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

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

If you’re in the marketing world, you’ve probably heard people say “I want this to go viral” or even “I’m going to make a viral video.”

The problem with that is that none of us can control what takes off in the public imagination, or even in the imaginations of enough of a cult that something goes viral within a niche.

Sometimes, the deliberate efforts of creators are successful. I am guessing the “Will It Blend?” ad series was designed very carefully to be passed around a lot. But other times, all the careful design in the world still results in only a few thousand pass-alongs. I’d say the vast majority of projects designed to go viral achieve very little traction—because the market recognizes when it’s being manipulated, and most attempts at deliberate “virality” contain a strong, obvious commercial element

And yet, the ones that really do go viral often don’t try to make any money. I am quite sure that Susan Boyle never dreamed that her video audition for “Britain’s Got Talent” would be seen by more than 86 million people (the combined view stats for just the first two out of 1,460,000 results for a Google search on “susan boyle britains got talent”). I just watched it again, and am still amazed by not only the power of her singing, but the contrast with her frumpy appearance and clueless personality. How could you not fall in love with that video?

Thinking about this today as I look over the comments for two recent blog entries: My 10-year reflection on 9/11 and the lost opportunity for peace, posted September 11, and a guest post by a conservative Christian friend, Steve Jennings, reflecting on his friendship with me—an unabashed progressive—despite our huge political differences, posted September 15.

I had some hopes in writing the 9/11 piece that it might go viral: posted on the tenth anniversary when everyone was once again talking about the attacks, talking about the better world that could have been created had we been blessed with visionary leadership instead of the small-minded vengeance of George W. Bush and his cronies. I tweeted the link a few times, a few other people picked it up, and response was very positive—but very limited. It did not bring me new audiences, though was reasonably popular among my existing readers. It has so far earned four comments and a bunch of retweets. and it somehow managed not to draw even a single attack from the right-wing lunatic fringe.

Steve’s post, which I didn’t promote as heavily, drew a number of retweets (which are, oddly, not showing up on the blog page), though only one comment. Again, uniformly positive, though not big numbers.

Steve’s post was not tied to a particular day and will be timely for many years; it may yet build more comments over time. The 9/11 article, other than from those reading here, is not likely to draw much attention now that almost a week has gone by.

Of course, I never had any dream that my 9/11 post would get as big as Susan Boyle, or even as big as “United Breaks Guitars” (10 million+ views). I’d have been thrilled if a couple of thousand people read it and a few dozen commented, because I’m just trying to get my ideas into the world, and I’m not using sound, video, or even pictures to do it. I still believe in the power of words.

If you find that either of those posts (or this one, for that matter) inspires you to say something, I hope you’ll share it on the comment page, Like it on Facebook, etc. Meanwhile, I’ll keep sharing my ideas, and hoping they make a difference in at least a few people’s lives.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, People Helping People, poverty, Shel's Personal Life

Guest Post by Steve Jennings

[Editor’s Note: Steve, good and gracious person that he is, sent me an advance copy of this post to make sure I didn’t have any issues with him posting it. I wrote back that I was honored, loved the post, and would welcome permission to use it as a guest post, which he granted. And my life is richer for knowing him, as well. It Unlikely Friends

Sometimes you meet someone and you become instant friends.  That happened to me awhile back.  I went to Massachusetts for some training on media interviews with one of the more brilliant marketing experts in the country, Shel Horowitz (https://shelhorowitz.com/).   He’s the author of Principled Profit, Grassroots Marketing (a must-have for bootstrap marketers), The Penny Pinching Hedonist, Marketing without Megabucks and his latest, Guerilla Marketing Goes Green.  He’s a true wordsmith and a master at getting the most bang for your marketing buck.

The odd thing about our friendship is that Shel and I disagree on a whole host of issues.  Shel is liberal on most issues.  I’m mostly conservative. Our religious views are quite different.  Yet despite our apparent incompatibility, our friendship quickly flourished.

Why?

First, we found our common ground.  Shel and I both believe in leading a simple, responsible lifestyle.  We both enjoy hiking and drinking in nature’s wonders as we go.  We both get riled at the sight of injustice and corruption. It didn’t take us long to find lots of other areas where we agreed.

Second is integrity.  Shel lives what he believes.  He does what he says he’ll do, and he won’t be shy about telling the truth.   I try to be the same way in my life.  Unfortunately, integrity seems to be a dying value in much of our culture.  So when I meet someone who has it, I am drawn to them.

