Tag Archive for Green Business Bureau

The Clean and Green Club, October 2022

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: October 2022

Which Inventor Are You? Great Leaper or Kaizenist?

The world grows through two kinds of invention, and both are important.The Great Leap is a huge technological breakthrough: putting an engine inside a carriage instead of needing a couple of horses at the front. Developing a way to send the human voice across distance, or humans to the moon. Making the connection between sanitation and infection control.

Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement—usually pretty small improvement. Think about making Twitter actually useful by letting users add a hyperlink that didn’t count in the 140-character limit that existed at the time. Or about the continuous miniaturization of computer chip size while magnifying power.

My first laptop had 24K—not gig, not even megabyte—just 24 measly kilobytes of main memory. It had an almost unreadable eight-line screen with no character descenders (black-and-white only, of course). But it was still life-changing, because I could type out a draft for an hour and a half or two hours before I ran out of memory and had to upload the file to my Mac (where I could revise on a legible screen). All of a sudden, I could go interview someone and type the interview directly to a computer instead of spending hours deciphering and typing my much less complete handwritten notes. Once I bought a storage device, I could take notes on trips and conferences. That machine was released in 1983; I got mine in 1986. Thousands of Kaizens over just 39 years resulted not only in the full-fledged laptop computers I now use but also in a 64-gigabyte smartphone that can do pretty much anything a computer can do and fits in my pocket. In a few years, smart phones will probably have holographic full-size keyboards and will be a lot better for us writers. But meanwhile, I can at least dictate a rough draft and then clean up the dictation errors.

Often, an invention can be both a Great Leap and Kaizen—like the original iPhone, which combined phone and usable Internet functions with an intuitive interface and still fit in a pocket (Great Leap), but was also simply an improved (Kaizen)—MUCH-improved—portable phone—and then was re-Kaizened a gazillion times with better reception, better camera, better touch screen, better voice recognition, etc. And of course, prices came way down.

Nobody would want an iPhone 1 as their default phone today—but it was so much better than a flip phone, even a flip phone that had (text-only) Internet and a (crummy) camera. Still, it was the series of Kaizens that allowed smartphones to become the default hand-held device. When the first smartphone was introduced, I didn’t buy it because it was too expensive. I waited until (Android) smartphones were under $200. Now, I’ve met people who are homeless, migrants who ran for their lives from other countries with almost no possessions, grade-school kids, teens in Africa who live in deep poverty—and they have smartphones.

Similarly, a motorcar was built at least as far back as 1769 when Joseph Cugnot threw a huge, clumsy steam boiler on a three-wheel wagon. And Leonardo Da Vinci sketched a design for a spring-powered car in (are you sitting down?) 1478, though he never built a prototype. (Da Vinci also sketched out a helicopter, by the way.) And the internal combustion engine, which powered or partially powered almost all motor vehicles larger than golfcarts built between about 1920 and 2008 (when Tesla introduced the first modern all-electric car) dates at least to the 1860s  and some say to the 1790s—but the auto industry was tiny until Henry Ford figured out how to lower costs by standardizing production along an assembly line. The Model T (not Ford’s first car) was introduced in 1908, when salaries for low-level workers started around $200 a year, and skilled professionals like engineers could make a few thousand. Once production ramped up enough to produce major economies of scale a few years later, he was able to offer his Model T starting at just $260. The previous year, the average price of all cars was $2834.

The point of this little history lesson is that Ford, like many popularizers, was a Kaizenist, not a Great Leap inventor. He took a manufacturing process from the gun industry and applied it to the production of cars, until then individually crafted and very expensive. That enabled him to lower the price enough that people wanted to buy it, and a lot of people did just that. Bill Gates is also a Kaizenist. Once he landed the contract to supply the PC operating systems that built the Microsoft empire, he bought and modified a variant of the then-popular CP/M operating system.

The questions I have for you: Which kind are you, and how will you cross-pollinate with the other kind?

Test Drive This Powerful Green Business Certification—No Cost

I’ve been telling you about the Green Business Bureau and the many benefits they offer, including the GBB EcoAssessment™, a very spiffy self-guided software-driven certification process that is very easy to use and much more friendly to small businesses than other certifications I’ve looked at.

A GBB staffer will be happy to demo the assessment tool for you. You don’t have to be a member to see how it works. All you have to do is fill out this 1-minute form with your name, company or organization, email and phone. Your request will be forwarded to a member of the Green Business Bureau staff.

