The Clean and Green Club

“I am a business and life coach and work with people in many fields, assisting them to expand their work. it is unique for each person – the best programs to create, the groups to work with, how to find customers and clients…

When Yanik Silver sent an advance manuscript of his new book, I liked it so much that I adapted a whole chapter as an essay in my own new book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. He’s one of four outside contributors.

My enthusiasm is apparently shared by a very influential group. Alongside my blurb, he’s got people like Tony Hsieh (founder of Zappos); John Paul DeJoria (co-founder of Paul Mitchell); and my brilliant friend Sam Horn (author of Tongue Fu and several other excellent books).

It’s focused very strongly on how business can have an impact in the wider world, and makes an excellent complement to Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. But its focus is quite different; with the exception of the shared chapter, there’s almost no overlap. Although Yanik comes out of the world of big-money Internet marketing, his book has an almost spiritual feel—reinforced by the mandala-like concept wheel that opens several chapters. He even uses the term “Transcending” as the third of the three stages of an evolved enterprise; the others are Transactional and Transformational (pp. 48-56).

He draws many lessons in marketing AND management through his own experience and those of his Maverick and Underground members—as well as thought leaders from Thomas Edison to Richard Branson. Edison, he points out, created an entire ecosystem of his ventures, all of which supported each other (p. 93); in the modern world, Zingerman’s does the same thing, with a bakery supplying bread to the flagship deli, for example (pp. 86-88). Tony Hsieh notes the importance of building a culture—not just hiring for values, but firing over them (p. 185). On the same page, Yanik shares a powerful insight about leverage: “little hinges swing big doors.” And a long guest essay by Joe Mechlinski is just filled with powerful leadership insights (pp. 195-207).

It’s a lot about how the good feeling you have making a difference in the world—and the fun you can have while doing it—translates into measurable bottom-line profits. The fun piece is very important to Yanik, a self-described adventure junkie. There’s a long an honorable tradition around this; he notes that the Dalai Lama has referred to himself as a “professional laugher” (p. 104).

That fun often translates to really creative ideas around building a deep and lasting community, internally and externally. Whether it’s exotic branded swag (such as the green Speedos that have become a part of Yanik’s Maverick brand), a unique collective experience, or even the ability to earn some sort of merit badges, as Harley riders do (pp. 170-171)—these can have vast marketing impact.

Creative marketers, he says, have to fall in love with customers and prospects (p. 160), and to use that love to do the unexpected. I’ve said for years that your real brand is not your slogan, logo, colors, etc., but the prospect/customer’s perception of you. Yanik puts it a bit differently: “It’s what other people are saying about you” (p. 161). This could take the form of genuine caring, such as Zappos not just refunding the purchase when a customer’s husband died in an accident before she could give him the brand new pair of boots she’d bought him, but sending flowers for the funeral! (p. 143).

How do you find ways to inject that creativity and that love? Yanik offers not only the usual tools, but also “community decoders” such as origin stories, in-group lingo and rituals, creeds, barriers to participation, sharing the inside story, artifacts, exceptional experiences, AND a higher purpose (pp. 163-180).

He looks quite a bit about the choices we business owners can make in our consumer role. Example: choosing to hire a firm that employs disadvantaged workers to fill goodie bags for a conference (p. 50).

And much of the work is backed up with rock-solid numbers that validate our choices to use our businesses to do good in the world. I knew about Patagonia’s Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign and mention it in my new book. But I didn’t know that the company’s sales leapfrogged 40 percent in the next two years (pp. 150-151). He has numbers for many of the best known case studies of social entrepreneurship and business creativity.