Third, it’s OK to disagree.  We accepted our differences and voiced our positions in friendly, reasonable conversation.  You can’t bring everybody to your side.  Jesus didn’t even reach everybody he came in contact with.  So Shel and I both took time to listen and learn from each other. We didn’t change each other’s opinions, but we broadened our minds.

It’s not hard to get along with people.  Instead of focusing on our differences, try to find some common ground.  There’s more of that kind of real estate than you can imagine.  From that starting point, make an effort to truly listen.  Digest what the other person is saying.  In far too many discussions we humans are guilty of concentrating on how we will advance our position and fail to truly hear the views of the other person.  You don’t have to agree, but you must try to understand.

Yes, Shel and I are unlikely friends. I can’t speak for him, but my life is richer for it.

God’s grace to you,

Steve Jennings, Executive Director

www.TeensOpposingPoverty.org

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By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Ten years ago, 19 criminal thugs seized control of four planes—and the world as we knew it was shed like the skin of a snake, replaced with a new and very unpleasant reality.

On this anniversary, I want to publicly thank the hundreds of brave men and women who unselfishly, courageously faced death and yet still went back into the flaming buildings…wrested control of Flight 93 back from its hijackers and crashed it in an empty field, instead of a major government building…poured into New York and Washington to see how they could help, knowing they were risking their own health, their own lives. Also, the thousands of brave soldiers from the US and elsewhere who have put their lives on the line every day. It is not their fault that we shouldn’t have even been in those wars.

But I also want to remember what might have been. In the vast emotional outpouring following the attacks, we were, for almost the only time in our history other than Pearl Harbor, united as a people. And also, for perhaps the first time ever, we had the sympathy and compassion of the whole world.

It was the first President George Bush who had called, ten years earlier, for “A New World Order, where the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.” His son had a chance to make that happen.

What was needed was a powerful, emotional speech recognizing that the old, imperialist model of conduct among nations didn’t work anymore…and seizing this terrible moment as a bridge to world peace, a chance for the world to re-invent itself as something new—as a collaborative body determined to achieve greatness as a place where war is an archaic and never-again-used way to settle disputes, no one starves, everyone can get an education and decent health care, the environment is given a chance to heal, and the enemies of industrialized societies cannot get any traction. I thought at the time that this is what Bush should have done and I still think so.

Not that the perpetrators would get off, though. Bush could have called for an international criminal manhunt to bring Bin Laden and his gang of thugs to justice for mass murder, and the world would have supported it. Especially as the US, coming off the Clinton period of prosperity and massive surpluses, had the resources to fund that manhunt.

What an outpouring of support that would have caused! People of all nations would have embraced Bush as a hero, and more importantly, would have striven to put those magnificent words into practice. The United States would have been seen as giving a precious and lasting gift to the entire world. And Bin Laden probably would have been captured early on, with no negative impact on the people unlucky enough to live in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Instead, Bush told us to go shopping…squandered the surplus in two illegal, immoral, unjust—and extremely expensive—wars (not counting the domestic war on Muslims, Arabs, and poor people)…initiated dozens of repressive practices at home…blew up our credibility in the world of nations by acting as a “rogue state” (turning us into either a hated enemy or a laughingstock, in various parts of the world)…and completely failed in his pursuit of Bin Laden (Obama had to come in and finish that one). And his actions caused so much resentment against the US that it turned Al Qaeda from a tiny cell into a massive terrorist organization spanning many countries. He made the enemy much bigger.

I have always perceived George W. Bush as a small-minded bully surrounded by smart and evil advisors, and I was not surprised that he could not step into greatness. But I’d have loved to have been proven wrong. And how much safer I’d feel today if he had somehow risen to the task. He could have been our greatest President. Instead, in my opinion, he was the worst.

On this 10th anniversary of 9/11, let us think how we can still achieve that world of peace. It will be much harder now—but it is not impossible.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Green Business Tagged with , , , , , , ,

According to the New York Times, it seems the Chinese want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to electric cars. With only a minuscule budget for R&D, the Chinese want to coerce their way into access to expensively developed technologies for electric cars by making that access a precondition for foreign manufacturers who want to sell electric vehicles in China, if they want the same subsidies that Chinese-made electric cars enjoy. (This happens to be a violation of the World Trade Organization’s rules, and China is a WTO member)

Here’s how I think that would play out:

  • At least some foreign automakers, wanting access to the vast and rapidly growing Chinese market, make the devil’s bargain and share their technology secrets
  • China begins a crash program in its state-owned car companies to bring cars to market using this technology
  • After one to three years, the foreign automakers find themselves closed out—and sitting on a big useless pile of expensive infrastructure—as the Chinese rush cheap and shoddily built EVs to market using American, European, or Japanese technology

General Motors is actively resisting and protesting; Nissan doesn’t even want to go into the market under these conditions; yet Ford apparently plans to cave.

