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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, September 2011

15 Sep, 2011  No Comment

 

In This Issue…

9/11 and the Lost Opportunity

I have spent much time over the last 10 years reflecting on 9/11, the choices that were made at that time, and the dreadful consequences of those choices: hundreds of thousands dead, two countries largely destroyed, and the economy of a third–my own country–in shambles. I took the 10th anniversary as a day to think about what might have been, how President Bush (and the country) could have seized the moment and stepped into greatness. I’d welcome your comments on the blog page at https://greenandprofitable.com/911-bushs-lost-opportunity-for-world-peace/

And yes, I recognize that not everyone reading this will share my opinions. Honest disagreement and healthy discussion are good things (ad hominum attacks are not).

Direct Mail that Got Me to Write Back

Bonus Direct-Mail Tip:

Since my subject is effective direct mail…

If you use an e-mail program like Constant Contact that supposedly renders beautiful HTML, make darned sure your “view in a browser” link actually works. Those renderings are unreadable in my e-mail program, though beautiful on the web. If the link to the web version doesn’t work—and that happens at least 15 percent of the time—I hit delete, and all your hard work adding me to your list is lost.

A Bulk E-Mail That Worked For Me

As a marketing consultant, copywriter, and teacher of effective marketing, I’m always on the lookout for great examples.

This is a cold-pitch that showed up in my e-mail recently, and I thought it was so brilliantly done, I asked permission to share it. And we’re actually even in dialogue about his core services. If we can find something that’s appropriate for me to use at personal appearances, I might even become a customer—and the last time I bought promotional products was something like 1988.

Wish I could take the credit for it—but I’m guessing Josh didn’t even use a copywriter, just wrote from his heart. Here’s the letter, and then some analysis; feel free to add your own comments below:

From: "Josh Frey" <joshfrey@onsalepromos.com>
Subject: Just Checking In Shel ...
X-Pass-two: yes

Hi Shel!

Hope you and yours had a great Labor Day weekend!  I was was up in NYC celebrating my
Aunt and Uncle's 60th anniversary (I know, that's a pretty impressive number of years
to be married!).

Anyway, I just wanted to check-in to see if you had any upcoming needs for September
and the Fall...for trade shows, events, corporate outings, recruiting fairs, etc?  

Our team would be happy to research and price out some ideas and items for you or any
of your colleagues at Principled Profit if you all have any needs.

Thanks for the opportunity and let me know if we can be of service.  Have a great week.

Josh

P.S. Here is a link to an awesome deal on Starbucks style 16oz. Acrylic Tumblers -
BUY 96 GET 96 FREE!  Only $6.50 per tumbler.  For more details, click here:
https://trk.cp20.com/Tracking/t.c?NH0e-LHqe-pJtXA6 

P.P.S. This tumbler deal is over 75% off of what Starbucks charges!  You can buy these
on Amazon for 22 ea... or with us for $6.50.  Plus, you get your logo on the tumbler.
Don't believe me...check it out:

https://trk.cp20.com/Tracking/t.c?NH0e-LHqf-pJtXA7

Josh Frey
CEO and Founder, On Sale Promos
202-237-2828 cell
joshfrey@onsalepromos.com
5100A Macarthur Blvd, NW
Washington, District of Columbia 20016
United States

You are subscribed to this newsletter as shel@principledprofit.com. Please use the link
below to modify your message preferences or to unsubscribe from any future mailings.
We will respect all unsubscribe requests.
https://trk.cp20.com/Tracking/t.fo?NH0e--i1g-pJtXA6&sl=1v
powered by Campaigner

What I Liked:

  • It’s just so darned friendly and personable, starting with a tidbit about his family and ending in the same casual way by wishing me a great week. My immediate reaction: do I actually know this person after all? (Answer: not as far as I know, and frankly, that could have backfired—but for me, it actually worked—maybe in part because I do know two people with the same last name, including a client)
  • It’s helpful: he’s checking on my needs and showing a willingness to do preliminary work on my behalf, without any commitment from me to buy.
  • It’s inclusive: he invites me to think about my colleagues.
  • It’s short!
  • It’s specific; not only does he name four types of events for which he can supply product and a specific period of time, but he gives me a sample deal to check out.
  • Plus he gives me the Amazon link to price-compare, where I can see that he is much, much cheaper than a site known for price-leadership.
  • He mail-merges my name appropriately and not to excess—just the subject line and salutation.
  • He includes full contact, including a cell phone—nice touch

What I Didn’t Like:

  • As far as I know, I never subscribed to his newsletter. Adding without permission is not only annoying, it’s actually illegal. Now, maybe I was wrong and did sign up; if so, he might have included a merge field that told me when and how I agreed to receive it. If I didn’t, though, a more appropriate method would be to say this is a one-time mailing and offer me the option to subscribe: a positive opt-in rather than a negative opt-out.  [Following up, I found out he took my card at a conference.]
  • The subject line, though effective in getting me to open the mail, was annoyingly unspecific. Because my name was merged in, I did open it. Without the merged name, I probably would have deleted. But I have no idea from the subject about the content of the e-mail. Of course, if it had said he was trying to sell me promotional mugs, I would have deleted too. Getting the subject line right is an art and the subject of much discussion among copywriters.
  • I always get a little ruffled when people take liberties with punctuation (okay, so I’m old-fashioned!). He needs commas before my name in both places.

What did YOU think of Josh’s approach?

Another Recommended Book: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown & Co., 2008)

The best-selling author of The Tipping Point and Blink claims in this book that success is made as well as born, and that rare indeed is the person who succeeds without considerable support and resources from others. “Outliers are those who have been given opportunities–and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them,” he states on page 267.

He points to super-successful overachievers in a wide range of fields, from star Canadian hockey players to computer genius entrepreneurs Bill Gates of Microsoft and Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems, and shows how their success is directly related to specific (differing) factors in their upbringing, their environment, the accident of when, where, and to whom they were born. And he ends by tracking his own family history, and showing how the choices of previous generations helped him become the person he is.

A key observation is that sufficient practice and menteeship maeks a difference, and that those who are given opportunities to log in 10,000 hours in their field–from the Beatles playing 8-hour sets as a fledgling band in Hamburg to New York’s Jewish lawyers of a certain generation pretty much inventing the field of corporate takeovers because they were denied jobs by the genteel Protestant firms of the time and had to go where the “white glove” lawyers would not.

Perhaps the best poster-boy for his argument is Chris Langan, a certified genius with an IQ of 195, but a person who, according to Gladwell, was severely hindered by a distinctly wrong-side-of-the-tracks upbringing that neither acknowledged nor nurtured his gifts—leaving him with very limited social skills and poor adaptive mechanisms. Langan not only does not appear to strive for (or achieve) material success or even intellectual accomplishment, he actually crashed against the bureaucracy early on and dropped out of college. Gladwell contrasts him with the career of atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and shows how Oppenheimer’s background gave him the street smarts to talk his way out of far more incriminating troubles, and to achieve success on his own terms, while Langan could not overcome the handicap of growing up in an anti-intellectual beer-and-television culture.

Similarly, Gladwell demonstrates that ghetto kids often actually test better for in-class learning than kids from higher up the class ladder (maybe because they have a bigger mountain to climb)–but the gains they make in class aren’t sufficient to make up for their stagnation while kids raised in an atmosphere of “concerted cultivation” continue their learning after school and during vacations, immersing themselves in books, travel, the arts, and other opportunities.

The encouraging factors can be socioeconomic, but also ethnic, chronological, or coincidental. Gladwell look at why the Chinese language and a society b ased on rice cultivation propel success in math…why Korean pilots’ accident rates improved dramatically when they were retrained to overcome a cultural bias toward authority, and why American planes are safer when the First Officer, and not the captain, is at the controls…why month of birth makes a huge difference in your chance of success as a hockey player in Canada.

Gladwell did not write the book as an academic exercise; he wants us, as a society, to stop squandering our children’s gifts and to make sure that we have systems in place to encourage everyone to explore their creativity, harness their gifts, and make a difference in the world:

Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? To build a better word we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success–the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history–with a society that provides opportunities for all…Multiply that sudden flowering of talent by very field and profession. The world could be so much richer than the world we have settled for.

Shel Horowitz’s latest book is the award-winning and category best-selling Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson)

Hear & Meet Shel

September

October

November

  • November 15, 8:00 pm ET/5 pm PT, January Jones interviews me: 818-431-8506

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

Friends Who Want to Help

Watch this Space for Something Really Exciting

They are *almost* ready to give out the details, so expect a special mailing: an invitation to a very exciting JV (Joint Venture) that has the potential to bring messages of easy environmental sustainability to a whole lot of people that haven’t “gotten it” before. Several A-list celebrities have lent their names to the project, which will have a whole lot of media attention nationwide. And there could be some very nice commissions for you, as well.

Private Teleseminar for My Readers:

How to Make Money with Membership Programs with Kathleen Gage

You’d pay quite a bit to get teaching of this quality, but for you–no charge. Allow at least two hours, because Kathleen is going to share a LOT of information. (And yes, she’s hoping you decide to buy her longer, deeper program). But even while co-hosting, I intend to take notes. I’ve tried a couple of different membership program launches that haven’t taken off, and I’m hoping Kathleen will shine some light on what I need to do different. She’s done a gazillion and has done very well with them.

Mark your calendar now:

Monday, October 17th, 10am PT / 1pm ET

And remember to check next month’s newsletter for the registration link.

Check out the amazing speaker line-up for the 3rd Annual Book Marketing Conference Online

* Kathleen Gage: “Become an Online Bestselling Author in Today’s Crowded Author’s Market”
* Carolyn Howard-Johnson: “Your Awards: How to win them and then use them to set your book apart”
* Brian Jud: “Selling More Books, More Profitably to Non-Bookstore Buyers”
* Lynne Klippel: “Going Beyond the Book: Fast, Easy Product Creation for Authors”
* Jill Lublin: “Be the News”
* Connie Ragen Green: “How to Repurpose Your Existing Content to Become a Bestselling Author”
* Marnie Pehrson: “Using Social Media to Create a Buzz About Your Book”
* Penny Sansevieri: “Maximize and Monetize Social Media -3rd Annual Book Marketing Conference”
* Felicia J. Slattery: “How Authors Can Create a Signature Speech™ to Build Platform and Sell More Books”
* Dana Lynn Smith: “The Secrets to Planning a Profitable Virtual Book Tour”
* Steven E. Schmitt: “How I made millions by listening to my intuitive voice”
* Noah St. John: “Attract More Money Blueprint: Your Hidden Power for More Wealth and Happiness”
* Denise Wakeman: “The Secret to Author Blog Success: How to Dominate Your Niche with a Book Blog”

Get the details at: https://shelhorowitz.com/go/bookmarketing/

Up close and personal with my celebrated co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerrilla Marketing

Jay is having one of his famous intimate 21-hour intensives at his lovely Florida home, September 26-28. Only 10 people will be allowed in. https://3bl.me/ysqdva . Jay describes it as “a three-day face-to-face training personally conducted by me in our home here on a lake just northeast of Orlando, Florida. It’s intense because it’s from noon till 7 pm three days in a row – 21 hours with lots of hands-on, devoted to making you a true guerrilla marketer.”

Some of these links are affiliate programs and earn me a commission. All of them are things I feel good about recommending.

 

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, August 2011

15 Aug, 2011  No Comment

 

In This Issue…

Can You Help Me Out (and Get Paid?)

I find myself looking for a few different types of people to work as part-time independent contractors. You can pick up some income, working from the comfort of your own computer and telephone, while helping to spread the message that green and ethical behavior is not only the right thing morally, but also a great way to grow your business.

* Webmaster: Format and post content, administer newsletters, revise content as necessary, research and install/troubleshoot new tools and scripts. Note: most of our sites are now in WordPress, which makes changing appearance or content very easy. But some of our older sites-the ones with the most articles-are in old-fashioned HTML, so some basic familiarity is necessary. This will probably take about five hours a week. USD $10/hour.

* Speech Booker: Commissioned sales: 25% of the speaking fee (my standard rate is $5000 for a 60- to 90-minute speech, plus noncommissionable travel expenses).

* Other Commissioned Sales: Sell my monthly Green And Profitable and Green And Practical columns to corporate and media clients. Sell my membership program. Sell foreign rights for books and information products. Commissions vary depending on the product.

Contact me to learn more: shel at greenandprofitable.com, or (8 a.m. to 10 p.m. US Eastern) 413-586-2388.

Not Just USP… ESP

If you’ve been in marketing any length of time, you’ve no doubt come across the concept of a USP: Unique Selling Proposition. A USP is the core reason why people would choose you rather than someone else; the classic example is Domino’s Pizza: fresh hot pizza, delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less. It’s not about the flavor or the quality, but about the speed and convenience.

Another well-known example, and I like this one because it’s not only a USP but also a memorable slogan, is FedEx’s 1978-83 slogan, “When it Absolutely, Positively has to be there overnight.” Its staying power is clear; I still remember it 28 years after the company stopped running those ads. Why did they abandon it, anyway?

In the green world, USPs might emphasize product attributes (e.g., organic and fair trade, biodegradable, recycled, low energy), longevity in the green market (such as Marcal’s “saving trees since 1950”), and/or manufacturing frameworks such as carbon-neutral, zero waste, etc. And in the green market, the more of these claims you can honestly make, the better your reception will be—but it has to be done in a way that’s not clunky or cumbersome. (If this is something you struggle with my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green will help, and I’m also available for private consulting.)

However, we can go a lot deeper. Paul John Castle, a fellow member of the LinkedIn Green discussion group, introduced me to Grant Leboff’s concept of an Emotional Selling Point, which he describes in his book Sticky Marketing.

We already know that people buy based on emotions and justify with rational arguments. I think this ESP concept could have a lot of resonance. See, for example, this blogger writing about what a stuffed giraffe meant to his pregnant wife. Here’s an article by Paul Simister on ESPs, which gives a nice clear explanation and is a good place to begin your exploration.

Another Recommended Book

Another Recommended Book: Ethical Marketing and the New Consumer, by Chris Arnold (John Wiley and Sons UK, 2009)

From the perspective of an ad agency creative marketer who has worked with some very big brands, Chris Arnold reaches many of the same conclusions I do in Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green (also published by Wiley, but in the US, and a year later): that ethical and green positioning is good for business, but that these businesses have to understand what they’re doing, what they’re saying, and to whom. AND that given products of comparable price and quality, customers will buy the one with social impact claims. In other words, when price and quality are equal, the ethical brands win.

Customers have zero tolerance for greenwashing these days–so making false claims, claims with a grain of truth but no substance, or claims that are at odds with other facets of your company’s operation–like the bank he criticizes for running ads for a “green” loan program featuring gas-guzzling SUVs–simply don’t make any marketing sense. He offers oodles of good examples.

Arnold’s book is partly organized by industry, so there are chapters for food packaging, food nutrition, clothing, cleaning products, and even insurance. Who knew there was such a thing as a green insurance agency? These chapters are scattered among other chapters devoted to marketing skills, trends and philosophies, and chapters focused on ethics ideas (ranging from fair trade to the influence of Quakers and Puritans on the corporate landscape). Some of the skills-oriented chapters have very good material, like his process for identifying a company’s strongest green and ethical talking points and building a campaign around them. And his advice to the UK fashion discounter Primark on how to build an ethical profile (p. 224) is worth getting the book just for that.

He is frank in discussing the need for green and ethical brands to perform as well or better than traditional brands. As someone who bought some early, primitive, and not-very functional biodegradable diapers when they first came out around 1989 or 1990, I can tell you from personal experience that customers demand quality: when we buy green, we DO want cleansers that clean, food that tastes great, clothes that look great and are comfortable to wear, and yes, diapers that can be relied on to hold in the mess. I did not go back for a second package of those diapers!

Fortunately, green products have come a long way since then–something that Arnold doesn’t always recognize. He sees many green products still under the stigma of poor quality. I personally think that food, in particular, usually looks, smells, and especially tastes better when it’s organic and local and fresh, that natural body care products feel better on the skin, and that green home products tend to increase comfort.

Arnold’s best strength is his creativity, boldness, and sense of play. He describes some absolutely wonderful campaigns, including a publicity stunt involving putting a 21-foot condom on a statue as part of a college safe-practices awareness campaign. Humor, he says, not only sells product, but also helps convey potentially depressing ideas very effectively. And that bridges to a long and useful discussion about using emotions and even NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) techniques to capture the prospect as not only a thinking, but also a feeling individual. He asks: are your ads good enough that people would pay to see them?

The best news in his book may be the sense of opportunity in the green market as it begins to go mainstream. He says half of all Americans would go greener if they knew how–so we, as green marketers, get to show them! How cool is that? He also posits that a bold campaign reaching a small group of influencers may be a better (and more affordable) strategy than a big but bland campaign aimed at the general public. He wants to show the public, through the people they want to emulate, that ethical buying and ethical product use are revolutionary steps in the best sense of the word, and that thrills me.

I do have to temper my endorsement, though. First, the book is very UK-centric and somewhat less accessible to readers elsewhere. Of the five companies mentioned most often (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively), four of them–Marks & Spencer (which he calls M&S), Sainsbury, Tesco, and Primark are largely unknown in the US. The fifth is McDonald’s, which comes under sharp examination around obesity and other issues. People in the green world know M&S’s Plan A sustainability drive, and maybe people in retail foods have heard of the supermarket giant Tesco–but probably not the others. In fact, the vast majority of his examples are UK-centric. His language, also, is a bit off-putting, full of British slang and lacking punctuation that those of us in the US feel increases readability. And second, even though it’s published by a major house, the book is sloppy. The writing is disorganized and repetitive, and the copy-editing was perfunctory, leaving glaring inconsistencies, misspellings, and an occasional obvious blooper (like 63 instead of 66 years between the 1903 Wright Brothers flight and the 1969 moon landing).

Despite those flaws, I strongly recommend the book.

Get your copy here: Ethical Marketing and The New Consumer

Hear & Meet Shel

Replay:

September

October

Negotiating on several other speaking engagements. Remember-if you set me up an engagement, you could earn a generous commission.

Friends Who Want to Help

Watch this Space for Something Really Exciting

Not at liberty to give out the details, but as a subscriber, you’ll be getting an invitation to a very exciting JV (Joint Venture) that has the potential to bring messages of easy environmental sustainability to a whole lot of people that haven’t “gotten it” before. Several A-list celebrities have lent their names to the project, which will have a whole lot of media attention nationwide. And there could be some very nice commissions for you, as well.

Up close and personal with my celebrated co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerrilla Marketing

Jay is having one of his famous intimate 21-hour intensives at his lovely Florida home, September 26-28. Only 10 people will be allowed in.  https://3bl.me/ysqdva . Jay describes it as “a three-day face-to-face training personally conducted by me in our home here on a lake just northeast of Orlando, Florida. It’s intense because it’s from noon till 7 pm three days in a row — 21 hours with lots of hands-on, devoted to making you a true guerrilla marketer.”

Want to create more business on LinkedIn?

This series of templates and guides will help you beef up your profile, have a more authoritative presence in discussion forums, and generally make it more likely to actually do business. In fact, while I was reviewing this material, I stopped what I was doing twice–once to change my profile headline, and once to make some changes in the way my Green And Ethical Business group is set up–and I’m not exactly a LinkedIn newbie (in fact, I was member #150225 out of more than 100,000,000). www.InstantLinkedInMarketingTemplates.com/shel

Did You Know There Are 156 Ways to Wash The Dishes?

That’s right and, more importantly, there are just as many ways to use social media.   There is no “right” way to use social media, nor is there only one way to succeed at it.  That’s why my colleagues have put together “Social Media Connect,” a collection of ideas and strategies, gleaned from some of the top people in Internet marketing and social media, including yours truly.

This is one resource you won’t want to miss out on.  And, remember to grab your bonus copy of “Blogging 4 Cash” as their thank you for joining: https://shelhorowitz.com/go/socialmediaconnect/

 

Some of these links are affiliate programs and earn me a commission. All of them are things I feel good about recommending.

Shel Horowitz’s Clean & Green Newsletter, July 2011

15 Jul, 2011  No Comment

There were some delivery problems with last month’s issue, so some information is repeated here. the main articles, however, are new, as are several of the items in other sections.

In This Issue…

  • Can You Help Me Out (and Get Paid?)
  • Special Price On Shel’s Award-Winning Book
  • Do You Qualify for a No-Cost Consultation with Shel?
  • How to Get Media Coverage From Reporter Query Sites
  • Another Recommended Book: Elizabeth & Hazel
  • Hear & Meet Shel
  • Friends Who Want to Help

(Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links-if you want to know about any particular link, please ask.)

Can You Help Me Out (and Get Paid?)

I find myself looking for a few different types of people to work as part-time independent contractors. You can pick up some income, working from the comfort of your own computer and telephone, while helping to spread the message that green and ethical behavior is not only the right thing morally, but also a great way to grow your business.

* Webmaster: Format and post content, administer newsletters, revise content as necessary, research and install/troubleshoot new tools and scripts. Note: most of our sites are now in WordPress, which makes changing appearance or content very easy. But some of our older sites–the ones with the most articles–are in old-fashioned HTML, so some basic familiarity is necessary. This will probably take about five hours a week. USD $10/hour.

* Speech Booker: Commissioned sales: 25% of the speaking fee (my standard rate is $5000 for a 60- to 90-minute speech, plus noncommissionable travel expenses).

* Other Commissioned Sales: Sell my monthly Green And Profitable and Green And Practical columns to corporate and media

clients. Sell my membership program. Sell foreign rights for books and information products. Commissions vary depending on the product.

Contact me to learn more: shel at greenandprofitable.com, or (8 a.m. to 10 p.m. US Eastern) 413-586-2388.

Special Price on Shel’s Award-Winning Book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World

This Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award finalist is a one-stop guide to low-cost, high-ROI marketing methods. Detailed coverage of copywriting, design, marketing online, selling in person, expertise-based marketing, and much more–plus a supplemental e-book that covers social media marketing in detail Please visit https://www.frugalmarketing.com/gm.shtml to see the complete table of contents and index, reader and press reviews, and more. It’s a very solid 306-page 7 x 10 book with lots of examples and visuals. Big, yes–but also easy to read, easy to grasp, and easy to implement. A great way to jump-start your marketing.

List price is $22.95–but right now, you can grab a copy for just $12.00 plus shipping (that’s the same price my publisher charged for a smaller and less comprehensive book I wrote many years earlier, and a savings of better than 47 percent.

And if you want to train your whole team, pay just $10 per book if you three or more, or $8 each if you buy ten or more. What a deal!

To order, visit https://www.frugalmarketing.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65&products_id=180 and enter the code for the quantity you want:

single copies at $12 each: GM12

3 to 9 copies at $10 each: GM10

10 or more copies at $8 each: GM8

Do You Qualify for a No-Cost Consultation with Shel?

I am giving away four 15-minute consultations this month on any aspect of marketing, book publishing, or green business. They will go to the first four people to respond with appropriate answers to the brief five-question survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9R5TYLC

How to Get Media Coverage from Reporter Query Sites

Last month, I showed you six places where reporters go to actively find the perfect sources for stories they’re working on (or producers looking for guests). Now, learn how to get the most value out of the contacts you initiate.

• Respond as instantly as possible (except for Radio GuestList—in most cases, they have an ongoing need, and you’ll stand out more by waiting until the deluge dies down). These queries may draw 200 responses, so the fastest in get the closest consideration. Consider setting up a separate e-mail address to receive and respond to queries, and check that account every hour from 6 a.m. to 6 pm. US Eastern Time (or better yet, turning on audio notification just for that account).
• Stay on topic and relevant—don’t try to make a fit where one doesn’t really exist. That means paying attention to such factors as geographic needs, size of company, or anything else the reporter might specify in the query (yeah, it would be nice if more reporters put the restrictions in the headline).
• Give the reporter something to quote right in your query (I usually do between 2-5 bullet points or one very meaty paragraph).
• Mention your relevant credentials.
• Set up Google and Yahoo Alerts for your name, book title, and perhaps main topic keywords (if not too general), so you can see if you get quoted—reporters won’t always tell you.

Another Recommended Book: Elizabeth and Hazel

Another Recommended Book: Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, by David Margolick (Yale University Press, forthcoming September, 2011).

Although this is not a business book, it has deep implications for business—and especially for those businesses trying to rehabilitate their image after a history of polluting, unfair labor practices, or other unethical behavior. For every Walmart that successfully pulls itself out of the pit, there are many BPs whose efforts at going clean turn out to be nothing but greenwashing. And managers at those sorts of companies may well want to spend a couple of hours with this book.

Elizabeth and Hazel starts at a very ugly moment in American history: a white girl (Hazel) is captured mid-scream as she curses Elizabeth, the unbowed black girl in front of her, one of nine students chosen to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, on her first day of school, in 1957—when both girls are just 15. The book follows these two women, separately and together, for more than 50 years. And it explores how the photo, and Elizabeth’s miserable year at Central, influenced both their lives, with both good and bad consequences.

Unlike many of her peers, Hazel begins to feel remorse, and within a few years, contacts Elizabeth to apologize. Eventually, they form a friendship, touring together as eyewitnesses and participants in history—but later, the friendship unravels. Reconciliation, it turns out, is a very messy business, especially when one side holds grudges not only against her white tormentors, but against some of her allies whom she saw as manipulating her situation to advance their agenda without regard to her own needs—while the former tormentor has a need to move on but doesn’t grasp the deeper psychology of the trauma she helped create.

It should be required reading for any diplomat or therapist trying to end a long feud, from a family conflict on-up to the centuries-old race and ethnic hatreds that lead to war. For healers looking for a glimpse of how violence can create long-term trauma and destroy brilliant potential in the victim, but also how it can eat away at the perpetrator. And yes, for business owners who want a positive role in the world, whether or not they are typically seen as having already earned it.

Pre-order now: https://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300141931

Hear & Meet Shel

July:

  • Clamshell Alliance Reunion and Planning Conference, World Fellowship, Conway, NH, July 22-24, https://www.worldfellowship.org/prog2011.shtml#22-Jul . Help plan a clean energy future and shut down the nukes! I have been a strong opponent of nuclear power since 1974, when I researched and wrote a college paper, and discovered how horrible it is. If Fukusjhma didn’t convince you, maybe the Associated Press year-long study on nuclear safety will. Links to three of the four parts of the AP report are on my blog, at https://greenandprofitable.com/latest-ap-nuke-safety-report-population-growth-not-factored-in/ and https://greenandprofitable.com/nuclear-safety-procedures-are-absolutely-unacceptable/.
  • Leading a teleseminar, Making Mainstream Media Your Book Launch Partner, on getting free publicity–for D’Vorah Lansky’s Book Launch Formula telesumit (20 speakers). https://3bl.me/n3wgtb Tuesday, July 26, 3 p.m. EDT
  • Another teleseminar, on effective and profitable uses of Twitter for National Association of Independent Writer and Editors: “Twitter for Writers: Greatest Thing Ever or Waste of Time?”  Here’s an excerpt from the course description, which you can’t see unless you’re a member:
    Shel usually spends between 5-20 minutes a day on Twitter. Yet he has 4,510 followers (all organically acquired–no cheats or automated software) on Twitter as of 6/30/11, gets retweeted frequently, has Twitter connections with some of the top names in marketing and publishing, has been a featured guest on several high-profile TweetChats–and used Twitter to help propel his most recent book launch to reach an estimated 5 million people. Join Shel as he shows you
    – Four different types of Tweets and how best to use them
    – Three super-effective tools that will vastly increase your efficiency with social media
    – Strategies to stay active, get noticed, and still keep Twitter from taking over your life
    https://3bl.me/petqfa (cost of this program is applied to membership, if you join). Wednesday, July 27, at 3:30 p.m. EDT.

September

October

Negotiating on several other speaking engagements. Remember–if you set me up an engagement, you could earn a generous commission.

Friends Who Want to Help

Want to create more business on LinkedIn? This series of templates and guides will help you beef up your profile, have a more authoritative presence in discussion forums, and generally make it more likely to actually do business. In fact, while I was reviewing this material, I stopped what I was doing twice–once to change my profile headline, and once to make some changes in the way my Green And Ethical Business group is set up–and I’m not exactly a LinkedIn newbie (in fact, I was member #150225 out of more than 100,000,000). www.InstantLinkedInMarketingTemplates.com/shel

Every day, I take a few moments to review the things I’m grateful for. I think this actually helps create more things to be grateful for. Kim Serafini’s new book i am gr8ful for you is a collection of fun photos, inspirational thoughts and meditations. A great thing to keep in your bathroom, or perhaps right by your bed to look at at the very beginning and end of the day. https://iag4.info/y/22310

We all know someone who’s been burned by work-at-home scams–yet 137 million people worldwide successfully telecommute. Leslie Truex’s new Jobs Online: How to Find and Get Hired to a Work-At-Home Job helps you learn about jobs that match your skills, interests and hobbies–*and* how to separate the genuine offers from the rip-offs. Plus you’ll find hundreds of companies that take applications continuously. https://3bl.me/2kqk4p

Shel Horowitz’s Clean & Green Newsletter, June 2011

15 Jun, 2011  No Comment

In This Issue…

  • Can You Help Me Out (and Get Paid?)
  • Special Price On Shel’s Award-Winning Book
  • Do You Qualify for a No-Cost Consultation with Shel?
  • Six Places Reporters Are Looking for You
  • Another Recommended Book: The Secret of Selling Anything, By Harry Browne
  • Hear & Meet Shel
  • Friends Who Want to Help
(Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links-if you want to know about any particular link, please ask.)

Can You Help Me Out (and Get Paid?)

I find myself looking for a few different types of people to work as part-time independent contractors. You can pick up some income, working from the comfort of your own computer and telephone, while helping to spread the message that green and ethical behavior is not only the right thing morally, but also a great way to grow your business.

* Webmaster: Format and post content, administer newsletters, revise content as necessary, research and install/troubleshoot new tools and scripts. Note: most of our sites are now in WordPress, which makes changing appearance or content very easy. But some of our older sites–the ones with the most articles–are in old-fashioned HTML, so some basic familiarity is necessary. This will probably take about five hours a week. USD $10/hour.
* Speech Booker: Commissioned sales: 25% of the speaking fee (my standard rate is $5000 for a 60- to 90-minute speech, plus noncommissionable travel expenses).
* Other Commissioned Sales: Sell my monthly Green And Profitable and Green And Practical columns to corporate and media clients. Sell my membership program. Sell foreign rights for books and information products. Commissions vary depending on the product.
Contact me to learn more: shel at greenandprofitable.com, or (8 a.m. to 10 p.m. US Eastern) 413-586-2388.

Special Price on Shel’s Award-Winning Book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World

This Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award finalist is a one-stop guide to low-cost, high-ROI marketing methods. Detailed coverage of copywriting, design, marketing online, selling in person, expertise-based marketing, and much more–plus a supplemental e-book that covers social media marketing in detail Please visit https://www.frugalmarketing.com/gm.shtml to see the complete table of contents and index, reader and press reviews, and more. It’s a very solid 306-page 7 x 10 book with lots of examples and visuals. Big, yes–but also easy to read, easy to grasp, and easy to implement. A great way to jump-start your marketing.

List price is $22.95–but eight now, you can grab a copy for just $12.00 plus shipping (that’s the same price my publisher charged for a smaller and less comprehensive book I wrote many years earlier, and a savings of better than 47 percent.
And if you want to train your whole team, pay just $10 per book if you three or more, or $8 each if you buy ten or more. What a deal!
single copies at $12 each: GM12
3 to 9 copies at $10 each: GM10
10 or more copies at $8 each: GM8

Do You Qualify for a No-Cost Consultation with Shel?

I am giving away four 15-minute consultations this month on any aspect of marketing, book publishing, or green business. They will go to the first four people to respond with appropriate answers to the brief five-question survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9R5TYLC

Six Places Reporters are Looking For You

What’s the very best way to get coverage in traditional media? Pitch reporters who are already looking for sources for their upcoming stories. It’s much easier to find a reporter who needs to talk to, say, an eco-friendly apartment building manager than it is to go out cold-pitching to reporters and say, I’m an eco-friendly apartment building manager, please write about me.”

I’ve used this method to get repeat coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Christian Science Monitor, Woman’s Day, and many other top-level media (as well as dozens of lesser-known media). Oh, and if you’re a consistently good source, some reporters will even start approaching you, before they post their queries. And that is really cool!

In this two-part series, I’ll connect you with six different places to find those reporters this month, five of which cost nothing but your time.

Next month, I’ll give tips on how to respond so you vastly increase your chances of getting covered. Meanwhile, go ahead and get registered (and start following the queries) at:

No-cost
1. HARO (Help A Reporter Out): www.helpareporter.com
2. ReporterConnection.com
3. PitchRate.com
4. RadioGuestList.com

Fee
5. Profnet/PR Leads: professional publicists can subscribe to Profnet for several thousand dollars a year—but individual authors can get a subset of the same leads, targeted to your expertise and interests, for just $99/month through authorized reseller PR Leads: https://www.frugalmarketing.com/dtb/prleads.shtml (yes, I’m an affiliate)

6. Follow these services on Twitter: @helpareporter, @reporterconxn, @pitchrate, @profnet, @prleads, radioguestlist

Next month: how to get the maximum value from these services and turn it into publicity (and credibility).

Another Recommended Book: The Secret of Selling Anything, by Harry Browne

Relate to that goal. Ignore any features and benefits that aren’t relevant to those specific needs and wants. Your prospect has already told you how to sell, and if you follow that blueprint, your success rate will climb. And be honest; if you don’t have the right product, don’t force it.

After providing a five-step formula for this process, the rest of the book gets specific. Three examples:
* Address objections with a cool 3-part method that truly respects the prospect
* Turn gatekeepers into allies
* Identify four different rationales for the “I have to think about it” response, and how to respond to each

That this book is important shows even in the publisher: legendary Internet marketing trainer Ken McCarthy, creator of The System Seminar.

Caveats: This book was written a long time ago, and uses the male pronoun exclusively. Also, inflation makes the numbers cited seem very quaint. Finally, there are a couple of minor places where I find his reasoning fallacious.

Get your copy here.

Hear & Meet Shel

June:
  • Tuesday, June 21, 3-4:30 p.m. Eastern/noon-1:30 PT. Featured guest on Profnet Connect Tweetchat To follow the chat, log onto Twitter and follow the hashtag #connectchat. And maybe the coolest thing about this is that the book cover for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green will be displayed on a huge electronic billboard in New York’s Times Square, promoting the event ahead of time. They’ve promised to send me a picture.
  • Saturday, June 25, I expect to participate in a Clamshell Alliance safe energy strategy session to be held at the Wendell Town Hall in Wendell, MA. In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, it’s more important than ever that we STOP all new proposed nukes and begin to shut down the 104 ticking time bombs in the US, and the 300 or so in other parts of the world. I just finished writing a new introduction for a Japanese reprint of my old book on nuclear power, and doing this research showed me that nukes have become, if anything, LESS reliable and LESS safe in the past 32 years since I wrote the original book. If you’re in the Massachusetts/Vermont/New Hampshire area, please consider attending. Potluck party and sing 1-8 p.m., strategy session affinity-group structure, 2:30-5:30 p.m. Info: Sharon (978) 544-8822 or Tom (978) 544-3911.
July:
  • Sunday, July 3: Radio interview on green marketing on Catching the Brass Ring at 6 PM ET on WBNW AM 1120 in Boston and WESO 970 AM in the Worcester area. Podcast should be posted the following day at https://thebrassring.net.
  • Thursday, July 7: Interviewed by Judah Freed on The Global Sense show, pwrnradio.com/global-sense/ (podcast will be permanently archived).
  • Sunday, July 10, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Exhibiting at the Common Good Festival, Amherst (MA) Common. This should be a wonderful event, featuring performances by two of my favorite folk groups: Emma’s Revolution and Kim & Reggie Harris.  No charge to attend–designed to raise awareness of the Common Good Bank, a people-centered alternative to “normal” banks.
  • Monday, July 11, 10:30 a.m. ET/7:30 a.m. PT. Interview on “Who You Calling Old,” https://www.blogtalkradio.com/who-you-calling-old
  • Interview by Mari-Lyn Harris on Blog Talk radio, July 12, 1 pm ET/10 am. I don’t have the link yet, but you can probably find her page on BlogTalkRadio.com
  • Sunday, July 17, 12:30 p.m. Speaking at SolarFest, Tinmouth, VT: “Green And Profitable: Harnessing the Marketing Advantages of Going Green”

Friends Who Want to Help

Want to create more business on LinkedIn? This series of templates and guides will help you beef up your profile, have a more authoritative presence in discussion forums, and generally make it more likely to actually do business. In fact, while I was reviewing this material, I stopped what I was doing twice–once to change my profile headline, and once to make some changes in the way my Green And Ethical Business group is set up–and I’m not exactly a LinkedIn newbie (in fact, I was member #150225 out of more than 100.000,000). www.InstantLinkedInMarketingTemplates.com/shel

Every day, I take a few moments to review the things I’m grateful for. I think this actually helps create more things to be grateful for. Kim Serafini’s new book i am gr8ful for you is a collection of fun photos, inspirational thoughts and meditations. A great thing to keep in your bathroom, or perhaps right by your bed to look at at the very beginning and end of the day. https://iag4.info/y/22310

We all know someone who’s been burned by work-at-home scams–yet 137 million people worldwide successfully telecommute. Leslie Truex’s new Jobs Online: How to Find and Get Hired to a Work-At-Home Job helps you learn about jobs that match your skills, interests and hobbies–*and* how to separate the genuine offers from the rip-offs. Plus you’ll find hundreds of companies that take applications continuously. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1456589180/

Shel Horowitz’s Clean & Green Newsletter, May 2011

16 May, 2011  No Comment

Contents

Help me find a gig–Earn a nice commission!

If you can find me a paying speaking gig for the following locations/dates, I will be happy to pay you a very nice fee. I speak on various aspects of green marketing, green profitability, customer service, living green, and book publishing. Sample topics: https://greenandprofitable.com/have-shel-speak/

To see an entire very brief (9-minute) presentation that didn’t use PowerPoint, click https://shelhorowitz.com/video/Shel%20Horowitz%201.mp4 (Typically, my talks are 25-50 minutes, though I’ve gone as long as 3 hours). Some use slides and some don’t.

  • Iceland, August 7-13 (airfare already covered)
  • Montreal, October 19-20 (travel expenses already covered)
  • Aukland (New Zealand), Sometime Dec. 26-January 12 (dates and trip not confirmed)

This Month’s Tip: Show Every Benefit

If you’re marketing a green product or service, it’s up to you to demonstrate why your offering is superior to the conventional alternatives. That means drilling down and drilling down to identify and brag about the core reasons, and to do so in a way that resonates with your audience.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’re a building manager and you offer the feature I mention in this month’s book review: graywater recycling. How can you turn that feature into benefits, and then drill deeper to get at the core benefits?

Good green marketing usually involves showing the benefits both to the customers themselves and to the world as a whole. In this case, the feature is a system to capture waste water from relatively clean uses like sinks and showers, and use it again to water lawns, flush toilets, etc.

The primary benefits are reduced water use and less water contamination. On the personal benefit side, that means lower water bills. Municipal water is artificially cheap in many developed countries, just as oil used to be, so thats a relatively weak benefit. Can we find any deeper personal benefits? How about this: by recycling the water, there is less need to draw down the water supply, which in turn keeps it available for other uses. OK, so if the aquifer is drawn down more slowly, it can recharge properly—and that keeps the water clean and pure.

Ah ha! Now there are both health and aesthetic benefits! The feature of clean and pure water turns into the benefit of staying healthy, not getting sick—and also the benefit of water that is not only good for you, but tastes good, too. This in turn means the customer doesn’t have to go out and spend money on bottled water, because the tap water is good enough to drink. So now we have two economic benefits (tap water lasts longer and therefore costs less, and eliminating the need to buy water bottles) as well as a health benefit because the water stays pure.

Let’s turn to the social goods. More water is available for other uses—and fewer oil-based plastic bottles are needed. If we accept Bill Roth’s statement (see book review) that 5000 kids die every day from lack of good water, we now see a clear benefit to conserving through recycling the graywater: we stop kids from dying. Add that to the benefit of protecting the water supply for our own kids and grandkids in the generations to come, and not squandering that resource the way we’ve squandered oil for so many years, and it should be pretty easy to write some powerful marketing copy.

Special Limited-Time Offer: Grassroots Marketing at Almost Half Off

Looking for GREAT information on how to

  • Write get-noticed press releases that stand out in a crowd
  • Create marketing copy that gets inside the prospect’s head and unleashes “buy-juice”
  • Use winning strategies to get business at trade shows, over the phone, and in sales presentations
  • Market successfully online (9 whole chapters)
  • And much more

It’s all in the pages of my award-winning fifth book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. Normally, $22.95. But since May is officially Business Image Improvement Month (according to Chase’s Annual Events), I decided to help  you build your business image more affordably by saving money on this 306-page roadmap to better, more affordable marketing.

This month only: pick yours up for only $12 plus shipping (paperback) or $10 with no shipping cost (e-book).

Preview: https://frugalmarketing.com/gm.shtml

Order: https://www.frugalmarketing.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=75&products_id=235

Extra Value: Add a copy of either Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green or Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers for only $15 more.

Another Recommended Book: The Secret Green Sauce

The Secret Green Sauce: Best Practices being used by actual green entrepreneurs and businesses to grow sustainable revenues and profits, by Bill Roth (self-published, 2009)

Like my own Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, Roth demonstrates that going green is very good for business. Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s also highly profitable. (He cites one sustainable coffee certification that grew at an astounding 106% per year.)

And sometimes, the right thing to do is long overdue. Roth is deeply troubled that we flush our toilets and water our lawns with clean water, while around the world, 5000  babies die every day for lack of clean water. (Editor’s note: There are technologies, like graywater recycling, which has been around for at least three decades, that could drastically reduce our water waste. There are also easy steps we as consumers can take, like turning the water off while we brush our teeth or wash something, except for the few seconds when we’re wetting our toothbrush or sponge.) But ultimately, business not only needs to help us get there, but it is showing leadership; many companies, for instance, have pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020. We could debate about whether this is fast enough, but it’s a huge turnaround from the attitude of a decade ago that it didn’t matter.

How do you know when your green program is successful? 1, it actually works, and 2, it’s sustainable. And in order to achieve that, Roth recommends being both green and a price-leader. This is in keeping with my own observation that the best green programs appeal to both personal self-interest and planetary good.

What Roth calls the “awareness consumer” is a huge and growing segment, which had already reached $10 trillion per year (85% of that controlled by women) by the time he went to press. He offers many strategies to monetize that segment. And he notes that workers in green teams at their workplace start being change agents at home and in their neighborhoods. Also, workers in green buildings are demonstrably more productive, and green companies also boast typically higher stock valuations. Cool!

Yet making dollar savings the only criterion for starting green initiatives is short-sighted, in Roth’s opinion. Many great green initiatives take longer to pay back than the two years CFOs typically look for, and they get left on the table, along with the revenue they would have brought in. “Siloization” is another enemy of greening the corporate world, and too many initiatives fall victim to turf battles or simple death-by-bureaucracy.

In short, this brief book has a lot to offer. It would have had even more to offer if Roth had worked with a good book shepherd. The editing is poor, there’s no index, and the interior design reminds me entirely too much of a book I typeset myself in a word processor in 1985, before I knew anything about publishing. We book shepherds can make a big difference.

Hear & Meet Shel

May

  • May 18, from 1 to probably around 2:30 pm ET (10-11:30 PT), master copywriter Ray Edwards and I will have a conversation about ethical, green marketing and the relationship of religion and ethics. This winter, I made a huge purge of many of the e-newsletters I’d been reading–and Ray’s was one I kept, because I found enormous value in it. Ray is a devout Christian, and lately his newsletters mixed about equal amounts of marketing advice and insights into his relationship with Christ. I am a non-Christian and not-very-religious Jew who does believe in spiritual guidance. It should be a very interesting conversation. Click here to get the call information: https://frugalmarketing.com/rayedwards Register even if you can’t make the call, and you’ll get a link to the recording afterward, at no charge. Ray and I will be selling the interview later, so here’s your chance to get it without paying.
  • Once again, I’ll be attending Book Expo America, May 24-26 in New York City

July

  • Interview on “Who You Calling Old,” Monday, July 11, 10:30 a.m. ET/7:30 a.m. PT, https://www.blogtalkradio.com/who-you-calling-old
  • Interview by Mari-Lyn Harris on Blog Talk radio, July 12, 1 pm ET/10 am. I don’t have the link yet, but you can probably find her page on BlogTalkRadio.com
  • Speaking at SolarFest, Tinmouth, VT, Sunday, July 17, 12:30 p.m.: “Green And Profitable: Harnessing the Marketing Advantages of Going Green”

Friends Who Want to Help

(Some of these are affiliate links–if you want to know about any particular link, please ask)

  • Whether you’re an author, entrepreneur, business person or a stay at home mom with an inspired idea – New York Times Bestselling author Peggy McColl has the tried and true formula to propel YOUR message like a rocket through the virtual world. https://peggys99things.com/ Judy O’Beirn, President of Hasmark Services, and Peggy McColl, NYTimes Bestselling author, collaborated on this book.  What that means for you is that you’re getting a ‘behind the curtain’ peak inside two of the brightest minds in online marketing today.
  • The always-brilliant Marcia Yudkin has been on a mission to prove that you can be an introvert and still be a highly successful marketer. Visit https://shelhorowitz.com/go/introvertmarketing/ to view her inexpensive new program, Marketing in Tune With Your Personality. I’ve known Marcia since the late 1980s. She was impressive then, and she’s impressive now.
  • My friend Jim Donovan told me that when I went to JV Alert a few months ago, I must look up his friends Julie Booz and Rick Toone. Not only did I meet them, they did a TV interview with me–and with a whole bunch of other folks attending (some of the best and brightest in the Internet marketing world). Watch a trailer for it at https://bit.ly/jo1e1E (I’m the second person shows, right after Cori Padgett). You might recognize Warren Whitlock, Willie Crawford, and other luminaries in the footage.
  • “How to Use Twitter in Just 15 Minutes a Day” – 13 Book Marketing and Social Media Experts Share Tips, Tools and Shortcuts to Getting the Most Out of Your Time on Twitter. No-cost report from Shelley Hitz includes a contribution from me. Download at https://www.self-publishing-coach.com/support-files/social-media-tips-from-the-experts.pdf (no squeeze page, automatic instant download)
  • Another freebie (this one does require a name and e-mail): Mickie Kennedy of E-Releases offers a Beginner’s Guide to Writing Powerful Press Releases. I haven’t looked at the book, but I have had very good luck with putting a press release on his service.  https://shelhorowitz.com/go/pressrelease/

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, April 2011

14 Apr, 2011  No Comment

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, April 2011

Contents:

  • This Month’s Tip: Create Your Energy Legacy
  • Recording Now Available: Social Media for Terrified Authors
  • Another Recommended Book
  • Hear & Meet Shel
  • Friends Who Want to Help

This Month’s Tip: Create Your Energy Legacy

How would you like to:

  • Slash your operating costs by anywhere from hundreds to millions of dollars every year?
  • Reduce greenhouse gases and thus help the world reach the carbon targets necessary to stave off catastrophic climate change
  • Push global social policy from a suicidal/homicidal course toward true sustainability?

Then it’s time to become an activist AND a role model on climate change, water and energy conservation, and sustainability. And to remember that successful activism involves marketing.

Some of you have been reading my marketing column all the way back to 1997. Some of you have read one or more of my books, which lay out marketing tactics and strategies simply and clearly and thoroughly. It time for you to take that knowledge and use it to help both yourself and the world.

A rapid shift away from fossil, nuclear, and biofuel and into safe, renewable efficient energy policy has to happen now, and it has to be pushed by the private sector. At least in the United States, where I live, it is painfully clear that the government isn’t going to be much help. Want to know why? Read this blog post I wrote: https://greenandprofitable.com/the-climate-crisis-why-global-warming-matters/ (And if you want a little taste of why nuclear is not the answer read this post: https://greenandprofitable.com/nuke-problems-in-japan-make-it-clear-no-more-nukes-elsewhere/)

You, as a business owner, will benefit hugely from your efforts. You, as a leader of environmentally friendly business, can capitalize enormously on your activism, because your business will be seen far more positively. This translates to opportunities under every rock and tree—to build partnerships and referrals, to gain media coverage, to get passed around on social media, and more (I wrote a whole book about how to do this: Guerilla Marketing Goes Green).

And as a resident of Planet Earth, you will also gain the operational advantages of reduced costs…the health advantages of a sustainable climate based on nonpolluting, nongreenhosue gas emitting, nonradioactive technologies…and the deep satisfaction of knowing you did your part to ensure the health of the planet for your children’s children’s children.

Whole books have been written on how to achieve this—but let me give you a few specific ideas:

  • Look for savings you can grab by increasing efficiency and conservation; many businesses can save 50 to 80 percent of their energy and water by taking relatively simple measures. TIP: I am giving away my $9.95 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, during the month of April (in honor of Earth Day). About 80 of those tips cost little or nothing to implement; this is the “low-hanging fruit.” Implement a tip or two every day, and in a couple of months, you’ll have a much Greener profile and be saving energy and water. Visit https://painlessgreenbook.com/earthday and use the code EARTHDAY.
  • Remember to factor in transmission losses, and thus look for power sources as close to the place of use as possible. For example, it’s generally more efficient to put a solar array in your own yard or on the roof than to send it across wires from some remote site in the desert, because a big chunk of that desert electricity will be lost as the electricity moves across vast distances.
  • Think about how to be more green in the ongoing maintenance and replacement you’re doing anyway. If you’re replacing a laser printer, get one that prints on both sides (and train your staff to use it whenever it makes sense). When you need a new roof, consider a planted (“green roof”), superinsulated, or photovoltaic roofing material. When your vehicle fleet needs an upgrade, think about electric, hybrid, or high-MPG vehicles (or, for some purposes, bicycles!)
  • Think about training yourself to do the really easy lifestyle changes. Keep a ceramic coffee cup in your office and say good-bye to disposable cups. Use reusable cloth towels, rags, and sponges instead of throw-away paper products. Bring cloth tote bags to the supermarket (keep them in your car).

This, of course, is just the beginning. The e-book will give you plenty of other ideas, and there are many more resources beyond that. Do your part!

Recording Now Available: Social Media for Terrified Authors

Social Media for Terrified Authors: How to Turn Scary Into Success, with Shel Horowitz and book coach/social media maven Judy Cullins.

  • Have an impact on the three major social media networks in just minutes a day: control social media and keep it from controlling you
  • Understand how to spread your content around the Internet with just a couple of clicks: more ROI for less work
  • Turn social media connections into website traffic, book sales, and client gigs without spending any money to do it.
  • Increase your credibility as a savvy expert.
  • Define and find your book’s target audience on the big 3 social media marketing sites–and market directly to the exact people who can benefit from your book.
  • Get your website or blog pages highly ranked on Google and other search engines.

Just $19.95, and includes several valuable bonuses.

https://www.frugalmarketing.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=67&products_id=234

Another Recommended Book

The Truth About Trust in Business: How to Enrich the Bottom Line, Improve Retention, and Build Valuable Relationships for Success, by Vanessa Hall (with help from Mandy Holloway, James Adonis, Fiona Pearman, David Penglase, and Iven Frangi) (Austin: Emerald Book Co, 2009)

Reviewed by Shel Horowitz, GreenAndProfitable.com

When reviewing a book about trust in business, the first question is how does it stack up against Stephen M.R. Covey’s wonderful The Speed of Trust. And the answer is that they’re quite different. I’d recommend reading Covey first; he gives a thorough grounding in the basics, and lots of examples.

But also read Hall’s book. Hall and her friends explore some deeper parts of the landscape, with fresh perspectives, and some visual aids that may make the whole thing more understandable to visual learners.

Hall’s first lesson in the fragility of trust was delivered by her then-nine-year-old son, who accused her of breaking “we might” statements that he saw as “we would”—in other words, promises.

As she explored the territory her son’s accusation had opened up, she began a career in corporate compliance, and that in turn led to looking at how to go from fixing problems to making things right in the first place.

Hall and her co-authors explore some interesting territory, such as the difference between customer expectations around implicit versus explicit promises (and how the former can often trip up even a caring business), and four distinctly different types of trust.

Building trust has numerous advantages for businesses. Rebuilding trust that’s been shattered—a huge challenge—can have especially large rewards. The authors cite a furniture manufacturer almost doubled production, cut work hours without reducing pay, slashed delivery time and changed a company experiencing 60 percent turnover all he way down to 1 precedent with a four-year waiting list to work there. How’s that for a convincing bottom-line argument in favor of building trust?

A few more high points:

  • When listening, aim to understand, rather than to respond in kind
  • Maintain your values; if they go, so will your passion
  • Follow the ten-point checklist for customer expectations (pp. 206-07)—which includes being told the truth
  • Ask questions of your prospects that facilitate, rather than obstruct, the sales process
  • Every interaction with your business is a chance for the customer or prospect to discover your organization’s true character
  • Organizations that have not built trust are “brittle”: rigid and easily damaged—while those that have are not only flexible but “magnetic”—they attract new business easily
  • Perhaps the best insight of all: customers have a vested interest in your success, because it makes you easier for them to deal with—and thus, you can turn to them for guidance and they will be wiling participants in improving your business and building their trust

Note: The book lacks a desperately-needed index (WHY do publishers do this?), so take good notes while you read, and jot down page numbers.

Hear & Meet Shel

April

May

  • May 18, from 1 to probably around 2:30 pm ET (10-11:30 PT), master copywriter Ray Edwards and I will have a conversation about ethical, green marketing and the relationship of religion and ethics. This winter, I made a huge purge of many of the e-newsletters I’d been reading–and Ray’s was one I kept, because I found enormous value in it.  Ray is a devout Christian, and lately his newsletters have turned away from marketing advice and toward his relationship with Christ. I am a non-Christian and not-very-religious Jew who does believe in spiritual guidance. It should be a  very interesting conversation. Click here to get the call information. Register even if you can’t make the call, and you’ll get a link to the recording afterward, at no charge. Ray and I will be selling the interview later, so here’s your chance to get it without paying.
  • Once again, I’ll be attending Book Expo America, May 24-26 in New York City, and possibly IBPA University May 22- 23

Friends Who Want to Help

LEARN HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL JV BROKER

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I’m a huge believer in partnerships and alliances. They are the best way I know to build credibility AND sales by going into a market “on the arm” of someone already known and trusted there—someone whose endorsement opens doors and lets you benefit.

My long-time friend Willie Crawford has teamed up with my new friend Sohail Khan (who I met at JV Alert and liked enough that I gave him some very specific advice on how to partner with a certain very prominent marketer on a book project) to offer a really good looking training program on how to be a JV broker: the person who brings JV partners together and takes away a very healthy commission (I’m working with a JV broker right now on a project, and I can tell you, it’s a lucrative and fun way to make a living). Willie knows this space very well; he’s brokered JV deals for many years. He’s also a really nice guy with a strong commitment to doing things the right way.

Check it out for yourself: https://shelhorowitz.com/go/WillieJVTraining

SKILL HIGHWAY: A FABULOUS RESOURCE

Dan Page is starting a marvelous entrepreneur portal called Skill Highway, with a ton of information for entrepreneurs, including one article from me so far, and more to follow. Here is a link to a short video Dan gave produced where he describes a strategy he uses to create new customers and revenue.  He explains how he used it last year to generate $1.7 Million in new business for a start-up with no customers and zero marketing budget. (I’ve used this strategy often, for myself and for many of my clients.)

To watch the video, please visit https://shelhorowitz.com/go/SkillHwy.  And be sure to join Skill Highway!

Oh, and Dan being such a nice guy, he has a special offer just for you: Join as a Premium member and he’ll throw in a copy of his $189 e-book, “Positioning For Profits.”  It outlines 16 strategies and tactics he’s used over the last 34 years to generate millions for himself and his clients.

ACTIVISTS AND BUSINESSES CAN BOTH BENEFIT FROM THIS

In her forthcoming (May, 2010) book, Collective Visioning: How Groups Can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable World, long-time social justice activist Linda Stout details a practical process that enables everyone to work together, showing in practical terms how to build trust, ensure that each and every voice is heard, create a positive vision, and develop an action plan that leverages everyone’s abilities. This process creates hope for change, even among those who’ve stopped believing that change is possible. I met Linda years ago and was quite impressed with her, but then we lost touch. This weekend, I went to a workshop she was co-leading at the National Conference on Media Reform, and it was the best part of the whole weekend. I got an advance copy in PDF form and I was just as impressed with the book. Learn more and preorder now at https://lindastout.org/

Shel’s Clean & Green Newsletter, March 2011

15 Mar, 2011  3 Comments

 

In this Issue…

Don’t Forget!

Social Media for Terrified Authors: How to Turn Scary Into Success: Wednesday, March 30 (good for non-authors, too). Two social media experts (I’m one of them) will give some great training, just $19.95. Details and link in the Hear And Meet section.

PS–Remember that I pay commissions if you find me new corporate/organizational (non-media) markets for my columns, a full-price speaking gig, or a marketing or publishing consulting client. Write for details: (click here to contact Shel via email)

This Month’s Tip: Five More Reasons to Do Social Media

I’ve talked in this space before about some of the more typical reasons to do social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the many smaller networks)—things like zero cost, links from high-traffic and well-regarded sites, and the ability to reach people of great influence.

Today, let’s go a little deeper:

Stay on Top of the Conversation
Do you know what people are saying about you? In today’s world, messages can spiral out of control very quickly. And a lot of companies haven’t figured out that their reputations are at risk if they’re not paying attention.

I was impressed a couple of weeks ago when I posted something negative about FedEx, and within an hour, got Tweeted back by @FedExLina, with some helpful suggestions. Here is a company that is paying attention. Too often, a negative message goes out into cyberspace, gets retweeted, shared on Facebook, maybe even blogged about, and the company continues to ignore it. Not a smart strategy. But the time the mainstream media get hold of it, a lot of damage may be done.

Keep Informed…And Informing
Where did I first hear about last week’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan? On Facebook. Where did I first learn about the peril those events caused at several nuclear power generation reactors on Japan’s northern coast? On Twitter. Following people who regularly share news events gives you a quick capsule summary, which you can click through to learn more. Nuclear safety has been a concern of mine for a long time. I actually wrote two articles about earthquake risks to nuclear plants in 1979.

Grab Short-Lived Opportunities
Things move fast in Cyberspace. Opportunities flit by, and if you’re paying attention, you can benefit. I’ve gotten tons of media exposure, speaking gigs (including my first-ever international speech), conference exhibit opportunities, and more by following social media and reacting quickly.

Amplify Your Reach
In social media, one post can reach many audiences. You can easily set up your WordPress and your Facebook Fan Page blog to post headlines and links to your status updates on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo, and the entire post to Facebook Notes. You can use a number of tools including MarketMeSuite, HootSuite, TweetDeck, Tobri, or Ping to post a status update to multiple networks. I often get more comments on the Facebook version of my blog than my actual blog page. Caution: Make sure you DON’T set up an endless loop where, for instance, Twitter posts to Facebook which then posts to Twitter. That would make you very unpopular, very quickly.

This may sound overwhelming, but it’s really not. Judy Cullins and I will demystify it for you on March 30.

I’m also available for individual consulting and training on social media, or even to do your social media for you.
 

Another Recommended Book: The New Rules of Green Marketing

Another Recommended Book: The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools, and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding, by Jacquelyn A. Ottman (Berrett-Koehler, 2011)

With its many big-corporation examples, extensive use of research-based statistics, and numerous charts, graphs, bullet points, and checklists, this is a green marketing book that could be widely adopted by green MBA programs. And true to its title, there are lots of rules—as well as big strategic questions starting right from the beginning (the first group is on page 21). But even if you’re not an MBA student, and your business is much smaller-scale, there’s a lot of wisdom here.

It’s also one of the most holistic green marketing books I’ve seen, considering whole-lifecycle processes such as energy and water used in manufacture and transportation, and questions of end-of-life disposal in determining whether a particular path is actually green. This depth of insight plays out especially well in her section on holistic product design, and in her examination of various tradeoffs in greenness. But always, she rightly insists, green products have to deliver the same quality and value; the market won’t put up anymore with the shoddy design of some ’70s and ’80s-era green products, and they don’t have to, because today’s green products are as good as their “brown” competitors, if not better.

As a consultant to many large companies, Ottman has learned a thing or two about the complexities of moving society down a greener path, one business initiative at a time. And she points out that brands themselves have to position themselves as green, because if there are no certification labels, a brand’s reputation determines whether it finds favor with green consumers. She concludes the book with profiles of two such brands, Starbucks (not the greenest coffee company by a long shot, but the one that buys the most organic and fair-trade coffee) and Timberland.

Those green consumers, she points out, are segmented in many different ways: from shade of green to age group (each of which responds best to its own particular marketing hot buttons). Oddly, she examines boomers, and Gens X, Y, and Z—but not elders. In my experience, elders (born before or during World War II) include a strong cohort of environmentally concerned and actively involved citizens, drawn to green buying because of both health and environmental concerns, and bringing a long-term perspective—they remember life before our instant/plastic/packaged current reality, and in many cases, they have quite a bit of disposable income. She also fails to differentiate urban, suburban and rural audiences, and—having lived in both megacities and small villages—I can tell you there are huge differences in the way you want to market to these different demographics.

But these are a minor quibbles. It’s a book well worth reading (and taking notes from), and an excellent companion to my own Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

 

Hear & Meet

March

  • Social Media for Terrified Authors: How to Turn Scary Into Success: Wednesday, March 30, 2 pm ET/11 a.m. PT, with Shel Horowitz and book coach/social media maven Judy Cullins.
    * Have an impact on the three major social media networks in just minutes a day: control social media and keep it from controlling you
    * Understand how to spread your content around the Internet with just a couple of clicks: more ROI for less work
    * Turn social media connections into website traffic, book sales, and client gigs without spending any money to do it.
    *Increase your credibility as a savvy expert.
    *Define and find your book’s target audience on the big 3 social media marketing sites–and market directly to the exact people who can benefit from your book.
    * Get your website or blog pages highly ranked on Google and other search engines.
    Just $19.95, and includes several valuable bonuses. Click https://www.bookcoaching.com/shel-judy-teleseminar.php to get all the details (this is not an affiliate link, but I do benefit financially from your registration).
April
  • April 8-10 I plan to attend the National Conference on Media Reform, in Boston. I’ve attended two previous conferences and am always blown away. If you’re interested in the impact of corporate media on our culture, progressive politics, or exploring the diversified world of D-I-Y (do-it-yourself) independent media—everything from setting up a blog to running your own TV station), this is a must. And if you happen to be in the Amherst/Northampton, MA area, let’s talk about carpooling. I’m thrilled to attend one that won’t require getting on a plane!
  • Saturday, April 23rd, 2011 10 AM-4 PM, my wife D. Dina Friedman and I will exhibit again at Amherst Sustainability Festival in downtown Amherst, MA
  • Wednesday, April 27, noon ET/9 a.m. PT: Sales guru Mike Krause interviews me on green marketing: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/salessense/2011/04/27/sales-sense-reality-talk-show-hosted-by-mike-krause-with-guest-shel-horowitz
  • Thursday, April 28, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT: Becky Cortino interviews me on Green Marketing for Biz Buzz: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/bizbuzz Becky is a master networker who has reached out consistently over time, and I’ll bet she does a terrific interview.
May
  • May 18, from 1-3 pm ET (10-noon PT), master copywriter Ray Edwards and I will take turns interviewing each other. This winter, I made a huge purge of many of the e-newsletters I’d been reading–and Ray’s was one I kept, because I find enormous value in it. I’ll be interviewing him about ethics in Internet marketing, and he’ll be asking me about the green side of marketing. I don’t know yet if we’ll be broadcasting live or (more likely, I suspect) breaking it up into two calls to be shared later. But you may want to keep that date clear, in case we are live.
  • Once again, I’ll be attending Book Expo America, May 24-26 in New York City, and probably IBPA University May 22- 23

June

  • TENTATIVE, LIVE IN WESTERN MASS: I think I’m hosting a training with Bob “The Teacher” Jenkins, a very smart guy who I’ve shared a stage with in Florida and enjoyed hanging out with on a couple of conferences. We’re thinking about Thursday, June 16. More details next month.

 

Friends Who Want to Help

No-Cost Webinar with Lev Natan: Access the Mythic Power of Your Business

Lev just did a very thoughtful interview with me for another project. As someone who is discovering and enhancing the mythic power of my own business, I found out about this webinar he’s doing, and wanted to share it with you:

Our times are calling us to live in the mythic dimension and become the heroes that we so often seek outside ourselves. To do this, we must weave together our desire for meaning and purpose with our practical work in the world.  In this webinar, learn about the direct connection between your stress levels and your sense of purpose; how your mythic sense makes you distinct in your market place; the power to recharge and sustain your energy; and how to create goals that are truly in alignment with your heart’s purpose. During the webinar, he’s going to bring you through a transformational process where you will take the first step towards integrating your mythic Self into you business. Visit www.thesocialentrepreneursquest.com to sign up.