You do have to be a member to actually go through the assessment and obtain certification. Membership is quite affordable, starting at just $212.50 (10 employees or less) once you factor in the 15 percent off I’ve arranged for you no matter how big your business is. To claim the lower price, just visit https://greenbusinessbureau.com/membership-purchase-options/ , choose the number of employees that describes your business, and enter the code Shel15 (no space between the lower-case L and the number 1).

Yes, I will get a commission if you join—and YOU get 15 percent off.

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.

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

Win Win Win

Win Win Win: Organizational Success through the Power of Agreement by Brian D. Molitor

This title jumped out at me after sitting unread for years. I’d thought it would be a book about negotiation and/or crafting solutions with multiple winners. I’m a big believer in multiple wins and often spotlight companies such as d.light and Greyston Bakery that create wins for employees, stockholders, abutters, customers—as well as social justice and the environment.

Molitor’s book is mostly about leadership and effective communication, not marketing, product development, goal-centered engineering, etc. And it doesn’t really discuss the environmental and social justice pieces at all. But effective communication is a foundational principle, and those with employees will find it especially helpful. I took five pages of notes, starting with the dedication to Visionaries, Leaders, and Peacemakers (p. vii).

He notes early (p. 8) that most human transformational miracles are rooted in cooperation and agreement and encourages us to think of people not as “human resources” but as our most important assets (p. 14), to be nurtured—by creating a feeling of ownership (p. 37), among other ways.

Molitor’s book plugs his services (as many business books do). His case studies draw from his practice, and exhorts us to do this work deeply: to understand that overhauling the entire organizational culture won’t be quick, easy, or cheap—but that the huge boosts in morale, productivity, quality, and profitability easily justify the time and money (example: pp. 50-54). You’ve got to be all-in; not-losing is nowhere near as good as winning (p. 51).

More principles:

  • Communication has to work in both directions, even in a hierarchy. Judge the impact of the words themselves and the emotions in how they’re delivered, as well as the specific message (pp. 177-179). He recommends professional training.
  • Specific (including detailed written task lists about the WHAT) agreements around values and mission go a long way—but the top brass should craft and commit to the values and mission before percolating them through the organization, then let line workers own the HOW (P. 61)
  • When doing the detailed surveys he recommends, use professionals to craft the survey, interview ALL employees, share the results after reviewing them with the executive team, and explain how you’re working the findings into your long-range strategic plan (pp. 90-91; 129-131)
  • Approach recommendations without defensiveness and with a willingness to implement real change; enable the workers to see that their concerns and suggestions are acted on (extrapolation from Shel: implement where practical, discuss with employees the barriers to implementing others, and listen to refinements that might overcome those obstacles)
  • Make sure each employee knows that both senior management and the employee understand what role that employee plays in the company’s success (p. 126); always treat every employee with respect, as an expert in their tasks (p. 165)
  • Examine not just the negative factors (e.g., falling sales) but also positive shifts. Change can arise from either (p. 112; p. 230).
  • There’s always room for more well-thought-out innovations (p. 116)—and don’t fret much if innovations don’t work out; think of the failures as pilot projects/learning opportunities (p. 165).
  • When problems arise, look to the values and mission for guidance, rather than setting inflexible rules (pp. 147-148)—and frame the values as “we will” and “we will not” statements (p. 156)
  • Workers will accomplish more in teams than by themselves—but don’t think about “work teams”; think instead about “teamwork” and organize those teams around clear purpose and direction, effective leadership, productive interpersonal relations, communication and listening skills, problem solving/decision making/planning, de-escalating conflict resolution strategies, skills/knowledge/abilities, resources, and reward-inclusive evaluations (pp. 218-224)

I particularly liked the case study of Saginaw County, Michigan, for the large impact, thoroughness, and seeming permanence of the transformation (pp. 133-141).

However, the book is not without its flaws. While it addresses diversity of skill sets and economic power, it’s very quiet about racial, gender, and religious diversity. In fact, the book assumes we live in a Christian society—which I as a Jew found unappealing. It didn’t address questions about how one case-study organization dealt with staff redundancies after two hospitals merged, even though it flags the concern. And he relies overmuch on trite cliches.

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!  http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

About Shel

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription for, too.

————–

Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

 

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The Clean and Green Club, August 2022

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: August 2022

Don’t Send Out Turnoffs!

Latest in the “Archives of Ridiculously Bad Marketing”: I received this email with a From name that matched the name at the bottom of the letter, but the address looked spammy and from a different person–and the subject line was someone else’s name. Oh, and there was no signature or even URL—just the person’s probably-fictitious name. Here’s the content, exactly as I received it. I found at least 8 grammar and usage errors in the four-line first paragraph. How many did you spot?

