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The Clean and Green Club, February 2025

14 Feb, 2025 No Comment

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Going Beyond Sustainabiilty with Shel Horowitz

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: February 2025

Networking, Part 2: Can You Hate Golf and Still Be a Great Networker?

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This is the third of the three-part series to get you in the groove for success in 2025, and the second on networking. So if your set of resolutions include getting better at networking, you’ll find extra value in last month’s and this month’s tip.

A reporter recently posted this query: “I’m looking for people who network and socialize professionally other than on the golf course.” As a non-golfer who has shoulder issues and poor spatial skills, I thought my response would make an especially good newsletter article at this “resolutionary” season. Here’s my slightly modified answer:

Yes, you can be an avid networker without ever picking up a golf club. I have a huge network and have never played golf. I discovered this as a high school student when another passenger on a New York City public bus interrupted and joined a conversation I was having. She became a close friend. Here are four of the ways I network:

I build up a history with people I admire by commenting on their newsletters, either through direct email or as a public comment on the post. This is how I built relationships with people like Seth Godin and Bob Burg, both of whom endorsed my most recent book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (my second co-authorship with Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerrilla Marketing).
Many of my networking successes have arisen out of shared interest groups: small-publisher or green business support groups both online and in-person, Chambers of Commerce, religious communities, grassroots social and environmental action organizations, involvement in the arts (substitute sports, the sciences, hobbies, etc., if that’s how you’re wired), and similar affinity communities. I still maintain both business and friend relationships with people I met in these contexts decades ago.
Cold pitches can work too. My pitch to Guerrilla Jay to be my nominal co-author was nine years after he’d been approached by my publisher to blurb my book Grassroots Marketing. We’d had almost no contact in between. (I’ve continued to network with his widow, by the way—and got a lovely endorsement for my speaking after presenting at one of her conferences.)

And my totally-out-of-the-blue pitch letters got one client a book endorsement from 1960s basketball superstar Bob Cousy—and got another client in front of Hollywood director Ed Zwick. That second client actually did some informal screen consulting on his movie, “Defiance”; she had been active in the events that film described. And many of my own book endorsements, including Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield, have come that way.
Zoom is a great networking tool. In addition to zoom meetings set up expressly to network, I’ve initiated conversations over Zoom chat or followed up via LinkedIn with people who seem to have common interests on learning calls. This had led to some very productive 1:1 meetings online and in person.

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.

Business Growth for Good Summit Mastermind
As a reader of this newsletter, you know I’m a strong advocate for profitably addressing environmental and social needs through business. You can get a six-hour immersion and learn from some of the leaders in this space by attending the Business Growth for Good Summit Mastermind on March 20th, 2025, from 11 AM to 5 PM US ET on Zoom—at no charge! Connect with fellow entrepreneurs, get insights from top experts, and receive personalized coaching in live hotseat sessions. And the best part? By participating, you’ll be supporting United For Mercy as they build global partnerships for good and address equity and economic development in Rwanda.

My own session, Profit by Being a Prophet: Turn Your Environmental and Social Values Into Marketing Advantages, will offer you ready-for-action advice on product development, marketing, shifting mindset, and more—with examples ranging from solopreneurs to Fortune 50 global companies. Visit https://go.eventraptor.com/summit/business-growth-for-summit-2503/shelhorowitz to register at no cost and be part of the movement! (Disclosure: if you upgrade to the paid package, I will get a small commission from the organizer, Michael Whitehouse.)

Sustainability Unveiled with Jessica Hunt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iiC7FebCv8 (just released February 13)

How saving a mountain inspired me to take social change into the business world
Why socially conscious companies have to create pleasant work environments, for their own protection
How to deal with imperfection in your sustainability quest
What I disagree with Greta Thurnberg’s approach
How to make sure your corporate philanthropy is in alignment with both your larger purpose and your product line
Why a successful social entrepreneur turned down an exclusive for the biggest opportunity in his industry in decades
How to create allies for change within your internal organization—and beyond
How to work for change within the business world without alienating people who have more rigid ways of thinking
How one simple lifestyle change can save millions of gallons of a precious resource over a lifetime
Why progress in the green world will continue despite the opposition of right-wing governments
What I might do with the potential 30 years of work I might still have,. at age 68
What gives me hope in tough times

From Hilary Samuel of Asleep at Last: Sleep-deprived? Instead, jump out of bed with energy and alertness! Discover your sleep type to escape your pattern of sleeplessness. Next join Sleep to Thrive: Wake Up to Your Life!, starting in mid-March to transform your sleep and your life.

And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture

And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture

By Bill Wasik (Viking, 2009)

An examination of how messages, memes, chart-topping bands and other quick-peaking cultural phenomena gain and then lose traction, by the man who claims to have invented flashmobs. I almost put it down several times, because the first three chapters felt like a celebration of some of the most obnoxious aspects of our culture that elevate something for a brief moment and then let it die.

I’m glad I stuck with it, though. Chapters 4 and 5 and the conclusion redeemed the book and provided a great deal of insight—including some self-reflection about why some of his stunts (and those of other manipulators he cites and often interviews) might not have been the best course of action, and in some cases weren’t even ethical (pp. 129-133).

The book was published in 2009 (which means likely written in 2008) and feels a bit quaint sometimes: He’s all over what happens on MySpace, but doesn’t even mention Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, all of which had already been running for several years.

This would have been one of the first books to really look at how communication shifted when everyone could be a creator and anonymous creators could achieve (although not necessarily maintain) stardom—and, from that stardom, influence the culture. A lot of the science we take for granted now wouldn’t have been done yet.

Still, the insights on how memes worm their way into our brains and change the way we think and act feel extremely relevant as I write this just two weeks after the 2024 US presidential election, where memes overpowered facts and someone was elected who was widely known as a serial liar on a mass scale.

This, for instance, feels eerily prescient:

“…the Internet and confirmation bias are conspiring to erode what remains of reasonable political discourse…even the most assiduous news fan can consume an entire day’s reading by simply ingesting only those tidbits that support his or her own views; and…the network of political blogs…has evolved into a machine that supplies the reader exactly this prefiltered information (p. 165).

In an age where everything is trackable, being an influencer doesn’t just change the culture. It also changes the content creator. It’s almost impossible to resist the temptation to tweak your content to get more Likes, shares, comments, etc. (p. 28). While eyeballs were the commodity in the TV ads of the three-network era, now it’s clicks. And we know precisely how many people clicked. If we want to go deeper, it’s not hard to find out how long they kept the article open, which subsequent links they clicked, and even how their eyes (and their brains) processed the material And this is why when you read a story even in respected legacy media like the New York Times, you’ll see a bunch of click-bait headlines.

However, some of this data may not be what it seems to be. As an example, I will often open an interesting link but not get around to reading it for days or even weeks. While the measuring tools would show me as engaging with this content, I’m actually ignoring it until I have the right moment.

Clickbait, in my opinion, certainly contributes to our collective short attention spans and craving for the adrenaline rush. We spend so much energy seeking out the superachiever outliers (he calls them Black Swans; we usually know them today as Unicorns) that we neglect the slow-and-steady Kaizen-style advances (p. 151). But so many of our supposed Black Swans turn out to be deeply flawed, like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. And for every Buckminster Fuller or Alice Walker, there are tens of thousands of others building the slow advances that take the whole culture forward.

We treat news as an extreme sport, and that makes it really hard to gain any deep and meaningful understanding of our world. Nanostories are NOT real stories (pp. 144-152)—and to achieve greatness in any artform, “we must learn how to neuter our nanostories” (p. 182). And both Left and Right have eroded the perception of legacy media as trustworthy (p. 154). In fact, our views of candidates and their policies are actively manipulated by “hundreds of thousands of self-taught pundits” who see message creation as more important than organizing (pp. 158-159).

Wasik makes an interesting distinction between Orwellian (1984) and Gladwellian (The Tipping Point) psychological manipulations (p. 136). The former concentrates power in the hands of an authoritarian government, while the latter lets any of us exercise some usually relatively small degree of power.

And even virality experts get it wrong. A lot. Wasik describes several of his own failures, including a site called OppoDepot (pp. 158-162) that gathered all the accusations against candidates, regardless of party, one web page per candidate. He experimented with several permutations but couldn’t get traction.

Finally, he turns his attention to the systemic failure: “I even have felt tempted, like Time’s ‘You’ issue, to lionize viral culture as a people-powered paradise. But I have also seen the day-by-day destructiveness of the Internet churn, of the manufacture of nanostories with little regard for their ultimate truth” (p. 183).

And then he explores “how to sap the machine of its tyrannical power”: gathering solutions that include month-long “Internet Ramadan” (proposed by jake Silverstein), a weekly “Secular Sabbath (Mark Bittman), and thinking in 10,000-year timelines (the Long Now Foundation, whose founder Danny Hillis cites the builders of Oxford’s New College Hall, whose 14^th-century foresight led them to plant a forest to supply replacement beams that were needed hundreds of years later) or “time-shifting” by reading ancient magazines as if they were new (pp. 183-185).

