Category: Abundance and Prosperity

Looking at abundance as not necessarily monetary–how to get your needs met and desires fulfilled without necessarily needing money to do it.

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

Cooperate with others to open new markets. It’s one of the key principles of my brand new book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson), released this week by John Wiley & Sons. The book is a manual for thriving by doing the right thing, showing businesses that Green and ethical practices aren’t just a way to stay out of jail–they’re a success strategy–and cooperation is one of those practices.

So–do we practice what we preach? Here are some of the things we’re doing to launch the book:

  • We chose to partner with Green America for the launch. We are donating a portion of proceeds, and they have spread word of our book to their 94,000 members.
  • We solicited other partners who will tell their following about the book–and we gave them two powerful incentives: the chance to build their own lists by submitting a bonus, and to promote an upsell product that pays commissions.
  • With these partnerships, we’re able to offer anyone buying the book this month a package of extra worth well over $2750 (and still climbing)–AND to reach at least 702,000 people who are on the lists of these partners.

    So…adding Jay’s lists and mine together, we have about 94,000 subscribers. Adding Green America alone doubled that. Adding in the partners means we multiplied our original 94,000 by about eight times, to 890,000. Even chopping off ten percent for duplicates, that still means 801,000 people are hearing about this book, and that’s 703,000 people that Jay and I couldn’t have reached on our own. And that doesn’t even count Twitter, e-mail discussion lists, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

    Oh yes, and let’s talk about my bringing in Jay as a partner co-author. Leveraging the strength of his name definitely helped to build all these partner relationships, as well as strong partner relationships within the publishing house. So now, instead of reaching 10,000 of my own subscribers to inform them of my newest book, I’m reaching 801,000, of whom 791,000 are the result of our outreach efforts, outside of my own network.

    Cost to me? Only time. OK, quite a bit of time, including my assistant’s time, which I am paying for. But time well-spent.

    Is it resulting in sales? A week ago, the Amazon sales rank for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green was in the 575,000s. In other words, five hundred seventy five thousand books were outselling mine.There have been some wild swings, but at the moment, it’s at 28,793. In the environmentalism category, it’s #13 right now. And Amazon is only one of the five channels that we’re linking to from the books website, https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com. In other words, yes–people are BUYING the book, and in doing so, validating this key concept.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

    It must have been somewhere around 1986, in the early days of my business, that I first encountered the work of Paul and Sarah Edwards, gurus to the home-based business sector that was just beginning to take off back then. I’ve been home-based since I founded my company in 1981, so their message resonated.

    I’ve been corresponding with Paul recently, and am very excited by something they’re into now: Offering the “Elm Street” economy as an alternative to both Wall Street and Main Street.

    Elm Street, in most communities, is typically in a residential neighborhood. In Northampton, Massachusetts (the closest Elm Street to my house), it’s a graceful, tree-lined boulevard of large Victorian-era homes.

    As Paul and Sarah Edwards describe it, an Elm Street economy is also firmly rooted in sustainability, at multiple levels:

    It’s a local economy, composed of locally-owned and locally-financed enterprises, industries, and independent practitioners who are invested in bringing long-term well-being to all living there, including nature. It’s focus is on working together to create dependable, environmentally sustainable way of life that bring basic services, products, and resilience back to our local communities.

    Local Economy
    Be it in a city neighborhood, a suburban sub-division, a small town or rural community, the Elm Street Economy is coming to life. It may look a little different from locale to locale, with urban Elm Street communities growing food on rooftops instead of backyards, for example, but wherever they might be located, they can flourish due to values and characteristics symbolized in this logo.

    • Local production of food, renewable energy and goods.

    • Local development of commerce, government and culture.

    • Reduction of consumption while improving environmental and social
    concerns.

    • Being an exemplary working model for other communities when the effects
    of decline of the existing economy and our natural resources becomes more
    intense.