This Morning I was on your website and I can see a few issues affecting your website Ranking I would like to send you a no-cost proposal on your website that will give some vital insight as to why you aren’t on page 1 yet and to show you some bigger issues. This is totally no-cost you’ll not be charged for any of this
Does this sound good?
Regards,
[Name]

Normally, I wouldn’t even respond—but somehow, I felt that maybe this person was teachable. And I know how hard it can be when it feels like your communications fall into the abyss. So I wrote back:

If I could give you some unasked-for advice: sending an ungrammatical mess with three different identities isn’t a really effective marketing strategy.

Why am I sharing this? Because I see a lot of people making mistakes like this—and I believe one of the best ways to do better is to dissect the failures.

It’s not just the bad grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. What other problems do you see in this 70-word message?

Here are a few that I notice:

  1. The writer failed to be specific. The letter is generic and could be applied to any business owner in any industry.

  2. There’s no attempt to engage with me as an individual business owner, e.g., “I love your focus on business succeeding by solving the world’s biggest problems”—or even “On your About page, I noticed that your use of the phrase, ‘extravagant cookie monsters’ could be costing you search engine rankings because [insert brief explanation].” If I had seen some indication that my correspondent had actually gone to my web page and spotted a problem, I would have been willing to gamble the time to read the report. (And just in case you go looking, that was a made-up example. I’m pretty sure that the archive of this newsletter will be the first time “extravagant cookie monsters” has appeared on any of my sites 😉 .)

  3. While it has a call to action, it has no third-party validation (like testimonials or reviews). It has no URL for me to check it out on my own (and a generic Gmail address that doesn’t give me the website). And it has no credibility.

  4. There’s also no differentiation. What makes this service different than the dozen other SEO services that pitched me this month? The only differentiation is the sense that this is a low-skill individual that I cannot trust to do a good job.

So there’s a quick four-point list of how to turn a pathetic email into a useful one. Go out there and make it happen! And if you want expert help with your copy, visit my contact form (on my main site, Going Beyond Sustainability), and let’s talk.

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Test Drive This Powerful Green Business Certification—No Cost

I’ve been telling you about the Green Business Bureau and the many benefits they offer, including the GBB EcoAssessment™, a very spiffy self-guided software-driven certification process that is very easy to use and much more friendly to small businesses than other certifications I’ve looked at.

A GBB staffer will be happy to demo the assessment tool for you. You don’t have to be a member to see how it works. All you have to do is fill out this 1-minute form with your name, company or organization, email and phone. Your request will be forwarded to a member of the Green Business Bureau staff.

You do have to be a member to actually go through the assessment and obtain certification. Membership is quite affordable, starting at just $212.50 (10 employees or less) once you factor in the 15 percent off I’ve arranged for you no matter how big your business is. To claim the lower price, just visit https://greenbusinessbureau.com/membership-purchase-options/ , choose the number of employees that describes your business, and enter the code Shel15 (no space between the lower-case L and the number 1).

Yes, I will get a commission if you join—and YOU get 15 percent off.

 

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.

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

Business and Corporate Social Responsibility Presentation

Business and Corporate Social Responsibility Presentation by @Tutor2U, 2015

If you find yourself bollixed up when someone asks why social responsibility is important in your business, share this 20-minute slide presentation. The UK-native speaker has a charming accent and his slides are clear and easy to understand. He covers the basics (including the Milton Friedman-inspired arguments against it, which he knocks down reasonably well though not in great detail) and at least mentions the idea that CSR can be a profit strategy, citing experts like then-Unilever CEO Paul Polman and the very positive experience of major UK retailer Marks & Spencer.

For a much deeper exploration of CSR generally and its potential role as a bottom-line success driver, I recommend my own 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. You can sample some really nice excerpts at no cost at https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/freebies/

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!  http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

About Shel

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription for, too.

————–

Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

 

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The Clean and Green Club, July 2022

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: July 2022

Test Drive This Powerful Green Business Certification—No Cost

I’ve been telling you about the Green Business Bureau and the many benefits they offer, including the GBB EcoAssessment™, a very spiffy self-guided software-driven certification process that is very easy to use and much more friendly to small businesses than other certifications I’ve looked at.

A GBB staffer will be happy to demo the assessment tool for you. You don’t have to be a member to see how it works. All you have to do is fill out this 1-minute form with your name, company or organization, email and phone. Your request will be forwarded to a member of the Green Business Bureau staff.

