The Clean and Green Club

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 Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.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).”

Spend Three Minutes with Me On Youtube
… and view my brand new speaker demo video, focusing on green business profitability through smart marketing. It took several months to get this done, but it was worth the wait; I’m very pleased with the results. https://youtu.be/DByWN4Feaj0 If you’re pleased, remember that you can earn a very generous commission if you get me a paid speaking gig.

By the way, increasing my video presence was one of my goals for 2013, and to that end, I’ve put up several brief interviews with people doing interesting things in the green world: rooftop urban farmers, the owner of a bookstore that carries many green books, the organizer of a tomato festival, an executive at a high end. See them at https://www.youtube.com/user/shelhoro/videos

Planning way ahead: May 10, 2014, I will once again be presenting at CAPA University, a one-day book publishing program in Hartford. More info: gaffney AT kanineknits.com

Friends who Want to Help

If you missed last month’s Vibrant Business Summit, organizer Laura Orsini has put together summaries of each of the three days. No charge: https://www.writemarketdesign.com/yvb/deliver/claim_recaps.htm

Another Recommended Book—Helping

Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help, by Edgar H. Schein (Berrett-Koehler, 2009)

On the surface, this is not a book about marketing or about green business. And do we really need a whole book about the dynamics of offering, requesting, and accepting help? What could go wrong?

But stay with me a moment.

All successful marketers need a deep understanding of psychology. And a key element of psychology is how people offer and accept help. What could go wrong? Lots.

Differences about giving and receiving help, after all, are at the core of why so many of us have conflicted relationships with our parents, spouses, and children–and often, a source of conflict with our own clients and suppliers; help is offered inappropriately, ignored or belittled, and used as a wedge to create personal conflict. And thus, helping encounters can be fraught with problems.

The dynamics of helping are especially relevant to marketers, because all of our products and services are essentially an offer of help in exchange for money–and because our marketing positioning both as service providers and as members of the business community and the neighborhood is greatly influenced by whether we’re seen as helpful or predatory, caring or callous. In the green world where many of you are, this is especially true, because the green world expects its businesses to be helping-oriented and to be good neighbors.

Schein uses the terms, “helper” (person offering the help) and “client” (the recipient). In his view, all helping interactions–not just marketing interactions–are really transactions. Every time you provide help, you raise your status relative to the client. Every time you request help, you lower your status relative to the helper. And if you’re providing that help as a paid supplier, you have the extra barrier of needing to establish yourself as trusted and knowledgeable, which can make it harder to locate and diagnose the real underlying issue or need.

It’s important to note that whatever you do has an impact. Even the choice to do nothing, to refuse to get involved, has an impact. So it’s important to understand the dynamics and likely results of all the available choices.

One way around this dynamic is to offer help before it’s requested–but to be willing to walk away with no ill will if that offer is declined. As an example, if you see someone with a physical disability struggling with a task, you can offer to carry something, hold a door, etc.–but it may be important for the person’s self-esteem to accomplish the task without outside help. If the offer is declined, the helper doesn’t need to be offended.

Of course, there are situations where you want to help whether or not that help is wanted. If you’re talking someone out of committing suicide, you can’t let yourself be deterred by the unwilling client. Schein suggests you say something like “let me talk to the part of you that doesn’t want to commit suicide.”

The flip side is situations where the client is begging you to solve the problem, whether or not the recommendation you can make based on your own knowledge and experience is appropriate. He suggests, “I’m not in your situation. But when I was in a similar situation, here’s what worked for me.” Another possibility is to throw it back on the client by providing two alternatives. Forcing the client to examine and choose is more empowering than providing a single answer.

Schein draws a big distinction between helpful and unhelpful help. Helpful help is perceived by both sides as reciprocal, fair, and equitable. It is invited or welcomed by the client. It usually involves asking probing questions to get to the heart of the issue, rather than making assumptions and jumping prematurely to recommendations. It honors the client’s intelligence and recognizes areas where the client needs support or could grow. And it results in the client not only being helped, but feeling heard and validated.

Without ever reading Schein’s analysis before, this is how I’ve run my marketing consulting practice for decades. And I’d suggest this is a lot of the reason why so much of my practice is repeat and referral business.

What’s your experience in your own business?

The Clean and Green Club, October 2013

11 Oct, 2013 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 2013

This Month’s Tip

Haircuts and Photos and Branding, Oh, My

At a conference this spring, I happened to meet a professional image consultant, who gave me some freebie advice. Among her suggestions: try my hair very, very short (but not a buzz cut)—and that if I was dressing for business, I could ditch the tie and just wear a jacket.

I’ve always loathed wearing ties; they make me feel like I’m choking, and I’m not very good at tying them (tying, in general, is not a strength for me; I was eight years old before I could tie my shoes). So of course, I was delighted with her advice. It felt really liberating.

So the next time I needed a haircut, I tried it her way. It was a look I’d never tried before. In the past, I’d had really long hair (which I finally cut when I found myself basically unemployable after college) and moderately long hair, and for about ten years, short-ish hair with a long, thin braided tail at the back. For the past ten years, I had pretty much settled into a mid-60s short-haired look, parted at the side, requiring almost no maintenance, and able to grow several months between cuts without looking too funky.

And I loved it! I thought it made me look sharp and cool and hip, it required even less maintenance than my previous look, and after three months, it was still only about as long as my previous look right after a haircut. I got it cut again anyway. This is what it looked like about ten days after the first haircut.

Shel Horowitz, July 2013. Photo credit: Andy Morris-Friedman

Why am I telling you this? Because there’s a branding lesson in here.

Last week, I got a consultation from an expert in speaker branding. Ahead of our phone call, I’d sent her my speaker onesheet, which is a couple of years old. She loved the material I work with, but she hated the flier. And one of the things she hated most was the formal suit-and-tie picture, taken by a professional photographer in his studio:

She told me it didn’t feel authentic to her—that she could tell, without ever meeting me, that I was not a suit-and-tie guy—just from the content of my onesheet (and other materials I’d sent). And she’s right. Even though she wanted me to go after corporate executives in my speaking flier rather than small business owners, she felt this picture wasn’t “speaking my truth.” She didn’t even know that it’s five years old and needed to be replaced (or that I had already done the shoot that got me the new photo). She somehow knew that this was not the real me.

Now, I write about authenticity in marketing; it’s part of my brand. I had always found that picture rather cold, and I never really liked the way my hair came out. Plus, I started wearing glasses all the time a few months after this picture was taken. In fact, for all but the most formal settings, I had been using several pictures from an even earlier photoshoot done by a friend of mine, because I felt they represented me much more accurately—at least as I was seven years ago—even though I had obviously forgotten to get a haircut first:

All of these photos came out of sessions where many shots were taken. In the 2006 shoot, I’ve rotated among three pictures. For both the 2008 and 2013 sessions, the one you see was the only good one of the batch.

But one good photo is all you need. I’ve been getting extremely positive feedback on my new one, which was taken at the farmstand across the street from my house. The gentle hill you see rises up to the summit of Mount Holyoke. I have lived here for 15 years, and founded the movement that saved and permanently protected the mountain next to this one.

I feel this photo shows me as relaxed and confident, and some of that is because I’m in my element, outside on the farm and walking distance from the mountain I helped save. This is very in keeping with my green marketing brand, and it’s authentic. And the speaker branding consultant, who still has not met me, said it was a great photo.

So will I throw away my neckties? No. I will save them, however for situations where not to wear one would be considered rude or a gaffe—for instance, a speech to a high-level corporate audience in a very formal culture like Japan, or a funeral.

Hear & Meet Shel

Connect with Shel on Social Media

Follow on TwitterFacebook Profile

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).”

Note: In last month’s newsletter, I confused my notes about the Global Oneness Summit (in this section) and Global Oneness Day (in the Friends who Want to Help section), and ran the wrong link. If you planned to sign up for Global Oneness and actually signed up for Global Movement Makers, please follow the link in this issue. Sorry for any confusion.

October 23: Global Movement Makers Summit
I’m honored to be included in a telesummit jam-packed with smart and dynamic speakers including C.J. Hayden (Get Clients Now), Cynthia Kersey (Unstoppable), Noah St. John (Success Anorexia/Afformations), Susan Harrow (Sound Bite Siren) and other equally bright lights. The summit runs from October 23, 2013 through November 12, 2013; my interview is October 23, 3 pm ET/noon PT https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GlobalMovementMakers/

October 24: Vibrant Business Summit
Another exciting telesummit! I’ll be doing “Making Green Sexy: How to Craft Message Points to Reach Green AND Nongreen Audiences” as part of the Vibrant Business Summit: https://shelhorowitz.com/go/vibrantbusinesssummit/

Planning way ahead: May 10, 2014, I will once again be presenting at CAPA University, a one-day book publishing program in Hartford. More info: gaffney AT kanineknits.com

Friends who Want to Help

Global Oneness Day, October 24, featuring acclaimed teachers like Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Michael Beckwith, Neale Donald Walsch, and even green pioneer Hazel Henderson (who I’ve been following since the 1970s) and my personal friend humorist Steve Bhaerman (a/k/a Swami Beyondananda). No cost to listen live, or during the 48-hour open replay period. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GlobalOneness2013/

Rerelease of Choices and Illusions by the ‘Mind Master,’ Eldon Taylor
When Choices and Illusions was first released 6 years ago, it quickly became a New York Times best seller. People around the world were talking about it and sending in letters saying how this teaching had changed their lives, empowered them to embrace life and restructure it to one of joy, success, harmony and happiness. Now Eldon has taken this incredible book, revised, expanded, and updated it, and also added in a complementary copy of his InnerTalk program, Unlimited Personal Power—a program he has sold for years for $27.95. And if you buy during the launch, you’re eligible to win some incredible prizes, including a pair of passes to the Hay House I Can Do It Conference (your choice of four dates and locations in 2014), Alex Lloyd’s complete Healing Codes, and admission to the Enlightened Warrior Training Camp (valued at $3,490). PLUS a whole bunch of bonuses for everyone, even if you’re not the one who gets some of those other goodies. https://www.parpromos.com/pp/it/13j/index/A.php

Catch the last few days of another great teleseminar series, Ryan Eliason’s annual Enlightened Business Summit (I’ve been a speaker in the past). Speakers for the overall series include Deepak Chopra, Ambassador Carol Mosely Braun, and social media superstar Mari Smith. $241 worth of bonuses just for signing up. https://enlightenedbusinesssummit.com/feature/Ryan-Eliason

Another Recommended Book—The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet

The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, by Ramez Naam (University Press of New England, 2013)

The Infinite Resource is a tribute to the human mind: to its creativity, its ability to solve very complex problems, and to its amplification when connected to other minds, whether in physical space or online. It’s a fascinating read—but I have to put a caution flag on my recommendation.

In some ways, this book is the antithesis (always wanted an excuse to use that word!) of Green Illusions, which I reviewed two months ago. I felt Green Illusions was too pessimistic; this one is overoptimistic. The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in the middle. Not necessarily an average, but on a continuum, or maybe a pendulum—varying topic by topic about where it swings.

Naam is an unabashed and relatively uncritical booster of solving the world’s problems through technology. And admittedly, technology has done amazing things. He points out hundreds of examples of how we are able to do more with less over time. We heat and cool our buildings to levels of comfort unimaginable a scant two centuries ago, and do so without even beginning to tap out the enormous power of the sun and wind. We use materials like carbon fiber and inventions like semiconductors to increase efficiency and bring down cost by orders of magnitude; Moore’s law (which he does not name) apparently applies in many sectors—not just computing power but agriculture, manufacturing, and much more. We feed more of the world’s hungry and use less water and land to do it—beating Malthus’ 18th-century predictions of doom because the rate we grow food has outpaced population growth. Efficiencies have allowed our food to be provided by only two percent of the population, whereas until the past few centuries, feeding the populace required almost all of society.

The reason Malthus was wrong, he says, is because innovation grows exponentially, while use of resources is more linear. And certainly it’s true that a person living in a large city uses far less land and far less fuel, compared to a country dweller. But population is increasing geometrically; we are approaching seven billion people on this planet, compared to two billion not that long ago—and a billion of those face serious hunger. He admits that we will have to grow 50 percent more grain and double our meat production to satisfy the growing demand. But he sees that much waste yet remains, and we can get vastly more efficient even than the 10,000-fold increase we’ve already had in some sectors.

I agree with that. And I totally agree with him that we have to move off the fossil-fuel treadmill and toward these nearly inexhaustible sources of energy. Burning fossil fuels depletes our resource capital, pollutes our air, and pushes us to the brink of catastrophic climate change (or perhaps over the brink). And we don’t need those fuels.

But where I disagree is his blind assurance that innovation—not just any innovation, but harnessing dangerous, unproven technologies such as nuclear power and GMO agriculture—will continue to solve those problems, even if we I am a fan of the Precautionary Principle, which as a society we have violated frequently, and suffered the consequences. The Precautionary Principle says we make sure we are not doing harm before engaging in an action. Yet both nuclear power and GMO foods are not only fraught with risks, but they may bring us risks that are not reversible.

Naam says that organic agriculture is substantially less efficient than industrialized, GMO-influenced “chemiculture” (a word I invented a few years ago) and that as a planet, we can’t afford to devote the greater amount of land he says they require. I say that’s an area where the very innovations he sees as solving other problems are solving this one. With the last 40 years or so of small-farm and organic innovation, organic yields and organic produce quality are up substantially, and they leave the soil in much better health than chemiculture fields, and thus ready to grow more food sooner. There are also many promising new developments that convert formerly unusable space into food production: rooftop farms, vertical small-space gardens designed for apartments, raised beds reclaiming paved areas…these are just a few of the many organic innovations of recent years.

I agree also that the exponential increases in our problem solving abilities are crucial, as the world’s developing countries and fastest growing population/economic powerhouses demand a seat at the table with the old-line industrialized countries of the United States, Germany, France, etc. China and India, especially, are putting great pressure on our resources, as they attempt to satisfy their people’s hunger for more consumer goods.

So take this well-researched but perhaps unrealistic book with a few grains of salt—but do spend some time with it. It’ll definitely open your mind to human possibility, and to our species’ incredible track record in making the world better for our fellow humans—something we don’t hear enough about.

The Clean and Green Club, September 2013

12 Sep, 2013 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 2013

This Month’s Tip

The Power of Partnerships

Ever wonder why so many post offices in the United States have a FedEx drop box outside? Or how the Postal Service, which has been the butt of jokes about deliverability issues for decades, can guarantee next-day delivery on Express Mail?

Ever think about why some cars from different companies look almost exactly alike? Or why so many Internet marketers are always promoting certain other marketers?

The answer: these businesses have organizational relationships—partnerships of some sort. These partnerships may involve operations, but can also be organized around marketing.The US Postal Service and FedEx have both marketing and operational partnerships; FedEx boxes at post offices are a marketing agreement. In the operational partnership, FedEx, with its superior logistics and tracking, transports Express and Priority mail airport-to-airport. FedEx gets to fill its planes with mail from a paying customer, and the Postal Service doesn’t have to issue a lot of refunds for failed next-day delivery. Meanwhile, both FedEx and UPS use the postal system to deliver to rural users in some remote locations—because the postal service is already going out there, six times a week, and is much more economical than making a special truck run.

In the auto industry, operational partnerships allow essentially the same car to be sold under different brands. For instance, the first car I ever bought new was a Toyota-designed 1988 Chevrolet Nova, about 98 percent identical to the Corolla of that period, but made in the US and about $2000 cheaper. Ford and Mazda, Chrysler and Mitsubishi, and other pairs have made similar arrangements.

The Internet marketers who have profited handsomely by promoting their competitors have marketing relationships (usually some sort of affiliate program). They’ve realized that when they promote each other, they become known to their competitors’ communities, and can grow far beyond what they could reach on their own. So they promote each other in their newsletters, speak at each other’s conferences, and laugh all the way to the bank. They understand that being endorsed by a trusted source is the easiest way to make a sale.

Another kind of marketing partnership—and there are many others—is one based on a strong existing brand. My own eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet, is an example. By bringing in Jay Conrad Levinson, “the Father of Guerrilla Marketing,” as a co-author, I dramatically enhanced my own credentials in ways that had been much harder with the prior self-published and unbranded version. For the rest of my life, I am a Guerrilla Marketing author—part of the best-known marketing brand in history, and able to tap into its large and well-oiled marketing machine. I’ve been able to parley this book into speaking gigs, client work, and international recognition as an expert in green marketing. Many retail businesses partner with well-known charities, for similar reasons.

Speaking of partnerships…

Friends who Want to Help

Spread Your Message to Other Languages

Yes, the section usually includes some of my own partners. Sometimes I even make an affiliate commission, as I remind you every issue.Our partner, Auerbach International, has been doing professional translations for almost 25 years, serving such “small” firms as Twitter, Home Depot and Roche. Now they can bring their expertise to you for only 8.5 cents/word. PLUS—to get you even greater exposure—they can get your translated book title registered on the major search engines of countries worldwide.

For a no-charge, no-obligation estimate, please visit https://www.auerbach-intl.com/free-quote/ Enter promo code SHS07 to get a fun gift: “Translation Bloopers from Around the Globe.”

Green Business Owners and Marketers: Bolster Your Arguments with Facts
Did you know the green building market grew by 1,700 percent while the conventional building market shrank by 17 percent? The organic food market shot up 238 percent while non-organic food grew only 33 percent. “The Big Green Opportunity,” a new report from Green America’s Green Business Network, is crammed with rich content to help entrepreneurs tap into growth areas in the green economy. Tired of arguing with people who think going green has to be expensive, difficult, and unprofitable? Download your no-cost copy at www.greenbusinessnetwork.org/green-your-business/big-green-opportunity-report.html

Connect with Shel on Social Media

Follow on TwitterFacebook Profile

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).”

Global Oneness Day, October 24
Your chance to listen to a LOT of the leading figures of New Thought: People like Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Bruce Lipton (Biology of Belief), Joan Borysenko, Neale Donald Walsh (Conversations with God), Michael Beckwith, and my humorous friend Steve Bhaerman a/k/a Swami Beyondanada. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GlobalOneness2013/

No-Charge entrepreneurial success training call series with Robert Smith
30 minutes every Friday, 12:30 pm ET/9:30 a.m. PT
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• Building a bullet proof reputation online and increase traffic
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• Software that finds buyers looking for your type of product
• 3 ways to grow your business
• Get $100,000 in national and local publicity712-432-0800, passcode 980948#

Hear & Meet Shel

Thursday, September 26, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT. “Incorporating Values in Copy: When, Why and What to Avoid,” Speaking at Marcia Yudkin’s No-Hype Copywriting Telesummit. She has a great lineup. No charge to attend the live calls, and a bonus session if you choose to purchase the recordings. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/NoHype/

Saturday, September 28, 10:15 a.m. “Do-It-Yourself Book Marketing,” Amherst Publishing Fair, 99 Main Street, Amherst, MA, amherstareapublications@gmail.com $10 includes all events and fair admission from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

CANCELLED: Magic of Water call with Patrick Durkin–because, to my utter shock, only one person signed up from this whole list. If you are interested in improving your water, please contact Patrick directly, Patrick AT TheWellnessEnterprise.com, with the subject line, Shel Sent Me.

Vibrant Business Summit, October 22-24. Details are still sketchy, but I like the theme and have agreed to present. I’ll have more information for you next month.

Global Movement Makers Summit
I’m honored to be included in a telesummit jam-packed with smart and dynamic speakers including C.J. Hayden (Get Clients Now), Noah St. John (Success Anorexia/Afformations), Cynthia Kersey (Unstoppable), Susan Harrow (Sound Bite Siren) and other equally bright lights. The summit runs from October 23, 2013 through November 12, 2013. I don’t know my slot yet, but I’m sure it will be sent to you if you sign up at https://globalmovementmakersummit.com

Planning way ahead: May 10, 2014, I will once again be presenting at CAPA University, a one-day book publishing program in Hartford. More info: gaffney AT kanineknits.com .

Another Recommended Book: Youtility

Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help not Hype, by Jay Baer (Portfolio/Penguin, 2013)

How do you market effectively in a world of ad-skipping tools, unsubscribe/unfollow options, and a public that feels assaulted by marketing? How do you get found online when search engines are being pushed out by prospects who get their recommendations either from their social media networks or through the iPhone avatar Siri these days?

Baer says you do it with marketing so useful to the recipients that they would actually pay for it if they had to. This is what he calls “youtility,” and it’s based on providing information. Lots of information.

He sees this as a natural evolution from old-style, advertising-induced “top-of-mind awareness” through “frame-of-mind awareness” based on being found when the customer is already in a buying mood, through pull tools like Yellow Pages and search engines, to “friend-of-mine awareness,” where corporate messaging has to compete with recommendations and other messages from friends and family, and your message has to be as warm and friendly and sincere as theirs.

Youtility lends itself particularly well to mobile phone apps. For example:

An in-store product locator/coupon provider that helps you locate exactly what you need as you walk the aisles; no more forced walks to the back of the store in the hope that you’ll be enticed along the way
A children’s hospital’s car seat selection app that recommends specific models based on your child’s height, weight, age, etc.
A toilet paper brand’s guide (amplified by data submitted by users) to clean vs. scuzzy public restrooms

But youtility doesn’t have to be app-based. A taxi driver hands out a paper guide to attractions and restaurants in his city. An entrepreneur creates video reviews of frozen food entrees. And a top hotel chain uses live monitoring of social media to respond to all sorts of questions about destinations near their hotels, whether or not it’s going to bring an immediate sale.

Baer says the hallmarks of good youtility tools are self-service, radical transparency (i.e., putting the customer’s immediate interest ahead of your own, rather than pushing, pushing, pushing for a sale), and comprehensiveness. And ideally, the tools become more useful because they factor in the prospect’s exact location and situation, along with external factors such as season of the year; thus, YOU must understand how and why your market likes to access information, and be there when they’re looking for what you offer. Also, include your employees; design youtility for them, and they can become your most powerful and enthusiastic evangelists.

Baer, a long time authority in the social media world, also has a lot to say about right and wrong ways to do social media, and about researching your market. One interesting idea he has is to let Google help you figure out what terms and competitors to monitor by not fully filling in your search terms; Google’s suggestions may surprise you and open up new possibilities. And he’s big on measuring both the tangible, easily measured returns, and the far less easily measured intangibles (such as how many people who got a tweet back from that hotel became favorably disposed toward that hotel brand for their next trip).

And very appropriately, he asks marketers to think globally. He notes that the Asian smartphone market is three times as large as that in the Americas.

Sometimes, though, he forgets that some of these high-touch but also high-tech approaches can go over the line. He reports, for instance, on ad serving software that allows a bus to display different ads as it approaches different locations, based on poling the devices of pedestrians nearby. While I haven’t had any illusion that we have any real privacy since about 1978, frankly, I still find that creepy.

Baer’s key message is not to worry about being amazing; the bar keeps getting pushed higher and it’s very hard to maintain your status in that rarified air. Instead, focus on being consistently useful, and the results will outperform the occasional bits of amazingness.

The Clean and Green Club, August 2013

15 Aug, 2013 No Comment

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,

August 2013

Before we get into this month’s tip—I’ve noticed that surprisingly few of my newsletter subscribers also subscribe to my blog. This month, I’m making a blatant attempt to get you to subscribe, by reprinting a slightly modified version of something that first appeared on the blog. Starting back in 2004, I’ve generally blogged up to three times a week, covering the intersections of ethics, politics, media, marketing, and sustainability.In addition to the reprinted post that is my main article this month, some entries over the past two months that you might enjoy or find useful include:

How to use copywriting skills in complaint letters (a guest post from Jack Forde, who does the wonderful Copywriters Roundtable newsletter that I’ve subscribed to for about ten years)
Links to/comments on important articles about utility pricing for purchasing solar power from users, Massachusetts meeting its solar goals years ahead of schedule, and on the impact of fracking on water safety
An analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of urban farming, as well as a tour of an urban farm in the Bronx (two separate posts)
My positive review of the new Bruce Springsteen movie
A look at some of the top green innovations in today’s world
Pushback from Europe on the US’s GMO-friendly farm policies
Challenging the data assumptions of a pro-nuclear article in Forbes

I’m a realist and I don’t expect you to drop everything and jump on my blog two or three times a week to see what I’m posting. That’s why I offer a subscription. New posts show up in your inbox, and you can either read them there or click over (if you want to follow a link, for instance). All you have to do is visit the blog page, https://greenandprofitable.com/shels-blog/ , look over at the top-right part of the gray section, just across from the headline, find “Get the Blog via Email,” and enter your e-address. If you don’t want to give your e-address (which I already have, since you subscribe to the newsletter), you’ll see “Networked Blogs: Follow This Blog” also on the right but near the very bottom of the page. That feature lets you subscribe via Facebook—just click on Follow this Blog.

Bonus tip: if you blog, set up subscriptions and become a subscriber. Then you’ll not only have a way to reach people in their inboxes, but also have an archive of all your posts.

This Month’s Tip

Avoid D-I-Y D-I-Sasters

Some things should always be left to professionals. You don’t ever want to trust me to do any carpentry for you…or even have me paint a room. And the older I get, the more I move from a D-I-Y (do-it-yourselfer) to a have-it-done.

Writing your own press release is something most people should not tackle. Here’s a comment I just made on a self-publishing discussion list in response to an advocate of D-I-Y press releases:

When I write a press release for a client, I spend significant time with the book. Sometimes I read the whole thing. Sometimes I read sections I’ve asked the author to flag, plus the beginning, end, and some random sections. Plus a synopsis, for fiction, and a thorough look at the TOC [table of contents] and Index for nonfiction. And always I read the author questionnaire I send, and the supporting materials I always request (such as press coverage of the author)…I read enough to thoroughly immerse myself in the project. And my press releases for clients have been picked up by the New York Times, among many other places.Yes, the author has far more subject knowledge than I do. But *I* have the expertise in crafting a message that the media, and the public, will find exciting. Most authors don’t, and believe me, I’ve seen their attempts.

One of the *problems* is the formulaic approach F___ recommends. Those formulas yield terrible press releases straight out of the 1970s. I don’t follow the formulas. I write press releases with the idea that the reader says “Wow! I want more of this.” Writing a standard reverse-pyramid 5Ws press release (who, what, where, when, why)–the most common formula–doesn’t accomplish that.

My favorite press release out of the probably thousands I’ve written was for a book on electronic privacy. If I followed the 5Ws formula, my release would have had a headline like “Electronic Privacy Expert Releases New Book.” How fast is the reporter going to hit delete on a big-snore headline like that? My headline was “It’s 10 O’Clock. Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is?” Following a lead about the credit history “vacationing” in databanks of big corporations, the book finally showed up in the third paragraph.

I refer to this type of press release as “the-story-behind-the-story,” and other than my own books, I don’t know a lot of books that teach how to do this… My book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, does give that context, and gives a lot of book-specific examples, including a wildly successful press release by listmate Ruth Houston that violates all the rules–proving that F___ is right that *some* authors can do their own press releases very effectively.

Some can do their own layout, too. I have discovered after laying out two books in my early publishing years, that I’m someone who should not ever lay out my own book. And most authors should not ever write their own press release.

In an earlier post in the same discussion, responding to a post that called professional publicity services a waste of money, I describe the advantages of a third alternative between do-it-yourself and pricy full-service publicists:

R___’s point is well-taken. With any expenditure, you want to be sure the results justify the expense.

And she’s right that most book publicists who are any good are frightfully expensive. Typically, you can expect to pay between $2000-$10,000 a month, with a 6-month commitment required. It takes a lot of sales to justify a $12-60K expenditure.

However, it’s not an either-or. There is a third alternative between doing it all yourself and spending $60K on a professional full-service publicist.

That alternative is hiring a la carte: use a professional writer to create a get-noticed media release that is likely to wildly outperform anything you do on your own, and then either hire one of the publicists who is willing to work a la carte and just do the distribution/follow-up, or use a wire service, or do it yourself with a list compiled by a media list specialist (such as our own Paul Krupin of Direct Contact PR).

As an example, I charge $325 to write but not distribute a news release on a book. I refer out to others for the other pieces for a few hundred more, and the total cost is under $1K. So if you did, say, six releases in a year, you’d still pay less than for one month of a high-end publicist.

Oh, and regarding the likelihood of better results: I had one client do a comparison test. He sent my release to half his media list, and one he’d written to the other half. He became a fan and a steady customer when mine got 6 times as many media responses.

One further lesson: these two posts demonstrate examples of promoting my own services on a discussion group while not making enemies—because the self-promotion is in the context of—and directly relevant to—a discussion already underway.

Reminder: this first appeared on my blog, along with a lot of other great content. You can easily subscribe—just visit the blog page, https://greenandprofitable.com/shels-blog/ and scroll down until you see “Get the Blog via Email” near the bottom. If you don’t want to give your e-address (which I already have, since you subscribe to the newsletter), you’ll see “Networked Blogs: Follow This Blog” a bit higher on the page.

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).”

Hear & Meet Shel

Saturday and Sunday, September 7-8, my friend Steve Schappert is organizing the first GreenFest in Middlebury, Connecticut. I am not currently scheduled to speak, but I think I’ll be there at least one day. If you’re attending, let me know. https://greenfest.ws/

Thursday, September 26, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT. “Incorporating Values in Copy: When, Why and What to Avoid,” Speaking at Marcia Yudkin’s No-Hype Copywriting Telesummit. She has a great lineup. No charge to attend the live calls, and a bonus session if you choose to purchase the recordings. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/NoHype/

Saturday, September 28, 10:15 a.m. “Do-It-Yourself Book Marketing,” Amherst Publishing Fair, 99 Main Street, Amherst, MA, amherstareapublications@gmail.com $10 includes all events and fair admission from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Planning way ahead: May 10, 2014, I will once again be presenting at CAPA University, a one-day book publishing program in Hartford. More info: gaffney AT kanineknits.com

Friends who Want to Help

The Magic of GOOD Water
If you’ve been to Las Vegas, you might have noticed that the water tastes and feels wretched. I drink a lot of water, ever since I had a kidney stone (BIG ouch) about ten years ago; in most of Vegas, I had to really work at getting enough fluid. But I went to a conference there recently, and I noticed that in the conference rooms, the water was among the best I’d ever experienced—but in other parts of the hotel, and in other places we went in the area, the water seemed unfit to drink. And this was especially awkward because in the hot desert climate, keeping hydrated is crucial. I drank a whole lot of water from the conference rooms and felt great.

Then I met the water magician who made it happen: Patrick Durkin. Patrick has done a whole lot of research on water, and has tremendous knowledge about how to reduce disease, rid your water of toxins, and enjoy a great tasting natural beverage. And it turned out that Patrick had arranged to treat the conference water so that we had something not just fit to drink, but fit for kings and queens.

Since our bodies are mostly water, the quality of the water we drink can have a huge impact on our health, our mindset, and of course, our taste buds.

I asked Patrick if he would share his water wisdom with you. And I asked him if it was OK for you to bring friends to hear this information. He said yes, and we set a date far enough out that you can help spread the word. Please save this date: Tuesday, September 24, 8 pm ET/5 p.m. PT. And sign up for the call at https://greenandprofitable.com/the-magic-of-good-water

Another Recommended Book: Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism

Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner (University of Nebraska Press, 2012)

What if everything we believe about alternative energy turns out to be wrong?

Green Illusions is both one of the most grim and one of the most hopeful books I’ve read in years. Be warned: the first two-thirds or so is the grim part.

Zehner knocks down one sacred cow after another, arguing that most of our most cherished energy alternatives are not any better than the fossil-fuel and nuclear status quo. He attacks:
• Photovoltaics (solar cells that turn sunlight into electricity, often shortened to PV)
• Wind
• Ethanol and other biofuels
• Hydrogen
• Electric and hybrid cars
• Large-scale hydro and geothermal

On what grounds? Most of his exhaustively researched arguments—documented in 60 pages of end notes and a 20-page index—center around what he sees as a failure to count all the costs of a particular technology. Those costs are not measured only in dollars, but also in energy consumed, raw materials mined (including rare earth metals), pollution during manufacturing, transportation, petroleum products, time and opportunities spent, maintenance/repair, and, of course, waste generation and disposal. And he says many of the most optimistic projections are based on erroneous data, and cannot scale up to be a meaningful part of the world’s energy picture.

And while I am skeptical of some of his findings, I’m not willing to write him off as any kind of crackpot. After all, I’ve been arguing for years that we have to count all the costs, and my book on the many problems with nuclear power draws heavily on our failure to do so. A future book I’ve begun working on positions this question as key to solving many of the world’s great problems.

I don’t have the science background to really evaluate his claims or the counterclaims by proponents of alternate technology. But I’d say that certainly we ought to be looking at these issues. We ought to make sure that our investments in alternative energy are appropriate, provide a net reduction in use of fossil and nuclear, clean our environment, and lower our carbon footprint. I believe, despite reading this book, that alternate technologies are a big part of the solution, and will continue to improve. But proponents must anchor this belief in fact.

With a lens focused primarily on the United States, Zehner argues that many of these technologies are nothing more than boondoggles: wildly overpriced and poorly performing “solutions,” often government-subsidized, that actually consume more energy than they generate, once all the factors during their lifecycle are figured in.

He also argues—and this I agree with—that until we get out of the headspace of “productivism” and consumerism, the idea that we can simply generate, purchase, use, and throw away infinite amounts of stuff—we will never solve our energy problems.

He also worries that adding these many alternative technologies won’t actually reduce the demand for conventional fuels, because we are simply adding new capacity rather than replacing existing polluting and warming ones. And hybrid cars promote sprawl, which in turn increases energy demand substantially.

Now, for the hopeful part. Zehner sees many areas where we can change our mindset, slash energy use and carbon footprint, and actually make progress. For starters, he notes that even very developed parts of the world, such as Germany and
Scandinavia, use far less energy per capita than the United States does. Bringing US energy consumption down to European levels would not even interfere in any meaningful way with typical American lifestyles, and could be done quickly and easily with existing technology.

A lot of this could be accomplished with policy and regulation shifts. Right now, much US policy creates incentives for waste, overconsumption, and sprawl. He suggests a number of policy initiatives that would encourage conservation, sustainable development, and reuse.

He does identify some technologies, including smart electric grids, solar thermal or solar light concentration, and greater efficiency, that do in fact take us in a deeply positive direction. My experience as a homeowner bears this out. Our solar hot water system, installed in 2001 (in cloudy, cold Massachusetts) has performed very well. Our little 1kw PV system has been a disappointment. But some of my neighbors with large PV arrays claim significantly better results. I would think that in places like Arizona and New Mexico, solar PV’s performance ratios would be substantially better.

The Clean and Green Club, July 2013

12 Jul, 2013 No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tips,

July 2013

This Month’s Tip

A Company Brave Enough to Ask, “Do You Really Need Our Stuff?”

Patagonia, the outdoor recreation supply company founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1973, has been an environmental hero company pretty much since its founding. In fact, Chouinard’s earlier company was among the first to make reusable metal supplies for mountain climbers, starting with a home blacksmithing operation in 1957 when he realized that permanent pitons hammered into the rocks were environmentally awful—and he cites among his influences such famous environmental writers as John Muir and Thoreau.

Every interaction with the company is likely to rub into some area where it demonstrates leadership. Patagonia has worked tirelessly and consistently to green its supply chain, its manufacturing processes, and the materials of its products. The environmental section of its website stretches across 11 different pages under an umbrella called “Common Threads.”

It was one of the first companies, perhaps the first, to offer to take back any product at the end of its useful life, to rehabilitate, remanufacture, or use as raw materials to make something else. You can see this commitment at https://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?assetid=5175, and again at https://www.patagonia.com/us/common-threads/recycle:

“In 2005 we began taking back worn out Patagonia clothing for recycling. Today, you can return any Patagonia product to us and we will reuse it, recycle it into new fabric or make it into a new product.”

56.6 tons of used gear has been recycled since this program started.

But even for such a thought-leader company, I am amazed that it actually urges its customers NOT to buy without thinking carefully about whether you really must have it. At https://www.patagonia.com/us/common-threads/reduce, you’ll find this statement:

“As a consumer, the biggest thing you can do is to not buy what you don’t really need.”

And this attitude extends to external outreach, too. At https://www.patagonia.com/email/11/112811.html, you can see the famous 2011 ad entitled “Don’t Buy This Jacket.”

Wow! Most companies would simply never do anything like that.

You can even find a link on their site to the trailer for the anti-materialism video classic, “The Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard.

Patagonia is the only company I’m aware of that tells consumers to limit consumption of its product, other than those that are legally required to do so (e.g., liquor and tobacco companies).

If you know of any others, please let me know, and I’ll list them (and credit you next month.

Friends who Want to Help

The Magic of GOOD Water
If you’ve been to Las Vegas, you might have noticed that the water tastes and feels wretched. I drink a lot of water, ever since I had a kidney stone (BIG ouch) about ten years ago; in most of Vegas, I had to really work at getting enough fluid. But I went to a conference there recently, and I noticed that in the conference rooms, the water was among the best I’d ever experienced—but in other parts of the hotel, and in other places we went in the area, the water seemed unfit to drink. And this was especially awkward because in the hot desert climate, keeping hydrated is crucial. I drank a whole lot of water from the conference rooms and felt great.

Then I met the water magician who made it happen: Patrick Durkin. Patrick has done a whole lot of research on water, and has tremendous knowledge about how to reduce disease, rid your water of toxins, and enjoy a great tasting natural beverage. And it turned out that Patrick had arranged to treat the conference water so that we had something not just fit to drink, but fit for kings and queens.

Since our bodies are mostly water, the quality of the water we drink can have a huge impact on our health, our mindset, and of course, our taste buds.

I asked Patrick if he would share his water wisdom with you. And I asked him if it was OK for you to bring friends to hear this information. He said yes, and we set a date far enough out that you can help spread the word. Please save this date: Tuesday, September 24, 8 pm ET/5 p.m. PT.

And sign up for the call at https://greenandprofitable.com/the-magic-of-good-water (page should be ready by the time the newsletter publishes—if it’s not, just drop me an email: shel AT greenandprofitable.com, subject: water call signup).

Connect with Shel on Social Media

27,000 Times the Radiation Limit–In Your Water

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).”

Your Writing Can Have Influence Even Beyond the English-Speaking World
Have you written a book or e-book in English? Did you know that for a small additional investment, you can spread your name and reputation internationally? How? By translating your books into any of 80 world languages.

Our partner, Auerbach International, has been doing professional translations for almost 25 years, serving such “small” firms as Twitter, Home Depot and Roche. Now they can bring their expertise to you for only 8.5 cents/word. PLUS—to get you even greater exposure—they can get your translated book title registered on the major search engines of countries worldwide.

For a no-charge, no-obligation estimate, please visit https://www.auerbach-intl.com/free-quote/ Enter promo code SHS07 to get a fun gift: “Translation Bloopers from Around the Globe.”

Shout-Out: Congratulations to the Most Ethical Business Owner I Know
Going back at least to February, 2006, I’ve mentioned Dean Cycon and his coffee company, Dean’s Beans of Orange, Massachusetts, several times in this newsletter, on my blog, and on several of my websites.

Dean is proof that a business can be green, and ethical, and extremely successful. And I recently found out that Dean was awarded the very prestigious Oslo Business for Peace Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” If you’d like to read my congratulatory blog, with a terrific picture of Dean making music with a group of villagers in Rwanda, and links, please visit https://greenandprofitable.com/most-ethical-business-owner-i-know-wins-the-alternative-nobel/

You can subscribe to my blog at no cost; just visit any blog page and scroll down until you see “Get the Blog via Email” near the bottom. If you don’t want to give your e-address, you’ll see “Networked Blogs: Follow This Blog” a bit higher on the page. I post a lot of cool stuff there—here are three recent samples:

(https://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GreenAndProfitable/~3/hkUPvMM8ZdQ/)

Idiot Politician of the Year? (He has introduced a law that would ban any state purchase of sustainable goods or services).(https://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GreenAndProfitable/~3/4XJ2C4vB0GE/)

A Commercial Hydroponic Farm–On a Bronx Rooftop!

(https://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GreenAndProfitable/~3/YJuMj4piJjw/)

Hear & Meet Shel

Replay of my “Copywriting for the Green Marketplace” interview with Dalya Massachi https://writingtomakeadifference.com/community/writing-wednesdays-archive

Tuesday, July 23, 2p.m. ET/11a.m. PT: Ruth Hegarty interviews me on green profitability strategies as part of her Seer Cafe thought-leader series: https://kindredhealing.com/seer-cafes-experts-interview-series-for-visionary-leaders/

Thursday, July 25, 9 pm ET/6 pm PT: Monica Brinkman interviews me on It Matters Radio. Listen live at https://www.blogtalkradio.com/itmatters/2013/07/26/chris-adams-magic-music-shel-horowitz-green-marketer
or by phone at 213-769-0952 (my segment will start at 6:30). The replay will be available later at the same link.

Thursday, September 26, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT. “Incorporating Values in Copy: When, Why and What to Avoid,” Speaking at Marcia Yudkin’s No-Hype Copywriting Telesummit. She has a great lineup. No charge to attend the live calls, and a bonus session if you choose to purchase the recordings. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/NoHype/

Saturday, September 28, 10:15 a.m. “Do-It-Yourself Book Marketing,” Amherst Publishing Fair, 99 Main Street, Amherst, MA, amherstareapublications@gmail.com $10 includes all events and fair admission from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Planning way ahead: May 10, 2014, I will once again be presenting at CAPA University, a one-day book publishing program in Hartford. More info: gaffney AT kanineknits.com

Another Recommended Book: How to Re-Imagine the World

How to Re-Imagine the World: A Pocket Guide for Practical Visionaries, by Anthony Weston (New Society Publishers, 2007)

This little book has been hiding on my shelf for a number of years. As I begin to conceive my own big-picture change-the-world book, I found it when I was looking for a book I might review.

It’s only 142 4×7-inch pages (most business books are 6×9). But don’t let the small size fool you. It’s a powerhouse of great ideas. Some of the material refers quite specifically to the policies of the George W. Bush administration. But as the news pages are exploding with stories about the spying scandal, the IRS scandal, and more, critiques of the Bush years still seem alarmingly relevant.

Weston begins by noting the accomplishments of “creative mutiny” movements, such as the US Civil Rights movement. Visioning a better world is a key step in achieving that world. Thus, the archetypal moment in that movement was a man sharing a dream in front of a quarter of a million people.

But the other part of the subtitle is “practical.” Wesson claims that harnessing our vision can create a better society in the here and now—one that’s easier to achieve because of our deep visionary mindset. And there are ways of depolarizing those visions so that Left and Right can find common ground. For instance, he says, a full-scale program to green the United States (the sort of thing I’ve been advocating for years) could create 3 million jobs, many of them high-skill and high-wage. Don’t be afraid to dream big, as Martin Luther King, Jr. did 50 years ago, he says. Ideas can stretch.

And they can shrink. Tiny individual changes can add up to big cultural shifts. Our actions on the micro level actually make a difference in the larger world. I’ve personally experienced this, over and over again. It’s one of the reasons why I create tools to motivate individual change, such as my Painless Green ebook with 111 mostly easy and low-cost/no-cost tips to go green.

At the same time, we need to make space for the big shifts that start as big shifts. Often, this involves rethinking how we do a task from the ground up. Weston is not afraid to tackle big issues with a new mind set: How would the solid-waste crisis improve if we switched many products to edible packaging, or demanded (as much of Europe does) that manufacturers take back all the packaging? What if instead of creating more efficient cars, we reimagined the whole reasons and ways we transport people? What if instead of building permanent homes in coastal danger zones, we made them moveable, and when a storm threatened, people AND their homes were evacuated?

Humans are a capable, resilient, innovative species. When we set our inner compass on a path of change, we are able to make great changes—to exceed expectations. And we’re able to plan for calamities such as natural disasters before they happen, and thus respond better when they do.

One of his “crazy” ideas that I really like is to create “delightism”—an antithesis of terrorism. Secret armies spreading joy in the world by stealth. I think that’s pretty cool. He takes the metaphor further, advocating that we preemptively spread peace—using South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission as one possible model.

Weston also questions today’s realities with an activist’s eye. How, he asks, did we ever accept that dumping pollutants or overharvesting resources are rights (he calls this “resourcism”?

You might notice that Weston is really good at reframing. Framing is something the enemies of positive change have been much better about than we who work to shape a better world. Let’s flip it around. In other words, we can co-opt the language of the naysayers. When “attacks on our soil” are used to justify police-state measures, use that phrase to discuss the literal attack on our soil by “chemiculture” (a word I invented, as far as I know) and GMO seed stock. “Nature Deficit Disorder” is Weston’s term for those who have never been exposed to the natural world and therefore have never learned to value it.

And, he says, don’t forget to have fun. Demonstrations can become festivals (as many have. The arts remind us that a better world is achievable. The paradise that we dream about is within our ability to create.

The Clean and Green Club, June 2013

13 Jun, 2013 2 Comments

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tips,

June 2013

Introducing “The Making Green Sexy Club”

“Shel Horowitz…is both an inspiring and an articulate spokesman on the topic of the environment…His passion and fire make me highly recommend him…He is blessed with that perfect combination of a sense of humor, an encompassing knowledge of his topic, and the courage to say what must be said.”
—Jay Conrad Levinson, father of Guerrilla Marketing, and co-author with me of the award-winning and best-selling book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

Jay, with more than 60 books to his credit, creator of the best-known marketing brand in history, chose to work with me because he recognized that I had the expertise he lacked in the green world, as well as a very solid knowledge of marketing.

I’ve written two books on green and ethical marketing, have been in both the green world and the marketing world for more than 40 years, have written a monthly column on green profitability since 2010, have done a monthly newsletter since 1997, and have covered green business issues in my blog since 2004. And as you know from reading the Hear and Meet column, I speak frequently on the topic, nationally and internationally.

Could you benefit from my in-depth knowledge about green business profitability and green marketing? Here’s your chance:

I’m launching a six-month mentorship program called “The Making Green Sexy Club.” It includes:

30-minute private “kickstart” consultation, just for you, about your particular green business concerns
1-hour group coaching call every month—bring your challenges
Private and group calls recorded for you
Monthly Green And Profitable column in your inbox (normally a paid subscription)
Ebook of column archives since 2010
Newsletter bonuses: 7 tips to Gain Marketing Traction; 7 weeks to Greener Business
Open access to newsletter archives since 1997

With a total value of $4199.95, this is going to roll out at $49.95 per month. But because you subscribe to my newsletter, and because you’ll be among the first to join, you get it for half price; your cost will only be $24.95 per month. In other words, the entire cost of your six-month membership will be just $149.70—and that’s less than you’d pay for a single hour of my consulting. Plus, as a charter member, you’ll have input into when the group calls take place.

The program will start once ten people have committed to it. That’s what I consider a “critical mass” to provide the “juice” that will provide excitement and synergy on the group calls. And I won’t accept your payment until the program launches.

Want to join (or simply to know more)? Send me an email at shel AT greenandprofitable.com (don’t forget to close up the spaces and change the word to the @ sign—I have to do it this way so the address doesn’t get spam-bombed), with the subject: Making Green S Club (in case the full four-letter S word with the x as third letter triggers spamfiltering).

This Month’s Tip

Business Cards, Part 3: Actual Examples

In this third and final column on business cards, you’ll get to see actual examples of cards I’ve used in my own business, and watch me analyze their different components and purposes. Be sure you have image display turned on, or visit the copy posted on the web to see the examples.

Here are four that I still give out—all of which happen to be template designs from web-based printing services, and all of which required tweaking of the field names so that I could emphasize the information *I* wanted to highlight, rather than my name or the company name:

In all four, the dominant line is not my name or company, but how the reader can benefit from working with my company (in fact, my company name—Accurate Writing & More—and postal address don’t even appear on any of these four cards):

Green + Ethics = Success
Be Green AND Profitable
Want Book Success?
SUCCEED Through Ethical/Green Business Principles

It is not a coincidence that all four mention success or profit.

Three of these are pretty similar regarding content and message, but quite different in their look and feel. Visually, my favorite is the blue one in the upper left, with the wind turbine motif. It’s bright, high-contrast, and uses bold black type that’s easy to see against the background. As I refined my messaging and gained more credentials in the green marketing world, though, I wanted to redo the card. When I shifted from the wind turbine card to the green earth image below it, I really wanted to emphasize the message that green is profitable, and the website, GreenAndProfitable.com. I also changed the body-copy tagline from “Better enviro-footprint, less cost, more profit” to the much simpler, though less specific, “Affordable, Effective Strategies”—in part, because I already cover profitability now in the headline. In retrospect, I’d look for something more specific again, but less clunky than what I had on the blue card.

I added the new credentials as a syndicated columnist and international speaker (when I did the wind turbine cards, I had only spoken in my own country). And instead of just saying “primary author, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green,” I could now legitimately claim “Best-selling lead author, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green”

I would have liked to use the wind turbine template again, with its attractive and eye-catching look, even though I’m more aware now of some of the major issues with industrial wind. However, the company I’d used to print those cards had gone out of business. I really loved the green-earth image for my message, even though I recognized that the card was lower contrast and harder to read. And at the time I did them, I hadn’t seen that design anywhere. Since then, though, I’ve found far too many people using the same template, so I won’t use it again

I still give the wind turbine card out occasionally to people who I think will respond better to a message with a strong ethical component. And I’ll sometimes use the spruce trees version if I think someone is interested in both the green marketing and the publishing consulting/book shepherding sides of my business—though actually, I’m much more likely to hand them one of the green-earth and one of the green stripe. I also use both the wind turbine and the spruce trees designs when entering drawings, because I think their brighter colors and bolder type make them more likely to be chosen in a jar full of cards, and I like to win stuff. Mostly, though, I use the green ones, especially since I’m nearly out of both the blue designs.

The white card with the green stripe is for a different audience: authors and publishers in need of marketing or publishing consulting. When I go to a book-industry event, I bring lots of these—but I find I meet a lot of authors and would-be authors, so I always have a few with me, even if I’m going to a green consumer event.

Note: I’m already thinking about my next business card design. I want it to be as bold as the windmills, as obviously eco-friendly as the green-earth card, and contain copy that positions me as a world thought leader in green marketing who does speaking, writing, and consulting. I’ll probably wait several months to do that card, because I’m still working out the product mix and websites to support them. And I’ll probably spring for a more eye-catching custom design that resonates with the messages of green profitability and making green sexy, not a packaged template.

This picture was my last “mini-brochure” business card, done up around 2000. I didn’t use a template; I designed it myself in a word processor, and it matched the look and feel of a 16-page brochure I was using at that time. As you can see, the folded, two-sided format gave me a LOT of room. I attempted a one-size-fits-all model that I could use for pretty much any purpose. The problem is, it comes across as jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. There’s nothing for anyone to focus on.

It’s also the last card I ever did with a postal address, and the last that was aimed primarily at a local audience. (All of the contact info other than my phone number is obsolete on that card, though, so please don’t try to use that P.O. box, e-mail or fax number.) By the time I did my next batch of cards—and there were at least three designs in between the two-sided one and the four in the top photo—Internet access was universal enough that I felt I no longer needed a postal contact. If people want to mail me something, they can find my address on the Web, and I don’t need to waste precious space on the card. Obviously, for a walk-in business, the street address would be a high priority.

Things I did well on that card: the slogan, “Ideas into words…words onto paper,” which encapsulated most of what I did at that time…the mention of an award that means something in my local area…and the very quick summary of who we could help and how long we’d been doing it (both of them on the rear flap, shown upside down at the upper left).

I hope this three-part series will be very helpful when you do your next batch of business cards.

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).”

Hear & Meet Shel

“Copywriting for the Green Marketplace.” Dalya Massachi, author of Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact, interviews me Wednesday, July 10, 3 p.m. ET/noon PT. 712-432-3900; Conference ID: 315434.

My July talk at SolarFest was cancelled. It’s still a great festival, if you’re near Vermont on July 13-14.

July 23, 2p.m. ET/11a.m. PT: Ruth Hegarty interviews me on green profitability strategies as part of her : https://theseercafe.com

“Incorporating Values in Copy: When, Why and What to Avoid,” Speaking at Marcia Yudkin’s No-Hype Copywriting Telesummit, Thursday, September 26, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT. She has a great lineup. No charge to attend the live calls, and a bonus session if you choose to purchase the recordings. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/NoHype/

Talk on “Do-It-Yourself Book Marketing,” Amherst Publishing Fair, Saturday, September 28, Masonic Hall, 99 Main Street, Amherst, MA: speaking at 10 a.m., and exhibiting until 2 p.m. $10.00 covers all workshops and the exhibit area.

Just booked my first talk for 2014: I think it’s my fourth time speaking at CAPA University in Hartford, CT, May 10, 2014. Usually I’ve done a talk on book marketing. This time, it’s on “Turning Your Self-Published Book Into Something a Mainstream Publisher Wants.”

—> Remember: You can get a very nice commission if you get me a paid speaking gig.

Letter to the Editor

I am glad to see another professional offering advice about the importance of business cards. I have been assisting firms for 24 years and still see, over and over, the same problems with this basic but key piece of information–our most important marketing and advertising tool.

I would add: make sure the paper and inks used are of good quality. Avoid those with a terrible smell of gasoline that seems like it will last 1000 years.

Adriana Michael – Founder and Editor in Chief
OrganicWellnessNews.com

Another Recommended Book: Working for Good

Working for Good, by Jeff Klein (Sounds True, 2009)

Not too many US business books are full of Buddhist parables, yogic breathing exercises, and quotes from the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, and Albert Einstein. This one is—though it also quotes more typical business leaders, among them Whole Foods founder John Mackey and master copywriter Robert Collier.

As one of the formative figures in the Conscious Capitalism movement, Klein doesn’t say so explicitly, but his message is clear: to transform the corporate culture, we must transform ourselves.

Klein lists Howard Gardner’s nine different types of intelligences involving all the senses as he examines the concept of Working for Good: the idea—very familiar to you as a reader of my newsletter—that business can be a lever for doing good in the world. His goal is to help each reader find our “big why”: our purpose.

There’s a story told (not in Klein’s book) about Gandhi: a mom asked him to tell her son that eating sugar was a bad idea. He sent her away and told her to come back a month later. When she returned, he told the child to give up sugar. When the happy but perplexed mother asked why she had to return, he replied, “I had not yet given up eating sugar when you came the first time.” Like Gandhi, Klein declares that we must be in total integrity as human beings in order to make that warrior’s journey through the business world and create the impact we want to have on the big issues of our time. Many of the exercises and stories are aimed at helping his readers achieve that integrity.

And many are aimed at helping us see beyond our own worldview, to reach understanding of the Sartre/Buber Other. The potential for connection, Klein says exists in every interaction–especially the bumpy ones. One very helpful and easily implemented exercise he proposes is to hear the other person’s backstory, the context of every statement. This is a great way to defuse tension, listen deeply, and arrive at a resolution that addresses everyone’s needs. Not coincidentally, solutions arrived by this kind of group consensus tend to be smoothly implemented, more lasting, and ultimately transformative; they arise out of Robert Greenleaf’s concept of servant leadership rather than dictatorship.

Klein suggests four other key principles (I’m quoting them exactly):

Not compromising quality for cost
Not jeopardizing friendships through our business decisions
Resolving conflicts through open dialogue, facilitated if necessary
Making major business decisions with consideration for the implications for people, planet, and profit

To make the theories more concrete, Klein uses a series of avatars that show different personality traits, and follows one in particular as she plans and facilitates a series of very collaborative meetings, using various consciousness tools to arrive at a strong, consensus-driven outcome. While this makes a lot of sense in theory, as a veteran of many meetings that were facilitated with those kinds of tools, I’d suggest that his happy outcome is a bit too rose-colored. Even in the most conscious communities, run by the most skilled facilitators, meetings sometimes get ugly. However, it is certainly true that the chances of a truly successful collaboration are far greater using this model, and I’ve seen it work beautifully—even to the point of seeing consensus arise rapidly and repeatedly in a group of over 700 people who had been arrested together, in a meeting that used a hub-and-spoke communication model. This was a key to the success of citizen safe energy movements in the 1970s and the Occupy movement in our own time—and can easily be applied to business. And now, Klein points out, new collaboration tools can be converted out of new technology tools, even including Facebook.

For Klein, his key teachings are that our individual actions matter…that when we discover our purpose through greater practice of awareness, and can listen and act with authenticity, we can achieve Working for Good. For me, the most important lessons are in two ideas at the very end of the book:
We value what we count—so count what you value
Working for Good is not about being a martyr; it comes from a place of joy.

The Clean & Green Club, May 2013

15 May, 2013 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 Tips,

May 2013

TIME-SENSITIVE: Did You Hear the Call with Media Trainer Jess Todtfeld?

Listen to the replay at https://www.PRsecretWeapon.com/MediaAndPublicityAudio-mp3.mp3 . There is a bit of a background hiss (it gets better after a few seconds), but you’ll love the information. And pick up the slides at https://prsecretweapon.com/BonusWithExamples.pdf . No registration required.

Jess is also making a special offer to my readers on his full-scale media placement training program full of great audios and videos–but only for the next 48 hours–which includes (a few among many):

The 24 *most essential* elements of effective PR emails
12 crucial elements if you want your PR pitches to work
Analysis of real-life pitches: what worked, what didn’t
* How to turn interviews into sales
AND Jess’s own Rolodex of 7000 media contacts, including senior producers (this alone would be quite a bargain comparing to buying your own media database without all the teaching)

Pick yours up by Friday, May 17, 11:59 p.m. at Click this link to see the PR Secret Weapons Program

If you include coupon code “SHEL” during the next 48 hours, you can get Jess’ program for 50% off the full price.

This Month’s Tip

Business Cards, Part 2: What Your Card Says About You

As promised last month: general observations about the role of business cards.

Before the 1980s, business cards pretty much all followed the same format: Your name, title, company, work address and phone, all done in a good-looking serif font, most of it in pretty small type, printed in black ink using raised-letter engraving in a run of 500 to several thousand. One business card looked like another, pretty much.

A few pioneers began to put a marketing message on their cards, rather than pure contact information.

Then came the desktop publishing revolution, which allowed short-run production. Not too far behind were innovations that allowed much greater use of color, creative fonts and design, graphic elements, and even photos—at less cost than the old plain black ones. And finally, colored stocks and standard design templates opened up a world of possibilities for marketing-oriented business cards.

So where does that leave you as you try to figure out what kinds of cards to do, among thousands of choices? Confused, in all likelihood.

Here’s my attempt to shine a flashlight (a nice, green, energy efficient LED flashlight—or torch, as the Brits call it) through the maze.

The first things to figure out are what kind of image you’re striving for, what message you want to be remembered for, and what action you’d like the recipient to take.

For example, if you’re a hard-sell kind of person, you might barely have any contact information, choosing instead to have screaming red and blue colors urging readers to visit your website to get your free consultation.

If you’re more aligned with a softer-sell, information-driven model, you could use quieter font and color choices to offer some kind of freebie report or white paper or comparison chart.

And if you run an activist group focused on passing a specific legislation, you may want to do up just enough cards for a very short-term action push, focused on swamping particular elected officials with mail about that exact issue.

Second, there are several format considerations. Will you print one side of the card, or both? Will you include a picture? If so, is it a head shot of you, an action shot of you, or a picture of your product or service being used? Will you do double-sized cards that fold in the middle? Are there advantages in your particular market to using nonstandard sizes or shapes that outweigh the added difficulty for your recipients in filing the card? Do you use a template or create a design from scratch? Do you need to have visual continuity for different employees’ cards from different departments or even different countries?

Each of these factors (as examples among many) applies differently *in different markets.* Your individual situation will help you determine the right choices.

Let’s look at some specific examples, starting with headshot photos.

When I see a business card with a headshot, I usually assume it belongs to either a real estate agent or a car salesperson. I have never felt the need to include a photo on any of the couple of dozen card designs I’ve used over the years—BUT I’ve heard from other people that they love getting cards with photos, because it helps them associate the card with the person, and with the event where they met. One person even commented that she scans photo business cards into a database, and if she’s looking through her contacts, the picture is a nice visual reminder.

Two-sided and double-size cards obviously give you a lot more room, and are well suited to people with a wide range of products or services. I used to use a lot of those types of cards. But about ten years ago, I shifted toward doing smaller, more tightly targeted cards. I decided, for instance, that the people who would be interested in my publishing consulting services—going on the journey from unpublished writer to well-published author—really didn’t want to read about marketing services for green businesses.

Remember, too, that you can use different cards for different audiences and purposes. Next month, I’ll share five cards I’ve used in my own business; four of them are cards I still give out, and one of them is a laundry-list card with a huge amount of information that I stopped using about ten years ago.

Friends who Want to Help

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).”

Spring of Sustainability Returns—Through June 14:
Last year, I was privileged to speak at the Shift Network’s Spring of Sustainability teleseminar series–which I would rate the best such series I’ve ever listened to. In fact, I keep the replay window from last year up on my web browser, and I’m listening to one of those calls as I write this.

This year’s series includes Joanna Macy, Francis Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet), Vicki Robin (Your Money or Your Life), John Trudell (who impressed me greatly when I head him speak more than 30 years ago), Bill McKibben (350.org), Randy Hayes (Rainforest Action), and many more. More than 30 leading sustainability pioneers will be presenting at this online series, and we’re proud to be co-sponsors of this world-changing event. You can listen at no charge to the live calls, and to the replays for about two days after each call. You can also get complete unlimited access to all the calls at a very reasonable cost, so that—as I’m doing today—you can still listen even a year later.

Get all the details and sign up at zero cost at https://shelhorowitz.com/go/SOS2013/

Take your Visionary Business to the Next Level with Ryan Eliason
Series of four no-cost webinars:

Webinar #1: Ten Vital Steps to Explode Your Positive Impact
How to make a great living by changing the world.

Webinar #2: The 11 Most Damaging Business and Marketing Myths
Avoid years of struggle, save 10-100K, and arrive at your ultimate destination 2-5 years ahead of schedule.

Webinar #3 – The Six Essential Pillars of Mastery
Learn to catalyze massive transformation through collaboration, communication, movement building, enrollment, and effective technology use.

Webinar #4 – Visionary Business Mastery
The proven 12-module system that leads to a “Black Belt” in visionary entrepreneurship.
https://shelhorowitz.com/go/Ryan/

$747 in Bonuses with David Newman’s New Marketing Book
Every time I read an article by David Newman, I am amazed at how similarly we think about marketing. So I’m happy to tell you about his book, Do It! Marketing: 77 Instant Action Ideas to Boost Sales, Maximize Profits, and Crush Your Competition.

If you pre-order the book today, you will immediately get over $747 in business-building bonuses, including an e-copy of my own award-winning Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. And you’ll be among the first to take delivery of the book the moment it is released—on or about June 5. He sent me a PDF and I found much wisdom.

To check out the pre-order bonuses you’ll get immediately when you buy today, visit:
https://doitmarketing.com/book-bonus

Hear & Meet Shel

I’ll be listening, learning and networking at CEOSpace in Nevada, May 21-26. And I also expect to be at Book Expo America, May 30-June 1, NYC (Note date change). I’ve gone every year since 1997. If you’re going to any of these events, contact me ahead of time and maybe we can meet.

I’m doing the Making Green Sexy talk again at SolarFest’s new Business2Business Day, Friday, July 12, Tinmouth, Vermont. This will be my third time speaking at this lovely (and completely solar powered) music and technology festival. Think of it as a much tinier, Vermont-scale version of South x Southwest. www.solarfest.org

Another Recommended Book
Raising Eyebrows: A Failed Entrepreneur Finally Gets It Right

Raising Eyebrows: A Failed Entrepreneur Finally Gets it Right, by Dal LaMagna (Wiley, 2010)

After the dense academics of Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded, which I reviewed last month, this month’s pick is a lot lighter.

Dal LaMagna’s memoir recounts a long string of business failures before founding the very successful, socially conscious firm Tweezerman, starting by losing all the money he had borrowed on a bad stock tip, his first day as a Harvard Business School student and continuing through such ahead-of-his time ideas as a computer dating service using a school mainframe computer (well before the introduction of personal computers) and a drive-in-movie disco scheme that drowned in a summer of torrential rain.

It’s fun, entertaining, full of encounters with movers and shakers and even a too-strange-to-make-this-up car chase, and demonstrates that even a very screwed up entrepreneurship addict can eventually get it right, even if inspiration takes the form of getting stuck in the tush with a whole bunch of wood splinters while enjoying some non-g-rated “entertainment” on a worn-out wooden deck. And it has a lot to say about dealing with failure, dealing with success and growth, managing expectations, coping with rip-off artists, negotiating international businesses deals…all while staying honest and true to your values (yes, he told Harvard Business School that he’d gambled away his student loan). Plus some very good marketing advice from a master promoter.

There’s also the quixotic adventure of trying to change the world, running a close miss for a seat in Congress on the slogan, “LaMagna—rhymes with lasagna,” and then even campaigning for President of the United States on a stop-the-Iraq-war plank.

The Clean & Green Club, April 2013

15 Apr, 2013 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,

April 2013

Business Cards, Part 1

About this Issue

You’ll want to pay close attention to the Friends who Want to Help section this month–some VERY special trainings there, exclusively for my community. And especially if you’re in Western Massachusetts, please see the first entry in the Hear and Meet Shel section.

I’m keeping the actual tip short, both because of all the announcements and offers, and also because I went pretty long on the book review. It’s a pretty amazing book; I could have said a lot more than I did about it, in fact.

This Month’s Tip

Business Cards, Part 1: Dos and Don’ts

Do:

Include at least a phone number, e-mail, website, and one way to connect on social media
If not obvious from the name of your company, say something about what you do: how you can help your prospects
Use big enough type that people over 40 can read it
Have different cards for different purposes, if you do more than one set of things

Don’t:

Laminate both sides or fill up every square millimeter—people need a place to take NOTES on your card
Thrust your card at people without a clear sense that they want it
Make your card difficult to read or computer-scan
Use an old-style format that makes it look like you haven’t updated anything about your business since 1954
Expect people to keep received cards in any reasonably retrievable system
Forget to include something to make you stand out
Use the same template pattern that you’ve seen on more than five other people’s cards
Order more than you can use in 6 to 12 months—this is a document that you may need to revise often!

The series will continue with some general observations about business cards, and conclude with a bunch of visual examples.

Friends who Want to Help

Wednesday, May 1, 8 pm ET/5 pm PT—new LIVE call with Marilyn Jenett: “The Universe is Your Marketing Department”

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).”

I’m putting this first and not in chronological order because I really want you to receive the benefit of this teaching.

Last month, I had promised you an encore recording of one of prosperity teacher Marilyn Jenett’s most popular calls. But Marilyn made room in her busy schedule to do something even better for you and much more exciting for me.

She’s going to do a new LIVE teaching call for you, with much more of a business focus. I will be interviewing her about applying her unique prosperity principles in a business context, Wednesday, May 1, 8 pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific.

Using these prosperity laws, Marilyn overcame her own “lack” consciousness to build a successful business from nothing. Her tiny one-woman company attracted the world’s top corporations, including Campbell’s Soup and Michelin, among others. And she built it without spending a penny in advertising. Now she’ll teach you how to make “the Universe your marketing department.”

This call costs you nothing and could change your life.

I’ll also share many of the ways applying Marilyn’s lessons have changed mine, including one that allowed me to deposit a check for $221,000 just last week. Marilyn likes to call herself “the common person’s prosperity teacher.” But there’s certainly nothing common about the results her students get.

I’ll give you more details in a special mailing shortly before the call. But meanwhile, mark that date on your calendar, and register for the call.
Register at https://www.greenandprofitable.com/the-universe-on-speed-dial

This Thursday, April 18, 1 pm ET/10 am PT. I’ll be interviewing legendary media trainer, best-selling author, and former TV producer Jess Todtfeld—holder of the Guinness World Record for most interviews in 24 hours (112 of them). If you’d like to get on TV and radio more often, to perform better on microphone and camera, and to convert more viewers to buyers, be on this call.

During this no charge high octane call, you will learn exactly how to break through the noise and get noticed by the media, from crafting a pitch email to coming up with compelling story ideas, we’ll show you what the media wants and how you could provide it. We’ll also remove all fear of the unknown by giving you the media training techniques to look, sound, and feel like a media expert.

Also, note that this call is unscripted—just as many interviews you do will be unscripted. Jess will model how to answer questions you might not be expecting, to keep your cool under pressure. We’re going to have a dialogue as the moment moves me to ask questions, and paying attention to how Jess handles this will be invaluable for you.

Here’s some of what Jess will cover—be ready to take notes:
-What gets producers and reporters to open pitch emails
-How to look, sound, and feel media ready
-How to use sound bites in your pitches (and interviews)
-How to focus in your media messages
-How to convert interviews into web traffic (and sales.)

Register at https://prsecretweapon.com

As founder, President, and Lead Media Trainer for Success In Media, Inc., Jess helps CEOs, business executives, spokespeople, public relations reps, experts, and authors, to not just do a better job when working with the media … but to CONTROL THE MEDIA. On a daily basis, Jess helps people to propel their business forward by helping them to make the media work FOR them instead of against them.

Book People in/Near New England: A Conference for You
The 4th Annual Publishing Conference sponsored by Independent Publishers of New England (IPNE) will be held April 19-21, 2013 at Southbridge (MA) Conference Center. Sessions in niche-publishing, marketing, distribution, digital and print publishing and specially-targeted sessions for writer-publishers will be led by industry experts. Network with other professionals and exhibitors. More information at https://www.ipne.org.

Spring of Sustainability Returns—Through June 14:
Last year, I was privileged to speak at the Shift Network’s Spring of Sustainability teleseminar series—which I would rate the best such series I’ve ever listened to. In fact, I keep the replay window from last year up on my web browser, and I’m listing to one of those calls as I write this.

This year’s series includes Joanna Macy, Francis Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet), Vicki Robin (Your Money or Your Life), John Trudell (who impressed me greatly when I head him speak more than 30 years ago), Bill McKibben (350.org), Randy Hayes (Rainforest Action), and many more. More than 30 leading sustainability pioneers will be presenting at this online series, and we’re proud to be co-sponsors of this world-changing event. You can listen at no charge to the live calls, and to the replays for about two days after each call. You can also get complete unlimited access to all the calls at a very reasonable cost, so that—as I’m doing today—you can still listen even a year later.

Get all the details and sign up at zero cost at https://shelhorowitz.com/go/SOS2013/

$747 in Bonuses with David Newman’s New Marketing Book
Every time I read an article by David Newman, I am amazed at how similiarly we think about marketing. So I’m happy to tell you about his book, Do It! Marketing: 77 Instant Action Ideas to Boost Sales, Maximize Profits, and Crush Your Competition.

If you pre-order the book today, you will immediately get over $747 in business-building bonuses, including an e-copy of my own award-winning Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. And you’ll be among the first to take delivery of the book the moment it is released—on or about June 5. David promises “a terrific book jam-packed with savvy marketing, sales and business development strategies, tactics and tools.”

To check out the pre-order bonuses you’ll get immediately when you buy today, visit:
https://doitmarketing.com/book-bonus

Hear & Meet Shel

Want to see the WHOLE new Making Green Sexy Powerpoint presentation—at ZERO cost? You saw some slides from this last month. If you’re in Western Massachusetts, join me…

—> Tuesday, April 30, 12 noon through 1:30 p.m., Jones Library, Amherst, MA: presentation for the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce (and be part of the taping for my new speaking video). To RSVP: info@amherstarea.com, 413-253-0700. Examples include toilet paper, ice cream, and even the Empire State Building. Learn how to market differently to deep green, light green (or “lazy green”) and, yes, nongreen audiences—plenty of time for questions in this one, too.

I’d really appreciate a good crowd for this. If you’re local, please bring a lunch and come on over.

Other events:

Monday, April 22, 9 a.m. ET/6 a.m. PT, I’ll be Bill Newman’s guest live in the studio on WHMP-AM, 1400, here in Western Massachusetts, some time between 9 and 10. Podcasts go up the same day at https://whmp.com/pages/8875192.php and stay live for a couple of weeks.

Monday, April 22, 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT, I’ll be a guest on Patrick Walters’ Triangle Variety Radio show, https://www.blogtalkradio.com/trianglevariety . If you’d like to call in live, (949) 272-9578.

Weather permitting, I’m exhibiting at the 4th annual Amherst (MA) Sustainability Festival, Saturday, April 27, on the Amherst Common. Stop by and say howdy.

I’ll be walking the floor at Green America’s Green Festival in NYC, April 19-21. I’ll be listening, learning and networking at CEOSpace in Nevada, May 19-26. And I also expect to be at Book Expo America, May 30-June 1, NYC (Note date change). I’ve gone every year since 1997. If you’re going to any of these events, contact me ahead of time and maybe we can meet.

I’m doing the Making Green Sexy talk again at SolarFest’s new Business2Business Day, Friday, July 12, Tinmouth, Vermont. This will be my third time speaking at this lovely (and completely solar powered) music and technology festival. Think of it as a much tinier, Vermont-scale version of South x Southwest. www.solarfest.org

Another Recommended Book:

Hot, Flat, and Crowded,

by Thomas L. Friedman

Thomas Friedman is both the most optimistic and the most pessimistic futurist I’ve encountered in a long time. His upbeat side sees the enormous potential to solve the world’s problems through technological creativity, combined with people in government and industry who are visionary enough to create incentives for these solutions to get developed and start working. In Europe, especially, he finds much hope.

But he channels Cassandra, the prophet of doom, when he tries to imagine these solutions manifesting in the politically schizophrenic chaos of today’s (well, 2008’s) United States of America. And he’s not sure which way China will go, pulling the rest of the world willy-nilly over a cliff, or developing and marketing the green solutions the world needs (cleaning the US’s economic clock in the process). Many of his statistics are frankly bleak.

Friedman himself sums up this tension at the end of the book: “I would call myself a sober optimist…If you are not sober about the scale of the challenge, then you are not paying attention. But if you are not an optimist, you have no chance of generating the kind of mass movement needed to achieve the needed scale.”

He knows the solutions are out there, but in today’s political and business universe, he’s not sure how the planet will survive the “hot, flat, and crowded” perfect storm of his title: rising temperatures causing numerous natural and agricultural disasters, a voracious appetite for fuel to power US-style standards of living around the globe, a world population expected to more than triple from 2.68 billion in 1953 to 9.2 billion by 2050 (a mere 37 years in the future)—demanding ever-more resources from a finite and endangered planet. A world in which atmospheric carbon, which had been stable at about 280 parts per billion for 10,000 years, shut up 37 percent to 384 ppm by 2007, nearly all of the increase occurring in less than 40 years. London, around 1800, was the first city to exceed one million; now there are more than 300, including 26 super-megalopolises of 10 million or more. The people who will feel the strongest negative impact of these colliding trends will be those at the economic margins: the so-called bottom of the pyramid.

The threat to our environment is also a threat to our freedom, he says. There is a correlation between the rise of authoritarian “petrodictator” governments and the oil addiction in developed and developing countries that cements their power.

Though the book draws on research and his own experience around the world, he addresses his message to Americans: we have to get rid of ossified tax and subsidy structures that favor fossil fuels and disincent renewable energy. We have to go on an energy diet that might not bring us to the per-capita levels of China or India, which use 1/9 to 1/30 of what we do—but could certainly achieve the high standard of living with roughly half as much energy use per person that is common across Europe.

Without really using the word, he talks of the need for better framing. Seeing going green as a national security issue, for instance—and he has some very interesting examples from the military—is a powerful way to communicate with those for whom green is not yet religion. And so is his wonderful frame of “Code Green” as the most massive economic opportunity since at least the Industrial Revolution: rebuilding our entire society along sustainability lines. I’ve previously called for a Marshall Plan-style initiative, but this is framing it even bigger.

Here’s some particularly sweet framing: if the climate deniers turn out to be right, we get so many benefits like cleaner air and water, greater spending power, and jobs that can’t be easily offshored that we should do the massive “Code Green” conversion anyway. He notes, too, that as in so many issues, the people are well ahead of their elected leaders on this.

And I also love the way he argues that environmentalists can respond to conservative condemnation of carbon taxes by pointing out that our current fossil-fuel economy is essentially paying taxes to foreign governments that are not our friends.

But if catastrophic climate change is a real problem, as the vast majority of reputable scientists are, not to address it is to destroy our society; we need a systemic and holistic solution—just as nature provides systemic and holistic solutions—and we need it NOW.

Friedman also points out the urgent need to stop allowing companies and governments to externalize the real costs of environmental destruction: to pass them on to others, whether people living in poverty in unregulated economies or future generations in our own culture. He even recognizes the numerous problems with certain biofuels, including he severe negative consequences of corn-based ethanol. However, he has a blind spot about nuclear power, and seems not to recognize that this particularly terrible technology would not exist if its backers had to count the real economic, health, and safety costs.

If you had to isolate one message from this long book, it would be the need to innovate our way out of the mess, and to do it fast. Friedman sees value in Kaizen-type continuous improvement, as well as in better sharing existing resources, such as letting a culinary startup use a school kitchen after hours—but he believes we’ll really move forward as we achieve big breakthroughs in three interlocking areas: clean power generation (he calls this “clean electrons”), massive efficiency increases, and deep conservation. The first provides clean, renewable power while eliminating the risk of rising fuel costs; the other two reduce demand at a far lower cost than building new capacity. And those new technologies will really sprout and flower once the tax and subsidy structure currently squashing them under a Bigfoot carbon footprint is thrown away and replaced with incentives to conserve and invent and bring the innovations to market.

Progress in all these areas will also create jobs and economic success; Denmark, he notes, has eliminated foreign oil and doesn’t use nuclear. It does use a carbon tax, which has massively stimulated cleantech industries. And Denmark’s economy has jumped 70 percent while keeping fuel consumption constant, and has brought unemployment all the way down to 2 percent. And many more breakthroughs are possible; he quotes Amory Lovins (p. 283) on the notion that buildings can become far more efficient as they start to interact as a holistic system, so that, for instance, windows not only regulate heat and light directly, they can talk to the heating and lighting systems and tell them they don’t need to work so hard.

Another challenge is helping locals in biodiverse regions under threat of land-rape see the natural resources such as forests, as whole and harvestable over time—more valuable alive than clearcut. Code Green, in other words, must be built around ladders out of poverty that are at least as attractive as the environmentally destructive path the West has taken for 200 years; the planet cannot sustain countries such as China and India taking that road on a large scale.

A New York Times journalist and author of several major business books, Thomas Friedman has access to the halls of power. He speaks at the World Economic Forum, hobnobs with government and corporate leaders, and not only interviews people like Bill Gates and Jeffrey Immelt, but achieves candor from them. Perhaps it’s fitting to end this review with a quote he extracted from a former Exxon Europe vice president, a man named Oystein Dahle (p. 259): “Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.”

The Clean & Green Club, March 2013

14 Mar, 2013 No Comment

The Clean & Green Club

March 2013

CONTENTS

Rethinking PowerPoint

Hear Shel Speak

Friends Who Help

Book Review

Connect with Shel on Social Media:

https://www.GetResponse.com

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).”

Rethinking PowerPoint

One of my goals for 2013 is to notch up my speaking career. I’ve always been known as a good speaker with a compelling message, but I want to be known as a great speaker. I love getting paid to travel, and I’m eager to find people who will pay me to come over and talk.

And one of several action steps I’m taking for this goal is upgrading the viewer experience of my PowerPoint slides by a few orders of magnitude. I conceptualized what I wanted to do several months ago, but struggled to get the 2004-version software on my desktop computer to do what I wanted. To my delight, I found that the 2011 version of PowerPoint that runs on my new laptop makes this infinitely easier—even, dare I say, FUN. Once I choose the right theme, all I have to do is highlight my bullets, select an appropriate format from the Smart Art pallets, and maybe play a bit with color and font size. It does take several tries to get the right look in Smart Art, sometimes—but the results are terrific.

Showing is better than telling, here. So have a look—here are three slides each from the deck I was using through the end of 2012, and the same three sides from the new version (the first two of them with some wording changes; as I went through the slides, I increased the message sharpness and accessibility not only in the visuals, but also in the text):

PowerPoint Before

PowerPoint After

(I apologize that our newsletter software degrades the quality of these images; you can imagine what the original clear, easy-to-read slides look like—or, better yet, attend one of my upcoming webinars or live presentations and see them in person.)

Hear & Meet Shel

Want to see the WHOLE new Making Green Sexy Powerpoint presentation? Two no-cost chances coming up…one of them *this coming Monday from anywhere in the world,* the other in person in Western Massachusetts. You’ll get to see how a sports car, a dessert company, and even toilet paper can be marketed to green and nongreen audiences—and as you can see on the sample slide above, the Empire State Building makes a guest appearance 🙂

—> Monday, March 18: webinar for my new friend Rena Nicole, a/k/a Green Rena, 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT, 30 minutes plus 15 for Q&A: Space is limited, so go over and sign up at https://renanicole.leadpages.net/shel-horowitz/ without delay.

—> Tuesday, April 30, 12 noon through 1:30 p.m., Jones Library, Amherst, MA: presentation for the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce (which will be taped for my new speaking video). To RSVP: info@amherstarea.com, 413-253-0700—plenty of time for questions in this one, too.

I’ll also be presenting the program at Podcamp Western Massachusetts March 30 at Holyoke Community College, but that one has a $30 ($32.64 with processing fee) cost: https://www.eventbrite.com/event/5293053666

Back to HCC (Kittredge Center for Entrepreneurship) 6-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 2, where I’ll be a marketing advisor for a no-cost speed-coaching event aimed at startups and sponsored by Sam Adams brewery. Not speaking, but answering questions from would-be entrepreneurs.

Also…

I plan to exhibit at the 4th annual Amherst (MA) Sustainability Festival, Saturday, April 27, on the Amherst Common.

Of course, I expect to be at Book Expo America, June 4-6, NYC. I’ve gone every year since 1997. If you’re going, contact me and maybe we can meet.

Friends/Colleagues Who Want to Help

Watch for an important email from me on April 7: Prosperity teacher Marilyn Jenett, who has made a big difference in helping me learn to attract greater prosperity into my life, is giving you a chance to listen to one of her most popular calls ever: “The Universe on Speed Dial.”

In that email, I’ll tell you some of the remarkable things that have happened to me since I began to apply her work. I’ll outline what she covers on the call…and show you where to listen. Keep an eye out for the special mailing.

Mark your calendar for April 18, 1 pm ET. I’ll be interviewing legendary media trainer Jess Todtfeld. If you’d like to get on TV and radio more often, and how to perform better on microphone and camera, you want to be on this call. I’ll send the details next month.

THANK YOU from Ana Weber and me! The book she and I wrote together, The Money Flow, made it to #1 in category. We appreciate it.

Another Recommended Book: Rebuild the Dream

No Book Review This Month, Because. . .

I’m reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman, and it is a much bigger book than I realized (printed on thin paper). I’ve been reading it steadily but am less than halfway done. By next month, I should be able to review it for you.

GetResponse.com

The Clean & Green Club, February 2013

10 Feb, 2013 No Comment

The Clean & Green Club

February 2013

CONTENTS

Observations from Equador

Hear Shel Speak

Friends Who Help

Book Review

Connect with Shel on Social Media: