An airline lobbyist testified at a federal hearing in March that changing the policy would create “confusion and frustration” and that there have been “very few complaints” about the extra costs for bags. The same lobbying group told the Department of Transportation that the government had no data to “demonstrate substantial harm” to passengers.
To put this quote in context, click the link above and scroll to the paragraph beginning “Falling prices for travel and for the foods usually on a Thanksgiving table are news the White House is celebrating.” Continue reading through “The authors say that the new organization will provide a conservative voice for democracy and that they hope to work with much more deeply established progressive voices.”
I can draw two opposing conclusions from this quote. Either…
This clueless lobbyist is completely oblivious to public opinion and has never been introduced to the concept of evidence-based research, or
This is a highly skilled strategic lobbyist attempting to deflect public anger and potential government regulation by pretending this massive problem doesn’t exist.
I have a clear sense of which I believe is true—but I’m not committing to it publicly because it might get me sued. You can draw your own inferences.
As it happened, I flew early Saturday morning from Boston to Minneapolis. And I observed that the airline officials were a bit panicky about getting all the carry-ons into the overhead bins. So much so that not only did we get offered a free upgrade to checked bag as we printed our boarding passes, they were making repeated announcements in the gate lobby and actually asking people as they boarded if they wanted one more chance to check their carry-on at no charge. And we were quite willing to take them up on it, sacrificing 15 minutes after the flight to avoid wheeling our bags all through the airport and lifting them above our heads to get them in and out of the overhead compartments.
I have seen this offer made repeatedly when I fly airlines that charge for stored baggage. What I draw from this is that plenty of people are angry about hidden charges and unwilling to pay the fees, so there are far more carry-on bags competing for space than in the days before baggage fees (especially since experienced travelers know that there will often be a free upgrade if the plane is crowded—and if it’s not crowded, there’s no problem using the overhead bin). Rather than expressing anger by not flying, customers simply boycott paid checked baggage—or, if their itinerary matches the traveler’s need, choose to fly airlines like Southwest and JetBlue that don’t charge for a checked bag or two. Millions of travelers are voting with their feet (or maybe their shoulder muscles).
My personal preference is to fly those carriers, but my higher priority is nonstop flights at reasonable times, so I sometimes fly the carriers that charge—and simply pack everything into my carry-on and leave home any items on the banned list. I once flew a no-frills airline that charged for everything they could to sit in its rock-hard, uncomfortable seats. As far as I’m concerned, a plane ticket should include such basics as getting a pre-assigned seat (except if nobody has one, as on Southwest). Flying that no-frills carrier felt like renting a car with no seat cushion and being charged extra for the steering wheel. I never flew them or any similar carrier again.
And years ago, in my own consulting and writing business, I switched from breaking out certain pieces that almost everyone wanted to including them.
As an example, I used to charge for keeping an electronic copy of certain client projects on my hard drive. Now, I email their documents to them AND maintain a copy on my system. And if a client loses the file, I don’t charge to resend it.
How do YOU feel about hidden charges? Please leave a note in the comments about whether you prefer to know the full price for what you need or whether you prefer different pieces added on separately.
PS: The O in the headline is not a typo. It’s a different word than “Oh” and is often used in formal or ancient texts (including the Bible and the Qu’ran) to draw the attention of the person being addressed.
Here’s the secret, buried in technobabble within this report written by an engineer at Google: the monopolists have already lost! You don’t have to understand all the jargon to get the point: Today’s chat universe is already out from under the grip of corporate control. And it isn’t going back into the box. The report compares Google with Open AI (a major for-profit competitor and the creator of ChatGPT) and with new open-source chat and AI (artificial intelligence) tools. The report concludes that the open source tools are faster, more nimble, and much faster to deploy and train, despite far less access to resources than projects at companies like Google and Microsoft:
Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable. They are doing things with $100 and 13B params [13 billion parameters] that we struggle with at $10M and 540B. And they are doing so in weeks, not months.
This has enormous ramifications in every aspect of society. Private profit will not be a driver toward centralization of control and limiting who can play. And that will drive enormous innovation, in ways that I at least can’t yet imagine, let alone describe. Some of it will be monetizable, just as Red Hat monetized an open source operating system (Linux) and Google has monetized its no-charge search engine. But almost none of it will be controllable.
TED Talks were once available only to attenders at the organization’s pricy conferences. But then they decided to open up the content, online, at no charge. This was so successful that TED Talks (and later, TEDx Talks all around the world) became integrated into the wider culture, democratizing the spread of world-changing ideas.
Where might it take us next? I’m not a futurist and I won’t get super-specific, but I do see a few general trends likely to arise from this:
Just as TV and Internet have converged, so will AI and 3D printing: a combination that will revolutionize tangible goods with innovations in design, manufacturing, and localization
AI could lead to the next miniaturization revolution, making it easier to do things like holographically project keyboards and maybe even monitors that make it possible to use watch-sized computers and phones a lot more easily
With the right protocols in place, AI could do a lot of basic research and interpretation of the data o that students could concentrate on learning concepts and following them down unexpected paths to create new concepts–OR, without those protocols, it could be used to reduce learning to something meaningless
In a perfect world–and we can help it become more perfect–AI can help us understand and solve our most pressing problems. It could turn us from linear to circular resource use, where every output becomes not waste, but something a different process could use. It could redistribute food, housing, and shelter (and other resources) so everyone has enough and no one has 5 million times too much, using only natural materials, generating zero waste, using zero net energy, and creating zero pollution.
Regardless of how it turns out, expect any sector you’re in–for example, agriculture, manufacturing, distribution, transportation, services, tech, creative arts, nonprofit, academia, government, military, or whatever–expect your world to turn upside down.
Chris Brogan borrowed an idea from James Altucher: “Write a list of ten things every day. They can be 10 anythings. Ten terrible dates. Ten places to visit. Ten desserts I want to eat this year. Whatever.”
I won’t commit to making a list daily, but I was inspired to create these two after reading Chris’s post (which includes several samples of his own lists).
World Issues
Help figure out how the 30-40% of food that’s wasted can instead be rechanneled to feed those who are starving–and help that get implemented (perhaps this is a place I can target my speaking; see Personal Goal #2, below)
Help amplify the voices of those better qualified than I am to show countries how to solve disputes without going to war
Help build more bridges between/among Left and Right/”woke” and “non-woke”/Muslims and Jews and Christians, etc.
Corollary #1 to #3: Explore and amplify alternatives to counterproductive communication styles: calling-in instead of calling out, respect and listening while searching for common ground instead of shaming
Corollary #2 to #3: Help people to understand that they are not stuck–that just because they have been caught in bad patterns doesn’t mean they are trapped there forever
Continue to demonstrate that baking environmental and social justice directly into companies’ products, services, and mindsets can be highly profitable–find ways for this idea to gain much more traction in the mainstream business world (without having to join that world)
Expose more companies to principles such as biomimicry, multiple function, and circular economy so that they can better understand the financial benefits of deep reimagining, deep re-invention, and regenerativity
Show companies that solving these big problems while increasing profitability requires a mixture of Great Leaps and Kaizen, different in different situations–and that they can do both at once
Corollary to #5: Bring the holistic and systemic analysis that helps determine the right solutions in the right situations, and recommend implementation strategies
Help change mindsets from despair to active, participatory hope: helping everyone I meet understand that he/she/they have the power to effect meaningful change, in their own lives AND in the wider world. Show how ordinary people (usually working with others) have created movements that changed history.
Personal Issues
Probe, discover, and overcome whatever internal barriers are still preventing me from achieving at a higher level–both in terms of impact and revenue–made good progress on this but clearly still have work to do
Book more speaking gigs that pay a fee, whether virtual or live-stage or hybrid–especially international speaking that allows me to explore more parts of the world
Land two or three new long-term consulting clients in the profitable social/environmental justice part of my business
Find steady, decently-paying markets for articles or other types of content, as I had before
Create the right offer for more readers/viewers/listeners to engage with me and come into my orbit
Implement more of the enormous amount of good advice I’ve been given over the past few years
Pick one of the several projects I’ve been tossing around, start it and run it: launch the retreat, the course, the pay-to-participate mastermind/mentoring group OR (not and) the resume-method licensing program
Address issues of fatigue and focus, including lack of motivation, lack of follow-through, and more
Keep up with the torrent of email, LI and FB messages, etc. and figure out a way to spot and respond to the important ones
Continue to be a force in my grandson’s life, even if his parents move out of the area
And what are yours?
Please feel welcome to comment with some of your own goal lists. You don’t need ten things. Even one or two. And yes, you can share a whole list of ten if you want to. Just keep in mind that comments will be moderated and abusive or spammy ones will be removed.
I spend a fair bit of time meeting with “practical visionaries.” I think you’ll enjoy these excerpts from the conversation I had with one of them this week. Tom Nodine managed to leapfrog from a typical insurance consultant to someone who is always thinking about how to extend both the length and the quality of human life. Now, he works with life insurance companies, who of course have a vested interest in longevity.
Our conversation touched on a whole range of topics starting with how switching to renewable energy can increase lifespan (which he’d asked about on the networking call where we met earlier in the month).
How Green Energy Can Increase Life Expectancy
Shel: I realized you didn’t get a great answer when you posed, repeatedly, your question about energy issues and life expansion on the call with Bill.
So I figured I would give my take on it. I don’t see myself as exactly an expert in that, although I’m kind of an expert in basic wide-ranging, holistic sustainability and regenerative. I don’t usually get down in dirty with specifics very much.
Number one. When you move to green energy to eliminate, not all, but many of the toxic work environments in the industry, the energy industry, such as coal mining, such as working in an oil refinery. Of course, you still have the issues with solar and wind. They certainly have impact in their construction and in their use of mineral resources and that sort of thing. So mining is something that’s still very much an issue. If you dig out lithium from somewhere.
Tom: I saw Greta Thunberg got towed away this morning. She was demonstrating against a Wind farm. So to your point. Wind apparently has some anti green aspects to it, as well.
Shel: Oh, it does! The birds are not very happy with our shift to wind, and right rightly so, and we need to figure out some way of letting the birds know. You know, “Danger, Will Robinson!” Warning. Don’t cross into that lane, beep, beep. But we don’t speak Bird well enough to have made that happen, I think. and then, of course, there’s like, you know, 8,000 bird languages that you’d have to master. There’s a challenge for chat GPT, yeah, so that’s one piece. Another piece is that the life expectancy expansion of the user is going to be much higher.
I have a gas stove right now, and I’ve been thinking that it may be time to see if we can convert that to an induction cooktop or something, because now that I’m in my sixties, I seem to be much more sensitive to the fumes from that stove than I was 20 years ago.
Tom: So you say, life expectancy of the user is higher?
Shel: Yeah, because there’s no toxic fumes involved.
Tom: Oh, user of an induction stoves. That sort of thing.
Shel: Versus a gas stove. Yeah. Now, of course, you have to look holistically.
Tom: Yep.
Shel: And you have to see, okay, where is the electricity coming for that stove? If it’s coming from a nuclear power plant or a coal fired fire plant, you’ve not made any progress except that you personally aren’t exposed to the fumes. So that’s that’s maybe the beginning of the answer.
Tom: Oh, thank you, that’s helpful. And do you mind if I ask you an even more broad question, because I know you, you focus at the in the broad space at the top level? What do you think of the notion of tying corporate activities to human life expectancy?
Shel: I think it’s a great idea. It very much dovetails with the work I’ve been doing to tie them into green and social change, and—
Tom: That has been my hope. My reaction to it, or the reason I did it is, I realized, that this seems to be a very fundamental thing that no one seems to be looking at, and I would imagine that perhaps implicitly behind almost everything.The majority of green activities as well, what we’re trying to do is help ourselves and other species to live longer.
Shel: In a broad context, yes. And if the earth lives longer, then the creatures on it live longer.
Tom: Right, exactly. And again, whether or not there’s carbon in the atmosphere, as George Carlin basically called out, you know the earth doesn’t care. It’s the people that are alive on the earth that care.
