Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert

A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com

Standing Rock Protector Accuses Other Side of Chemical Warfare

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on November 28, 2016 Posted in Activism, censorship, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with attacks against protestors, chemical warfare, national monument, police violence, rubber bullets, standing rock water protectors, tear gas

NOTE: You’ll find several action steps at the bottom of this post. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, please scroll down to that section and take action before leaving this page.

Watch this video made by Standing Rock Water Protector Candida Rodriguez Kingbird on November 14.

Read a transcript by clicking this link. She claims that a crop duster was spraying the encampment, and only the encampment. Kingbird’s video, or commentary on it, has appeared on many progressive sites and social media profiles.

We know the level of repression against Standing Rock Water Protectors has been consistently shockingly high. There are numerous reports of the authorities using water cannons, tear gas, and even rubber bullets against this peaceful group of Native people fighting nonviolently to protect their water—from a project that was originally to go very close to Bismark, but was rerouted because of worries about what it would do to the water supply.

The link in the paragraph above is to a Christian Science Monitor story with video. The Monitor is a respected mainstream news outlet known for its good journalism over many decades.

We know that the temperature has been in the 20s (Fahrenheit) at Standing Rock—well below freezing—and we know that both demonstrators and journalists have been injured and are being deliberately soaked: a clear recipe for hypothermia. It’s all-too-reminiscent of the tactics used by police departments in the American South against black nonviolent civil rights marchers in the 1950s and 1960s.

I see no reason to doubt Kingbird’s account.

Although a search for “chemical weapons standing rock” didn’t turn up any video of the spraying or any reportage based on a claim by someone else—or coverage in mainstream media, I find Kingbird’s testimony thoroughly believable. I found her a credible witness, someone clearly not used to being a public figure. I didn’t feel she was acting, just reporting—and speaking from the heart.

Brookings Institution researchers felt the job-creation benefits of the pipeline were only half of what pipeline backers have claimed. Former US Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich says the entire project is economically unsound and will “go belly-up” (scroll back to his post of November 16, 2016). But Donald Trump stands to gain financially by its completion and is an outspoken advocate of tar sands, fracking, and other highly destructive fossil fuel extraction technologies. If Reich is correct, there is no economic justification for the project. In any case, there’s no excuse for the violence. And even if the project were financially viable, it’s been long-acknowledged that one way to avoid climate catastrophe is to STOP extracting fossil fuels, especially those extracted in the most environmentally destructive ways—like the tar sands at issue in the Dakotas and Western Canada.

There is the (faint, IMHO) hope that Obama will protect the area either by revoking the DAP permit or protecting the land as a National Monument in his final weeks, but I am personally not optimistic that either will happen, or that it will survive a near-certain overturn attempt form the new administration.

Actions You Can Take

Petitions (click the marked text to sign, then share them widely):

Stop the violence (Really American)

Declare the area a National Monument (Bernie Sanders supports this approach)

Of course, personal letters count much more, so if you’re inspired, go for it!

Phone Calls (with script)

Call the Morton County, ND Sheriff’s Department to tell them to stop attacking. Call the Army Corps of Engineers to tell them to revoke the construction permits. And call the US Department of Justice demanding an investigation into police violence at Standing Rock. (Single action page for all three, via Daily Kos—be sure to click “Not Dina?” if that text shows up on the right)

Donate Moneyor Goods to Standing Rock Water Protectors
These organizations were recommended by a friend who was recently out at Standing Rock.

Standing Rock Healers Council: website and Facebook page

Indigenous Youth Council Facebook page

Postal and Paypal addresses for donations :

PayPal: www.paypal.me/ocetisakowincamp

Checks or cash may be sent to:
Oceti Sakowin Camp
P.O. Box 298
Cannon Ball, ND 58528

List of MATERIALS they are seeking
https://www.ocetisakowincamp.org/donate

Trump Voters: Please Speak Out to Stop the Violence

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on November 20, 2016 Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with actions for justice, basket of deplorables, conflict de-escalation, Donald Trump, election violence, hate crimes, hillary clinton, muslim registry, nonviolence

I have publicly condemned election-related/hate crime violence on both sides. But it’s important to note that there are already more than 700 documented instances of right-on-minority or right-on-female violence and a far smaller number of left-on-Trump-voter incidents.