He settles on urging all of us to become Stoics, who accept the good and the bad, rather than Epicures, who only choose the finest things (pp. 186-187). This, he says, will lead us to embrace “more sustainable approaches to information, to novelty, to storytelling. We cannot unplug the machine, nor would we want to, but we must rewire it to serve us, rather than the other way around. And for that, we must learn how to partially unplug ourselves” (p. 187).

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing! http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

About Shel

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too.

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The Clean and Green Club, October 2024

29 Sep, 2024 No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: October 2024

This is the First Time I’ve Ever Done This

Photo Credit: Cottonbro Studio via Pexels

In the 21 years since the first issue of this newsletter, I’ve tried to make it a voice for values that I hope you share: doing right by other people, doing right by the planet, acceptance of diversity, and not just fostering democratic and empowering outcomes, but reaching those outcomes through democratic and empowering processes. Because I focus on leveraging the power of profitable business to change society, and because many of you are not US voters, I’ve attempted to keep electoral politics out of these pages. I don’t believe I have ever endorsed a specific candidate for any office in this newsletter until now.

But we are at a critical moment in history here in the US. One candidate has largely endorsed the values I just listed.

The other attacks them at every turn, spewing hatred, putting down people who are different from him, threatening the vast numbers he perceives as his enemy with “retribution” (a direct quote) that includes massive incarceration and deportation, and assailing the very roots of the 248-year US commitment to electoral democracy.

This man also showed, during a previous term as president, that he doesn’t value the US’s hard-won positive relationships with other democracies around the world—but he does value the dictators who have figured out that if they pretend to adore him, they can manipulate him.

He’s a man whose speeches are almost always about his self-perception of greatness. A shallow,
superficial man who values the trappings of wealth and power but has no idea how to exercise those things responsibly. A convicted felon who a civil court found not only committed rape but slandered the victim.

Trump even attacks his super-loyalists like former VP Mike Pence and former Attorney General William Barr). He’s made it abundantly clear that his government will be a brutal culture of repression. He wants people who will agree to his every crazy whim and never bring up questions or concerns. He’s even gone after Greta Thunberg! And let’s not forget that he is a serial liar who lied 162 times in just one campaign event and an astonishing 30,573 times during his term (that’s more than 7,500 lies per year).

And Vance, his running mate, has admitted there was no truth to his crazy fantasy that Haitian
immigrants were eating their neighbors’ pets—a fantasy that has led to threats of violence so extreme that Springfield, Ohio’s schools went back to remote learning

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are going about the task of putting together a government that will uplift all of us, continue to address the climate crisis through a myriad of ways, build on the already-remarkable economic turnaround that began under Biden, honor the rights of all ethnic, religious, and racial groups, welcome LGBT folks and people with physical disabilities (among the many groups their opponents have mocked and insulted), and bring well-practiced leadership to foreign policy.

Harris and Walz honor our tradition of dissent, acknowledge the humanitarian crises in Palestine,
Ukraine, and at the US-Mexico border, call for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, oppose dictators, and acknowledges the reality of the climate crisis that Trump repeatedly dismissively scorns and mocks.

Harris is far from my perfect candidate but she’s orders of magnitude better than her opponent on
every issue. And Walz has a remarkable record as a caring governor who has used the power of his office to make lives better in his state, someone who cares far more about his social legacy than about accumulating wealth on the backs of others.

Yes, Harris could be much better on several issues, especially the Middle East and energy policy. I
understand why you might want to consider voting third-party. I’ve voted third-party several times in
the past—but this year, Please Don’t!

Third-party candidates rarely even get beyond single-digit vote percentages, and that’s with one clear choice. Even Ralph Nader got less than three percent in a well-run national campaign in 2000—but that was a factor in having the nation suffer eight years of George W. Bush, including the disastrous and destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan wars and refusing to take meaningful action on climate.

This year, with at least three third-party candidates courting the progressive vote and none of them
getting any traction, the next president will be either the Democratic or the Republican nominee—and therefore, the election can’t be about turning our backs on a decent but flawed candidate in a doomed-to-failure attempt to pick the perfect over the good.

Until we have ranked-choice voting, a third-party vote ends up being a vote for the candidate you favor the least. Voting for a “perfect” but unelectable third-party candidate could shift victory to the most evil choice: Trump. This election cannot be a quest for unachievable perfection. It has to be about which candidate will enable those of us who are activists to better organize for more meaningful change while also making improvements that help people right now.

If you live in a swing state, your vote could mean the difference between democracy and dictatorship. If you live in a red state, you might help it shift blue. Many so-called “red states—including at least Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, and Florida—have elected at least one Democratic statewide candidate (e.g., governor, senator) and/or voted Democratic in at least one presidential race in this century. With massive new voter registrations and unpopular Republican polices such as severe restrictions on reproductive freedom on the ballots of multiple states, even more formerly safe Republican states could be in play this year, surprising the pollsters.

And if you live in a blue state, you need to help ensure the margins of victory are so large that no one will believe Trump this time when he once again falsely claims the election was stolen. Jane Fonda’s short video gives a few more reasons.

Just a Few More Days to Catch This Full Replay!
My September talk to the New York Public Library’s Yoseloff Business Center was very well-received. The organizer wrote,

“Thank you so much for a great program and for being so generous with your time, knowledge, and insights!! The presentation was incredibly insightful, and the audience loved all the resources you shared… You presented that deck beautifully, filled with great info and resources that the audience loved…I had a consultation with a patron after the event, and she told me she loved the program. So you were a rockstar today! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Unfortunately, they only keep the replay up for 30 days, which means they’re probably taking it down October 15. I’m publishing the newsletter a few days early just so you can listen to the whole thing, uncut. I have permission to chunk it up and I’ll make those replays available—but I don’t have permission to give you the whole thing in one block.

So if you have a chance, visit Recording Registration – Zoom before it goes away—and let me know what insights you take away.

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.

Backlash Didn’t Kill Green Investing

Backlash Didn’t Kill Green Investing
By: Paul Polman

We so often hear from mainstream financial writers on the inadequacies of social and environmental investment—but according to the many studies I looked into when researching my book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, that’s simply not true. Former longtime Unilever CEO Paul Polman, whose excellent book Net Positive I reviewed in my May, 2023 newsletter, debunks it nicely in his article, “The Backlash Didn’t Kill Green Investing.” It’s only a few hundred words—so rather than writing a review of a few hundred words, I suggest you follow the link and read the original.

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing! http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

About Shel

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The Clean and Green Club, March 2019

12 Mar, 2019 1 Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, March 2019

Get No-Cost Support and Feedback from Other Social Entrepreneurs
Nicole Dean and I have just launched 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’s a place to get and give advice, bounce ideas around, share news, and help move society to do better. It NOT a place to complain or call names. If you want to be invited, please friend me on Facebook and then send me a direct message. Please say that you saw the newsletter and want an invite to the marketers for social change group.

This Month’s Tip: When You Can’t Change Bad Rules—Make Them Work for You

As I’m writing this, we have a very interesting situation in the town where I live. A member of the Planning Board, who has interfered with many efforts to make things better for the town’s residents over the years, was caught on camera making racist and wildly inaccurate remarks at a Planning Board meeting about someone who was bringing forward a plan for approval. Several people brought attention to it, and there was a newspaper story later in the week.
This incident has touched a nerve in town. Although the deadline to get on the ballot is past, three different people in this town of about 3300 voters and 5000 residents stepped forward to explore running against him. This in spite of some personal risk, as this man is known as a bully and has made vindictive public or private remarks to many of his enemies and perceived enemies. This same man created national news in May 2016, when from the floor of Town Meeting, he said he’d never been inside a library in his life and didn’t intend to start now. (This was part of his three-year vendetta against plans for a new library and senior center, despite near-unanimous support in town for both projects.)

Usually, it’s very hard to win a write-in campaign, but in this case, it should be easy. Several of the most popular town officials, across wide ideological differences, are eager to see this man out of office. Their combined influence vastly outnumbers his supporters.

But here’s the thing: my town doesn’t have ranked-choice voting. So if three or even two opponents were on the ballot, the chances would be high that the incumbent, despite being widely disliked—he was even removed from a different, more powerful town office by citizen vote several years ago—would actually win even with most people in town voting against him.

There are people in my town, and across the state, working for ranked-choice, which has many advantages. In ranked-choice, if your first choice is eliminated, your vote gets moved to your second and subsequent choices, until one candidate has a majority. But it won’t affect this election, which is less than a month away, and ranked choice probably won’t be in place for several years.

So I and several others took action to make sure we wouldn’t be in that situation. We contacted the candidates and got them to meet together and pick one among them to “carry the banner into battle.” Now, if only all those ideologically similar Democrats running for President would do the same ?.

This is an example of people taking their power to change a result, even if not in the ideal way. Think about how you can take this model into change efforts in your own organization or community.

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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.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!

https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

Another Recommended Book: Conflict—The Unexpected Gift: Making the Most of Disputes in Life and Work

Conflict—The Unexpected Gift: Making the Most of Disputes in Life and Work by Jack Hamilton and Elisabeth Seaman
Communication skills are essential in any successful business—especially in green/social entrepreneurship businesses, where unfamiliar processes can create conflicts. Conflict management is one of those key communication skills. It’s something I’ve been striving to improve since the 1970s.
Hamilton and Seaman, both professional mediators and conflict resolution trainers, provide a great overview of patterns that interfere with resolving conflicts. Those patterns turn easy conflicts into difficult, relationship-shattering impasses. Often, this is because we’re quick to make judgments without anchoring them in facts. The authors use the metaphor of racing up a “ladder of assumptions” starting on the floor with the setting, and climbing past to facts, interpretations, motives, and generalizations (p. 20).
Rung 1, facts, is necessary—but we tend to assume we have all the facts when we only have a partial understanding. Without the full benefit of all the facts, up the ladder we run, falsely attributing negative motivations and stereotypes as we go.
The authors walk you back down the ladder (p. 31), staying with the setting and facts and not assuming the other person’s motivations. Once you’ve de-escalated yourself, turn toward making sure both parties feel—and are—understood, and then actually solving the conflict. That requires listening skills training (pp. 63-65). The authors also list eight unhelpful responses to avoid (pp. 67-68) and model asking questions sincerely, without defensiveness or attacking/blaming the other person (p. 87). And they have guidelines for resolution, including understanding that an initial agreement is always an experiment, and the parties can modify it as they test it in the real world (p. 159).
It should still be in writing, though, including the procedure for moving forward and any consequences of non-compliance (p. 162). Hamilton and Seaman also include eight factors in regaining trust (pp. 180-181) and the importance of not just forgiving the other party, but also forgiving yourself (pp. 181-183). They say you’ll have the best results when you give the other person the benefit of the doubt: when you expect good intentions and good behavior (p. 196)—and that your own deposits of goodwill should exceed your withdrawals (pp 178-179). Forgiving is NOT condoning the behavior, however (p. 192).
Still, “it is more important to resolve conflicts and restore relationships than it is for one person to be right and the other be wrong” (pp. 242-243)—and that’s easier when you focus on the future, not the past (p. 244).
Two sections that I haven’t seen in other communication skills books are especially worth highlighting: how to do apologies and explanations that don’t feel like excuses but take honest responsibility (excuses make the situation worse)(pp. 146-149) and how to get past a conflict when the other person can’t or won’t participate in the resolution due to death, estrangement, or other factors (pp. 118-127). A useful appendix (pp. 256-257) provides a nice chart of the four components of deep listening.
If they do a fourth edition, I have two suggestions. Before you and your opponent brainstorm solutions that benefit both parties (pp. 158-159), I’ve found it enormously helpful to list each person’s needs—and only then move toward solutions. And I don’t agree with the language suggestion (p. 215) of “I’ll try.” Trying is a license to fail or abandon. I prefer “I’ll do” or “I commit to.” But these are minor quibbles. This book will be enormously useful to pretty much any business owner/manager, negotiator, activist, or parent.

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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).

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The Clean and Green Club, July 2018

10 Jul, 2018 1 Comment customer experiences Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World job-finding widget practical visionaries social entrepreneurship

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, July 2018

This Month’s Tip: Practical Visionaries, Part 4: John Todd, “Gossamer Engineer”

I want to share with you some of the amazing people—I call them “practical visionaries—profiled in my award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. These folks are doing incredibly exciting work in bringing about a regenerative, thriving world. By the time this series is over, I can safely guarantee that you’ll be glad you’ve “met” a few of them. After each excerpt, you’ll find a brief comment from me, adding more context, since you haven’t read the whole book yet.

In downtown Burlington and South Burlington, Vermont, you’ll find a very unusual industrial park: a place where brewery wastes turn into a growing environment for mushrooms—and in the process create an enjoyable biopark, a green and vibrant ecosystem in the middle of the business district, where downtown workers can enjoy a unique natural setting.

Welcome to the Intervale, 700 acres of sustainable enterprises and ecofriendly public spaces.

This project is one of many lasting gifts to the earth—and to the business world—from John Todd. Todd defines ecological design as “the intelligence of nature applied to human needs”: a new partnership between the ecological needs of the planet and the physical and commercial needs of human beings that can “reduce negative human impact by 90 percent.”

Todd described a project on Cape Cod to save a pond that was receiving 30 million gallons of toxic landfill waste a year. His staff remineralized the pond by adding a rock floor and brought the dead bottom water up to get light with floating windmills. They installed restorers: solar and wind-powered biosystems that process the contaminated water through a series of cells, each with different ecologies—integrated networks of microorganisms, higher plants, snails, and fish. Each of these mini-ecosystems removes specific toxins from the water. Designed to work as a system, the restorers—nine cells in this case—digested 25 inches of sediment within two years—and the water is clean enough to drink now. “This pond was constipated; we uncorked it,” says Todd.

In Maryland, Todd worked on a project to clean up waste from a large chicken-processing plant. The highly concentrated waste was being dumped into a lagoon that flowed directly into Chesapeake Bay. “We planted restorers with 28,000 different species of higher plants and animals. It grew very quickly. Each was designed to break down or sequester different compounds. We reduced the electrical power to convert the waste by 80 percent and cut capital costs in half.” This kind of system is “very effective in agriculture, because it’s cost-effective enough for farm use.”

One of the underlying principles in this work is sharing resources among different pieces of the system and changing the paradigm about what’s left over. Instead of disposing of a waste stream, Todd encourages people to think about how to use that material as an input. The goal is zero emissions: no waste generation at all. If wastes are considered as inputs, they can lead to new commercial enterprises—for instance, a mushroom farm. All of a sudden, the cost of waste disposal turns into capital for a new revenue stream.

This is how the natural world works, at least when undisturbed by human pollution. When these systems are integrated together, they not only eliminate waste, but also provide shared synergy, reduce costs, spread technical and legal expertise, and create both economic and environmental improvements—as occurred at the Intervale, where biowastes feed a commercial fish farm that also cleans the water, and the waste heat from a wood-fired power plant is recaptured to heat the complex. “I begin to see a model for college and urban food production. We can begin to think of strengthening our own food security in these troubled times. We’re creating a new culture based on earth stewardship.”

These concepts can also work easily in developing countries. Todd designed a water treatment sustainability project for a refugee camp, using a long transparent pipe to expand and contract gases. The range of temperatures and conditions is so great that it kills viruses.

Todd notes, “The biotech industry looks for magic bullets—single solutions to complex problems. Nature is a symphony”; it doesn’t work that way.

For more information about this award-winning, life-changing book (Shel’s favorite by far among the 10 he’s written) and to get your very own copy—visit https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/guerrilla-marketing-to-heal-the-world/ Find out why over 20 world-class entrepreneurs and green business experts including futurist/blogger Seth Godin, Chicken Soup for the Soul co-creator Jack Canfield, pioneering green business author Jacquelyn Ottman, GreenBiz.com Executive Director Joel Makower, and many others. If you buy a paper copy directly from Shel, he will happily personally inscribe and autograph it for you or the person of your choice.

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Hear & Meet Shel

I’ve been taping several other podcasts lately, and will post the links in future newsletters as I get them. In the meantime, you can browse the list of the more-than-30 podcasts I’ve done; they range from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

Order your copy of Shel’s newest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World

Learn how the business world can profit while solving hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change (hint: they’re all based in resource conflicts). Endorsed by Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin, and many others. Find out more and order from several major booksellers (or get autographed and inscribed copies directly from me). https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/guerrilla-marketing-to-heal-the-world/

Download a free sampler with several excerpts, the complete Table of Contents and Index, and all the endorsements.

Is Anyone REALLY Reading Your Sustainability or CSR Report?

Repurpose that expensive content, without using any staff time. I will extract the key items and turn them into marketing points that you can use immediately: https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

Another Recommended Book: Customer Experiences with Soul

Customer Experiences with Soul: A New Era in Design, by Simon Robinson and Maria Moraes Robinson (Holonomics Publishing, 2017)

Let’s get something out of the way right at the start: despite the subtitle, this isn’t a book about product design; it’s about designing magnificent customer experiences based in core values. I’ve covered several books on that theme over the years, and I consider it part of the core knowledge base for all social entrepreneurs and marketers.

And yes, customer experience is absolutely part of marketing. Maybe the most important part. The authors point this out consistently, starting right on page 4: “’customer experience’ refers…to every single interaction inside the business between colleagues, employees, suppliers, shareholders and contractors…and every person who comes into contact with the business.” The Robinsons set a goal of congruence: what a business says, means, and does should all align (p. 6). And on page 11, they set out five hard-nosed MBA-type statistics demonstrating why businesses should embrace this thinking.

They definitely see the social entrepreneurship side of their work. Within the main chapters, subsections bear titles like Peace, Truth (a subhead in two adjacent chapters), Love, Righteousness, Non-violence, Beauty, Goodness, and Justice. The book is a roadmap to design a business that embodies those types of values—and spins that out to create stakeholder (especially customer and employee) experiences that also embody those values.

The early part of the book is somewhat theoretical, and parts of it can be a bit of a slog. But when they’re talking about real businesses, sharing case studies, it’s a great read.

For an American like me, the perspective and language of two Brazilians who trained in England is very different, and quite refreshing. Several examples forced me to confront my own regional biases, and to see what works well in a very different culture like Sao Paolo.

It’s also very refreshing to see their emphasis on authenticity, integrity, ethical behavior—principles I’ve been publicly advocating since 2002, and where I sometimes feel like a lonely voice in a business and political culture that emphasizes short-term profit at the expense of these deeper virtues. I love this image: “We can’t use soul like chili sauce” (p. 70). It’s not a condiment to spice up a dead company; it has to be a core value. This attitude is key to understanding the book, and themes like that are repeated often.

Of course, service itself has to matter. Even little things can count a lot. “Sometimes we can find a phenomenon, such as the coffee in a hotel, which contains the whole essence of the brand, the company, the values, the experience” (pp. 64-65). And the book makes the business case many times. One of my favorites was the story of a happy customer’s Facebook post that brought a 900% increase in revenue to a Sao Paolo cell phone repair kiosk (p. 155).

But a better experience doesn’t mean taking all the challenges away, making things too easy. That can actually be counterproductive, if the challenge reminds your prospect of what they like about the struggle. Think about artisanal wares made in small batches, by hand, versus their mass-produced equivalents. A handwriting font simply doesn’t replicate the experience of receiving a card done in real (hand-done) calligraphy (pp. 68-69). Similarly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot replicate the customer service experience of dealing with a skilled human being who is actually interacting with you (p. 185).

Several case studies shed light on applying this good thinking in a real-world business. The book ends with a fabulous case study of a love-based set of restaurants (not a chain, as each venue has its own identity and niche (pp. 198-211); the authors see their interview with founder Walter Mancini as encompassing all the principles they discuss. But I found another case study even more compelling: a Sao Paolo medical center called Hospital Sírio Libanes (Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, pp. 167-178). Their remarkable CEO, Dr. Chapchap, has made a career of making the hospital experience far more enjoyable than the typical. He also has a collaborative attitude that I find really refreshing: Believing that “it is not morally defensible to have a competitive advantage in healthcare” (p. 168), he not only creates a culture that continually improves best practices, but freely shares them with other medical organizations.

On page 186, the Robinsons give a quick summary of their favorite takeaways from several of the businesses they’ve profiled, and then on page 187, a comprehensive chart of their holonomic model, in three concentric almost-circles. Each circle has a small gap, to emphasize that the circles are interrelated.

There’s much more. Go out and read it and take the time you need to get through.

Accurate Writing & More
14 Barstow Lane
Hadley, MA 01035 USA
https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/

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About Shel & This Newsletter

As a green and social change business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriter…award-winning author of ten books…international speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His award-winning 8th book Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet was a category bestseller for at least 34 months (and is now available exclusively through Shel), his newest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, has already won two awards and is endorsed by Jack Canfield and Seth Godin. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.

Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Going Beyond Sustainability, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He’s an International Platform Association Certified Speaker and was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).

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

We collect your information solely to let our mailing service send you the information you request. We do not share it with any outside party not involved in mailing our information to you. Of course, you may unsubscribe at any time—but we hope you’ll stick around to keep up with cool developments at the intersections of sustainability, social transformation, and keeping the planet in balance. Each issue of Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter has a how-to or thought-leadership article and a review of a recommended book. We’ve been doing an e-newsletter all the way back to 1997, and some of our readers have been with us the whole time.

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.

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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).

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.

Since When Are Libraries Known for Brilliant Marketing?

10 Aug, 2012 No Comment

This month’s marketing lesson comes from one of the best examples of marketing ju-jitsu I’ve ever seen.

In ju-jitsu (a/k/a jiu-jitsu), like many martial arts, you use the strength of your opponent, rather than your own strength, and deflect it back on him or her. You get to still be nonviolent and righteous, while your opponent is lying in a heap on the floor.

Similarly, in marketing ju-jitsu (a term that may have been coined by Max Lenderman in 2001), you can overcome an opponent with far greater resources who can afford to hire wildly talent advertising agencies and saturate the airwaves with the result.

In the business world, the classic examples are car rental giant Avis’s “we’re only #2 so we try harder” campaign, Volkswagen’s Small Wonder ads from the 1960s, and of course, the legendary Smash Big Brother ad that debuted the Apple Macintosh in 1984.

In the anti-business world, the day in 1967 Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies threw dollar bills on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange comes to mind, as do many of the Adbusters campaigns, such as Buy Nothing Day.

So what does this kind of guerrilla marketing have to do with libraries? Librarians are thought of as a quiet bunch who rarely make any kind of public stink (though this is actually not true—just ask progressive author and filmmaker Michael Moore, whose book Stupid White Men was saved by a national campaign by librarians).

Well, here’s a video (less than three minutes long) outlining a particularly intense use of marketing ju-jitsu: threatened by a Tea Party campaign to defund the library, supporters created a fake campaign in favor of book burning, even saying the event would include live music and refreshments generating massive backlash. They then revealed their true agenda: to raise consciousness that “closing a library is like burning books.” This in turn resulted in a massive outpouring of library supporters on Election Day that easily defeated the defunding initiative. And both the book burning announcement and the later clarification got lots of social media buzz and the attention of thee press nationally.

Go watch it now. I’ll wait.

Back? Good.

I’d love you to share the takeaways you got in the comments, below. Here are some of mine:

Memes have a lot of power. Revulsion against book burning is a deep-seated response to centuries of oppression. Whether in 15th-century Spain, 18th-century America, Nazi-era Germany, or the late Ray Bradbury’s fictional dystopia Fahrenheit 451, book burning is seen as an attempt to suppress and control thought.
Reductio ad absurdumarguments—taking a line of thinking past its logical conclusion iinto the realm of the ridiculous—still work.
Even without funding, an organized populace can defeat injustice, especially when we make it a mom-and-apple-pie issue. (This was the approach we used when we saved our local mountain.)
Please share yours in the comments, below.

The Clean & Green Club, April 2012

13 Apr, 2012 No Comment

The Clean & Green Club

April 2012

CONTENTS

Twitter, Part 2

Just for You

Hear & Meet Shel

Friends/ Colleagues

Book Review

Connect with Shel on Social Media:

Twitter

Facebook Profile

Blog

Green and Ethical Marketing Facebook

Google+

About Shel & This Newsletter

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 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).”

Twitter, Part 2: What to Tweet

Twitter Bird

A key principle: Twitter is about building relationships over time.

That means if all you do is shout sales messages, you’re wasting most of Twitter’s potential. Yes, if you have a popular brand or retail store, your customers do want information about bargains. But they also want to feel like a human being is talking — and listening.

Personally, I strive for a ratio that is no more than 10 percent blatant self-promotion. The other 90% is a mix of passing on links to interesting information (often by retweeting someone else, with acknowledgment), responding to requests for — or asking for — advice, commenting on news or trends, engaging directly with people (responding or passing on a tweet, saying thank-you to people who have retweeted me, mentioned me as someone to follow, or mentioned my latest book (Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green), or just bringing a smile with a quote or a cool picture.

However, if other people say nice things about me or my offerings, I will retweet and/or thank them, and I don’t count that toward the 10 percent.

I guess it must be working, as I get 20 to 50 new followers in a typical week, all of them earned organically, without any game-the-system crap.

Last month’s Twitter, Part 1 newsletter brought this comment from Sherry Lowry in Austin, TX (@sherrylowry on Twitter):

“I really love Twitter (or actually the Twitter-related tools) and was expecting when reading your March news to either

– see clips from your Twitter stream

– a chance to click right into or follow you

Ask and ye shall receive, at least this time. To follow me on Twitter, visit @ShelHorowitz or https://www.twitter.com/shelhorowitz

And here are five of my Tweets (all posted April 1). You’ll notice they illustrate several of the types above.

RT @TalkAboutIssues
Fact: President Ronald Reagan, an icon to most conservatives, supported increases in the debt limit 12 times over his two terms.#Obama2012 [Retweet]

Blog: How Southwest Airlines is Greening Their Planes https://greenandprofitable.com/how-southwest-airlines-is-greening-their-planes/ [passing on interesting links–in this case, an automatic post to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn from my blog]

Fabulous! Beethoven’s 9 10,000 in the chorus, Japan https://www.youtube.com/embed/paH0V6JLxSI[passing on an interesting link that I found elsewhere]

@maddow I’m hoping for 39 x 3 more years of your speaking truth to power. Very happy birthday. [engaging directly, in this case with TV commentator Rachel Maddow]

RT @SW_Coalition: Denise Hamler of @GreenAmerica will be hosting@ShelHorowitz for a talk on green business at (cont) https://tl.gd/goltff [Retweet of someone else’s tweet that promotes me]

I’m a pretty active Tweeter, so you can see lots more at https://twitter.com/shelhorowitz

Just For You: JV Telesiminar with Robert Smith

June 19, 7 pm ET/4 p.m. PT

I’m a long-time fan of joint ventures (JVs), because they let you go to new markets and audiences on the arm of someone they already know and trust I used JVs to reach 5 million people for the launch of my most recent book Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green — versus the roughly 25,000 I can reach on my own.

Robert, a JV expert, approached me recently about doing a program for you. I listened to one of his earlier programs and thought you would benefit by having me bring him in, You’ll learn:

How to set up Joint Ventures to make fast cash — sometimes in just a few hours using your phone book
Secret method for mailing 10,000 sales letters per month…at no cost…not even postage
An amazing strategy for telling 200 million people about your business for FREE
How to dominate your local market as a JV Dealmaker
How to use publicity to get potential joint venture partners to call you
Sneaky way to get $5000 a month in free radio promotions
From O to $1.5 MM using joint venture strategies

Robert Smith is president of Champion Media Worldwide, a public relations and marketing firm in Loves Park, IL. He has mastered the art of joint venture deals and teaches others how to spot hidden opportunities to help their businesses.

Hear & Meet Shel

Not one, but three major telesummits on environmental themes in April (Earth Day is that month, after all). Read on for details.

MONDAY, 4/16 I’m on the first day’s program for the Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit: How You Can Unite Purpose and Profit for a Sustainable Planet, organized by Lorna Li as an “alternative green MBA.” https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GreenBusinessEntrepreneurs/ My topic: Making Green Sexy: Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Small Green Businesses, and I’m on at 5 pm ET/2 pm PT. Other presenters include Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director of Green America; Steven Hoffman, co-founder of LOHAS Journal and LOHAS Forum; Jacqui Ottman, author of The New Rules of Green Marketing, Elena Christopoulos, Interim President of the Green Chamber of Commerce (among others). No charge for this series!

4/21, Amherst, MA Exhibiting at the third annual Amherst Sustainability Fair, on the common, 10-4. https://www.amherstma.gov/index.aspx?NID=683 1200 exhibitors, live music…and fun.

4/26, Interview with Wendy Meyeroff — to listen, 347-884-8365; to ask questions before the show wendy@piggybankpromotions.com

4/29 Goodall and I are also among the presenters for the Better World Forum, another remarkable telesummit on the last two weekends in April — along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra and others. Again, I feel very honored to be included. You can bring down the already-low cost ($49 another $10, to just $39 — if you use my link: https://shelhorowitz.com/go/BetterWorldForum/. I’ll be airing Sunday, April 29, 1-2 pm ET/10-11 am PT

5/1, Houston, TX Speaking at the Gulf Coast Green conference in Houston, May 1: “Making Green Sexy.” https://gulfcoastgreen.org/pages/default.asp

Also remember, if you set me up an engagement, you could earn a generous commission.

Friends/Colleagues Who Want to Help

I’ve listened to several calls from ShiftNetwork’s latest telesummit, Spring of Sustainability, and they are amazing. I’m so proud to be one of the presenters, along with such planet-changers as Jane Goodall (legendary for her work in Africa with chimpanzees), Bill McKibben (climate activist and founder of 350.org), Vandana Shiva (Indian activist who took on Coca-Cola), Van Jones (former White House Green Jobs czar and funder of Color of Change), John Robbins (visionary who puts the Baskin-Robbins fortune to good use), Hazel Henderson (author of Ethical markets and many other key works), Frances Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet and other books, decades of food and democracy activism) John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hitman), Thom Hartmann (progressive radio host and author), Aqeela Sherrills (campaigner against gang violence and government violence), Julia Butterfly Hill (she lived in a tree for months to save it from being cut down), Vicki Robin (Your Money or Your Life), Hunter Lovins (energy pioneer and co-author of Natural Capitalism), Joel Makower (founder of GreenBiz.com), John Trudell (American Indian and earth activist)…WOW! Many of the interviews will be aired between now and June 22; for those you’ve missed (including mine), you can unlimited access to the replays for a very reasonable price of about $2 per session ($147 altogether). https://shelhorowitz.com/go/SpringOfSustanability/

GreenAmerica’s GreenFest comes to NYC for the first time, April 21-22. I spoke at this event in Washington, DC a year and a half ago, and loved it. Unfortunately, I have to miss it, as I’m exhibiting in Amherst that weekend and haven’t figured out how to clone myself. I’d originally planned to just come in for Sunday, but the best speakers are on Saturday. https://www.greenfestivals.org/

IPNE Publishing Conference

The Independent Publishers of New England (an organization I founded sometime around 1999) 2nd Annual New England Publishing Conference “Embracing the Past, Imagining the Future” inBoxborough MA, April 27-28 with speakers Robert Gray (who writes for Shelf Awareness) and Chris Morrow (owner of Northshire Books).

A cram-packed two day opportunity to further your publishing plans withaccess to experts and ample time for networking at a bargain price.https://www.ipne.org

Another Recommended Book: Become an Award Winning Company

Become an Award Winning Company: 7 Steps to Unlock The Million Dollar Secret Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know, by Matt Shoup (Shoup Consulting, 2012)

It sounds like a thin premise for a marketing book: go out and win some awards. After all, I cover the subject in just a few pages in some of my own books on marketing. In one of my books, winning awards shares a chapter on credibility building with getting endorsements and reviews.

But breaking a process down step by step is often a worthy endeavor, and in this case Shoup provides good food for thought.

The bulk of the book is devoted to the good things that can happen to an award-winning company that understands how to leverage and market those awards (including a bunch of interviews with CEOs of award-winning companies about the specific ways their achievement helped their business). A smallish section at the end goes through the how-to of actually winning awards. I might have reversed both placement and proportion, but maybe that’s because I do have a very clear understanding of the benefits already (and have won quite a few awards over the years).

Shoup himself sums up the case for winning awards nicely and succinctly on page 171: “As an award-winning company, you are going to be able to go out and attain massive success, exposure, credibility, free PR, and more business.” And a lot of the book shows how he and the CEOs he profiles have done just that.

More than the specifics, where this book really shines is in three consistent approaches to the success mindset:

1.To win awards, you must achieve excellence: base your company in high integrity, wow your customers, and establish a culture that drives the best people to join your staff and succeed with you.

2.This excellence allows you to thrive in economic downturns (he has a great rant on this) and to set and achieve goals a lot more easily.

3.Success doesn’t just happen to you; you go out and make it happen, and that means when you do win awards, it’s up to you to extract the maximum possible benefit from them in your marketing.

That last is important. Used properly, awards let you de-commoditize your business, get away from the tire-kickers and bargain hunters, and establish the value of working with an excellent company and being wiling to pay for it.

One thing that puzzles me: Shoup apparently gave no thought to becoming an award-winning *author.* The cover and interior design are amateurish, and the book would have benefited from one more edit (with someone who understands when a phrase like “award winning” should or should not take a hyphen). It would have been easy enough to spend a few hundred bucks more on a better production and then enter some good awards for the book, especially if he wants to build up the coaching and speaking parts of his own business (his primary line of work is running a house painting company).

GetResponse.com

https://www.GetResponse.com

The Clean & Green Club, March 2012

15 Mar, 2012 5 Comments

The Clean & Green Club

March 2012

CONTENTS

Why Tweet?

…Next Book…

Hear & Meet Shel

Friends/ Colleagues

Book Review

New Format

Thank you for all your comments on the new format. Overwhelmingly, most respondents like the new HTML version. We will try to work on the display issues some people are experiencing.

We did have a winner of the e-book.

About Shel & This Newsletter

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 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).

Why Tweet?
(March 2012 Tip)

Twitter Bird If you’ve been reading my newsletter for several years, you know I’ve been marketing through social media all the way back to 1995. These days, a lot of my social media goes into Twitter.

People either love Twitter or hate it. My wife can’t stand it; I think it’s great.

Why?

You can have a big impact while investing almost no time
It’s easy to gain very targeted followers — and influential “followees” (people you follow)
Very short learning curve
Interface stays reasonably constant, and the changes are improvements that make sense (unlike Facebook, where you have to keep relearning how to do it, or frequently discover that the expensive tools and processes you invested in before the latest redesign are now them obsolete)
Third-party tools like TweetDeck (now owned by Twitter), MarketMeSuite, and HootSuite add enormous functionality: scanning the most important contacts quickly, searching topics, scheduling ahead, adding users to groups quickly
Trends, posts, and connections can easily go viral through the power of retweets and other devices — and as they do, you can easily expand your circles of influence
You can build real relationships with people by responding personally to their tweets
While there are lots of ways around the 140-character limit, it does force you to sharpen your brain and be concise
Oh yeah, and it’s fun!

I find Twitter a terrific research tool: I get a lot of my information on new trends in the green, business, and political worlds by following links. I also find it a great way to get into conversations with people I haven’t met before, some of whom are very well-connected. Often, I’ll start a conversation on Twitter and then move it to 1-to-1 e-mail.

Twitter is also a great way to get noticed by speakers: if you tweet highlights of their talks or Twitter chat presentations — and either include a designated hashtag for the event (e.g., #sustainchat) and/or mention them by their Twitter handle (e.g., @ShelHorowitz), you’ll get on their radar. I can tell you that when someone puts @ShelHorowitz in a tweet, I go visit their profile unless it’s obvious spam, and usually follow back. And when someone at a networking event tells me he or she follows me on Twitter, I pay closer attention.