Living the Life of My Dreams: Essays & Interviews with 30 Ordinary People Living EXTRAordinary Lives will become a bestseller, according to Caryn FitzGerald, who put the project together. I’m amazed at how many friends and colleagues of mine have chapters in this book, among them Lillian and Dave Brummet, Stacey Kannenberg, Angela Lussier, and Sally Shileds. 35 cool bonuses, but you may not see them, as the official bonus period is over. However, Caryn assures me that any purchaser will have access for a few more days (they include such things as The New Rules of Success, networking 101, Oceanic Mind Deep Meditation, even a Personal Sleep Quiz: Living the Life of Your Dreams

Bouncing Back From Loss: How to Learn From Your Past, Build The Present, and Transform Your Future Donna Marie Thompson will give you a blueprint to learn from life’s lessons. She herself lost her mother, her man, her money and then her health. Some people would give up… but Donna chose a path that will inspire you.

Huge bonus package: 217 gifts including one from me. But Warren Whitlock, who is organizing the campaign, says, “The greater value will come in the lessons you learn and blueprint Donna shares.” https://BestSellerAuthors.com/bounce

Big Wave Surfing: Extreme Technology Development, Management, Marketing & Investing by Kenneth J. Thurber Ph.D. explains why so many of our greatest companies got started *in a recession.* Big Wave Surfing presents the issues of our innovation-based, technology driven economy in an understandable form through the exciting analogy of big wave surfing. It’s written for entrepreneurs, investors, managers, or anybody who wants to glide into the flow of abundance just like riding a big wave.

Learn More: https://www.bigwavesurfingbook.com/promo/

As usual, some of the links in this newsletter will earn me a small commission if you choose to purchase. And once again, they are not listed here because of the money they could make me, but as a way of providing value to you by sharing things that I think will benefit you.

Will Water be the New Oil?

30 Jan, 2011  No Comment

By Shel Horowitz, painlessgreenbook.com (666 words)

In the year 2050, I predict that there won’t be an oil crisis anymore. The world will have largely moved away from fossil and biomass fuels, in favor of sustainable, renewable, and clean energy solutions such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal.

But if we don’t shift our behavior, what our grandchildren will be facing could be far, far worse: a water crisis.

As a society, we don’t just waste water—we squander it. Billions of gallons of good fresh water go tumbling down our pipes and sewers, gone forever. And when our children’s children struggle to find enough clean water to live, they will be pretty angry at our generation for letting it get so bad.

See, unlike fossil fuels, which can easily be replaced by safer, cleaner, sustainable alternatives, there is no substitute for water. We can protect our water supplies by keeping them clean, we can make them last longer by using less. But we need water to live. When we’re born, our bodies are 78 percent water. As adults, 55 to 60 percent of our bodies is water, and some of the most important parts of us use even more: 70 percent of our brains, 83 percent of our blood, and nearly 90 percent of our lungs.[1]

And while much water use goes to agricultural and industrial processes over which we as individuals have no control, the good news is that there are many easy free or cheap steps we can take to drastically reduce our home water waste and conserve this vital resource for future generations.

In fact, for many people, it’s probably easier to reduce water use in and around the home than any other resource—because so few people have even thought about it. A typical household can easily reduce water consumption by 50 to 80 percent, just by thinking differently.

Here are four easy no-cost steps among many every household can take:

Reduce Toothbrushing Water Waste by 90 Percent or More: Wet the toothbrush with a small trickle of water, and then turn the water off! Turn it back on to rinse the toothpaste off the brush at the end. A family of four could save hundreds of gallons every month just from this simple trick.

Switch from Bottled Water to Filtered Tap Water, if you live in a place where the tap water is good enough to drink (which it is in many parts of the world). Too often, bottled water is an environmental disaster! Bottling consumes petroleum and typically wastes or contaminates several times as much water as goes in the bottle—and bottling plants can draw down the local water supply, causing problems for agriculture and for local residents. Plus, the carbon footprint of transporting the water around the world is significant. For comparable flavor and health, use a simple, inexpensive home water filtering system, which will lower your costs and produce far less waste. For times you need a water bottle because you’re out and about, fill a reusable bottle or cup from your water filter—or invest in a reusable bottle with a built-in filter so you can fill up from unfiltered taps and fountains without worry.

Stop Temperature-Related Water Waste: Don’t let the water run until it gets cold enough. Fill a bottle and refrigerate it so you always have cold water with no waste.

Recapture and Reuse: When you have old water in your tea kettle, cooking pot, or reusable water bottle, use it to water plants, presoak dishes, etc., instead of dumping it down the drain.

These four simple tips are only the beginning. We can all save tens of thousands of gallons of water in our lifetimes by looking for ways to let the water run less often, and with less force.  You’ll find 28 different water-saving tips in my <a href=” https://painlessgreenbook.com”>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</a>.

Shel Horowitz, shel at greenandprofitable.com, shows you how to “reach green, socially conscious consumers with marketing that has THEM calling YOU.” He writes the Green And Profitable/Green and Practical columns and is the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green (John Wiley & Sons, 2010).


[1] https://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/propertyyou.html

January 2011

6 Jan, 2011  No Comment

Please note: Starting next month, we’ll be shifting our publishing schedule to on or about the 15th–so don’t panic when we don’t show up between the 5th and 8th as usual. It’ll be between the 15th and 18th from now on.

In This Issue…

Column Update: Like to Make $200 Per Sale?

Did you see in last month’s newsletter that I’m self-syndicating a monthly column called Green And Profitable? It’s off an running, and there’s quite a bit of news—including an opportunity for you to earn some significant bucks. Here’s a quick update:

  1. Along with the green business column, Green And Profitable, I’m introducing a companion column for consumers: Green And Practical.
  2. In addition to offering both columns to media (at $10 per column insertion, currently), and to individuals ($10 for a six-month subscription), I’ve decided to offer the columns to corporations and organizations who might want to “private-label” them: issue them as if they had published the columns, and distribute to their own subscribers, customers, or prospects. I’m charging these organizations just 25 cents per subscriber, per year, which works out to about two cents per reader per issue.
  3. This new model presents an income opportunity for you: if you connect me directly with a specific person who buys the right to private-label the columns ($1200 and up), you can earn a commission. Here are the specifics:
  • If you set me up directly with a client who buys column rights, I’ll pay you $200—that’s if you make the introduction.
  • If you don’t set me up, but give me the contact and I can use your name, I’ll pay you $100 if your contact makes the buy.
  • If you don’t give me a specific contact but are the first to suggest an organization that buys the rights, I’ll pay you $25.
  • Suggest either or both of the columns to a publication that you read or subscribe to, and if they agree, I’ll give you your choice of any of my e-books (sorry, but with total sale of only $60 for six months or $120 for a year, I can’t pay cash commission; there are costs in administering and writing the column).

Think about who you know. I’ll be here :-).  shel (at) principledprofit.com

Are You Throwing Away Your Opportunities? Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, January 2011

Happy New Year! I love symmetrical dates like last Saturday’s 1/1/11. We’ll have three more dates with all 1s this year: one later this month and two in November.

Looking out over the fields of the farm I live on, I was reminded of our luscious organic garden. This year, we had a particularly bountiful harvest of hot peppers—to the point that I went down to the garden, picked five pounds of surplus, and brought the whole big bag to my neighbors’ farmstand. They sell produce from a bunch of local farms, usually labeled with the farm of origin and the town, and of course, the price.

So I was figuring mine would go out with something like “Grown right here on this farm by our neighbors, no pesticides or chemical fertilizers” and the price per pound (they can’t legally say organic, because for our home garden, we don’t go through any certification process.) With a sign like that, I would have expected my chiles to go flying out the door, and I would have had a steady market for the remaining two months of the season. But for some reason, they put my beautiful peppers in an out-of-the-way spot, with no sign at all. And there, they slowly shriveled over the next week or so. Needless to say, I didn’t bring them any more to sell.

A less personal example: I recently bought a box of crackers that had this message: “100% of the electricity used to manufacture these crackers and this container come from green power sources,” and has a nice little accompanying graphic of a windmill. Just above this is a Forest Stewardship Council certification logo denoting sustainably harvested timber sources for the box.

Unfortunately, both of these logos and statements are on the bottom panel of the box, where no one can see it unless they’ve already bought the crackers–or perhaps if the prospect accidentally knocks the package off the supermarket shelf, happens to land the bottom facing up, and somehow notices the small logos while picking up the box.

The lesson in both of these situations is that you have to be willing to talk about the advantages of dong business with you. Not in an obnoxious way, but sincerely, and in ways that show you’re proud of what you’ve created.

An additional lesson from the farmstand: make it easy for your customers to get the information they need. Failing to put a price on the display meant that anyone considering the peppers would have to go to the counter and ask—and that extra step is a disincentive.

After all, if your sets of benefits don’t convince yourself, why will they convince anyone else?

I have learned not to be shy about this. So let me remind you: If you’d like to know more about smart green marketing, pick up a copy of my award-winning and Environmental category bestselling eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson)—and register your purchase (from anywhere) on the Bonus page to collect more than $2000 worth of extra goodies.

Hear & Meet

January

February
  • Yesterday, you should have gotten a mailing from me about a fantastic no-cost conference series that really focuses on my core values of social entrepreneurship: business as tool of social and environmental change, and of growing a conscious planetary  community. I taped a great call with host Ryan Eliason, and it will air February 16, 2011, 1 pm ET/10 am PST. But you should register for the whole series. It includes such wonderful people as tree activist Julia Butterfly Hill, former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones (I’ve heard both of them speak and they are superb), brain researcher/philosopher Dr. Bruce Lipton, the writer Marianne Williamson, Green America head Alisa Gravitz, Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, and my eco-biz friends George Kao and Tad Hargrave, among others. Ryan should be charging big bucks for this–but you get this incredible education at no charge. (He will be charging for the replays, though.) https://shelhorowitz.com/go/RyanEliason
  • If I can work out some logistics, I’ll be a panelist (not the same thing as a speaker, in this case) at Ken McArthur’s next JV Alert, Orlando, February 18-20. I’ve heard amazing things about these conferences, including some legendary and very profitable deals and partnerships. I’m eager to experience it.  If you’d like to go too, click here for the very impressive speaker lineup and registration link https://shelhorowitz.com/go/JVAlert
March
  • Social Media for Terrified Authors: How to Turn Scary Into Success: Wednesday, March 30, 2 pm ET/11 a.m. PT, with Shel Horowitz and book coach/social media maven Judy Cullins.
    * Have an impact on the three major social media networks in just minutes a day: control social media and keep it from controlling you
    * Understand how to spread your content around the Internet with just a couple of clicks: more ROI for less work
    * Turn social media connections into website traffic, book sales, and client gigs without spending any money to do it.
    *Increase your credibility as a savvy expert.
    *Define and find your book’s target audience on the big 3 social media marketing sites–and market directly to the exact people who can benefit from your book.
    * Get your website or blog pages highly ranked on Google and other search engines.

Just $19.95, and includes several valuable bonuses. Click https://www.bookcoaching.com/shel-judy-teleseminar.php to get all the details.

