Rocket Thrusters for Your 2025 Success: Seth Godin’s 54 Strategy Questions
Photo Credit: Mikhail Nilov via Pexels
Yes, this is a lot to take in at once. But it’s well worth your time—so much so that as soon as I read it almost two months ago, I asked and received Seth’s permission to share it with you so it could inspire your New Year’s resolutions—and more importantly, your New Year’s actions. I strongly encourage you to spend some time with it. If it’s too much all at once, you could look at five a day for 21 days.
While this piece is exceptional, I’ve been reading Seth’s daily bulletins for many years and often find value. If you’re not already a subscriber, start brightening your mornings. Many of his daily posts can be read in two minutes or so.
—Shel
Here’s Seth:
My new book (published October 22) contains more than 500 questions. Here are some to get you started:
Who is this project for? Who is my smallest viable audience?
What change do I seek to make with this project?
What is my strategy to make this change happen? Can I articulate it clearly?
What resources and assets do I have to dedicate to this project? Do I have enough kindling to burn this log?
What is my timeline for this project? When does it ship and what is my deadline for calling it quits?
What systems am I currently working within? Does the system want what I have to offer?
What systems would need to change for my project to succeed? How can I create the conditions for that change?
Where will I cause tension? What resistance should I anticipate from others (and myself)?
What are the status roles and affiliations at play?
How big is my circle of us and circle of now? What can I do to expand them? What about my audience’s circles?
Why would someone talk about or recommend my project to others?
How can I create the conditions for a network effect to develop around my project?
Where are the feedback loops, and which ones move my work forward or slow it down?
Which games are being played? Who sets the rules?
Which games are winnable, which are oppositional? And which games don’t need to be won, simply played?
What can I learn to increase my odds of success? Where can I gain that knowledge?
Where is the smallest viable audience? How do they think about status and affiliation?
Which false proxies are likely to distract me? What matters?
Am I taking advantage of the shift being caused by a change agent? Or do I need to become one?
What asset would transform my project? How do I acquire it?
If an early adopter talks about my project, what will they say?
Where is the empathy? Does my work align with the actual motivations and interests of the audience?
What is the tension that I’m eagerly creating in the system by showing up with my change?
Am I building the scaffolding people will need to adopt and move forward?
Does this help the dominant forces in the system continue to achieve their goals or does it challenge their status quo?
What’s my position? Are people who choose an alternative making a good choice based on their needs?
What can I learn from comparable projects that have succeeded or failed?
Is my strategy simple to describe and hard to stick to?
What partnerships, alliances or collaborations could increase the scaffolding around this project?
Am I tapping into an insatiable desire?
What’s the process for altering the strategy based on what I learn?
Is my strategy resilient enough that we can actually look forward to surprises?
Is the network effect sufficient to insulate me from a race to the bottom? Can I create a network that is built on abundance, not scarcity?
Is the change I’m making contagious? How can I alter the culture I’m creating to make it more so?
How will early successes of my project make later successes more likely?
What are the tropes and requirements of the genre I’ve chosen?
How do we gain insight into the probability that our assertions will work out?
Can I make it easier for others to decide?
Where are the non-believers, and how do I avoid them?
How does my project tap into existing social desires for status, affiliation, and/or security to help propel its adoption and spread?
What frayed edges, anomalies, or contradictions in the current system could serve as leverage points for introducing my alternative?
What metrics is the current system optimizing for? How could my strategy re-align incentives and feedback loops around different measures of success?
How does my project seek to shift part of the culture from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset?
What incumbents might perceive my project as a threat to their power or position? How does my strategy navigate those political dynamics?
How can I design for network effects, enabling each new participant to create value for all the other participants?
What sunk costs might prevent potential stakeholders from embracing my approach? How can I lower the perceived switching costs?
What are the common scripts or objections I expect to encounter? How will I constructively respond to skepticism and resistance?
How will engaging with my project help people become who they aspire to be? What identity and worldview does it invite them to step into?
How can I lower the barrier to entry and make it feel easy and irresistible for people to take the first step with my offering? Where is the scaffolding?
How do I shorten the delay in the relevant feedback loops (or learn to thrive with a longer delay)?
How do we lower the decision-making barrier to invite participation? Can we make it easy for people to say, “I was right all along?”
How can I avoid becoming trapped by sunk costs if my initial strategy proves ill-fated? When should I pivot vs. persist? Where’s the dip?
Can I improve project hygiene? What are the standards and conversations I’m avoiding?
How will I resist the social gravity and “pull to the center” over time as my project matures and faces pressure to conform?
When asked for a bio, Seth humbly responded, “Seth writes a blog at seths.blog. He’s a teacher and the author of 22 international bestsellers.” So in case you don’t know his work, let me give him a better intro than he gave himself. He’s one of the foremost business futurists of our time and someone who sees and interprets for us—more clearly than most—the cascading effects of a world where new technologies, new thought patterns, and new ways of doing both business and social good have all begun to overlap. In the many years I’ve been reading his daily blog and some of his books, he’s changed the way I think about many issues and expanded the toolset I use to make sense of the world.
—Shel
See the original/subscribe to his blog at https://seths.blog/2024/10/the-strategy-questions/ )
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
There’s a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum’s Amazing 10 “Rings of Power” for Creating Fame, Fortune, and a Business Empire Today—Guaranteed!
There’s a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum’s Amazing 10 “Rings of Power” for Creating Fame, Fortune, and a Business Empire Today—Guaranteed!
By Joe Vitale (2006 edition)
Let’s get a few things clear right at the start:
While Vitale makes a case that Barnum acted within an ethical framework based on deep religious faith, I personally have a problem with one aspect of Barnum’s ethics (more about this in a moment).
I find the hypey subtitle a big turnoff. But because of the cover design, I didn’t even notice it had a subtitle until I sat down to write this review, despite seeing the cover daily for the roughly three weeks it took me to read the book.
Full disclosure: Joe Vitale is an acquaintance and has been helpful in my career.
About number 2: Barnum repeatedly created promotions that deliberately misled people into attending his shows. While the material often contained disclaimers, the focus was on undermining the prospect’s rational incredulity and replacing it with irrational credulity (examples on pages 27, 32, 89, 93, and 134-135). That’s not how I run my business and I hope it’s not how you run yours. Barnum rationalized it by saying (probably correctly in 99% of all cases) that he always gave people more than their money’s worth and did not encounter disgruntled customers. But still, while he delivered value, he made deceptive promises about the “marvels” visitors would experience and then delivered value on the 850,000 (p. 64) much-less-promoted museum items.
Notice how Barnum’s copy here includes several qualifiers and prevarications, but buries them in the emotional triggers of hype while turning scientific doubt into controversy—which always sells (combining the quote from p. 108 with a version in The Independent that starts a few lines earlier but omits the 45 words beginning “and its natural existence”):
“Engaged for a short time, the animal (regarding which there has been so much dispute in the scientific world) called the Fejee Mermaid! Positively asserted by its owner to have been taken alive in the Fejee Islands, and implicitly believed by many scientific persons, while it is pronounced by other scientific persons to be an artificial production, and its natural existence claimed by them to be an utter impossibility. The manager can only say that it possesses as much appearance of reality as any fish lying on the stalls of our fish markets—but who is to decide when doctors disagree? At all events, whether this production is the work of nature or art, it is decidedly the most stupendous curiosity ever submitted to the public for inspection. If it is artificial, the senses of sight and touch are useless, for art has rendered them totally ineffectual. If it is natural, then all concur in declaring it THE GREATEST CURIOSITY IN THE WORLD.”
Look at all the “modern” copywriting tricks squeezed into that paragraph: Time limit, controversy, authority (scientists, doctors and the unidentified manager), exoticism, appeal to multiple senses, superlatives—and curiosity.
Yet Barnum himself says, “Anything spurious will not succeed permanently…[customers] will denounce you as an imposter and a swindler” (p. 210). I guess he felt that his use of weasel words and his delivery of entertainment value were enough to keep him out of that despised category.
Still, this book is worth your time. Vitale does a great job of illuminating Barnum’s core principles (pp. 19-25): 1) Choose a business that brings you joy; 2) keep your word; 3) be all-in; 4) avoid alcohol and drugs; 5) “let hope predominate, but be not too visionary”; 6) focus on just one kind of business; 7) hire well—and fire when you hired poorly; 8) commit to substantial marketing; 9) stay frugal/avoid vanity and extravagance; 10) rely on your own efforts—”be the architect of [your] own fortune.”
Despite #10, Barnum bet heavily on joint ventures. He took risks on unknown performers, made them superstars, paid them well—often a percentage of the gate—and engendered deep loyalty from these partners. He was also extraordinarily adept at marketing, using both paid ads and media publicity extensively. And his fans really did feel like they’d gotten more than their money’s worth, because he believed “the noblest art is that of making others happy” (p. 65).
Barnum is also a model for thriving despite tragedy. His life was a continuous exercise in resilience (pp. 43-44, 141-153) as his uninsured museum was destroyed twice by fire, his mansion burned down, he went bankrupt, he was briefly jailed, and even faced a lynch mob ready to hang him—not to mention the devastating deaths of multiple loved ones. But he always bounced back.
I also admire the way Vitale frequently shows how Barnum’s acumen can be applied in the modern world, as well as the historical continuity of Barnumesque techniques through PR geniuses like Edward Bernays in the 1930s (p. 75) and Paul Hartunian in the 1980s (p. 130).
So yes, get your hands on a copy—but go in with your eyes and ears open to the story behind the story.
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
In a recent newsletter, Brian Kurtz of Titans Marketing quoted his late mentor Marty Edelston, founder of Boardroom Reports (best known for the Bottom Line newsletters):
“Fiction is not worth your time. We don’t need to escape but we always need to learn through business books.”
Despite my enormous respect for both Brian and Marty, I vehemently disagree. This is adapted and expanded from my response to Brian:
Really shocked that a marketer as astute as Marty would say this. Fiction and poetry and drama (and visual art, music, dance, etc.) are windows into souls—keys to understanding psychology—extremely useful for every marketer who is not trying to sell a universally needed product. And as far as I know, there’s no such thing as a universally needed product. Toilet paper comes pretty close—but there are plenty of people who use bidets, or who live in cultures that have other ways to clean up. Historically, we all managed to do without TP for most of human history—a point reinforced by the packaging of the Trader Joe’s recycled TP I sometimes buy.<end of my note to Brian>
I feel that my effectiveness as a marketer is deeply rooted in the insights to the human condition that I get through literature, music, visual art, movies, and other forms of creative expression. It’s hard for me to imagine invention or innovation without them. It doesn’t surprise me that the earliest human artifacts include works of visual art that tell stories (cave paintings and pictographs)—and that they are present in many ancient cultures all around the world. I’ve personally seen them in places as far apart as Western China and New Mexico.
Let them into your own life. Not just because you’ll get marketing insights, but because you’ll feed your soul. My initial attraction to the arts had nothing to do with marketing—but once I was immersing myself, I became a much better marketer.