And yes, I’ve sold books, started conversations about my consulting, copywriting or speaking, and attended networking events that I learned about on Twitter.

This is the first of a three-part series. Next month, what you can tweet, and in May, what Twitter is NOT.

Be in My Next Book with Your Book Marketing Success Story!

I’m revising my 2007 book Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, and looking for a few more good recent success stories — the more “out-of-the-box,” the better.

I am thinking about chunking up the book into several smaller e-volumes, to take advantage of the Kindle/Nook market — and if this works well, I might repeat the strategy with my consumer book on frugal fun.

Anyway, please submit stories of 500 words or less, using this link to generate a subject line I’ll spot:
mailto:shel@principledprofit.com?subject=BookMarketingSuccessForGMAP

Submission constitutes permission to reprint in the book and in any publicity and warrants that you have the right to submit the material. If I use your material, you’ll get a copy of the mini-e-book that includes it.

Hear & Meet Shel

Not one, but three major telesummits on environmental themes in April (Earth Day is that month, after all). Read on for details.

3/19 Triangle Variety Radio has me as a guest Monday, March 19, 8 pm ET/5 pm PT, discussing “Making Green Sexy: Marketing Strategies that Any Business Can Use to Profit in the Rapidly Growing Green Market. https://trianglevarietyradio.com/ and click “Log In To Our Radio Show” or Skype to 949-272-9578; (I’m told only Skype will work — which I find very odd)

3/24, Greenfield, MA Speaking on how artists and businesses can benefit from working together at Creative Economy Summit III: Fostering our Local Economy: Art and Business in Partnership March 23 and 24, 2011, Downtown Greenfield, MA, https://www.creativeeconomysummit.com/ — my session is from 2-3:15 pm Saturday, March 24

4/2 I’m still pinching myself that I am one of the speakers at the amazing Spring of Sustainability telesummit, along with environment rockstars like Jane Goodall (legendary for her work in Africa with chimapnzees), Bill McKibben (climate activist and founder of 350.org), Vandana Shiva (Indian activist who took on Coca-Cola), Van Jones (former White House Green Jobs czar and funder of Color of Change), John Robbins (visionary who puts the Baskin-Robbins fortune to good use), Hazel Henderson (author of Ethical markets and many other key works), Frances Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet and other books, decades of food and democracy activism) John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hitman), Thom Hartmann (progressive radio host and author), Aqeela Sherrills (campaigner against gang violence and government violence), Julia Butterfly Hill (she lived in a tree for months to save it from being cut down), Vicki Robin (Your Money or Your Life), Hunter Lovins (energy pioneer and co-author of Natural Capitalism), Joel Makower (founder of GreenBiz.com), John Trudell (American Indian and earth activist)…WOW! Sessions start March 26 and go through June 22. My slot is April 2, 3-3:30 pm ET/noon-12:30 pm PT. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/SpringOfSustanability/ No cost, and all the calls get recorded. If you don’t sign up for this series, I have to question your judgment. Even if you only manage to listen to a few of these world-changing visionaries, why would you want to miss out?

4/16 I’m on the first day’s program for the Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit: How You Can Unite Purpose and Profit for a Sustainable Planet, organized by Lorna Li as an “alternative green MBA.” https://www.greenbusinessentrepreneurs.com/ My topic: Making Green Sexy: Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Small Green Businesses, and I’m on at 5 pm ET/2 pm PT. Other presenters include Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director of Green America; Steven Hoffman, co-founder of LOHAS Journal and LOHAS Forum; Jacqui Ottman, author of The New Rules of Green Marketing, Elena Christopoulos, Interim President of the Green Chamber of Commerce (among others). No charge for this series either!

4/21, Amherst, MA Exhibiting at the third annual Amherst Sustainability Fair, on the common, 10-4. https://www.amherstma.gov/index.aspx?NID=683

4/26, Interview with Wendy Meyeroff — to listen, 347-884-8365; to ask questions before the show wendy@piggybankpromotions.com

4/29 Goodall and I are also among the presenters for the Better World Forum, another remarkable telesummit on the last two weekends in April — along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra and others. Again, I feel very honored to be included. You can bring down the already-low cost ($39 through April 12, or $49 afterward) another $10, to just $29/$39 — if you use my link: https://shelhorowitz.com/go/BetterWorldForum/. I’ll be airing Sunday, April 29, 1-2 pm ET/10-11 am PT

5/1, Houston, TX Speaking at the Gulf Coast Green conference in Houston, May 1: “Making Green Sexy.” https://gulfcoastgreen.org/pages/default.asp

Also remember, if you set me up an engagement, you could earn a generous commission.

Friends Who Want to Help

ShiftNetwork’s latest telesummit, Spring of Sustainability, is going to be amazing, and I’m so proud to be one of the presenters. See description in the Hear & Meet Shel section. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/SpringOfSustanability/

Vrinda Normand is another one who puts on great telesummits, and hers are focused on marketing for conscious companies. Her latest, Irresistible List Building Summit, runs from March 13 (yeah, you’ve missed a few) through April 6 and includes people like Lisa Sasevich, Denise Wakeman, Kendall Summerhawk, Nancy Juetten, Christian Mickelsen, and Adam Urbanski. The headline: “How to Attract 1,000s of Your Ideal Clients Online So You Can Make the Big Impact You Were Born For” — nice use of Ultimate Benefits copywriting strategy there. :-). Another event with no cost. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/VrindaListBuilding/

GreenAmerica’s GreenFest comes to NYC for the first time, April 21-22. I spoke at this event in Washington, DC a year and a half ago, and loved it. I intend to be there Sunday, but I’m not on the program.

Two Book Launches with Lots of Bonuses

360 Degrees of Influence: Get Everyone to Follow Your Lead on Your Way to the Top
by NYT Bestselling author Harrison Monarth

In 360 Degrees of Influence, Monarth provides everything you need to gain the trust and respect of those around you — no matter where they’re positioned in the organizational hierarchy — and expand your influence well beyond your immediate environment. Become the most psychologically astute person in the room — so you can be the most influential leader in the room. Learn how to:

Assess your current influencing power
Overcome resistance to your ideas and proposals
Know what people are thinking and feeling — even better than they do
Avoid the most common decision-making pitfalls
Create an influence strategy tailored to your organization’s hierarchy

March 22 is the launch for If I’m So Smart, Why Can’t I Get Rid of This Clutter? Tools to Get it Done! by Sallie Felton

Are you conquering your clutter — or is your clutter conquering you? Author and life coach Sallie Felton, walks you through the practical and organizational strategies that make it easy to stay organized; but this book goes deeper and uncovers the hidden reasons why it can be so hard to get clutter free and stay that way.

Another Recommended Book: Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact, by Dalya F. Massachi

If you want to communicate clearly, you have to write clearly. If you want to write clearly, you want this book.

While her focus is tilted toward grassroots and nonprofit/not-for-profit community organizations, about 98 percent of her advice is equally applicable to business — especially green, socially conscious, ethical businesses that need to communicate a bigger message than “buy my stuff.”

Massachi has a light touch that turns a could-have-been-deadly subject into an enjoyable read, and the textbook-like format is full of exercises, nice little interjections, personal experience, and such. Which makes it a lot more palatable than the grammar and style textbooks of my youth. I’d even go so far as to say that this is a book that I’d have liked to have written, and certainly one I wish I’d had when I was starting my career as a social-change and environmental action writer.

Still, I wanted to take it a little at a time, so I could absorb it properly. Now that I’ve gotten all the way through, I’m sure I’ll be referring to it when I hit a grammar snag.

Not to say the book is perfect. Some of the later chapters get a bit bogged down in grammatical minutiae, and there are a few places where I would argue with her style choices. Example: call me old-fashioned, but to me, the only time you’d use an apostrophe after a set of initials is as a possessive: “NGO’s” can *only* mean “belonging to an NGO” [Non-Governmental Organization]. But to Dalya, a generation younger than me, using that construction as a plural noun is a valid if unfortunate choice.

Be sure to read the appendices; otherwise, you’ll miss the excellent brief sections on writing for audio and video, as well as a wonderful list of “visionary” trigger words (right after a list of marketing trigger words) — these are the words that tug at our readers’ heartstrings and help us frame the narrative. And that’s something that far too often, progressives have been clumsy with.

A must for the shelf of any serious business or nonprofit writer, and even more so for employees or managers who are not writers but get thrown a writing project (if they don’t want to contact someone like Dalya or me to do it for them). Nicely indexed and crammed with resources, too. https://dfmassachi.net/.

GetResponse.com

https://www.GetResponse.com

Shel Horowitz’s Clean & Green Newsletter, December 2011

15 Dec, 2011 4 Comments

In This Issue…

Will YOU be the One to Get a Brand New $1299 Multifunction Printer from Dell?
This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 1
Friends Who Want to Help
Hear & Meet Shel
Another Recommended Book: The New Relationship Marketing

If you celebrate any holidays in December, I wish you a joyous season.

