The Clean and Green Club, June 2023
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Category Archive for Best of Clean & Green Links
The Clean and Green Club, May 2019
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Recent Interviews & Guest Articles
Rather Read Than Listen? Here’s an Excellent Interview in Forbes
Kare Anderson interviewed me at length on Forbes.com. Learn…
- How I got published repeatedly in a newspaper whose viewpoints were the opposite of mine—as a teenager
- The deeper backstory of the amazing Save the Mountain campaign that rescued an endangered mountain the “experts” had given up on—and did it fast!
- How big companies from GE to Unilever have turned sustainability consciousness and social entrepreneurship into profit centers
- How to save 99% of the wasted water in this everyday household process
- What designers can learn by studying the natural world—and how that creates hope for the planet
Listen to the Six Best Interviews I’ve Ever Done
1. Elaine Starling of The Abundance Journey Interviews Shel About Amplifying Abundance with Social Impact
1. The Power of Abundance Thinking: Shel Horowitz unveils how businesses can simultaneously achieve greater abundance and higher profitability by aligning their goals with environmental and social good. Learn how to create an “abundance amplifier” that benefits not just your bottom line, but also the world.
2. Success Stories of Transformative Change: From the inspiring victory of the Save the Mountain campaign to innovative business practices at Interface and Unilever, discover real-life examples of how businesses and individuals have made significant positive impacts. Shel’s stories will show you that sustainable, regenerative business practices are not only possible but also highly rewarding.
3. Practical Steps to Get Started: Shel provides actionable insights on how to conduct a social good audit, identify synergistic opportunities within your business, and implement sustainable practices that lead to win-win-win outcomes. Whether you run a large corporation or a small pizza shop, you’ll find valuable tips to start making a difference today.
2. This Interview Breaks New Ground on Reimagining the World
I’ve begun to focus some good thinking and research on how the pandemic creates opportunities to skip “going back to normal” and instead remake the world we really want to see. I’m even looking for a publisher for an article I’d like to write, called Leveraging the Great Pivot: How COVID-19 Creates Opportunities for Racial Justice, Economic Advancement, and Environmental Healing.
As I began this research, podcast host Tony D’Urso invited me to return to his show–so I got my first chance to see how some of this sounds out loud. Keeping in mind that this is in the very early stages, and that we spent the first ten minutes sharing some background, I’d love to know your thoughts. You might even get a credit in my next book!
You can listen (and read the transcript) at https://tonydurso.com/crisis-opportunities-now-with-shel-horowitz/ –and Tony would be grateful if you gave a quick kudo at ratethispodcast.com/tony . And here’s my list of takeaways from the call:
Shel’s personal backstory as a writer, marketer, and activist (Timings: 00 through 8:20):
- How activism got me into marketing AND journalism in my teens
- My start in journalism: a right-wing high school alternative newspaper gave 15-year-old left-wing me a platform–and ran my articles with disclaimers!
- My first paid writing assignments, at $3 per hour–and my unusual motivation to write those articles quickly
- The humble beginnings of the business I’ve run for more than 39 years
- Why forming a successful group to block a large mountainside housing development proposal opened the door to the work I’ve done for the last 20 years, integrating profitability with environmental and social good
Shel’s motivation for activism on multiple issues, especially clean energy (8:20 through 10:33, 15:06-17:35):
- Why clean energy has a much brighter future than even 20 years ago
- How the energy-hogging Empire State Building was converted into one of the greenest buildings around–and how those improvements generated 33% return on investment
- The cow-poop-powered green heating system in my antique farmhouse (built in 1743)
How we pivoted in 2020, and how we can make those pivots bigger and more long lasting to create a better world (17:40-24:38):
- The opportunity COVID created to remake the world differently–including the newly global reach of formerly local events
- How I got connected to a 16-year-old green entrepreneur on the other side of the country, which would never have happened pre-pandemic
- Chances to explore entirely new careers, because your old career may not exist anymore
- How we’ve often faced huge social shifts (the 1918 pandemic, when no one had Zoom and few people had a phone in their house; transition from horse to engine power; the vast disruption of the Internet) and risen to the challenge
What it means to be environmentally and socially responsible AND profitable (29:23-39:54):
- Successful examples from clothing company Patagonia to a company that builds a ladder out of poverty using inexpensive solar LED lanterns
- Cost savings in going green, including a different approach to manufacturing (and the technology we already have that will eventually make that possible at scale)–and how that could revolutionize medicine and other areas
