The Clean and Green Club

About Shel & This Newsletter

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 Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

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

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

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

The New Sustainability Advantage, by Bob Willard

Bob Willard originally published The Sustainability Advantage: Seven Business Case Benefits of a Triple Bottom Line back in 2002. In 2012, his publisher, New Society Press, brought out an updated 10th Anniversary edition, and changed the title to The New Sustainability Advantage.

Basically, Willard takes apart every conceivable factor in business economics and shows how greening the company (when done right) yields vast financial benefits for businesses large and small. In other words, the entire book is a validation of something I’ve been saying for years: business can profit strongly by going green.

The book covers obvious and non-obvious savings and income possibilities in many areas, with entire chapters on revenue/market share, energy, waste, materials and water, employee productivity, HR expenses, and risk reduction; these are the seven benefits in the subtitle. The risk reduction chapter is particularly detailed—covering reputation damage (with five subcategories), cost spirals (six subcategories), compliance, and other areas.

What’s a non-obvious saving? One example would be the cost of water embodied in the production of paper; it turns out to be an astonishing 60 liters per ream (page 88). I certainly didn’t know that!

Willard uses a mixture of real-world examples and two hypothetical companies, one quite large and the other much smaller—and uses very conservative projections for both. For the smaller company, with $1 mm annual revenue, the profit boost tips the scale at 51 percent. 51 percent growth in profit—that is, income minus costs—is not too shabby. But the large company, with revenues of $500 mm per year, showed a truly astonishing 81% net increase.

Once again, Willard is using extremely conservative assumptions, bending over backward to avoid sensationalizing the results.

Still, I would have preferred two real case studies of companies that have taken these steps, with real numbers. Fortunately, he does cite many real-world examples to illustrate specific categories of savings and revenue. To name a few of them:

GE’s Ecomagination line of earth-friendly products brought in $18 bn in 2009, up from $10.1 bn in 2005. This was roughly 10 percent of total revenue, and was expected to grow at twice GE’s overall rate in the following five years (page 42).
IBM turned a $1.5 mm cost into a $1.5 mm revenue stream by selling something it used to throw away, adding $3 mm to profit each year; the US Postal Service turned a $9.1 mm annual disposal cost into $13 mm annual income, or $20 mm in profit (page 72).
The UK department store Marks and Spencer’s internationally recognized Plan A sustainability initiative was adding £50 mm (approximately $80 mm) per year to the bottom line through its original 100 sustainability commitments; this was part of the incentive to up the number of metrics to 180 (page 159).

He also cites statistics that show overall growth in consumer awareness and shifts in purchasing habits. Examples include findings that 77 percent of consumers describe themselves as green and/or health-conscious; 57 percent had made a green purchase in the previous six months; 40 percent chose particular products or services because of the values the company espoused (page 43). 92 percent of young professionals want to work at an environmentally friendly company (page 120), while at least 57 percent up to 83 percent of employers acknowledge that their corporate responsibility policies influence employee retention and loyalty (page 125).

While the book is definitely tilted toward larger entities, even small companies with just a few employees will probably find some ideas to implement that produce substantial savings and generate new revenue. For example, trash reduction can help even very small businesses lower costs. Here’s a link to a trash consultant who works strictly on a percentage of what he saves you, https://greenandprofitable.com/slash-your-solid-wastetrash-bill-50-or-more-at-no-cost/, so that would be an easy “low-hanging fruit” place to start.

The Clean and Green Club, November 2014

14 Nov, 2014 No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

November 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help

Reminder: Business For a Better World Telesummit is Replaying NOW

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

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

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

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

Nov. 20 Harry McAlister: Animations with A Message

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

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

Ongoing Shel Horowitz: Overview: telesummit +8 bonus calls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Shel on Social Media

About Shel & This Newsletter

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

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

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

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

Another Recommended Book—Recommend This!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Clean and Green Club, October 2014

11 Oct, 2014 No Comment

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

October 2014

Hear & Meet Shel

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

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

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

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

Remember that old nursery rhyme, “This Little Piggy Went to Market”? Remember the last line, “And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee all the way home”?

Well, it might work for telling nursery rhymes to a toddler, but too many marketers try to adopt this line in their marketing. Instead of “wee, wee, wee,” they “we, we, we all the way home.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help

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

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

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

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

Connect with Shel on Social Media

About Shel & This Newsletter

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

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

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

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

Another Recommended Book—Story Based Selling: Create, Connect, and Close

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

This is a basic book about selling to the right side—the emotional side—of the brain, similar to many books I’ve read over the years, starting with Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by America’s Best Companies by Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman and Tad Tuleja—which I read in 1988!