You do have to be a member to actually go through the assessment and obtain certification. Membership is quite affordable, starting at just $212.50 (10 employees or less) once you factor in the 15 percent off I’ve arranged for you no matter how big your business is. To claim the lower price, just visit https://greenbusinessbureau.com/membership-purchase-options/ , choose the number of employees that describes your business, and enter the code Shel15 (no space between the lower-case L and the number 1).

Yes, I will get a commission if you join—and YOU get 15 percent off.

A Peace Prize for Pill Pockets? A Lesson in Ultimate Benefits

If you have a cat or dog, you may have experienced medicating your companion with the help of a nifty thing called a Pill Pocket. It’s a little animal treat shaped kind of like a Hershey’s Kiss. The canine model is about the same size, while the feline version is much smaller. You press the pill into the pocket in the middle and then wrap the corners around it so the medicine is completely enveloped in the treat. And the animal is usually happy to gobble it down.

If you’ve ever tried to medicate some dogs or (especially) cats the old-fashioned way, you know it can be an act of war. I speak from experience that holding a cat’s mouth open and then jamming it closed before the pill can be spat out, while massaging the throat to force a swallow and trying not to get ripped to pieces by the furious cat is not fun for you or the cat.

Pill Pockets uses the slogan, “turn pill time into treat time.” It’s a good statement, focusing on shifting an unpleasant experience into a more enjoyable one for all concerned. But what would happen if their marketing went deeper? What would happen if the explored the ultimate benefits?

I learned the concept of ultimate benefits (and many other basic marketing strategies that I’ve used ever since) reading the books of Jeffrey Lant and interviewing him for one of my own early marketing books. I have my issues with Jeffrey (particularly in his approach to marketing online, which I totally disagree with), but I learned more from reading Cash Copy than any other marketing book. The idea is you keep drilling down until you find the reason for the reason. So if you go to the hardware store to purchase a hammer, your ultimate goal wouldn’t be to own a hammer or even to put nails into the wall—because the goal of hammering the nail would be to put up shelves or hang pictures or build something, and the goal of hanging pictures is to live surrounded by beauty—and the goal of living surrounded by beauty might be to have a more serene and creative life, and the goal of that might be to invent something world-changing that in turn would have a purpose like enabling people to climb out of poverty. You just keep drilling down to the core benefits (yes, I know, hammers aren’t good at drilling ?).

So—the obvious benefit of a Pill Pocket is to get your animal properly medicated. But going deeper, we find much more “ultimate” benefits:

  • Your pet gets the proper dose of medication without hiding or spitting out big pieces of it
  • YOU don’t get clawed or bitten, leading to both a better mood and more productive time afterward
  • Your PET avoids a traumatic incident—or, more likely, a series of traumatic incidents until the medicine is used up or no longer needed—and thus is able to trust you more and be more loving with you
  • If you have kids or housemates, you get to model creativity and nonviolent solutions to problems—which could make a huge impact on an observer who goes on to devote their life to peace, clean energy, or other forms of betterment (in keeping with a core principle of mine that we don’t always know the full impact of our actions at the time)

Here’s the “ultimate” question: What ultimate benefits can you discover in your own products and services, and how can you leverage that to get into new markets?

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.

Ian Peterman interviewed Shel on his Conscious Design podcast. Shel is not a designer, but had a lot to say on how design can be a tool of environmental and social justice.

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

The Path to a Meaningful Life

The Path to a Meaningful Life by Frank Sonnenberg

If you want a book that builds character—and especially if there’s a person in your life who could use some firm guidance—Sonnenberg may offer just what you need. Directed both at business and personal life, his book probes to the heart of what it means to be a person with strong ethics and solid character: someone who others can count on, and who can look in the mirror and feel good. It’s full of lessons, many in easy-to-digest list format, such as:

  • 30 ways to live the Golden Rule (pp. 7-9)
  • 4 reasons why earning your accolades is better than receiving them without doing the work (p. 28)
  • 25 ways to demonstrate a strong work ethic (pp. 35-37)
  • 13 ways to turn mistakes into learning opportunities (pp. 60-61)
  • 9 reasons why selfish people are losers (pp. 87-88)
  • 15 positive business choices (pp. 116-117)
  • 15 negative choices that could ruin your business (pp. 119-121)
  • 10 times you want to walk away from a sale (pp. 123-125)
  • 11 ways to make yourself proud (pp. 154-155)
  • 13 workplace policies that work better than rigid rules (pp. 162-163)
  • 14 examples of leading by example (pp. 181-183)
  • 25 things not to stress about and 15 negative attitudes to dump (pp. 219-225)
  • 20 things to either fix now or regret not fixing them when it’s too late (237-239)
  • 16 ways to give more effectively (pp. 241-242)