- How even a pizza shop could make a meaningful difference–with a youth training program that offers four distinct types of benefits around job and entrepreneurial skills, healthy eating, life skills, and more profit to the shop owner
- How a house in the Colorado snowbelt went net-zero-energy–in 1984–and paid for all the improvements out of energy savings
- How mindset changes possibility, including a magnificent quote from Muhammad Ali (I built my TEDx talk around this quote)–and how to frame the narrative to find out what actually is possible
- What I’ve learned by posting a daily public gratitude journal
“Opportunities, ideas, are under every rock and tree” (44:34-48:00):
- If you generate ten ideas a day), find two each month to explore
- Our power is in our resilience and our inventiveness
- The benefits of the conscious choice I made to have a happy life
Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World–and what my legacy might be (48:00-54:00):
- How marketers benefit by finding an elastic market (like books)
- Why Guerrillas should be quick and nimble
- Marketing that leads to action–and action that makes the world better
- The secret of turning customers into ambassadors
- Why customer evangelism is one of the most profitable things a marketer can invest in–and how surprisingly easy it is to develop and harness that loyalty (easier for businesses with a higher purpose, by the way)
Tony’s summary of the call takeaways (54:00-57:12):
- The necessity of getting good and getting fast
- The power of a higher purpose: “sow good seeds and do good deeds”
- When you see problems–brainstorming how things can work better–grab hold of your vision
- Find ways you can pivot
- Find 10 new ideas each day
3. Kymm Nelsen, host of Conscious Leadership Weekly: In just 51 minutes, we managed to cover:
- My activist childhood beginning at age 3, including a 48-year boycott
- The key mindset shift that I harnessed to build the movement that saved a mountain
- Why problems like hunger, poverty war, and catastrophic climate change are actually solvable—and how to effectively motivate people to solve them
- Three ways business can profit by solving those problems
- How to avoid getting a stake pounded through the heart of your business after a customer service screw-up
- How empowering your employees lowers your HR costs
- Why lying about one thing can destroy all the hard-won goodwill you’ve built up in your business
- The exciting new exponential-growth paradigm of “biological marketing”—and the engineering miracle of “biomimicry”
- How to convince business people who think going green or running a conscious, social-change-focused business is “too hard”
- A key mistake the green movement committed in the 1970s and 80s
- The two simple changes I made that cut my paper use ~80 percent
- The way one social enterprise addresses urban poverty, creates personal empowerment, and eliminates staffing shortages all at once
- Why Ben & Jerry’s was able to carve out 40 percent market share in a market with hundreds of competitors
- The surprising answer: what company sells more organic food than Whole Foods—and how you can use their marketing strategy to sell green and social change products to people who don’t even care about the issues
- The almost net-zero-energy house built in the cold Colorado Rockies back in 1983—that doesn’t need a furnace, stays warm enough to grow bananas, and has a $5 monthly electric bill
- How thinking about light bulbs differently could save some businesses up to $4 million
- Finding and harnessing new product opportunities that never existed before: from a Frisbee-sized hydroelectric generator to small-space indoor apartment gardens
4. 6 Star Business with Aveline Clarke in Australia: Why Social Change DOESN’T Have to be a Sacrifice
Normally, I prepare my own summaries of podcast interviews, but this was mostly prepared by the show host. I’ve shortened it somewhat, and added a few of my own highlights in italic.
…We explore how to market differently to the different types of “green” consumers, ranging from deep greens who prioritize sustainability to non-greens who may not be as conscious of their environmental impact. Shel highlights companies… [that have] made substantial strides…
[B]rands such as Patagonia and Ben and Jerry’s have found success in promoting their environmentally-friendly products by catering to the deep green market. Shel also sheds light on companies like Cadbury and Hershey that were originally founded as social impact companies but have lost their way…
We delve into the intersection of doing the right thing and being a successful business, and how Shel’s own business has evolved over the years.
Shel’s expertise extends beyond marketing, and he provides actionable advice for businesses looking to integrate sustainability into their operations. He highlights the importance of addressing sustainability and regenerativity issues, as consumers increasingly choose products that make a positive impact…
Shel offers a free resource called “10 success and profitability secrets for businesses looking to do social and environmental good” on his website, https://GoingBeyondSustainability.com . He also offers affordable consultation services tailored to each business’s unique needs.
