The Clean and Green Club

Dealing with the Tough Stuff: Practical Wisdom for Running a Values-Driven Business, by Margot Fraser and Lisa Lorimer (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009)

Every business faces challenge like revenue crunches, supplier issues, personnel problems, and of coure, stress. For socially conscious businesses, the challenges re multiplied by the need to address these problems in ways consistent with the company’s social and environmental commitment, even if that’s not the easiest path.

In this latest entry in B-K’s excellent Social Ventue Network series, Fraser and Lorimer, past CEOs of Birkenstock USA and Vermont Bread Company, resectively (with substantial help from Carol Berry of Putney Pasta, Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Yogurt, Joe O’Connell of Creative Machines, Marie Wilson of the Ms. Foundation and White House Project, and Tom Raffio of Northeast Delta Dental) show solutions that worked, and solutions that failed.

The book will be very useful to companies with at least a few employees and revenues in the seven to nine figures, and particularly those facing rapid changes in their market or corporate identity (from products going out of fashion to challenges in getting financing without onerous strings attached, to dealing with rapid growth). One section that will apply just as clearly to much smaller and perhaps larger companies is the last chapter, on how to exit from the business while still maintaining not only the viability of the company but also its core values. Even social entrepreneurship pioneer Ben & Jerry’s got burned on that one.

Learning from Ben & Jerry’s mistakes, Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg describes how he held out for the right buyer, one who would take the ownership burden while leaving him with decision-making power. It was a long search, but he did find his buyer. Birkenstock’s Fraser was not as fortunate; transfer of ownership to her employees was a disaster, and the company had to be regrouped and sold off to its German parent, even as the German company was gong through management transition of its own.

Some advice comes though consistently in chapter after chapter:

• Understand the numbers and what they mean
• Use a board of outside advisors (including ten great tips on how to set up and work with your board)
• Heart, head, and gut all play important roles—but you also need a reality check
• Don’t undersell yourself, don’t overcommit yourself, and yet don’t be afraid to take on big challenges
• Avoid getting trapped by your own “socially responsible mindset arrogance” (as Lorimer puts it)—but don’t let the nay-sayers stop you from bringing those values into every aspect of your business; as Fraser says, you don’t have to give your vision away to make quotas
• Hire people who know more than you—but don’t let them push you into decisions you’ll regret

While the book spends a fair bit of time on the grim realities, it also offers hope that companies who maintain their high standards of ethics and social/environmental responsibilities are often well-placed to survive the challenges of the corporate world and the marketplace, and come out stronger as a result.

Another Recommended Book: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Of the dozen or so books I’ve read on Internet-based communities (and their application for marketing), Trust Agents stands head-and-shoulders above the rest. Normally when I review a book, I take a page of notes, maybe two. In the smallest handwriting I can still read, I had more than half a page by the time I got to the end of Chapter 1! By the time I was done, I had four full pages.

A generation younger than me and a generation older than those who grew up with computers from the womb on, Brogan and Smith bring insights from Read the rest of this entry »

Several months ago, I had Dee Boyle-Clapp, co-owner of Starlight Llama Bed & Breakfast in Florence, MA, as a guest on my radio show. Prior to the show, she sent me a marvelous list of the Green steps she and her husband have taken with the inn, and the list so inspired me that I put it in my Future Positive Power Spotlight file. Having just read Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (all about eating locally and minimizing environmental impact), I feel this is the perfect time to share it with you–in part as a tribute to Barbara, whose book doesn’t quite fit the criteria for reviewing in my column, but is extremely worth reading, and in part because it shows how much each of us can actually do to improve our environment, even here in cloudy, cold New England. I have both photovoltaic and hot water solar systems on my own roof, but unike Starlight Llama, we do remain connected to (and dependent on) the grid.

Here’s Dee:

We are Massachusetts’ first solar-powered, off the grid B&B.  Our house has never been grid-tied.

We serve gourmet vegetarian breakfasts using organic or locally grown products.  We feature vegetables, fruit and herbs grown in our own organic gardens and we serve eggs from our own free-range hens.

Wherever possible we use green and scent-free laundry and cleaning products.  We never use a dryer, which we feel wastes energy.

The house was built with wood taken from our own land and many found or recycled products including our large  4 x 8 ft windows in the greenhouse and diningroom.

We are commited to preservation and put 55 acres of our property into a conservation restriction, to help serve as a wildlife corridor for the region’s deer, bobcat, coyotes, moose, bear, fox and other animals.

Much of our heat is from our passive solar greenhouse (in the winter on sunny days we don’t need to turn on other heat sources).  Our home is also heated by wood cut, split, stacked by family members from our own land.

We heat our hot water via 3 systems: on-demand for the B&B rooms, and a blend of wood heated or solar heated water for the kitchen and the rest of the house

The B&B is located on a llama farm that uses integrated pest management to control ticks and bugs harmful to llamas.  Our guinea fowl and peacocks wander our property freely and together have reduced deer and dog ticks.

Our product choices are as low impact as possible.  Many of our bed sheets are made from bamboo.  We use cloth napkins at breakfast, and reusable cups in the rooms.

I knew bamboo could be used as a sustainable, regrowble building material, but didn’t know you could make bedsheets out of it!

Another Recommended Book: Appreciation Marketing: How to Achieve Greatness Through Gratitude, By Tommy Wyatt and Curtis Lewsey (BFG Group Publishing, Westport, CT)

As Wyatt and Lewsey point out, your customer can leave you for ever in just two clicks: the first to Google or another search tool, and from there to a competitor. This is one among many reasons why I’m a big believer in marketing by building real relationships (something I spend quite a bit of time on in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First).

And one of the best ways to build relationships is to say thank you. A lot. To say thank you without any obvious self-interest motive on your part, such as enclosing your business card and asking for a referral along with the thank-you. It shows up your thanks as insincere. In Wyatt and Lewsey’s vivid metaphor, it’s “chocolate frosted dog crap.”

The authors spend a fair amount of time describing that kind of person, and several others you want to avoid turning into. Fortunately, they also provide plenty of examples of sincere thanks expressed well. Start your thanking program by appreciating the blessings in your own life, and with that grounding, thank others every chance you get. This is their strategy to achieve “TOMATO: Top of Mind Awareness…Through Others.” Once you have that, your marketing will almost take care of itself.

Mobile Marketing, Part 2: Legal, Ethical, and Strategic Considerations: Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, September 2009

Once again, this article owes much to The Mobile Marketing Handbook: Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Mobile Marketing Campaigns, by Kim Dushinski–read this book BEFORE you implement any mobile campaign.

The careful mobile marketer will keep some basic principles in mind, not only to avoid alienating your prospects, but to stay on the right side of the law. First of all, in a potentially intrusive technology, privacy concerns are key. Second, more than in any other medium (even the Internet), you must coax the customer to opt in. And third, the customer or prospect should feel that interacting with you improves his or her life.

With its legally mandated emphasis on authenticity, honest disclosure, and customer involvement/opt-in, mobile marketing is very much in harmony with the ethical methods I’ve been advocating for years (see my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People first, https://www.principledprofit.com).

Still, mobile marketing may or may not make sense for you–or for me. Dushinski’s 16-point checklist is a great tool to determine if there’s a fit. In my case, she convinced me that if I do any mobile marketing at all, it will be a text-based SMS newsfeed that I can pilot first on Twitter; most of the other mobile technologies are either too expensive and complicated for me, or simply don’t apply to a non-location-based business like mine–this is crucial information that could prevent me from wasting a lot of time and money on methods that aren’t appropriate.

One thing I WILL do after reading Dushinski’s book–and soon!–is set up a website that’s optimized for mobile phone users, and includes a press kit for reporters on the go; this is a no-brainer! Optimizing the experience for anyone wishing to access at least my main site from mobile could potentially yield huge dividends, and can be set up simply by simplifying existing content and hosting on a subdomain of one of my existing sites.

Reviewed by Shel Horowitz

As I complete six years of writing this column, I believe this is the first time I’ve reviewed an e-book instead of a physical book. Not only that, but an e-book with a absurdly low price of $9.95 US. I’ve seen a lot of those, and the vast majority I’d never recommend. They tend to be shallow, fluffy, and to exist only to upsell various other offers.

Tipping the Point is different. It has far more practical value than many e-books I’ve seen at five or even ten times the price.

Basically, it’s a quick-start guide to viral marketing, using integrity and ethics–and incorporating many examples (yes, including upsells). It starts with a theory section, but one made accessible and clear even to people who haven’t studied a lot of marketing–and one emphasizing the importance of building a real relationship. He covers force multipliers, the difference between viral ideas that spread via influencers and those that spread through the general public (a much larger group, of course, and therefore able to spread your idea or product much faster), and even looked at where Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point may have gotten some of its best ideas. He also covers some niceties as the ratio you need to become self-replicating and the ease with which you can get others to pass your stuff on.

Other goodies:
* 21-item glossary
* 11-point checklist for creating a message that people welcome and pass along
* More in-depth coverage of 14 different strategy success factors (not the same as those on the checklist)
* 12 problems that can sabotage your campaign
* 29 tactics to draw attention to your viral offering
* Plus a gazillion specific URLs for resources (more than I’m willing to hand-count!)
* A software bonus called The DOT (Do It Now), which claims to support you in achieving focus and concentration. It’s PC only and I’m on a Mac, so I can’t vouch for it.

Tom walks his talk, too. In the little over a year we’ve known each other online, I’ve noticed that he’s always doing little favors for me and others, without expectation of a direct return: a principle he espouses repeatedly in Tipping the Point (and one that I recommend in Principled Profit, as well). Oh yes, and he’s set up some nice charity stuff in this e-book, in keeping with the work he’s been doing at JointWinWin for a while now.

The book isn’t perfect. Yes, it does suffer from a few of the typical e-book flaws, like the occasional instance of poor proofreading and amateurish clipart illustrations. And while I prefer to think of his Britishisms (not just spelling, but idioms) as charming, not everyone may feel that way. (It’s honest, though–he is based in England.) But there’s an awful lot of good stuff here.

In fact, there’s so much good stuff that I took the very unusual step of becoming a dealer and putting it up for download on my own cart. And let me tell you, something has to be really good for me to do that. I still can’t believe he only wants $9.95 for this!

Please click here to get your own copy, and yes, I do benefit financially (a little, anyhow) from your purchase.

https://shelhorowitz.com/go/tippingthepoint/

Note: There are two volumes in Tipping the Point. Volume 1 is free and you can download it from this link. Volume 2 is available for $9.95 with the “add to cart” button on the page linked above.

The Pursuit of Something Better: How an Underdog Company Defied the Odds, Won Customers’ Hearts, and Grew its Employees Into Better People, by Dave Esler and Myra Kruger (Esler Kruger Associates, 2008)

Can a mediocre company (whose main USP is dominance of markets too small for others to bother with) transform into something truly great? If U.S. Cellular’s experience is any indication, the answer is a very strong yes. It isn’t easy, quick, or cheap–in fact, as of the book’s publication late last year, it had been an ongoing 8-year process–but under the right leadership, in this case, the remarkable CEO Jack Rooney, a squirmy little company with little concern for either its associates, its customers, or its business practices can actually reinvent itself as a highly ethical, customer-focused company that not only makes its employees really proud to work there, but actually begins to make a positive impact in the family and community lives of those employees. It’s not surprising that it now has twice as many associates and three times as many customers (meaning not only is the company growing rapidly, but productivity has also grown; each associate handles more customers)

This is an insider’s story; Esler and Kruger are the culture consultants that Rooney brought in at the start of his tenure, and they’ve played an ongoing role in shaping the transformation. Yet they don’t gloss over the rough stuff, and there’s plenty of it along the way.

But they and Rooney–and thus, U.S. Cellular–drew lines in the sand, fired people who didn’t share the dream, and made it work. In the early years of this decade, U.S. Cellular was widely expected to be swallowed up. Instead, they’ve shored up existing markets, built new ones, won numerous awards both for their customer focus/workplace culture and the reliability of their technology, and are well-prepared to hold their own even in the current recession.

A couple of core principles dominate:

• How comes before what, and nothing is morally neutral: if you get the numbers you want through the wrong methods, it doesn’t count; go back to the drawing board
• Truth is less stressful than deception

A key insight: marketing is important too. In many companies, the grim reality doesn’t match the sunny marketing/advertising/public relations picture, and that’s a problem. At U.S. Cellular, the problem was in the other direction: the company refused to take credit early for what it was accomplishing (Rooney felt they weren’t ready yet), and so the sunny and glorious reality was vastly better than the public picture; the company could have grown faster, perhaps, if their marketing had lived up to their culture. (This is exactly why I show, in my award-winning sixth book Principled Profit, that the ethical and social commitments must be accompanied by effective marketing that harnesses and highlights these achievements.)

A bonus: this is one of the better-written business books I’ve read recently, as you can see from this passage below, at the very conclusion of the book.

Jack Rooney and his slowly-expanding team of believers challenged the long-prevailing assumptions that business is a blood sport, that the advantage inevitably goes to the ruthless and the greedy, that the only way to win is to hold your nose and leave your values at the door He has proven beyond question, once and for all…that a values-based model works, that it can raise both a company and the individuals who are part of it to undreamed-of heights, to peak experiences that will last a lifetime and change the way those lives are lived. He has shown that there is indeed a better way.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

You might have heard that the rights to my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, got picked up by John Wiley & Sons, and it forms the basis for my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson). The new book will include all but, I think, two chapters of Principled Profit, plus some 20-25,000 words of new material. Wiley will publish it in 2010. I’m especially proud of this  because, following an e-mail introduction by one of Wiley’s business authors,  I landed the deal and negotiated the contract myself.