As well as affirmations and principles within the text including:

  • “Self-discipline is not a punishment; it’s a gift.” (p. 21)
  • “Winning doesn’t have to be at someone’s expense…focus on how much you can accomplish together.” (p. 63)
  • “Someone’s good fortune is not your misfortune.” (p. 82)
  • “What’s the cost to your well-being of harboring anger and resentment?” (p. 92)
  • “If you think that doing the right thing most of the time makes you reliable, you’re kidding yourself.” (p. 109)
  • [On people who always need to be right] “You never know if your ideas are sound until they are challenged.” (p. 147)
  • “Watch your children grow, and they will teach you what you’ve taught them.” (p. 175)
  • [Quoting actor/author Sean Patrick Flanery] “Do something today that your future self will thank you for.” (p. 187)
  • “Doing your best isn’t an activity; it’s a mindset.” (p. 197)
  • “Impossible means that you just didn’t do it yet.” (p. 203)
  • “A wedding reveals promises made while a funeral recounts promises kept.” (p. 205, emphasis in original)
  • “Forget your to-do list and create a to-be list.” (p. 215)
  • “If work isn’t fun, you’re playing on the wrong team.” (p. 225)

The final list, on pages 245-247, is “30 questions only YOU can answer.” While he presents them as binary choices, I found many of them were really “both-and.” For example, #21, “Identify as a member of a group or view yourself as a unique individual?” I’d even say that my uniqueness could be the sum of my descriptors (writer, social justice/environmental activist, business owner, consultant, husband/father, visionary, music lover, voracious reader, photographer, vegetarian foodie, etc.), memberships (Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice, National Writers Union, a grassroots political action network in my town, several Internet forums, and dozens of groups I support financially), and various intangibles and personal experiences.

While I agree with about 95 percent of the content, there are places where Sonnenberg and I disagree. One is his oft-repeated urging to always finish what you start. I once wrote a piece called “Failure is ALWAYS an Option.” For me, knowing when to walk away is a key life skill. It should not be done casually and it should acknowledge the consequences. A lot of people would look at where I’ve put much of my energy for the past 20 years, see big change-the-world ambitions but less-than-stellar results, and tell me I’m a fool to keep going. But showing the business world that social change and planetary healing can be profitable is still the passion that gets me up in the morning, and I’ve had enough results that I see the worth of continuing. But when something just isn’t working—or simply no longer inspires me—I walk away, without guilt. To me, failure is an essential part of evolution—and my business, my life, and my thinking continue to evolve.

My other two quibbles:

  1. The blanket statement that breaking the law is always wrong (p. 159). I almost agree: breaking the law for personal financial gain or to do violence to others is always wrong. But as a nonviolent activist, I’m well aware of the 3000-year-old tradition of resisting unjust laws. The Bible is full of examples of courageous people who broke unjust laws; my favorite is of Shifra and Pu’ah, midwives to the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt. Ordered by Pharaoh to kill the newborn Hebrew males, they responded with the lame (but effective) excuse that the Hebrew women gave birth too fast. In our own recent past, we saw vast nonviolent resistance to unjust laws in such diverse situations as Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territories around Europe; the US Civil Rights, draft resistance, and peace movements; Tiananmen Square; South Africa’s rebellion against apartheid; Arab Spring, Greta Thunberg’s school strike (among thousands of examples)
  2. His long rant opposing affirmative action could have argued (but didn’t) that while you should hire someone who is qualified, if you have a choice to hire another person from the majority culture or someone from a historically disenfranchised and abused culture, this can be a chance to partially right a grievous wrong.

But these are minor points in a book filled with wisdom. So much so that if I had a time machine, I would bring a copy to the teenage version of a certain disgraced recent US president who was so out of alignment with the principles of this book that he was willing to subvert democracy rather than admit defeat.

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!  http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

About Shel

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription for, too.

————–

Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

 

Powered by:

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The Clean and Green Club, June 2022

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: June 2022

Test Drive This Powerful Green Business Certification—No Cost

I’ve been telling you about the Green Business Bureau and the many benefits they offer, including the GBB EcoAssessment™, a very spiffy self-guided software-driven certification process that is very easy to use and much more friendly to small businesses than other certifications I’ve looked at.

