The Clean and Green Club

**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.

Which books qualify?

• Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (with $2000 worth of bonuses)
• Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World (with the Missing Chapters e-book, covering Web 2.0/social media and other new developments
• Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers (just for people marketing books. Includes several hundred dollars worth of bonuses.)

Be sure to enter the coupon code: HolidayCode1 to get your free bonus!

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.

Plus you still get the bonuses that already come with the books (for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green , that’s already more than $2000 worth of goodies).

Be sure to enter the coupon code: HolidayCode2 to get all of your free bonuses!

To preview and purchase: visit https://www.frugalmarketing.com/cart/index.php?main_page=products_all

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.

Many observers in the environmental movement were dispirited by the US election results in November, with the election of several prominent climate-change deniers and the power switch in the House of Representatives.

Political reality around sustainability varies a lot with location. Western Europe has been pushing hard on green technology leadership for years, combining business and government to drive the change. From simple innovations like a light/heavy switch for toilet flushes to the complexities of generating significant power from offshore and mountaintop wind farms, Europe has made it clear that carbon reduction and energy and water conservation are priorities. China, using an approach dictated largely by government policy, has become a world leader in solar.

However, both the European and Chinese systems send out mixed messages. Europe relies far too heavily on dangerous and un-green nuclear power; China has made an even larger commitment to dirty, health-killing coal.

In many parts of Africa and Asia, NGOs and nonprofits—often more than government or private industry—are taking the lead, bringing low-cost and highly portable energy technologies in to disadvantaged villages, replacing polluting, unsafe, and carbon-spewing kerosene, wood, and charcoal with clean alternatives—decentralized to the level of a single home.

Turning back to the US: I believe the election shows that Americans can’t rely on the federal government to deal with climate change on our behalf; as business leaders and thought leaders, we have to do it ourselves. Nothing meaningful will come out of Washington for the next two gridlocked years, on climate change, going green, or many other issues.

But this doesn’t mean the work will stop. Not at all.

Individuals within companies will continue to spearhead the movement for change, and those companies will slowly turn to embrace the change. Individuals within households will continue to make better choices for themselves and their families, and the machinery of commerce will continue to make those choices ever more widely available and affordable.

First, of course, is the pioneering work done for the past several decades by companies that were founded with a strong environmental chromosome. When companies like Whole Foods or Ben & Jerry’s take steps to go more green, it’s totally in keeping with the corporate culture—the company DNA—and with the needs and desires of their customer base.

But wider change must be driven by companies considered much more mainstream. “Fringe” businesses—small innovative concerns that will grow to become the Whole Foods and Ben & Jerry’s of the future—may show us how to get there, but to really make a difference, much bigger players have to get involved.

Will this happen without government carrots? Actually, it’s happening already. Let’s take Walmart as an example. The largest retailer in the world—that sounds pretty mainstream. Founded by a conservative, pickup-driving rural American from the South (the most conservative region in the country), Walmart certainly doesn’t kowtow to tree-huggers. In fact, it’s often been criticized by environmentalists for a host of issues ranging from store siting to labor practices.

Yet in the last few years, starting with the appointment of Lee Scott as CEO and continuing past his term, Walmart has taken numerous major steps toward sustainability in both its operations and its product line. Why?

1. Walmart’s always been awesome at slashing the cost and boosting the efficiency of its logistics. So the dozens of green operations initiatives that actually save the company millions of dollars are a no-brainer. Examples range from fitting its long-haul trucks with separate temperature systems so the big diesels don’t have to run just to heat or cool the cab, to switching to LED parking lot lighting in some stores—which slashed energy consumption by 48 percent and maintenance costs by 75 percent—to saving 678,000 barrels of oil and 290,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases a year just by cutting plastic shopping bag waste by a third.

2. The company realized that bringing in green product lines (from energy-efficient lightbulbs to organic food to healthy cleaning and body care lines) opened up enormous revenue and profit potential.

In other words, the company realized it could both save a fortune and make a fortune. So what’s not to like? And this is the future of going green in the US for the next two years: companies stepping forward to do the right thing out of economic self-interest.

Of course, if the Obama administration had engaged in a massive Marshall Plan-style program to create hundreds of thousands of jobs by converting to green power sources, we might not need to ask ourselves how to move forward without the government’s help. But that’s a topic for a different column.