In addition to his wealth of knowledge, Shel shares his personal practices for finding joy and gratitude in life, such as his 1530-day gratitude journal and his passion for writing.
Here’s some highlights of our conversation…
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- The power of individual consumers, social change movements, and ordinary people to effect change
- Changing the world is not a sacrifice if done with joy and gratitude
- Going beyond traditional limits of excellence to a spiritual 110 percent
- Cross-pollinating: finding solutions for one industry by looking at other industries—or at nature
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- Thinking of communities as organisms within a bioregion
- Seeing businesses as allies in positive change who can benefit by addressing the world’s big problems
- Giving advice to clients on marketing green and social change products and services
- Kaizen (small improvements) versus Great Leaps
and much more…
Here are the links to listen to the episode:
Audio only with transcript: https://podcast.6star.business/1743080/13106695-profitable-sustainability-balancing-business-success-and-positive-impact-with-shell-horowitz/
Or video without transcript: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mibStVs0MiY
5. The Spotlight with Tony Durso (2017)
- Two key events at ages 3 and 12 that spurred me to a life of activism—and how activism turned me into a lifelong marketer and writer at age 15
- Learning to build a platform to reach people who don’t agree with you—as a teenager
- How I approached Guerrilla Marketing founder Jay Levinson to do our first book together—showing him the win-win possibilities—how I landed the contract with Wiley to publish it, and the easy things I did to get on Jay’s good side for the rest of his life
- Brief history of the Guerrilla Marketing movement and how it works for social change
- How an attitude of invincibility led to actual victory in a major grassroots campaign
- My process for staying ahead of trends—and what I see as the next big trend after green
- How going green got GE a 1250% ROI, saved NYC $6.5 billion, and created a $15 billion/year revenue stream for Walmart
- How to sell green or socially conscious products and services to three different types of consumer markets—and a specific example of how this plays out
- What my mother-in-law told me that revealed one of those markets
- Why market share doesn’t matter for many businesses—and how that understanding led to profitable cooperation with other businesses from solopreneurs to Fortune 50 companies including Apple, IBM, and FedEx
- Why you should see green as a built-in, not an add-on, and how that will increase profit
- How changing out lightbulbs could save some businesses $4 million per year—and how you can get my $9.95 ebook on saving energy AND money as well as some other gifts including a 15-minute consult from me, at no charge
- How to frame massive problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change as solvable—and how those solutions can create abundance for all by addressing multiple problems at once
- The secret that let ordinary people like a seamstress, an electrician, and a housewife launch movements that changed the world—and how all of us can step from our ordinariness to create great impact
6. Covering some different ground was this interview with Jack Humphrey (and occasional help from Gina Gaudio-Graves) on Leverage Masters:
- Why I am not daunted but INSPIRED by the “tough” challenges of getting business to meaningfully turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance
- The surprising turnaround that graced the lives of people like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates (I could have named Warren Buffett as well)—and what that meant to the world
- How to create a “possibility mindset”—in Jack’s words, changing “the insurmountable skyscraper” into something doable; thousands of companies have begun doing this
- The power of being shocked into action
- The surprise you can find on a rooftop eight floors above a South Bronx street—and how that affects not only the future of food but skill building and job creation for inner-city youth
- The flip side of ASAP—you need both sides
- How Ben & Jerry’s went viral long before social media, and won the ice cream wars
- How to sell green products to a Hummer-driving climate denier
- Why green is a lever to create deeper social change
More Interviews
Deepak Saini
I was a guest July 26 on the Deepak Saini Show, an episode titled “The Impact your Business can have on Global Issues.” In about half an hour, we started by talking about my earliest social change influences, including how the house of cards about checks and balances in government came crashing down around me when I was 12.
Then we moved to the idea of win-win-win-win-win and the abundance mindset. ”There are always more than two stakeholders.” And we already know the technology that can fix society’s biggest problems—but it will take public relations skills to create the will to move forward. But “instant” movements don’t come up out of nowhere; there’s always a story leading up to the big public splash.
Briefly discussing some right and wrong ways to do alternative energy, we then focused on 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. Near the end of the show, Deepak asked me about my own health regimen (something that almost never comes up in interviews).