A GBB staffer will be happy to demo the assessment tool for you. You don’t have to be a member to see how it works. All you have to do is fill out this 1-minute form with your name, company or organization, email and phone. Your request will be forwarded to a member of the Green Business Bureau staff.

You do have to be a member to actually go through the assessment and obtain certification. Membership is quite affordable, starting at just $212.50 (10 employees or less) once you factor in the 15 percent off I’ve arranged for you no matter how big your business is. To claim the lower price, just visit https://greenbusinessbureau.com/membership-purchase-options/ , choose the number of employees that describes your business, and enter the code Shel15 (no space between the lower-case L and the number 1).

Yes, I will get a commission if you join—and YOU get 15 percent off.

50.17 Years in Marketing—and This Still Blew Me Away

Yes, that’s a clickbait headline—something I almost never do in this newsletter. I used it this time to very deliberately illustrate something. Can you guess what it is? Here’s another example—the actual reason I’m choosing this topic for this month’s newsletter: a presentation by direct-mail legend Denny Hatch called

A Whirlwind Tour of Direct Marketing Knowhow: From July 10, 1194 through the 21 st Century

That title got me to stop what I was doing, put aside my agenda for the day, go and watch Denny’s 41-minute talk, and then write this article—and that sequence doesn’t happen too often.

Why were these 15 brief words so persuasive to me? Can you guess?

Yes, it helped that I knew Denny Hatch’s reputation, and that it was sent in a newsletter from Brian Kurtz, for whom I have enormous respect. But the real motivator would have gotten me to click even if I knew nothing about the presenter. Have you figured it out yet? Here’s the secret:

This talk title used specificity to harness curiosity!

By putting in a specific date from more than 800 years ago, in an industry that most people assume is only about 250 years old, Denny didn’t just engage my curiosity, he grabbed it.

One-paragraph digression: And yes, he delivers on why that date is important in marketing—avoiding a mistake too many clickbait headline writers make (a mistake that I’m betting leaves the reader feeling cheated and less interested in the product). If you’ve clicked on any ads that use words like “tragedy” and then name a celebrity like Willie Nelson or Whoopi Goldberg and then discover an ad for a CBD company, you may have experienced that sort of disgust. End of digression.

The thing is, this talk title wouldn’t hook in everyone—but I happened to be the ideal audience for it. I wrote my first marketing copy around April 1972 (yep, that’s the 50.17 years in my own headline) and I’m fascinated by history. So when he offers something very specific and unknown to me about the long-ago history of marketing? Oh, yeah, baby, I am so hooked! For someone who’s more interested in football or the Kardashians, this headline weeds them out. Only the actual markets (marketers and lovers of history) will respond to that title and watch the presentation—but they won’t be able to stay away.

If you’re curious also, his presentation is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ww8a-8hyio

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.

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

The Carbon Almanac: It’s Not Too Late

The Carbon Almanac: It’s Not Too Late by The Carbon Almanac Network, foreword by Seth Grodin

Did you know…

Bad News

  • Climate change has secondary impacts in every aspect of our lives: flooded homes and roads, inflation, loss of precious beaches, diseases, famines… (pp. 28-29)
  • 634 million people (~2x US population) risk climate-related flooding (p. 34)
  • Flying adds 6x atmospheric carbon per person as the same trip done by train (p. 37)
  • Despite years of pretending they didn’t know, Exxon released a memo (excerpts reproduced on pages 46-47) on November 12, 1982 outlining the consequences of human-caused climate change and identifying fossil fuel industries as the major cause
  • Methane traps 80 times as much heat as CO2; nitrous oxides trap 270 times as much (p. 51)
  • We use 8x energy and produce 7x emissions to support 3x the population of 1950 (p. 72)
  • Plastic produces 6x its weight in CO2 over its lifetime (pp. 78, 79); plastics manufacturing also causes massive deforestation (preventing capture of 6.5 million metric tons per year of carbon) and emits gigatons of CO2. Only 9 percent of discarded plastic is recycled; 12 percent is incinerated, further worsening carbon impact (p. 34).