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands
Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands
By Sarah Towle
I don’t usually review resources dedicated to uncovering and solving big social problems without an obvious business context—but I’m making an exception for this historical and current analysis of the incredibly cruel US immigration “system”—which is not at all systematic in its functionality, only in its cruelty and racism.
And while it may not be obvious, business is definitely a factor in this cruelty. The private prison/detention system is a huge beneficiary, building massive profits out of the exploitation and even torture of those who fled for their lives. The human traffickers and smugglers who help bring people and products across the border are running businesses, albeit illegal ones. Also, the roots of the border crisis have a lot to do with US policies going back a century and more that prioritized profits for giant agribusiness companies growing such crops as coffee and bananas. The term “banana republic” actually came out of that long-running exploitation—and so did the dual crisis of drugs ravaging the US while US-made guns ravage Latin America.
Towle explores both, as well as the devil’s partnerships between those private entities and some of the most repressive agencies within our federal and state governments—some of which have their own roots in the slave abduction rings that operated before the Civil War—and the way both have abused those in their custody to the point where torture is the only word to call it. Both the agencies and the profiteers are aided and abetted by a shadowy network of right-wing organizations organized by a man named John Tanton (p. 140)—a name I hadn’t encountered before reading this book, although his impact has been felt in repressive laws, repressive judicial appointments, and much more.
These tangled webs may help explain why oppression and arbitrary (often illegal) treatment of low-income immigrants of color are a curse in our society whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House.
Towle is a good writer and researcher. She tracks down long spirals of causes, long histories of completely unnecessary cruelty and barbarism directed at those who came to the US seeking protection. All-too-often, they find the opposite. And she makes the point over and over (p. 105, for instance) that attempting to deter migrants from entering doesn’t work, and won’t work as long as they are fleeing direct threats to their own and their loved ones’ lives.
As I do, she would love to see policy based on what we say we believe in as a country. It was the US that in the aftermath of WWII pushed hard to get other countries to accept asylees and refugees.
Personal note: I have been involved in immigration justice activism since the spring of 2019 and I met many of the activists Towle profiles when I participated in an eight-day witness delegation to the US-Mexico border in early 2020.
Note: Towle is based in London and currently touring the US. If you are in or near Massachusetts or Connecticut, this flier outlines a series of events from November 12 to 20. I’ll be attending her program this Wednesday evening, November 13, at Amherst Books along with my wife, D. Dina Friedman, author of recent poetry and short story collections on immigration themes (if you’re in the room, please say hi to me). She will also be in Northampton, Hartford, Worcester, and Boston.
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
In the 21 years since the first issue of this newsletter, I’ve tried to make it a voice for values that I hope you share: doing right by other people, doing right by the planet, acceptance of diversity, and not just fostering democratic and empowering outcomes, but reaching those outcomes through democratic and empowering processes. Because I focus on leveraging the power of profitable business to change society, and because many of you are not US voters, I’ve attempted to keep electoral politics out of these pages. I don’t believe I have ever endorsed a specific candidate for any office in this newsletter until now.
The other attacks them at every turn, spewing hatred, putting down people who are different from him, threatening the vast numbers he perceives as his enemy with “retribution” (a direct quote) that includes massive incarceration and deportation, and assailing the very roots of the 248-year US commitment to electoral democracy.
This man also showed, during a previous term as president, that he doesn’t value the US’s hard-won positive relationships with other democracies around the world—but he does value the dictators who have figured out that if they pretend to adore him, they can manipulate him.
He’s a man whose speeches are almost always about his self-perception of greatness. A shallow,
superficial man who values the trappings of wealth and power but has no idea how to exercise those things responsibly. A convicted felon who a civil court found not only committed rape but slandered the victim.
And Vance, his running mate, has admitted there was no truth to his crazy fantasy that Haitian
immigrants were eating their neighbors’ pets—a fantasy that has led to threats of violence so extreme that Springfield, Ohio’s schools went back to remote learning
Harris and Walz honor our tradition of dissent, acknowledge the humanitarian crises in Palestine,
Ukraine, and at the US-Mexico border, call for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, oppose dictators, and acknowledges the reality of the climate crisis that Trump repeatedly dismissively scorns and mocks.
Harris is far from my perfect candidate but she’s orders of magnitude better than her opponent on
every issue. And Walz has a remarkable record as a caring governor who has used the power of his office to make lives better in his state, someone who cares far more about his social legacy than about accumulating wealth on the backs of others.
Yes, Harris could be much better on several issues, especially the Middle East and energy policy. I
understand why you might want to consider voting third-party. I’ve voted third-party several times in
the past—but this year, Please Don’t!
Third-party candidates rarely even get beyond single-digit vote percentages, and that’s with one clear choice. Even Ralph Nader got less than three percentin a well-run national campaign in 2000—but that was a factor in having the nation suffer eight years of George W. Bush, including the disastrous and destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan wars and refusing to take meaningful action on climate.
This year, with at least three third-party candidates courting the progressive vote and none of them
getting any traction, the next president will be either the Democratic or the Republican nominee—and therefore, the election can’t be about turning our backs on a decent but flawed candidate in a doomed-to-failure attempt to pick the perfect over the good.
Until we have ranked-choice voting, a third-party vote ends up being a vote for the candidate you favor the least. Voting for a “perfect” but unelectable third-party candidate could shift victory to the most evil choice: Trump. This election cannot be a quest for unachievable perfection. It has to be about which candidate will enable those of us who are activists to better organize for more meaningful change while also making improvements that help people right now.
If you live in a swing state, your vote could mean the difference between democracy and dictatorship. If you live in a red state, you might help it shift blue. Many so-called “red states—including at least Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, and Florida—have elected at least one Democratic statewide candidate (e.g., governor, senator) and/or voted Democratic in at least one presidential race in this century. With massive new voter registrations and unpopular Republican polices such as severe restrictions on reproductive freedom on the ballots of multiple states, even more formerly safe Republican states could be in play this year, surprising the pollsters.
And if you live in a blue state, you need to help ensure the margins of victory are so large that no one will believe Trump this time when he once again falsely claims the election was stolen. Jane Fonda’s short video gives a few more reasons.
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
Just a Few More Days to Catch This Full Replay! My September talk to the New York Public Library’s Yoseloff Business Center was very well-received. The organizer wrote,
“Thank you so much for a great program and for being so generous with your time, knowledge, and insights!! The presentation was incredibly insightful, and the audience loved all the resources you shared…You presented that deck beautifully, filled with great info and resources that the audience loved…I had a consultation with a patron after the event, and she told me she loved the program. So you were a rockstar today! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Unfortunately, they only keep the replay up for 30 days, which means they’re probably taking it down October 15. I’m publishing the newsletter a few days early just so you can listen to the whole thing, uncut. I have permission to chunk it up and I’ll make those replays available—but I don’t have permission to give you the whole thing in one block.
So if you have a chance, visit Recording Registration – Zoom before it goes away—and let me know what insights you take away.
Backlash Didn’t Kill Green Investing By: Paul Polman
We so often hear from mainstream financial writers on the inadequacies of social and environmental investment—but according to the many studies I looked into when researching my book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, that’s simply not true. Former longtime Unilever CEO Paul Polman, whose excellent book Net Positive I reviewed in my May, 2023 newsletter, debunks it nicely in his article, “The Backlash Didn’t Kill Green Investing.” It’s only a few hundred words—so rather than writing a review of a few hundred words, I suggest you follow the link and read the original.
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
Don’t worry, you didn’t miss the July newsletter. My father died when there was one more thing to finalize, and my assistant didn’t want to bother me to get that clarification. And I was so busy dealing with his death that I didn’t even notice the newsletter hadn’t dropped. So the July issue didn’t actually get published. “We now resume our regularly scheduled programming” 😉
Amplifying Abundance with Social Impact: Shel Horowitz and Elaine Starling
Elaine Starling is the host of an incredible podcast called “The Abundance Journey.” I was her guest for the July 11 episode and it was such a rich and potentially life-changing conversation that the highlight notes I took when I listened to it ran over 800 words. I consider it the best interview I’ve ever done, and I’ve done hundreds.
So I’ve decided to turn those highlight notes into the lead article this month.
I do recommend listening to the whole thing. We covered twice as much as I jotted down. You can watch the entire amazing 54-minute show at https://youtu.be/b9t2yyJai_M or listen without video at https://player.captivate.fm/episode/31aa13ab-7fdd-418d-87f4-fee96a18a02a. The numbers on the left are the minutes and seconds into the recording where that insight shows up. Enjoy!
1:45 Elaine: Environmental/social good and profitability is a both-and, not an either-or
7:10 Elaine’s intention-setting exercise and 78-second silent meditation
9:14 Shel: How I got started on this path: It goes back to embracing the non-monetary abundance that “fell into my life as a high school student.” And then, in November, 1999, founding Save the Mountain and expecting 20 people at the first meeting and a five-year campaign. “The abundance, the abundant universe, was out there waiting for me to do better than that…we won. In 13 months flat, we protected that land!”
11:07 activist since age 12, marketer at 15.
11:32 “This campaign took everything I knew about marketing and put it in an organizing context.”
11:48 Victory mindset was key to achieving the victory.
12:00 “How could I bring some of the stuff from the social change/environmental good world into the business community?”
12:45 Elaine: “A form of abundance is your personal involvement and engagement…when you contribute your own gifts and skills and abilities, it gets amplified and comes back to you” and to the whole community.
13:30 Shel: There’s also the incredible abundance of solar energy, a year’s worth every hour. “So the planet, the solar system, is very abundant.” And I get my heat and hot water from the green energy system on my neighbors’ farm. “The whole world is a both-and. Either-or choices are so retro!”
14:58 My personal definition of abundance.
15:47 “Every trip I take is a lesson in abundance,” including visiting an entire country powered by renewable energy.
16:37 Elaine: Centuries-old ideas from developing countries have given us technologies that we can adapt and use.
17:28 Shel: Indigenous wisdom of 10,000 years ago combines with modern technology to create a spiral of abundance. We’ve learned to grow organic with just as high yields as chemiculture, and a new infrastructure (community gardens, farmers markets, etc.)
18:52 Biomimicry—how the land designs itself for localized conditions—and what creature to ask about how to engineer a bridge.
19:40 My role as a popularizer and demystifier for concepts worth spreading.
20:10 How conservation can create abundance (example: the power of how we use a toothbrush)
22:00 Bottom-line, quantifiable benefits of incorporating environmental and social change into the DNA of a business.
23:14: How to unpollute a dead or dying lake.
23:46 How to do really low-budget ($50-$100) solar hot water, insulated pipes, and no-detergent laundry and slash your use of fossil fuels.
25:26 The surprising climate championship by an ultra-profit-driven retail chain not known for its social conscience.
28:15 Elaine: What has to shift in your perspective to embrace this approach?
28:38 Shel: Business is too-often a taker economy, extractive—and those businesses are not good corporate citizens. But we all have to live here, and we have other generations to pass on our legacy. That includes the natural beauty as well as the natural resources. So one big shift is to go from being just a taker to a contributor. Doing things in systemic, regenerative ways. Ray Anderson from Interface was a great example of a CEO who changed his mindset. His company continues his legacy with innovations such as modular flooring tiles and tiles sourced from rescued abandoned fishing nets.