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6msnneCvFXic1ig5EqDue9
YouTube: https://youtu.be/MVUkKOYCT1c
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-impact-your-business-can-have-on-global-issues/id1745518106?i=1000663398111
——
Jean Border interviews Shel on the Focused Practical Dreamer podcast, https://www.FocusedPracticalDreamer.com/shel-horowitz/
Some of what you’ll hear in this 57-minute show:
- 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!
——
Mari-Lyn Harris of Heart at Work interviewed Shel on her Creating an Impact podcast, which also aired on her Summit for Changemakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJWzZ1sdDEw
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
——
Ian Peterman interviewed Shel on his Conscious Design podcast. Shel is not a designer, but had a lot to say on how design can be a tool of environmental and social justice.
I’ve gotten quite a bit of media coverage recently, though only the first two links are about green and social justice business practices. But hey, I’m eclectic ;-).
Share2Seed quotes me in a long piece about how Elon Musk has made it more OK to be a successful eco-entrepreneur https://medium.com/@Share2Seed/how-to-be-an-ecopreneur-and-get-paid-well-like-elon-musk-463a0e3eaed7
- They seem like an interesting support venture for eco-businesses; after you read the article you might want to visit their home page.
Included in this roundup story about making seasonal businesses more sustainable. https://www.incfile.com/blog/how-to-make-seasonal-business-sustainable
Profiled in this article about how I as a rural business owner and activist use broadband. https://www.explorebeyond.org/stories/broadband-powers-entrepreneurship-in-rural-new-england/
I presented a brief gallery talk on the stunning posthumous show of my stepfather, Michihiro Yoshida, a painter whose bright colors and surrealistic images earned him the title, “The Mythic Modernist.” His site is http://artbyyoshi.com, and the slide talk is at https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/3qKcWmG8nEb8FMYIHTpf8AVYILof-xfJtxP5MfxKEQegkkhcTlZwHCDbyGKxBuhH.-9D0QrXxeZDB4lZi Passcode: BtAUz?Y3 (the presentation starts at 2 minutes, eight seconds into the video).
My tips on traveling like a local lead off this article on traveling internationally for newbies: https://arreh.com/planning-a-trip-heres-what-you-need-to-know-10-pieces-of-advice-for-new-travelers/
My interview, How to Write a Book for Social Change, is live on Dan Janal’s Write Your Book in a Flash podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPUoVPp2yP4 . I had a short-term physical issue that day, which explains some of the weird pauses—but the information is really good, and because it’s focused on authors building movements, it’s significantly different material from many of my other interviews.
- How books have ALREADY changed the world (with examples)
- How to research to support the point of view you want people to adopt
- How to leverage your book to widen the audience for your point of view
- How self-publishing can give you leverage to get a traditional publisher
- How to use YOUR book to create a movement
It’s worth noting that a lot of my social change consulting practice is book shepherding and book marketing for authors with socially conscious books. In other words, if you’re looking to get a change-the-world book done, published, and/or marketed, please get in touch: https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/
——
Profiled in this article about (of all things) how I as a rural business owner and activist use broadband. https://www.explorebeyond.org/stories/broadband-powers-entrepreneurship-in-rural-new-england/
——
Nice new print interview with Shel on Billion Success: https://billionsuccess.com/shel-horowitz/
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For his Western Mass Business Show, radio host Ira Bryck asked Shel to put together a panel. Shel reached into the activism world to pull in State Senator Jo Comerford (who was elected after a decades-long career at MoveOn and elsewhere) and to the green business world for Raj Pabari, a 16-year-old entrepreneur who has started multiple companies and has 16 employees.
Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdego4U3jSM&feature=youtu.be
- Guests: Shel Horowitz, Going Beyond Sustainability, expert on/consultant to social entrepreneurship businesses and author of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World
- Jo Comerford, Massachusetts State Senator and 30-year professional activist
- Raj Pabari, 16-year-old CEO of Off Grid Technologies (a social enterprise and green business making device charges that can take many power sources)
Takeaways:
- There is significant synergy among progressive business, activists, nonprofits, and government–different ways to get to similar results–and each of these sectors can learn lessons from the others
- People will flock to a business associated with a social cause and conducting itself ethically and sustainability
- But even bottom-line-driven companies can save and make a lot of money by doing the right thing–including the surprising identity of the company that doubled the organic foods market by selling to mainstream consumers
- How Shel began to merge profitable business and social change
- How Jo anticipated some of the worst aspects of the 2017-2021 federal government, and where she found hope–and what it’s like to speak on behalf of 160,000 constituents
- How Raj is finding success as a social enterprise that goes well beyond the basics, and how he appeals to impact investors who cout environmental and social goals
- How to talk to–and be heard by–“the other side”–in politics and in business
- How Shel makes the self-interest argument to skeptical business owners and managers
- How government can open doors to social and economic transformation
——
Here’s my talk last month at the Kindness Matters Summit. The audio came out a bit rough, with some words getting chopped (and more ums/uhs/pauses than usual–I wasn’t feeling all that great)–but it’s worth the effort, because this is a really good introduction to social entrepreneurship through the lens of kindness and an emphasis on ordinary people succeeding despite the challenges. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHXiTtJ5wiA&feature=youtu.be
——
Quoted at some length in Playboy, of all places, on individual actions we can all take to avert climate catastrophe.
——
Wide-ranging written interview on Fem Founder (I was very pleased that they would interview a man) about being a tiny startup, morphing my business multiple times, marketing challenges, the current work on strategic integration of profitability and social change–and even some insight into my lifestyle and my volunteer social justice/immigration justice/environmental activism outside of work. https://www.femfounder.co/femfounderstories/shel-horowitz-interview . If you prefer to read it on Medium, it’s also at https://medium.com/fem-founder/do-the-homework-to-make-sure-you-can-find-a-market-if-you-follow-your-heart-with-shel-horowitz-f27efb35ac82 . Note that at this time, I am not pursuing the activist clearing house idea that the interview refers to. I have something more exciting that I’ll reveal to you down the road.
——
The 22-minute Climate Change with Scott Amyx interview I taped several weeks ago is now live: https://scottamyx.com/2020/08/31/interview-with-shel-horowitz-green-transformative-expert/ We discussed some very different ideas about marketing, the importance of environmental and social commitment to profitability, and more.
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Insight-packed five-minute interview by Mitchell Levy https://www.thoughtleaderlife.com/thoughtleaderlife/thought-leader-life-455-guest-shel-horowitz/
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Back in March 2020, I responded to a reporter query on corporate social responsibility (one of my fortes). I received a note from the reporter that the story was published late last month, and I was very pleased with the way it came out. I talk about one of my favorite examples, a company that addresses poverty, the environment, and quality of life all at once, through solar LED lights. And I enjoyed reading the examples other experts provided, too: https://blog.submittable.com/csr-examples/
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Also quoted in some depth on whether socially conscious advertising is a good thing. Not surprisingly I argue that it is, and back up my claim with facts: https://www.verywellmind.com/does-socially-conscious-advertising-work-4847116
——
Mirko Galassi interviews Shel on the Italian channel Webenjoy.net:
- My new, unusual and very green heating system (in a house built in 1743, BTW)
- How to market green products to nongreen audiences, and how service businesses can focus on the green market
- Why it makes sense to get your current clients onto your marketing team
- My observations on Italy’s steps toward a greener society (I happened to be there just a few weeks before this interview)
- What to compete on instead of price
- Two surprising suggestions on dealing with aggressive competitors
- How Walmart doubled the US market for organic foods
- My green design challenge to Apple
——
Willie Crawford interviewed me last summer and I missed the message where he told me the interview was posted. This is what I’m posting on my interview page about it (yeah, I recognize that posting in the third person is odd on Facebook, but that’s why):
My segment starts at 31:11, and we covered a LOT of ground:
- How an “impossible” movement not only won, but changed the culture of Shel’s town
- How that success inspired Shel to go much bigger–eventually developing strategies to tackle problems as big as hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change
- Why Shel says sustainability is not enough–and what we need instead
- What Shel thinks the best AND worst outcomes of doing this work will be, and how those possibilities affect his legacy
- The bigger impact of Ben & Jerry’s long-time push for socially responsible business–and a hat-tip to a social responsibility business pioneer of nearly 200 years ago (still in business today)
- The reasons why a “pure capitalism, non-tree-hugger” retail giant has become a leader in green business
