single marketing piece or aspect of your marketing ($195).

Doing a small first assignment like writing a get-noticed story-behind-the-story press release ($525) or book jacket (single panel, $425; 3-panel, $525). This has been very successful for me over many years in demonstrating opportunities to the client that lead to more work for me.

Marketing tune-up: once or twice a year, a quick review of up to five pieces/campaigns, and a few quick suggestions to tweak them ($350).

Mid-Range ($550 to $5000; most of these are open-ended and thus priced individually)
Full-fledged marketing assessment of your entire operation (this would typically take 8 to 10 hours or more, depending on how many methods and media are in use, and how deep the client wants to go).

Training a client’s in-house staff, interns, and/or freelancers in specific areas, such as social media, audience-specific message points, joint venture partnerships, or press releases. This could include review/critique of the trainees’ work.

A combination of training and copywriting, where a client can purchase a custom package that includes a certain amount of each.

Social change consulting, where the client brings me in to look for ways to harness a company’s core skills and best assets to create a business model for profiting while doing good in the world (i.e., addressing one of those big global challenges).

Some kind of group or community involving both ongoing training from me and the chance to network with and learn from other participants

High-End (above $3000)
Speaking, or a combination of speaking and training.

Having me on retainer for four, six, or 12 months, with a custom set of services and fee depending on each client’s needs.

Bulk-purchasing my services in advance, at a discount.

Which of these models can you adapt to your business?

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help

Ryan Eliason is one of the true visionaries in the heart-centered business community, and one of the best people to learn from in creating a business that’s both socially/environmentally conscious and quite profitable. I’ve known him online for quite a few years, and I’m always impressed.

Ryan has two great (time-limited) gifts for you right now: 1. His wonderful report, “The 5 Best Heart-Centered Online Marketing Strategies: How to Heal the Planet, Grow Your List, Attract Clients, and Enjoy a Bigger Income.” An easy-to-read 26 pages crammed with useful principles and action steps. https://ow.ly/BnPCE

And 2. “Conscious Marketing for Visionary Changemakers,” a series of four no-charge webinars: #1 – Ten Vital Steps to Explode Your Positive Impact; #2 – The 11 Most Damaging Business and Marketing Myths; #3 – The Six Essential Pillars of Mastery; #4 – Visionary Business Mastery, https://ow.ly/BnQhs

Hear & Meet Shel

Largest rally on climate change in US history, Sunday, September 21, NYC. I am going to be in the city Saturday as well, and still have some time that afternoon for a couple more meetings. Please respond to me (shel at principledprofit.com) with the subject line Meet in NYC

September 26-28,Dover, Vermont: Scaling Change for Social Good is a fascinating “un-conference” with a keynote by Ami Dar, founder of Idealist.org, and an emphasis on getting your deep social change story sharp enough to present on video. This is a skill set that every marketer *and* every social change agent or environmental activist needs. I’ll be there as an advising mentor—but what happens there is really about the group, about a new way to collaborate for change. https://www.scalingchange.org/

I am participating because 1) I love the theme of achieving deep social change; it’s very much aligned with the direction I expect to be going for the next 15 years or so, and 2) I’m betting that this could be the start of something very big—kind of like being able to say you were at the first TED conference.

 
This just in as we go to press. The organizer adds,

Exciting news! John Raatz, partner with Jim Carrey and Eckart Tolle in GATE Transformational Entertainment, will participate in our Scaling Change event.

Here’s the press release: https://bit.ly/1pgB54t
And here is our website: https://www.scalingchange.org/

 

Monday, October 6, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT: It’s been a while since I’ve done the Making Green Sexy talk as a webinar. I’m doing it once again for Green America—a much-improved version compared to the last time I presented it online. No charge. Details not set yet; please contact me for the signup link.
 

Remember: You can earn a generous commission if you book Shel into a paid speaking engagement.

Connect with Shel on Social Media
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About Shel & This Newsletter

As a marketing consultant and copywriter… award-winning author of eight books… international speaker, blogger, syndicated columnist — Shel Horowitz shows how green and ethical businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”
Another Recommended Book—80/20 Sales and Marketing

80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More, by Perry Marshall (Entrepreneur Press, 2013)

Wow! Rarely have I encountered a marketing book that packaged so many key insights into business success, or one that was so applicable to the environmental justice/social change lens that you and I bring to our businesses.

 
Right from the start, Richard Koch’s foreword reveals the biggest insight (which Marshall states on page 37 and explores in more depth throughout the book): the fabled 80/20 rule, a/k/a the Pareto Principle, is fractal. In plain English: If 20 % of your clientele spend at or above the average (and the rest are probably not even worth your time), then 20% of the first 20%—4% of your total customer base—will account for 16 times the average sale. Marshall represents this graphically in the “power curve,” which looks quite different from the typical bell curve that identifies medians and averages. He includes numerous examples of power curves, which crawl along the bottom left before escalating steeply—exponentially.
Now, turn this into strategy. After you identify the top-performing 20 % to focus on, rinse and repeat: take the top 20% of that 20%, and run it up several iterations. By the end, you’ll have identified a core group of buyers willing to spend thousands of times more with you than the average buyer. Then craft offerings for them. Sports teams understand this, and make half their revenue from the handful of wealthy fans willing to spring for season skyboxes and other very expensive perks.

—> Go read those two paragraphs just above one more time. They’re that important.

But don’t stop there. Read the rest of the book.

On page 87, I found out exactly why my attempts at affiliate marketing have been so poorly received—and how to fix it if I want to try again. On page 50, there’s a copywriting formula that I can’t wait to try, revolving around simple, elegant, and complete solutions to pain points. Page 89 offers a process of continuous tweaks that can multiply results by orders of magnitude, again and again. And then there’s the incredibly powerful lesson in split testing that fills Chapter 9; the chapter title, “It’s not Failure. It’s Testing,” takes my own insights about persisting with “impossible” goals to its enormously profitable mathematical/logical conclusion. Pages 93-100 explain why your most expensive offering should always be at least 100 times as expensive as your entry-level offering. And then there’s Marshall’s double-80/20 saddle curve (p. 155), which goes a long way toward explaining the polarization of politics (among many other things)—and the market opportunity (pp. 158-162) that may be waiting for you on both sides of that polarization.

The Clean and Green Club, August 2014

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, 

August 2014

This Month’s Tip: Speak at a TED Event and Do It Right

This spring, I got to do a TED talk “Impossible Is a Dare: Business For a Better World.”

You can see it at https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/11809.

I’ve written often about public speaking as an outreach, brand building, and marketing tool. There is perhaps no better training ground for speakers than TED. If you’re not familiar, TED—an acronym for Technology, Education, Design—is a prestigious (and very expensive) conference featuring short talks by very bright minds. No TED talk is supposed to go longer than 18 minutes, though I’ve seen a few that snuck in a bit extra.

Presenters have included Bill Gates, Isabel Allende, Seth Godin, James Cameron, Viktor Frankl, Gabby Giffords, Malcolm Gladwell, Bill and Hillary Clinton (separately), Stephen Hawking, and hundreds of others at the top of their game. The world is a richer place for this body of elegantly delivered wisdom, and the TED.com website is extremely popular. Many superstars of the speaking world were virtually unknown until their TED talks went viral.

The smartest thing TED has done is to video-record every presentation, and put them up on a public website, freely accessible to all. And the second-smartest thing TED has done, under the management of Wired Magazine founder and bestselling author Chris Anderson, is franchise the TED concept. Hundreds of cities now post TEDx talks, as official satellites of the main TED event.

To put a coherent message together in as little as five or as much as 18 minutes is no easy task. Even for experienced speakers, it’s a challenge. For many years, I’ve watched lots of TED talks—both to gain knowledge and insight about the world around me, and to study presentation techniques from these excellent speakers.