I do not condone the violence on either side. But I’m sorry, when you have just elected a president who has given license to bullies and attackers for months, it is time for Trump voters also to say “this is not OK.”

Spectators applaud the Forbes Library contingent, #Nohopride 2011 — Spectators applaud an LGBT pride march. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

And if DT is really going to take his own “president for all Americans” election-night rhetoric seriously, he needs to issue a far stronger and more convincing demand to stop that behavior than the wimpy few words he reluctantly issued after a CBS reporter asked him directly to rebuke the attackers. And those who voted for DT for reasons that have nothing to do with the subjugation of women, people of color, and non-Christians need to speak out loudly and publicly. Hate crimes of any kind are not OK—and the Right as well as the Left both need to say so.

Trump voters who refuse to speak out and call for cessation of the violence are proving Hillary’s “deplorables” comment. The way to prove her wrong (and I think she is) is to speak out loudly that you, as a Trump voter, will not tolerate violence and threats against racial/religious/sexual minorities and women. That we as a country are better than this. That we can disagree and still be a democracy.

I am putting a safety pin on my coat as a sign that I am someone willing to intervene if I am a witness to a hate crime. I’ve been trained in nonviolence and conflict de-escalation (though it was long ago). If you’ve had some training, think about joining that movement. And if you haven’t, find a way to get that training. Google “nonviolence training” with your city’s or state’s name. And if DT actually implements his proposed Muslim registry, I will be part of a movement to flood that database with non-Muslim registrants so it becomes useless. These are personal risks I am willing to take. We have seen too many times what happens when good people do nothing while others perpetuate evil in their name.

I understand if those actions might be more than you’re willing to do; here’s one that’s totally safe: Sign this petition. Please note in the comments section of THIS that you’ve signed, or better yet, share your own personal letter that you’ve written to Trump.

Election Violence from Both Sides has to STOP NOW!

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on November 14, 2016 Posted in Activism, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics: General, language, media-general, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns Tagged with Donald Trump, election violence, hate speech, Michelle Obama, racism

It’s been less than a week since the US presidential election and the news is filled with more than 200 d eeply disturbing reports of violence by Trump supports against people of color, women, gays, and Muslims.

There also news of leftists attacking people who they feel enable racism and sexism, although I’ve found only one documented incident in a pretty thorough search (that was a Fox video of a beating, which I will not share, because I don’t post violent videos on my blog). But I did see a picture posted of a protestor holding a sign that said “rape Melania.”

Rainbow Peace banner at a demonstration. Photo by Michele Migliarini

I’ve signed many petitions urging Trump to speak out against the physical and psychological violence of his followers. Trump actually did issue a direct request to “just stop it” (on CBS News) and for that I thank him.

And just as I condemn the wide-ranging violence (hundreds of reported incidents) BY Trump supporters, I also condemn the acts of physical and psychological violence AGAINST them. Holding a sign advocating rape is psychological violence. It is not acceptable. As Trump said, “Stop it!” And as Michelle Obama said, “when they go low, we go high.”

And THIS is Why Trump Won!

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on November 11, 2016 Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with Boston Globe, Donald Trump, Senator Elizabeth Warren, US presidential election

Two kernels of wisdom to help us all understand what happened on Tuesday.