Will YOU be the One to Get a Brand New $1299 Multifunction Printer from Dell?

A few weeks ago, I received a gift of a very spiffy Dell 3335dn multifunction printer, which not only prints two-sided at high resolution from any computer on our network, but also scans, copies, e-mails, and stores documents in its memory. I have to tell you, even though I’ve gotten along just fine without in-house copying and faxing capabilities, I’m finding that I really enjoy having them.

Because the company is courting the green market for this printer (which not only can print both sides of the paper but also has some cool energy management features), Dell’s promotion team came to me and asked if I’d like to give one of these printers away. Of course, I agreed. But I put a condition on it. Rather than just give one away randomly, I’ll give it to the person who submits the best sustainability tip via my Twitter account during the giveaway days.

So you’ll be rewarded for your thinking processes, and probably not facing an enormous number of entries. In other words, if you give this your best shot, you’ll have a much better chance of winning than in most contests.

And five runners-up get a copy of my very useful e-book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.

Disclosure: as is obvious from above, I got one of these printers as a gift and have been using it steadily ever since.

By entering, you agree to both my rules and Dell’s rules for the contest. You’ll find both sets of rules posted at https://painlessgreenbook.com/win-a-1299-printer-december-16-19-2011

Good luck!

This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 1

In this two-part series, I’ll first introduce the context of video marketing in today’s world–which is quite different from even a few years ago. Next month, I’ll follow up with specific things to keep in mind when shooting a video, and some ideas for what kind of content to create.

There are probably at least 1001 ways to promote a product or a service with video–a medium that penetrates the brain like no other (as we’ve known since the popularization of television began more than 60 years ago). Video used to require considerable technical skill and a whole pile of expensive equipment. But these days, anyone can shoot and produce a video. All you need is a pocket video camera or (for interviews) even just a Skype account with the call recorder add-on; distribution is as simple as uploading to a video sharing site like Youtube, Vimeo, Viddler, Ustream, or their many competitors.

(Note: For some purposes, I still advise professional production; the quality will be way better. Your speaker demo reel, for instance, should absolutely be done by a pro, and so should anything that you expect to go head-to-head with footage shot by big studios. But you can do a lot with homegrown videos.)

Video is enormously popular. This list of more than 300 video sharing sites <https://www.reelseo.com/list-video-sharing-websites/> includes Alexa rank (how much they get visited) and Google Page Rank (a vague indication of how much search engines like them). Astoundingly, 46 sites have an Alexa rank better than 1000. That means out of the roughly 300 million websites in the entire world, 46 of the 1000 most-visited websites exist to share video. And many of these sites allow user submissions of videos.

Alexa’s own Top Sites page gives Youtube the number 3 position in both the world and the United States, trailing only Google (which owns Youtube) and Facebook (data checked 12/12/11).

On Youtube, and presumably other sites, you can set up a branded URL for your own channel, building name recognition. You can also easily embed a video hosted on any of these sites into your own web pages and even e-mails.

And don’t forget that these sites are typically non-exclusive. You can post the same video on multiple sites, which may be especially useful if there’s a niche video site covering your area of expertise.

Friends Who Want to Help

Guerrilla Marketing Intensive–$1000 discount just for you

My co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, “the Father of Guerilla Marketing,” has a few seats left in his next Guerrilla Marketing Intensive, at his Florida home, January 23rd-25th. 21 hours of training over three days. Normally $4997 (payable in up to four installments)–but Jay’s manager (his daughter Amy) has offered a $1000 discount to my subscribers. Limited to just ten people, so this is pretty in-depth. https://gmarketing.infusionsoft.com/go/Int/shelhoro/ If you want my opinion about whether Jay knows his stuff, read my rave review elsewhere in this issue of Guerrilla Marketing Remix.

To get this special rate, just click this link: mailto:olympiagal@aol.com?subject=Discount?cc=shel@frugalfun.com to tell Amy you want the $1000 off for Shel’s subscribers (Also tell her whether you prefer an online payment link or prefer to call in your payment info).

Increase Your Happiness Quotient

Remember the hit song, “Don’t Worry…Be happy?” But how do you GET happy without worrying? Ana Weber’s book/course, “The Happiness Thermometer,” can give you more than a few clues to increase your happiness quotient without having to worry about it. https://3bl.me/rb3y6n

Coop-themed Poetry Contest for Middle Schoolers

Know a middle-schooler who likes to write? Cheese and milk co-op Cabot is doing a poetry contest for students in grades 5-8, on the cooperative spirit. Winner not only gets a cash prize, but his or her poem on a Cabot butter box. For details: https://potatohill.com/files/2011-PoetryContest.pdf

D’vorah Lansky Wants to Help with Your Book Promotion

Virtual Book Tour Course: https://3bl.me/ewsged

Hear & Meet Shel

December

Listen to the repay of my December 5 webinar for Ventureneer: Green Marketing: Leveraging Your Social Responsibility to Improve Profit, https://ventureneer.com/webclass/green-marketing-leveraging-your-social-responsibility-improve-profit

January

1/4/12: Visit https://bigamericangiveaway.com/–I’m that day’s Massachusetts sponsor, and I’ll have some cool stuff for you: a gratis copy of my e-book Painless Green, and a $25 gift certificate good toward any consultation or copywriting. Same Deal applies to the London page of https:// bigbritishgiveaway.com on January 17.

February

In negotiation to speak at conferences in Bangladesh and Switzerland. Nothing definite yet.

April

4/2/12: I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be doing a program for The Shift Network. For a year now, I’ve been listening to many of their calls, interviewing the creme de la creme of experts in sustainability and global consciousness. I’ll be part of the Green Business track of the ambitious Spring of Sustainability program, which also features such luminaries as Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben, Hunter Lovins, David Korten, Frances Moore Lappe and Duane Elgin. You will want to sign up for this entire series. I plan to listen to as many of the calls as possible. Watch for the registration link (no cost, I believe) in a future issue.

Also remember–if you set me up an engagement, you could earn a generous commission.

Another Recommended Book: The New Relationship Marketing by Mari Smith

About 80 percent of Mari Smith’s new book is about social media–but I’d say the other 20 percent might be worth the closest look.

That’s because Smith is not only a believer in meeting face-to-face, but a brilliant tactician who uses her prodigious online skills to totally win over the people she meets offline (at conferences, for example)–and tells you exactly how to do the same.

Using a powerful yet very accessible set of online research tools to steer her face-to-face encounters, Smith creates quite a bit of “wow factor” by integrating online comments about her presentation directly into the speech, in real time–and to not just show up very prepared to network with other speakers and attenders, but to have impressed them so much ahead of (as well as during) the event that they actually seek you out.

Smith outlines how she does this, step by step, in Chapter 7 of her new book, The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web (John Wiley and Sons, 2011). She titles the chapter, Go Offline to Optimize Your Online Marketing–but I’d actually flip that around. Really, it’s about going *online* to maximize your *offline* marketing.

While that chapter alone would be worth buying the book, it’s typical of the other good stuff, all based on the idea of using “radical strategic visibility” to build real relationships in business. She encourages businesses to think beyond B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) to “P2P”–people-to-people. For instance, she talks about how to get your A-list–the people you want to impress–to see you as a valued colleague…what parts of your social media presence you should and should not delegate, and why…how to recovery gracefully and with minimal damage from a social-media faux pas…how businesses with purely local clientele (such as restaurants) can market effectively on social media…identifying and cultivating “superfans” who will advance your brand perhaps better than you can do on your own.

And it all comes from an attitude of service, perhaps best summed up by this quote from pages 193-194: “Always be thinking about how you can tap into the intelligent network of people that will allow you to bring greater value to each and every individual and your community at large. Provide a better product and better service, and consistently build your social equity to establish your brand as the natural “go-to” for your field. You can become a top industry leader by utilizing the inclusion of your marketplace. If you’re really treating people as equals–whether it’s 10 or 10 million–then you are relating to each one with the greatest of respect by including and involving them.”

The book is also crammed with resources, both in the main text and in the appendix, and features a wonderfully comprehensive index (something I desperately wish more business books paid attention to).

Some of the links in this newsletter earn me a commission. I only promote products that I think will be useful to you.

About Shel and 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 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). Shel brings you a mix of actionable marketing tips, profiles of successful green and ethical businesses, and reviews of worthwhile books.

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, November 2011

15 Nov, 2011 1 Comment

In This Issue…

Clean and Green Spotlight: An Avon Approach To Healthier and Wealthier Communities
Friends Who Want to Help
Hear & Meet Shel
Another Recommended Book: Guerrilla Marketing Remix

Clean and Green Spotlight: An Avon Approach To Healthier and Wealthier Communities

Guest article by Olivia Khalili of Cause Capitalism, where this originally appeared.

The concept is simple and brilliant. When I came across Living Goods, my stomach flipped with the potential impact of the organization’s work. The mechanisms, intent and appeal match that of blockbuster social enterprises Kiva and charity: water.