And for many years, too, I’d wanted to present a TED talk. I answered speaker calls for several TEDx events, reached out to people I knew who had presented at TED, and tried to be patient. I even volunteered to coach a TEDx presenter over Google Hangouts. (It’s quite fascinating to help shape someone else’s TED talk.)

Then, on April 10 of this year, the same organizer for whom I’d coached a speaker chose me to do a TEDx Salon event on May 8 in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, just 35 miles from my house. Instead of a day in a big auditorium with lots of speakers, I would be the only speaker in an intimate evening in a very small room (it was crowded with 15 people), and I would also choose two related TED talks to show. But it would still get posted on TED.com, and that was good enough for me.

I had less than a month to prepare. Most TED speakers have a lot more notice. Yes, I felt the pressure. I wanted thousands of people to watch my video, and I wanted it to leverage change in the way business is done.

This organizer wants all her speakers to have a rehearsal/coaching session, usually in person (I don’t know if that’s standard TED procedure, or just hers). After creating a whole new talk and slide show, I was on the third major draft (plus numerous minor edits) by the time I drove up to the venue for the dry run. Having been a speaker for decades, I was feeling pretty confident (and a little resentful of giving up an extra evening). But my volunteer coaches showed me I still had room for lots of improvement. Fortunately, I still had ten days to get it right. I simplified and clarified the messaging and slides, reworked certain awkward points in my narrative—and successfully delivered Version 4.0 in front of my packed and enthusiastic audience of 15. I ended up being quite grateful for the coaching session.

Fairly late in the process—the day before the rehearsal—I decided to build my talk around this quote: “Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare.” In my talk, I attributed it to an author named Elna Baker; I later found out that she took it from Muhammad Ali. The complete quote is “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

And that gave me a structure. I brought up several examples of things we used to think were impossible and now accept as fact: from human beings traveling at 17,500 miles per hour (aboard the International Space Station)…to the invention of the lightbulb and the iPod…to ending apartheid without vengeance…to saving a mountain in my own neighborhood. Then I took it global, challenging the business world to “turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.” I pointed out the profit potential in doing this work, and cited companies already profiting with their social enterprises.

If you watch my TED talk (once again, the URL is https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/11809 ), I’d be grateful if you send me a comment that I can put on a web page. If you can spare 15 minutes to listen, please take another minute or two and share your reaction. If you can forward to people you think would like to see it and link to it on social media, you’ll have my gratitude.

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help

Jay Levinson Memorial Conference is On Hold

My wife was the one who noticed that the Guerrilla Marketing conference I mentioned last month had been scheduled for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. When I brought this to the attention of the organizers, they immediately cancelled the conference (to their credit). At press time, they haven’t set a new date.

Starting a new website? Or tired of your existing hosting company? Have I got something for you: Hostgator, the hosting company I’ve been happily using for the past few years, is allowing me to give you a whole month of hosting—for a penny. Such a deal! All you have to do is go to https://www.hostgator.com/shared and when the time comes to give your coupon code, use my full name, all capital letters: SHELHOROWITZ (1 L, 2 Os).

Hear & Meet Shel
Thursday, September 11, 6 pm ET/3 pm PT: Webinar, “Selling Your Self-Published Book to a Bigger Publisher,” Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. Details & Register Here https://tinyurl.com/onlz3hw
HOLYOKE, MA: Saturday, September 13, 9:30-10:30 a.m., Making Sustainability Sexy: Marketing Secrets for Green/Local Businesses/Organizations, Co-op Power’s Sustainability Summit, Holyoke Heritage State Park, 221 Appleton Street, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

September 26-28, Dover, Vermont: Scaling Change for Social Good is a fascinating “un-conference” with a keynote by Ami Dar, founder of Idealist.org, and an emphasis on getting your deep social change story sharp enough to present on video. This is a skill set that every marketer *and* every social change agent or environmental activist needs. I’ll be there as an advising mentor—but what happens there is really about the group, about a new way to collaborate for change. https://www.scalingchange.org/