April
  • April 8-10 I plan to attend the National Conference on Media Reform, in Boston. I’ve attended two previous conferences and am always blown away.
  • Saturday, April 23rd, 2011 10 AM-4 PM, my wife and I will exhibit again at Amherst Sustainability Festival in downtown Amherst, MA
May
  • Once again, I’ll be attending Book Expo America, May 24-26 in New York City, and probably IBPA University May 22- 23

Friends Who Want to Help

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 (where I visited recently). 21 hours of training over three days, for $4997 (payable in up to four installments). Limited to just ten people, so this is pretty in-depth. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/rfHHY8Y

Another great no-cost teleseminar series, from Ken Foster, has invited many prominent social thinkers (like Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and Spencer Johnson (Who Moved My Cheese?), as well as a host of prominent Internet marketers like Lisa Sasevitch, Stefanie Hartman, Alex Mandossian, my good friend and book marketer extraordinare Penny Sanseveiri…a star-studded cast of 18 speakers. The URL isn’t live yet, so watch for a special mailing on or around February 1 giving all the details.

Unrelieved stress is a significant risk factor for heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndromes, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, and asthma, among many other illnesses too numerous to name. THE WORRY SOLUTION, by Dr. Martin Rossman will teach you how to use your mind and brain to eliminate unnecessary suffering and the negative health impacts caused by worry. Buy the book today @ https://worrysolution.com/book/ and get a ton of amazing gifts!

NY Times bestselling author Marci Shimoff interviewed more than 150 Love Luminaries and uncovered 14 Love Keys to living in a state of unconditional love. She shows you how in Love for No Reason: 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love. She offers a breakthrough approach to experiencing a lasting state of unconditional love-the kind of love that doesn’t depend on another person, situation, or romantic partner. This is the key to lasting joy and fulfillment in life. Get it Today and get a TON of free gifts: https://www.TheLoveBook.com

Current Issue: October, 2010

6 Oct, 2010  1 Comment

In This Issue…

  • Lots of Exciting News
  • Deep Sustainability
  • Another Recommended Book: Twelve by Twelve, by William Powers
  • Hear & Meet Shel
  • Friends who Help

Lots of Exciting News

Goodness! So much going on here at Clean and Green World Headquarters—let me fill you in on some of it.

First, this month’s issue has both a bunch of really cool advice on copywriting for the Green market AND a review of a new, important yet not-well-known sustainability book (see the two main articles)

Also some very big deal speeches coming up, starting with my talk for Green America’s GreenFest at the DC Convention Center Saturday, October 23. I think it may be the largest group I’ve addressed so far. (See the Hear & Meet section).

Now, here’s some of what’s going on:

  • My newest site, Green and Profitable, is up and running, although not in final form. This will be the new home of my blog and is also the launching pad for  a self-syndicated column: Green And Profitable. If you or someone you know would like to run my column on Green business success, please visit the site and get in touch. There will be a third sample column posted soon.
  • Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green is now available in Kindle format as well as paperback (click on the link and scroll to the bottom to direct links for several retailers).  And don’t forget, if you register your purchase of any format on the bonus page at https://guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com, there are about $2000 in extra bonuses coming to you (use the same link to preview the bonuses).
  • New and much more affordable ad rates and options for FrugalMarketing and FrugalFun—and, for the first time, including in-context ads. Prices start at just $9.50 per month.
  • The International Association of Earth-Conscious Marketers continues to move forward. And it really is international, with people expressing interest from Bali, Dubai, Britain, and elsewhere. We hope to accept memberships early next year. Meanwhile, you can ask to be notified by leaving your e-mail or subscribing to the RSS feed at the organization’s website.  If you’d like to be actively involved in shaping the organization, please Tweet the words “IAECM Steering Commitee” and your e-mail address to @ShelHorowitz

Deep Sustainability

The old Green messages are beginning to look a bit pale. Accusations of greenwashing are rife, and often, those charges have more than a little substance—does anyone really believe BP is a Green company anymore?

So does that mean Green marketing is dead? What’s a conscious marketer to do?

First of all, I don’t for a moment believe that Green is dying, let alone dead. But just as parents stop diapering their babies once they’ve been toilet trained and expect them to wipe their own tushes from that point on, so we as Green marketers need to take greater responsibility for our messaging. Like those toddlers who are mastering not only toilet training but walking and talking and table manners and a whole bunch of other stuff all at once, we have to stand on our own feet, even if it feels a bit wobbly at first.

So here are a few marketing guideposts on your own wobble toward sustainable marketing:

  • Be clear and specific. Today’s informed consumer doesn’t just want to hear “we’ve gone Green.” They’ll respond better to something like “by introducing this new, efficient packing machine, we’ve reduced solid waste by 18 percent and cut carbon emissions by 368 tons a year.”
  • Make consumers understand what each of these accomplishments means to them: “That solid waste reduction means we don’t have to bring nearly as much to the landfill, which means lower costs passed on to you, longer landfill life, and fewer non-degradable materials clogging up the landfill. Lower carbon means 68 fewer asthma cases in our county every year, as well as reducing catastrophic global warming.”

(If you’re familiar with the concept of features vs. benefits, you’ll note that the first bullet stresses features—which are by themselves seldom enough to sell successfully—and the second bullet translates those features into direct benefits both to the consumer and to the world. Features provide the gear-heads (who already understand what they mean, and can supply the benefits themselves) something to look at; benefits speak to average consumers through their own emotional needs and wants, and are much more powerful—but you need both, in many cases.)

  • Raise the bar on your industry’s standards for going Green. Have you achieved zero waste in a facet of production? Have you switched to compostable plastics—that you’re actually composting? Have you figured out a way to cut energy or water use by some huge percentage? Are you sourcing a larger percentage of materials from sustainable-practices vendors? Say so! You’ll get the competitive advantage of doing this before others—and once your competitors start imitating, you can still get good marketing mileage out of having been first.
  • Stay away from messaging that won’t be believed. If you’re promoting nuclear power or large-scale biomass, for example, any attempt to portray your company as Green will come back to bite you. Best, of course, is not to promote those products at all, but if you have to promote them, get out of the Green space and find other ways to market (or should I say, defend) these environmentally toxic technologies. Both of these have been promoted as Green alternatives, and neither one passes the sniff test.
  • If the Green content of your practices is questionable or largely unknown, be prepared to document it in your messaging. Thoroughly. I went to a solar festival this summer where a couple of the exhibitors were talking about “biochar.” From their materials, it looked to me like just another variant on burning wood: points for renewability, certainly, but NOT for clean emissions or carbon impact reduction. By failing to convince me that they were truly Green, these companies left me highly skeptical of other claims they (or their competitors) might make.
  • Involve your supply chain. Just as “no man is an island,” neither is a corporation. You have vendors who sell to you, and customers who buy from you. You have ancillary services involved, such as transportation or security. And you have both carrot- and stick-flavored leverage you can exert to help these companies go Green. The carrots: not only will they get more of your business, but you will promote them in your Green marketing campaigns. The stick? If they fail your sustainability criteria, you’ll choose another vendor who is more earth-centered.

Another Recommended Book: Twelve by Twelve, by William Powers

“Enough is the sweet spot between too little and too much.”

—William Powers

Normally, the books I recommend here are quite easy to see as business books. Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid & Beyond the American Dream, by William Powers (New World Library, 2010) isn’t like that. In fact, it’s kind of a look at what life might be like if we all *stopped* doing business as usual.

Something of a cross between Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Thoreau’s Walden with more than a dash of wider social visionaries like E.F. Schumacher and Hazel Henderson thrown in, this gorgeously written book chronicles the author’s sojourn of several months in a 12′ x 12′ handmade cabin, without electricity or running water, in the North Carolina backwoods but within an easy drive of Raleigh-Durham. Documenting the journeys toward sustainability that he, his wildly different assortment of “eccentric” neighbors (racist refugees from urban squalor on one side, a Mexican immigrant craftsman on the other) and his urban friend undergo separately and together, he also looks penetratingly at what it means to be sustainable in modern society…how “primitive” cultures such as those he’d lived in as an aid worker in Liberia (Africa) and Bolivia (South America) offer some lessons to the industrialized world, and vice versa…and what happens when government regulators, megacorporations, or even well-meaning, philanthropic land developers stand between homesteaders and their dream. These different dramas play out in both optimistic and pessimistic ways.

Most of all, we look into Powers’ own soul, as he struggles with a whole series of physical and psychological dynamics that weave together his past, his time in the cabin, and his unknown future.

To me, as a Green business activist and consultant, the questions Powers raises are questions we need to address if we want to Green the world. I see Twelve by Twelve as a book to reread every year or two, going a layer or two deeper each time.

As he notes in the final pages, “we decide what gets globalized—consumption or compassion; selfishness or solidarity—by how we cultivate the most valuable place of all, our inner acre. (p. 258)


Hear and Meet Shel

October

  • Tuesday, October 12 at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT: My third annual presentation to the MUSE Online Writers Conference. This time, Selling a Self-Published Book to a Traditional Publisher
  • Wednesday, October 13, I’ll be interviewed again for the Guerrilla Marketing Association’s weekly calls–this time by Alexandru Israil from Romania, 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.
  • Saturday, October 23, 2 pm ET, Green America’s Green Fest, Washington Convention Center, Green Business Pavilion, Washington, DC. Live talk: Green and Ethical Messages to Reach Green and Ethical Customers. Contact: Denise Hamler, denisehamler (at) greenamericatoday.org
  • Wednesday Oct. 27th, 1:30p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT, Dr. Vitt Argent interviews me for KIVA Talk Radio,

November

December

January
February
  • Second Annual Communication on Top Forum, Davos, Switzerland, February 17, 2011. Tentative title: “Social Media, Internal Activism, and Corporate Social Responsibility: How to Build Customer Loyalty AND a Greener Brand”
April
  • Saturday, April 23rd, 2011 10 AM-4 PM, my wife and I will exhibit again at Amherst Sustainability Festival in downtown Amherst, MA




Permanent Links to Audios and More (partial list)
Articles By Me

Friends Who Help

Wow! Where else can you find a teleseminar series with 30 faculty like this: Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired, part of the legendary Whole Earth Catalog, and author most recently of 1,000 True Fans)…Janet Switzer (coordinator of major marketing campaigns for people like Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup fame, and quite possibly the real reason for their success)…Peter Shankman (founder of HARO, the no-cost journalist/source matching service I’m always raving about–you ARE a member, I hope)…Joan Stewart (The Publicity Hound)…Warren Whitlock (co-author of what I believe is the first book on Twitter marketing)…Susan Harrow (expert on getting on Oprah and author of a book I love, Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul)…and many others. And it’s put together by David Mathisen of Be The Media (an amazing book). Yes, it costs—but the first three calls are no-charge previews. (Dave recently interviewed me—you can find the link in the Hear and Meet Shel section). https://shelhorowitz.com/go/jcUpEX

My friend Paula Langguth Ryan, author of Bounce Back From Bankruptcy, just released a no-charge 10-page special report called How to Know If It’s Time to File Bankruptcy. Paula wrote this report to give people a sense of peace as they ponder whether or not taking the big step toward bankruptcy is in their best interest. Paula confesses, “If I’d had someone to walk me through this when I was considering bankruptcy, I might have chosen a different path.” In this report, she also offers a paid (but optional) 30-minute Considering Bankruptcy Consultation: She could you see your situation with fresh eyes, so you can make an informed decision about which path you want to take.  Get your copy at https://bit.ly/bfQnT8

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