Tom: Exactly. Okay, and do you in any way find it threatening to greens or competing with greens or dysfunctional? Because I don’t! Last thing I want to do is distract from what I think is very, very solid and appropriate green activities, which I strongly support.
Why You Can’t Lump All Greens Together—And A Style Difference with Greta Thunberg
Shel: Okay. Well, first of all, you have to look at the greens as a category the way you would look at, say, the Christians, what does a Unitarian have in common with a Bible-thumping Baptist fundamentalist, not much—
Tom: Oh, I would say they both want to live longer.
Shel: Maybe, maybe not. Some of those millennialists, they’re waiting for the Rapture.
Tom: Yeah, you’re right. But moment by moment, I promise you they want to live longer.
Shel: But you know you have Greta protesting against wind power on one extreme.She is not going to be a convert to your way of thinking, no matter what you do. She’s an absolutist, and absolutely won’t compromise and probably would be a pain to work with. I have enormous respect for which she’s done, but I also recognize that she has a very limited worldview. She was 16 when she started. She’s probably 21 now, so there’s a lot more wisdom that will likely work its way down at some point. I mean, I see it in my own kid. I had a very, very strident younger child, who is now, at age 30, considerably less strident.
Tom: The world has a way of teaching us all, doesn’t it?
Shel: Yeah. And I was when I was that age, I was totally strident.
Tom: Yeah. If you don’t mind my complimenting you…
Shel: Go ahead.
Tom: You’ve done a lot over the years, you know. I’ve loved I’ve looked at the books that you’ve written from your first book on smoking way back, when which, by the way, is something that early on, I felt strongly about as well—
Shel: Oh, you really have gone back! That was 1980.
Tom: To Principled Profit. And all that you’re doing now on Guerrilla Green Marketing and Grassroots Marketing, and all that sort of stuff. It does kind of seem like there’s a trajectory that you have gone on the same dimension.
Shel: Yeah, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World is my tenth book. And the fourth in a series that started in 2003 with Principled Profit on business ethics, environmentalism, and social justice as business success strategies—as profitable enterprises.
Tom: That’s great. I mean, I love that stuff, and I haven’t read the books yet, anyway. But I think I get the gist of it.
Shel: Yeah, well, this would be the one to read. Most of what’s in the three leading up to this one is are in Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. Grassroots Marketing and Marketing without Megabucks, and my way early self-published book on marketing, are all kind of Marketing 101 books. How to write a press release, how to use good triggers in your ad copy, and that sort of thing. And they’re also all pretty old at this point.
Should Tom Publish a Book or Focus on Youtube?
Tom: Yeah, yeah. Well, do you mind if I ask you? How have you found the publishing route for your overall impact for your consulting business? For your life? Are you happy you did it?
Shel: Okay, I’m definitely happy I did it. But as far as material success, stemming directly from publication? Doesn’t happen. There’ll be 5 books a year where the authors can really kind of live off what they’re making. Maybe 50, not anywhere near the millions of books that are seeing print all the time, and but what it does when you have even one book, and I have 10.
Tom: Yeah.
Shel: You are taken seriously when you invite yourself to speak at conferences, you are taken seriously when your clients look you up on Google or prospects, you have an easier time getting meetings with important people. So if you see it as a 300-page-long business card, it’s a great, and and I actually a lot of my work is in the area of taking would-be authors, and making them successfully published authors, which is a long and involved and many-step process, and which I definitely recommend people not to on their own, because it is a mine field if you don’t know what you do.
Tom: Yeah, I started out with a topic of basically looking at technology, and how they’ll impact human life expectancy. And at the result of kind of a 2 year effort of interviewing experts on all this, and working with actuaries. And all this came to the conclusion that we’re all going to be living 10 years longer within the next 20 years. The average global life expectancy will go up pretty dramatically and not be talking about this. And so I actually figured, I really want to understand it. And so I wrote a book called Dead Reckoning that’s all about this and that book turned out to be, oh, 900 pages that I then cut down to 300 pages, and even then I realized, no one’s going to read this these days.
Shel: Wow!
Tom: It would have taken me well over a year to get it through a publisher. And at the end of it all, only a few people would read it. And so instead, I decided to go with a series of Youtube videos. And I don’t know whether that was a good decision or a bad decision. I mean, so far, one of my videos, the one on genetic and epigenetic testing I’ve got, 3,000 or so views on it. It’s not nothing. But you know Edward Sheeran has nothing to fear from me, for sure, and so I’m thinking that although I could publish it in a book, are videos a better way to go.
Shel: Well, I want you to think of this as a both-and, and not an either-or. There’s absolutely nothing that prevents a video superstar on Youtube—let’s just say for the moment you become one—from doing a book. In fact, there’s synergy there, because you can tell the people who watch your Youtube channel, “hey, I’ve got a book coming out. It’s a great present for you to buy for other people.”
How Does Increasing Longevity Affect the Business World?
Shel: I find it really interesting that you come out of the insurance industry to this, because insurance will play longevity 2 ways. The life insurers are delighted because it delays the payout, but the health insurers the annuity people, the retirement people, are maybe not so happy because it lengthens the number of years they’re paying out.
Tom: Let let me refine that understanding. So you’re absolutely right on the life insurance side. The incentives are completely aligned. You know they want people to live longer, for sure, both financially and otherwise. And that is a huge opportunity, because insurers right now are challenged in their customer relationships, sometimes considered collectors of premiums? There’s such an opportunity to change what their company is about, by helping their customers to live longer. So that is one big thing on the health side, though kind of 2 points. Once again, you’re absolutely right that the annuity people are realizing that if people are going to be living longer, we’re going to be underwater really quickly.” On the health insurance side, though the economics, actually turned out to be the other way. If you can help people to live longer healthfully, it actually helps them reduce their claims. And also the technology offers the prospect for reducing medical costs over time, which has not happened over the past 75 years. Increasing technology has actually been one of the causes of increased health care costs.
Shel: Yeah, whenever a GP has to have a CAT scan [machine] in their office. That’s expensive.
Tom: Exactly. CAT scans alone involved brillions of dollars. It’s ridiculous. So completely agree that that’s been the past. But there’s reason to believe that that may not be the future. So, anyway, yes, and it is a little bit odd that I came from the insurance industry. I mean, I spent years in innovation, in insurance, and looked at all kinds of things from driverless cars to artificial intelligence And, worked for Allstate doing all that, and it was great. But when I realized there’s new technologies like genetics, epigenetic tests, and other things that are coming down the pike that can really impact life expectancy, it kind of seems irrelevant to me thinking about driverless cars when there was something so much more germane for humanity to focus on, and so decided to really go in that direction.
Can’t Humans Just Relocate to Other Planets?
Shel: Yeah, well, it’s a big leap for somebody with your background because insurance people tend to be very narrowly focused, not seeing so much the big picture. And here you’re not only seeing the global big picture you’re seeing kind of a universal big picture, and I’ll just put my foot in my mouth, maybe, and speculate that you have at least explored what it might be like to start colonizing other planets.
Tom: I’m sorry. Say that once again.
Shel: You have at least explored the idea of what it might be like to have human colonies on other planets, even if it’s just by reading science fiction.
Tom: Absolutely. I’ve explored that idea and while I’m in favor of the space program, I’m not a fan of the idea of moving to Mars.
Shel: Yeah. Well, better to fix the planet we have, I think. But.
Tom: How badly would we have to screw up this planet before Mars or the moon becomes a better place for us to live.
Shel: Yeah, a barren rock with no atmosphere is not exactly my ideal.
Tom: Exactly. And I actually agree with those who say that holding Mars out as an alternative is really quite dysfunctional if it causes people to think credibly, which they shouldn’t, that there is an alternative to here.
Shel: Yeah, what is interesting to me about the whole space endeavor—and I actually, when NASA thought they were going to send a journalist to space, I wanted to be that journalist—what interests me is the way space travel could expand our horizons about what’s out there. Perhaps break down, not just the human-to-human xenophobia, but human-to-whatever-is-out-there xenophobia. When I first started reading science fiction, most of the books I read were very dystopian about all the invaders are coming with their lasers and they’re going to wipe us out. And then there was one book that I came across as a very early teenager, I don’t know, 13, 12, something like that. I don’t remember the name.
Shel: I think the author’s first name was Jack, where the aliens were treated as a gift, almost as like here’s how we can improve our species. [NOTE FROM SHEL: As I was editing the transcript, I remembered that it was Jack Williamson. I still don’t remember the title, and he was a prolific author.] Here’s how we can improve our communication, people that we can learn from who don’t happen to look like human bodies. And that was really kind of a revelatory book for me. I wish I remembered the author and the title, so I could recommend it to people, but since then I’ve come across many others with that worldview.
Tom: Hmm, well, I agree with your thesis. I mean taking a galactic perspective can only enhance our understanding of who we are, and therefore what we should do.
Shel: Yeah, okay. Yeah. But that doesn’t give us the license to say, Okay, we can just destroy the earth and go someplace, else.
How This Conversation might Lead to Collaboration
Tom: Exactly, exactly, exactly… And more broadly, Shel, I’m pleased to meet you. I sense that we are kindred spirits in thinking broadly about how business can impact our world, impact our lives and would welcome your collaboration, as I mentioned in the call. I really would like to be able to build a bridge between what I’ll call green activities and life extend activities, because I think that we’re moving in in much the same direction.
Shel: Yeah, and I think that that synergy is there. For some of the reasons I talked about at the very beginning of this call…
The Marriage of Science and Spirit in the Study of Evolution
Shel: And I’m actually reading a book right now that I think might be germane to this conversation and it’s another Chicago guy named Perry Marshall, and he wrote a book called Evolution, 2.0. And he talks a lot about epigenetic. He’s from what he calls a Young Earth Creationist Christian background, which is to say, I think, literal interpretation of the 7 days of creation—so raised not to believe in evolution at all, but with a tech background. He was an electrical engineer working on audio systems before he became a marketer. He kind of invented Google Adwords marketing the way we know it today.
Shel: And then he wrote a really impressive book that I reviewed several years ago, called 80/20 Sales and Marketing and it was all about the Pareto Principle. And his basic insight on that book which was worth the other 200 pages to go through was that the 80/20 is fractal. So you take your well performing 20% and you rinse and repeat, and then you take 20% of that 20%. You iterate that 5 or 6 times, and you have a super power.
Tom: Yeah, got it. Thank you very much. I’ll give Perry Marshall a look.
Shel: So the evolution book, which I’m about halfway through, the first half, which is a part I’ve just finished, is basically proving that evolution is not random noise or accidents. And I totally agree with him that you do not fix the system by introducing things that don’t work into it. But now he’s got to convince me that the Creator that he sees at the beginning of this is real, and that’s going to be a harder self for me, because my question is always going to be to him: Okay. So if there is an intelligent designer who put this entity there, how did it come about? Because somewhere along the way there has to be a first point.
Tom: Well, Shel, should you be interested in knowing my thoughts on this topic—you might, you might not—but I have thought rather deeply about it in technology and biology. It has led me to a very interesting place.
Shel: Sure. Go ahead!
Tom: I think in my Youtube videos, there’s one called is Evolving. And it basically goes through how, in fact, evolution is evolving very quickly to be more and more what’s called volitional evolution, where we, as humans are choosing the course of our evolution and the evolution of other species.
Shel: That goes back at least to plant hybridization, 3,000 years ago.
Tom: Absolutely, and is only accentuated now that we’re gaining capabilities and genetic engineering. So it’s it’s really a very interesting thing. So anyway, I’d also be personally interested if you have any views regarding the video channel. And you know the look and feel of the the videos we’re putting out.
Shel: Okay, I haven’t watched yet, but I will start with that one.
Tom: That’s kind of you. Thank you. It’s it’s called the Human Life Expectancy Channel on Youtube. And we put something out every week, and we’ll do until at least June, because we’ve got them produced already. There’s also another one there on energy technologies and how energy technologies might well impact human life expectancy, there’s others I’ve created but not yet published on restructuring the food chain, which, of course, is a big part of both greenness and human life expectancy, getting clean water to people and new water technologies, new transportation technologies, and all the things all those are coming up soon.
How Virtual Meetings Help the Planet
Shel: To interface this with the huge acceleration in the last 3 years in non-person-to-person/face-to-face, contacts such as we’re doing right now [online meetings].
Tom: Absolutely. Let’s hope that it cuts down on senseless carbon emissions from business travel.
Shel: Hopefully. Yeah. And I think the senseless carbon emissions from computer networks are going to be a lot lower number.
Tom: I’m sure that they will.
Shel: It’s not an insignificant number.
Tom: No, it’s not nothing, but it’s better, definitely, better.
Shel: It’s way better. Yeah. So if it’s my guess is, it’s probably a savings of roughly 90, 95% of the energy involved in moving people to meetings.
Tom: Yeah, that’s great. Well, Shel, I mean, is there anything you can imagine that I might be able to do for you? Connect?
Shel: I’m sure there is. I don’t yet have a handle on what that might be, and well, one thing actually is, I’m always looking for clients who want to build more social equity, capital and environmental capital into the core of their businesses that can be made to see that—again, into both-and, that you can have a business that is both doing right by the world, and a profitable business, and that you can build it into the core of the business, into all its products and services. If you if you haven’t yet watched my TEDx talk, I would say that’s a good 15-minute summary of what I’m talking about…
And I’m thinking, in the work you do, you might very well find that when you’re talking to insurers, for example, insurers will know of people who really want to do this and insurers can lower their costs. Also by backing companies that are not destructive to the environment and that are actually advancing social justice. And I’m talking when I say social justice, I’m talking about things like hunger, poverty, racism, climate change, war—“little easy things to fix.”
[Tom chuckles]
Shel: But with the exception of the recognition of climate change as a big problem, which is quite recent, only 150 years or so, all of those things have been with us since there were humans.
Tom: Or minus 5 years, depending upon who you’re talking about.
Shel: Well, the scientific consensus is there. There are the people who feed on stupid, untrue quote, news, unquote. You know, they’ve also been with us since the beginning of time. I think there are examples of propaganda in the Old Testament, if I remember correctly. There’s also that wonderful argument that Abraham has with God about if there are 100 good people, 50 people, 10 people, one person, will you save the village? So that’s essentially public relations. Maybe the first recorded public relations writing.
Tom: Cool, although I’ll bet it was a problem way before that.
Shel: Oh, I’m sure it was. That’s just the first documentation we have.
Tom: It’s it’s a rather universal human thing. I think.
Shel: Yeah, but it’s interesting, because the Old Testament—and I’m not a particularly religious person, I see myself as spiritual, and I certainly believe there are entities out there that are bigger than humans, and in their capabilities—and communicate with them regularly. But the Old Testament also has the first instance I’m aware of documenting nonviolent civil disobedience, which is what I see as the primary level lever for social change. Not civil disobedience, but nonviolent resistance in general, it doesn’t necessarily have to be civil disobedience. You have this very interesting scene where Pharaoh was telling the midwives for the Hebrews go out and kill the male babies, and they come back and say, “we’re so sorry they have babies so fast we can’t get there in time.” That’s, as far as I know, the first time that anybody talked back to a Supreme Ruler and got away with it and and changed the outcome.
Tom: So are these early examples of guerrilla marketing?
Shel: Well, yeah, I would say, yeah, marketing of the social change movement.Both the cases. Yeah. Abraham was definitely being a guerrilla marketer in his argument about how many souls were viable to save a city. And the midwives Shifra and Puah were definitely using a guerrilla approach. I don’t know if you could call it marketing.
Tom: Okay. Fair enough. Well, Shel, thank you very much. I really appreciate getting to know you better, and I appreciate you taking the time to get to know me a little better, too. I will definitely do the things you recommend. I will order your Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World book and read it also look at Perry Marshall’s book and look at your TED Talk, which I haven’t yet done but would be happy to do.
Shel: Great. On the Going Beyond Sustainability site, you’ll find on the book page, there are links to a number of places to order it. One of them is me. In that way, you can get an autographed copy if you want one and another is IndyBound, which will hook you up with whatever independent bookstore you like to use.
Tom: So Amazon will not get me to Guerrilla Marketing?
Shel: Amazon will, but I prefer the people send their money to local bookstores, independents, rather than the one that’s trying to drive them all out of business.
Tom: Fine, I’m happy to do that, too. I don’t suppose you mentioned you as a possibility. Okay, is there any chance I can order one directly right now?
Shel: Sure. Let me get my cell phone, and I can take your credit card information.
[transaction details removed]
How to Find Shel’s and Tom’s Videos
Tom: In the meantime, I presume I can find your TED talk by just going to TED Talks and typing in your name?
Shel: It’s actually easier to go on my speaking page and find it there, because it is on the TED site but it’s really hard to find there. It’s not indexed, for some reason.
Tom: Okay. Can you send me a link to your speaking page?
Shel: Absolutely.
Tom: Please do. And in the meantime, yes, if you would kindly take a look at the human life expectancy channel, if you can, if if you’re so inclined, it would be great if you could subscribe to that, so you’ll get to see the new, videos as they come out and even more importantly, share whatever thoughts you might have. And, by the way, the negative thoughts are probably the more valuable.
Shel: Okay. I’ll open that up on my browser.
Tom: So if you could say, Hey, Tom, you are jumping off of a cliff here, don’t do this, or you know that sort of stuff. That’s the kind of feedback that I actually most need, and would appreciate at this point.
Shel: Yeah. And similarly, if you see any big holes to poke in my TEDx, please let me know.
Tom: Well, I gotta believe people have been poking if they’re going to poke since 2014. So I don’t know if I’m going to come up with anything new. But I’ll definitely look at it with interest.
Shel: Great. Cool and groovy. Well, this was fun, and you know there’s I think the ways that we might work together will evolve, using the word on purpose, over time.
Tom: Yeah, that’s great. That sounds great. Let’s do that and let’s just kinda be open to the opportunity.
Tom: But whatever case, real pleasure to meet you, Shel!
Tips on Booking a TEDx Talk
Shel: Likewise. And have you done a TEDx? You sound like you ought to have if you haven’t.
Tom: No, I have not I’d be wide open to it. But you know the opportunity hasn’t yet presented.
Shel: I don’t have any contacts for you. They’re all locally organized. But within Chicagoland, there’s probably at least 100 a year.
Tom: Yeah, I mean, that would be another great conversation if you’d be willing to have it. Which is how the heck do you get a TED Talk?
Shel: There are a couple of books out there [on getting a TED talk] that are not written by me that would be worth your while to read. I got mine by working with a local organizer and pitching her on various talks over a period of years. Right when I was starting to shift toward this work, she decided to organize an event, and I got in with a proposal. I already knew her. I’d been to a couple of the events she had produced. And I explained the overall concept and she said, “Yeah, let’s do that one.” So I don’t have any great secrets there except for persistence, and keep making—
Tom: The right person. Make the right pitch. If we’re modifying it. Right? Or finally finding out what pitch they’re looking for.
Shel: And TED talks don’t pay, by the way.
Tom: Oh, I had no expectation that they would, but they were—it’s possible that you could give me more advice on the find-the-right-person piece. Is all of that well-known? If I type in TEDx Chicago, am I going to find the contact and give her a call.
Shel: Probably, but you might have to play with your search query. I might do TEDx Illinois and TEDx Indiana, and just see what comes up. I mean, I imagine you’d be willing to drive 3, 4 hours to go give a TEDx and have that credential.
Tom: Of course.
Shel: So, yeah. Or TEDx near me. See what comes up. I don’t know how many are doing live events these days, and how many are doing virtual, or how many just folded their tents in the pandemic. But yeah, if this is sort of thing where you could get, you know, an intern or somebody in the Philippines to go do some research for you.
Tom: Yeah, thank you. I’ll look into that, too, because you’re right. I mean, I would love to do a TEDx, and I’ve certainly got a concept that’s broad enough and big enough to merit consideration.
Shel: And then the other thing I would say is, whenever one is convenient to you, go attend it, watch the sorts of things that work, and be also aware that if you get a gig that there’s significant time upfront because there’s coaching involved that is actually really helpful.
Tom: Yeah. Good.
Shel: Yeah, I mean, I’m a pretty experienced speaker, but I found that I benefited greatly from the coaching I got before my TEDx and before my Pecha Kucha, which is a different format where you have 20 slides in 6 minutes, 20 seconds each slide yeah, that’s one you—
Tom: Yikes. Yeah.
Shel: —don’t want to do without scripting. I normally speak off, not off-the-cuff, but I speak without a formal script, but for the TEDx and the Pecha Kucha, in order to fit the format, I scripted everything I was going to say.
Tom: Sounds great, thank you. Sure. I’ll look into that as well.
Shel: You’re welcome. All right!
Tom: Well, let’s keep in touch, and again look forward to hearing back from you. If you have any thoughts, and I suspect that, based on all I read, I may have a few things to come back to you with as well. Great, Shel.
Shel: Great.
Shel: All right! Thanks! Oh! And let me just grab the transcript before we exit, and I’ll send it to you.
This push says that pension funds must not be allowed to even consider any factors pertaining to ESG–Environmental, Social, Governance. It doesn’t say they have to make sure that ESG investments perform as well as non-ESG investments (which, often, they do). That would be a reasonable law to protect retiree pensions. But this one would bar fund managers from even considering anything involving ESG.
For decades, smart fund managers have been shifting investment toward ESG, and their reasons are fiscally sound. From avoiding corrosive investments in “stranded assets” like fossil-fuel or nuclear processing infrastructure that’s been plagues, by leaks, spills, explosions, etc. to avoiding ethics scandals that destroyed once-respected companies like Enron and Arthur Andersen, ESG investing makes so much sense that, as no less an authoritative source than NSDAQ notes,
The article goes on to list six factors in ESG investment growth and notes that even during the pandemic, “funds with ESG strategies outperformed traditional funds.2″ (Click the link to see the footnote sources, too.) This updates and reinforces the research I did when writing my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, a few years ago. Every single one of the dozens of studies I checked at that time showed that ESG criteria lead to better financial results.
Net flows into ESG funds available to U.S. investors have skyrocketed, totalling $20.6 billion in 2019, nearly four times the previous annual record set in 2018, [1] while ESG funds in Europe also attracted record inflows of $132 billion in 2019. [2]More than 70% of funds focused on ESG investments outperformed their counterparts in the first four months of 2020, [3] and nearly 60% of ESG funds outperformed the wider market over the past decade. [4]
One unintended consequence I haven’t seen addressed anywhere is the possibility of widespread rebellion by private investors that could put the whole pension system at risk, as stakeholders demand that funds embrace sensible, profit-driven ESG corporations in their portfolio choices while an inane law makes that commitment illegal.
I value the metaphor but want to talk about actual cars for a moment:
A client once gave me a ride in his Maserati. The thing that shocked me was how utterly silent it was at 60 mph. At that speed, it was about luxury, not power and noise–a Fast and Secure in your matrix. I think it would have been a different experience at 100+ mph.
I’ve generally favored utilitarian car choices–cheap, reliable, boring. Mostly Toyota Corollas (including the Chevy Nova Corolla clone of 1988). But twice, I’ve been the accidental owner of sport sedans–high-performance cars disguised as boring. I bought a used 1975 Fiat 131 four-door sedan in 1981 when I moved from the city to Western Massachusetts, because I didn’t know any better–and only found out that Fiats of that era were notoriously unreliable when it was already our headache. We bought it for $1500 as economy transportation.
Fiat 131 sedan: Clark Kent on the outside, Supercar in handling. Photo by by Bene Riobo via Wikipedia (Creative Commons)
It was unbelievably fun to drive–when it worked. We got the car at 65,000 miles, which is the prime of life for a Corolla. In the ~9000 miles/nine months we drove it, we had failures of the entire exhaust system, the entire brake system, even the bleeping steering column–and if it was cold, rainy, or snowy, we often needed a tow. We were young and broke, used to public transportation, and not prepared to be owning a money pit. We sold it as a parts car for $500 and were lucky to get it. The second was a 2004 Mazda 3 hatchback that we bought new, thinking of it as an economy car that was a little peppier than most. Turned out it only got 30 mpg. It was also really fun to drive, and reasonably reliable. I guess it would be a Hot Rod but with zero visual indication of high performance. We gave it to our kid in Metro Boston in 2018 when my stepfather was killed and we got his ultra-low-odometer Honda Fit, six years old, 14,000 miles, not at all fun to drive (underpowered even compared to a Corolla) but incredibly well-engineered for storage. Definitely in the Boring quadrant. We’re still driving it, along with a 2005 Corolla. Oddly enough, Raf only got about a year out of the Mazda, which started needing expensive repairs. But at least it was 15 years old when it started to go.
Do I regret trading fun-driving cars for reliable ones? Not at all. The genuine pleasure of ultra-responsive steering, braking, and acceleration was fun, but ultimately, for me, the purpose of a car is to get me someplace. Appreciating the engineering that made at least the Mazda both safe and fun was like visiting a friend who spent ten grand on a really good stereo system. I could take joy in the moment but didn’t feel a need to own it. We live relatively simply and spend more on travel than on material things.
But I certainly have my own areas where I will spend more to get significantly higher value. It was true when I spent $3K on a Mac in 1984, recognizing that the much shorter learning curve compared to a pre-Windows IBM PC was going to pay big dividends in my career as owner of a writing business–especially in being able to produce resume while-you-wait and know exactly what they’d look like before hitting the print button. And while I’ve found ways to keep the costs down, I stock our kitchen primarily with organic and local items instead of chemiculture frankenfoods shipped from far away.
So let me ask you: what luxuries do you value enough to pay significantly extra for, and why? My own two areas, as noted above, are both experience-based.
Travel
I love travel because (at least the way we do it), it gives us chances to experience the world differently–to see different perspectives, different approaches to common problems–kind of like looking across from your chosen career to what the standard procedures are in some completely unrelated career (and what lessons can be found there).
Travel, for me, often involves staying with locals. But even if I’m not doing homestays, when I travel, I make a point of finding ways to connect with local people. I take public transportation, shop at independent local markets, wander through ethnic neighborhoods, strike up conversations, eat in places frequented by locals, take guided walks led by rangers, historians, and naturalists, visit artisan workshops…I don’t spend much time in the classic tourist areas.
And the insights I’ve come away with include noticing that…
Iceland’s non-vehicle power needs are met almost entirely by renewable hydro and geothermal (even as far back as my 2011 visit).
Quito has a public transit system (that I’ve since seen several other places) that combines the advantages of buses and trains, using dedicated rights-of-way and raised boarding platforms (aligned with the bottom of the bus door) that require turnstile-entry so when the bus comes, it can board much faster because all the passengers have already paid and no one has to climb stairs.
Peru and Guatemala figured out intensive high-altitude agriculture many centuries ago, and the Incan and Mayan agronomists were as sophisticated as any modern research team.
In much of the developing world, reuse and recycling are so integrated into daily life that nothing is thrown away if it has an iota of value remaining.
Judaism–and thus the Christianity and Islam that derived from it–has enough parallels with Hinduism (other than the schism between monotheism and polytheism) that it tells us there were active trade routes between South Asia and the Middle East thousands of years ago.
Two visits to Israel and Palestine, 28 years apart, gave me the chance to gain much greater knowledge on the conflict, and how it might be healed in ways that felt just all around. My wife and I met with the founder of an Orthodox Jewish peace movement, a Palestinian-American blogger who taken had moved to Ramallah and become a Palestinian citizen despite the restrictions on his movement this entailed, a man born in the 1930s who clearly remembered his entire village being evicted from the place they’d lived for generations, even right-wing Israeli settlers.
All of these observations find their way into my world view–and my consulting practice.
Food I’m willing to spend considerably more money for a fabulous food experience. I’d much rather pay $20 for a memorable meal in a restaurant featuring local specialties than $4 for fast food that’s indistinguishable and unmemorable. I shop local and organic because it offers both superior taste and superior health and nutrition. I buy fair-trade chocolate and farm eggs because I can enjoy their wonderful taste–and also I enjoy knowing that I am NOT propping up a system based on child slavery (non-fair-trade chocolate) or animal cruelty (industrial eggs).
But I will also find bargains! One of my favorite meals in my life cost 75 cents and fed two of us: we were in the Mexican heartland, walking to a national park. We inhaled the aroma of fresh tortillas and stopped into the tortillarilla to buy half a kilo of still-warm corn tortillas. At the little neighborhood market, we found a large, perfectly ripe avocado. We took our finds to that park, sat under a giant poinsettia tree, and enjoyed a feast that I still remember as divine. This was way back in 1985 and burned into my memory, happily, for ever–one of many wonderful food memories I keep there.
And What About You? So, once again, I’ll ask you: what luxuries do you value enough to pay significantly extra for, and why? Please share in the comments.
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
An energy consultant I’ve known since high school raised a frustration he has in his work:
Sadly, the biggest problem is culture, Shel Horowitz. Building owners have a mentality in their culture, in their business dealings of loving the status quo. I can’t tell you how many times I have offered free energy audits, to give them information and tips to save money, and they turn it down. Free (no obligation). They just don’t want to know. I have been involved in many proposals for simple upgrades with numbers that show that this will help their bottomline ($$$), for solar panels or LED lights, and they say no. As long as money is flowing in, they don’t want to change. How do you get over that mindset?
And I responded,
You have to approach changing culture with the mentality of a marketer and organizer–this is what I do, and I’ve helped to change some cultures in my time. Think about what the world was like when you and I met in the early 1970s: Environmental consciousness was close to zero. Most families had never tried organic produce, or tofu, or even yogurt. War was still raging in Vietnam, and you could be drafted at 18 but had to be 21 to vote. South Africa and Rhodesia had rigid apartheid. Dictators were running things in places like Spain. All of these changed because organizers and marketers changed the culture. When I moved to my current town of Hadley, in 1998, the dominant paradigm was “You can’t change Town Hall.” 14 months later, our landscape was threatened and I launched Save the Mountain, and did so with mom-and-apple-pie messaging like “[developer’s name] has wildly underestimated the love the people of Hadley have for this mountain.” I knew we’d win, but I expected it to take five years. We did it in just 13 months!
It’s true that culture change is usually neither easy nor fast. But it DOES happen. Usually, it happens because people’s movements for change bubble up from the grassroots. Sometimes, technological shifts speed the process of change, turbocharge it. As one example, the widespread acceptance of clean energy had to do with technological shifts that made those choices economically as well as environmentally superior–but it was the widespread rejection of dangerous, polluting energy systems such as fossil and nuclear that created the momentum behind the technological growth and price drops/efficiency increases.
I would suggest to my old friend that his offers need to be phrased in terms of how they mitigate pain and add profit. Marketing to others’ self–interest in order to foster your own agenda of social and environmental progress is totally legitimate. And if the case is made properly, they will see that the cost of moving forward is lower, and the benefits higher, than the cost and benefits of keeping things as they are.
It is very unfortunate that the original developer didn’t get any guarantees that a buyer would maintain the fossil-free commitment written into the sale documents. Nonetheless, I think a creative and skilled attorney could make a number of different legal arguments that could force the developer to honor the agreement. Could the Environmental Defense Fund? perhaps take this on? It would be a great precedent to say that a community developed specifically as an eco-community could not then be put at the mercy of eco-hostile development.
As a non-lawyer, all I can do is speculate about the arguments a lawyer might use to block the conversion of the acquired parcels to fossil fuels (I have no idea if any of these would hold up in court and I am not presenting this as legal advice). Arguments could be made about such harms as
Introducing new health risks (especially to children)
Negative progress on climate that goes against International, US,Colorado, and neighborhood climate goals
Adverse possession (a doctrine that gives rights to squatters in certain circumstances)
The deliberate destruction of a cohesive intentional community
And of course, about consumers’ rights: this could clearly be seen as bait-and-switch: buying into a community with a stated purpose, and having that purpose violated, even shredded.
But the courts aren’t the only recourse. I do know something about organizing movements, and these neighbors should be organizing a movement. To list a few among many possibilities, they could be:
Organizing mass protests outside the developer’s office
Saturating the local paper with letters to the editor and op-eds
Enlisting allies in powerful environmental organizations, of which Colorado has no shortage
Protesting at the capital in Denver that their rights are being taken away
Contacting the press ahead of and after all of these events
Physically but nonviolently blocking attempts to connect the pipelines (note: this is illegal civil disobedience and participants might be subject to arrest)
Researching obscure laws that might provide tools that can successfully block the connection
Organizing boycotts and other public shamings of the developer
Plus, I really have to wonder what the developer is thinking. Eco-friendly homes are in high demand, can often sell for more than the price of comparable fossil-powered homes, and prove a skill set that many homeowners want. After all, people moved from other states just to participate in this community. And forcing eco-hostile housing development into an eco-friendly community is a recipe for public relations disaster and a bad, bad reputation.
Why not simply stop, think about the benefits of keeping this community identity, and use it as a marketing tool? That would make so much more sense than risking ongoing hostility, a ruined reputation and possibly much worse.
For decades, the rule has been “no politics nor religion in business.” That’s gone. If you say nothing or try to stay neutral, you’re voting. If a company takes money and does business with an organization a person doesn’t support, this might be grounds to do business elsewhere.
He’s absolutely right. If you don’t declare your values, the world assumes you support the status quo. And when the status quo is untenable, that choice is not good for business.
Have you been dithering about starting a blog? Blogging provides several advantages in your marketing, but a lot of people are scared off by the idea.
It’s not that hard. A no-cost tool called WordPress makes it easy.
WordPress dashboard showing the ribbon, file naming, and text-editing window
WordPress is a terrific platform. I have never heard of it not working on a site, though if your host company doesn’t support it, you’d need to do a manual installation (any web designer could help you with that). Most webhosts have one-click WordPress installation in their CPanels.
You do need to know some things about WP before you set up.
There is WordPress.com, which is hosted on THEIR servers, and WordPress.org, where your content is hosted on YOUR server (you don’t have to own your server–let your hosting company do that). You want .ORG, so you have full control over the content and cant be held hostage over it. Neither one charges money.
WordPress is a very simple shell that uses “themes” to determine the look and feel. There are thousands of themes out there, some at no cost and others for a fee. Find one you like that can incorporate your company branding, but play with it to see how easy it is to work. There are some that nest text inside Java routines as one example) and I have found it’s really tough to find the place I need to be to make minor edits.
Editing in WordPress is really easy, assuming you picked a theme that didn’t have the issue I just described. If you turn off the blocks feature, the interface is similar to Microsoft Word or GMail . So you don’t have to learn any HTML. Instead of using angle brackets to e.g. turn your text bold and then back to regular, you just highlight the text and click the B button in the formatting ribbon. You can see that ribbon at the top of the screenshot.
Find and install a few key plugins: a backup program so if WP utterly collapses, you still have your content; a file-namer that gives your posts a meaningful name taken from your headline (see where it says “Permalink” on the screenshot?), probably some others.
WordPress updates frequently, both to add function and to beef up security. Set yours up to automatically run the updater, but remember to check every now and then to see if you need to update your plugins. Updating is just a few clicks and very intuitive.
You have a choice every time you post new content: a post, which goes at the top of your blog (which posts in reverse chronological order so the newest is on top) or a page, which is part of your permanent website structure and can be organized with menus, etc. Posts can also be sorted by category, so your reader can see everything you’ve put in any particular category just by clicking on the category name. I find it very worth the extra few minutes to add categories, keyword tags (which help people find your post), a picture, and an excerpt.
Consider having a designer set up the site to begin with, making sure they know you want a theme that’s easy to edit posts, and then posting your own content from there.