But Bloomfield’s advice is still worth paying attention to, because I’m still encountering salespeople every day who don’t have a clue and are still trying to sell with methods we knew about in, say, 1958. And because, unlike other human-centered sales books I’ve read, he bases his research in neuroscience, yet presents it very accessibly.

Borrowing from a minister named Nathan Hurst, he lists 18 characteristics of a great communicator. Some of these are left-brain obvious, like content, credibility, and preparedness. Others are decidedly right-brain: passion, intensity, and self-revelation. And others are just plain surprising: the ability to speak without notes, and to incorporate humor, and movement for instance. Storytelling makes the list, of course. And so do brevity, pauses, and asking the audience for some sort of personal decision to change something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Clean and Green Club, September 2014

11 Sep, 2014 No Comment

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, September 2014

This Month’s Tip: The Green Marketing Buffet

For several months, my business coach has been working with me to expand my service line, to allow people to find ways of hiring me that are in perfect alignment with whatever they need at the moment, and lead easily down a path to hire me longer-term.

We’ve looked at a lot of different models, but hadn’t come up with one that seemed to make sense. Then, a few weeks ago, I came up with an “umbrella” that it all fits under, and since then, our work together took a quantum leap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which of these models can you adapt to your business?

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help

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

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

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

Hear & Meet Shel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Shel on Social Media

About Shel & This Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

Another Recommended Book—80/20 Sales and Marketing

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

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

Right from the start, Richard Koch’s foreword reveals the biggest insight (which Marshall states on page 37 and explores in more depth throughout the book): the fabled 80/20 rule, a/k/a the Pareto Principle, is fractal. In plain English: If 20 % of your clientele spend at or above the average (and the rest are probably not even worth your time), then 20% of the first 20%—4% of your total customer base—will account for 16 times the average sale. Marshall represents this graphically in the “power curve,” which looks quite different from the typical bell curve that identifies medians and averages. He includes numerous examples of power curves, which crawl along the bottom left before escalating steeply—exponentially.

Now, turn this into strategy. After you identify the top-performing 20 % to focus on, rinse and repeat: take the top 20% of that 20%, and run it up several iterations. By the end, you’ll have identified a core group of buyers willing to spend thousands of times more with you than the average buyer. Then craft offerings for them. Sports teams understand this, and make half their revenue from the handful of wealthy fans willing to spring for season skyboxes and other very expensive perks.

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

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

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

The Clean and Green Club, August 2014

12 Aug, 2014 No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

August 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help

Jay Levinson Memorial Conference is On Hold

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

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

Hear & Meet Shel

Thursday, September 11, 6 pm ET/3 pm PT: Webinar, “Selling Your Self-Published Book to a Bigger Publisher,” Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. Details & Register Here https://tinyurl.com/onlz3hw

HOLYOKE, MA: Saturday, September 13, 9:30-10:30 a.m., Making Sustainability Sexy: Marketing Secrets for Green/Local Businesses/Organizations, Co-op Power’s Sustainability Summit, Holyoke Heritage State Park, 221 Appleton Street, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Shel on Social Media

About Shel & This Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

Two Recommended Books—Talk Like TED, How to Deliver a TED Talk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And from Donovan:

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

The Clean and Green Club, July 2014

11 Jul, 2014 No Comment

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit www.thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

July 2014

This Month’s Tip: Grab Unexpected, Out-of-Genre Media Opportunities

I wrote to Dear Abby this month—not to solve a problem, but to grab publicity.So why does a marketing and publishing consultant and copywriter specializing in green business think he can benefit from writing to Dear Abby?

Because Abby handed me an opportunity on a silver platter.

