The Clean and Green Club

Another Recommended Book: Zentrepreneurism: A Twenty-First Century Guide to the New World of Business by Allan Holender

Not lot of business books quote Greg Palast, the sharp-witted investigative reporter who exposed the illegal removal of over 90,000 likely Democratic voters from Florida’s voter rolls ahead of the hotly-contested 2000 election. And not a lot devote significant space to the classic social/ethical business book Natural Capitalism by PaulHawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins. Even fewer are written by a self-proclaimed “recovering Tony Robbins franchisee.”

I happen to be a huge fan of both Greg Palast and Amory Lovins, and am thrilled that Holender cites them in his examination of how Buddhist principles can apply to improving the business world.

I’m not a Buddhist, and I disagree with the core Buddhist belief that life is suffering. Yet I found much to agree with in Zentrpreneurism, and a great deal of alignment with the principles of my own award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First.

Especially relevant to my conception of principles for ethical business: The Eightfold Path:
• Right View
• Right Intention
• Right Speech
• Right Action
• Right Livelihood
• Right Effort
• Right Mindfulness
• Right Concentration

Pointing out that “engaged Buddhism” works not only on finding inner peace but also on addressing social problems, Holender describes each, briefly, toward the beginning of the book. A strong sense of ethics runs through the book and especially the entire chapter on business ethics. Holender includes many quotes from the Buddha; one I especially like is “The wrong action seems sweet to the fool until the reaction comes and brings pain and the bitter frits of wrong deeds have then to be eaten by the fool.”

But not all his insights come directly from the Buddha. Here’s one of his own: “the fear of discovery [when you tell a lie] is greater than the unknown consequence of the truth.” And he raises the question of how to be compassionate and have a higher purpose when money is involved–and then answers that question with the two chapters that immediately follow, one on social entrepreneurship (he notes that aging Boomers especially are looking to find meaning as they find ways to help the world) and the other on socially responsible investing. Even a small group of investor activists, he says, can have an impact far beyond their numbers.

The book’s website is https://www.zentrepreneurism.com

Copywriter and marketing consultant Shel Horowitz specializes in affordable, ethical, and effective approaches. He is the award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and six other books

PLEASE VOTE FOR SHEL IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL-STARTUP NATION BUSINESS CONTEST! I’ve entered in Green and Innovative categories.

A few free search engine optimization tools (out of dozens, if not hundreds) to help you with optimizing for search engines.

First, Google’s own tool designed to help you write high-performing Google ads turns out to be also very useful for writing longer copy that performs well. Other services have keyword tools as well, including a freebie tool from the widely used commercial SEO package Wordtracker, Trellian’s Keyword Discovery, and more. There’s a nice roundup of free search engine optimization tools at https://tools.seobook.com/, too.

Second, the use of tags. I’m writing this on a blog platform that actually asks me for keywords. If you use Ken Evoy’s SiteBuildIt, the program pretty much demands these tags from you and lets you optimize on the fly to easily build your ranking in minutes, which is why SBI pages tend to show up very high in the search engines. If you’re writing in a conventional web page, you need to add the tags yourself. Keyword, description, and title tags should all reflect the content of the page and the audience you want to attract.

Third, the use of one key phrase per page, three or four times in the body, but in such a way that it appears natural to human readers (Karon Thackston has written a nice little e-book about how to do this).Can you guess which phrase I’ve targeted for this page?

Further reading: The Search Engine Optimization section of my Down to Business magazine contains 26 articles on SEO strategies, from some of the foremost writers on the subject.

Shel Horowitz’s Book Marketing Tip of the Month, Volume 2, #2, August 2008
Market Your Book with a Postcard, Part 2 of 2
What Should Your Postcard Include

Front side:
Your gorgeous book cover, in full color (Note: companies like Modern Postcard, Tu-Vets, and VistaPrint make this easy and cheap. VistaPrint will even accept back sides done in MS Word.)

