Get No-Cost Support and Feedback from Other Social Entrepreneurs
Nicole Dean and I are planning to launch a Facebook discussion group for marketers involved with social entrepreneurship and/or green business: people who want their businesses to be both world-changing and profitable. It’ll be a place to get and give advice, bounce ideas around, share news, and help move society to do better. It WON’T be a place to complain or call names. If you want to be invited (probably within the next couple of weeks), please send me a direct message on Facebook. Please say that you saw the newsletter and want an invite to the marketers for social change group.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

World Famous: How to Give Your Business a Kick-Ass Brand Identity, by David Tyreman

About Shel 

How does an idea go from one person or one small huddle of people to become part of society? Although it happens all the time, it’s not easy. But as Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Think about some of the huge changes those small groups of people have accomplished:

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Creating Customer Evangelists, by
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba (Dearborn, 2003)

About Shel 

All printed editions of my marketing books are on sale this month, and they make great holiday gifts at a bargain price). Scroll down for the details.

One big copywriting nugget I got from Jeffrey was searching out the Ultimate Benefit: drilling down until you find the deep motivation. For instance, taking off 10 pounds or 5 kilos is not the true goal. People reduce wait to attract a new romantic partner or enjoy better health.

Even money is not an Ultimate Benefit. Money by itself is either a bunch of digital 1 and 0 marks in an electronic account or a pile of paper in your wallet. The Ultimate Benefit is what you achieve by using that money to buy something or give it away to someone/some organization. If you use that money to buy a car—or a yearly transit pass—you’re really buying the ability to go where you want to go. If you buy a new stove, you’re buying better meals and lower energy costs.

Lant’s analysis is based on selfish human desires. That’s crucial in marketing—but for most of you, so is altruism. I believe the urge to do good is just as powerful, and combining the selfish and altruistic is an unstoppable marketing combination.

My latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, explores this across several chapters. Here are a five examples, taken from a list of 13 in a section on marketing to “Lazy Greens”:

• “The warmest and softest slippers you’ll ever own, thanks to our special blend of all-natural ?bers.”
• “Enjoy fresh veggies from our organic greenhouse all winter. Need a scrumptious, juicy tomato for your dinner? Just pick one o? the vine.”
• “Let oil prices triple! You’re protected, because you heat and cool directly from the earth.”
• “You’ll never worry about waste disposal again. With our fully compostable packaging, you’re adding nutrients to the earth instead of paying to clog up your land?ll.”
• “You and your kids will both make new friends in the organic community garden and certi?ed nontoxic natural playground.”

Send in your own favorite examples of marketing that hits both personal and social/environmental benefits. If I get good responses, I’ll feature them next issue.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

As it happens, last week I mentioned to my friend Rita Joyan (a marketing and speaking consultant in Australia who had me on as a podcast guest a few years ago) a frustration I’ve had recently in my own marketing. She sent me a link to a remarkable Facebook Live she did. In half an hour, clearly and concisely, she does an excellent recap on core marketing principles. To have it all in one place, without having to wade through hundreds of pages in multiple books, is a huge favor to the marketing world. Go and watch it. She’s not selling anything and I don’t get commissions for recommending it. Do yourself a good turn and listen without distractions. I generally multitask when I’m listening to a marketing video but I listened pretty carefully to this one.

When I opened the book and read the first essay, I saw an ungrammatical mess. And my first thought was that if people tried to read that article, they would abandon the book and never get to my “brilliant thoughts.” So I had a self-interested motive to address that problem.

I went up to the publisher and told him that I thought that essay needed an edit. He told me that it had been pulling teeth to get that article in the first place, and he thought the author would not respond well to the idea of an edit.

This was a fun challenge. How would you handle it? (Hit reply or post a comment and tell me, and then scroll down to see what I did).

Order your copy of Shel’s newest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World
Learn how the business world can profit while solving hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change (hint: they’re all based in resource conflicts). Endorsed by Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin, and many others. Find out more and order from several major booksellers (or get autographed and inscribed copies directly from me). https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/guerrilla-marketing-to-heal-the-world/
Download a free sampler with several excerpts, the complete Table of Contents and Index, and all the endorsements.

Millionaire Success Habits: The Gateway to Wealth & Prosperity by Dean Graziosi
My goals have always included making the world better and having a rewarding life. Although acquiring big buckets of capital has never been a particular goal of mine, I have striven for financial comfort, freedom to travel and enjoy pleasures such as live performances and great restaurants. And because I enjoy learning from smart people and I find many of the self-made wealthy are very smart, I’ve read several books on the subject.

Dean Graziosi is one of those very smart people. Overcoming a childhood as a classroom underachiever with learning disabilities and poor social skills, Graziosi has succeeded in multiple industries, and has many great lessons to impart. His accessible, down-to-earth style, willingness to admit and learn from his mistakes, and especially his amazingly positive attitude make this worth a read.

I don’t often find a book about getting wealthy that not only discusses such concepts as attracting what you desire (a/k/a Law of Attraction) but also include a little mini-Marketing 101 course. This one does, and that makes a lot of sense to me, since 1) many entrepreneurs are motivated by the possibility of wealth, and 2) entrepreneurship is often a much better route to that wealth. Some of his marketing tips:

• Transparency and trust, going in both directions, are essential to successful marketing—something I’ve been talking about since at least 2002, and built a movement around starting with my 2003 book Principled Profit, by the way (pp. 151-152).
• People buy not when they understand, but when they feel understood (p. 145)—and when you sell them what they want, and not what you think they need (pp. 155-157).
• Great marketing is often built around storytelling, as we’ve discussed here many times (pp. 157-162).
• When you’ve closed the sale, stop talking—or you might talk yourself right out of the sale (p. 162).
• Throw in unexpected bonuses (what New Orleaneans call “Lagniappe”) (p. 169).

Some of my many takeaways (or, in many cases, reminders), outside the marketing advice:

• Keep asking why until you get to the real issue (pp. 34-41). Graziosi follows one of his mentors and goes seven levels. In my own life, I find it can be more or less than that.
• Notice and list what you’ll no longer accept –and what you now demand (p. 67).
• You have the power to largely disarm the negative impact of other people’s words (p. 72)—I’m in only partial agreement with this one; yes, when it’s a comment made to you. But how do you undo the negative impact of comments behind your back, that you’re not even aware of?
• Frame things as positively as possible. For instance, transform overwhelm into “blessed with opportunity” (pp. 74-75). Look for ways to transform negative self-stories vby focusing on the good that came of those experiences. Graziosi found benefits in his dyslexia (p. 94); I have seen some positive outcomes in a bunch of difficult times from surviving childhood sexual assault to my parents’ divorce.
• Think of the difficult times in your past as “research and development” necessary to create your amazing future (p. 95).
• When something bad happens, find the best outcome; don’t seek revenge (pp. 197-108).
• Come up with a series of motivational mantras or aphorisms to get you over the rough spots. One of his is “if I can get through this, I can get through anything”—but he has several that he uses for different situations (p. 121-122).
• Having a “don’t-do list” may actually be more valuable than your to-do list (p. 128). Hire others to do the things on your don’t-do list that need to get done, but not by you, and save your own resources for the things you’re good at or the things it doesn’t make sense to delegate (p. 137).
• Abundance mindsets open us up to solving problems that seem insurmountable when we view the world as scarce (pp. 154-155).
• Happiness leads to success, not the other way around (p. 184).
• Live life and run your business with passion (p. 163), but don’t be rigid about outcomes; be willing, even, to embrace failure (pp. 195-197).

And some places where I disagree. He sees wealth as a primary goal. I see wealth as one among many paths to abundance. I see money as only being useful for what it can buy; the stack of greenbacks in your drawer and the series of ones and zeros in your bank’s computer file aren’t useful by themselves. It’s only because we’ve agreed that you can trade them for services, possessions, and good works. But there are plenty of other ways to acquire goods and services or do good works.

I also disagree with the decision not to have an index. When will authors realize that their books become 10 times as valuable with an index that lets readers re-find key concepts and names in seconds?

The best part of the book is chapters 9, 10, and 11, leading off with 10 success habits, moving on to 17 “success hacks,” and concluding with a road map for getting started in the next iteration of your life. These 48 pages starting on page 184 are gold. If there were nothing else of value in the book (and as you can see, there’s quite a bit), it would still be worth reading just for these three chapters.

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

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

Subject: Breaking: Trump ordered tanks in D.C.

From this subject line, you’d expect some horror story about peaceful protestors facing American military might. It could happen. It has happened in the past–for example, the 1970 Kent State massacre that left four Vietnam War protesters dead and nine more injured by Ohio National Guard soldiers’ bullets. (The shootings at Jackson State College in Mississippi 11 days later were committed by police, not soldiers.) And protestors in countries with totalitarian governments have often faced tanks; if you want to see courage, watch the video of a man stopping tanks with only a flag, in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989–WOW!)

It’s a clear attempt to generate hysteria, to have people perceiving tanks in the streets with their guns pointed at dissenters.

Only in the body of the email do we find out what’s really going on:

Shel —

Last night, the Washington Post broke the story that Donald Trump has ordered a giant military parade with tanks, guns, and troops taking over the streets of our nation’s capital. [1] This is the kind of parade that dictators around the world use to intimidate their enemies and, more importantly, their own citizens.

This is what authoritarian dictatorships look like.

But Trump can’t change the fact that we still live in a democracy — which means Washington, D.C.’s local government gets to have a say before Donald Trump’s tanks roll down its streets.

Note the use of mail merge software to appear personal. Does that really fool anybody anymore? But OK, even when you know it’s a mail merge, it still generates at least a small warm fuzzy.

More importantly, note that the actual content is totally different from the expectation in the headline. We can argue the foolishness of Trump wanting a military parade (I think it’s foolish, and an expensive attempt to stroke his ego, and even he has since canceled the parade)–but in no way is this the same as attacking demonstrators in the streets of Washington, DC.

The right wing is at least as bad. I don’t subscribe to their e-blasts, but I found this juicy example (with an introduction and then a rebuttal by the site hosting it) in about ten seconds of searching.

And then there are DT’s own Tweets, news conferences, and speeches, both during the campaign and since he took the oath to uphold the constitution as President of the United States (an oath he has been in violation of every single day of his term). They are full of lies, misrepresentations, name-calling, bullying, and fear-mongering. They are hate speech. I will not give them legitimacy by quoting them here; they’re easy enough to find.

As a country, we are better than this.

How You Can “Vaccinate” Yourself Against Sensationalist Fear-mongering

Before sharing any news story or meme, run through a series of questions to help you identify if it’s real. And if it passes that test, pop on rumor-checking site Snopes and check its status. For that matter, go through a similar questions for advertising claims.

The questions will vary by the situation. Here are a few to get you started:

Does the post link to documentation? Are most of the linked sites reputable? If they advance a specific agenda, does the post disclose this? (Note that THIS post links to several reputable sites, including NPR, New York Times, history.com, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google, CNN, Snopes, and my own goingbeyondsustainability.com and greenandprofitable.com. Yes, I am aware of the issues in using Wikipedia or Youtube as the only source. I am also aware that Google gives them a tremendous amount of “link juice” because on the whole, they are considered authoritative. For both those citations, I had plenty of documentation from major news sites.) Strong documentation linking to known and respected sources is a sign to take the post seriously.

Does the post name-drop without specifics? See how the Win Without War letter mentions the Washington Post but leaves out the link? Remember that ancient email hoax citing longtime NPR reporter Nina Totenberg? Name-dropping to buy unsusbstantiated respect is not a good sign.Are the language and tone calm and rational, or screaming and sensationalist or even salacious?

Is the post attributed? Can you easily contact the creator?

And last but far from least, the most important question: Who benefits from the post’s point of view? What are their relationships to the post’s creator? (Hello, Russian trollbots!). Don’t just follow the money. Follow the power dynamics, too.

I could go on but you get the idea.

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

Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart, by Howard J. Ross with Jonrobert Tartaglione

Ross sees the need to be part of community as essential; we are hard-wired to demand it, to form community in numerous ways. He sees two kinds of communities, though: inclusive and exclusionary. Exclusionary communities bond internally but create barriers outside their in-group: they see themselves as “us” against “them”—while inclusive communities build bridges (pp. 16-17).

While those divisions have always existed, Ross sees them escalating dangerously: “People are no longer merely disagreeing; instead they are disavowing each other’s right to an opinion” (p. xi). It’s much harder to forge coalitions across these divisions now, or even friendships. And we surround ourselves with bubbles of like-minded people, who reinforce our prejudices. And that kind of social isolation.

The barrier(s) could be cultural, racial, religious, class-based, gender, sexual orientation, etc.—but they also could be ideological. If we demonize the “enemy,” if we treat them as a batch of stereotypes and not as human beings with the best interests of the world in their hearts, we create that “us versus them.” But because we create it, we can undo it.

How we define our bonding communities shifts situationally. A conservative Muslim woman or a progressive gay Christian might bond with one set of people over politics, another through religion, and a third as part of the sisterhood of women (a majority group that still experiences discrimination) or within the gay community (a minority subculture)—and some of these communities would see membership in the others as anathema.

And sometimes, others put you in the category. When the news media identifies someone as a radical Islamic terrorist but doesn’t identify the Oklahoma City bombers or the man who shot up the concert in Las Vegas as Christian terrorists, that creates a false identification of Islam with terrorism, and that demonizes Muslims but not Christians (p. 19).

One key piece of identity politics is the difference in perception between members of the dominant and non-dominant groups: members of dominant groups typically don’t often think about the experience of those in non-dominant groups. Yet, a person of color or a woman or someone who identifies as another type of minority experiences daily reminders that society puts up physical, psychological, economic, and other barriers.

That difference in perception seems especially relevant during the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination process, which was still going on as I wrote this earlier this month. Ross says we’re all heroes of our own stories (p. 55); certainly, both Kavanagh and Ford presented themselves that way.

I blogged about some of the parallels at: https://greenandprofitable.com/kavanaugh-and-the-culture-of-belonging/ Please read it. This review doesn’t duplicate that post. Here, I talk much more specifically about the book, which has relevance to so many situations in society, the workplace, the community.

There’s a lot of good stuff in the book, including a few specific ideas for defusing conflict and forming community across those “them” barriers. I will say, though, that I expected more of that. I didn’t really feel I’d been given a toolkit—but perhaps that’s because I’ve been doing bridge-building work for decades. As long ago as 1977, when I and 1413 other safe energy activists were incarcerated in New Hampshire’s National guard armories following a protest at the Seabrook nuclear plant construction site, I was one among many of the protestors who reached out to the young, conservative Guardsmen overseeing our captivity. I was only 20. Since then, I’ve met with and even stayed with Muslims (I’m Jewish), Evangelical Christians, conservatives (I identify as progressive), and others on the other sides of those us-them mental fences.

Ross presents 10 specific ideas to become more inclusive, pp. 53-58. While I wish he had included more, what he does include shows great wisdom. Examples:

• Look for places you can partner with the other side: where does the right-wing goal of personal liberty [I’m not sure that’s as universal a concern as he says it is, but that’s a different discussion] intersect with the left-wing goal of justice [again, I see many on the right wanting justice; they just define it differently] (p. 53)?
• Don’t confuse voting for a candidate with supporting all that candidate’s positions or actions (p. 55). If you’re talking to a Trump voter, you may feel that person is enabling racism, bullying, lying, etc. But you may discover that person is not acting out of racism, but perhaps economic issues or ending abortion. Similarly, if you’re talking to a Hillary Clinton voter, you may go deep enough to find that this voter didn’t support Clinton’s hawkishness or her tone-deaf and entitled campaign, but wanted to keep an openly racist and mean-spirited “loose cannon” away from the most powerful job in the world. It’s worth remembering that both candidates were caught up in multiple corruption scandals, and the media was not sensitive to the vast differences in degree of corruption. So a lot of people voted as they did to vote against what they saw as someone even worse, rather than voting for a future they really wanted.

Ross notes that having situational privilege, being part of the dominant culture and mindset in a particular interaction, doesn’t mean you don’t face challenges. But the nature of the challenge is different; you don’t have to prove that what you wear or where you travel or how you speak meets society’s standards; if you’re found wanting, it won’t reflect badly on your entire subgroup (p. 91). You may not even notice that members of different subgroups often don’t share that good fortune. And you’re very unlikely to feel negative physical effects from being marginalized, if you never experience being marginalized (p. 113).

But note the word “situational.” A gay white male will experience situational privilege when the focus is on race or gender, but will be the marginalized minority in other ways. And those who hold the power typically face far lesser consequences when they stereotype and marginalize (p. 152). Members of the dominant religion or ethnic group in one country may see other religions as not only not sacred, but even heretical (p. 130)—while in a different country, the positions might be reversed. At its extreme, the consequences of marginalization include death; I happen to be reading a poetry collection dedicated to a martyred white gay man, Matthew Shepherd (October Mourning, by Leslea Newman).

All of this affects how we communicate, and how we communicate also affects bias behavior. Language creates thinking and believing patterns (pp. 124, 126, 184). Inuit languages include dozens of words for snow, while corporate English has dozens to describe different strata in management. In Hebrew or Spanish or German, every noun has a gender. In English, that’s not true. How do we think differently as a result? How does social media, which can organize both positive and hateful movements, and which can amplify (go viral) and distort (fake news) messaging very quickly (pp. 164-165), shift the dynamics?

The good news: we can overcome the conditioning. Peru and Ecuador managed to settle a 175-year-old border conflict in just 77 days in the 1970s, by using a “process-oriented mentality” to really listen to each other (p. 173). The two presidents won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so, because they were able to treat the other’s point of view as just that, a point of view (p. 179).

Interestingly, this kind of inclusive thinking works better, even when it’s not easy. “Belonging has to include the uncomfortable” (p. 180). He lists eight factors in effective diversity training (pp. 196-197), notes that “breakdowns can be the source of breakthroughs” (p. 213), and stresses the importance of staying civil when you and the other person disagree (p. 214). At its best, as in Nelson Mandela’s leadership in post-Apartheid South Africa, idealism and practicality come together to create something amazing (p. 215).

About Shel & This Newsletter