    In short, very much aligned with the values I’ve been espousing for years, in this blog, in my books, in my speeches, and elsewhere.
    The Edwards’ vision of the Elm Street economy, and their analysis, go far deeper than what I’ve quoted here. Go and read it.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Entrepreneurship Tagged with

    My friend Denise O’Berry is running a contest for the best advice to new entrepreneurs. I don’t have much use for the prize (a year of blog hosting at Network Solutions–I’m happy hosting my own blog), but it felt like a fun and seasonal thing to do. Here’s what I posted:

    1. Be as helpful and friendly to others as possible, and be well-networked (both online and off)–cultivate relationships from an attitude of how you can be of service, and people will help you. Introduce people who need to know each other.

    2. Do outstanding work. Stuff that people will want to brag about. Turn it in on time or early, and on or under budget–and then suggest the next thing they need and you can help with that maybe they haven’t thought of on their own.

    3. Stay true to both your ethics and your values. Do not cross the line to take on projects you shouldn’t. Keep honesty, integrity, and quality front and center.

    4. Keep expenses down while starting out. And keep good records.

    5. Make sure people understand what you do and how you can help–but do it without being salesy. Show that you know your stuff by answering questions, writing articles (and later, books), speaking,etc.–not by going on and on about how great you are.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , ,

    Horace Mann, founding President of Antioch College, famously said “Be ashamed to die until you have won one victory for humanity.” Neither Nicholas Negroponte nor Iqbal Quadir will ever have to worry about shaming themselves in front of Horace Mann’s ghost.

    These two M.I.T. professors have both made substantial contributions in developing countries, bringing life-changing technology to villages that don’t even have electricity or running water.

    Negroponte is the key mover behind One Laptop Per Child, an initiative to develop and distribute rugged but cheap (like $100 per unit) laptops to school children, in 18 countries so far. Quadir convinced Bangladeshi microlending pioneer Grameen Bank (founded by Mohammad Yunnis, who received the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts) to underwrite Grameenphone, a business providing cell phone services to villages with no telephone at all.

    Both men spoke at a panel during the Boston Book Fair, coincidentally on Climate Action Day, October 24, 2009. And both have had a major impact.

    Negroponte’s rugged, lightweight laptops can be thrown or dropped with no bad consequence, use only three watts of power (he’s aiming for just one watt on a forthcoming redesign), and both the battery and the computer are designed to last at least five years—about double the typical laptop lifespan—and to minimize waste impact when they are finally past their useful life and life extensions such as use as a TV. With no electricity grid, they’re recharged with hand-cranks, solar photovoltaics, or car batteries.

    Each laptop comes preloaded with not only productivity software, but also 100 books whose creators have agreed to make their content available. That means that if a village receives 100 laptops, it suddenly has a library of 10,000 titles (a larger collection than many small-town physical libraries in the United States).

    These computers are designed directly to foster social change: newly literate school children use satellite wi-fi to access the Internet, learn literacy as well as research skills, and even teach their parents to read. For many of these kids, their first English word is “Google.”

    In October, 2009, Uruguay became the first country to get these laptops into the hands of every single school child; Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Peru are among the other countries with a program. Negroponte would love to “take one day of [the cost of war in] Iraq and Afghanistan and do the children in those countries.” In Afghanistan, where many girls are prevented from going to school, the plan he has worked out with the Afghani Minister of Education is to seed the laptops first to girls, so they can learn outside of the classrooms they’re not allowed to attend.

    But his vision is much grander: “It would take $30 billion to do every kid in the world. We gave away more than twice that much to AIG.”

    Grameen Phone     uses a very different business model: funding new small businesses through microlending, and then changing the society as that business rewrites the entire village culture. “Connectivity is productivity,” says Quadir.

    In 1993, there was one (land-line) telephone for every 500 Bangladeshis, and 73 percent for the phones were in Dhaka, the capital. Grameen came in and began lending small amounts of capital to entrepreneurs, who provided and operated a village telephone, where residents could rent time whenever they needed to make a call, and paid back the loans out of profits.