30:09 The chocolate industry was started by social pioneers like Milton Hershey and the Cadbury brothers—but later, they lost their way.
31:42 Why Ben & Jerry’s chose to sell to Unilever, what unusual management model they were able to negotiate, and how Unilever successfully propagated some B&J’s innovations across many of hits huge array of brands.
33:02 A small, profitable company that was founded specifically to be ethical, socially just, and environmentally friendly.
34:10 Baby steps: A social-good audit uniquely tailored to each business (I can help with this—pizza example). Ask yourself “What can my business, my organization, my family do?”
37:50 How my Guerrilla books exemplify the abundance mindset through partnering with competitors—and how partnering can open doors.
40:20 Elaine: Partner with organizations, corporations, nonprofits who share your vision.
40:36 Shel: My immigration justice activist group is count-on-your-fingers tiny, but we partner with many organizations locally, nationally, and internationally—and have leveraged that to influence far beyond our numbers.
41:35 Three free gifts from Shel. And (43:14) a much more valuable 30 free consultation to “get you on the path to what is the best thing for your particular organization to combine social good, environmental good and a successful business.”
43:49 How I benefit from offering that free consultation. “I want a better world because I want to live in a better world.”
45:18 How activism turned something important into international news.
ACTIVATE YOUR ABUNDANCE Elaine’s testimonial about Shel’s episode.
48:12 Shel is…a Niagara Falls of brilliance. I’m so grateful for Shel for opening my eyes to all the possibilities… I love his definition of abundance: opening up yourself to the probability that the universe will support you…Schedule time to read Shel’s book or get on his calendar for a consultation.
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
Deepak Saini interviewed me on “The Impact your Business can have on Global Issues.” We covered: my earliest social change influences; win-win-win-win-win and the abundance mindset; how “instant” movements don’t come up out of nowhere; right and wrong ways to do alternative energy; how business benefits from building in environmental and social good—and steps any business can take to figure out where they should create their specific impact; my own health regimen (something that almost never comes up in interviews).
I will be presenting a virtual program to the Thomas Yoseloff Business Center of the New York Public Library. This event will be open to the public without charge, over Zoom. It is scheduled for September 16, noon US Eastern. Click here to register.
The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking: Tools for the Transitions Ahead
The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking: Tools for the Transitions Ahead
By David Bollier (Schumacher Center for a New Economics, 2021)
David Bollier and I met for coffee several months ago. Without discussing it ahead of time, we each brought a copy of our most recent book to give to the other person—and that so embodies the theme of this book that I had to start with it. Although we live one town apart and do similar work, our paths so rarely intersect that the book I was giving him is eight years old, and his was three. I think we met 1:1 only once before, probably about twenty years ago.
Modeled loosely on the 1960s-era Whole Earth Catalogs, The Commoner’s Catalog is a heavily annotated collection of resources on dozens of subtopics under the umbrella of collaborative economy. Some are familiar, like food co-ops, land trusts, open-source software, Transition Towns, and worker-owned businesses. Some were completely new to me, like a collaborative, “value-sovereign,” and feminist initiative around blockchain (p. 96). Some partner with government entities, such as a reparations project in Mississippi that sued the federal Department of Agriculture and used its 1999 $1 bn settlement to fund the initiative (p. 88), or like Peru’s project to protect species diversity of indigenous potato varieties (p 55).
The book is divided into short sections, each with a few articles. it’s crammed with resources: URLs or publishing information for books, articles, videos, organizations, and even processes. I wrote down 42 page numbers listing books I might review in future newsletters! And many of those pages contain multiple books.
A few among many key insights:
Collaborative ventures are often created out of stress—as a response to a system that tries to crush people, or as a response to disaster, for instance
Commoners can influence the creation of new laws and businesses that not only allow but encourage collaborative success
Successful models of resources held in common and managed by collaborative groups are all around us. I knew that the World Wide Web was placed into the commons by its creator, Tim Berners-Lee (and what a magnificent gift that has turned out to be)—but even though I’ve used them since I got my first smartphone many years ago, I had no idea that Android phone operating systems are based in open-source Linux.
The “tragedy of the commons” concept that open-source is inevitably corrupted by private greed just isn’t true—especially if the communing systems are designed to be resilient, self-policing, and serving the needs of users and ecosystems. A corollary is that the model of the lone-wolf genius entrepreneur achieving magic all by himself (and it’s usually a him in these stories) is also flawed. Most geniuses had a lot of help creating their successes.
I really only have one criticism. Presumably to save paper, the layout is deeply challenging. Most people who would want a paper copy are going to skew older, but this book’s design is a nightmare for older readers. All this information is crammed into 114 8-1/2 x 12 pages. The introductory text to each section is nice and readable but the specific narratives are in a tiny font and many of the resources are in even tinier print, plus the eye flow isn’t always easy. It took me about a month to read it because I could only do two or three pages at a shift. I’m someone who reads small print on paper better than a lot of my cohort (I’m 67). There’s no way I could recommend this paper edition to my wife, who was 39 when she started refusing to look at a printed phone book (oddly, she can read much smaller print on screen than I can, so an e-edition may be better for people with eyes like hers).
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
Should You Offer Replays of Your Learning and Networking Calls?
Photo Credit: August de Richelieu via Pexels
You’ve probably noticed that some marketers make their recordings available indefinitely, some for a limited time with the option to buy permanent access, and some, if you’re not there live, you missed it.
I vote yes, not just for replays but also for saveable transcripts. Think of it this way: The more available you make your material, the more people know about you, get exposed to your viewpoints, and perhaps become followers.
Even if your call is to promote a time-sensitive offer, the recording can be doing marketing on your behalf long after the offer expires. If people love what you say and click through to the offer page, greet them with a message like: “Thank you for your interest in [name of program]. That offer has closed, but you can put your name on a waiting list for the next round, [give the date if you have it]. And if you’re not already on our mailing list, add your name here [hot link to your signup form] so you will be the first to know about opportunities like this and you won’t miss out next time.” You can still get these people into your tribe, where they might buy a different offer down the road.
It’s much easier to attract someone as a customer if they are already part of your knowledge tribe. That’s the real meaning of the slogan “content is king.”
Another benefit of course, is that you can still share your information and your pitch before your offer expires. Many people have competing priorities and sign up for meetings knowing that they can’t make the slot but hoping for a recording. They’ll probably listen promptly, especially if you note in your follow-up email with the recording link that it’s time sensitive.
And I recommend replay links that provide on-demand playback, rather than fixed times. If you are in my time zone, the Eastern United States, and you do a late morning or early afternoon meeting, you’re not going to get attendees from Australia, 14 hours ahead of you in their big Eastern cities, or China, 12 hours ahead. And you may not get many from Europe in the evening or late afternoon. But we live in a global economy and it makes sense to accommodate people in any time zone.
Of course, you want to make exceptions if you are planning to sell a replay package from a summit, if you’re an activist organizing an action, etc. But give people a three-to-five-day window to listen to the recordings first, and save them so for instance you can give away one session (with the presenter’s permission, of course) to entice a purchase of the whole set. After all, you put in a lot of time and energy to think about the content you presented, make the presentation, and create the offer. Why not let as many people as possible reap the benefits and get interested in what you are selling?
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
I will be presenting a virtual program to the Thomas Yoseloff Business Center of the New York Public Library. This event will be open to the public without charge, over Zoom. It is scheduled for September 16, noon US Eastern. Click here to register.
View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
By: Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions, 2015)
I started reading this book with no thought of reviewing it, but I found it quite relevant. I thoroughly recommend this wonderful combination of science, spirituality, indigenous wisdom, and poetic language.
Kimmerer, a member of the Potawatomi Nation of the Anishinaabe, is a botanist, storyteller, poet, mom, and gardener. Deeply proud of her heritage, she looks at issues like catastrophic climate change and cultural survival under an oppressive and powerful society through the lens of her nation’s oral history. And this is key: she is not just sharing folklore but taking a deep dive into indigenous ways of thinking.
In Potawatomi culture, plants and animals, even rocks, are people (p. 23), and calling them “it” would be extremely rude (p. 53). They all have gifts to share and needs to be met. Pecans and sweetgrass are two among many plants whose gifts she explores. We human people can take their gifts and give them some of ours, recognizing as we do that gifts are relational, not transactional; that their value multiplies when the gifts are shared; and that gifts come with responsibilities (pp. 26-28), including giving thanks (see especially the long and wonderful section on the traditional Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, pp. 107-117). I will personally be thinking about how I can thank the land as I’m harvesting in my garden this year.
If we never take more than we need, never hoard or close off the bounty from others who also need it, the culture will be in balance and sustain itself for tens of thousands of years—as it did before the arrival of the Windigo: takers who take far more than they need, try to keep all the wealth for themselves, and give little or nothing back (often, but not always, of European origin). For 500 years, Windigo colonialists have attempted to stamp out the indigenous culture, sometimes through wars; sometimes through forcing Native children into boarding schools that punished the use of original language, clothing, and customs; sometimes through the scourge of alcoholism—and sometimes by dumping so much pollution into natural places of beauty and abundance that the land is rendered useless.
She describes in horrific detail one such toxic site. Onondaga Lake near Syracuse, New York State (pp. 312-322). The Solvay Process Company (formed in 1881 and eventually merged into Allied Chemical) dumped directly into the lake for decades. As far back as 1907, New York State threatened legal action. Ice harvesting was banned in 1901. And that was long before mercury and chlorine processing moved in alongside the salt industry that polluted the lake since the 1830s. But even this desolate landscape can return from the dead—when multiple species learn to cooperate (p. 332). Cooperation is a key tenet of successful societies living in balance (next month’s review of David Bollier’s latest book on the commons will say more about that).
Language is another key aspect. What we name is what takes importance. Thinking shapes language and language, in turn, shapes thinking. In English-language botany classes, Kimmerer never learned a word for the force that pushes mushrooms up through the soil in one night. Potawatomi, an almost-extinct language with only nine surviving native speakers as of when she began studying it, taught her the word: puhpowee (pp. 48-49). In Potawatomi, 70 percent of words are verbs, while in English, 70 percent are nouns. In other words, English is based in things while Potawatomi is based in activity or states of being/becoming. The key distinction is not gender or human versus nonhuman, but whether a thing is alive—so they use different verbs for hearing a person or hearing an airplane engine. (p. 53).
Kimmerer loves English, but she also loves Potawatomi. “With the beautiful clusters of consonants of zh and mb and shwe and kwe and mshk, our language sounds like wind in the pines and water over rocks, sounds our ears may have been more delicately attuned to in the past, but no longer. To learn again, you really have to listen” (p. 53). After her initial frustration with a language that has a word meaning “to be a bay,” she found her epiphany:
An electric current sizzled down my arm and through my finger, and practically scorched the page… In that moment I could smell the water of the bay, watch it rock against the shore and hear it sift onto the sand. A bay is a noun only if water is dead…defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa—to be a bay—releases the water from bondage and lets it live…the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers… (p. 55, italics in the original)
And that paragraph demonstrates the poetry I was talking about earlier. She has written an achingly beautiful book with many important messages woven in. I intend to go back to it every few years, at least to read my handwritten notes. Treat yourself!
