The Clean and Green Club

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

• Thursday, April 21st, 2011 Speaking at the CRM Summit in Istanbul, Turkey (which means I will NOT exhibit this year at Amherst Sustainability Festival, after all)
• 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 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/

In this Issue…

• This Month’s Tip: Five More Reasons to Do Social Media
• Another Recommended Book: The New Rules of Green Marketing
• Hear & Meet
• Friends Who Want to Help

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 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 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.

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, February 2011

Lessons from the Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco

Ritz-Carlton has a reputation for blow-your-socks-off customer service, including the widely reported mantra that any employee is empowered to do anything to make a customer happy, as long as implementation will cost less than $200. I’ve even heard a story about a Ritz restaurant employee overhearing a mother telling her non-dairy-eating daughter that there was no soy ice cream on the menu—and going to a nearby store to purchase some.

This was the first time I got to check it out first-hand.

The gleaming white Ritz-Carlton San Francisco sits on a hilltop overlooking the confluence of Chinatown, Nob Hill, and the financial district. Looking like a 1930s-era Washington DC government administrative edifice, with its pillared entrance and huge windows in massive wooden frames, the building exterior is nicely decorated with green bas-relief. It was originally built in 1909 for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and was later Cogswell College (this information conveniently printed on the room key packet). Because of the hill, the lobby entrance is actually on the fourth floor, which is confusing if you don’t realize it. Bellmen in top hats handle the pull-through driveway, but I arrived on foot.

Staff was universally courteous and informative, yet not obsequious—and totally willing to engage as one human being to another. Maybe because this was relaxed and mellow San Francisco; I found them a lot less reserved than many other corporate hotel employees of my experience—more like what you’d expect to find at a single-location boutique hotel or bed-and-breakfast. (I was told by another guest that the staff here is in fact a lot friendlier than staff she’s experienced at other Ritz locations.)

The lobby is pleasant but not enchanting, with rather fewer plush chairs than many upscale hotels, and those mostly scattered around the periphery. The front desk was surprisingly small. I think every time I passed by, there were only one (usually) or two clerks on duty, but I never saw a line build up. The interior public spaces are well-decorated: curio cabinets at the ends of hallways featuring tasteful Asian pottery and the like, and the halls lined with paintings and photographs of San Francisco street scenes and landmarks.

My room was refreshingly uncorporate. The furnishings are simple but not sparse; my guess is that they’re relatively new but designed to look old and comfortable. (I did see a reference to a recent $12 million renovation.) The décor is anchored by round mirrors with sun’s-rays frames above each bed (too high to be usable as a mirror, but quite effective in anchoring the eye and setting the tone). The feeling, once again, was not of a corporate chain but a small and homey hotel. And since I personally relate much better to cozy than to cold or edgy, I was pleased. A classical radio station was playing softly as a walked in—nice touch.

In fact, “nice touch” was something I found myself thinking a lot. When I opened my room key packet, I didn’t notice it at first, but there was a business card saying

The Ritz-Carlton

Shel Horowitz

In Residence

with the hotel’s full contact information. Very classy, and something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced at any other hotel. I actually brought it back with me at the end of my trip.

At home, I answer my work phone line (if I don’t recognize the caller ID info) “How may I make your day special?” That business card made me feel special.

Another nice touch was the choice of both dark and milk chocolates on the room tray.

The next morning, my conference started, and here was the nicest touch of all: two concierges assigned to the conference, available for any type of assistance. Roy and Lauren were extremely facilitative. Unasked, Lauren brought my box of books to the exhibit table, and at the end of the conference, Roy took it away to reseal and ship back to me—so their suits got sweaty instead of mine. They rang the chimes at the end of every break to signal time to regather, and were there to handle any logistics issues not just for the organizers but also for all of us attenders. Their presence (for the most part, one of them at a time, but sometimes both were on duty) was beyond the expected staff who brought and removed food and beverages, etc., and made it easy to establish a personal connection between the conference and the hotel. Roy, in particular, also seemed quite interested in the subject of the conference (sustainable foods).

That evening, I called the front desk with a question about the iron, which used icons instead of labels for the controls. I’m a word guy, and I found the interface unintuitive. Rather than trying to explain over the phone, the desk clerk said he’d send someone up from housekeeping to show me—very cool. However, after 20 or 30 minutes when the staffer hadn’t arrived, and as I was fading out for the night, I figured it out on my own and canceled the staffer.

Housekeeping redeemed itself on my final morning, I reported a problem with the toilet and a staffer was at my door in less than three minutes. That’s even better than my experience at a Disney hotel a few years back.

Catering was quite good, with a lot of locally grown fresh vegetables and well-prepared desserts. Another nice touch was having the staff bring the dessert carts from our lunch spot in the courtyard tent (nice and sunny after a morning in the basement conference room) down to the exhibit area so we could continue to feast as the sessions restarted.

One thing that does need to be modernized, however, is the electricity. In this era of multiple devices each with its own charger, there was only one open outlet in my room, and it was nowhere near the desk. In order to type this on my laptop while plugged in, I’m sitting in an armchair and balancing the laptop on a tiny nightstand.

Outlets were also in short supply in our conference room, although there were a decent number along the back wall of the exhibit and food area just outside. Inside, there were none along the side walls, a few (in high demand) at the back and front.

And the elevators had minds of their own. Whether they chose to bring you to your floor without first going in the opposite direction and either opening and closing the doors or just hanging on the wrong floor for a moment with the doors closed seemed quite arbitrary.  At least twice a day, I was taken up when I wanted down, or vice versa, without anyone waiting to board at the opposite location.

And another thing that would be easy to rectify is the signage. One elevator bank doesn’t go to the rooms, but to a large and unnavigable staff work area. It took me fifteen minutes to undo the confusion and get back to my room. It would have been easy to put up a small sign saying, “If you wish to go to the guest rooms, please use the elevators on the opposite side of the building.”

These, however, are minor quibbles. In all, I found my first experience of a Ritz-Carlton quite charming, and am better prepared to believe the legends. It certainly rates as my most positive experience in a large corporate hotel chain.

So…what lessons can marketers and customer service people take away from this experience?

Lessons From Things the Ritz Did Right:

• Exceed your customer’s expectations for the experience
• Provide ongoing and consistent human points of contact (Roy and Lauren) who are not only very helpful but also genuinely interested in the customer and the agenda
• Make customers feel special with several “nice touch” flourishes
• Create a superbly pleasant ambience, including high quality fresh, interesting, and well-prepared food along with excellent service

Lessons From Things the Ritz Could Have Done Better

• Never promise more than you deliver; after thrilling me by promising to send someone up to demonstrate the iron, the no-show from housekeeping (with no call explaining the delay) was a definite downer
• Make sure the basics work. Infrastructure issues like bad signage, elevators overriding human instruction, and inadequate electrical outlets need to be addressed, because they can form the core of a customer’s experience, and undermine a lot of the good stuff if the customer chooses to focuses on them (I didn’t—but I certainly noticed).

Shel Horowitz’s latest book is Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. He also writes the monthly columns, Green And Profitable and Green And Practical.

Pepsi: $20 MM to Community, Instead of Super Bowl Ad

It’s pretty rare that I shine the Clean and Green Spotlight on a huge corporation that’s a household name around the world. It’s a nervous-making proposition, especially since the only time I had to rescind the honor was a company in that category (BP).

However…I have learned that if I bestow the honor for a particular achievement or stance, I’m less likely to smear egg all over my face. And I like to “catch companies doing something right” and highlight them. After all, even Walmart  (a company I don’t do business with) was named, because of its amazing reaction to the Katrina flooding of 2005, and may get named again down the road because of its powerful sustainability initiatives at every level and every stakeholder interaction. Yes, I could criticize Walmart for many things—but the company earns my respect in those two areas.

This month, it’s another corporate giant: Pepsi. I am not endorsing Pepsi’s products, many of which are nutritionally dubious or worse. But I do wholeheartedly endorse the company’s decision to stay out of Super Bowl advertising this year, and instead donate the $20 million  it would have spent—an obscene amount to spend on an ad—on community fundraisng projects.

Here are a few lines from the New York Times story about the campaign:

More than $20 million in grants, ranging from $5,000 to $250,000, has been distributed to about 400 winners so far, including $25,000 for new uniforms for the Cedar Park High School band in Cedar Park, Tex., which took its campaign to win votes to Friday night football games. In Las Vegas, a new playground opened last week with a $25,000 grant won in September.

The idea is nicely interactive, involving a lot of voting mechanisms, including heavy use of social media—and spreading the wealth around many projects that could benefit from mid-range grants. It’s a cool bit of community building that also does an excellent job of brand building. And I love win-wins like that.

(My thanks to Chris MacDonald, @ethicsblogger on Twitter, for steering me to this story.)

Another Recommended Book: Bye-Bye Boring Bio by Nancy Juetten

What’s the kiss of death at a party? It’s answering the “what do you do” question the wrong way–some deadly response like “I sell life insurance.” While people will be stampeding away for anyone who answers like that, they’ll flock to someone who does the same thing, but knows how to express it creatively. To keep the same example, wouldn’t you be willing to spend a few minutes finding out about the person who responds, “I help your hard-earned money pass to your children without stopping to drop half of it at the tax offices.”

Many websites and marketing materials make the same kind of mistake. You’ve seen “about us” pages that just blah blah blah about the boring facts, or drown their unique focus in “corporatese.”

If your marketing materials suffer for that disease, Nancy Juetten has the cure. I’ve been an admirer of hers for quite some time, and have incorporated some of her thinking into the work I do with my own marketing clients.

Nancy’s the author of a wonderful book, Bye-Bye Boring Bio, that shows you how to turn on the excitement in everything from Twitter profiles to books, and then convert that excitement into monetization. Highly recommended for speakers, authors, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits–anyone, in short, who wants to convince anyone else that their product, service, or idea is exactly what the prospect needs. Your choice of e-book or spiral-bound.

https://www.byebyeboringbio.com

Hear & Meet Shel

• I’ve really enjoyed Ryan Eliason’s Social Entrepreneurship teleseminar series. In fact, I’ve really made a point of listening to the replays on the calls I couldn’t attend live, and have listened to far more than I do of most series.  Speakers include tree activist Julia Butterfly Hill, former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones, 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. My session with Ryan airs tomorrow, February 16, 2011, 1 pm ET/10 am PST.
  –>If you want to gain access to the replays, visit https://shelhorowitz.com/go/RyanEliason to register for the no-cost live calls. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll get the information about how to buy the entire set of this excellent series.
• Yes, it’s short notice. I did mention it last month, though–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

• 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 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
• 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.

• 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

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

What do you do when there’s no clear eco-friendly choice—when you have to balance competing claims of environmental benefit against competing harms?

In January, I spoke at the Sustainable Foods Summit in San Francisco. My challenge to the other attenders was to achieve a food system that combines the artisan quality and chemical/petroleum independence of pre-20th century food production with the massive volume and ability to feed hungry people of the 20th century Green Revolution, while achieving the distribution necessary to end hunger.

Conflicting Priorities

That sounds great, in theory. But how do we get there? And what trade-offs do we have to make along the way?

Some of the other speakers had their own ideas about the rocky road ahead, not just in food sustainability but a host of related issues. Among the many concerns they raised:

·      Is it better to switch to no-till farming, which dramatically alleviates soil erosion but is very difficult to do without herbicides—or to build up soil quality naturally through organic or biodynamic methods, and hope that the soil doesn’t blow away in the meantime?

·      What is the real benefit of using biodegradable plastics (such as compostable cutlery or packaging) if the sources of corn or potatoes for these plastics are genetically modified plants? And when food is scarce in many parts of the world, do we really want to divert cropland from food to plastic (or energy) production?

·      Which is more sustainable: a lightweight plastic bag made from virgin materials (i.e., petroleum), or a plastic clamshell using 40 times as much material, but made from recycled water bottles?

Is there a “right answer” to these kinds of questions? The answer is situational. For the wheat growers of Washington State where a foot of topsoil has disappeared in the last 40 years, the no-till method sounds pretty compelling. In a different landscape, ravaged by chemical pollution, the organic argument would probably win out.

When the Benefits Line Up

Of course, there are many situations where a clearer path exists. If all the stars align in a single direction, the choice is easy. For instance, the conference heard from dairy cooperative Organic Valley’s Theresa Marquez about the benefits of their approach: Organic farming creates richer and darker soil that is far better able to hold water and nutrients…organic cows fed a diet high in flaxseed oil produce more of the essential nutrient Omega-3 while decreasing the output of methane (a greenhouse gas linked even more heavily to global warming than carbon dioxide)—and they typically live up to three times longer than conventional-agriculture cows, which allows farms to be economically sustainable as well.

Marquez also noted that many of her member farms are planting some acreage in oilseed crops such as sunflowers, which can power a farm’s trucks and tractors, feed its livestock and generate revenues.

The Challenges We Already Meet

Other speakers provided hope for meeting those difficult challenges mentioned earlier, by showing how their organizations are already surmounting equally difficult challenges. For example, Maisie Greenawalt of Bon Appetit Management Company (a food service provider to college, corporate, and organization cafeterias) inspired attenders with stories of converting institutional food service from slop to gourmet treats with fresh ingredients, and being profitable even while allowing college students unlimited trips to the (expensive, locally sourced, naturally raised non-antibiotic-treated beef) burger bar.

Not all sustainable food initiatives are local, of course. Fair trade—which, by definition, means products are crossing international borders—was also a much-discussed. From its beginnings in coffee, fair trade has olive oil, herbs, tea, cocoa, sugar, bananas, and many others. Fair trade ensures that the farmer makes a decent livelihood and has good working conditions, and the fair trade movement is spreading into such areas as bridge loans for farmers who only get paid once a year.

And more and more companies are producing goods that are not only fairly traded but also organic, providing sustainability not only to the farmers but to consumers as well.

Big…Or Little?

While once the province of tiny little artisan firms, these products and processes are breaking out of their niches. More and more of the major players in the food industry are making shelf space or production line space for organic, natural, and fairly traded goods, and many of the smaller companies have been bought up by industry giants. While this came up frequently at the conference, questions about the roles of multinationals versus tiny independents will have to wait for another time.

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).

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?
• Are You Throwing Away Your Opportunities? Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, January 2011
• Hear & Meet
• Friends Who Want to Help

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

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

The box says “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.

This is a company that’s doing the right thing, right?

Wrong. 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.

In other words, the marketing benefit of their commitment is just slightly above zero.

This particular package has plenty of white space on the front panel, prime real estate that does have a heksher (Kosher certification logo) but otherwise, does very little marketing at all.

This cracker company (which I will not name publicly) is far from alone.

Another example, which I highlight as a case study in my talks, is the household paper products company, Marcal. When I ask my audiences what year they think Marcal switched to recycled paper, most of the answers tend to fall between 1985 and 2005. Occasionally someone will guess a year in the 1970s, especially if I call the company a pioneer in using recycled stock.

Not once has anyone guessed the correct answer—1950—or even the correct decade. Because, for too long, like the cracker company, Marcal kept its best marketing point hidden. Even though the company has been 100% recycled for more than 60 years, it was only in the past decade that it started incorporating this vital message into its packaging—and only since 2009 that environmental branding has become the central focus of its message to consumers.

You just have to wonder how much more toilet paper, napkins, tissues and paper towels the company would have sold if it had started bragging earlier. I know that when I first became aware of environmental concerns in the early 1970s, I would have been thrilled to find a cost-competitive brand that was also very green.

Like Marcal, the Swiss cereal company Familia has been using sustainable practices—in this case, buying grains from sustainable farms–for decades. But it was only early in 2010 that I noticed this was finally explained on its packaging.

These are three examples among hundreds.

Why do companies take the time and trouble to do good in the world, and then act like they’re embarrassed about it? Perhaps it’s a matter of corporate humility, not wanting to brag. In some cases, maybe it’s worry about being accused of greenwashing—an accusation that could definitely hurt.

In Marcal’s case, it may have started as a legitimate fear that people wouldn’t buy household paper made of other people’s castoffs, even if it was just their sterilized junkmail. In the conformist, status-conscious 1950s, it may not have been seen as a marketing strength, but as a liability.

But certainly by 1980 if not well before, what we now call Cultural Creatives were a well-established and rapidly growing marketing demographic. As far back as the 2000 publication of their book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World, Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson estimated that more than a quarter of all adults in the developed countries they studied fell into this category. A quarter of the population!

Greenwashing accusations are easily defused with one simple rule: tell the truth. As for corporate humility, it’s not doing those companies any favors. I see both a bottom-line advantage and a save-the-world benefit to trumpeting an honest green message. On the financial side, you’re able to market much more effectively to that vast market segment.

But even more to the point, you help make the world a better place. Every company that shares its green initiatives publicly shows consumers that there are sustainable alternatives, pressures competitors to also go green, and continues to generate momentum toward a better world.

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).

**Holiday Offer: Do Your Shopping Here and Get Great Bonuses**

You know you’re going to make those New Year’s resolutions about working more *on* your business and less *in* your business. Here’s your chance to get some wonderful practical tools for yourself and for the entrepreneurs in your life:

These offers are good during the month of December. Buy just one copy of any of our award-winning marketing books directly from us, and get as a bonus a copy of my very practical 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.

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• Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (with $2000 worth of bonuses)
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Buy three or more shipped to the same address (mix and match titles or buy the same book for all your friends), and get both Painless Green AND my 280-page e-book on how to have fun cheaply, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty With a Peasant’s Pocketbook.

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For more detailed previews of the individual books including the bonuses that they include, please visit https://shelhorowitz.com, where you’ll find links to all of them in the section called “Do-It-Yourself Resources.”

**BIG Announcement: Green And Profitable Column Now Available**

For more than 20 years, I’ve wanted to be a syndicated columnist, with one column appearing in dozens or hundreds of publications. I even packed up some samples and tried to get the attention of the big syndicates every now and then.

Well, I got tired of waiting. I decided that if I were ever going to fulfill this lifelong ambition, it would be on me to make it happen. I also decided that while there’s no shortage of political commentators of all stripes, there aren’t a lot of people talking about how to be green and profitable.

Since that’s the subject of two entire books I’ve written, plus most of my speaking and a good deal of my blogging and newslettering, I realized that I was uniquely suited to write such a column, and that I was probably going to have a much easier time marketing it than trying to sell yet another politics column. And indeed, I launched Green And Profitable in November and immediately picked up a newspaper here in Massachusetts and a website in Australia. My goal is to use this column to drive home the message that green IS profitable by landing 1000 publications to run the column by the end of 2012–so that the message is found all over and actually might have some impact in the world. 2 down, 998 to go :-). I’ve posted three sample columns at https://greenandprofitable.com/green-and-profitable-column/#sample

To get this properly launched, I’m offering an incredible price: for the first hundred media that sign up for the column, the price will be just $10 per article, guaranteed through the end of 2012. And I’m also offering individual subscriptions for your own use (not for republication), at an even more phenomenal price of $10 for unlimited six-month access. Wow!

If you read any magazine, newspaper, website, blog, or newsletter, or listen to any favorite radio shows or podcasts (there will be an audio version), I’d be delighted if you ask them run the column (once you ask, please send me an e-mail to shel at principledprofit.com, subject “I requested your column” or Tweet me @ShelHorowitz, and tell me the name of the publisher. If that publisher subscribes, I promise I will do something nice to you. Please direct your publisher contact to https://greenandprofitable.com/green-and-profitable-column/ — where I’ve put all sorts of material about why the column, how to run it, etc.

If you’d like to subscribe as an individual, without republication rights, please visit https://www.frugalmarketing.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=82&products_id=233. And thank you so much!

Analysis of a Really Bad Book Query Letter (With Lessons for Non-Authors, Too)

Ever dream of getting a big New York publisher for your future best seller? Don’t do it like this—in fact, don’t send any kind of pitch letter that makes these mistakes:

M husband has a finished book and he is looking for a Book Agent or Book Publisher. His book is geared for young adults. He is a Highschool teacher and his students are chomping at the bit to read his book. We are sitting on a gold-mine! If you are interested, please leave your information so we can send you more information on the book! Thank you so much.

This was an actual query, submitted through a media query submission service. Let’s play a little game with this, just for fun. How many things can you find wrong with this post? Use the comment form to respond, and then scroll down to see my list (don’t cheat!)

Publishers are deluged with queries and are actively looking for reasons to say no. Any of the eight points below will probably trigger rejection. All of them together? This proposal is going nowhere, fast. Similarly, executives look for reasons to brush off sales pitches…customers of any kind want to be romanced, but this letter is more like the equivalent of a wolf-whistle on the street corner.

1. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation count. I notice two typos (dropping the y in My and running high and school together into one non-existent word), one inappropriate hyphenation, and four inappropriate capitalizations.
2. Writing style counts. This limp and wooden paragraph gives me no confidence in the author’s ability.
3. I don’t even know if this is fiction or nonfiction, let alone the subject and genre. Tell me what the book is about, tell me your working title, get me interested.
4. Young Adult, in the children’s book market, is a much younger reader than high school. She doesn’t know her terms and her audience, which means she doesn’t know the industry, which means the product is not likely to be salable.
5. Don’t give me hype (gold-mine). Give me facts.
6. What a great market analysis—NOT! His students are eager for the book. OK, let’s say he teaches five classes of 30 kids each, which would be a pretty big load but not out of the question. OK, so that’s a universe of 150 students per semester. If even 25 percent of the market actually buys (and that’s about 5 to 10x more than I’d guess), you’ve just sold a whopping six books. That won’t even pay for the cover design. I think this particular gold mine may be all played out. And no other markets are mentioned.
7. What’s his name, what are his credentials, and why isn’t he writing his own letter?
8. Finally, why submit this to a media pitch service that goes to experts across all genres, seeking publicity by answering reporters’ queries? The targeting is very poor. It would make a lot more sense to pitch a list of actual publishers, don’t you think?

And by the way, if you’re thinking of submitting a book proposal or query letter to an agent or publisher, a bit of expert help can make a huge difference. I offer critique services, rewriting, or writing from scratch. And I’ve sold to Wiley, Simon & Schuster, and Chelsea Green, as well as gotten nibbles for my clients from many other fine houses. For those authors better suited to self-publishing, I walk you through every step of the process and we come out the other end with something as good as books coming from major publishers.

Another Recommended Book: Good For Business

Good For Business: The Rise of the Conscious Corporation, by Andrew Benett, Cavas Gobhai, Ann O’Reilly, and Greg Welch (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

Reviewed by Shel Horowitz, primary author, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

If you ever doubted that corporate social and environmental responsibility play a role in business success, consider some of these stats:

• In a survey of consumers across the U.S., France, and U.K., 74 percent of consumers believe businesses bear as much responsibility as governments for driving positive social change
• 76 percent  take responsibility for avoiding products from unethical companies, and 63 percent have made purchase decisions based on company conduct
• An astonishing 85 percent believe that companies need to stand for more than just profitability

All of these are taken from the appendix of Good For Business: The Rise of the Conscious Corporation, which ends with 11 pages of juicy stats. And there are plenty of important stats in the main text, too: such as:

• The market for organic foods in the U.S. grew by nearly an order of magnitude in just eleven years, mushrooming from $3.6 billion in 1997 to $33 billion in 2008
• Just the compact fluorescent light bulbs sold at Walmart kept 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere—the same result as removing 700,000 cars from use
• Reputation accounts for 75 percent of the difference between book value and market capitalization; in other words, good behavior translates into real dollars when a company is sold
• On the aggregate, companies listed on the 100 Best Places to Work returned 14 percent a year on investment, compared with just 6 percent for the overall corporate economy
• Tesco, the U.K. supermarket giant, built a store in 2008 that uses just 30% of the energy of a store built just two years earlier

Plenty more to this book than statistics, of course. Much of the text draws from four cornerstone concepts—corporations need to:

1. Be about more than profit.

2. Treat both employees and customers well

3. Champion sustainability

4. Respect the power of consumers

Case-study companies, including well-known examples like Marks & Spencer, Ben & Jerry’s, Nike, GE, Whole Foods—and many less-frequently cited examples, including not only companies but also nonprofits—are examined in light of these four criteria, with many specifics.

There is a long digression on mission statements, which the authors reinvent as a living, changing document they call a USOD (Useful Statement Of Direction). Were it up to me, I’d have edited that part down. But this one small negative is more than compensated by pearls of wisdom such as the way a Conscious Corporation turns transparency into advantage, even as old-style companies see it as a recipe for paranoia. (p. 186)

Hear and Meet

December

• December 7th, 5-9pm ET, Green Marketing for the Food Industry, Speaking and Exhibiting at Holyoke Community College, Kittredge Center Cafeteria, $25 for adults – TONIGHT
• Thursday, December 9, 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT: How to Create A Message that Resonates with the Green Consumer, 60-minute webinar for Strategic Sustainability Consulting, https://www.sustainabilityconsulting.com/events-list/webinar-green-and-profitable-creating-green-messages-that-ma.html Contact: tracy (at) sustainabilityconsulting.com

January

• Personal profile of me as a green marketer on Stephanie Chandler’s website (print)
  https://businessinfoguide.com/interview-with-author-shel-horowitz-guerrilla-marketing-goes-green/
• With I. Vitt Argent on Green Marketing: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/ivaradionetwork/2010/10/27/kiva-talk-radio-interveiws-guerilla-green-business
• With TJ Walker on social media: https://www.tjwalker.com/2010/10/13/radio-shel-horowitz-shares-some-communication-tips-on-using-social-media/
• With Carma Spence on public speaking:
  https://publicspeakingsuperpowers.com/featured-speakers/shel-horowitz/
• With Lillian Brummet on conscious marketing and green living:
  https://www.blogtalkradio.com/consciousdiscussions/2010/09/07/conscious-marketing

Domains for Sale

I have some excellent domain names that I don’t anticipate needing in the future. If you’ve been looking to start a business of your own or expand your existing business in a different direction, this may be just what you need. Interested in buying any (or all)? Drop me an offer at shel at principledprofit.com

• RecessionBusterBooks.com
• The-Perfect-Life.com
• EarthConsciousMarketers.com
• FrugalFun.info
• GuerillaMarketingGoesGreen.com (note: Only one r. I’m keeping the 2-r)
• PrincipledProfits.com

Friends Who Want to Help

Success Bug LevelUP Business Acceleration Program: an amazing learning community for business success with stellar faculty, assembled by Spike Humer (long-time chief strategist for Jay Abraham, who I consider one of the top business thinkers in the world today), my co-author Jay Conrad Levinson (the original Guerrilla Marketing man as well as the advertising legend who brought us such iconic campaigns as United’s Friendly Skies and the Marlboro Man), and my new friend Barry Plaskow who is coordinating the whole thing from his bases in the UK and Israel.  https://nanacast.com/vp/98574/38467

Janet Switzer’s How Experts Build Empires: What secret weapon do Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup), Jay Abraham (see above), and Tony Robbins all credit as a huge factor in their success, worth many millions of dollars to each of them? A one-woman marketing and packaging strategic powerhouse named Janet Switzer. I heard Janet speak at a conference a few years ago and took a steady stream of notes as fast as I could bang them into my keyboard. I’ve also listened every chance I can to any teleseminar where she’s presenting. She thinks big, helps others see the big picture, but also knows how to get down and dirty with little tweaks that make a huge difference. And she co-authored The Success Principles—the one self-help book I recommend constantly–with Jack Canfield, which means she probably wrote the bulk of it. Normally, to get help from Janet, you need to buy into her very expensive mentoring program. But right now, she’s selling the ‘How Experts Build Empires Marketing Plan for only $97. Yeah, that may seem like a lot for an info product, but I have never known Janet to delivery anything less than enormous value. I would expect that you’ll get something worth many times more than the purchase price, as long as you implement even 1/10 of what she suggests. https://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=1268266

Become a “Pay It Forward Angel” with radio host Dr. Pat Bacili—No Cost https://tinyurl.com/288y76d is the link for a huge giveaway with nothing to buy. Joining me in providing a gift are people like Nancy Juetten, Findhorn Press, and about 150 other luminaries. Some of the people working with Dr. Pat on other levels (for instance, hosting a program on her Transformation Radio Network) include the actress and mystic Shirley MacLaine, musicians Melissa Etheridge and Olivia Newton-John, and bestselling author Dr. Wayne Dyer.  She fully expects to transform the world through creating a giving culture, so you may as well start by looking at the amazing array of gifts to you when you sign up at no charge for her Transformation Community.

Karen Hudson and Lily Hills, radio show co-hosts of “The Goddess to Goddess Empower Hour~Inspirational Information for Women and the Divine Dudes that Love Them,” have just released their new book, A Feminine Manifesta.

I love seeing people like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela cited in a women’s self-help book! The integration of personal and political may be the single biggest contribution of modern feminism. Social/global/environmental change cannot be separated from personal empowerment and personal behavior.

A new book, The Feminine Manifesta, by Karen Hudson and Lily Hills (radio show co-hosts of “The Goddess to Goddess Empower Hour~Inspirational Information for Women and the Divine Dudes that Love Them”) makes the connection very nicely. Particularly if you haven’t read a lot of the personal empowerment/personal is political classics, this is a book you’ll want to read.

Particularly now, during the launch promotion when you get 25 wonderful gifts totaling more than $1500 in value, including my own 12 New Year’s Resolutions For a More Ethical, Ecological, Profitable, and Successful Business. Preview all the gifsts–and the book, of course, at https://www.afemininemanifesta.com/preview_bonus_gifts.html

Are you tired of rushing? Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World, is giving you the gift of time this holiday season. When you purchase one or more copies of her book (as seen in O magazine, Redbook, on NPR and CNN.com), you will receive bonus gifts at no extra cost. The offer is only good for Tuesday, December 7th so mark your calendar!

Why is there power in slow? It is scientifically proven that slow is faster and fast is merely exhausting.

Christine’s 101 principles will help you establish a more positive relationship with time so you have more of it. If you want to live in state of time abundance versus time starvation, The Power of Slow is for you. And of course all your friends on your gift list, too! www.powerofslowbook.com

Give a Little, Get a Lot: The Unstoppable Foundation has an amazing event taking place right now where you have the opportunity to get cutting edge information from some of the world’s leading experts at 80% to 90% OFF discounts…with 100% of the money going to a charity that is educating children in Africa.  This is an opportunity to transform your life and the lives of thousands of children in Africa.  Find out more in the introduction video with the founder of the Unstoppable Foundation, Cynthia Kersey: https://www.unstoppablefoundation.org/

Good For Business: The Rise of the Conscious Corporation, by Andrew Benett, Cavas Gobhai, Ann O’Reilly, and Greg Welch (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

Reviewed by Shel Horowitz, primary author, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

If you ever doubted that corporate social and environmental responsibility play a role in business success, consider some of these stats:

• In a survey of consumers across the U.S., France, and U.K., 74 percent of consumers believe businesses bear as much responsibility as governments for driving positive social change
• 76 percent  take responsibility for avoiding products from unethical companies, and 63 percent have made purchase decisions based on company conduct
• An astonishing 85 percent believe that companies need to stand for more than just profitability

All of these are taken from the appendix of Good For Business: The Rise of the Conscious Corporation, which ends with 11 pages of juicy stats. And there are plenty of important stats in the main text, too: such as:

• The market for organic foods in the U.S. grew by nearly an order of magnitude in just eleven years, mushrooming from $3.6 billion in 1997 to $33 billion in 2008
• Just the compact fluorescent light bulbs sold at Walmart kept 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere—the same result as removing 700,000 cars from use
• Reputation accounts for 75 percent of the difference between book value and market capitalization; in other words, good behavior translates into real dollars when a company is sold
• On the aggregate, companies listed on the 100 Best Places to Work returned 14 percent a year on investment, compared with just 6 percent for the overall corporate economy
• Tesco, the U.K. supermarket giant, built a store in 2008 that uses just 30% of the energy of a store built just two years earlier

Plenty more to this book than statistics, of course. Much of the text draws from four cornerstone concepts—corporations need to:

1. Be about more than profit.

2. Treat both employees and customers well

3. Champion sustainability

4. Respect the power of consumers

Case-study companies, including well-known examples like Marks & Spencer, Ben & Jerry’s, Nike, GE, Whole Foods—and many less-frequently cited examples, including not only companies but also nonprofits—are examined in light of these four criteria, with many specifics.

There is a long digression on mission statements, which the authors reinvent as a living, changing document they call a USOD (Useful Statement Of Direction). Were it up to me, I’d have edited that part down. But this one small negative is more than compensated by pearls of wisdom such as the way a Conscious Corporation turns transparency into advantage, even as old-style companies see it as a recipe for paranoia. (p. 186)

Ever dream of getting a big New York publisher for your future best seller? Don’t do it like this—in fact, don’t esend any kind of pitch letter that makes these mistakes:

M husband has a finished book and he is looking for a Book Agent or Book Publisher. His book is geared for young adults. He is a Highschool teacher and his students are chomping at the bit to read his book. We are sitting on a gold-mine! If you are interested, please leave your information so we can send you more information on the book! Thank you so much.

This was an actual query, submitted through a media query submission service. Let’s play a little game with this, just for fun. How many things can you find wrong with this post? Use the comment form to respond, and then scroll down to see my list (don’t cheat!)

Publishers are deluged with queries and are actively looking for reasons to say no. Any of the eight points below will probably trigger rejection. All of them together? This proposal is going nowhere, fast. Similarly, executives look for reasons to brush off sales pitches…customers of any kind want to be romanced, but this letter is more like the equivalent of a wolf-whistle on the street corner.

1. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation count. I notice two typos (dropping the y in My and running high and school together into one non-existent word), one inappropriate hyphenation, and four inappropriate capitalizations.
2. Writing style counts. This limp and wooden paragraph gives me no confidence in the author’s ability.
3. I don’t even know if this is fiction or nonfiction, let alone the subject and genre. Tell me what the book is about, tell me your working title, get me interested.
4. Young Adult, in the children’s book market, is a much younger reader than high school. She doesn’t know her terms and her audience, which means she doesn’t know the industry, which means the product is not likely to be salable.
5. Don’t give me hype (gold-mine). Give me facts.
6. What a great market analysis—NOT! His students are eager for the book. OK, let’s say he teaches five classes of 30 kids each, which would be a pretty big load but not out of the question. OK, so that’s a universe of 150 students per semester. If even 25 percent of the market actually buys (and that’s about 5 to 10x more than I’d guess), you’ve just sold a whopping six books. That won’t even pay for the cover design. I think this particular gold mine may be all played out. And no other markets are mentioned.
7. What’s his name, what are his credentials, and why isn’t he writing his own letter?
8. Finally, why submit this to a media pitch service that goes to experts across all genres, seeking publicity by answering reporters’ queries? The targeting is very poor. It would make a lot more sense to pitch a list of actual publishers, don’t you think?

And by the way, if you’re thinking of submitting a book proposal or query letter to an agent or publisher, a bit of expert help can make a huge difference. I offer critique services, rewriting, or writing from scratch. And I’ve sold to Wiley, Simon & Schuster,and Chelsea Green, as well as gotten nibbles for my clients from many other fine houses. For those authors better suited to self-publishing, I walk you through every step of the process and we come out the other end with something as good as books coming from major publishers.