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 column and is the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green (John Wiley & Sons, 2010).

Earn a commission–find me a paid speaking gig in the Bay Area for January 17 or 18. I will be speaking on the 19th at the Sustainable Food Summit. Contact me directly at 413-586-2388, shel at greenandprofitable.com

Shel’s Green And Profitable monthly column has launched. If you know a newspaper, newsletter, website, or blog that would like to run this column, please recommend us. the link is https://greenandprofitable.com/green-and-profitable-column/

In This Issue…

• Pushing the Green Bar Higher: Report from the Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival
• Persuading People to Buy, by Marcia Yudkin
• Hear & Meet Shel
• Friends Who Help

Pushing the Green Bar Higher: Report from the Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival

Saturday, October 23, I did my Green Marketing talk at the Green Festival: the largest and most well-run event of its kind I’ve been to, and I’ve been to quite a few.

The way the schedule worked, I ended up not being able to connect with a lot of the other great workshops—but that was ok, since it took me pretty much the whole day to go through all the exhibits.

Let me tell you, the Green world is hopping! Two years ago, much of what I saw at the show would not have even been on the drawing boards, and now it’s reality.

Some random observations:

Water: Awareness of water as a global resource issue has come a long way in the past few years, and that plays out on several fronts, among them:

•   Products that reduce or eliminate use of bottled water, such as Hydros Bottle: a reusable water and highly portable bottle with a built-in filter

•   Industrial and agricultural processes designed to use much less water

•   Consumer awareness projects such as Corporate Accountability International’s very effective “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign

Community Food Self-Sufficiency: Innovative companies and community organizations are noticing that not only rural people are looking for locally-sourced, healthy food. Urban people want options too. Some of the solutions have been around for years, such as farmers markets bringing their wares to urban centers or Community Supported agriculture farms that sell memberships for a whole growing season. But others could be just as game-changing, such as the offering from Sustainable Garden Supply, Inc. This company does “vertical gardens” and claims that 30 different plants could be grown in a three-foot space. It looks somewhat like an Italian Renaissance fountain and can be used indoors or out.

Fair Trade: No longer just about coffee, cocoa, and tea, the list of fair-trade certified products (and groups certifying them) continues to grow. Sugar, bananas, clothing, and other products are now obtaining certification, and several different certifying bodies are now active. And there were at least four different fair-trade chocolatiers sapling their yummy wares (a far cry from the acute shortage of decent chocolate I encountered when I switched to fair trade several years ago).

Home, Shelter, and Energy: There must have been at least two dozen vendors selling and/or installing solar energy systems, a comparable number selling conservation and retrofit products, plus some geothermal. Attention to wind seemed to be concentrated in the nonprofit organization booths, though. Many contractors were also around to discuss building new green structures or renovating old ones, along with eco-friendly landscaping, gardening, and decorating. And Zero Waste as well as Zero Energy have become popular catchwords.

Fashion and Home Decor: Green has gotten very chic. Say goodbye to the drab monochrome patterns and I-used-to-be-a-burlap-bag look of years past. Today’s eco-fashions are colorful, dramatic, interestingly cut, heavily influenced by world-beat cultures, and look nothing like an old coffee sack. Think of the difference between recycled paper in 1990 and today. Reusability is also big, with, for instance, reusable cloth wraps with Velcro closures to replace sandwich bags—and a portion of the Mother Earth News booth set up as an heirloom seed exchange. And speaking of Zero Waste, many small vendors featured a wide assortment of craft items created from what used to be considered scrap: jewelry made of recycled paper and metal, elegant art papers made of deodorized and sanitized elephant dung (which I actually came across in 2009 and mentioned in Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green), textiles from old soda bottles, furniture from recovered glass…

In short, if your exposure to green products is based on what was out there 20, 10, or even five years ago, it’s time for another look—which you can take by browsing the exhibitor catalog, posted here.

Another Recommended Book: Persauding People to Buy, by Marcia Yudkin

As a long-time subscriber to Marcia Yudkin’s Marketing Minute newsletter, I read most of these essays when they were first published in that format.

Now that she’s organized some of her columns into books, I’m pleasantly shocked by how much more I get out of them. She has clearly given much thought to the order, so that essay builds upon essay to strengthen and hammer home the central messages–such as the importance of knowing your market inside out and backwards, and matching the medium, market, and message.

The articles are short and digestible: 1-1/2 to 2 widely spaced pages apiece (remember—these were first published in a newsletter called the Marketing *Minute*). Normally, I like my content longer, because I like depth. But Marcia wastes no words and achieves that depth in surprisingly little space. Which is why I continue to read her newsletter for more than a decade, even as I’ve unsubscribed from dozens of others after a couple of years, or even a few months.

Icing on the cake: the little aphorism or bit of humor at the end of many of the articles that lets different synapses connect in your brain, and reinforces the article’s message while generating a smile.

As a long-time advocate of these principles, I strongly recommend Marcia’s book, with its easily-digested nuggets, as a complement to my own Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

Disclosure: I am personally acquainted with Marcia and we were in a mastermind group together for a while.

—Shel Horowitz

Hear & Meet Shel

November

• Monday, November 8, 3:30-4:30 ET/12:30-1:30 PT, Felice Gerwitz interviews me on book marketing for WritingandPublishingRadio.com
• Tuesday, November 16, 9pm ET/6 pm PT: Mastermind class for GreenBusinessOwner.com. Details at https://www.greenbusinessowner.com/products/item6.cfm.

December

• Thursday, December 2, 1:00 ET: 90-minute audio conference with Association of Strategic Marketing “Reaching the Green Consumer with Effective Marketing”
  Register at https://www.associationofmarketing.org/bookstore.php?sku=387283 and use Priority Code 16899, or ph 866-226-0828 and mention code 16899 (my affiliate code).
  I’ll provide you with a bonus audio on how to respond to journalist queries with pitches that lead to coverage–just e-mail a copy of your receipt to shel at greenandprofitable.com, subject line: Audio Bonus for 12/2 Webinar.
  Please tell you friends and colleagues about this one!
• 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

• 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

Friends Who Help

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

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:

Another Recommended Book: Twelve by Twelve, by William Powers

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,
  https://www.blogtalkradio.com/ivaradionetwork/2010/10/27/kiva-talk-radio-interveiws-guerilla-green-business-author-shel-horowitz Call in at 888.492.0308 x102 or 347.994.2414.

November

• Monday, November 8, 3:30-4:30 ET/12:30-1:30 PT, Felice Gerwitz interviews me on book marketing for WritingandPublishingRadio.com

December

• Thursday, December 2, 1:00 ET: 90-minute audio conference with Association of Strategic Marketing “Reaching the Green Consumer with Effective Marketing”
  Register at https://www.associationofmarketing.org/bookstore.php?sku=387283 and use Priority Code 16899, or ph 866-226-0828 and mention code 16899 (my affiliate code).
  I’ll provide you with a bonus audio on how to respond to journalist queries with pitches that lead to coverage–just e-mail a copy of your receipt to shel at greenandprofitable.com, subject line: Audio Bonus for 12/2 Webinar.
  Please tell you friends and colleagues about this one!
• 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

• How to Reach the Green Consumer-and Make a Whole Lot More Profit: Cost-Cutting, Revenue-Building Green Marketing Strategies are Easy to Implement, press release posted at https://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/09/prweb4495314.htm
• Carolyn Allen from California Green Solutions put together a lovely chapter-by-chapter preview of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: https://www.solutionsforgreenmarketing.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl.h,content=2524
• The audio from the preview webinar I did for Green America can be heard at https://www.mediafire.com/?dwppnb20hghm2sg
• David Mathison interview with Shel Horowitz, September 29 2010.
• https://www.blogtalkradio.com/be-the-media/2010/09/29/guerrilla-marketing-goes-green-with-shel-horowitz
• Brief written interview on Self-Publishing with GalleyCat/MediaBistro: https://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/self-publishin-local-marketing_b13003
• Excellent one-hour interview on going green and marketing green on Home-Based Business Live (Colorado and online): https://homebasedbusinesslive.com/shel-horowitz (click on replay button under and to the left of my bio)

• GreenBiz: 10 Ways to Make Your Message Resonate with Green Consumers https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/08/26/10-ways-make-your-message-resonate-green-consumers#ixzz0xkhTOz6C
• GreenBizBlog (different site): Is Your Printing as Green as It Could Be? https://greenbiz.ecosyte.com/2010/08/07/is-your-printing-as-green-as-it-could-be-by-shel-horowitz.aspx
• Sustainablog: One Glug at a Time: The Rise and Fall of Bottled Water https://blog.sustainablog.org/bottled-water-business/

Friends Who Help

Let Jingles Jangle Your Cash Register: Clean and Green Marketing Tip

Fill in the blanks:
Double your pleasure, double your fun with _____________
You wonder where the yellow went when you _______________
___________ can put good food in your family and chaaaange back in your pocket
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, ____________

Bonus question for those who grew up in or near New York City and northern New Jersey:
Palisades from coast to coast, ____________
Palisades Amusement Park.

If you’re over 50 or so, chances are you know all the answers:
Double your pleasure, double your fun with Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint gum
You wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent
McDonald’s can put good food in your family and chaaaange back in your pocket
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is
Palisades from coast to coast, where a dime buys the most.
Palisades Amusement Park. (Hear the whole 31-second jingle at https://www.palisadespark.com/sounds_comeonover68.html.)

In July, I mentioned that if you’re doing branding campaigns, you want to engage as many of the senses as possible. Whether it’s about branding or a call to action, engaging more senses makes your message far more memorable.

The fill-ins above are all from ads that haven’t run in decades. Palisades closed in 1971, nearly 40 years ago! What made them memorable? The jingles! While a good slogan can make an ad memorable, a jingle adds the elements of music and rhyme—and a mediocre jingle has much more staying power than a mediocre slogan. As a marketer, I really don’t understand why they’ve largely gone out of fashion.

If you use jingles, be smart and include the brand name right in the jingle. Note that all the above examples except for Alka-Seltzer include the brand.

So if paid advertising is part of your marketing mix, and if those paid ads include radio or TV, think about commissioning a really powerful jingle. Even if you’re not dong paid ads, think about using jingles on your website.

Friends Who Help

Lots of stuff for you this month!

Benefit Gulf Oil Spill Victims

Raise money for those impacted by Deepwater Horizon’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and get a cool song, too. Scott Blum and his group Wilderland are donating *100 percent(* of the proceeds for Scott’s music single, “Fragile Day.” Scott, by the way, has worked with Peter Gabriel, Toby Wright, and other music superstars. He and his associates hope to make this “the biggest viral event ever.” https://www.fragileday.com/

Scot writes, “The Gulf Restoration Network is a charity that has been operating in the Gulf of Mexico for over 16 years and because of their proximity to the disaster, they were first on the scene and has been working around the clock to help the habitat directly affected by the spill. The second charity is the WILD Foundation, which is looking for a long term solution to ensure these tragedies never happen again. Their first initiative is enacting a formal recognition for the Marine Wilderness that can be protected from all development, and eventually ensuring that ‘Nature Needs Half’ to heal herself while we live on the other half.”

Excellent New Book on Customer Service: And the Clients Went Wild! I got to preview a really excellent book on marketing and customer service: And the Clients Went Wild! by Maribeth Kuzmeski. Read a little taste:

“Perfect clients” are those who will pay for the full value of your product or services, rave about what you do, and go wild for anything that you offer. Lots of businesses have good clients; but only an elite few have passionate, loyal, vocal clients. This type of client is one that not only keeps coming back for more, but also finds the need to share you with family, friends and even strangers. Perfect clients are often what drives a firm’s explosive growth. And although the perfect client is found only in a perfect world (which doesn’t exist), there are a lot of businesses that can enjoy the results from the enthusiasm of the nearly perfect passion of their clients…

I have ultimately been searching, as many of us are, for the “secret sauce” that some businesses have mixed together to create incremental success…

People nowadays are far less likely to become loyal, given the overwhelming noise of the countless marketing messages they face. The objective is to get clients into the game — your game. And to accomplish this feat in today’s “new media” world, businesses are being forced to change…

Businesses that have effectively created a loyal following of passionate and vocal clients have followed some, if not all, of five fundamental marketing principles.

And then 19 chapters on the principles and their practical application. I think this is one of the best marketing how-to books I’ve seen in a long time. I’m hoping to get an excerpt posted on my site, down the line. But meanwhile, do yourself a favor and mark your calendar for September 14. I’ll send the link in a special mailing mid-month so you can get yourself a copy and a whole bunch of bonuses, including one from me.

Monetize Your Passion: Powerful E-Book at No Cost

We all want to turn our passion into a good living. Even though it took him two years to write it, Rich German is *giving away* e-copies of his new book, Monetize Your Passion, filled with good advice on doing just that. You’ll have a chance to donate to rich’s favorite charity, Generation Why, helping America’s 1.6 million homeless children–but that’s optional. Rich’s 238-page book is your blueprint for living a life of passion, indescribable abundance, and happiness–not just his own experience, but also those of people like the book Gary Vaynerchuk, David Riklan, Mari Smith, and Marci Shimoff . I highly suggest you click now, https://shelhorowitz.com/go/richgerman2, and collect your free copy of Monetize Your Passion.

Deepak Chopra’s New Book on the Prophet Muhammad

The one and only Deepak Chopra is releasing his third book on great religious teachers (having already done books on Buddha and Jesus). September 21, HarperOne releases Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m betting it will be amazing. You can hear Deepak talk a bit about his motivation and read a brief excerpt on this video https://blog.beliefnet.com/intentchopra/2010/09/muhammad-a-story-of-the-last-p.html. I don’t have the order/bonus link for you yet; look for a special mailing mid-month with that, and possibly some other goodies.

Superstars of the New Consciousness: No-Charge Audio Series

Here’s an awesome-looking no-cost teleseminar series from Michelle Bersell: The New Consciousness Evolution Audio Series features such experts as Marci Shimoff, Janet Attwood, Arielle Ford, Jo Dunning, David Wolfe, Joan Borysenko and Marcia Wieder–wow!

Kids around the world love The Wild Soccer Bunch!

I’m told the book motivates kids to get involved in team sports and supports values such as diversity, sportsmanship, teamwork, leadership and self-acceptance. The book “exudes passionate storytelling and an equal passion for the game kids love: soccer, as well as a nice root-for-the-underdog adventure,” according to the promoters.

Purchase the book on September 9, and receive dozens of free bonus gifts for yourself and the kids in your life, including a copy of my Painless Green e-book: https://www.wildsoccerbunch.com/launch. Plus, you’ll automatically go into the draw to win 2 tickets to Hollywood, to the filming of The Wild Soccer Bunch Television Ad, featuring Landon Donovan.

David Mathison’s Blockbuster Online Success System Webinars

Mathison, author of the remarkable book Be the media (which I recommend frequently) is a very smart guy who understands how traditional media, self-made media, social networks, and progressive social change all fit together. He’s assembled an awesome group of instructors for this set of webinars, which include both no-charge and for-pay events. The course covers blog and web traffic, mining your content, self-publishing, licensing, even music–to name a few–and the faculty includes such luminaries as Janet Switzer, Katheen Gage, and Joel Comm. https://shelhorowitz.com/go/dmathison

Hear & Meet Shel, September 2010

I’m especially thrilled about partnering with Green America for a webinar on September 28 and a live event in Washington on October 23. (BTW, I’m looking for another gig while I’m in DC. If you find me one, you could earn a very nice commission).

September

• Tuesday, September 7, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT, Lillian Brummet interviews me on Conscious Discussions Radio (646) 478-4758
• Monday, September 20, 5:30 to 7:30 (program starts at 6:00), at the Media Education Foundation, Northampton, MA: Claudia Gere and I present on Book Publishing in the Digital Age
• Monday, September 20, live interview for CreateChatter.tv https://getresponse.com/click.html?x=a62b&lc=mi1u&mc=m&s=ANhX&y=j& 9 pm ET/6 pm PT
• Tuesday, September 21, Ronda Del Boccio (The Story Lady) interviews me about Green marketing (90 minutes). Noon ET/9 a.m. PT. Listen in by calling 646-478-0823 (it will be featured for a week).
• Monday, September 27, 8 pm ET/5 pm PT: Sandy Lawrence interviews me on the creative book marketing strategies we used for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green., for the Perceptive Marketing Hour.
• Tuesday, September 28, 2 pm ET/11am PT: Webinar for Green America, Green and Ethical Messages to Reach Green and Ethical Customers. Preview call for our live event October 23 in Washington, DC. Contact: Denise Hamler, denisehamler (at) greenamericatoday.org
• Wednesday. September 29 at 5 pm ET/2 pm PT, Dave Mathison from Be The Media interviews me about green guerrilla marketing (postponed from July). https://getresponse.com/click.html?x=a62b&lc=mi1x&mc=m&s=ANhX&y=U&

October

• Saturday, October 2, I’m speaking at the second annual Self-Publishing Book Expo in New York City
• 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

November

• Monday, November 8, 3:30-4:30 ET/12:30-1:30 PT, Felice Gerwitz interviews me on book marketing for WritingandPublishingRadio.com

December

• Thursday, December 2, 1:00 ET: 90-minute webinar for Association of Strategic Marketing (this one costs money and I believe provides certified continuing education credits) Writing Copy That Sells: Case Studies from the Green Market. Contact: Erica Rokus, 866.226.0828, erokus (at) associationofmarketing.org. Please tell you friends and colleagues about this one.

Shana Tovah! Happy 5771 to all my co-religionists. Happy Ramadan and a blessed Eid to those who celebrate that.

Accurate Writing & More, 16 Barstow Lane , Hadley, MA 01035, United States

Some of the above links are affiliate links that earn me commissions if you purchase.

* Friday, August 6, 1:35 pm ET/10:30 a.m. PT (and Arizona time, which is where Hollis is), Hollis Chapman interviews me over Blog Talk Radio on Green Guerrilla Marketing, 30 minutes. https://getresponse.com/click.html?x=a62b&lc=HYWO&mc=m&s=ANhX&y=F&

* Friday, August 6, 4 pm ET/1 pm PT, Maureen Kedes from Vertex PR interviews me, also on Green marketing. https://www.voiceamerica.com/voiceamerica/vshow.aspx?sid=1409

* Friday, August 20 ,1-1:25 p.m., “Reaching the Green Consumer.” Boston GreenFest  (the entire event  takes place August 19-21, 2010). One of the cool things about this event will be a display of cars that traveled
100 miles (from Greenfield, MA, near me) on a single gallon of gas. https://getresponse.com/click.html?x=a62b&lc=HYWW&mc=m&s=ANhX&y=R&

* Tuesday, September 7, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT, Lillian Brummet interviews me on Conscious Discussions Radio, https://www.blogtalkradio.com/consciousdiscussions or (646) 478-4758

* Monday, September 20, live interview for https://createchatter.tv 9 pm ET/6 pm PT

* Tuesday, September 21, Ronda Del Boccio (The Story Lady) interviews me about Green marketing (90 minutes). Noon ET/9 a.m. PT. Listen in by calling 646-478-0823 or visiting https://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/jvqueen (it will be featured for a week).

* Monday, September 27, 8 pm ET/5 pm PT: Sandy Lawrence interviews me on the creating book marketing strategies we used for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. Info: gayla@perceptivemarketing.com

* Wednesday. September 29 at 5pm ET/2 pm PT, Dave Mathison from Be The Media interviews me about green guerrilla marketing (postponed from July). https://getresponse.com/click.html?x=a62b&lc=HYW0&mc=m&s=ANhX&y=9&

* October 2, I’m speaking at the second annual Self-Publishing Book Expo in New York City, https://getresponse.com/click.html?x=a62b&lc=HYWi&mc=m&s=ANhX&y=r&

* 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

* 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. Contact: alexandru.israil (at) gmail.com

Market Me Tweet
If you follow me on Twitter, you might notice that for the last couple of weeks, most of my Tweets don’t come from TweetDeck anymore. Instead, they’re from an application called “ShelHorowitzGreen&EthicalMarketing.” What magic strings did I pull to set that up? None whatsoever, and I can’t program anything more complicated than a QuicKeys macro so you can bet I didn’t write the code for this.

The secret is Market Me Tweet, a nifty little program that lets you create an application, in Twitter’s eyes, just by copying a few lines of code once. It takes maybe ten minutes to set up, and after that, all your Tweets carry your own brand. You just post them, using an implication interface for both Twitter and Facebook very similar to TweetDeck (though, I confess, not quite as elegant). In my case, with my goal of becoming nationally and internationally known as a go-to commentator for green business issues, the ability to reinforce that with every Tweet is very powerful—especially now that Google is indexing Tweets. If you figure you might use Twitter for the next ten years,a lifetime membership will cost you twelve bucks a year. If you purchase any advertising at all, you’ know how ridiculously cheap that is. But if that’s too much to convince you, go get the first month for $15 and see how you like it. Tammy Fennel, head of the company, offers a 30-day money-back guarantee anyhow, so you have nothing to lose.

