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Irish crafter at work

During my trip last month to Ireland and Northern Ireland, I was pleasantly shocked to see evidence that this was a culture that cared about working conditions for both humans and animals.

Yes, of course, I could find fairly traded products in the health food stores and even in supermarkets. But it was astounding to me that every roadside convenience store had them as well. Little places in the middle of nowhere, just bathroom stops on the motorways, uniformly offered a pretty good selection of fair-trade chocolate and coffee, among other products. Such items are much harder to find in those types of stores in the United States, where I live.

Furthermore, the Insomnia coffee chain, which seems to be Ireland’s largest, has also gone fair-trade over there. When I encountered that brand in Canada about seven months ago, I saw no fair-trade markings.

Supermarket shopping was actually fun. I got a fantastic house-brand fair-trade chocolate bar at Sainsbury’s, which is comparable to Giant Food or A&P. If I remember right, the cocoa content was around 82 percent, and the quality was terrific. I also noticed that Hellman’s mayonnaise is made with free-range eggs over there; if that’s true in the US, it hasn’t said so on the label, last time I checked.

As a percentage, the number of “conscious” products in these stores is still quite small. But if roadside convenience stores are carrying fair-trade products, that means enough people who shop in those stores have requested those products that the store chains have decided to carry them. And I find that remarkable, especially considering that as a culture (and particularly outside of Cork, Galway, and Dublin, which all seem to have higher food awareness), Ireland is not particularly focused on eating well. It’s very meat-centric, vegetables are routinely overcooked, and the food generally is bland and heavy. Dairy is very good, however.

Those three cities seem to have a well-established local/organic culture. We found vegetarian restaurants in Dublin and Cork, a terrific Saturday farmers market including not only organic produce but also artisan foods and crafts in Galway, just outside an amazing artisan cheese shop. A health food store in Dublin offered an amazing selection of raw chocolates, and one raw chocolatier had a booth at the Galway market.

Asian noodle bar, Drogheda

One other trend that surprised me: the infiltration of ethnic restaurants (particularly South Asian and Far Asian) into just about every corner of the island. So if you’d rather not have beef and cabbage stew with potatoes, you’ll find options like Afghani kebab shops, Chinese or Korean restaurants, or Pakistani takeaways in even relatively small towns.

This is a slice of globalization that actually leads toward greater sustainability—not only because it’s easier to find healthy food choices, but also because I believe monocultures are not sustainable, whether you’re talking about growing a single crop or a single human culture. Cultural diversity allows for cross-pollinating the best practices that other societies have come up with, recognizing that some may not be appropriate for a different climate. Here are a few other random observations from my trip:

• Wind power plays a significant role. It’s common to see large wind turbines (as in much of the rest of Europe), though for the most part in small clusters of one to five, rather than in the vast wind farms of say, Spain—and also to see older, smaller  private installations on individual farms, of the sort that were common on US farms in the late 1970s.
• Solar’s role is minimal. I have seen only a handful of rooftop solar hot water installations, and most of the  photovoltaic have been on self-powered electronic highway signs. Of course, it’s not the sunniest place in the world; an Italian immigrant told us, “in Ireland, they call this a beautiful day. In Italy, we would call it a disaster.”  But there must be more than is obvious, because we passed quite a number of solar businesses, even in some pretty rural areas.
• Big cities have some limited public recycling in the major commercial and tourist areas. I imagine there are recycling programs for households, too.
• On the campus of the technical college we visited, environmental awareness was quite high. This school is also about to launch a degree program in sustainability and one in agriculture, yet they haven’t explored the obvious linkages between those two program offerings—in part because they’re slotted for different campus, 50 miles apart.

Since it’s part of Europe, I wasn’t surprised that attention to conservation is more prevalent. Toilets with low/high settings, tiny cars, and composting projects all seem fairly common. Yet, to my shock, the small conference center we stayed at in rural Donegal was still using energy-hogging incandescent light bulbs.

Thursday, August 2, 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT

Click for details on call-in information 

We had a glitch in our registration form, which means if you signed up for this call, we never received your registration. The form should be working now, with a confirmation sent to your inbox. If you did register already, please take 30 seconds and do it again. I apologize for that.

I had a good chat with Robert over the phone, and I think this no-charge call will be well-worth your while.

I’m a long-time fan of joint ventures (JVs), because they let you go to new markets and audiences on the arm of someone they already know and trust I used JVs to reach 5 million people for the launch of my most recent book Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green-versus the roughly 25,000 I can reach on my own.

Robert, a JV expert, approached me recently about doing a program for you. I listened to one of his earlier programs and thought you would benefit by having me bring him in. You’ll learn:

• How to set up Joint Ventures to make fast revenue-sometimes in just a few hours using your phone book 

• Secret method for mailing 10,000 sales letters per month…at no cost…not even postage 

• An amazing strategy for telling 200 million people about your business for FREE 

• How to dominate your local market as a JV Dealmaker 

• How to use publicity to get potential joint venture partners to call you 

• Sneaky way to get $5000 a month in free radio promotions 

• From zero to $1.5 MM using joint venture strategies

Robert Smith is president of Champion Media Worldwide, a public relations and marketing firm in Loves Park, IL. He has mastered the art of joint venture deals and teaches others how to spot hidden opportunities to help their businesses.

Thursday, July 12, 10:30 a.m. ET/7:30 a.m. PT and indefinite replay, Michelle Vandepas interviews me on Talking Purpose radio

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/talkingpurpose/2012/07/12/shel-horowitz-interview–ethics-green-and-frugal-business.

Monday, August 6, 11:30 a.m. ET/8:30 a.m. PT and indefinite replay, Marsha Dean Walker interviews me on Minding Your Own Business radio https://www.blogtalkradio.com/lwl-radio.

Thursday, September 6, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT, Barbara Saunders interviews me on Solo Pro Radio https://www.iasecp.com/solo-pro-radio

October 24-27, Association for Business Communication 77th Annual International Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii. I’m deeply honored to share the opening plenary panel with Jonas Haertle, head of the United Nations PRME initiative, widely published CSR author Nick Tolhurst, and a sustainability official from the Hawaiian government official. My wife, Dina Friedman, and I will be attending the entire conference. https://abchawaii2012.wordpress.com/

Earn a Commission: Get Me a Speech in Hawaii in October

If your lead gets me a speech at my standard $5000 rate, you’d earn $1250 in commission. Drop me a note: shel ATprincipledprofit.com, subject line Hawaii Speech Possibility. NOTE: You can also earn commissions for getting me speaking other times and places–but for Hawaii, you can offer a big savings in airfare, since I’ll already be there. Email me at the same address, subject line Have Shel Speak. If your subject line is something like “Hi,” I’ll probably dump it unopened because I will think it’s spam. Processing hundreds of emails per day, I have to be kind of ruthless.

Planning Waaay Ahead

4th annual Amherst Sustainability Festival will be held on Saturday, April 27, 2013.

Book Expo America, June 4-6, 2013, NYC.

The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It

A Theory of Social Change to Make Sense of this Book
One of my long-held theories of social change is that it’s easier to influence the power structure, and accomplish change within it, if you’re seen as the rational and reasonable negotiating partner. And in order to be perceived as a good negotiating partner, there has to be someone more extreme, who can be dismissed as the lunatic fringe, but who actually makes space for your demands to seem like a compromise.

Examples:

• Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement were able to make more progress because Malcolm X and the Black Panthers existed (very publicly).
• George W. Bush was forced to endorse same-sex civil unions even though the idea was anathema to his Fundamentalist “base”—because the alternative was same-sex marriage (this example also shows how society can evolve very quickly sometimes—we’ve moved way past civil unions now).
• Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, a radical restructuring of capitalism, was more palatable to the business/financial world because massive unrest made Communism (the destruction of capitalism) somewhat likely.
• My own outsider candidacy for my local City Council, many years ago, gave space for a more moderate progressive to win in a four-way race, and then go on to serve four terms as Mayor.

A Book for More Moderate Activists
Through this lens, I view Amy Showalter’s book, The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It. Showalter targets those who want to be seen as the reasonable and rational alternative. Those who want to meet with powerful politicians and heads of corporations, and get them to change their actions.

And thus, her message about dialing down the passion makes sense. Big dogs try not to negotiate with (or concede points to) those they find threatening. But I believe that seeing the threat out there in the distance makes them more willing to come to the table with those who are more persistent than passionate, those who’ve done their homework, and those who can articulate a change program that leaves the top dog feeling he or she did the right thing.

Without that lens, the book would leave me confused, because I can point to hundreds of examples throughout history where loud, passionate, angry people made big, sweeping changes. But in many of those cases, it was a symbiosis between the loud and angry in public view and the quiet, warm and friendly, but very persistent negotiators in the background; each needed the other to succeed.

However, reasonable doesn’t mean passive. The more vivid you make your case, the more likely you are to succeed, Showalter says. And this is true whether your cause is liberal, conservative, or nonideological.

While charisma makes the struggle easier, Showalter says a much more essential quality is grit: determination, doggedness—not going away. Proximity, which she sees as the key element of vividness, is a big part of winning, because you’re much harder to ignore if you’re right there.

From “Underdog” to “Sled Dog”
But it’s not enough if you’re so ego-involved that you make it all about you. Showalter has examples that take the “dog” metaphor from underdog to sled dog. Success, she says, depends on the pack leader being collaborative and encouraging of the entire group.

Not surprisingly, those underdogs who succeed in persuading their big dogs have often built relationships with them years before they ever tried to sway them or gain a favor. Not that it’s impossible to do it cold, but it’s much, much easier if you have an existing relationship based in mutual respect.

And it is helped, as she points out, if you can win over sincere and influential converts who can be seen by your opponents as one of their own, and pave the way for a change of heart by documenting their own impetus to change.

Social change theory also says that if you start to experience heavy repression, it means the power structure is scared of you and thinks you need to be crushed. If you can hang on through the crackdown, you succeed…eventually. As Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Can Social Media Spark Social Change
Gandhi, like most successful revolutionaries throughout history, did not have access to Twitter and Facebook. Showalter is highly skeptical of the role of social media in fostering change, pointing out that even Egypt’s much-celebrated revolution was primarily offline—in the streets. She notes that only a quarter of Egypt’s population even has Internet access.

I believe social media—like TV during the civil rights and Vietnam struggles, and like printed publications of an earlier era—is crucial for bringing awareness of the struggle into the public eye.

The election protests in Iran are an obvious case, even though they failed to bring about regime change. Revolution is not always quick; Gandhi’s revolution in India took decades, Ireland’s, centuries.

However, as she points out, that awareness must be accompanied by action—and action is a lot more than signing a petition or posting a status update.

And where am I on the continuum? I’ve been all over it. I’ve risked arrest several times for what I believe in, and was actually arrested once. I’ve been the militant marcher shaking my fist into the TV camera—but I’ve also negotiated privately with a developer to create a compromise that allowed him to build after failing to gain a yes vote three times, once he agreed to protect a bunch of farmland and granted other concessions to the activist community. Both approaches are effective, in their time.