- How even a pizza shop owner could pilot a “social responsibility octopus” [I don’t use that term in the interview, just came up with it now] with gains in skill-building among unemployed youth, job creation, organic food marketing, and more–at close to zero cost and with plenty of opportunity to monetize
- How ordinary people like a seamstress or an shipyard electrician can change the world (with famous examples)
- Where to find an inexpensive road map for achieving social change through profitable business
- A successful model for marketing socially responsible products to people at the very bottom of the ladder, where they can afford to buy, and the company can be economically successful
- The surprising positive society-wide outcomes of a simple plumbing fix
- Where we can turn to to solve climate problems when the government is hostile
- The low-hanging fruit that can cut energy use in the US 50 to 75 percent within just a couple of years
——
I’m the final of 22 positive-thinking experts featured here: https://upjourney.com/how-to-get-rid-of-negative-thoughts
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Mira Rubin interview with Shel Horowitz on the Sustainability Now podcast
The power of one person making a difference—and the corollary power of thinking big: three examples everyone has heard of but maybe haven’t thought about what that really means
- How being annoyed by environmentalists got me to start the movement that saved a mountain—and how saving that mountain led me to think so much bigger
- Five benefits in being a socially and environmentally active company (#3 is particularly exciting)—and three reasons why those companies have better employees
- How one of the most profit-driven retailers in the world created a $15 billion/year mainstream market for organic food
- Why the “bottom of the pyramid” represents a vast economic opportunity—and how to approach it the right way
- How a super-successful company succeeds by hiring ex-addicts, ex-mental patients, and other “unemployables”
- My superpower, according to Mira—and tips to make it work in your own business
- Why you NEVER want to “we, we, we all the way home”
- What money really is—and how to gain its advantages even if you don’t have a lot of it
- The secret to turning your customers into active ambassadors for your company
- Why values matter when you want to establish value
- The difference between prosperity and abundance—and how gratitude fits in
- How I switched from heating with oil to heating with cow poop and food waste
- Why I continue to be optimistic about reversing climate change, despite the gloomy predictions
- How we can motivate people with something better than guilt and shame
- The secret weapon the general public has to create BIG change in the business world
- The long history of social change movements just in the past 60 years, and some of the miracles they’ve accomplished
- How Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia used social and environmental concern to beat the odds
- The shocking demographic that potentially could become the biggest consumer of green products and services
- How to tell real green commitments from greenwashing
Carole Murphy—HeartStock Radio
- How my childhood (and my mother) shaped the work I do now, and how I got past my urban roots
- The intertwined shifts in society that give me hope even in troubled times
- How activism led directly to my marketing career, starting at age 15—and the marketing lessons I learned at that early age, including targeting a message to the market
- Who’s the leader in selling green products? The answer might shock you
- How each of us, as consumers, can make a difference one interaction at a time
Mature Preneurs Talk with Diana Todd-Hardy
- Why I got into marketing (through activism)
- How activism led me into writing books
- When I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up (not so long ago)
- How you can design to solve multiple problems at once (for instance, poverty, environment, and safety)—and to build in circular (no-waste) resource use
- The difference between old-style social responsibility and thinking really big
- The biggest challenge I have found in this new work
- The most exciting parts for me personally of the new social change work
- The difference between marketing and advertising
- How to write sexy, attention-getting press releases (and other marketing materials) that DON’T fit the 5W formula
- Where to look to surmount almost any engineering challenge—the surprising key
- 2 key questions to green your business and profitably address social issues
- How the Empire State Building changed its thinking about energy to save $4.4 million per year
Profitability Revolution with Ruth King
- How even a very small business can get involved in healing the biggest problems of our time
- The key questions to ask in developing a profitable approach to social change within business
- An unrehearsed brainstorm about how a consultant can make an impact in developing countries and find people to pay for it
- The key to solving war
- Positive versus negative motivation
- How the most famous skyscraper in the world got a 33 percent return when it went deep green
Interview with Brian Basilico on the Building Authentic Connections Online Networking podcast. Interestingly enough, Brian did not have the link to my media center ahead of time, so this was a freewheeling, off-the-cuff interview with neither of us knowing ahead where the conversation would flow. We managed to cover quite a bit of ground:
https://www.baconpodcast.com/episode-315-guerrilla-marketing-heal-world-shel-horowitz/
- My journey from file clerk and park ranger to running a business that changes the world
- The life-changing shock at age 12 that committed me to activism
- A definition of cause marketing—and why it isn’t enough
- Three ordinary people—a seamstress, a shipyard electrician, and a writer: two of them changed the world and the third is working on it
- The big problems with the terms “global warming” and “sustainability”
- How to find out if YOU’RE ready to start a profitable social entrepreneurship product
Interview on Blue Collar Proud with Taylor Hill and Carter Harkins (segment starts at 24:23)
- How small-scale businesses in the trades can lower costs and boost revenues doing things to help the world
- What if the climate change deniers are right—and what if they’re not?
- The impact of going green on healthcare
- Why making big, sweeping improvements in sustainability can be much more cost-effective than tiny changes
- How switching to greener lighting can save certain types of businesses millions of dollars
- Does green make a real difference in customer loyalty?
- The shocking fact that could end hunger in the US
Hear Shel on Game Changers with Lisa Faulkner, https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/5334235
- The Biblical command that inspires Shel to be an agent of change
- How to make huge goals manageable and solvable
- How changing a community’s mindset led to a solution path for solving humanity’s biggest problems
- How hiring “unemployables” created multiple benefits for the company and the community
- How America’s most famous skyscraper got a 33% return on its clean energy investment
Stephanie Chandler interviewed me on Writing to Create Social Change:
- Three books (among hundreds) from three centuries that changed the world
- How I started writing for social change—as a 15-year-old high school student
- How my passion for the environment—and a bizarre coincidence—led me to become a published author at age 23
- Why I STOPPED freelancing for magazines and newspapers
- How I get top-tier endorsers and co-authors for my books
- What happened when a subsidy publisher DEMANDED to publish my book
- How social change got me a gig as a TEDx speaker
The debut of my brand new talk, How Social Entrepreneurs Can Thrive in a Trumpian World, was a webinar put on by Green America (my fourth for them). Catch the replay at https://youtu.be/GderLF6vn0s
Karina Crooks interviews me on the Business Code Podcast: :
- What mangrove trees can teach engineers
- Why “coopetition” works
- What will social entrepreneurship look like 20 years from now
- How a seamstress and an electrician separately changed the world, three decades apart
- How to create a successful mass movement
Brief but powerful interview on JenningsWire—a great lesson in how to make the most of less than nine minutes.
Ajay Prasad and I chat on Founder’s Corner. He mentors me about pricing, ROI, and other MBA-type business concerns, while I educate him on green business and the green/social entrepreneurship market—including three different types of customers for green products and services and the surprising answers to questions like 1) what’s the largest segment of customers for green products? And 2) what company sells more organic products than Whole Foods?
Positive Phil Podcast. We start with a detailed example of the types of products that can create social betterment (reducing poverty, creating jobs), environmental/health/safety improvement (eliminating toxic fumes and a major fire hazard), and make a nice profit all at once. Then several examples of how we can improve our engineering and design by studying nature. We discuss the word “Transformpreneur” (which I use to describe myself)…how solar can be workable for renters and for people who live in cloudy areas…how to replace boring press releases with fascinating ones…a company that has thrived by employing “unemployables”—and what I love about the work I do and the life I lead.
Brand with Jenna—Brave Entrepreneur Podcast: (Episode 90):
- How you can create a *profitable* business that can change the world
- The teamwork involved in building a successful movement
- Learning to think long-term—even through a 10-year campaign
Profits and Prana with Ysmay Walsh:
- Ordinary people joining with others to change the world
- How we saved our local mountain
- Why Ben & Jerry’s is so successful (hint: it has a lot to do with their corporate social conscience)
- Exploring the idea of an international force of yoga teacher serving as conflict mediators
Smart Hustle Podcast with Ramon Ray:
- Why every business can benefit by introducing and marketing products and services that address threats like hunger, poverty, war and climate change
- Why social entrepreneurship goes deeper than philanthropy
- How even solopreneurs can make a difference
Reaching the Finish Line—Kallen Diggs
Unlike most interviews I do, this one focused on book publishing and not on the core message that business can profit by solving our biggest problems.
- What I did wrong on my first self-published marketing book (and how I can save you from doing the same)
- Why I don’t worry about low-volume book sales—and what I focus on instead
- How to keep a book going long beyond its expected shelf life
- How an ugly, unknown newsletter I almost didn’t respond to sold 90 books for me
Five-minute interview on Jennings Wire: “How Ordinary People Can Do The Extraordinary” How ordinary people start and lead movements—and how Shel saved a mountain in his own town.
Mike Schwager:
How I got started in social/environmental change at age 3 and returned to it (for life) at age 12. Dialog with Jack Nadel, 92-year-old entrepreneur with a green product line. The easiest ways a business can go green—and the real 7-figure savings that are possible when counting all the costs. Why market share doesn’t matter, and how to partner with competitors
Western Massachusetts Business Show with Ira Bryck, Profiles of several companies that were founded to good in the world. Green companies as price leaders. How to get a copy of my $9.95 ebook, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life—With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle at no cost.
Bill Newman—WHMP: (segment starts at 28:28): A quick, intense 11-minute trip through the highlights of my work
Ask those Branding Guys: (segment starts at 9:23)
Barry Moltz: (segment starts at 15:12)
Todd Schinck, Intrepid Now, with a nice emphasis on the power of ordinary people to change the world (segment starts at 2:28)
JV Crum, Conscious Millionaire, second interview: We cover my first activist moment at age 3, how I helped save a mountain, the next big environmental issue, and how a simple vow in my 20s changed my life (segment starts at 3:25)
Jill Buck, Go Green Radio: The difference between socially responsible and socially transformative businesses, impact of a social agenda on employees, urban farming, new energy technologies…and a cool case study of how a dog groomer could green up. (segment starts at 0:52)
Kristie Notto, Be Legendary: The perfect example of a business that addresses social issues, the hidden revenue model I showed a social entrepreneur, how a famous gourmet food company went head-to-head with a much larger competitor, what we can learn about engineering from nature, and why wars are solvable
Leon Jay, SocialpreneurTV (you’ll get to see what I look like when I’m overdue for a haircut/beard trim—a rare glimpse at Shaggy Shel)
Two-part interview on Steve Sapowksy’s excellent EcoWarrior Radio podcast: (Listen to Part 1 before Part 2, of course)
The first of two excellent shows on Conscious Millionaire
Clean and Green Club Best Links for May, 2010
Links about the Gulf Spill:
BP’s behavior, if these sources quoted in NY Times are accurate, is probably criminal (via @gfriend, quoting @climateprogress): https://climateprogress.org/2010/05/03/bp-oil-spill-federal-permit-cut-costs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29
If this is the plan that’s working, I’d hate to see the one that failed: (via @BusinessGreen) https://bit.ly/b2uW3g
RFK, Jr.: Gulf oil spill caused by anti-ethics culture of Bush’s “regulators” in collusion w/ BP, Halliburton: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/sex-lies-and-oil-spills_b_564163.html
BP’s Louisiana oil disaster will have repercussions across numerous industries (Triple Pundit)–and WHY are we still talking about expanding offshore drilling? I think we should be looking at the safety of all the existing rigs, first: https://www.triplepundit.com/2010/05/economic-impact-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-loui…siana/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TriplePundit+%28Triple+Pundit%29
The always-brilliant George Lakoff on how Obama could have used the BP disaster to create a unified multi-issue leadership/moral position #fbhttps://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/obamas-missing-moral-narr_b_593528.html
Other Links:
My favorite energy futurist Amory Lovins’s TED talk on how to get the US OFF oil entirely, add 1 million jobs & lots of ROI #fb #li https://us.cnn.com/video/?/video/living/2010/01/04/ted.amory.lovins.ted #Green (I love his “Faroffistan”)
Go Green Cars: Videos: Hemp sports car by Lotus lighter, cheaper, stronger than steel. Research by Henry Ford, 1941! – https://tinyurl.com/2b946ez (via @GreenCelebrity)
Prevention Mag: Why you’re greener than you think/24 easy green steps https://bit.ly/bhmS2C
World Bank $12 million program to replace African kerosense lamps (polluting, nonrenewable, carbon spewing) w/ solar (via @whatgreeninvest) https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64H46220100518?feedType=RSS&feedName=GCA-GreenBusiness&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FUSgreenbusines…sNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Green+Business%29&utm_content=Twitter
Even a very conservative study finds that investments in climate change mediation and other Green measures are well-worth doing: https://greeneconomypost.com/conservative-study-climate-action-improves-economy-9723.htm
Best Clean & Green Links of April
The best Clean & Green links for April:
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Best Clean and Green Links of February
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