    The benefits are “inclusive, egalitarian, and immediate,” and the results are astounding. Each 10 percent increase in cell phone penetration corresponds with a .8 percent increase in the country’s Gross Domestic Product. By 2005, the company had 250,000 retailers, 22 million subscribers, and 50 million cell phones (many of them smart phones that bring computing power to these remote villages). It expects to have 5 billion phones in place by 2015, which will be near-total penetration of the population.

    Yet the magnitude of change from this initiative may not even be apparent for some time. Rural electrification in the U.S., says Quadir, didn’t happen immediately after the development of electrical utilities. It went to rural areas decades later, when refrigeration made it possible for farmers to store food much longer, and therefore shift perishable food production and distribution from regionally to nationally based.

    Telephone service, he says, is “the low-hanging fruit. From the juice of the low-hanging fruit, you get the energy you need to climb the tree and take the higher fruit.”

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity

    I always start my day looking at the queries from reporters looking for story sources on HARO (Help A Reporter Out). This morning, in addition to the three that I answered, I spotted this intrigung one:

    Looking for people who use household robots for chores, communication,
    security or entertainment. Parents if youve purchased toy robots for
    your kids to play with, Id love to hear from you, too. Am wondering if
    you’ve ever had any security/privacy concerns with regard to your robots
    (especially ones that can be controlled over short distances using remote
    control or via the Internet) and/or if youve ever noticed any odd
    robot behavior. No experts needed, just looking for people who own some
    kind of robot and are interested in participating in a fun Tech story.

    Putting aside the question of whether reporters should be allergic to apostrophes, I was struck by how far we’ve come, so fast, in my lifetime. In my childhood and teens in the 1960s and 70s, robots were very much a part of my life…in the science fiction I read, in movies, and on TV. But nobody I knew actually had a robot in their house.

    It’s hard enough for my kids to believe that I grew up in a world without so much of what they took for granted.

    Never mind the Internet; the only computer in my life was the mainframe in my mom’s office at a university, that filled three large rooms, had to be specially air conditioned, was talked to through punch cards, and probably had less computing power than my $5 solar calculator.

    Cell phones? Our tethered landline phones were black and had rotary dials, and most families only had one phone for the whole house. When I went to college, we had one phone for a dormitory floor with 20 people, although by then they were beige. My family did have a private number but I know people who grew up with shared party lines. We did have the first answering machine I ever saw. My dad paid $400 for it in 1961 (a huge fortune at the time), because he was self-employed and also holding down a full-time job. It actually lifted the phone off the hook and played the recorded message into the receiver.

    We had a black-and-white television with maybe a 15-inch screen. It picked up only channels 2-13. For most of the country, that meant between one and three stations. Living in New York City, we actually had seven–what luxury! Oh yes, and if you missed a program, it was gone. No TiVo, no DVD, no VCR.

    It was a big treat to go into a fancy office in the summer, because they had air conditioning, and most of the rest of us didn’t.

    So much of the technology that enriches our lives didn’t exist yet or was reserved for an elite few. I could go on for pages listing the innovations that have reached every corner of our lives. And of course, go just a few decades earlier than my childhood and you’re in a world with no cars, telephones, or electric lights. I’ve met plenty of people who grew up in that time, though most of them are gone now.

    Other changes were in the social sphere, and ultimately far more important. Most jobs weren’t open to women, and in many parts of the country, weren’t open to minorities either. Disabled people were shunted aside and kept out of sight, and there was very little infrastructure for them. Forget about the Americans with Disabilities Act; most sidewalks didn’t even have curb cuts on the corners. There was no mass consciousness at all about environmental issues; it was considered the right of any industrialist to pollute, to leave toxic dumps, and so forth. Organic food was hard to come by, and so was decent coffee.

    Sometimes, instead of ranting at all the things we want to change, it’s nice to take a deep breath and remember how far we’ve come. We’ve just passed Canadian Thanksgiving, and the US Thanksgiving is coming up in a few weeks. This seems like as good a time as any.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , ,

    Normally, I stay far away from all the get-rich-quick stuff. But I remember when copywriter John Reese became the first Internet marketer to (at least publicly) break the million-dollar-in-one-day barrier.

    In fact, I remember thinking at the time, oh, for goodness sake, you want us to buy into your product launch so you can set a sales record? Puh-lease! I didn’t buy it. Nevertheless, I watched what was going on, and was pleased for him when he surpassed the goal.

    Well, I just stumbled on a short interview of John Reese by Tony Robbins on the psychology of this order-of-magnitude breakthrough ($100,000 in a day was considered fantastic back then). Both of them compare it to Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile, and they share lessons about achieving any BIG goal that I think transcend the (to me, not very interesting) specifics of making a big pile of money.

    Two things struck me particularly:
    1. The opening titles say Reese was $100,000 in debt. I have to wonder how such a world-renowned copywriter (I’d heard his name for years, long before this event) got into such a hole in the first place; the video, alas, doesn’t address this.

    2. Reese’s thinking was much bigger than I realized. I hadn’t known that a million in a day was about ten times as much as had been done before. It reminds me of Amory Lovins’ thinking about energy use: that it’s just as easy or perhaps even easier to save 80 percent of your energy than to save 10 percent.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, People Helping People, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

    Since the Republicans have taken a few pages from the Saul Alinsky organizing playbook—Alinsky was the legendary Chicago community organizer who influenced Obama, known for such tactics as a fart-in—maybe it’s time for Barack Obama to ask himself “What would Alinsky do?

    What he wouldn’t do is capitulate. Alinksy would know, as Obama should know, that if he lets health reform die now, his entire agenda will be sunk in a quagmire of intransigence, lies, and loud, even violent public opposition. He will have no legacy beyond this point, and that would be a tragedy.

    Barack Obama, President should turn to the Barack Obama of the past: that community organizer and brilliant marketer who knows how to galvanize a crowd, frame an issue, and move the discourse.

    The Barack Obama who understood from Alinsky the impact a group of low-income could have when they move from disenfranchised, socially alienated aloneness with their troubles to a cohesive community group able to press the power structure. The Obama who was a contributing writer to a book called “After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.”

    THAT Barack Obama would not be talking about taking the public option off the table. Instead, he’d make a speech something like this:

    “Fellow Americans, for the past several months, we’ve been trying to move this health care system forward from the disastrous present where good solid working folks can’t afford to get treated, but healthcare executives live the high life. All we’re trying to do is create a system where health care is the right of every American, just as it is the right of the citizens of almost every other industrialized country in the world. But we are blocked at every turn. We’ve tried to meet them half way, and we have been rebuffed. We try to negotiate, to compromise. And instead, we’re shouted down, we’re lied to, and we’re faced with people who will not budge an inch because they want to protect their own perks.

    “We will not allow this little group of small-minded selfish liars to control the dialogue. We made a promise to make healthcare not only affordable but he guaranteed right of every American, and we’re going to keep this promise.

    “To get out of the stalemate, I am withdrawing the existing health reform legislation and replacing it with just one paragraph that everyone can understand, that can’t be misrepresented, and that will rapidly transform us to full universal coverage. I ask your wholehearted support of this clear and simple action plan. It uses the one part of our healthcare system that has been working, and working well, since 1964. It’s tested and proven.

    “As of one year from the passage of this legislation, the effective age of eligibility for Medicare shall be lowered to age 55. As of three years from passage, the eligibility for Medicare shall be age 35. And as of five years from passage, all citizens of the United States shall be eligible from birth. Companies now offering healthcare coverage to their employees shall continue to extend coverage until they are Medicare-eligible or until an employee takes a position with another company that offers equal or better coverage.

    “That’s it. Instead of hundreds of pages of confusing legal jargon, a single paragraph of enabling legislation to open the door to the right of healthcare for millions of Americans. Citizens of America, this is your birthright.

    “I will introduce this legislation every year that I am in office, until it passes. And I will work with you to organize, community by community, until your Senators and Representatives, whether Democrat, Republican or independent, support this bill or are replaced by those who do.”

    Let’s see this speech on every network, every blog, every radio show, and in every newspaper in the country. Delivered, as he surrounds himself on stage with the victims of today’s healthcare policy madness: those who can’t get treatment, get the wrong treatment, are marginalized or even see family members die because of the cost-first, profit-only, single-bottom-line narrow-mindedness of today’s system.

    In 1979-80, Shel Horowitz advocated for single-payer healthcare as a staff organizer for the Gray Panthers of Brooklyn. His eight books include Apex Award winner Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

    Source for the “fart-in story and Obama’s book contribution: Bill Dedman, “Reading Hillary Rodham’s hidden thesis,” https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17388372

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun Tagged with , , ,

    While you’re reading this, I’m on my way back from the California desert. I’m actually writing it before I depart, from my home in Massachusetts where there’s plenty of water. But going to the desert, where water is taken for granted, always makes me reflect on how profligate we are with water, and how sorry we’ll be about that a couple of decades down the road.

    Yes, I believe that within my children’s lifetime, the price of water will soar, its availability will decrease, and we’ll have a serious resource crisis. Actually more serious than the oil crisis. There are plenty of energy substitutes for oil; we can easily generate the power we need from clean, renewable sources: sun, wind, water, and especially a complete rethinking of what is possible in the way of energy conservation. Reading people like Amory Lovins makes me aware that as a society, we could easily reduce our energy consumption by 80 percent or so, without any negative impact on quality of life.

    Water is not nearly as replaceable as oil. Human beings, other animals, and all the plants we rely on directly or indirectly for food need sources of clean water, and the supply is not infinite. So it’s incumbent on us not to squander the good water we have, through waste or pollution.

    The good news: like oil, water use could be sharply curtailed without any negative impact on lifestyle. I estimate that I probably use no more than 1/10 as much water as the average American–and I’ve met people who use 1/10 as much as I do. I’m not suggesting you collect buckets of rainwater and use them to flush your toilet, as one woman I talked to recently is doing. But I do suggest you look at the obvious places where you’re running water harder and longer than you need to.

    Here’s one simple, totally painless example: if you’re like most Americans, when you brush your teeth, you turn the water on (often full-force) and let it run for three minutes or so while you brush. When I brush my teeth, I do it like this: Wet the toothbrush with a small trickle of water, and then turn the water off! Turn it back on to rinse the toothpaste off the brush at the end. So instead of several gallons each time, I consume a couple of ounces of water.

    Want to know more? 28 of the 111 conservation tips (yeah, I snuck in a bonus tip) in my e-book, Painless Green: 110 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle, are about saving water.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People Tagged with , , , ,

    Readers of my various books will know I’m a fan of alternative locally-based currencies. Here’s a twist: A shopping center in Reno is sending street teams out all over Reno to spot acts of kindness, and reward them with “Karma Cards,” redeemable at the shopping center.

    Two extra things worth noting:

  • The retail complex is partnering with at least seven nonprofits
  • Anyone receiving the card not only gets store credit but is entered in a drawing for a $3000 grand prize

    • Sweet! The campaign is only six weeks long. Maybe it’ll be so successful, they’ll continue it.

    Thanks to Reno resident Jacqueline Church Simonds for sharing this.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Uncategorized Tagged with , ,

    I think this is soooo cool! Bicycles are already an incredibly liberating, essentially nonpolluting technology. Now someone in Africa has found a way to use native bamboo as a bicycle-building material. Sustainable, renewable, widely available, and with potentially an enormous impact.

    How great would it be if this were widely adopted?

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