Someone identifying herself as “Reader in the Southwest” complained that a friend’s self-published book was so badly done and full of typos that she couldn’t even finish it, but the friend was eager to get her to post a rave review on Amazon.com. And Abby told her, among other things, “Find SOMETHING you liked about the book and mention that on the Amazon page. You could call it a ‘page turner’ because you had to turn from Page 1 to Page 2, didn’t you?” (Read the full question and Abby’s response—as well as 358 reader comments as of five days after publication—at https://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/2014/7/5/0/friend-has-hard-time-finding-a#disqus_thread)

I still make a fair piece of my living as a book shepherd/publishing consultant, and when I saw this response in my morning paper, I immediately put down the paper and dashed off this letter, which I submitted through the Dear Abby website and posted as a comment on that day’s column:

Dear Abby,

Your advice to “Reader in the Southwest” was 30 years out of date. These days, most self-published books are printed only to fill orders; the author of the badly done book is not sitting on inventory. You ask Reader to lie and call it a page-turner—which does harm to the author (misleading), the reviewer (trashing his/her reputation), and anyone who buys the book (misleading into a purchase). It would be far better to say, “I love that you’ve gotten your book done. But I have to tell you, it could reach a much wider audience if you went back and fixed all the grammar errors. It’s always hard to proofread your own work, and you might not realize what a negative impression it makes right now.”

Abby, I’m a book shepherd who helps writers become published authors, and I’ve had similar conversation with many of my clients. They’re always glad they took my advice once their beautiful books are out in the world.

—Shel Horowitz in Hadley, Mass.

At best, this will run in hundreds of newspapers around the country and the world—at no cost to me. At worst, it will only be seen by those who go to the website and scroll to the second comment page (it did generate one positve response there)—and perhaps by those who are searching Dear Abby or Google for advice on dealing with a friend’s terrible book. I felt that my letter might be blocked if I put in a web link—but by including my real name and city, I’ve made it possible for any prospective clients to find me.

It took me only about fifteen minutes to write this letter. I frequently spend that much time on a HARO (HelpAReporter.com) media pitch. Again, you don’t know if you’ll actually get media, but if you do, the results can be spectacular. Over the years, I’ve been quoted multiple times each in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur magazine, and even Woman’s Day (among many others). This kind of national publicity has been a major credibility builder for me, and was even instrumental in keeping my Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shel_Horowitz) when it was challenged as too promotional.

Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help

Freebie Session with My Own Business Coach
My business coach, Oshana Himot, writes:“I am offering complementary business coaching sessions for entrepreneurs and others who desire to expand their business. Sharing, as you know many people in a growth phase who can benefit from mentoring.”

I have found working with her quite transformative in my own
business. Contact: oshanaben@yahoo.com

Disclaimer: I do not earn a commission or benefit financially from
this. Doing it because I’m thrilled with what we’ve accomplished
together and would like to share that good karma.

The two new brands around Business For a Better World and Making Green Sexy would not have happened without her.

Save the Dates: October 3-5
Jay Conrad Levinson, the original Guerrilla Marketing man and my coauthor for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, passed away last October. His widow, Jeannie Levinson, daughter Amy Levinson, and another of his many co-authors, Loral Langemeier (Guerrilla Wealth) are marking the year since his death with a fantastic conference featuring many of the superstars with whom Jay collaborated in his life. This will be a very affordable event (the figure of $199 has been tossed around, though it’s not firm) that will be the catalyst for relaunching the brand in the post-Jay era. I am hoping to speak.

Hear & Meet Shel

THIS Saturday, July 19th, 2014, 1:30 to 2:30 pm, Workshop Tent #2, “Making Green Sexy,” SolarFest, Tinmouth, VT, USA, July 18-20: www.solarfest.org.

Webinar for Green America’s Green Business Network DETAILS TK

Thursday, September 11, 6 pm ET/3 pm PT: Webinar, “Selling Your Self-Published Book to a Bigger Publisher,” Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. Details & Register Here https://tinyurl.com/onlz3hw

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

Connect with Shel on Social Media

About Shel & This Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

Another Recommended Book—The Trader Joe’s Adventure

The Trader Joe’s Adventure: Turning a Unique Approach to Business into a Retail and Cultural Phenomenon, by Len Lewis (Dearborn, 2005)

As a subscriber to my newsletter, you’re well aware that I advocate consumer-centric, ethical business practices as a business success strategy: it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s also very good for business.

Trader Joe’s, the very popular supermarket chain emphasizing its own private-label gourmet and natural products, eliminated GMO foods in its own brands all the way back in 2001—over a decade before Whole Foods agreed to label GMO products on its shelves. It was an early endorser of Fair Trade products (though to this day, there are plenty of non-Fair Trade products right next to some of the Fair Trade ones, particularly in chocolate, where the Fair Trade label probably makes the most difference). In 2003, it was one of the first 30 companies to win an award from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). The following year, Rainforest Action Network saluted the company for changing its bag purchasing to avoid paper made by a company known for cutting old-growth forests. It sells 100%-recycled paper products at very attractive price points.

