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| Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,
May 2014
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Even Experts Need Coaching
When I walked into the rehearsal/coaching session nine days before my TEDx talk, “Business For a Better World,” I was feeling pretty confident. After all, I’ve made hundreds of public presentations, know my material very well, get great feedback on my talks, and make a portion of my living as a paid speaker. Plus, I’d already gone over the material a whole lot. In fact, I was on my third complete draft, not to mention numerous tweaks and revisions.
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TED prides itself on presenting ideas that change the world, and doing so in ways that capture attention. They tell their speakers, “don’t trot out your usual shtick.” And they limit presentations to a very short time—in my case, 18 minutes or less.
The challenge of fitting material into TED’s format was something I’d never faced, and I knew this could be the most important speech I’ve ever given, because it would be displayed world-wide on the enormously popular TED.com website, forever. I’d also had the experience of being one of this organizer’s coaches for another speaker last year, and I saw the value it had for the featured speaker.
So I was grateful that the organizer asked me to come up to the venue for a live-audience rehearsal and critique—even though it meant an extra 70 miles of driving.
And boy, was I ever glad I did!
People liked the material, and liked my familiarity with it—but they had lots and lots of good advice for me. There were specific slides that were much too confusing, specific tones of voice that felt wrong to the listeners (for example, sounding accusatory in places I didn’t mean to). And they gave me overall feedback on the talk that was invaluable in terms of what should and shouldn’t be included, how it was being perceived, and what I could do to increase my impact.
It was, in short, incredibly useful. It also left me with a lot of work to do: three days rescripting Version 4.0, and five more rehearsing and tweaking, rehearsing and tweaking. Even as late as the morning of my talk, I added a new element as the very first thing.
But it meant my talk is much more likely to reach more people, and to have more impact. And that, after all is why I did my talk.
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Hear & Meet Shel
After doing four completely different talks within just a few weeks, I’m kind of glad to report a very light schedule. |
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I’ll be walking the floor at Book Expo America, May 29-31 in New York City, and a guest on Ana Weber’s radio show June 9 at 11:30 a.m. ET/8:30 PT.
I’ll be visiting Israel in late June—if you live there, drop me a line.
I might be at SolarFest in Vermont the week of July 18, but I’m not on program and I’m not sure if I’m going.
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You can watch my recent interview on The A-List with Alex Cequea at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvfQI4taV-w&list=UUx_T7l1Ft-iIwsK-L5CsQUg |
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Nominate a Business-Change-the-World Project at Business For a Better World
Do you have a favorite cause around turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war and poverty into peace, or climate catastrophe into planetary balance? I’m starting a directory of social change projects that businesses can get involved with, at https://www.business-for-a-better-world.com/ (you’ll see a link labeled Nominate, near the top of the home page.) This is your chance to be among the first to put up a project, and be more likely to attract attention. Let’s get some GREAT projects up there! No cost to list—but the submissions are moderated, so don’t bother spamming it.
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Connect with Shel on Social Media |
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About Shel & This Newsletter
As a marketing consultant and copywriter… award-winning author of eight books… international speaker, blogger, syndicated columnist — Shel Horowitz shows how green and ethical businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.
He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.
Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company
He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).
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| “As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).” |
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| Another Recommended Book—Hug Your People |
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Hug Your People: The Proven Way to Hire, Inspire, and Recognize Your Employees and Achieve Remarkable Results, by Jack Mitchell (Hyperion, 2008)
Don’t let the folksy style, the approachable writing, or the aging copyright date fool you—this is a ninja human resources manual disguised as a conversation. And not only does he have the attitude that work can be fun, so do his employees.
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Like his earlier book, Hug Your Customers, Mitchell proves the value of extreme niceness as a business success strategy. By treating employees as empowered, loved, people with not just unique skills but unique passions—and not as cogs in a machine to be checked up on—Mitchell inculcates a culture of greatness at his small family-run chain of upscale clothing stores. This shows in little things like knowing who would appreciate a bottle of good wine, and who is a nondrinker. Who roots for the Yankees and who would rather read a book. These personal touches are among the metaphorical “hugs” the executives at Mitchells give their associates, and they are very aware that such a hug given in ignorance to someone who doesn’t appreciate it will do more harm than good.
The core of Mitchell’s philosophy is laid out right in the prologue, in five principles that each get their own multi-chapter section: Nice, Trust, Pride, Include, Recognize.
Within each part, Mitchell uses anecdotes to show how putting these principles into play creates that loving and productive climate, and then sums up each section with an easy and accessible one- or two-page summary.
Mitchell believes in hiring people who are already nice, and training them in the product skills—a much easier process than finding product experts who don’t fit the corporate culture and trying to shape them to fit. In hiring (a process that starts with Mitchell—the CEO—greeting the candidate at the front door and introducing the person around as they walk to his office and continues through multiple interviews; not just decision-makers but also the line workers who will be alongside them), he looks for integrity, positive attitude, passion to learn and grow, competence/confidence, and of course, being nice.
This emphasis on nice doesn’t mean hiding the warts, or keeping on an employee who isn’t working out—but it does mean not micromanaging or overmonitoring, and trusting your people. Conflict resolution is a key piece of Mitchell’s approach. Conflicts that are dismissed without resolution have ways of bubbling up even uglier, so the Mitchell’s team works on clear communication and examining the issue.
Sometimes, Mitchell is delightfully out-of-the-box, as in his rejection of the phrase, “let me be honest with you.” Mitchell dislikes that phrase because he values honesty all the time, and not just on special occasions. In fact, those sots of language changes show up a lot in his book. He sees his employees as “working with” his company, rather than “working for.” He starts e-mails with a you-focused sentence like “you’ve been on my mind.”
And I love his idea of building an “‘of course’ culture,” with very few rules.
There’s much more wisdom in this book. If you have people working in your company, read it.
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