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
Photo Credit: Diva Plavalaguna via Pexels
Democratization Changes Everything, Part II In Part 1 of this article, we looked at how democratization has changed in punditry and fundraising. In this second and final installment, we examine the changes in a third area, and look at how these shifts in many industries change the way we do business, and the way we live.
Networking and Learning Especially since Zoom was so widely adapted during the pandemic, alternatives to expensive and draining in-person conferences are everywhere. From the comfort of my farmhouse in Massachusetts, I’ve attended major conferences put on by the UN, by various green business associations, and by businesses or organizations in Europe, South Africa, Asia, and the other side of my own country—as well as dozens of networking and learning calls including a monthly salon of environmental visionaries that’s always a highlight of my month. One of the two activist groups I’m involved with meets exclusively online (allowing the involvement of people in all four mainland US time zones) and the other, although all the members live within a 30-mile radius, mostly meets online.
Because I’m a good networker who participates actively in breakout rooms and posts resources to chats, I count many new friends from online events, including a green entrepreneur who was 16 when I met him at a Zoom pitch event in San Diego four years ago, a man a decade my senior who shares a lot of my vision for achieving peace in the world, a woman who is extremely skilled at facilitating challenging/triggering discussions on fraught topics, and an Australian with a compelling vision of integrating environmental work into the business world at a much higher level. And the democratization piece is that now, anyone with a $16/month Zoom subscription can host conferences for 100 people at a time, with no travel costs—and then make the recording available as long as they want. I began online professional networking in 1995 and have watched the technologies improve. Zoom in 2024 is a lot better than Zoom in 2017, which I think was when I started using it. And even 2017 Zoom was better than Skype, which was better than email discussion boards, etc.
Implications In a world where anyone can be a pundit, an educator, a conference organizer, a political candidate, a product launcher, or a fundraising Ninja, the rules are very different than where everything is stratified, job titles have limitations, and resources are scarce. This is true whether you are a marketer, business owner, activist, academic, creative, government worker—or some combination.
Here’s a wild hypothesis: because so many limits and barriers have gone away, we see the world as abundant and that in turn helps us become more creative. We can be looking beyond either-or to both-and, or even many-and. We can imagine vastly different ways of solving problems—and if we can imagine something, we can figure out a way to do it. Here are some creative solutions we’ve already discovered:
Using biomimicry to develop gecko-like adhesives, spider-web-style building materials, bamboo houses that can grow their own replacement parts, and termite-inspired zero-energy HVAC systems
Harnessing the power of moving water not through eco-catastrophic massive dams but through no-dam frisbee-sized hydroelectric plants with near-zero environmental impact
Building net-energy-positive houses—as Amory Lovins did all the way back in 1984—that despite a location in the cold Colorado Rockies, don’t need a furnace because they stay warm enough without one to grow bananas
Purifying water using only the properties of light and natural temperature change
The four mass-scale climate restoration technologies explored in the book I review this month, Climate Restoration (I mention them in the review, but to really explore them you’ll need to read that book).
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
Still working out the details, but it looks like I will be presenting a virtual program to the Thomas Yoseloff Business Center of the New York Public Library. This event will be open to the public without charge, over Zoom. The probable date and time: September 16, noon US Eastern.
Climate Restoration: The Only Future That Will Sustain the Human Race
Climate Restoration: The Only Future That Will Sustain the Human Race By Peter Fiekowsky with Carole Douglas (Rivertowns Books, 2022)
Fiekowsky starts by arguing two points that I didn’t think of as in contention:
The Paris climate targets are woefully inadequate, and net zero atmospheric carbon growth is nowhere near enough. In a world with carbon levels already passing 320 ppm (parts per million), we need to actually reverse global heating to get our atmosphere back to conditions that we know can sustain life (pp. 8-9, 22-25, and elsewhere, with a particularly grim look at what life would be like meeting the Paris targets on p. 8).
We have the capacity to solve the problem by implementing technologies that are relatively permanent (workable for at least 100 years), able to scale up rapidly (removing at least 25 gigatons of carbon per year), and able to attract investors to finance them (p. 33).
He obviously travels in a different world than I do, a world of high-level scholars and big investors who need to be convinced of these two axioms. I have never heard a single climate scientist claim that the Paris goals would be enough, that an average temperature rise of even just 2 degrees Celsius would not spawn massive changes around the world. And for at least a couple of decades, I’ve been convinced of humans’ ability to solve the problem. He apparently has found it difficult to convince colleagues and influencers of this, and strikes a tone I find unnecessarily defensive.
But the things I’ve always thought of as our most positive steps toward mitigating catastrophic climate change—such as afforestation (massive tree planting), complete and rapid conversion to true clean energy, and shifting our industrial/agricultural/construction processes—are, in Fiekowsky’s world view, less important than some big technological developments I wasn’t familiar with.
He identifies four industrial revolutions that meet the three criteria listed in the second point, above, plus a social trend that has long been part of the mix—and he says these, combined, could easily reduce atmospheric carbon to less than 300 ppm, with only minimal lifestyle changes. These five big innovations are:
Synthetic limestone that will allow carbon-negative construction (Chapter 3, pp. 83-97)
Seaweed and marine permaculture underwater forests (Chapter 4, pp. 98-114)
Iron fertilization of the oceans (Chapter 5, pp. 115-141)
Oxidizing methane to convert it into longer-lived but less harmful CO2 (Chapter 6, pp. 115-141)
Reducing the human impact on climate by reducing the size of the human population (Chapter 7, pp. 162-181; something environmentalists have been advocating since at least 1968, when Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s landmark The Population Bomb was published)
These solutions, each described in great detail in its own chapter, including the benefits, challenges, revenue streams, and investor appeal, do involve geoengineering—something I’ve been skeptical about in the more commonly discussed variations of, e.g., destroying existing weather patterns and replacing them with wild untried schemes. But the particular interventions—unlike any other geoengineering project I’ve ever heard of—are also biomimicry. Fiekowsky studied how nature has stoped previous global heat waves and then recalibrated again when it got too cold. Then he found scientists and entrepreneurs who have figured out how to replicate those eons-old models that were not engineered by humans but by oceans and continents.
While I’m not a scientist, I have done extensive reading on climate, and as far as I can tell, both the science and the business analyses are sound. His big challenge is convincing the world of his two initial points. Read the book yourself and see if you think he’s on the right track. I do.
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
Five Weeks to Set Up a Profitable Green/Social Justice Business—Only Eight Spaces Available
If you’ve always wanted to run a business that makes the world better, this is your chance to get personal guidance from Shel Horowitz (me, your newsletter writer), an internationally recognized expert in environmentally and socially conscious business (bio below). In just five weeks.
Format:
Five 75-minute interactive and participatory online group sessions, plus a private 45-60-minute consultation with Shel: you get to choose either a single session or splitting it into two half-hour sessions at the time they’ll be most beneficial for you (I’d recommend scheduling at least one session after the final class, but that’s up to you). And a mutual-support private group on LinkedIn just for those who are currently enrolled in or have gone through this program.
Each group session will consist of
Attender check-ins on how they moved forward/what they’re pleased about/new challenges (for the first session, we’ll have introductions instead that follow a specific format to keep the discussion moving and focus on the important parts)
A learning unit presented by Shel
Facilitated discussion and brainstorming on the day’s topic
Wrap-up and next steps
Members will have access to recordings and informal transcripts, to the best of our ability. You’ll probably find it helpful to replay the sessions or review the transcripts.
Topics:
Session 1: Identify your green and social equity opportunities.
Session 2: Rough out products or services that yourorganization (a business, sole proprietorship, nonprofit, educational or medical institution, government agency, etc.) can develop to address those opportunities.
Session 3: Use Shel and the group to evaluate your ideas and choose your first green and/or social equity offering.
Session 4: Understand the basics of marketing your first green/social equity product or service to three different populations—vastly increasing your potential market and giving you a significant competitive edge.
Session 5: Outline your personal path to move your idea from conception to completion: what steps you’ll take to make it real. Opportunities to continue receiving support.
One-to-one Consultation: 45-60 minutes total, in one or two sessions at the point in the five-session program that will provide YOU with the most value. Shel can help you see the unique strengths of your operation and guide you toward possible offerings, help you list and implement your next steps, steer you toward very helpful resources, and more.
Mondays, 3 pm ET/noon PT, May 20, 27, June 3, 10, 17.Click if you’re ready to sign up. Is This Program Right for You and Do You Qualify?
You will benefit from the program if you can say yes to at least three of these questions:
Do you currently own or run a business, nonprofit, or department OR have one you’d like to start or manage?
Are you interested in achieving a higher good and a better world?
Do you have a mission that focuses on at least one particular environmental or social justice issue—something you feel called to do?
Have you ever wondered if your business could be a vehicle to make progress on that goal?
Have you ever considered what kind of a difference your organization could make on the issues that matter to you most—if you focused some energy on those issues within a business framework?
Do you see potential for business to be a factor in co-creating a better world?
Are you eager to discover how your specific business can thrive by combining profitability with environmental and social good?
How to Apply:
With only eight spaces available and to make sure everyone has a fair chance at a slot, here’s the easy application process: You start by making sure you can answer yes to at least three of the questions above. Then fill out the simple questionnaire online. If your answers fit the program, Shel will schedule a quick 10- to 15-minute one-to-one call to explore a bit more. After the interview, you’ll be notified quickly whether you’ve been accepted, waitlisted, or asked to wait until you’re more ready.
Note from Shel, Your Presenter/Facilitator, on Enrollment, Pricingand Scheduling:
This first round is a pilot program, limited to eight people. A minimum of four is required to run the program. Future programs are likely to be more expensive and accommodate up to 12 people, so this is a time you can get more in-depth attention from me at a more affordable cost. I was advised by multiple experts that I should be charging $1500-$2000 for this program, but I want to keep it affordable—and I recognize that you’ll be road-testing it with me and helping me refine future versions. So, pricing for this first round will be just $675 in one payment or two payments of $375. The next iteration of this mastermind will likely be in the $995-$1195 range. This initial bargain price will not be repeated.
Mondays, 3 pm ET/noon PT, May 20, 27, June 3, 10, 17.Fill out and submit the brief application if you’re ready to sign up.
Your Instructor/Facilitator, Shel Horowitz
With more than 20 years at the intersection of profitability and environmental/social good and more than 20 additional years in small business marketing and in activism, Shel’s “superpowers” include:
Finding your social change sweet spot: how you and yourorganization are uniquely positioned to create and market profitable products and services that address crises like hunger, poverty, racism/othering—even “unsolvable” ones like war and catastrophic climate change (the answers will be different for every business or nonprofit). Your offering will be based on your skills, interests, and capabilities.
Creating compelling ways to tell “the story behind the story” that generate interest, empathy, and engagement—in a press release, on a web page, in interviews and speeches, etc.
Writing informational and marketing materials that make a compelling case for you, your products and services, and your focus on higher good: reasons for your prospects to choose you!
Helping you write, publish, and market a book that establishes your expertise and credibility while helping to influence others toward a better world (Shel has published ten books under his own name and ghostwritten others, through big NYC publishers, small presses, his own publishing company, and a subsidy house, so he has expertise in whichever model will work best for you).
Suggesting win-win-win partnerships that broaden your market, add more capabilities to your offerings, and increase revenue opportunities. Shel can also write powerful introductory letters to your potential partners like the one that enabled one of his clients to do script consulting for Hollywood director Ed Zwick. Doing two books in the Guerrilla Marketing series with the legendary Jay Conrad Levinson was Shel’s best partnership in his own career.
Helping you secure knock-it-out-of-the-park endorsements and positioning those blurbs for visibility and sales. He wrote the letter that got one client a testimonial from basketball superstar Bob Cousy. Shel’s latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, has 22 endorsements including Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, green living and green business experts Alicia Bay Laurel, Jacquelyn Ottman, and Joel Makower, social media gurus Chris Brogan and Brian Solis, Go-Giver Bob Burg, BNI founder Ivan Misner, and other prominent people.
I note in the opening paragraph of this month’s book review (Democracy Awakening by historian Heather Cox Richardson) that this is the third consecutive month I’ve reviewed a book that gives a window in changing the power dynamics in order to create lasting social change.
Shifting power dynamics is why we know this month’s author in the first place. Despite the rise of many authoritarian regimes around the globe, general social trends clearly show that power is being democratized in some very important ways. Electoral politics dynamics, shaping public opinion, fundraising, organizing movements, and of course, the buying process are really different than they were 30 years ago. Let’s look at just three of these.
Shaping Public Opinion
In this country’s early history, pamphleteers printed or went to a print shop to print their own works. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin became not just influencers, but folk heroes—and they did it without the help of a mainstream press. But in the 19th and 20th centuries, the mainstream media took hold. In the 1960s when I was growing up, the news, for the most part, was what Walter Cronkite or Huntley & Brinkley said it was on TV, or what the New York Times saw as part of “all the news that’s fit to print.” Our consciousness not only in news but in culture and life was shaped by just three major television networks, and the typical family might only consume one or two news sources.
National media still exist, of course. But with hundreds of thousands of media channels diluting the audience for any single one, there was no longer a national consensus about what was important and where to learn about it. At the same time, media broke out of geographic and time isolation. If a reader wants a European or Middle Eastern perspective, it’s easy enough to jump on the website for Der Spiegel or Al-Jazeera. And the days of needing to watch the news at a particular moment are long gone. We live in a world of unlimited reruns and pause buttons.
For the past several decades, opinion makers can once again, finally, develop an audience without the help of a mainstream media platform. While self-publishing never went away (think Walt Whitman or Anais Nin), it had existed on the margins. But by 2000, we suddenly saw a big shift: a return to the dynamics that had lifted Paine and Franklin in the 18th Century. Commentators like Greg Palast and Beverly Harris suddenly found a following.
24 years later, hundreds of self-made pundits have built significant followings, often leading to book contracts. But tens of thousands of others, using those same platforms, toil in obscurity.
Richardson is one of those newly strengthened voices. Her daily Substack newsletter, Letters from an American, has tens of thousands of readers. So do newsletters from Rubert Hubbell, Jessica Craven, and so many others.
This model has upended power relations between commentators and their public, at least from my perspective. I start my day reading Richardson and Hubbell along with business commentators Seth Godin and Bob Burg. And I read Craven’s Sunday good news roundup. While I frequently follow links to mainstream-media commentary such as Rachel Maddow and Seth Myers, I don’t seek them out, just follow links when their stuff someone or some algorithm sends me something that looks interesting. I do subscribe to various news bulletins from the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Guardian, as well as several green business and climate publications. Sometimes I read the summaries and don’t click through; other times I might click three links in a single newsletter. But those self-published four are the first places I turn to when I log on each morning.
Multiply me by tens of thousands of others, and you can see that both Left and Right are building audiences through individual newsletters, a few subscribers at a time. Add in social media chatter, which tends to aggregate like-minded audiences, and we see that the established media has much less influence than it used to. As a society, we now crowdsource our wisdom and to some extent our conclusions.
And this is one of the reasons why things seem so much more polarized. We’re not getting the middle voices so much, and the ends of the spectrum get far more traction than they used to.
Fundraising
You’d never know it looking at the number of fundraising letters coming into my postal mailbox every week, but fundraising has also seen sweeping change. Any of us can now set up a campaign on one of many platforms. While Kickstarter is the most famous, hundreds of alternatives exist (many with much more fundraiser-friendly models). To name just a few (listed for informational purposes; these are not endorsements and you should do your own due diligence): GiveButter, Chuffed, and Zeffy serve nonprofits, Barnraiser and Harvest Returns help farm and food businesses, Mighty Cause and SeedInvest fund activists, Patreon assists musicians, and GoFundMe and IndieGoGo can fund pretty much any venture. These and many other crowdfunding platforms have allowed inventors, creatives, charities, and for-profit businesses to capitalize without relying on vulture capital, banks, or predatory lending.
[This article continues next month, examining one more category and discussing what this means for marketers, business owners, activists, and creatives.]
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
Overcoming the challenges in creating a successful business.
The art of merging world-saving with business growth.
How ethical, green businesses aren’t just good for the planet—they’re great for business success.
Four diverse markets for green products, from the eco-enthusiasts to the skeptics, and how tailoring your pitch can win them over.
Global conflicts, and how resource competition fuels them.
Easy-to-implement socially conscious business practices.
How activism can boost your business and fill your soul.
And much, much more
A much shorter 21-minute interview with Mari-Lyn Harris of Heart at Work on her Creating an Impact podcast, which also aired on her Summit for Changemakers.
Mari-Lyn has had me on her podcasts and telesummits many times and we always have a great conversation. Despite the short length, we managed to cover:
Motivating from excitement about new possibilities instead of despair and gloom
Creating initiatives that have multiple benefits (and often, few or no disadvantages)
How green initiatives offer ROIs that outperform almost any other option
Why we need to go beyond sustainability(keeping things from getting worse) to regenerativity (making things better)
Why the so-called Green Revolution that started in the 1940s was really a failure
How funding small, well-chosen initiatives with tiny donations can create deep and lasting change–and how I personally used this method to start libraries in two developing countries
How I can help businesses and organizations find enormous value in the social change and environmental work they do
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America By: Heather Cox Richardson (Viking, 2023)
Why am I devoting a third consecutive book review to a book on power dynamics? Some of it is coincidence—but the play of power dynamics in the 2024 US presidential election probably helped bring Democracy Awakening, David and Goliath and Reclaiming Democracy to the top of my reading pile. Next month’s book review will be entirely different: a handbook on reversing the carbon problem.
As a historian, Richardson has a very different approach than Gladwell the visionary or Daley-Harris the activist. She puts this moment with a would-be dictator facing 91 criminal charges into a historical context that starts before the Revolutionary War, continues through the major threat to US democracy before, during, and after the Civil War (a struggle between slavers/segregationists and those who saw their mission as expanding the reach of liberty), and moves into the 20thth and 21stst centuries with the slow-building right-wing attempt to return to the “glory days” when white males controlled those they saw as inferior—culminating in the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
We know that Trump in some ways is different. Never before has a president been so willing to lie (the Washington Post documented 30,573 lies during his term.) Never in my lifetime has a US president been so openly corrupt or so blatant in using his office to grow his personal wealth and business revenues—or so openly racist, misogynistic, ableist, and cruel; so demanding of personal loyalty while giving none in return; so enamored of some of the worst dictators in the world; so inept at policy; and so emotionally insecure that he needs to brag that anything good was because of him (while being conspicuously absent when it’s time to admit he was wrong).
But Richardson shows that Trump, while extreme, is a logical consequence of decades of policy.
We will never know if Trump would have happened (or been so successful) without the earlier almost continuous attempts at subverting democracy, from Jefferson—yes, the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence—pushing winner-take-all presidential state-by-state voting in a blatant attempt to win the presidency under the new rules (p. 185) and the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act betrayal that could have turned the entire US into slaveholder territory (p. 197) to Richard Nixon squelching negotiations with Vietnam until he was firmly in the White House so Johnson could not claim a victory. That playbook was used again in 1980 by Ronald Reagan to block a hostage-release deal with Iran until Jimmy Carter had left the White House (p. 49), and Trump used a variant in first demanding action on immigration in order to get funding for foreign crises, then torpedoing that action as soon as it became apparent that it might actually pass.
This sorry history has many roots. The KKK chose white robes so they would appear to be ghosts and spook Blacks into intimidation (p. 27). A pro-slave senator physically attacked Senator Charles Sumner in 1856 (p. 197). Hitler slurred the groups he tried to destroy, such as Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews—as “Indians” (p. 167).
Richardson also examines the little tug-of-wars in values in both current US political parties. But one thing she doesn’t do satisfactorily is to explain how the Republican Party of liberation that managed to win the presidency in just its second attempt (and that under Lincoln made huge strides toward a more equal society) became the party of racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism while the Democrats, who embodied blatant racism through the 19thth century, somehow became the part of working people regardless of color, gender, sexual orientation, or physical abilities. To me, that’s a rather shocking omission.
Despite this flaw, it’s a well-written book that fills in a lot of details about the past 200+ years and girds us well to protect our democracy again going into November.
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
Here’s a numbered checklist to move your organization forward, fast:
Make your sustainability and social justice initiatives self-funding, generating at least enough revenue/savings to cover their cost. This will make them kill-proof when belts get tight.
Go first for the low-hanging fruit that produces easy and substantial gains, then use the savings and new revenue they generate to go deeper.
Get deep buy-in up and down the hierarchy: C-Suite support is crucial—but so is support from line workers.
See your workforce as an “innovation factory”: set up systems to collect, acknowledge, and—where appropriate—implement site-specific and corporate-wide sustainability ideas and projects in ways that make the works feel not just seen and heard, but appreciated and valued. If not implemented, express gratitude for the idea and explain what would need to happen to make it viable.
Collaborate outside silos and even outside the company. See your work as helping the planet by allowing best practices to emerge and cross-pollinate.
Think bigger. Sustainability keeps things from getting worse. Regenerativity makes things better! Work to create and market profitable products and services—and mindsets— that uniquely match your company’s strengths and interests and that make a difference on issues like hunger, poverty, racism, other kinds of othering, and even the big, scary stuff like war and catastrophic climate change. Consider that most wars are largely about resource issues, and that a truly ecofriendly world would make a lot of those resource issues go away.
Remember that we already have solutions for many of these problems—but we have big marketing challenges to broaden awareness and adoption of these solutions, dispel the myths spread by those who see themselves at risk if the world changes, and change the course of development so it moves all of us forward to a better world. (For specific solutions, look to several of the books I’ve reviewed in this newsletter. Just in the past year, those would include The Climate Challenge, February 2024; From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want, November 2023; The Sustainability Scorecard: How to Implement and Profit from Unexpected Solutions, October 2023; The Blue Economy 3.0: The Marriage of Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Creates a New Business Model that Transforms Society, September 2023; Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, May 2023. See also my older reviews of Drawdown, The Climate Almanac, Biomimicry, and Cradle to Cradle, among others. You should be able to find most of these at IndieBound.org (an alternative to Amazon that supports independent bookstores).
Look to nature for inspiration and for engineering. Nature has already solved most human engineering problems, better, more efficiently, and more elegantly than our best science has done. Watch Janine Benyus’s terrific TED talk.
Look beyond your own industry for ideas and possible collaboration partners. Remember that Velcro® was invented for the space program, and the drive-up window so popular with banks and food/beverage service has been adapted to many industries, even dry cleaning.
Reap the benefits. Once you’ve achieved some progress, start marketing those accomplishments (and your future path of even greater progress) to gain higher customer and employee loyalty, a better reputation, access to funding, and more. But don’t exaggerate! If you’re caught greenwashing or purposewashing, all those benefits will go up in a plume of CO2.
There you have it: ten best practices for sustainability and regenerativity. And if you want help from an expert, I’m offering my readers a half-hour consultation at no charge ($100 value) to explore how you might harness them in your own organization, through the end of April, 2024.
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants By: Malcolm Gladwell (Back Bay Books, 2013)
Gladwell is known for books like The Tipping Point and Blink that turn our worldview upside down. This book will still turn your world upside down, and yes, some of the examples are from business. But it’s really about power dynamics and their perceptions, and I think they apply even more in the activist arena. He looks at how to use the power of being the underdog to shift the balance—starting with the famous conflict between the future King of Israel and a huge, powerful, unvanquished warrior (pp. 3-15).
But oddly enough, even that battle, which has become a metaphor for underdog victories for thousands of years, isn’t what we think it is. While refusing to fight on Goliath’s own terms, David was not coming into the battle weak and unguarded. In his day, a person who knew how to wield a slingshot effectively had a huge advantage: ability to attack across a much bigger distance than anyone relying on swords and physical strength. Slingers were the elite troops of their day, more equivalent to Navy Seals than to helpless shepherd lads. And Goliath’s size led to physical disabilities. In Gladwell’s analysis, he had a hard time moving his oversize body and suffered from poor vision. He couldn’t see David, couldn’t see the stone streaking toward his forehead until it was too late, and couldn’t get out of the way in time once he understood the attack.
Every book on power dynamics I’ve ever read shows that the underdogs who succeed dictate the terms of their engagement. We see it in the corporate world, where Avis marketed being #2 into a reason to excel in customer service (“We Try Harder”), where Apple told us to “Think Different,” and Walmart bcame the world’s largest retailer by opening in small towns other retailers hadn’t bothered with. We see it in the activist world: Saul Alinsky used the power of poor people’s movements super-creatively, including a fart-in against racist bankers. ActUp harnessed a tiny but very visible band of gay men to demand action on AIDS. The Yippies threw dollar bills into the air at the New York Stock Exchange, using Wall Street greed to show the shallowness of US corporate culture on national TV news. And numerous actions in the civil rights, feminist, environment, and other people’s movements, often led by underdog people of color or from economically and socially disenfranchised communities, have given us thousands of examples of how to prevail when the odds don’t appear to be in your favor.
With the exception of the US Civil Rights movement, the above examples are not in Gladwell’s book; rather, they arise from my own decades-long examination of power dynamics—and that’s the lens I bring to the lessons I extract from this book. As an example, his analysis of how Wyatt Walker, a close associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. essentially tricked Bull Connor into a response that was perhaps not as violent as it was portrayed but catalyzed the country in support of the movement (pp. 165-193) is just fascinating.
The structure of the book is unique and interesting also. Each chapter is named for a person whose narrative is central to that chapter, but other narratives are woven in. He’ll bring an example from earlier pages, whether David the shepherd warrior, several dyslexics (pp. 99-122)—one who bluffed his way into a career in finance culminating in running Goldman Sachs, others who became an A-list lawyer and a super-successful Hollywood producer—or the unlikely immigrant captain of a basketball team of 12-year-old girls (pp. 19-38) that kept beating the overwhelming favorites.
Gladwell always finds ways to gain insight that flout conventional wisdom. Are small classes better for learning? Gladwell says highly skilled teachers who can successfully manage large classes are better educators than incompetent teachers with smaller classes (pp. 38-44 and elsewhere)—and there has to be enough critical mass to foster deep discussion in the classroom. His other education example is even more surprising: students with career goals in STEM often do better at less prestigious colleges, where they don’t feel crushed by the geniuses (pp. 63-96).
The book deliberately crosses siloes. Not just sports, academia, and corporate, but also such examples as medical research (pp. 125-164), military strategy in Vietnam (pp. 276-295), open defiance of Nazi orders (pp. 263-275), a police career turning ghetto “bad kids” and their families into motivated citizens (pp. 209-217), and helping to create peace in Northern Ireland (197-231). So no matter what industry you’re in, you’re likely to find value. It’s got a good index, extensive notes, and a readable style, too. Order from your favorite independent bookseller at https://bookshop.org/p/books/david-and-goliath-underdogs-misfits-and-the-art-of-battling-giants-malcolm-gladwell/15735366?ean=9780316204378
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
Before we get to this month’s tip, an important and limited chance to really up your green/social equity business game:
Five Weeks to Set Up a Profitable Green/Social Justice Business—Only Eight Spaces Available
If you’ve always wanted to run a business that makes the world better, this is your chance to get personal guidance from Shel Horowitz (me, your newsletter writer), an internationally recognized expert in environmentally and socially conscious business (bio below). In just five weeks.
Format:
Five 75-minute interactive and participatory online group sessions, plus a private 45-60-minute consultation with Shel: you get to choose either a single session or splitting it into two half-hour sessions at the time they’ll be most beneficial for you (I’d recommend scheduling at least one session after the final class, but that’s up to you). And a mutual-support private group on LinkedIn just for those who are currently enrolled in or have gone through this program.
Each group session will consist of
Attender check-ins on how they moved forward/what they’re pleased about/new challenges (for the first session, we’ll have introductions instead that follow a specific format to keep the discussion moving and focus on the important parts)
A learning unit presented by Shel
Facilitated discussion and brainstorming on the day’s topic
Wrap-up and next steps
Members will have access to recordings and informal transcripts, to the best of our ability. You’ll probably find it helpful to replay the sessions or review the transcripts.
Topics:
Session 1: Identify your green and social equity opportunities.
Session 2: Rough out products or services that your organization (a business, sole proprietorship, nonprofit, educational or medical institution, government agency, etc.) can develop to address those opportunities.
Session 3: Use Shel and the group to evaluate your ideas and choose your first green and/or social equity offering.
Session 4: Understand the basics of marketing your first green/social equity product or service to three different populations—vastly increasing your potential market and giving you a significant competitive edge.
Session 5: Outline your personal path to move your idea from conception to completion: what steps you’ll take to make it real. Opportunities to continue receiving support.
One-to-one Consultation: 45-60 minutes total, in one or two sessions at the point in the five-session program that will provide YOU with the most value. Shel can help you see the unique strengths of your operation and guide you toward possible offerings, help you list and implement your next steps, steer you toward very helpful resources, and more.
April 2, 9, 16, 30, and May 7, 2024 (skipping April 23 so as not to interfere with Passover Seders). Click if you’re ready to sign up
Is This Program Right for You and Do You Qualify?
You will benefit from the program if you can say yes to at least three of these questions:
Do you currently own or run a business, nonprofit, or department OR have one you’d like to start or manage?
Are you interested in achieving a higher good and a better world?
Do you have a mission that focuses on at least one particular environmental or social justice issue—something you feel called to do?
Have you ever wondered if your business could be a vehicle to make progress on that goal?
Have you ever considered what kind of a difference your organization could make on the issues that matter to you most—if you focused some energy on those issues within a business framework?
Do you see potential for business to be a factor in co-creating a better world?
Are you eager to discover how your specific business can thrive by combining profitability with environmental and social good?
How to Apply:
With only eight spaces available and to make sure everyone has a fair chance at a slot, here’s the easy application process: You start by making sure you can answer yes to at least three of the questions above. Then fill out the simple questionnaire online. If your answers fit the program, Shel will schedule a quick 10- to 15-minute one-to-one call to explore a bit more. After the interview, you’ll be notified quickly whether you’ve been accepted, waitlisted, or asked to wait until you’re more ready.
Note from Shel, Your Presenter/Facilitator, on Enrollment, Pricing and Scheduling:
This first round is a pilot program, limited to eight people. A minimum of four is required to run the program. Future programs are likely to be more expensive and accommodate up to 12 people, so this is a time you can get more in-depth attention from me at a more affordable cost. I was advised by multiple experts that I should be charging $1500-$2000 for this program, but I want to keep it affordable—and I recognize that you’ll be road-testing it with me and helping me refine future versions. So, pricing for this first round will be just $675 in one payment or two payments of $375. The next iteration of this mastermind will likely be in the $995-$1195 range. This initial bargain price will not be repeated.
Tentatively, I will schedule for Tuesday afternoons at 4 pm US Eastern. If you are seriously interested but Tuesday afternoons aren’t good for you, reach out to me (after March 27–I’ll be off-grid until then). If I can get a minimum of four, I’m willing to run a second group concurrently. We will do our best to provide recordings and transcripts.
April 2, 9, 16, 30, and May 7, 2024 (skipping April 23 so as not to interfere with Passover Seders). Fill out and submit the brief application if you’re ready to sign up.
Your Instructor/Facilitator, Shel Horowitz
With more than 20 years at the intersection of profitability and environmental/social good and more than 20 additional years in small business marketing and in activism, Shel’s “superpowers” include:
Finding your social change sweet spot: how you and your organization are uniquely positioned to create and market profitable products and services that address crises like hunger, poverty, racism/othering—even “unsolvable” ones like war and catastrophic climate change (the answers will be different for every business or nonprofit). Your offering will be based on your skills, interests, and capabilities.
Creating compelling ways to tell “the story behind the story” that generate interest, empathy, and engagement—in a press release, on a web page, in interviews and speeches, etc.
Writing informational and marketing materials that make a compelling case for you, your products and services, and your focus on higher good: reasons for your prospects to choose you!
Helping you write, publish, and market a book that establishes your expertise and credibility while helping to influence others toward a better world (Shel has published ten books under his own name and ghostwritten others, through big NYC publishers, small presses, his own publishing company, and a subsidy house, so he has expertise in whichever model will work best for you).
Suggesting win-win-win partnerships that broaden your market, add more capabilities to your offerings, and increase revenue opportunities. Shel can also write powerful introductory letters to your potential partners like the one that enabled one of his clients to do script consulting for Hollywood director Ed Zwick. Doing two books in the Guerrilla Marketing series with the legendary Jay Conrad Levinson was Shel’s best partnership in his own career.
Helping you secure knock-it-out-of-the-park endorsements and positioning those blurbs for visibility and sales. He wrote the letter that got one client a testimonial from basketball superstar Bob Cousy. Shel’s latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, has 22 endorsements including Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, green living and green business experts Alicia Bay Laurel, Jacquelyn Ottman, and Joel Makower, social media gurus Chris Brogan and Brian Solis, Go-Giver Bob Burg, BNI founder Ivan Misner, and other prominent people.
April 2, 9, 16, 30, and May 7, 2024 (skipping April 23 so as not to interfere with Passover Seders). Fill out and submit the brief application if you’re ready to sign up.
When “If You Build It” Actually Works (it does once in a while)
Photo Credit: Jason Renfrow Photography via Pexels
Most of the time, the famous advice from “Field of Dreams,” “If You Build It, They Will Come,” is total nonsense. The market rarely rewards innovation for its own sake and almost never rewards innovation when it’s priced way higher than the market leaders unless you’re specifically targeting the luxury market (where high price is seen as a status symbol)—or a market whose needs were not well met by previous, cheaper competitors.
In the computer world, the original Apple Mac is an example of that second category. The Mac carved out a significant set of niches (music, publishing, computing for people with disabilities, visual arts once it had color), but it never really took off in the mainstream until Microsoft re-engineered a Mac-like interface for the PC (Windows 95). It might have come out of the gate a whole lot faster if it hadn’t been about a thousand dollars more than a more powerful but harder to use IBM PC clone. Steve Jobs’ next big innovation, the NeXT, went absolutely nowhere, just like the earlier Lisa that offered most of the features the Mac offered but with a $10K price tag that was simply not acceptable to the market.
Most truly innovative cars were failures, like the 1937 Cord, the 1955s-1975 dolphin-shaped Citroën that could raise and lower on demand (which sold well in its native country of France but poorly elsewhere), the 1930s Chrysler Airflow, and the half-car/half-boat Amphicar that croaked out just 3878 units in four years. I can think of two wildly successful exceptions: The Model T Ford, whose rampant market penetration was because huge innovations in production enabled pricing at about 1/20 the price of competing cars. The actual car was old-fashioned even for its time, though—still requiring a hand-crank start even in its late incarnations more than a decade after the introduction of electric starters, for instance. And then there’s the Prius—not the first generation based in the boring and ugly Tercel body, but the classic hatchback of the second generation. It targeted the eco-conscious market, could hold four passengers and a considerable amount of gear, and it was relatively reasonably priced. It wasn’t the first hybrid on the market (as noted, not even the first Toyota hybrid)—but it was the first to make driving a family-friendly hybrid cool and sexy.
Let’s look at a few other times when “If You Build It, They Will Come” actually worked: when does something actually go viral?
Google Search went viral because it offered a vastly better experience on multiple counts: easier to use, better interface, way faster, and best of all, far more relevant search results—at zero user cost. As far as I can tell, Google wasn’t even accessible outside Stanford University’s private network until 1998. By July 1998, Google had become a verb. But it wasn’t until 2000 that Google began to monetize its search tool by soliciting ads, at which point it was already the default search tool for most people. I usually start my searches at ecosia.org so that my searches plant trees (and so Google doesn’t have even more of my data). 80-90 percent of the time, I’m ok with those results. But when Ecosia falls flat, I copy my search into Google.
McDonald’s became ubiquitous because it delivered on a promise of cheap family meals, rapid service, and consistency across whole countries (they localize their menus and vary quite a bit from country to country, though)—and because often, you could spot those golden arches from the highway before approaching the exit. It was never about having a great experience with the burger (which I loathed even as a meat-eating pre-teen and early teen; I did not miss McD’s at all when I went vegetarian at 16).
While European-style coffeehouse culture’s been easy to find in cities like San Francisco and NYC since at least the 1950s, Starbucks brought a watered-down/sugared up version to middle America. They made it not about getting a caffeine-energy shot but about the experience of being coddled (including customization). Starbucks proved people would pay several dollars instead of a dollar or less for a superior experience—and that sugar-laden frozen drinks could be marketed as coffee. What I find most interesting about Starbucks is the thousands of independent and unique coffeehouses that sprang up world-wide once Starbucks proved the market—offering, usually, better coffee and a better experience.
Chat GPT exploded unbelievably quickly following its public unveiling in November, 2022—because, like Google, it made users’ lives easier while being easy to use (unlike many of the AI tools that preceded it)—so easy that in some circles (like academia and journalism), it’s considered a cheat. As a writer, I see uses in research and planning, but my final drafts will be human-created, thank you, and my references will be verified. Some worries about overreliance on AI include its tendency to spew authoritative-sounding nonsense(including distortion through omission)—and the way its programmers largely ignored copyright.
Amazon succeeded in part because its founders were unusually patient and well-resourced. They were willing to lose vast amounts of money: $3 bn in the first ten years as a public company. Remember that they started in just one niche: their slogan was “Earth’s Largest Bookstore” and their user proposition was the then-unique long-tail ability to get pretty much any title, quickly. They were a boon to micropublishers closed out of physical bookstores because their sales numbers would never justify shelf space—and their practices such as charging less to buy a book than bookstores had to pay to obtain it and forcing those small publishers to pay a wholesaler rather than a retailer discount were a menace to physical bookstores, which closed in huge numbers. (These practices are among several reasons why I do nearly all my book buying in local independent stores.) Founded in 1994, the company only had its first profitable year in 2003 and continues to swing between wildly profitable and wildly unprofitable—it $2.7 bn in 2022.
Looking at these five examples, it’s clear that virality is hard to create, or even predict. It helps if your offering is superior, your price is low or zero, if it makes people’s lives easier or fills a niche. It also helps if you’re good at marketing. But none of this is a sure thing. Still, if you want to create one of those success stories, I hope you find this analysis useful.
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
Participating in Mari-Lyn Harris’s Change Maker Summit, March 20 & 21. I’ve done several events with her and usually end up listening to most of the other speakers because she does a good job. https://events.mari-lynharris.com/change-maker-summit (my segment was taped quite a while ago, but because of my trip, I can’t drop in for live Q&A)
Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy
Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational AdvocacyBy: Sam Daley-Harris (Rivertown Books, 2024)
The author has been an activist leader for many decades and has started several national groups and consulted to many others. Most of the book is stories from member activists, focusing on how to win a campaign—and how empowering it is to participate meaningfully. The final 80 or so pages are Daley-Harris’s practical advice on the nitty-gritty of carrying out these campaigns.
Daley-Harris is a great advocate for “transformational advocacy”: empowering volunteers to go deeper into the process, get out of their comfort zone, make an actual difference, and feel really great about themselves and the difference they’ve chosen to make. In other words, these are ordinary people who’ve come into their power through active participation.
Much of the book comes out of Daley-Harris’s first group, RESULTS, formed in 1980; the first edition of this book was published in 1994, when those efforts were recent/ongoing and the activists’ memories were fresh. His activists from around the country and around the world share their own empowering journeys of learning not just to contact elected officials and media editorialists but to do so in ways that create victories—not just from those already predisposed to support an effort, but also from those who started on the other side. The relationships may take a long time to build, but when activists are both well-prepared and respectful, progress can be made.
Daley-Harris has little use for “checkbook activism” organizations (my term, not his) that don’t want to train and supervise an active core of dedicated volunteers but simply want to raise money and collect petitions or form e-mail submissions:
When someone deeply cares about an issue and they are offered the opportunity to add their name to an online petition, they feel that they’ve done what they can and move on…But they have been robbed of an opportunity to make a difference, and the issue has been robbed of a voice. (p. 277)
He wants activists to actually be active—to take action and get out in the trenches: write letters, meet with influencers and lawmakers, train others, etc. And he’s worked really hard to create infrastructure that trains and supports these activists, including ongoing conference calls, democratized trainings that allow people to quickly get up to speed on an issue and learn how to effectively speak publicly about it, and more.
Even Daley-Harris didn’t start as an activist. He was a symphony percussionist! But he attended a meeting organized by The Hunger Project and saw that he could make a difference—and oh, what a difference he made! He organized chapters, formed coalitions, recruited celebrity spokespeople, and learned how the system worked and how to work within that system to make real change. And these actions, done properly, can dramatically shift national policies over time. The book chronicles several major victories, among them:
Making Oral Rehydration Therapy—a simple mix of common ingredients that costs pennies per dose and has saved tens of thousands of lives in developing countries—an integral part of US foreign aid policy as part of a new emphasis on child survival (pp. 86-105)
Saving the International Fund for Agricultural Development (pp. 106-121)
Passing the Universal Child Immunization Act and tripling the original budget for life-saving immunizations from $25 mm to $75 mm (pp. 122-142)
Revolutionizing foreign aid to incorporate microlending and address the very bottom of the economic pyramid through the Self-Sufficiency for the Poor Act (pp. 143-166)
Co-organizing and publicizing—and pressuring world leaders to participate meaningfully in—annual World Summits for Children (pp. 188-210)
Rescuing funding cut by President Clinton for global child survival programs (pp. 211-218)
Daley-Harris loves to share the methodology and works hard to train activists from other organizations. Several groups have adopted the RESULTS tool kit, most notably Citizens’ Climate Lobby. And groups in countries with parliamentary governments such as the UK, Canada, and Australia have adapted these methods (pp. 219-230).
The book makes frequent reference to 18 activist commitments, but oddly enough, there’s no list of all 18 together and they are not spelled out in a group until pages 256-271, which lists them all but interrupts the list with commentary. You won’t have to work so hard to find them because I’ve gathered them for you:
Provide a Powerful Structure of Support
Know Your Why and Share It
Overcome the Fear of Making Big Asks of Volunteers
Create a Focused, Inspiring Agenda
Embrace an Expansive View of Who People Are
Cultivate Inspiration and Idealism
Enroll Others
Select the Right Staff
Increase Your Skills Through Practice and Learning
Embody Integrity
Overcome Fear and Catalyze Breakthroughs
Nurture Authentic Relationships
Be Vulnerable
Practice Partnership, Not Partisanship
Move People Up the Champion Scale (from opponent to neutral to supporter to advocate to leader to champion, p. 269)
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
Sorry to be a few days late this month. The fault is all mine; in the midst of a health crisis with my dad and a trip to Florida to help sort it out, I neglected to move the main article from my stay-at-home computer to the one I travel with. I asked my housesitter to send it to me, but I think it sounded too complicated for her.
The good news is this issue is a really good one, starting with your chance to get some awesome skills in developing/expanding your own green/social change business, continuing through a guest main article on one of my favorite topics, and including for the first time in a while some chances to hear me on podcasts and read recent press coverage. It concludes with a review of a wonderfully thorough and deeply optimistic climate crisis book focused on ACTION: of individuals, organizations, and citizen groups.
Enjoy! And please feel welcome to comment on any or all, either by leaving a note online or by replying to this email.
Warmly, Shel
Before we get to this month’s tip, an important and limited chance to really up your green/social equity business game:
Five Weeks to Set Up a Profitable Green/Social Justice Business—Only Eight Spaces Available
If you’ve always wanted to run a business that makes the world better, this is your chance to get personal guidance from Shel Horowitz (me, your newsletter writer), an internationally recognized expert in environmentally and socially conscious business (bio below). In just five weeks.