Back side, left

• Title and author
• Brief enticements such as endorsements, review quotes, awards, mini-synopsis
• Ordering information for individuals
• Ordering information for bookstores and libraries
• Adequate whitespace and font size for easy, comfortable reading

Back side, right
Blank space for personal or stickered message and address

(Shel Horowitz’s latest book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, is his third in a row to win an award. Order at https://www.grassrootsmarketingforauthors.com/ )

The first words out of Lawrence “Lorenzo” Gottschamer’s mouth were “I’m a guerrilla in the eco-war. Everything we do here is to repair the planet.”

Lorenzo owns the aptly-named Valhalla, an organic macadamia farm a few miles outside of Antigua, Guatemala. In 1976, he came for a three-day visit, and never left. Now he employs about 25 people on three sites, living in a beautiful forest, harvesting nuts from the trees he planted in 1978, and removing a pound of carbon from the atmosphere with every pound of nuts he produces.

The nuts fall to the ground when ripe, and are very easy to harvest. He built a sheller out of a spinning tire and some rebar, and built an equally simple but equally effective size-sorter (it looks kind of like one of those toys where marbles roll downward through a maze) so that processing plants are willing to take his crop.

The trees themselves create hundreds of new varieties, no grafting required. And Lorenzo conducts meticulous research on the properties of the new varieties.

Lorenzo is a giving kind of guy. Visitors are welcomed with a personal tour from him or one of his co-workers (in English or Spanish, as appropriate), free samples of chocolates, nuts, and the macadamia-based cosmetics he sells to companies like Nivea, even free facials. His outdoor restaurant serves macadamia butter laced over fresh
fruit and pancakes, herbal tea, and more, all very reasonably priced.

And the proceeds go to his reforestation and sustainable economic/agricultural development work with indigenous people. He has donated over 200,000 new trees, and is involved in numerous development and reforestation projects. Much information can be found at the Valhalla website, https://www.exvalhalla.net

So many books about the need for change are nothing but doom-and-gloom. Focusing on the successes, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy by Hazel Henderson (with Simran Sethi) (Chelsea Green, 2006) is fundamentally about hope.

Mind, there’s plenty of information in these pages about the world’s problems and the consequences of doing nothing. And lots more about the way government and business collude to skew the system in favor of the traditional model (such as unsubsidized solar and wind energy having to compete against heavily subsidized oil, coal, and nuclear, and lifecycle costs such as disposal transferred from the manufacturer to the consumer). But the book profiles dozens of entrepreneurs in both the business and service sectors who have found a way to help humanity address that raft of problems. If the entire world adopted the solutions modeled and piloted by these visionaries, it would go a very long way toward reversing negative climate change (a/k/a global warming)…reducing poverty…creating economic support systems that lift up not only the middle class but also the very poorest–and do so without government handouts.

Henderson, whose many websites include EthicalMarkets.com, has been taking a leadership role in the environmental/activist/ethical investor sector for decades (I have a book of hers that was published in 1978; this book is based on a PBS TV series she produced.

The ultimate message is that we, not only as consumers but as citizens (yes, there is a difference!) can impact the world of business and shape it away from the rigid single-bottom-line, profit-at-all-costs model popularized by economists like Milton Friedman, in favor of a more humanistic triple-bottom-line approach that is shaped to benefit all stakeholders, not just those who happen to own stock.

Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, socially responsible companies tend to perform better. As I discuss in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and as Henderson points out over and over again, these companies are better managed, they’re not embroiled in costly lawsuits, and they’ve made strides to reduce their own environmental footprint in ways that actually lower costs.

And Henderson tracks probably hundreds of ways that this attitude has filtered from the hippie pioneers of the 60s and 70s into the mainstream business world–not only through the successes of companies that were built from their founding on social and environmental responsibility (e.g., Greyston Bakery, Grameen Bank), but also in how this ethic is slowly spreading into even the largest of traditional businesses, even to the likes of auto companies, oil companies, General Electric, Wal-Mart, and so forth.

The book is wide-ranging, with chapters covering not only the obvious (energy, environmental impact, fair trade) but also the pervasive areas of society that need to–and are starting to–shift (health and wellness, joy at work, investing). Henderson identifies four pillars of socially responsible investing (a field where she has had major influence through her work with Calvert and other organizations): social and environmental screens, community investing, shareholder activism, and socially responsible venture capital. She also wants us to place economic value on “the love economy” (work done for free, in the home or as volunteers).

In short, despite the mess we’re in, many, many trends are positive. She even finds support in the writings of those two writers whose works have often been used to justify the worst aspects of the corporate oligarchy: Adam Smith, 18th-century author of The Wealth of Nations, and Charles Darwin, 19th-century author of The Origin of Species.
A few specific examples of positive change among the many she cites:

• Socially responsible investments in the U.S. and worldwide now total $2.3 and $5 trillion, respectively
• Socially screened companies outperform the S&P 500 and similar indices around the world–and that may have something to do with why socially responsible mutual funds grew 156% in five years (to $32 billion) while that market as a whole grew only 22%

• In Brazil, about 1/3 of the nation’s GDP is accounted for by companies that have joined an ethical-principles umbrella organization–and the country’s celulosic (i.e., not from diverted food sources such as corn) ethanol production has made it energy self-sufficient
• Fair-trade coffee consumption in the UK multiplied 400% from 1998 to 2005
• Green venture capital is growing at 36% per year; wind power is growing at 29% per year; solar grew by 63% from 2004 to 2005, and countries such as China are becoming major players (very hopeful for those of us who worry about the environmental disaster that would happen if China adopted traditional, polluting, resource-hogging technologies to achieve Western living standards)
• At least some clothing companies have rejected sweatshops in favor of production that is certified under the Social Accountability 8000 standard (mentioned in a profile of one of those companies, Eileen Fisher)
• Technology exists to supply all the power California currently generates with traditional powerplants, just by switching four percent of the state’s vehicles to fuel cell power
• Shareholder activists have achieved numerous victories, from switching McDonald’s off polystyrene containers to getting Home Depot to carry sustainably-forested wood

SEO Copywriting: Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, Volume 11, #4, August 2008

What’s the biggest difference in writing copy for the Web versus writing for direct mail, printed ads, or other media? Simple–when writing for the Web, you have two very different audiences: the reader, of course, but also the robots that spider your site for Google and other search engines.

And these two audiences have very different needs. Human beings want copy that flows, that leads the reader through, engaging both emotions and logic until that reader is ready to purchase.

But search engines look for things like keyword density, exactness of match with a search query, and other robotish attributes.

It’s a delicate line. If you want to get the search engines to return your page in a results page, you have to have a page that appears to conform very closely with the search string–but keeping that page readable and comfortable for human beings can be a challenge! And we’ve all seen those dreadful web pages that are written so much for the search engines that they’re really awkward to read.

Here’s how you can learn to create pages that work both for search engines and for human beings. Karon Thackston is a copywriter who has built her whole career on writing SEO-friendly pages that are also human-friendly. Her stuff is a whole lot less stiff and more flowing than most SEO-optimized pages. It was Karon who taught me years ago that you could break up search engine phrases with punctuation.

And that’s the first of many tips in her newly-revised and updated e-book, Writing With Keywords. If you want to bring traffic to your web pages, and you want that traffic to stick around and read what you wrote, you’ll want to get your hands on this.

Price is usually $39, but if you use my affiliate link, and do it before 5 p.m. Eastern this Friday, August 8, it’ll only cost you $29. Do it. Satisfaction guaranteed.

1. Read Mark Joyner’s New Book For Free–A Year Before Publication

Mark Joyner continues to amaze me! I’ve been following him for about ten years, long before we became friends. Not only is he one of the smartest people in marketing, but he also has a strong sense of social justice.

Anyway, on the smart side of things, he’s written a new e-book on Integration Marketing. If you’ve read my own my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, some of the concepts will be familiar to you (though I don’t use that term in the book).

In this book, Mark actually demonstrates a complex mathematical formula to determine if a Joint Venture is worth your time. I haven’t seen anyone else do anything remotely like this, except that I’ve seen Bob Bly’s evaluation of whether it’s worth it for him to do an e-mail blast for your product. But Mark goes much deeper. You can use Mark’s tool to evaluate absolutely any JV proposal, far more than e-blasts. And use his creative and visionary thinking to open many doors to growing your business massively, spending little or even no money to do it.

Oh yes, and Mark’s concluding chapter ties in ecology and peace themes in a way that will strike a chord with all of you who see business as more than making money, but also a social good. Yes, he’s ReMarkAble (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Mark Joyner has a contract to publish this book, but it won’t be out for a year. I imagine that will be a greatly expanded version. But meanwhile, go ahead and blow your mind with the e-book version. It’s only 49 pages and it’s easy to digest. And with a price of zero, what are you waiting for? Get it here.

2. Train in Person with Jay Conrad Levinson, Founder of Guerrilla Marketing, for three days at the Guerrilla Marketing Business University from August 27-29th in Orlando. Not cheap–but the level of value he expects to deliver is so high that he makes this guarantee: If you aren’t blown away at the end of the first day, simply turn in your materials, and receive a refund for whatever you have paid.

You’ll come away with your own custom 1-year Guerrilla marketing plan for your own business, as well as an introduction to “200 crucial and innovative weapons in marketing today. More than 100 of them are completely free!”

Visit https://snipurl.com/3b392 to register

3. Funny how so many people are terrified of speaking, and then they do their worst to sabotage their own presentation, so the next time an opportunity presents itself, they’re even more afraid and do even worse. Me? I love to speak in front of groups. It amazes me that people pay me, and pay me well, to essentially do my own marketing while imparting useful information. Master speaking coach and media trainer TJ Walker is doing another program to train you as a professional speaker. His office writes,

At the Presentation Training Workshop you will learn:

1. Look your best in front of groups
2. Speak in a way that doesn’t put people to sleep
3. Techniques for reducing nervousness
4. Speak so people remember what you say, act on it, and pass the information along to others.

Most importantly, you’ll learn the techniques that can keep you looking calm, collected, and in control.

Click to see an introductory video about TJ’s training process.

4. Your Chance to be in the Movies

The Choosing America Project is calling for dramatic
anecdotes from immigrants who chose to live in America.

“We are looking for those special moments, encounters, surprises, experiences, disappointments, which vividly convey what it’s like

to be an immigrant in America. The good, the bad, the sad, the miraculous, the joyful–every anecdote is welcome as long as it’s authentic and well told.”

They hope to turn some of these stories into short films that will be shown in the movies and broadcast on TV.

For more details go to: https://www.choosingamerica.com

Disclosure: some of the links are affiliate links and earn me a commission. I believe in the affiliate model as long as I have vetted the product or know that a speaker/trainer delivers value.

As most of you know, SPAN launched the Amazon/BookSurge Antitrust Lawsuit Campaign on July 7. The campaign is working to get Amazon.com to change its policy of requiring publishers, using their print on demand (POD) distribution services, to print with their subsidiary, BookSurge.

For the whole story, you can read my July 7 letter to members and additional supporting information at
https://www.spannet.org/amazonantitrust-home.htm.

After sending the letter to our e-mail list of about 10,000 authors and publishers, I received quite a few letters. Response to SPAN’s campaign ran about 97% favorable.

I thank everyone who sent comments and I especially thank all of you who signed the petition. I appreciate the commitment the signers made to stand up for the good of the industry. Although I was not able to get back to everyone, I read and archived your comments.