First, this story in the Boston Globe, “The red state no one saw coming.” A few things worth noting there. First, Hillary’s campaign has only themselves to blame for being complacent, for not shoring up a weak base in states, like Wisconsin, they took for granted.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts

When Sanders trounced her by 13 points in the Wisconsin primary, she didn’t see the warning signs. She didn’t see that people were hurt and angry and demanding change. She didn’t bother to campaign in Wisconsin, while Trump visited five times in the past few months. She didn’t even start running ads there until the final week. And a thin wisp of a margin lost her the state. Rinse and repeat in other places, and you see the pattern. The Globe article notes that some Sanders voters switched to Trump, and this pattern (in my very unscientific observation via Facebook and elsewhere) shows up all across the country. Others, of course, stayed home or voted third-party.

Yes, there were those who voted for Trump out of bigotry. But according to Elizabeth Warren, in a powerful post-election speech, more of his voters were voting for economic change. They supported (she claims) the liberal parts of his agenda, such as trade reform, restoring Glass-Steagall (which I don’t remember him supporting), and rebuilding our country’s infrastructure while creating jobs. Undeterred by the lack of specifics and in many cases holding their noses over his character issues, they voted for a Republican with an old-line Democrat domestic agenda and an appeal to the racist populism that propelled the Democratic Party even into the 1960s. The above link takes you to the video. Full transcript: https://www.elizabethwarren.com/blog/president-elect-donald-trump. Watch or read it; there’s much to learn about how we frame this election and where we go from here.

Meeting Hate with Hate is Not the Answer

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on November 7, 2016 Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with 2016 election, 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump, Michelle Obama, misogyny, nazis, Neurolinguistic Programming, NLP, psychology, racism, sexism

“When they go low, we go high.”—Michelle Obama

The US election is tomorrow, and I’m hoping for a result that utterly repudiates the racism, misogyny, and general hatred spewing from the mouth and keyboard of Donald Trump. That hope got me thinking about a column that ran in our local paper this summer.

The writer is progressive and I usually agree with him. But when he wrote about his experiences as a counterprotestor at a Trump rally, tossing insults at the attenders with his child in tow, I had a growing sense of unease.

Michelle Obama gardening with an elementary school student. Photo courtesy of Whjte House Public Domain — Children from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, D.C. help First Lady Michelle Obama plant the White House Vegetable Garden, April 9, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)

He forgot Michelle Obama’s excellent advice at the Democratic Convention not to stoop to the level of those we oppose.

Yes, it’s very easy to get caught up in a temporary good feeling, hurling insults at Trumpsters and feeling like you’re striking a blow for what’s right and true. But it negates the other side’s humanity. It demeans people. It ignores the phrase popularized by 17th-century Quaker theologian George Fox, “that of God in every [hu]man.”

And it accomplishes the reverse of the desired goal! No one’s mind is changed by being insulted. If anything, when people are belittled, they are more likely to harden their hearts, reinforce their defenses, and stand resolute against what they perceive as the rowdy mob.

Think about the mindset of a Trump supporter encountering a protestor hurling insults. Many of Trump’s supporters are already feeling attacked; that’s why they respond to ideas like building a wall to keep Mexicans out or blocking any Muslim from entering the US. When they get insulted, they’re going to feel even more attacked. Instead of changing their minds, they’re more likely to come away from an encounter with a name-calling protestor feeling more justified in their condemnation of protestors. Instead of being touched at a human level, they wall themselves into the gated communities of a mind that now finds more safety in Trump’s lies and empty threats.

He writes, “what became clear as we shouted back and forth is that there is no common ground whatsoever between Trumpistas and the rest of us.”

But I disagree. When we focus on our differences, on the “otherness” of our “enemy,” we lose sight of what binds us together—yet our commonalities are still there. We all want a word where we feel safe, can earn a decent living, and can raise our children to feel like they matter in this world.

Are there some Trump supporters who are attracted to Trump’s blatant racism and misogyny, the constant lying, incessant bullying and name calling, and all the rest of his hateful message? Of course. But I don’t think it’s anything close to a majority of his voters. He has learned the fine art of framing. Helped by a vitriolic, slanderous 20+ year campaign against his Democratic opponent in right-wing media, he has framed his opponents as crooked and incompetent liars, who are bringing this country down, and he portrays himself as the Messianic savior who can turn the whole thing around, even without clear policy positions—and he’s managed to get enough people to believe this to win the nomination.