Good News

  • Only 8 percent of Norway’s 2021 new-vehicle sales were powered by fossil fuels (p. 101)
  • We improved air and water quality and slashed food waste during the pandemic (pp. 113-114)—so we can replicate that success through behavior changes
  • Switching from chemiculture to organic could cut crop losses by about half—as they were before most farmers switched to chemical pesticides (p. 120)
  • Trees, wetlands, and coral reefs embody biodiversity; a single tree can host 2.3 million organisms; coral reefs contain 25 percent of marine species; peat bogs (wetlands) capture twice the carbon of forests (pp. 136-140)
  • Tools such as “border carbon adjustments” (p. 163) and counting GNP to factor in environmental and social costs and benefits (Robert F. Kennedy quote, p. 117) could eliminate the competitive advantage of poor carbon habits and help businesses actively mitigating their environmental and carbon impact
  • Primitive solar continues to power the Vanguard I satellite, launched in 1960 (p. 178)
  • Humans first harnessed tidal power in 687 A.D.; it was widely used in 18th-century England (pp. 182-183)
  • 25 percent of all US fossil fuel hubs are ideally suited to green energy (which provided 90 percent of new capacity in 2020)—thus offering retraining opportunities for thousands of miners (p. 196)
  • We could probably eliminate world hunger by using the 1/3 of all food that’s thrown away uneaten (p. 201)
  • Drip irrigation cuts water 60 percent while increasing crop yield 90 percent over open-channel irrigation (p. 204)
  • Cross-laminated wood buildings have many superiorities over steel (p. 223)
  • Solarizing all US K-12 schools could replace 18 coal plants (p. 245)
  • Above all, humans have risen to overcome all sorts of “insurmountable” crises (p. 326); this book proves we have the know-how—let’s find the will to do it!

You’ll find or extrapolate hundreds more takeaways in The Carbon Almanac, spearheaded by Seth Godin and written by 300+ volunteers. Forthcoming in July from Penguin/Random House. It’s a readable and comprehensive single-volume guide to…

  1. Why atmospheric carbon must be addressed
  2. The many ingenious solutions—and a refreshing willingness to confront the new problems these solutions (from bioplastics to mass-scale solar) sometimes bring
  3. The impact of lifestyle choices, such as using an electric bicycle instead of a car for the short trips that represent more than half of our car travel (p. 166), changing our fashion habits (p. 162), planting trees (p. 155, in numerous suggestions to switch your primary search engine Ecosia, and in the collective’s pledge to replace 10x as many trees as are consumed to produce the book, p. 226), and eating less meat (pp. 76, 200, 203)—and the potential impacts of our activism (I love that the glossary, p. 312, defines “activist” as “You”—and the long list of activist organizations to get involved with).
  4. The way all these factors and many more intersect and interact, presenting a holistic analysis a bite at a time

Besides 40+ pages of information and action resources within the book, each article has an info/sources page on https://thecarbonalmanac.org —which keeps that single volume to a manageable size while encouraging interested readers to drill much deeper. That also allows the content to be updated easily: As a long-time opponent of nuclear power, I wrote to Godin challenging the nuclear fission article’s implication that there have been only three accidents, vs. the actual 100+. While it was too late to change the book text, he immediately posted a correction at the top of that web page, https://thecarbonalmanac.org/093

I’d scheduled my review expecting a mid-June release date. That’s been pushed back a month. I urge you to 1) preorder your copy from your favorite independent bookstore (a chance to make a lifestyle change and support your local economy), 2) get involved in the launch promotion: https://seths.blog/joining-the-almanac-launch-team/ , and 3) sign up for the Carbon Almanac Network’s Daily Difference newsletter (at the bottom of thecarbonalmanac.org home page).

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!  http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

About Shel

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription for, too.

————–

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The Clean and Green Club, April 2022

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: April 2022

Test Drive This Powerful Green Business Certification—No Cost

Last month, I told you about the Green Business Bureau and the many benefits they offer, including the GBB EcoAssessment™, a very spiffy self-guided software-driven certification process that is very easy to use and much more friendly to small businesses than other certifications I’ve looked at.

GBB will be happy to let you play with that assessment tool. You don’t have to be a member to see how it works. All you have to do is fill out this 1-minute form with your name, company or organization, email and phone. Your request will be forwarded to a member of the Green Business Bureau staff.

You do have to be a member to actually go through the assessment and obtain certification. Membership is quite affordable, starting at just $212.50 (10 employees or less) once you factor in the 15 percent off I’ve arranged for you no matter how big your business is. To claim the lower price, just visit https://greenbusinessbureau.com/membership-purchase-options/ , choose the number of employees that describes your business, and enter the code Shel15 (no space between the lower-case L and the number 1).

Yes, I will get a commission if you join—and YOU get 15 percent off.

The Sweet Spot Where Marketing Meets Social Change

I love this post from the Changemaker Institute, How to Change The World By Meeting People Where They Care. I love it because it approaches social change through a marketing lens. It starts by revisiting the famous Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Case of 1967, which struck down longstanding bans on marrying across the color line. Pointing out how Richard and Mildred Loving got people to care, the post goes on to ask how to get people to care about what you’re doing—and answers with a business-oriented focus on outcomes of your social change action, which you arrive at through these questions (quoting directly from the post):

  • What does it take to get an investor to believe in your business and invest in your mission?
  • What does it take to get customers to believe in your product or service and invest in it?
  • What does it take to get your employees to believe in your company’s mission and invest time and energy in supporting it?
  • What does it take to get people to support your vision for a better world? [end of quote]

This intersection is so important to me that on the wall behind my computer monitor, where I see it many times a day, I have a poster that reminds me, “I help businesses find their unique sweet spot where profitability meets environmental and social progress.” It’s important enough that I’ve written four books making the profitability case for business to deeply embrace social change and planetary healing, and have also written about the success lessons activists can take from thinking entrepreneurially. It’s the basis for much of my consulting and speaking.

To take it a step further: I see getting out of the silo, rubbing shoulders with people who are not like you and examining different ideas from different industries or different sectors of the same industry as crucial. It’s a way of testing your own ideas, sharpening them enough to really get inside someone’s head and cause enough discomfort with the status quo to embrace the brighter future you propose. Whether you’re marketing a business or a movement, that’s a pretty important thing to do.

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.

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

The Beautiful Business

The Beautiful Business by Steven Morris

More of a meditation/inspiration than a how-to manual, Morris leads us through plenty of general guidance on how to build a business that makes the world better both in its attempts toward justice and in its attempts at art. While there’s certainly plenty of instruction, other books will be more useful if you’re looking for someone to hold your hand and steer. This one emphatically celebrates “your weird, your crazy…what makes you uniquely you” (p. xiii) and notes that “all edge-pushers are considered crazy by those who fear change (p. 4).Morris carries this artistic energy forward into the design of the book, which is set in an attractive unidentified modern sans-serif typeface that might be Avant-Garde, in various sizes—with the text augmented by numerous (mostly quite striking) black-and-white photos.

Morris sees purpose and profit supporting each other in a “both-and” (p. 8); in his “world of possibility” (p. 135), your win doesn‘t mean someone else has to lose. And in this world, it makes sense to play the long game that understands how abundance wins over scarcity. “Moral highlights” exist, but they are not binary (p.18); the truth is nuanced. Pages 33-34 provide a concise three-paragraph manifesto.

Art is integral and leadership is an art (p. 9) that can be beautiful. Creating something beautiful, value-laden (p. 51), and life-changing, even in something as traditionally unbeautiful as business, says Morris, is the path to immortality. He lists seven criteria (p. 52), 12 questions to guide growth (pp. 62, 64), and four tenets of the beautiful business (p. 67). And, like Apple’s designers, he sees simplicity as a form of beauty (p. 208).

Higher purpose flows throughout the book. I love his addition of Justice to the traditional Diversity, Equity, Inclusion acronym, turning DEI—which I’ve always found a bit too similar to DUI (driving under the influence) into the beautiful JEDI warrior a conscious business can become (p. 72). And I’m delighted that he sees that process, not just outcome, has to be beautiful: respectful and inclusive. Better process yields better outcomes, as he demonstrates by comparing actual command-and-control-style vs. inclusive meetings (pp. 112-117).

Morris freely acknowledges the shoulders he stands on. He quotes frequently from Brené Brown, Toni Morrison, Carl Jung, Buckminster Fuller, Peter Drucker, and many others. I love Brown’s differentiation between belonging—being where you want to be, with people who want you as you are—“I get to be me”—and fitting in—conformity (p. 74). I love the sweeping systemic thinking of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard: to change government, we have to change corporations, and to change corporations we must change ourselves (p. 249).

He devotes a big section (pp. 216-229) to psychologist Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. You’re probably already familiar with Maslow’s five stages: biological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. But I didn’t know that he later added three more: cognitive, aesthetic (#5 and 6)—and self-transcendence (#8).

The book is published by Conscious Capitalism Press; Morris concludes by describing four tenets of conscious capitalism and the BCorp assessment process (pp. 288-295). Then there’s a glossary (partially alphabetized and partially random, which is confusing). No index, unfortunately. To me, user-friendliness is also a form of beauty, so those two anomalies are surprising.

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!  http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

About Shel

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

If you’re not already a subscriber, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com and scroll to the very bottom left corner. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription for, too.

————–

Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

 

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