Format:
Five 75-minute interactive and participatory online group sessions, plus a private 45-60-minute consultation with Shel: you get to choose either a single session or splitting it into two half-hour sessions at the time they’ll be most beneficial for you (I’d recommend scheduling at least one session after the final class, but that’s up to you). And a mutual-support private group on LinkedIn just for those who are currently enrolled in or have gone through this program.
Each group session will consist of
Attender check-ins on how they moved forward/what they’re pleased about/new challenges (for the first session, we’ll have introductions instead that follow a specific format to keep the discussion moving and focus on the important parts)
A learning unit presented by Shel
Facilitated discussion and brainstorming on the day’s topic
Wrap-up and next steps
Members will have access to recordings and informal transcripts, to the best of our ability. You’ll probably find it helpful to replay the sessions or review the transcripts.
Topics:
Session 1: Identify your green and social equity opportunities.
Session 2: Rough out products or services that yourorganization (a business, sole proprietorship, nonprofit, educational or medical institution, government agency, etc.) can develop to address those opportunities.
Session 3: Use Shel and the group to evaluate your ideas and choose your first green and/or social equity offering.
Session 4: Understand the basics of marketing your first green/social equity product or service to three different populations—vastly increasing your potential market and giving you a significant competitive edge.
Session 5: Outline your personal path to move your idea from conception to completion: what steps you’ll take to make it real. Opportunities to continue receiving support.
One-to-one Consultation: 45-60 minutes total, in one or two sessions at the point in the five-session program that will provide YOU with the most value. Shel can help you see the unique strengths of your operation and guide you toward possible offerings, help you list and implement your next steps, steer you toward very helpful resources, and more.
April 2, 9, 16, 30, and May 7, 2024 (skipping April 23 so as not to interfere with Passover Seders). Click if you’re ready to sign up
Is This Program Right for You and Do You Qualify?
You will benefit from the program if you can say yes to at least three of these questions:
Do you currently own or run a business, nonprofit, or department OR have one you’d like to start or manage?
Are you interested in achieving a higher good and a better world?
Do you have a mission that focuses on at least one particular environmental or social justice issue—something you feel called to do?
Have you ever wondered if your business could be a vehicle to make progress on that goal?
Have you ever considered what kind of a difference your organization could make on the issues that matter to you most—if you focused some energy on those issues within a business framework?
Do you see potential for business to be a factor in co-creating a better world?
Are you eager to discover how your specific business can thrive by combining profitability with environmental and social good?
How to Apply:
With only eight spaces available and to make sure everyone has a fair chance at a slot, here’s the easy application process: You start by making sure you can answer yes to at least three of the questions above. Then fill out the simple questionnaire online. If your answers fit the program, Shel will schedule a quick 10- to 15-minute one-to-one call to explore a bit more. After the interview, you’ll be notified quickly whether you’ve been accepted, waitlisted, or asked to wait until you’re more ready.
Note from Shel, Your Presenter/Facilitator, on Enrollment, Pricingand Scheduling:
This first round is a pilot program, limited to eight people. A minimum of four is required to run the program. Future programs are likely to be more expensive and accommodate up to 12 people, so this is a time you can get more in-depth attention from me at a more affordable cost. I was advised by multiple experts that I should be charging $1500-$2000 for this program, but I want to keep it affordable—and I recognize that you’ll be road-testing it with me and helping me refine future versions. So, pricing for this first round will be just $675 in one payment or two payments of $375. The next round of this mastermind will likely be in the $995-$1195 range. This initial bargain price will not be repeated.
Tentatively, I will schedule for Tuesday afternoons at 4 pm US Eastern. If you are seriously interested but Tuesday afternoons aren’t good for you, reach out to me. If I can get a minimum of four, I’m willing to run a second group concurrently. We will do our best to provide recordings and transcripts.
April 2, 9, 16, 30, and May 7, 2024 (skipping April 23 so as not to interfere with Passover Seders). Fill out and submit the brief application if you’re ready to sign up.
Your Instructor/Facilitator, Shel Horowitz
With more than 20 years at the intersection of profitability and environmental/social good and more than 20 additional years in small business marketing and in activism, Shel’s “superpowers” include:
Finding your social change sweet spot: how you and yourorganization are uniquely positioned to create and market profitable products and services that address crises like hunger, poverty, racism/othering—even “unsolvable” ones like war and catastrophic climate change (the answers will be different for every business or nonprofit). Your offering will be based on your skills, interests, and capabilities.
Creating compelling ways to tell “the story behind the story” that generate interest, empathy, and engagement—in a press release, on a web page, in interviews and speeches, etc.
Writing informational and marketing materials that make a compelling case for you, your products and services, and your focus on higher good: reasons for your prospects to choose you!
Helping you write, publish, and market a book that establishes your expertise and credibility while helping to influence others toward a better world (Shel has published ten books under his own name and ghostwritten others, through big NYC publishers, small presses, his own publishing company, and a subsidy house, so he has expertise in whichever model will work best for you).
Suggesting win-win-win partnerships that broaden your market, add more capabilities to your offerings, and increase revenue opportunities. Shel can also write powerful introductory letters to your potential partners like the one that enabled one of his clients to do script consulting for Hollywood director Ed Zwick. Doing two books in the Guerrilla Marketing series with the legendary Jay Conrad Levinson was Shel’s best partnership in his own career.
Helping you secure knock-it-out-of-the-park endorsements and positioning those blurbs for visibility and sales. He wrote the letter that got one client a testimonial from basketball superstar Bob Cousy. Shel’s latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, has 22 endorsements including Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, green living green business experts Alicia Bay Laurel, Jacquelyn Ottman, and Joel Makower, social media gurus Chris Brogan and Brian Solis, Go-Giver Bob Burg, BNI founder Ivan Misner, and other prominent people.
April 2, 9, 16, 30, and May 7, 2024 (skipping April 23 so as not to interfere with Passover Seders). Fill out and submit the brief application if you’re ready to sign up.
Build Your Spirits and Your Business with this One Shift
Photo Credit: fauxels via Pexels
Why Kindness Builds Success
Guest article by Rob Hatch
[Editor’s Note: I was introduced to Rob by the legendary Chris Brogan, his colleague at Owner Media, several years ago, and I read both his newsletter and Chris’s faithfully. Their styles are extremely different—Rob is the grounded, practical one while Chris is the big dreamer—and both give solid advice with a very personal touch. I’ve also corresponded with him repeatedly and find him to be every bit as much a mensch as this article suggests. This post originally appeared in his November 23 newsletter. You can read his bio and subscribe at the link in his byline, above –Shel]
“Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true. The kindest person in the room is often the smartest” – J.B. Pritzker.
This quote was from the Illinois Governor’s commencement speech at Northwestern University.
Too often, we excuse behaviors that are…well, unkind. When discussing the achievements of remarkable individuals, we sometimes overlook lousy behavior. We may even cite their insolence as a critical element of their success or, worse, attempt to emulate it.
However, being a jerk is not a requirement for success. In fact, it is kindness that conveys strength and instills confidence.
You can be kind and still have high expectations.
You can be kind and still hold people accountable.
You can be kind and still be honest and direct.
You can be kind and still make difficult decisions others disagree with.
You can be kind and still be firm in the face of challenging situations.
I can’t promise it will make you the smartest person in the room. However, when I consider how to frame my success, I want kindness as the foundation.
Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.
Mari-Lyn Harris, who has interviewed me several times for various summits, taped a great interview with me that was scheduled to air on February 12 as part of her Change-Maker Summit. Then she had to postpone her whole summit for health reasons.
And Kevin Lee has had to postpone two tapings for his Power Marketing podcast.
I will post the links to both of them on the archive page for this month’s newsletter (click on any of the Read More buttons in this email) as I receive them.
It’s been a while since I had this section in the newsletter–but this year, I will be actively pursuing podcast interviews once I get back from a trip to China at the end of March. So hopefully this will be a more-or-less regular feature again.
The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming
The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming By: Guy Dauncey
Actually, Dauncey presents far more than 101 solutions. Each two-page “solution” covers a broad topic, and within that framework, he might include a dozen or more. As an example, I opened randomly to solution #58, “Build a Smart Grid” (pp.192-193). Those two pages begin by pointing out issues with the old-fashioned grid and challenges that will render it obsolete. Then it presents a vision of the many improvements a smart-grid world would offer, from evening out the consumption highs and lows to eliminating the need for “peaker plants” to lowering homeowner electric bills—and notes potential overall savings in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Then it provides three action steps for electric utilities before concluding with six methods to address storage of renewable energy in the short term. It also includes a photo with caption, a sidebar with 15 websites to learn more, a quote from an expert, five reference citations to the extensive endnotes (22 pages’ worth)—and, amazingly, about two column-inches of white space.
Other solution spreads include charts and graphs, sidebars with citizen action steps (nine of these at solution #62 fill almost half a page), and many more resources (solution #32’s resource box includes 26 websites instead of a photo). The book designer did an amazing job of making everything except for the single-page final solution #101, which basically just tells the reader to get involved in whatever way is meaningful to them, fit exactly two pages.
And before we even get to the solutions—grouped into 11 economic sectors such as farming, governments, communities, activism, manufacturing, transportation, etc.—the first 75 pages are devoted to an overview that looks deeply at how humans have altered the earth’s current status—and what that means for our future.
I found quite a bit to agree with here, including several points I’ve been making for years in my speaking and writing. A few examples:
Mindset is key. We have the technology to solve many of the biggest human-created problems, but the biggest battle is convincing others that yes, we can—and, in fact, we must.
When you scrape away the superficials, war is usually about competing claims for resources such as energy, which he focuses on. I would also consider water, minerals, harbor access, etc. And because resource issues are solvable, peace actually is possible.
The business case for addressing these issues (not just climate but the many related slices like hunger, poverty, and various kinds of discrimination) is so strong that executives should be asking managers why they are missing the enormously profitable opportunities in being part of the solution.
We’re all in this together. While business and the profit motive can be significant movers toward the better world we’d all like to envision, government needs to use its regulatory power as well. And activists need to pressure both business and government. And academics, engineers, and scientists need to research cutting-edge solutions. And NGOs need to create the awareness not just of the problems, but of the solutions.
Because it was published back in 2009, many statistics in the book are probably obsolete. Even back then, his numbers showed an overwhelming case for shifting to clean energy. But the good news is the performance of clean-energy technologies compared with fossil and nuclear is likely to be even better, because prices of renewables have plummetedwhilefossil fuels have fluctuated wildly but tend toward higher prices (and are more expensive now than they were in 2009).
Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.comhelps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.
Don’t worry, you didn’t miss the July newsletter. My father died when there was one more thing to finalize, and my assistant didn’t want to bother me to get that clarification. And I was so busy dealing with his death that I didn’t even notice the newsletter hadn’t dropped. So the July issue didn’t actually get published. “We now resume our regularly scheduled programming” 😉