Trump is a master of crowd psychology. He speaks to the amygdala, the “reptilian” part of the brain that doesn’t care about facts—and he knows how to work an audience. I’m guessing that he’s probably read many works on manipulating the psyche, including Neurolinguistic Programming. I’m guessing that he has carefully studied the methods the Nazis used to get elected in 1933. This makes his refusal to be bound by facts more understandable. Catch him in a lie and he denies he ever said it, or denies it means what it appears to—because to admit and apologize would pry loose his grip on the minds of his followers. If we mirror his nastiness, we fertilize the field where his metaphorical bacteria can grow. But when we take the high road, we defuse his manipulations with a powerful natural antibiotic: the truth of our common humanity.

Let’s not stoop to Trump’s level. Let’s honor Michelle Obama’s call to take the high road. Rather than call our opponents nasty names, we must win them over to the promise of a better world than Trump can offer: a world that helps them achieve our common universal desires—without stomping on the backs of others.

“When they go low, we go high.” Let’s go really high tomorrow, and show that as a country, we are better than that.

This Voter Has No Use for Nostalgia—He Prefers Hope

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on October 26, 2016 Posted in Diversity, Environment, General Commentary, People Helping People, Politics, Technology Tagged with 1950s, blogging, election, families, family arrangements, fatherhood, nostalgia, racism, sexism

[Editor’s Note:] I read John Engel’s article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (my local newspaper) and immediately went to his website to ask his permission to reprint. It’s highly topical and speaks so strongly to something that I’ve felt for a long time but never got around to writing about, and that’s why I chose to share it with you. I generally enjoy his column (which you can read at his site—link is at the bottom) but this is the first time I was moved to republish one.—Shel Horowitz, “The Transformpreneur”]

As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, October 26, 2016

As the presidential race approaches Election Day, rhetoric – from candidates, pundits and voters alike – has reached a fever pitch. My kids Zoe and Adam, at ages 10 and 7, are befuddled by both the hype and some of the more disturbing messages that have reached their young ears.

Filtering both the extreme and mundane, what continues to hold my attention is one of the election season’s most persistent themes – a steady beat of cries that the country is in disastrous condition and only getting worse. Some voices from this chorus are calling for a return to life as it was in the 1950s.

While I was not alive, let alone a father in the 1950s, my historical understanding of that era provides me with some insight about what my experience of fatherhood might have been like, in that most laudable decade of modern America. Granted, fathers probably were not writing columns about the experience of fatherhood, and since Al Gore had yet to invent the internet there were no Daddy Blogs – or Mommy blogs, for that matter – to peruse on smart phones, while children frolicked on play dates.

But had I been writing such a column in the 1950s, here are some important topics I may, or may not have, considered.

I might have expressed concern over the dangers families faced while traveling in automobiles, since protective child safety seats had not yet been developed and adult seat belts were not yet standard equipment.

Father and child (in the pre-safety equipment mindset) - Photo by Felipe Daniel Reis — Father and child (in the pre-safety equipment mindset) – Photo by Felipe Daniel Reis

Revolutionary as it was, I would not have been writing about the 1955 patent of a cutting edge chemical known as BPA, which for decades thereafter poisoned infants and children through contaminated baby bottles and Sippy cups until the FDA banned its use in these products, in 2012.

While it would have been socially unacceptable, I might have written about the customs of the day that relegated fathers to roles of provider and protector, denying them the opportunity to nurture their children and share equally, with mothers, in domestic chores and homemaking.

I would have been more than remiss, had I not written about the trauma experienced by people of color who were both routinely denied basic civil rights and subjected to extreme violence when trying to simply create a better life for themselves and their children.