I am participating because 1) I love the theme of achieving deep social change; it’s very much aligned with the direction I expect to be going for the next 15 years or so, and 2) I’m betting that this could be the start of something very big—kind of like being able to say you were at the first TED conference

Largest rally on climate change in US history, Sunday, September 21, NYC. I am going to be in the city Saturday as well, and could squeeze in a couple of meetings. Even, if someone wants to organize one, a public event. Please respond to me (shel at principledprofit.com) with the subject line Meet in NYC or Speak in NYC

Monday, October 6, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT: It’s been a while since I’ve done the Making Green Sexy talk as a webinar. I’m doing it once again for Green America—a much-improved version compared to the last time I presented it online. No charge.



Remember: You can earn a generous commission if you book Shel into a paid speaking engagement.

Connect with Shel on Social Media
Follow on Twitter

Facebook Profile

LinkedIn

Blog

Green & Ethical Marketing Facebook

Google+

About Shel & This Newsletter

As a marketing consultant and copywriter… award-winning author of eight books… international speaker, blogger, syndicated columnist — Shel Horowitz shows how green and ethical businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”
Two Recommended Books—Talk Like TED, How to Deliver a TED Talk

Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo (St. Martin’s Press, 2014), How to Deliver a TED Talk by Jeremy Donovan (McGraw Hill, 2014)

Whether or not you ever hope to give a TED talk of your own, if you do any public speaking at all (and that includes teleseminars and webinars), you can learn a lot by studying the best TED talks. There are quite a few books on the subject. I found these two quite helpful.

Yes, it’s unusual for me to cover two books in one review; I think I’ve only done that once before in 11 years of writing a monthly book review. It’s also unusual for me to review books when I haven’t taken several pages of notes while I was reading.

But these two books are two windows on the same need, and they complement each other nicely. Both books cite dozens of examples of successful TED talks, complete with the URLs to watch them. Their lists of talks overlap—both, for instance, cite Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on the need for creativity in education and Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s fascinating talk on how she, a neuroscientist, deconstructed her own experience of having a stroke. But they also each cite numerous examples that the other does not, and they provide different frameworks for constructing your talk.

Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, by Carmine Gallo (St. Martin’s, 2014) was recommended to me by my friend Jim Bowes, who used it in preparing his own TEDx presentation.

I read this during those few weeks I had to prepare, and I found that often, I’d get up from the book to watch one of the examples he refers to. And almost as often, I’d go from reading the book or watching one of the referenced TED talks to the edit window in PowerPoint, and immediately make changes based on what I was learning.

A few weeks after my TED talk, I met Jeremy Donovan at Book Expo America, and he gave me a copy of his new book, How to Deliver a TED Talk: Secrets of the World’s Most Inspiring Presentations (McGraw Hill, 2014).

And even though my TED talk was over, I started reading it. First, because I do plenty of speaking beyond TED, and second, because I might do other TED talks (Malcolm Gladwell has done at least three).

Some of my takeaways (or reinforcements of my existing ideas) from Gallo:

  • Talk to the amygdala: to the part of the brain that reacts viscerally, emotively 
  • Use strong sound bites
  • Incorporate humor, abundance, and optimism
  • Group concepts in threes (in my case, I had three social problems for the business community to solve, and three examples of how people worked backward to reach an “impossible” goal—but I’ve been speaking and writing in threes long before I read this book)

And from Donovan:

  • You can organize a talk either through inductive or deductive logic
  • If seeking to move people to accept a controversial idea, bridge from a non-controversial idea
  • Know what persona you’re going to adapt, and to what purpose; will you be a magician? A creative genius? A teacher of science? A lover of nature? A catalyst for change?
  • Understand the components of your talk (for example, you might alternate between stating premises and proving them)—he deconstructs numerous talks
  • Use the full complement of tools at your disposal: body language, tone of voice, visuals, humor, etc.
  • Provide the person who introduces you with a script that reinforces both your message AND your delivery style (great advice for ANY speech).

