The Clean and Green Club

Lately, my inbox is full of courses to market via Facebook Messenger.

I actually hit reply to one that began, “What if you could use FB Messenger to make up to $2,500 a week…in your spare time?”:

Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

Seth has permission to be in MY mailbox. His daily blog shows up every day. I actually open and read every column for his useful information and fresh perspectives. Often, he offers a program or product—but it’s in context.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

A Short Course in Kindness by Margot Silk Forrest

Being nice is not the same thing as being kind, says Forrest in this small but powerful book. Kindness is authentic, builds community and feels like a shot of adrenaline, while niceness is superficial and often builds stress—because being nice often means NOT speaking your truth, but suppressing it in a misguided desire to put others’ needs in front of your own (pp. 8-27).

About Shel 

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Mid-Course Correction Revisited: The Story of a Radical Industrialist and His Quest for Authentic Change, by Ray C. Anderson and John A. Lanier (Chelsea Green, 2019)
As CEO of Interface, a global B2B carpet and flooring company, Ray Anderson took it as a personal challenge to “climb Mount Sustainability” and make his company not just green but regenerative, after an epiphany reading one of Paul Hawken’s books in 1994. By 1998, Interface was already recognized as a world leader in sustainable manufacturing—but it continued (and continues) to raise the bar. I’ve known about his work for years, but never really thought of the special challenges of taking leadership on green manufacturing when your products are made from fossil fuels. Nylon is the main ingredient in Interface’s carpet tiles. This book explores that challenge in detail.

Anderson spearheaded a dramatic change in the company culture, and created an innovation-friendly, mission-driven environment that rewarded both big systemic changes and little Kaizen-style improvements, allowing the company to make impressive strides even in those first few years. Now, it’s a model for manufacturing companies around the world. Even back in the 1990s, he set a goal to turn Interface into the first restorative industrial company (p. 9).

Anderson died in 2011. Part 1 of this book is a reprint of his original 1998 Mid-Course Correction. Part 2, the Revisited portion, is written by his grandson, the executive director of Anderson’s foundation. Hawken wrote the foreword.

Part 1 is fascinating, because Anderson and his company were inventing a whole new paradigm from scratch. If anything, the newer part is even better than the original, because it goes through the nitty-gritty of processes and recognizes that even as green business has become mainstream, regenerative business is still rare—and they benefit from their good deeds, just as Interface continues to do.

If the laws change to catch up with this new mindset, those well-adapted companies will benefit even more. As an example, if your manufacturing processes already sequester carbon, you won’t feel the pain when the inevitable carbon-output tax (p. 232) finally becomes reality.

In many instances, both authors identify concepts and processes that I discuss in my own tenth book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. This is not a big surprise; Anderson’s brain trust includes many of the thought-leaders I drew from in my research. But it’s so exciting to see their ideas applied hands-on, in the real world, over and over, resulting in lower costs AND a more eager market. As well, to see the impact Interface has had in greening its own suppliers—even including mighty DuPont (p. 93)—customers, competitors…and the business world in general. Lanier even says, “driving waste to zero is a risk-management strategy” (p. 150). It’s also a great human resources tool: Interface’s values-motivated employees don‘t spend time on petty feuds. They collaborate across teams and departments. They don’t just innovate, but see their innovations adopted around the world (p. 167).

Both men show that going green, and then taking it regenerative (making things better than they were), can be profitable. But some of that requires changing the way we account for various pieces of the economy. In particular, we have to stop letting companies internalize the income and profit while externalizing the costs, such as the military structure necessary to rely on fossil fuels, or the health costs of those fuels—or the waste involved in processing 40,000 pounds of raw material into a single 10-pound laptop (p. 10; this was the 90s, remember).

This forward-thinking company is looking deeply at biomimicry (modeling nature’s solutions), seeing its factories as the functional equivalent of a forest (p. 230), and creating changes in the wider culture so we all start thinking differently—seeing carbon as a resource/raw material, for instance (pp. 229-230). And the little things add up, too. Interface’s Carbon Challenge for Georgia Tech students downsized a bank’s default rental car and saved them $40,000 and 45 tons of carbon per year (p. 239).