I believe in free markets, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly. I also believe in the system of checks and balances on both government and citizens as outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

Amazon has the freedom to do whatever it wants to do with its business (even illegal acts) until the market or the legal system stop it from doing things they find objectionable.

I’m not a lawyer, but I did take Business Law 101, which had a chapter on antitrust cases. I also recently read the class action complaint and some other information on illegal tying of products. Ultimately, it is for the court to decide if Amazon’s practices are illegal. From my research, the plaintiffs seem to have a reasonable case against Amazon for illegal business practices.

(You can read the complaint and several antitrust articles here: www.spannet.org/amazonantitrust-home.htm.)

People have asked me, “How is the campaign going?” At this point we have 307 signatures on the petition and five publishers’ and writers’ organizations supporting the campaign. Additionally, several organizations contacted me to say that the decision would have to go to their board and it might take a few months.

As for the advocacy side of the campaign, I will send the letter and a copy of the petition to Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com at the end of July.

One price of freedom is a responsibility to hold in check unjust practices by taking the time to be informed and to
voice our objections. SPAN’s campaign provides an opportunity for our community of voices to be heard.

Have you added yours?

Thanks,

Scott Flora
Executive Director

Ps. We still need people to sign the petition www.spannet.org/amazonantitrust-petition.htm and publishers’ and writers’ organizations to support the campaign.

Shel Horowitz’s Book Marketing Tip of the Month, Volume 2, #1, July 2008
Market Your Book with a Postcard, Part 1 of 2
10 Reasons to Promote Your Book with Postcards

• Visit libraries and bookstores, show your book and leave your postcard
• Mail postcards to your local mailing lists to announce author events
• Pass them out at fairs, festivals, and other public events
• When you talk to someone at a trade show or business networking event, give the postcard instead of (or in addition to) your business card
• Excite people who’ve never met a real live author by giving them personally autographed cards–one for them and one for a friend
• Enclose cards with every direct order to get more business from your “word-of-mouth army”
• Enclose when you send press releases, letters of interest about speaking gigs, responses to inquiries about consulting, etc.
• If you’re doing a flier exchange with another author, offer postcards instead of fliers to put in their packages
• Distribute to school classes if you do school gigs, and hope that some show their parents and talk about how much fun you were, and the parents order
• Hand them to clients and suppliers and say, this is my new book

Next month: what to put on your postcard.

(Shel Horowitz’s latest book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, is his third in a row to win an award. Order at https://www.grassrootsmarketingforauthors.com/ )

–> Some Useful Blogs for Book Marketers
Yes, there are many others besides Shel Horowitz’s Book Marketing Tip of the Month. Here are a few that I like, in alphabetical order by author’s last name.

–> How to Get Grassroots Marketing for Half-Price
Over 300 pages of solid information on lowering your marketing cost and boosting your return.

–> Get Noticed in a Big Way!
Jill’s new book, GET NOTICED … GET REFERRALS, is available today! We want to give you thousands of dollars worth of valuable and unique gifts from her colleagues – speakers and authors who are the best of the best! Jill’s new book teaches you how to get noticed and become influential using an intuitive, people oriented approach that will serve you throughout your career. Here’s the details and a quick peek at all the special gifts you will receive: www.GetNoticedBook.com

–> Boost Your Profits & Get More Referrals with Your Business Card
Do you worry that your business card is going to get thrown away as soon as your back is turned? Can subtle design changes really double, triple, even quintuple the follow-up business you get from simple little business cards? Learn the secrets of effective business cards with Diana Ratliff’s ebook (recently revised to include a brand new chapter on business card referral strategies!).

–> How to Make a Major Impact
JV maven Ken McArthur’s long-awaited book, Impact: How to Get Noticed, Motivate Millions and Make a Difference in a Noisy World is available, with a ton of bonuses including one from me–and 100 hours of no-cost top-level audio training on the Impact Factor site. I haven’t seen the book yet, but I’ve followed Ken’s process of writing, and the amazing way he turned this launch into a months-long internship on Internet marketing, imparting skills to others while building the launch in the best win-win People first fashion. The quality of information he provides is superior, plus he’s a really nice guy; I fully expect the book to be worthy of him. When the time comes for me to update Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, I expect to include his story, as I just love the way he embraced the idea that he can profit by making everyone he knows into a better marketer.

–> A Book and A Seminar from Rick Frishman
Rick Frishman is a busy guy; he’s got two things going on that you want to know about.

First, his newest book, “Where’s Your Wow! 16 Ways to Make Your Competitors Wish They Were You” (co-authored with Robyn Spizman). I’ve read the whole thing and I think it’s an excellent introduction to branding. https://www.wheresyourwow.com/.

–> Myanmar Cyclone Relief: Make a Donation to Doctors Without Borders
Sharon Tucci put together a site to funnel donations directly to groups on the ground doing cyclone relief in Burma/Myanmar. Her preferred charity is Doctors Without Borders, but she offers several other choices as well. Note: Donations through this site are administered by an organization that takes a small administrative fee, but makes the process very smooth. If you’d rather give directly, that’s fine too.

–> A No-Cost Way to Connect with Reporters Seeking Stories
My friend Peter Shankman, a very well-connected PR guy in NYC, has started a no-charge service called Help A Reporter Out. He sends queries from reporters a few times a day, and if there’s a good fit, you answer the journalist. And he gets some leads that never make it to Profnet/PR Leads. This should be a no-brainer–but don’t abuse it. Only answer if you’re approrpiate for the query, or else you’ll spoil it for yourself and everyone else . If you get one good lead in a year, it’s worth it. He has passed on leads from the NY Times and Washington Post, as well as lesser venues. Sign up at www.helpareporter.com

–> Finally–An E-Book Site Puts Authors’ Needs First
Writers: Mark Victor Hansen (of Chicken Soup fame) has just launched a very author-friendly e-book/multimedia content distribution site at https://www.youpublish.com/referredby/shelhorowitz. No fee to set up, no fee to upload your files (wide range of types), 50% commission.

–> Which of Shel’s Books is Right for You?

–> Want a Free E-Copy of Mark Joyner’s Classic Book, The Irresistible Offer?
This amazing book has a prominent place on my bookshelf–but I had to pay for my copy. You can get the e-book at no cost by following the above link.

–> Also from Mark: the re-release of his infamous “Mind Control Marketing,” the book that built his reputation years ago as one of the most focused and creative marketers in the world. I confess, I haven’t read this one-but I’ve heard about it for years.

–> Facebook Teleseminar with Mari Smith
If you’re not on Facebook yet, you may be missing valuable business opportunities. If you are on Facebook, are you getting the most out of it for your business? Recently, The Blog Squad grilled Mari Smith about why you need to be on Facebook and how to use the social networking site to be smart about building your business. Now you can get access to the audio program from the live teleseminar for an investment of only $20.

–> You’re invited to join Foundercontact
Christophe Poizat, founder and chairman of the International Network of Social Entrepreneurs (INSE) has invited you to receive a free membership with Foundercontact. Foundercontact International Ltd is a web 2.0 online marketplace designed to bring entrepreneurs into contact with 3500 investors for seed, early stage, or growth capital. With members from 5 continents and 93 different countries, it opens up international business opportunities for entrepreneurs. Sign up at https://www.foundercontact.com/user/register

–> Latest Additions to the Websites

–> Administrative Information
Subscribe, unsubscribe, back issues, etc.

–> Don’t forget to play our games, at the top of any page on FrugalFun.com— no fees to play, prizes to win, and you help me continue to bring all this good information to you.

Published monthly since July, 2007 by Shel Horowitz
16 Barstow Lane, Hadley, MA 01035 USA
413/586-2388