The Clean and Green Club, April 2014

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, 

April 2014

The Research Phase of Reinvention, Part 1

Introduction
Once again, I take you behind the curtain as I shift toward making a living while helping business solve poverty, hunger, war, and climate catastropheI feel deeply in my heart that this is the work I was meant to do. Frankly, I don’t know how it will all shake out. But while I’m figuring it out, the process creates learning opportunities for you if I choose to be transparent and reveal it–which I do. I feel you can benefit a lot by seeing my process, including how I plan to make money from these offerings.
Common business wisdom says, “research before launch.” But I’m research by doing. I’m putting a lot of things out there, and seeing what has resonance

  1. with my market and my fans (that’s you!)
  2. with the larger work, and 
  3. with my own passions. 

I can do this because most of them cost me only time (and maybe buying a domain name). And I also NEED to just jump in and do it because it would take far too long to research all the various pieces enough to know whether they’ll fly (and I wouldn’t necessarily trust the data anyway). And because opportunities have been zooming at me lately that I want to share with you.

For each, I’ll answer three questions:

What’s in it for you?
How does it advance the planet?
How can it boost revenues?

I want your feedback. And I want you to “vote with your feet” and take advantage of the offerings that make sense. So tell me what you think of these—send me an email telling me which ones you’re interested in personally, and which you think will sing to a larger market (if you can include a quick line or two about why, I’d be very grateful):

The most exciting mobile marketing platform I’ve ever seen
I sat through a demo expecting to smile and move on. Instead, I was totally hooked. Retail, entertainment, and appointment-based service businesses could totally transform their marketing.

I was so enchanted that I worked out a new revenue model for the company (which until now, relied on face-to-face presentations by salespeople). I got them to do a demo video to show you this very powerful platform–something they can scale up and make available to other affiliates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvjgtnbU4d0&feature=youtu.be

What’s in it for you?
Reach highly targeted, segmented portions of your customer and prospect list instantly…customize the message situationally…increase revenue during slow times…fill cancelled appointment slots…build customer engagement, community, and loyalty.

How does it advance the planet? A full marketing campaign that’s paperless…AND nimble enough to respond instantly to new developments or events. It’s also interactive, builds relationships, and recaptures lost time that can be used to grow a business…or to organize on your favorite issue. And it’s integrated with social media.

How can it boost revenues? I earn a commission if you become a customer.

No-cost green marketing strategy tune-up
Brand new: 15 minutes to discuss your strategic marketing and branding objectives to advance your green and ethical business. Limited to the first 10 qualifying business owners who sign up. Please have clear objectives in mind for your call.

What’s in it for you?
No-charge tweaking by an expert green business profitability strategist should improve performance. Personally, I’ve learned a great deal from no-charge initial consultations from others.

How does it advance the planet?
Your improved positioning should make you a better green marketer. And since your green business helps the earth, your success helps the earth too.

How can it boost revenues?
Indirectly. You could hire me to write copy, critique and/or tune up your full marketing documents portfolio, and bring new prospects into my orbit. Or even hire me to speak on effective marketing :-).

More info: e-mail shel at greenandprofitable.com with the subject “Please schedule my green strategy tune-up”. In the body of the email, please provide a paragraph about your business. Describe your current marketing efforts in general terms, and your goals for the session. (Note: only people who provide this will be considered for the consult).

Telesummit
Starting next week—you’ll get a full solo mailer on this. Listen to 17 amazing presenters at no cost, plus eight extra calls in the inexpensive recording package. Leading lights in green business AND marketing, sharing deeply—several who almost never do teleconferences. I learned quite a lot as I was recording the calls! It’s really an extraordinary series.

What’s in it for you?
17 (summit calls) or 25 (with bonus calls) info-packed audios offering great information on working with the media, building networks, running a green and conscious business, using business to change the world, activism as a business, marketing to introverts, and even running a green business in a conservative area.

How does it advance the planet?
Gives you new tools to convey your message powerfully to your best audiences—AND provides information on the green and activist world (especially in the bonus package).