GoShort URL

You might also notice that some of the URLs I use in this newsletter and on my various social media sites point back to one of my own domains, ShelHorowitz.com. As an example, if you hover your cursor over the link for Market Me Tweet, you’ll see that the actual link is https://shelhorowitz.com/go/MktMTweet. This has a number of advantages: First of all, it provides “link juice” to me instead of some other site, and makes my site a good deal more important in Google’s eyes. Especially if my posts get retweeted or copied to a resource blog, or one of my social media pages—but probably even if they get harvested by a yucky spammy splogger site.

Second, it’s a built in URL shortener, much more convenient to use than monstrosities like blog post URLs. As an example, my most recent blog post as I write this has this lovely and convenient URL (NOT!): https://principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/faked-photos-no-end-to-bps-stupidity/2010/08/02/

And third, it makes it much harder for anyone to hijack any affiliate URLs I happen to use (and yes, both of these resources are affiliate links). Yes, it’s a common practice for unscrupulous marketers to knock out someone else’s affiliate code and substitute their own. (Can you say Eeeeeew?)

Finally, it’s written by Will Bontrager, whom I’ve known online for about 15 years and always found to be a person of great integrity as well as a skilled programmer. He’s done a ton of great utilities over the years.

Want to get your own? Conveniently enough, it’s at https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GoShort

Help Dr. Mani Help Child Heart Patients in India

My Indian friend Dr. Mani is not only a successful Internet marketer, but also a famous pediatric heart surgeon. A large percentage of his Internet income goes to fund surgery for kids who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get this life-saving surgery. He’s just released a new version of his Think, Write, Retire, a very nice guide to infoproduct marketing online. His official launch starts August 15, but I’m jumping the gun since I won’t have an issue then–and you don’t have to wait to get the $123.85in incentives.

Growing America: The Story of a Grassroots Activist, A Call for Renewed Civic Action, by David A. Kidd, “The Tree Man”

If you think one person can’t make a difference in the world read this book. David A. Kidd is personally responsible for reforesting his Ohio county; he organized a massive community effort that planted three million trees over a ten-year period, involving thousands of people in the process.

Kidd is an unlikely activist: a very ordinary guy with mainstream tastes and interests who served in Vietnam and had a spiritual transformation there. Kidd’s decision to renounce violence in all forms and devote his life to a higher purpose began there with a conversion to vegetarianism. Over his next several decades, he first brought an Eastern spiritual movement to his Ohio community. Later, he started the county-wide tree movement, then was hired to oversee Ohio’s state reforestation program. Eventually, he moved to animal rights activism, putting his own body on the line to stop a particularly brutal hunting event, several years in a row.

Because he doesn’t come out of an activist background, Kidd’s organizing methods are creative and unorthodox; he gets the tree project moving through schools, churches, and especially Rotary clubs, and understands intuitively how to get buy-in from all the key players so the projects are adopted and followed through, and how to successfully motivate both aid and volunteer helpers. His formal study of organizing came later, after he was already up and running with the tree project.

Essentially, he has created a blueprint for organizing around any issue where there’s pretty much a community-wide consensus supporting the project goals.

It would never have occurred to me to do a community organizing project through Rotary, so perhaps my biggest takeaway is to think about different audiences and how to reach them. Environmental work crosses many demographics, as I learned with my own most successful organizing project, Save The Mountain–the only time I’ve ever been involved in a movement with a near-complete community consensus.

This is a timely book for me to read, as I contemplate creating the<a href=”https://earthconsciousmarketers.com/”>International Association of Earth-Conscious Marketers</a>. an international trade association for Green marketers

Available directly from the publisher, Lantern Books, at <a href=”https://lanternbooks.com/detail.html?id=1590560302″>https://lanternbooks.com/detail.html?id=1590560302</a>. Not showing up on Amazon (and his davidakidd.org website seems to be gone), but well worth tracking down.