So Trader Joe’s scores pretty well on social screens.

But that’s only part of its success formula. As of a decade ago, when this book was written, it was doing twice the typical supermarket sales per square foot, and was expecting to raise that as it started entering into and expanding in affluent, educated urban markets like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston.

Some of the other major keys to its success include:

A workforce that’s well-treated, collaborative, and among the best-compensated in the entire supermarket industry—and whose managers are not only willing to get down and dirty and pitch in wherever needed—sweeping floors, running registers, etc.—but also genuinely welcome input from line employees. New hires are actually told, “If you’re not having fun within 30 days, quit.”
Workers who are trained to be customer-centric, have lots of information on the products, and happily interact with customers (gently upselling when it feels appropriate).
A unique and constantly changing product mix. For many items, there simply is no other place to buy them. As of when this book was written, the store was introducing about 25 new products per week, and removing about as many. So shopping becomes, in Lewis’s words, “a treasure hunt.”
Near-zero use of traditional advertising, relying instead on word-of-mouth and a magalog-style catalog distributed by direct mail (to shoppers who request it) and in stores.
A contrarian approach to most industry practices: Unlike most supermarkets, he company favors small-footprint stores with limited selection, often in second- or third-tier locations with inadequate parking. It does not try to be a one-stop shop but instead a boutique destination experience. Unlike most gourmet shops, Trader Joe’s focuses on multiple niches: ready-to-eat frozen foods, gourmet, organic and natural, wine and cheese. And the store gets by with fewer workers per square foot, but pays them better and treats them better. It doesn’t do “loyalty programs” (encouraging frequent shopping, e.g., buy 10, get one free, rebates, airline points).

Many years ago, I actually wrote to Trader Joe’s and mentioned that the Whole Foods in my own town was doing really well, and it might be a good site for a new store. I didn’t get a response, but a few years later, TJ’s arrived (and was instantly successful). The store’s location is across the street from the mall that contains the Whole Foods, and many shoppers combine trips to both of these destination stores. It turns out I’m not the only one. Lewis cites actual organized campaigns by residents to bring the company into various cities—something I doubt any other supermarket chain experiences, ever.

On the very last page of the main text, Lewis shares eight research findings from the Organic Consumers Association about the impact of social responsibility on shopping patterns. No matter what kind of business you run, take heed that you are not only socially responsible, but that your customers and prospects know it. Among the highlights:

92 percent felt more positively toward companies that back social causes
91 percent are prepared to switch if their current vendor is not a good corporate citizen
85 percent would tell their family and friends
87 percent are more likely to remember companies when they learn about their social responsibility initiatives

While the book is very repetitive and somewhat dated, it still carries important lessons for business owners in today’s world. So far, Trader Joe’s has managed to stay true to its roots while expanding rapidly, and being enormously profitable.

The Clean and Green Club, June 2014

9 Jun, 2014 1 Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

June 2014

Learn with Shel from the Comfort of Your Own Phone:
“Virtual Intensive” on Green Marketing and Creating a Better World
Six group calls with Shel—at a very affordable price.

If you are seriously interested in this training, I want to make sure to design something you’ll be happy with. Please take the short survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9Y538SN and be part of the process. It should take you between 2 and 5 minutes.

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.

This Month’s Profile:

Hawthorne Valley Farm

Here’s a community that combines top organic and Biodynamic farming practices, education, social action, and the arts: Hawthorne Valley Farm, in New York State’s Hudson Valley.

I heard Martin Ping, Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director, at the Slow Living Summit in Brattleboro, Vermont last week, and decided to share some of his story with you.

Founded in 1972, the 900-acre farm uses Biodynamic agriculture: a vigorous standard developed by the visionary educator Rudolph Steiner, who also created the Waldorf Education movement–that goes far beyond organic into a much deeper relationship with the land.

Hawthorne raises vegetables, grains, chickens, goats, sheep, cows, and pigs. Its store sells raw milk, homemade cheeses, live lacto-fermented sauerkraut and veggies, and home-baked breads made from its own grain. It also distributes its wares through one local and three New York City-based CSA (community supported agriculture) networks, as well as through three of New York City’s farmers markets, including the massive thrice-weekly market at Union Square.