This is the latest honor for a self-published book that also was republished in India and Mexico, won an Apex Award for best book in the PR/Marketing world, has been endorsed by 80 entrepreneurs and marketers, and sold 1000 copies to Southwest Airlines. It’s certainly not unheard of for a self-published book to be resold to a major publisher, but it doesn’t happen every day, either.

I know I’m the author so I shouldn’t brag. But the amount of wisdom and great advice packed into 160 clear and readable pages is astounding.

What sort of ideas are we talking about?

You’ll learn a great deal of very specific material that you can put into practice in your own business. A few of the highlights…

• Why your competitors’ success not only isn’t an obstacle, it can actually help you succeed (Chapter 8 )
• How “biological marketing” enables you to reap hundreds of times more than you sow (Chapter 4)
• Why smart, customer-centered marketing succeeds when ordinary sales techniques fail (Chapter 2)
• How to turn your marketing from an expense to an income stream—not just from its results, but for the very act of marketing (Chapter 14)
• How to convert your customers, complementary businesses, and even competitors into your Sales Ambassadors (Chapter 8 again)
• Why the customer experience is a more powerful testament to your brand (whether positive or negative) than all the slogans and logos and advertising and marketing materials in the world—and how you can harness this to benefit your business (Chapter 11)
• How to stay honest and true in your copywriting while boosting your response: 4 trigger points, 10 keys to include in your copy, and 12 “helper” elements to construct successful marketing materials (Chapter 13)
• Six specific ways to highlight your ethical commitment in your media publicity and other traditional marketing (Chapter 12)—and 12 specific marketing tools that work well for ethical marketers (Chapter 14)
• How to leverage your marketing skills to make a huge difference in the wider world—to help create the type of world you want to live in (Chapters 15, 16, and 18)
• 56 specific resources for further exploration, plus 20 copywriters who can make it happen for you (Chapter 19)

But my problem is…my contract with Wiley forces me to stop selling Principled Profit by the end of this year. And I still have quite a few left. This was a groundbreaking book when it came out—one of the only voices showing that ethical business not only made good moral sense, but good business sense as well. While there are more resources in this area than there used to be, it’s still really hard to find this sort of solid, practical advice on both the theory and the implementation, in a nice, easy-to-read format that anyone can put into practice.

To put it another way, Principled Profit shows you how to find the *value* in your *values.*

So I’ve got a deal for you!

Want a copy for yourself? Take $5 off the original $17.50 price. Visit https://snipurl.com/kdq1j to order this remarkable book. Just visit and enter the code, GET5OFF.

Copies for your list and network are an even better deal. Full cases of 68-72 books at just $6 a copy (rounded to 70 per box), plus shipping at cost. Note that only eleven cases are available, though–you’ll want to act fast. This is absolutely the lowest price I’ve ever offered on this book.

To make it even sweeter, I have bonuses for you.  Use that discount code (GET5OFF) to also get my two newest e-books:

Again: https://snipurl.com/kdq1j

Another Recommended Book: ONO: Options Not Obligations: Enrich Your Personal Life by Rethinking Your Financial Life by Marc Warnke (Morgan James, 2009)

In his first book, Warnke lays out a compelling case for succeeding, staying within your means, and being a “family first entrepreneur” who understands that quality time with kids and high ethical standards are more important than the million-dollar deal. However, he’s had a few of those deals as well.

Warnke encourages business people to think strategically, using what he calls the “Scrabble model.” Just as an experienced Scrabble player knows how to place tiles for maximum points, so the savvy business person looks at any possibility in terms of how well it fits in with the entrepreneur’s strategy: how much time it needs, how big the potential reward might be, how much energy it will take, and at what level of risk.

On ethics, he encourages readers to make sure that “all of your actions fall within the parameters of the highest moral and ethical standards. When profitability gets in the way of ethics, it is only a matter of time before a business blows up and goes under. If you keep your moral and ethical standards high, you’ll attract a long list of people waiting to do business with you because they know they can count on your integrity. That simple fact is worth a fortune.”

Warnke had to come to this realization the hard way, though. He’s not ashamed to admit that in his early years, he tried to put himself first at the expense of others, and also struggled with alcoholism. But when he changed his ways, he changed them permanently, and bettered himself in the process. These days, he understands that a give/give relationship works best, and that we should all “be the customer you want to have.”