How can it boost revenues?

  1. Commissions on speakers’ product upsells
  2. Sales of recordings
  3. Adding newsletter subscribers—future clients?–into my tribe 
  4. Building deeper relationships with well-connected presenters—possible future opportunities 
  5. Actively promoting the spring intensive at my house (see below) and the summer mentorship coaching program (see next month’s newsletter)

More info: https://business-for-a-better-world.com/telesummit

The famous three-day marketing and social change intensive
Small-group intensive in my beautiful antique mountain-view solar farmhouse, in historic ecovillage.

What’s in it for you?
Learn hands-on skills in identifying different audiences and creating specific messages for each…media skills (including on-camera interview practice as well as writing compelling press releases)

How does it advance the planet?
Makes you a better green marketer

How can it boost revenues?
Tuition, future work, mentorship sales

More info:
https://making-green-sexy.com/come-learn-with-shel-3-day-green-marketing-intensive-in-beatuiful.html

This is only part of the list. Next month, you’ll get part 2.

Friends who Want to Help

Paulette Ensign’s Booklets and Beyond: Making More Money Today Online and Offline course has already started—but you can catch the session you missed on the recording. Paulette is an expert on tips booklets, an easy way to package your knowledge and create revenue. She’s building a community around it, too. (This one does have a cost).
https://www.kickstartcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=889945&u=www.tipsbooklets.com/teleclass.html

D’vorah Lansky’s Book Marketing Challenge includes content from many leading lights of independent publishing (including me). Hands-on, no-charge, interactive training on a wide variety of online book marketing strategies. Workshops, expert interviews, articles, action steps, hot tips, special gifts, and opportunities to expand your online presence.

– Develop Your Author platform
– Learn how to build a list of thirsty readers
– Discover ways to create multiple income streams with your book
– Access specific book marketing strategies that deliver results
– Find out the most powerful ways to reach more readers, globally
https://buildabusinesswithyourbook.com/access/aff/go/shelhoro

Shift Network, the same people who bring you the wonderful Spring of Sustainability series—I sent you a special mailing on that last Thursday—host a call with environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived for several months in a beautiful old tree to prevent it from being logged. I heard Julia speak several years ago and was impressed. Julia will be speaking May 7 on Igniting the Power of Courage ~ 4 Steps for Transforming the Ordinary into the Extraordinary. No cost. I don’t have the link yet, but I did find out that in addition to the freebie call, she’ll be doing a course. Contact marykay AT theshiftnetwork.com to get all the details.

Connect with Shel on Social Media
Follow on Twitter

Facebook Profile

LinkedIn

Blog

Green & Ethical Marketing Facebook

Google+

About Shel & This Newsletter

As a marketing consultant and copywriter… award-winning author of eight books… international speaker, blogger, syndicated columnist — Shel Horowitz shows how green and ethical businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company

He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

“As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).”

Living in Oneness 5 Pillars For Success Summit, from Humanity’s Team, offers training in the 5 realms of Self, Parenting, Relationships, the Business/Professional world, and Leadership and Public Service.

Featuring Neale Donald Walsh, don Miguel Ruiz, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Patricia Ellsberg, Gay & Katie Hendricks, Bruce Lipton, James O’Dea, and many others. https://vg165.infusionsoft.com/go/lio14reg/shorowitz

Hear & Meet Shel–A TEDx Talk, Green Festival & More
April 21 through May 2: I interview all 16 other presenters on the Business and Marketing For a Better World Telesummit. My overview call describing all the other calls will be available at any time. And then on the last day, Tom Antion interviews me about how business can create sweeping social change AND make a profit. No cost to register, and you get all the other presenters too: https://business-for-a-better-world.com/telesummit
April 26, NYC, 12:30 p.m. (note time change) Speaking on Business For a Better World AND message points for different audiences at the NYC Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival. I’ll be signing books afterward. The Green Festivals are wonderful events. I spoke at one in 2010 and have attended a couple since then. Pier 94, 55th Street and Hudson River. https://www.greenfestivals.org/nyc/schedule

May 8, Shelburne Falls, MA: Speaking on Business For a Better World at a TEDx salon! Who-hoo! Speaking at a TED event has been on my to-do list for years. If you’re in Western Mass, please come. McCusker’s market, 7 to 9 p.m. Contact: stacy at TEDxShelburneFalls.com

May 6, Tech SandBox, Hopkinton, MA, near the I-495 interchange off the Mass Pike: The brilliant entrepreneur and networker Ken McArthur, bestselling author of The Impact Factor and a really nice guy, is doing a one-day Boston-area intensive with a bunch of other very smart marketers. I’ve traveled as far as Florida to and one of his events, and I don’t remember him doing one north of NYC before. I’ll be attending, and though I’m not formally a presenter, if past experience is a guide, I’m likely to have some role as a resource.
Also, if past is a guide, he will put together an awesome group of people who have a lot of knowledge to share. I expect to take lots of notes :-). Let’s put out a great New England welcome for him. $497 Early Bird price. https://onedayintensive.com/boston

May 10, Hartford, CT: I will once again be presenting at CAPA University, a one-day book publishing program in Hartford. More info: gaffney AT kanineknits.com

May 16-18, Hadley, MA: Marketing Green in the Wider World: 3-Day Intensive.
Another Recommended Book—An Edible History of Humanity

An Edible History of Humanity, by Tom Standage (Walker & Co., 2009)


Standage argues convincingly that most of the major changes and many key events throughout (and preceding) history are about food. It’s a fascinating and well-written book,

I was particularly drawn to it right now, as I’m launching Business For a Better World—with the idea that most of our current biggest social problems are resource-related.

He starts the history some 10,000 years ago, when humans began to domesticate crops and move from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. He notes that very early, people started selecting for grains that were more appealing, even if they were less resilient. 

Agriculture began the process of allowing people to develop skills beyond feeding themselves and their families—because, as agricultural surpluses began to accumulate at least as early as 3200 BC, not everybody had to be involved in food production. Thus, Bronze Age toolmaking, crafts, and eventually, industries. With irrigation, these trends increased and spread around the world. 

And this led to a move away from the egalitarian hunter-gatherer ways to stratified societies of professionals, laborers, and of course, a ruling elite. 

Standage offers a new, food-related view of so much of what we take for granted. And he draws a fascinating parallel between the amount of democracy (including a free press)—and food security. Authoritarian regimes tend to have a lot more problems feeding their populace. 

Examples: Did you know the Dutch used violent suppression and caused eco-catastrophe in order to monopolize clove production on two islands, all the way back around 1700? Why Stain’s dictatorial regime was based in his complete misunderstanding of agriculture—and how Mao repeated and multiplied the mistake, causing the greatest famine in human history and 30-40 million deaths? (Post-Mao China, however, has made huge strides in food sufficiency, and at least some progress on democracy.) How Mugabe’s country-destroying rule in Zimbabwe saw 80 percent decline in agriculture, 10,000 percent inflation, 20 percent reduction in life expectancy, and unemployment at 85 percent? 

He looks at positive and negative aspects of the Green Revolution’s roots in the development of synthetic ammonia and other nitrogen fertilizers, and of the much more recent shift to GMO (genetically modified) crops. Personally, I think he’s rather too uncritical of some of these technologies—but I do recognize that the Green Revolution, in particular, helped create a more solid footing of sufficiency. 

He also looks at how enlightened consumers have used food purchases to support a social agenda, starting with the first known values-based food boycott in 1791, when Quakers started refusing to buy slave-produced sugar. (I guess he doesn’t see the Boston Tea Party as values-based.) 

At the end of the book, he shares some startling and deeply disturbing statistics about genetic diversity. I find it very scary to learn that in the 20th century, 6800 of 7100 American apple varieties have gone extinct, as have 75 percent of varietals across all crops. Yikes!