Living Goods replicates Avon’s model of door-to-door selling, but instead of peddling lipstick and mascara to middle-class women, Living Goods’ Health Promoters sell affordable health products—from antibacterial soap to de-worming tablets to condoms to bednets—to the Ugandan poor. By providing a way for women to make a living by selling products that prevent unnecessary death from treatable diseases, Living Goods is fighting the double-headed dragon of mortality and poverty.

More than 10 million children die every year (pause for a second; that’s 27,398 deaths a day) from easily treatable conditions like malaria, TB and diarrhoeal disease. Products for prevention and treatment exist, but efficient and scalable delivery systems are lacking. Living Goods uses micro-enterprise and micro-franchising to get these products into communities and to keep them there. Health Promoters buy a business-in-a-box for $100-$250, which includes the products, as well as training, marketing and coaching. Living Goods and its partners—one of whom is the microfinance and development organization BRAC—provide affordable financing for the kits.

Malaria, as one example, deals a double blow by causing economic as well as physical suffering. Reoccurring and prolonged bouts with malaria prevent people from working. Living Goods is committed to inverting this cycle by incentivizing its Health Promoters (through profit) to make essential health products available to more people. The more a Health Promoter does this, the larger her profit and the greater the health impact she will have on her community.

Over the next five years, Living Goods aims to become financially self-sustaining and to replicate its model in other countries. Charles Slaughter, Living Goods’ founder and president, is very open to helping other social enterprises adopt or replicate the model. Partnering with the Poverty Action Lab* (PAL), Living Goods is tracking its impact through randomized control studies as it works to lower mortality rates for children under five by 15-30% in its target communities.

Child and community health, female economic development, financial sustainability, open-source replication, local support, microfinance micro-enterprise—these outcomes and mechanisms give me an adrenaline jolt. Why have I not heard of Living Goods earlier? If you’re as moved by Living Goods’ approach and mission as I am, you can sign up for its e-newsletter or make a donation. Living Goods doesn’t yet have a Twitter or Facebook presence (but I’m about to offer to help develop it for them).

*The New Yorker recently wrote a great profile on PAL and the organization’s co-founder Esther Duflo.

Friends Who Want to Help

Amazing $2500 Freebie from Sean D’Souza of Psychotactics

Of the many marketers I regularly follow and learn from, I consider Sean D’Souza one of the smartest (as well among the most entertaining). If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you might remember I’ve referred to him often, and have posted several of his articles to my various websites.

Well, now Sean is giving away a 36-audio course he normally charges $2500 for—if you register for his excellent newsletter—I’ve been reading it for many years—by November 29. Not only will you get what promises to be a ton of useful information, you’ll get to listen to Sean’s quirky and enjoyable Kiwi accent (he’s a New Zealander) as he delivers it. I’ve listened to a lot of his audios over the years, and I always learn a lot about human psychology—and how we marketers can most effectively harness it.

This workshop, the Brain Alchemy Masterclass, explains why structure—not marketing—is critical to growing a business effectively.

Because he’s including so much material, Sean is rationing out the access codes over time, so he doesn’t wipe out his servers with too many people trying to download at once. (I signed up and I’m waiting eagerly for my code.) Here’s the link: https://www.psychotactics.com/free-goodies

The Best-Conceived JV I’ve Seen

Do you do Joint Ventures? As I hinted last month, I’m helping to orchestrate a particularly exciting one, involving celebrities, politicians, environmental education, kids, quilts and all sorts of other cool stuff that appeals to the media and will get you coverage and contacts. We’re planning ahead on this-want to get commitments this year for ramping up early next year and a launch that ties in with Earth Day next spring-but don’t wait to get involved. If you’d like to receive an invitation as soon as we’re ready, please use this link to tell me (and let me know if you think of yourself as more of a marketer, or more of an environmentalist).

Unfamiliar with Joint Ventures? Basically, we partner with you, you tell your own contacts (like the readers of your e-zine or blog), and if people make purchases from your link, you earn a commission.

Guerrilla Marketing Intensive – $1000 discount just for you

My co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, “the Father of Guerilla Marketing,” has a few seats left in his next Guerrilla Marketing Intensive, at his Florida home, January 23rd-25th. 21 hours of training over three days. Normally $4997 (payable in up to four installments)—but Jay’s manager (his daughter Amy) has offered a $1000 discount to my subscribers. Limited to just ten people, so this is pretty in-depth. https://gmarketing.infusionsoft.com/go/Int/shelhoro/ If you want my opinion about whether Jay knows his stuff, read my rave review elsewhere in this issue of Guerrilla Marketing Remix.

Coop-themed Poetry Contest for Middle Schoolers

Hear & Meet Shel

November

November 15, 8:00 pm ET/5 pm PT, January Jones interviews me: 818-431-8506
November 16, 7 pm ET/4 pm PT: Interviewed on Your15Minutes Radio’s “Brand This” with Shaun Walker and Reid Stone, www.your15minutesradio.com
November 17, 11 a.m. ET/8 am PT: Interviewed by Susan Rich on “Get Noticed Now.” https://www.richwriting.com/2011/11/shel-horowitz-on-get-noticed-now-w4wn-com/
November 25, interview with Susan Davis on Good and Green Radio will become available at https://wgrnradio.com/archive-good-and-green-radio-with-susan-davis/ as well as at iTunes

December:

December 5, 12 noon ET/9 a.m. PT: No-cost webinar for Ventureneer: Green Marketing: Leveraging Your Social Responsibility to Improve Profit, https://ventureneer.com/webclass/green-marketing-leveraging-your-social-responsibility-improve-profit

January

1/4/12: Visit https://bigamericangiveaway.com/ — I’m that day’s Massachusetts sponsor, and I’ll have some cool stuff for you.

Also remember—if you set me up an engagement, you could earn a generous commission.

Another Recommended Book: Guerrilla Marketing Remix

Another Recommended Book: Guerrilla Marketing Remix, by Jay Conrad Levinson and Jeannie Levinson (Entrepreneur Press)

I have read many of the Guerrilla Marketing books, and written one of them (Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green)—and I have to tell you this new “best of collection” is extremely impressive. It’s really two books in one, each of which is well worth reading (and taking notes on).

Through page 158, Jay and Jeannie’s summarize their key lessons after many years in the forefront of marketing innovation. And then in part two, they’ve culled some of the best wisdom from the numerous Guerrilla books co-authored with other experts.

The Levinsons have never been afraid to be heretics, and by page 15, they’re already very much against the grain. That’s where they tell us to beware of humor in advertising—because a key Guerrilla Marketing principle (as well as a core principle of traditional advertising) is repetition, but repeated humor gets old very quickly. By the third or fourth time, it starts to be annoying.

Other insights from part 1:

Patience and planning, rather than miracles, are key to success
A major purpose of a marketing funnel is to “broaden consent” and get buy-in for the next step
Honesty is rewarded; phoniness comes back to bite you (something I emphasize in several of my own books)
You get better customers when you motivate for positive gain rather than to avoid negatives such as hurt or fear
Go back to the well; 34 percent of your previous customers will likely try you again if you take the trouble to court them, with respect
Use clever strategies to drastically lower the cost of advertising, and maximize the leverage you get from it (such as the one on pages 93-94)
Never confuse revenue with profit

This whole section is rich in practical, actionable advice—much of it broken down into easy checklists, like the 200 top marketing weapons (really closer to 150, as several are restatements and variations), 5 overarching strategies, 50 reasons to advertise, and 35 advertising mistakes.

In fact, the advertising chapter is so jammed with wisdom that I would recommend to any of my marketing clients considering buying advertising that they read it, read it again three days later, and then again after a week. It’s that good.

And then there are the riches of part 2. With collaborators like Seth Godin, David Garfinkel, Laurel Langemeier, and Alex Mandossian, it’s not surprising to find many gems But don’t forget to read the folks who are not household names. Some of the best advice came from people you may never heard of, like Frank Adkins and Chris Forbes, who did Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits, or Orvel Ray Wilson and Mark S.A. Smith’s incredible tips from Guerrilla Negotiating. Many of these contributions are very strong as well.

Full disclosure: I am a contributor to this book, and I fully hope that the excerpt from Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green will encourage new readers t buy my book—just as I will be looking to acquire several of the other books this marvelous volume exposed me to.

Highly recommended.

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The Clean and Green Club

Category Archive for Uncategorized

The Clean and Green Club, February 2025

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: February 2025

The Clean and Green Club, October 2024

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: October 2024

The Clean and Green Club, March 2019

The Clean and Green Club, July 2018

The Clean and Green Club, August 2013

Since When Are Libraries Known for Brilliant Marketing?

The Clean & Green Club, April 2012

The Clean & Green Club, March 2012

Shel Horowitz’s Clean & Green Newsletter, December 2011

Will YOU be the One to Get a Brand New $1299 Multifunction Printer from Dell?

This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 1

Friends Who Want to Help

Hear & Meet Shel

Another Recommended Book: The New Relationship Marketing by Mari Smith

About Shel and this Newsletter

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, November 2011

Clean and Green Spotlight: An Avon Approach To Healthier and Wealthier Communities

Friends Who Want to Help

Hear & Meet Shel

Another Recommended Book: Guerrilla Marketing Remix

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