This is one time I find myself agreeing with General Motors. This is a bad idea!

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By Posted on Posted in Customer Service as Marketing, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

There’s a popular deli and bakery in my area that we’d been patronizing for about 25 years—but I’m not in a rush to go back right now.

Knowing that we were gong to have a series of small memorial gatherings for my late mother (according to the Jewish custom, “sitting shiva”), a friend of Dina’s ordered a bunch of pastries to be delivered to us Wednesday between 3-5 (the gathering started at 7). We were delighted, and made a point of rushing home to be here when the precious goodies showed up.

Except that they didn’t. And at 5:15 p.m., when Dina called to find out where they were, she got a clueless young man who said the delivery driver had already left for the day. “I see your order right here, and I don’t know why it didn’t go out” was about the extent of what he could think of. He implied that he could have the brownies delivered the following day, and Dina told him she expected fresh ones, not those getting stale after never being delivered when they were supposed to.

It didn’t occur to him that he could call somebody to come in and make the delivery. It didn’t occur to him that he could offer any kind of make-good (or even a credit to our friend who had ordered the undelivered merchandise). And it didn’t occur to him that it was the store’s responsibility to remedy the situation—even after some prompting. He told her to call back tomorrow. Dina suggested that it was more appropriate under the circumstances for the store to call us, and he took down our number (after some more prompting).

Thursday came and went with no call from the store. Slightly earlier in the day, Dina called again and was met with a slightly more intelligent person who said she’d been at the store when she’d called the previous day, and that she would make sure the owner took care of it the following morning. I didn’t understand why if there were two people working, one of them couldn’t have gotten the order out to us when we called the first day. And she also told Dina to call back the following day, which got Dina pretty irritated. She told the woman she’d already wasted a lot of time on this and it was the store’s responsibility to call back.

And in fact, the following morning (Friday), the owner called back personally with an appropriate, if tardy, apology and make-good: a full credit for our friend, and a gift certificate (unknown amount) for us. For this reason, I’m not naming the offender. Hopefully, the gift cert will show up in ample time to use for the large public memorial we’ll host in November.

But think about the cost to this store: a number of our friends in the area (plus of course, the out-of-towner who’d given the gift) know which store did this, and will will likely go elsewhere if they need anything delivered at a specific time. And we, quite frankly, will be much less likely to go there at all, despite a relationship of more than two decades. Meanwhile, the friend who placed the order left left a withering review on Yelp, which will haunt the store for a long time to come.

It wasn’t the mistake; mistakes happen. It was the shabby way we were treated once the mistake was acknowledged that left a bad impression, the more so because we are actively grieving the loss of my mother, and it was made clear that this delivery was for a memorial gathering.

Unfortunately, wretched customer service is all-too-common in our society. Business owners don’t realize that these experiences undo a lot of their marketing and a lot of their good will.

Here are three lessons you can take away and implement in your own business, so that you’re not the one getting bad word-of-mouth/word-of-mouse:

  • Make sure your front-line people have excellent customer service skills. It doesn’t take much to be empathic, sympathetic, and show that you’re trying to solve the problem, and failure to do so has negative impact on your business.
  • Train every employeeon how to respond to customer service issues. Our clueless guy should have had a written checklist of what to do, if he wasn’t bright enough to figure it out on his own.
  • Empower your employees to make things right. the cost of a credit and make-good is almost always far less than the cost of lost business and sullied reputation.
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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business Tagged with , , ,

With all the partisan conflict gridlocking Washington, it’s refreshing to read about a 16-year-old partnership between deep environmentalists and deep conservatives.

The “Green Scissors” project, with participation from the likes of Friends of the Earth on the environmental side and the Heartland Institute among the conservative groups, targets $380 billion in wasteful government spending that happens to also foster environmentally negative impact.

Among the programs suggested for the chopping block:

  • Ethanol Excise Tax Credit
  • $49.6 billion in subsidies for the troubled, environmentally disastrous nuclear power industry
  • $109.6 billion in highway subsidies
  • A $5 billion natural gas subsidy

Download your own copy of this year’s (and previous years’) reports at https://www.foe.org/green-scissors.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business Tagged with , , , ,

Wow! Tell this to your skeptic friends. One of America’s top research think tanks, Brookings Institution, now says that the 2.7 million Americans employed in green industries has outpaced the number working in fossil fuels.