I certainly would have written about the plight of women and mothers — and by extension families — who at the time had relatively little political power, limited professional opportunity, and were subject to persistent sexist norms. Though I probably would not have written about the domestic and sexual abuse women experienced because, as a country, we did not even begin seriously addressing these heinous crimes until the 1970s — and later.

And it would have been beyond taboo for me to write a column about the challenges parents faced when helping their gay, lesbian or transgender children triumph over discrimination and intolerance.

So, while I am not immune to experiencing fear-based nostalgia, calls for returning to bygone eras remind me that we humans often yearn for something we don’t have — and even harder for something we fear losing — all the while neglecting to appreciate what we already have gained. And this leaves us ill equipped for the hard and necessary work of identifying goals and actions that will guide us to a future that unites, not divides, us.

So as a father — in 2016 — I both celebrate, and seek to build upon, the gains we have made since the 1950s, regardless of who is president, because for me, hope trumps nostalgia.

John Engel of Florence, Massachusetts (United States) can be reached through his website, https://www.fatherhoodjourney.com

When Does Social Change Work Become a “Calling”?

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on October 16, 2016 Posted in Activism, Environment, People Helping People, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with goodness, having a calling, kindness, motivations, social change

My friend Kathleen Gage posted a quote from Albert Schweitzer about people sometimes reacting with hostility or obstruction to your attempts to improve the world. And then she said.

So if you are doing good for praise and accolades, you are doing it for the wrong reasons and it is no longer a good deed. It is an act of manipulation.
Do good because you are called to do good and for no other reason.

I’m going to gently disagree. I agree with the first two statements. But I disagree about “for no other reason.” I’m guessing that really what we have is different definitions of the concept of a calling—that mine is a lot stricter than hers. And that’s because, a few times in my life, I’ve experienced a genuine calling: a feeling that I was put into this place at this time to do something very specific—and that I had to do it.

We do good for lots of other reasons than because we are called to: to show your children what is possible. To make conditions better for others. To improve the lot of a group facing oppression that you don’t belong to–or that you do. To right an immediate wrong. Not all of these rise to the level of a calling. But all of them (and far too many more to list). I became an activist at age 12 and remain one. Five times, I have felt that calling—to:

1. Do what I could to stop the Vietnam war

2. Move the country away from a reliance on nuclear power (maybe the worst technology ever invented)

3. Protest publicly when the US bombed Libya (and I was the *only* protester on the first day, but by a few days later, there was a whole group of us out in front of the courthouse)

4. Save the mountain two miles from my house (with a massive outpouring of community support, won that one in just 13 months!)

View of the Mount Holyoke Range, showing the land saved by Save the Mountain in 2000.

5. My current mission of showing the business community how to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance—not through guilt and shame, but through enlightened self-interest

Yet these are only the tiniest fraction of thousands of actions I’ve taken for social change. The rest were not a “calling” but simply the right thing to do. They were not done for self-aggrandizement. If that had been my goal, I would have taken far faster and easier paths (like the Internet millionaire meme). Some of them were tiny and easy, like signing a petition. Others consumed years of my life, like the time I spent building what we now think of as the LGBTQ movement or my involvement in changing the politics of the city I lived in for 17 years, and the small town where I’ve lived for the past 18. Most were somewhere between, like serving on committees for grassroots groups or local governments.

That said, I gleefully share that my current calling is the most exciting and meaningful work I’ve ever taken on.

When have you felt a calling? What was it for and what was the result?

Did Obama Create Trump?

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on October 13, 2016 Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with barack obama, Bernie Sanders, dick cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Donald Trump, FDR, hatred, Hermann Goering, hillary clinton, Jeb Bush, poorly educated, racism, republican party, Richard Viguere

I read a comment by the author of a new book called President Obama Created Donald Trump, claiming that President Obama saw himself and the country as post-racial, and thus didn’t prepare for the consequences of “the catalyst for racial backlash and unrest” that led to Trump’s nomination.