And it packages and wholesales yogurt and quark: a spreadable creme fraiche cheese.

Ping calls these packaged dairy products “our secret weapon. We make yogurt–and people in Atlanta read the container and say, ‘ooh, they’ve got a summer camp.’

Hawthorne Valley’s social action and education/farm apprenticeship programs are fully integrated into the farming operation, as are Waldorf teacher training and numerous visual and performing arts programs. The farm regularly brings in 600 children and teens a year, many of whom inner-city children with no previous exposure to nature.

“We find nine years old is the sweet spot for education. You pull out a carrot and they say, ‘whoa, food comes out of the ground!’ They’re just beginning to see the warts on their parents and teachers, you get them mucking out a stall, taking care of another sentient being–a chicken, a goat, a cow–for the first time in their lives. Kids are not standardized. They’re individual and spiritual,” just like farms.

“They get a sense of the relationships, that it doesn’t magically appear. They make all the food, all the accouterments, they understand. There are 100 pounds of milk in 10 pounds of cheese. Kids get a lesson in economics, in food miles, in the relationships of the whole food system.”

Hawthorne Valley also reaches out to prisoners, immigrant farmers, and veterans, even developing theater works for inmates to perform.

A convergence of factors led to the farm’s founding. As Ping puts it, “At that time, a bunch of farmers and Waldorf teachers were meeting. Farms were being told, get big or get out. Agriculture was being pushed out by agribusiness, the culture was getting lost. And teachers were saying kids had less and less opportunity to interact with the natural world. They mooshed the two themes together.

“They said, let’s buy a farm and decommodify the land. And children will be welcome. ‘We are founding the seed of a living organization: agricultural, artistic, educational. The goal is to become full human beings.’ I get to go to work each day at a place where the goal is to become full human beings!”

The farm’s mission is nothing less than “renewal of society and culture through education, agriculture, arts. It’s a food shed, a watershed. We think of the whole farm as a living organism. Inputs and outputs should stay on the farm.

“Farmers grow soil [through manure and compost]; soil grows plants. We’ve been ‘making good shit since 1972.’ I hear people talking about hedge funds. We plant hedges and watch them grow: bird and insect habitat.

“Our disconnection is at the root of every crisis we face. We’re not displaced, we’re DEplaced. This is what we’re doing at Hawthorne Valley: that healing, that connection, that sense of higher purpose.”

The farm also has a Center for Social Research, which explores Rudolph Steiner’s ideas on how society can be organized, and another research arm studying eco-friendly farmscapes. It supports a microlending program and a two-year Waldorf teacher training program that “looks at art in relation to social life and to money, to supporting it freely and decommodifying it.”

And this has far-reaching implications, both in and beyond Hawthorne Valley’s own bioregion: “We’re starting to see Columbia County as a farming organism, not just to our own borders. We’re growing farmers. 65 new farms in Columbia County, they did profiles, put pictures in every library. One of our farmers got those 65 new farmers and some others together for a one-day charette. We had 75 and had to turn some away. They look at practical things, like how to share equipment.

Despite his zeal, Pink is remarkably nonjudgmental. “Even the multinationals are filled with good people, and we need to help them help us. People at Johnson & Johnson [makers of hand sanitizers, among many other products] understand what we’ve lost in the rush to sanitize everything.”

Where else to Hear & Meet Shel
(beyond the Virtual Intensive)

“Making Green Sexy,” SolarFest, Tinmouth, VT, USA, July 18-20:
Saturday, July 19th, 2014, 1:30 to 2:30 PM, Workshop Tent #2

Discussions in process about several other possible talks. Remember: You can earn a generous commission if you book Shel into a paid speaking engagement.

Connect with Shel on Social Media

About Shel & This Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

Another Recommended Book—The Business Solution to Poverty

The Business Solution to Poverty: Designing Products and Services for Three Billion New Customers by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick (Berrett-Koehler, 2013)

Several years ago, I reviewed The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, a remarkable book about improving people’s lives at the very bottom while monetizing that improvement in the form of business profit. The Business Solution to Poverty picks up where “Fortune” left off.

Based not on academic theory but on real-world hands-on experience starting such companies in places like Bangladesh, Polak and Warwick say there’s a great deal of money to be made serving the world’s very poorest inhabitants: 2.7 billion people living on $2 per day or less.

However, it’s not a mater of just walking in and rolling up your sleeves. Succeeding in these markets–plural, because conditions and cultures vary widely in different parts of the world, or even different parts of a single country–requires extensive research, following key design and economic principles, and DEEP understanding of the local cultures.

Products must be items that people with almost no discretionary income will pay for and use, because these will better their lives, directly and rapidly. They must be durable…extremely cheap to manufacture…designed so a non-literate population can use AND maintain them…and systematically deliverable to places with no roads, no infrastructure, and no tradition of buying from the outside. And they have to both fit well enough into the existing culture and be disruptive enough to dramatically improve people’s lives.

Examples?

Treadle pumps that can be installed for $25 including the cost of drilling a well
Ceramic water filters
An ultra-low-cost warmer for premature babies
Artificial knees that cost $75 instead of many thousands.

The authors cite numerous failures, many at the hands of governments or NGOs who, in the authors’ view, don’t scale up enough to make a big difference because they lack the profit motive and thus have less need to make sure their projects actually WORK on the ground. Private businesses, including those run by the authors, have had their failures too–but their batting averages tend to be higher, especially if they do plan for scale. Polak and Warwick say successful businesses will talk to at least 100 customers before going forward–and this research may lead to creative marketing strategies such as theatrical presentations, in situations where traditional Global North media won’t work. If people can’t read, the newspaper will not tell them about you. If they have no electricity, then marketing on radio, TV, or online won’t work very well. Aware of the marketing challenges, Polak and Warwick list “aspirational branding” as a crucial ingredient.

The chances of success are highest, the authors say, when the ventures address basic core needs: energy, water, health care, and jobs (oddly, food is not on their list)–and when there’s accountability. They are critical of many microloan programs, for instance, because they often see the money diverted away from seeding a business (a long-term approach that lifts people out of poverty) and into basic survival–and then the money is gone and there is no business to funnel in capital.

I agree with almost all their numerous success principles in these challenging markets. However, they make–and I question–the assertion that successful businesses must be able to scale up within the first decade to 100 million units and $10 billion in revenues per year in order to be worthwhile. While I recognize that a systematized, replicable infrastructure capable of those numbers is a good thing, I also do believe there is a place for the smaller venture that might be working in just one or two communities, yet still makes a real difference in people’s lives. And a place for the entrepreneur who still wants to make a difference but wants to stay small.

To make this whole thing concrete, Polak is starting or consulting to four specific businesses that meet the authors’ criteria:

A bicycle-delivered safe drinking water company
A low-carbon biofuel made from agricultural waste that in the past had been burned without capturing the energy
Solar-powered LED lanterns that are safer, cheaper, and more effective than kerosene lamps–and pay for themselves in the savings of a few months’ supply of kerosene
Door-to-door health education and sales of franchised high-impact health products that protect against malaria, diarrhea, and worms

The Clean and Green Club, May 2014

12 May, 2014 No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

May 2014

This Month’s Tip:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Connect with Shel on Social Media

About Shel & This Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

Another Recommended Book—Hug Your People

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.

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.

The Clean and Green Club, April 2014

14 Apr, 2014 1 Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

April 2014

The Research Phase of Reinvention, Part 1

Introduction

Once again, I take you behind the curtain as I shift toward making a living while helping business solve poverty, hunger, war, and climate catastrophe—I feel deeply in my heart that this is the work I was meant to do. Frankly, I don’t know how it will all shake out. But while I’m figuring it out, the process creates learning opportunities for you if I choose to be transparent and reveal it–which I do. I feel you can benefit a lot by seeing my process, including how I plan to make money from these offerings.

Common business wisdom says, “research before launch.” But I’m research by doing. I’m putting a lot of things out there, and seeing what has resonance

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

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

For each, I’ll answer three questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How can it boost revenues?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends who Want to Help

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

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

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

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

Connect with Shel on Social Media

About Shel & This Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hear & Meet Shel–A TEDx Talk, Green Festival & More

April 21 through May 2: I interview all 16 other presenters on the Business and Marketing For a Better World Telesummit. My overview call describing all the other calls will be available at any time. And then on the last day, Tom Antion interviews me about how business can create sweeping social change AND make a profit. No cost to register, and you get all the other presenters too: https://business-for-a-better-world.com/telesummit

April 26, NYC, 12:30 p.m. (note time change) Speaking on Business For a Better World AND message points for different audiences at the NYC Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival. I’ll be signing books afterward. The Green Festivals are wonderful events. I spoke at one in 2010 and have attended a couple since then. Pier 94, 55th Street and Hudson River. https://www.greenfestivals.org/nyc/schedule

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

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

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

May 16-18, Hadley, MA: Marketing Green in the Wider World: 3-Day Intensive.