That is quite extraordinary!

For some good analysis on what this means and where we should go from here, read Green For All’s Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins’ excellent article on Treehugger.

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By Posted on Posted in Shel's Personal Life

My mother died Sunday morning a week after a paralyzing stroke and it’s been a time of NOT focusing on work. She was a remarkable woman who touched many lives. This is the obit that I wrote for our local papers:

Gloria Yoshida, lover of art and justice

SOUTH HADLEY – Gloria Yoshida, of South Hadley, died Sunday, Aug. 21, 2011, at Fisher Home Hospice in Amherst, surrounded by family, after a 12-year battle with cancer.

A native of the Bronx, N.Y., she was born in 1933 to immigrant parents, Hedwig and Fischel Gleich, and worked in print production until her retirement and relocation to western Massachusetts in 2000.

Gloria was a passionate crusader for social justice who desegregated apartment buildings in New York City and attended the 1963 March on Washington led by Martin Luther King Jr. She was a lover of art and music, exotic travel destinations and good food; an addicted reader, games player and joke teller; and most importantly someone who loved people and still had many friends in her life, from the 1940s to the 11 years she lived in South Hadley.

She was a docent at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, a volunteer at the Gaylord Library, and a frequent auditor of classes at Mount Holyoke.

She is survived by her beloved, devoted husband, Michhiro Yoshida; her son, Shel Horowitz, of Hadley; her daughters, Helen Horowitz, of Denver, and Jeanne Horowitz, of Valley Cottage, N.Y.; her son-in-law, Joe Clayman, of Denver; her daughter-in-law, Dina Friedman, of Hadley; her sister, Elsie Dudovitz, of Chicago; and six grandchildren, Alana and Rafael Horowitz Friedman and Naomi, Miriam, Heidi and Pearl Clayman.

In accordance with Jewish tradition, a graveside service will be held today, Aug. 22. “Shiva” (calling hours) is at the Horowitz Friedman home, 16 Barstow Lane, Hadley, from 7 to 10 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 22 to 24. A memorial service and celebration of her life will be scheduled in the fall. Her daughter Helen will sit shiva in Denver beginning Tuesday.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , , ,

The latest in a long series of “incidents” at the long-troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, just up the river from me in Vernon, Vermont: the tritium leaking for several months at Vermont Yankee has definitively reached the Connecticut River.

The Connecticut River runs along the Vermont-New Hampshire Border and through Massachusetts (including our Pioneer Valley region) and Connecticut before emptying into Long Island Sound (bordering New York State), and eventually the Atlantic Ocean. It is widely used for boating, fishing, and swimming.

If you are in that area, I would suggest not eating fish from or swimming in the Connecticut River right now. I would instead suggest lobbying your US Representatives and Senators to block the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—that word, “regulatory” should really be in quotes, as they don’t do much regulating and have never failed to renew a power plant license—decision to relicense this failing plant for another 20 years.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , ,

No, I haven’t forgotten you! I was on vacation in Iceland, and had very limited access to Internet.

I’ve known for years that Iceland is a geothermal paradise, but to see it in person was quite amazing. Everywhere we went, there were geothermal hotsprings. Everywhere, there were geothermally heated municipal swimming pools and hot tubs (one of the few bargains in a rather expensive country). We visited a geothermal power plant that contained an energy museum. We enjoyed hot, hot showers, as hot as our solar-heated system at home (we saw almost no solar in Iceland, in part because usually they don’t have too much sun, and in part because geothermal is readily available and produces much steadier power).
We cooked eggs in a geothermal spring, and tasted bread that had been baked in the ground, overnight.

One surprise for me was how much geothermal power is used to create steam and spin turbines to generate electricity; I’d expected most of it to be heating water for direct use rather than spinning turbines, because that cuts down on efficiency.

But efficiency and conservation aren’t such big concerns in Iceland. We were rather surprised that conserving water or electricity didn’t seem to be a value. People just ran the water or left lights on.

But that can change with education and a values shift. Meanwhile, Iceland can truly claim to have one of the greenest power grids in the world.

In a country with only 318,452 inhabitants as of January 2011 and approximately 116,000 households, this tiny country has the capacity to supply much of Europe’s energy needs. In fact, plans are afoot to build deep-sea cables that will export as much as 5 billion kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable electricity to the rest of Europe—enough to power 1.25 million homes.

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