I took five pages of notes and could write three times as much. But like Interface, I’ll downsize, and just tell you to go and read it.

About Shel 

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World, by Scott Harrison

About Shel 

I write this on July 1, after reading news coverage of the huge Pride Marches in NYC commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

The gay, lesbian, and trans people who fought back against another unjust police raid had no idea they were igniting a quiet-until-then international movement, and that by 2014 it would be legal to marry a same-sex partner in every US state—something unthinkable as recently as 2000. Even by the time I came out as a 16-year-old college first-year in 1973, the energy had already shifted. We were a long way from equality, but we were recognized as existing and becoming much more public. I give them my thanks and congratulations.

(Of course, I’ve been to hundreds of actions that didn’t have long-term impact—but that’s ok.) Here are four among many actions I’ve participated in that turned out to make a difference:

• The Seabrook occupation of 1977 birthed the US safe energy/no nukes movement and brought the massive US nuclear power program to a grinding—and fully deserved—halt (link goes to a 4-part retrospective I wrote for the 40th anniversary)
• The movement my wife and I started that saved a local mountain—and inspired me a few years later to braid my activism and my marketing together into the consulting, speaking, and writing I now do about the intersections of profitability and regenerativity (making things better in areas like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change)
• The massive Women’s March on Washington the day after the current president’s inauguration, letting him know that we would resist his promised agenda based on hatred, environmental destruction, and further enriching himself, his family, and his corporate cronies—and the smaller demonstrations around the country about a week later, keeping that promise and demonstrating that the Muslim ban was racist and unacceptable (and putting that despicable project on hold for several months until he could get a toned-down version through the courts)

In my life, too, some of the actions I took by myself turned out to be very important. In 1984, I went to my city councilor with a concern about the need for restaurants in our town to accommodate nonsmokers. It was not a big public organizing effort. But within a few months, every restaurant was required to have a nonsmoking section. Two years later, when the US bombed Libya, I called up our most prominent local peace activist and asked where the demonstration was. She said she didn’t know of one. I said “noon at the courthouse.” I did a vigil there at noon for three days. The first day, I was out there by myself, and most passers-by were hostile. By the third day, I had a few people with me, and the mood had turned sympathetic. I like to think I had something to do with shifting public opinion in my community, and I think that’s every bit as important as being arrested at Seabrook.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

The Great Pivot: Creating Meaningful Work to Build a Sustainable Future, by Justine Burt

About Shel 

I listened to publicity guru Steve Harrison interview a mortgage-originator named Brian Sacks, who’s been fantastically successful at getting publicity, including 9 years with a regular spot on a network-affiliate TV station in his Baltimore market.

This gentleman is very aware of the power of the press, and was discussing the way it (and some other self-generated credentials) sets him apart from all the others in his niche. Pretty much alone, he has both customers and Realtors calling him, while his competitors are all out prospecting and trying to differentiate themselves.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

DUH! Marketing: 99 Monstrous Missteps You Can Use to Learn, Laugh, & Grow Your Business! By Liz Goodgold

I confess: I took this one off the shelf because I wanted a quick read to keep me entertained on a four-hour train ride. But I’m glad I did.

Using mostly big-company examples, Goodgold pairs a marketing blooper (“DUH!”) with a marketing success (“TA DA!”), half a page each—and extracts a marketing lesson from each pairing. I don’t always agree with her choices, but her lessons are generally spot-on. It’s fun to read and even entertainingly laid out.

About Shel 

Here’s a technique many Practical Visionaries (such as the ones I profiled in the December 2017, March, May, and July 2018 issues) use to get planet-changing conversations going.
Faced with resistance—denial, hostility, or just “we’ve always done it this way”—they ask two simple questions, consciously or unconsciously:

1. What’s the best way to get from where we are to where we want to be?
2. What are the consequences if we take no action?

I call that second question “turning the question upside-down and inside-out.” And it’s a lever to create both personal and social change. Let’s look at an example of each:

• PERSONAL CHANGE: When an older client says, “I’ll be too old” after a career coach suggests pursuing a goal that involves extensive training, the coach asks, “and how old will you be at that time—and how much closer to becoming the _____ you always wanted to be—if you DON’T get that training?”
• SOCIETY-WIDE CHANGE: When opponents of the Green New Deal challenge advocates about how to pay the cost, business environmentalists and global strategic thinkers should ask several questions: “And how much will it cost us to rebuild entire cities or rehouse their population when climate change makes them uninhabitable? Cities at risk include Houston, New Orleans, Miami, New York, Boston, San Diego, and many others?” (Non-US residents, please substitute your own at-risk coastal cities.) “How will you replace the millions of acres of farmland that will go unproductive because of climate change, even as people are uprooted and face mass hunger?” And even “What if the climate deniers are right—and what if they’re wrong?”

Since those two links are a lot to read, I’ll keep it short this month.

I will be attending Book Expo in New York City, May 29-31. If you’ll be at the show, I’m happy to schedule a meeting. If you’re in NYC but not at Book Expo and want to meet, I might be able to make it work Wednesday evening, or over lunch Wednesday or Friday. Thursday evening I’ll be attending the Evolutionary Business Council dinner on the Upper West Side. Call me on my landline, 413-586-2388 (8 am to 10 pm US ET), or email shel AT greenandprofitable.com with the subject Meet at BEA. The sooner I hear from you, the more likely we’ll be able to connect.

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurtz (Hay House, April 2019)

Overdeliver has deep roots in the principles I’ve advocated for decades: sticking to your ethics, thinking and acting from abundance, building relationships without looking for “gimmies,” creating massive leverage from small actions, and matching offer to audience.

Brian is a leading expert on direct marketing. Together with publisher Marty Edelston, he built Boardroom/Bottom Line newsletters to the most successful mass-market paid-subscription-based newsletter franchise in the country. And he’s not even a copywriter or a list manager (though he hires the best out there).

He is, however, a gifted writer. The book is filled with great stories told well. And nice touches—a summary of key points at the end of each chapter, thorough index—create a positive reader experience. He even got Jay Abraham to not only write a forward, but personally guarantee readers’ satisfaction. How many writers come up with a book so worthwhile that a non-involved third party will guarantee the purchase?

One thing he points out over and over again is the hidden cost of not being authentic. Don’t be seduced by quick dollars into making an offer that’s not congruent with your audience. Even one offer that feels false or out of alignment can cause massive unsubscribes. Suddenly, the list you built up for years loses half its names and 80% of its value.

For decades, Brian carefully tested, tracked and ANALYZED the results, segmented his lists, rinsed and repeated. He can even tell you the relative profitability of offers that brought high initial purchases but little repeat business, versus mailings that converted slowly at first but had vastly better renewal rates—across specific lists those two mailings were sent to.

With this data and an almost religious belief in lifetime customer value, he knew he could spend even three times the initial sale on acquiring the right customers, because they’d more than make up the difference over the next several years. He learned whether a certain list would respond to upbeat or paranoid copy, what freebies and incentives worked with which types of buyers, whether those buyers paid off in the long run, and whether they came from a list of inquiries, free subscriptions, active buyers, or ex-buyers. Tracking this granularly is far more useful than tracking demographics, and then your own list becomes golden. He lays out his testing strategy on pp. 112-113, and also some magic questions every marketer should ask, especially in Chapter 6. And he acknowledges mistakes/painful lessons.

Using this knowledge, he encourages his clients to analyze their customer acquisition and payback costs and to be unafraid of spending to acquire long-term customers if the numbers work. He even advises them to become so niched that they become “a category of one”: the only choice. But that doesn’t mean isolating yourself. Find people who will advise you, including telling you when you’re either too full of yourself or full of crappy ideas (pp. 215-216). That’s part of a relationship chapter that would be alone worth the price.

He also encourages marketers to respond to immediate changes. He removed affected zipcodes from a mailing following a hurricane, and then gave free list rental to disaster relief agencies. Related: provide superior service to win back ex-customers who become your best ambassadors. They came to you because they shared your vision and values, after all (p. 186).

Disclosure: Brian and I are friends, and I’m one of those several hundred people acknowledged (I don’t actually know why).

About Shel
How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).

Recently, I hit one web page that did something very right, and something else very wrong. I want to share these with you.

One of my big peeves when surfing the Net is the lack of clear instruction when you need to fill out a form. I especially can’t stand choosing a password with no guidance as to how the site requires that password to be structured, and then having my first two or three attempts rejected. And if I have to try three passwords, I will leave the site unless I absolutely have to register (for instance, if I am doing a website analysis for a client). So the first trap is failure to provide frustration-reducing instructions.

So I loved it when I hit a signup form on https://www.smartbizquiztribe.com/ and got this wonderful clear wording:

Security is important to us.
Password requirements: 8-20 characters long,
at least 1 uppercase, 1 lowercase character and 1 digit.

What I DIDN’T like: This was a link from a page of giveaways from various marketers. The page that got me to click was a page offering a free assessment tool. But when I clicked to the landing page, it was a 30-day free trial. I don’t see that as the same thing at all—and I lost enough trust that I refused to provide my information, walked away from the tool they were offering, and crossed them off the list of companies I might do business with.

1. Page failed to deliver what was promised
2. I don’t like giving my payment info when I’m not buying anything
3. I felt misled. I would never have clicked over if I’d known I had to subscribe to a paid service and then remember to cancel. My trust was gone and my time was wasted, and they lost any chance to make me a customer.

So even though I loved the way they did their password instructions, I was unhappy with the way this site took my time for granted and betrayed its promise. I lost trust and didn’t sign up. Betraying trust by delivering something different (and less than) you promised is Trap #2. Learn from their mistake!

Here’s the actual offer text that got me to click:

Free

Gift for Everyone

It’s a well-known truth that assessments and quizzes are SUPER-POWERFUL tools for growing your list and moving prospects to a YES! Smart Biz Quiz provides an automated assessment system that is revolutionizing the way coaches, trainers, speakers and consultants market their expertise online. From personalizing your communication, to increasing conversion from your one-on-one conversations, Smart Biz Quiz provides a new and innovative way to personalize your e-communication to double and even triple your conversion.
Value Each: $397 Quantity Available: UNLIMITED
Not a word about this being a one-month trial membership or about it not being a tool that the reader could use over and over.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, by Safi Bahcall
What makes some “crazy” ideas take off and change the world, while others die a quiet, slow death? Bahcall, a physicist, biotechnologist, and former advisor on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, spent years studying this phenomenon across disciplines, industries, and cultures—from ancient China, to the Islamic world of the Middle Ages, to the US military in WWII, to contemporary industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals, aviation, computing, and even entertainment. This fascinating and ambitious book is the result.
What he found (a small sampling; I took five pages of notes and even recommended it to Seth Godin, who had already read it):

• Successful “crazy” ventures nurture two very distinct, conflicting roles—and each requires a different structure and different governance. The “artists” are the dreamers and inventors who make the flying intellectual and intuitive leaps that turn 1+1 into much more than 2. But the “soldiers,” who bring the new discovery into the mainstream, are just as necessary.
• Famous loonshots are often product-focused. But strategic loonshots, like American Airlines’ early computerized reservation system or Walmart’s initial concentration on the small-town heartland, can be just as important.
• Artists and soldiers are in dynamic tension, rubbing up against each other with each side strengthening in some places while weakening in others—in a “phase shift” similar to the subtle changes in temperature and pressure that shift H2O molecules between solid (ice) and liquid (water) states, or between liquid and gas (steam). Change happens best when they’re both valued equally, separated, yet ideas can transfer back and forth (yes, the soldiers have plenty of ideas for the artists, because they test the concepts in the real world, where artists might not go). So, soldiers may respond better to a rigid chain of command, while artists need independence–but that independence is tempered by feedback from the soldiers.
• Forget looking at individual molecules in a phase shift; any molecule can shift frequently to either state. But in the aggregate, as the temperature cools, more molecules will “choose” the solid phase; as it warms, more will liquify. It doesn’t happen at once, which is why some parts of a pond or a puddle might be ice at temperatures above 32 degrees F (0 degrees C), while other parts (perhaps in direct sunlight) will be liquid even at 30 degrees F.
• It’s crucial to analyze WHY a system is generating successful loonshots—or why it’s failing.
• Differentiate between false and genuine fails (Friendster’s failure was not about social network unworkability, but about poor infrastructure; cholesterol-lowering statin drugs succeeded when the labs shifted their methodology).
• Organizations ossify from loonshot-incubators into franchise-maintainers (filming the next James Bond movie or releasing the next incremental software performance enhancement) because of multiple factors. But, potentially, we can prolong the loonshot phase. We humans can influence which actors are in which phase, by controlling factors such as the size of a working group (around 150 seems ideal) or whether political in-group maneuvering or pure innovation is rewarded.

Loonshots is well-written, well-researched, and quite provocative. With a release date of March 2019, you might be the first on your block to gain from Bahcall’s work (I read a prepublication copy). Oh, and read the endnotes, also fascinating.

About Shel
How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).

Get No-Cost Support and Feedback from Other Social Entrepreneurs
Nicole Dean and I are planning to launch a Facebook discussion group for marketers involved with social entrepreneurship and/or green business: people who want their businesses to be both world-changing and profitable. It’ll be a place to get and give advice, bounce ideas around, share news, and help move society to do better. It WON’T be a place to complain or call names. If you want to be invited (probably within the next couple of weeks), please send me a direct message on Facebook. Please say that you saw the newsletter and want an invite to the marketers for social change group.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

World Famous: How to Give Your Business a Kick-Ass Brand Identity, by David Tyreman

About Shel 

How does an idea go from one person or one small huddle of people to become part of society? Although it happens all the time, it’s not easy. But as Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Think about some of the huge changes those small groups of people have accomplished:

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Creating Customer Evangelists, by
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba (Dearborn, 2003)

About Shel 

All printed editions of my marketing books are on sale this month, and they make great holiday gifts at a bargain price). Scroll down for the details.

One big copywriting nugget I got from Jeffrey was searching out the Ultimate Benefit: drilling down until you find the deep motivation. For instance, taking off 10 pounds or 5 kilos is not the true goal. People reduce wait to attract a new romantic partner or enjoy better health.

Even money is not an Ultimate Benefit. Money by itself is either a bunch of digital 1 and 0 marks in an electronic account or a pile of paper in your wallet. The Ultimate Benefit is what you achieve by using that money to buy something or give it away to someone/some organization. If you use that money to buy a car—or a yearly transit pass—you’re really buying the ability to go where you want to go. If you buy a new stove, you’re buying better meals and lower energy costs.

Lant’s analysis is based on selfish human desires. That’s crucial in marketing—but for most of you, so is altruism. I believe the urge to do good is just as powerful, and combining the selfish and altruistic is an unstoppable marketing combination.

My latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, explores this across several chapters. Here are a five examples, taken from a list of 13 in a section on marketing to “Lazy Greens”:

• “The warmest and softest slippers you’ll ever own, thanks to our special blend of all-natural ?bers.”
• “Enjoy fresh veggies from our organic greenhouse all winter. Need a scrumptious, juicy tomato for your dinner? Just pick one o? the vine.”
• “Let oil prices triple! You’re protected, because you heat and cool directly from the earth.”
• “You’ll never worry about waste disposal again. With our fully compostable packaging, you’re adding nutrients to the earth instead of paying to clog up your land?ll.”
• “You and your kids will both make new friends in the organic community garden and certi?ed nontoxic natural playground.”

Send in your own favorite examples of marketing that hits both personal and social/environmental benefits. If I get good responses, I’ll feature them next issue.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

As it happens, last week I mentioned to my friend Rita Joyan (a marketing and speaking consultant in Australia who had me on as a podcast guest a few years ago) a frustration I’ve had recently in my own marketing. She sent me a link to a remarkable Facebook Live she did. In half an hour, clearly and concisely, she does an excellent recap on core marketing principles. To have it all in one place, without having to wade through hundreds of pages in multiple books, is a huge favor to the marketing world. Go and watch it. She’s not selling anything and I don’t get commissions for recommending it. Do yourself a good turn and listen without distractions. I generally multitask when I’m listening to a marketing video but I listened pretty carefully to this one.