Another Recommended Book—An Edible History of Humanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Clean and Green Club, March 2014

13 Mar, 2014 2 Comments

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

March 2014

Lessons from a Lost Launch

Within 48 hours after I sent out the newsletter extra edition announcing the Business and Marketing for a Better World Telesummit that was supposed to start this past Tuesday, I had to move the event back a month. The new dates are April 22-May 3.

We thought at the time I sent out the mailing that we were ready to go–but then we ran into a cascading series of technical problems starting with some registration buttons that weren’t loading the form (others were working fine) and culminating in a server that started crashing when we tried to update the site. That last one was such a doozy that I got myself a new webhost last Sunday and moved the site over–a multi-day process that cemented my decision to move the dates. It meant that we couldn’t tinker with the site during the migration and then couldn’t test our changes before the calls would have started going live.

So I thought I’d build this month’s article around the lessons I learned from this whole process.

1. Make sure your deadlines are realistic. Mine weren’t. The five weeks between sending out the first invitations for speakers to participate and the date the calls were supposed to start turned out not to be a realistic timeframe. My web designer and I both put in very long days for the two weeks before the launch date, and I at least had to put my client work on hold for a week. I was even editing pages on my laptop while hanging out at a family function in New York–something I’m generally very careful not to do.

2. Understand the scope of the project, and how it might differ from what you’ve done in the past. If I’d known just how much work it was going to take, I would never have done this project. I’ve put up lots of websites over the years, but this one required functionality I’d never needed before. Essentially, my designer created a WordPress site in the very complex and powerful Jupiter theme that duplicated many of the features of Instant Teleseminar, and I kept finding missing pieces that needed to be in place. Some of this was because I apparently hadn’t clearly explained the full scope, and some because the designer had never worked on a teleseminar product before and didn’t know certain pieces that I thought were obvious from the job description. And there turned out to be a fair amount of trial-and-error with plugins that only gave us part of the functionality and had to be replaced.

I took responsibility for the scope creep. And the designer took responsibility for recommending the wrong plug-ins. And we both put even more time to make it all work.

3. If integrating pieces from different providers, allow extra time to make sure they play nicely together. (See above.)

4. Know when to use off-the-shelf and when to go custom. In retrospect, it would have been much faster and cheaper to simply buy a license for Instant Teleseminar. However, now that I have all the infrastructure, I hope to do more telesummits in the future and amortize the investment. And meanwhile, I have to say the new site, https://business-for-a-better-world.com , is simply gorgeous. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please go have a look. The home page reminds me of those cool-looking infographics and the speaker presenter pages are a marvel in the way they compactly present enormous amounts of information in a clean, readable layout.

5. Plan for growth; make things scalable wherever possible. In Phase 2, this site will eventually become my web hub, and my other sites will be part of it, though the individual domains will still work. (It’s been explained to me that this has search optimization advantages over my current model of lots of separate sites). And Phase 3 may be another series of teleseminars, or some other product. Knowing this ahead helped us avoid stupid decisions that would have to be undone later.

6. Have one person coordinating the project, and channel all communication through that person. The designer hired and managed two coders, and managed the SEO expert who had actually hired the designer. He could talk programming-speak with them, and they received only one set of messages, so nobody was second-guessing anyone else.

7. Keep lines of communication clear, open, and in-use. The designer hadn’t told me that a certain change I made would wreck his layout. After that, I asked before making changes in parts of the site we hadn’t discussed. And several times, he said either that I should let him handle it, or that I should wait until some other step was completed first. Without that information, an awful lot of extra work would have been created for no benefit. Also, as I explained what I wanted, we had extended discussions on how to achieve the task. These discussions resulted in a stronger, more resilient, more elegant, and more functional site.

Overall, I’m deeply pleased with the new site. The delay will not cause any significant mischief, and I feel much better knowing that when the telesummit actually starts, all the pieces will have been tested and are working smoothly.

Friends who Want to Help

Third Annual Spring of Sustainability Series, April 22-June 24: I don’t have the list yet of the 100(!) speakers who will be participating–but if it’s anything like the last two years, it’ll be awesome. I’ll send more details when I have them.

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