The Clean and Green Club

Here’s a technique many Practical Visionaries (such as the ones I profiled in the December 2017, March, May, and July 2018 issues) use to get planet-changing conversations going.
Faced with resistance—denial, hostility, or just “we’ve always done it this way”—they ask two simple questions, consciously or unconsciously:

1. What’s the best way to get from where we are to where we want to be?
2. What are the consequences if we take no action?

I call that second question “turning the question upside-down and inside-out.” And it’s a lever to create both personal and social change. Let’s look at an example of each:

• PERSONAL CHANGE: When an older client says, “I’ll be too old” after a career coach suggests pursuing a goal that involves extensive training, the coach asks, “and how old will you be at that time—and how much closer to becoming the _____ you always wanted to be—if you DON’T get that training?”
• SOCIETY-WIDE CHANGE: When opponents of the Green New Deal challenge advocates about how to pay the cost, business environmentalists and global strategic thinkers should ask several questions: “And how much will it cost us to rebuild entire cities or rehouse their population when climate change makes them uninhabitable? Cities at risk include Houston, New Orleans, Miami, New York, Boston, San Diego, and many others?” (Non-US residents, please substitute your own at-risk coastal cities.) “How will you replace the millions of acres of farmland that will go unproductive because of climate change, even as people are uprooted and face mass hunger?” And even “What if the climate deniers are right—and what if they’re wrong?”

Since those two links are a lot to read, I’ll keep it short this month.

I will be attending Book Expo in New York City, May 29-31. If you’ll be at the show, I’m happy to schedule a meeting. If you’re in NYC but not at Book Expo and want to meet, I might be able to make it work Wednesday evening, or over lunch Wednesday or Friday. Thursday evening I’ll be attending the Evolutionary Business Council dinner on the Upper West Side. Call me on my landline, 413-586-2388 (8 am to 10 pm US ET), or email shel AT greenandprofitable.com with the subject Meet at BEA. The sooner I hear from you, the more likely we’ll be able to connect.

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.

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.

Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurtz (Hay House, April 2019)

Overdeliver has deep roots in the principles I’ve advocated for decades: sticking to your ethics, thinking and acting from abundance, building relationships without looking for “gimmies,” creating massive leverage from small actions, and matching offer to audience.

Brian is a leading expert on direct marketing. Together with publisher Marty Edelston, he built Boardroom/Bottom Line newsletters to the most successful mass-market paid-subscription-based newsletter franchise in the country. And he’s not even a copywriter or a list manager (though he hires the best out there).

He is, however, a gifted writer. The book is filled with great stories told well. And nice touches—a summary of key points at the end of each chapter, thorough index—create a positive reader experience. He even got Jay Abraham to not only write a forward, but personally guarantee readers’ satisfaction. How many writers come up with a book so worthwhile that a non-involved third party will guarantee the purchase?

One thing he points out over and over again is the hidden cost of not being authentic. Don’t be seduced by quick dollars into making an offer that’s not congruent with your audience. Even one offer that feels false or out of alignment can cause massive unsubscribes. Suddenly, the list you built up for years loses half its names and 80% of its value.

For decades, Brian carefully tested, tracked and ANALYZED the results, segmented his lists, rinsed and repeated. He can even tell you the relative profitability of offers that brought high initial purchases but little repeat business, versus mailings that converted slowly at first but had vastly better renewal rates—across specific lists those two mailings were sent to.

With this data and an almost religious belief in lifetime customer value, he knew he could spend even three times the initial sale on acquiring the right customers, because they’d more than make up the difference over the next several years. He learned whether a certain list would respond to upbeat or paranoid copy, what freebies and incentives worked with which types of buyers, whether those buyers paid off in the long run, and whether they came from a list of inquiries, free subscriptions, active buyers, or ex-buyers. Tracking this granularly is far more useful than tracking demographics, and then your own list becomes golden. He lays out his testing strategy on pp. 112-113, and also some magic questions every marketer should ask, especially in Chapter 6. And he acknowledges mistakes/painful lessons.

Using this knowledge, he encourages his clients to analyze their customer acquisition and payback costs and to be unafraid of spending to acquire long-term customers if the numbers work. He even advises them to become so niched that they become “a category of one”: the only choice. But that doesn’t mean isolating yourself. Find people who will advise you, including telling you when you’re either too full of yourself or full of crappy ideas (pp. 215-216). That’s part of a relationship chapter that would be alone worth the price.

He also encourages marketers to respond to immediate changes. He removed affected zipcodes from a mailing following a hurricane, and then gave free list rental to disaster relief agencies. Related: provide superior service to win back ex-customers who become your best ambassadors. They came to you because they shared your vision and values, after all (p. 186).

Disclosure: Brian and I are friends, and I’m one of those several hundred people acknowledged (I don’t actually know why).

About Shel
How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).