The White House. Photo by Emilien Auneau

Interesting theory. But it sounds to me like blame-the-victim. I’m too young to remember FDR, who I know was adamantly hated by conservatives—and who, despite that hostility, was elected four times. When the Republicans got power again in 1952, their standard-bearer was no radical demagogue. It was Eisenhower, a moderate who feared the oligarchy and was the first to call it “the military-industrial complex.”

Obama has borne the brunt of more hostility than any US president in my lifetime (much of it due to his color)—and handled it with remarkable grace. In this author’s view, he is somehow to blame for racism?

Here’s my contrasting view: When the Democratic Party and especially (Texan/Southerner) LBJ began to get serious about undoing racism, the Republicans, starting at least with Richard Nixon and his Southern Strategy (if not earlier) began courting and nurturing the most racist right-wing fanatics in the party. Richard Viguere and his ilk brought fundraising, marketing, and organizing prowess. Reagan came to the party with a new economic agenda geared toward the 1%. Bush II added megalomaniacal ignorance and disastrous foreign and economic policies, yielding two wars and the Great Recession–and a hankering for “change.”

Obama rode that wave but faced an intransigent Congress openly dedicated to sabotaging his efforts. Progressives perceive him (falsely) as not accomplishing much. Yet the Republicans see him as usurping power. Neither accusation has merit, but that’s the public perception.

So people are eager for change. We saw it in the remarkable primary successes of not only Trump but Bernie Sanders (who I supported and voted for, incidentally—and like Bernie, I’m voting for Clinton next month). People feel disenfranchised, powerless, and thoroughly disgusted with the Establishment. Hillary Clinton, destined perhaps to be an even more hated president than Obama or FDR, is the embodiment of that establishment, as is Jeb Bush–one of the first GOP candidates to drop out.

Trump stepped into the vacuum, with lowest-common-denominator messages of hate masked in “Make America great again” rhetoric. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of his statements closely parallel quotes from Hermann Goering:

Trump: “I love the poorly educated!”
Goering: “Education is dangerous—every educated person is a future enemy.”

Trump: “The security guys said, Mr. Trump, there may be some people in the back with tomatoes in the audience. If you see somebody with a bag of tomatoes, just knock the crap out of them, would you? I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.”
Goering: “Shoot first and ask questions later, and don’t worry, no matter what happens, I will protect you.”

Trump: “By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
Goering: “Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning.”

While his psychopathologies and abusive behaviors (not just the groping, but the lying, cheating, physical intimidation, psychological intimidation, threats of violence, etc.) go beyond even the Republican Party of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Trump’s thinking is a logical extension of his party’s reach for the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. He is the next iteration of a pattern that began in the GOP nearly 50 years ago. He is merely the next step the Republican Party has aimed toward for decades.

How Much Should You Spend on Marketing?

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on October 7, 2016 Posted in Advertising, Business-general, General Commentary, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with innovation, investors, marketing

Someone asked a very odd question in a discussion group:

How a startup is viewed (by an investor) when its majority spending is on marketing/advertising?

In my answer, I chose to ignore the investor question (although I hint at it in my last sentence) and discuss it instead from an overall business point of view. Let me share that answer:

Having written several books on how to market effectively with little or no money, I definitely agree. While we don’t all have to be as extreme as Google, which built one of the most profitable companies in the world without spending anything on advertising, I think all of us should be focused heavily on more creative, more interactive marketing—including content, interactive involvement tools on your website, social media actual participation (not just advertising), live appearances, etc.—only using advertising and other paid strategies sparingly if at all. This is something I can help with, BTW. For a very affordable cost, I can create an entire marketing plan for you, rooted in these kinds of strategies as they make sense for your particular business/skill set/interests.

If someone is spending more on marketing than on operations, I’d worry about their long-term viability.

But I found the question quite odd. It’s hard to even wrap my brain around the idea of spending more on marketing than on innovation, product development, manufacturing, distribution, etc., combined. Yes, of course, we’re all in business to sell something, and marketing helps us do that. But we also have to have something worth selling.

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Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert