Category: Uncategorized

By Posted on Posted in language, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized Tagged with ,
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

Editor’s Note from Shel Horowitz: this was originally published on Seth’s blog under the title, Where Will the Media Take Us Next? I am a long-time reader and fan of author and teacher Seth’s daily blog (and thrilled that he gave me a terrific endorsement for my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World). I have often linked to his blog posts on Facebook, and sometimes corresponded with him. This one struck me as one I wanted to share on my own website. Used with his permission. And now, here’s Seth.

Where Will the Media Take Us, by Seth Godin

Since the first story was carved on a rock, media pundits have explained that they have simply given people what they want, reporting the best they can on what’s happening.
Cause (the culture, human activity, people’s desires) leads to effect (front page news).

In fact, it’s becoming ever more clear that the attention-seeking, profit-driven media industrial complex drives our culture even more than it reports on it.

Thoughtful people regularly bemoan our loss of civility, the rise of trolling and bullying and most of all, divisive behavior designed to rip people apart instead of moving us productively forward.

And at the very same time, reality TV gets ever better ratings. So much so that the news has become the longest-running, cheapest to produce and most corrosive TV show in history. Increase that exponentially by adding in the peer-to-peer reality show that is social media, and you can see what’s happening.

Imagine two classrooms, each filled with second graders.
In the first classroom, the teacher shines a spotlight on the bullies, the troublemakers and the fighters, going so far as to arrange all the chairs so that the students are watching them and cheering them on all day.

In the second classroom, the teacher establishes standards, acts as a damper on selfish outliers and celebrates the generous and productive kids in the classroom…

How will the classrooms diverge? Which one would you rather have your child enrolled in?

We’re not in elementary school anymore, and the media isn’t our teacher or our nanny. But the attention we pay to the electronic channels we click on consumes more of our day than we ever spent with Miss Binder in second grade. And that attention is corrosive. To us and to those around us.

The producers of reality TV know this. And they seek out more of it. When they can’t find it easily, they search harder. Because that’s their job.

It’s their job to amp up the reality show that is our culture.
But it’s not our job to buy into it. More than anything, profit-driven media needs our active participation in order to pay their bills.

It’s an asymmetrical game, with tons of behavioral research working against each of us–the uncoordinated but disaffected masses. Perhaps we can find the resolve to seek out the others, to connect and to organize in a direction that actually works.

The first step is to stop taking the bait. The second step is to say, “follow me.”

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, censorship, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Events, General Commentary, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

The LGBT Pride March in Northampton, Massachusetts has happened every May since 1982. Northampton, an artsy college town on the Connecticut River with a population under 30,000, has mostly been a haven for lesbians and gays (and more recently, for trans, bisexual, and gender-queer folks) for decades–but there were some major bumps along the road, such as the arrest of several gay male Smith College professors in 1960. Another bump occurred in 1983, as you’ll read below. And at one point someone tried to shut down the event because it was too big and the person tried to claim that the town was overwhelmed. But the March marches on.

I marched in the first Northampton Pride March, served on the organizing committee for the following three years (1983-85), and have marched every year I’ve not been traveling except for one year when a friend’s daughter was becoming Bat Mitzvah. I haven’t counted but it’s probably at least 32 of the 38 years.

The first year, there were about 500 of us, many covering their heads with paper bags for fear of retribution—and many others did their best to avoid cameras. We were met with a couple of thousand curious gawkers and maybe 100 very loud, very hostile counterprotestors from the local Baptist church. We considered it an enormous success. The next year, I think we had about 1000, and about 20 counterprotestors.

But later that year, a sitting at-large City Councilor ran for re-election, and won, on a platform of “I will stop the gay rights march.” Also around that same time, lesbian activists started receiving anonymous death threats over the phone. We demanded and received a mass meeting with the then-mayor and county District Attorney, where we demanded a statement condemning the violence. The mayor shilly-shallied around for an hour, until the DA, a quiet guy named Mike Ryan from an old Northampton family and someone with a strong passion for social justice, finally blurted out, “I’ll give you a statement.” Once he had cover from Mike, the mayor agreed as well. Eventually, someone was convicted for the harassing phone calls.

Pride Day kept growing from there, and after a few years, there were no more counterprotestors. In the 1990s, 10-12,000 was fairly typical, if I remember right. Then in the past few years it started to grow much larger.

The first several marches started at Bridge Street School and marched up Main Street to Pulaski Park. Later, as the crowds got too big for that little park, the direction was reversed. For many years now, it starts at a staging area in a big parking lot behind Main Street and heads down Main and Bridge to the 3-County Fairgrounds, which are enormous.

Part of the Elizabeth Warren contingent marches past the Northampton parking garage #Nohopride2019. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Part of the Elizabeth Warren contingent marches past the Northampton parking garage #Nohopride2019. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

This year, it didn’t even fit into the staging area and spread into several surrounding streets. By the time it reached the Fairgrounds, gathering up so many of the bystanders along the way, it took over an hour and a half for the whole march to pass by.

The Springfield paper estimated 35,000, but I think they were counting the march as it left the staging area. At least 10,000 waited for us along the whole length of Main Street, watched the parade go by, and then joined in. The Gazette said 30-40,000, and I think that higher number is more accurate.

Back in the early 1980s, we were considered curiosities, even in liberal Northampton. Even as recently as 1991, the first publication in the Gazette of a same-sex wedding announcement sparked an outrageous article in the National Enquirer headlined “Lesbianville, USA.”

But for a decade now, the contingents have included dozens of school groups from kindergarten through college, the occasional daycare center, banks, churches and synagogues, real estate agencies, hospitals…every type of business you can think of. People come with their kids, same- or different-sex partners (as usual, I was there with my wife, D. Dina Friedman), grandparents, pets…and homemade or store-bought rainbow apparel.

The first person I saw that I knew this year was Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz, who was officiating a wedding on stage at the rally that followed the march. He didn’t just show up to do his bit, but marched with the rest of us. He posed for a picture but my camera didn’t cooperate. But I snapped this unposed one while he was talking to someone (possibly State Senator Jo Comerford—I couldn’t tell from the back). Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse was also in attendance, as was former Northampton Mayor Mary Clare Higgins. Holyoke City Councilor and staffer for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential run Jossie Valentín organized the Warren contingent.

Those first years were about anger, vulnerability, and claiming our right to be part of the community. Now, it’s a celebration. Much less activism and much more a great big day-long party with the march, the rally, and various dances and cultural events in the evening. The hotels, restaurants, and retail businesses downtown are packed.

This is how far we’ve come! From fringe to totally normal. The legalization of same-sex marriage was certainly a factor in normalizing the LGBT community, but acceptance was permeating through the local culture long before that. I’m convinced that when someone from a conservative culture sits on e.g. a PTA committee with a same-sex parent, and they both realize they want basically the same things for their kids and their community, those barriers break down.

I’m proud that Northampton has been in the vanguard of this movement (a movement I first got involved with in 1973, before I ever heard of Northampton). While I haven’t lived within city borders since 1998 when I moved across the river to Hadley, it’s still my community, I’m there several times a week, and I can see it from the hill behind my house.

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By Posted on Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,
Artist sketch of the proposed energy wall along the border, published in Big Think

Wow, I found this fascinating idea on the Big Think website: a string of alternate energy facilities all along the US-Mexico border.

From the article on Big Think

Potentially, this could be a win-win for Democrats (clean energy, good jobs) and Republicans (border security).

However, it’s very rough and needs a lot of refining. Just on a quick glance, I had several questions:

  • How will it affect animal habitat as well as cross-border human friendship and commerce relationships (both put at severe risk by DT’s proposed wall)?
  • Who determines which side of the border gets all this new clean energy?
  • Can we do it WITHOUT the natural gas part–which has plenty of problems of its own?

What other issues come up, and how to we address them? Let’s start TALKING! I’d love to see some serious discussion of the merits or issues. And it would be great if some politicians join the discussion.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Corporate Social Responsibility, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

Do corporations treat innovation as a “virus”–a threat?Even a virus can look beautiful. Chanvge the perception of yur inovationn form a virus to a beautiful opportunity.

That’s the intriguing question Stowe Boyd asks in today’s newsletter. Along with Seth Godin, Stowe often helps me start my day.

Never Under-Estimate the Immune System | John Hagel warns us of the almost reflex rejection of new ideas by the innately conservative culture of organizations, and which may be the central weakness of organizations to the world of today:
Every large and successful institution has an immune system– a collection of individuals who are prepared to mobilize at the slightest sign of any “outside” ideas or people in order to ensure that these foreign bodies are neutralized and that the existing institution survives intact and can continue on course. Just like the immune system all organisms have, this institutional immune system is adept at recognizing foreign bodies as soon as they appear and very effective at protecting the institution from infection. It is in fact what has helped large institutions to survive – they are in fact “built to last.”
But here’s the paradox: the immune system that has given large institutions extraordinary resilience in the past may be the very thing that makes these institutions so vulnerable today.

I clicked through to the original article. Hagel continues:

In more stable times, institutional immune systems are very effective at keeping institutions focused and on course, resistant to the distractions that might lead to their downfall. In more rapidly changing and volatile signs, this same immune system can become deadly by resisting the very changes that are required for the survival of the institution…

I’ve been involved in large scale transformation efforts for decades now and there’s only one lesson that I really have to share from all that experience: never, ever under-estimate the power of the immune system of a large existing institution…

[W]e need to craft approaches to transformation that have the ability to respect the power of the immune system and find ways to minimize the risk that the immune system will mobilize to crush the transformation effort. [emphasis in original]

Pointing out that threat-based change increases resistance, Hagel lays out a detailed transformational change action map that positions change as an opportunity. It’s worth reading.

Progressives and environmentalists often try to motivate negatively: through guilt, shame, and fear. And as I think about it, I realize the Right also uses negative motivations, notably fear and greed. Both sides are Chicken Littles, screaming that the world will end. So the far-Left gets people sunk and worried that the world will end, while the far-Right gets people on a treadmill of hatred, xenophobia, etc.

Neither of these approaches create positive social change. But Hagel’s focus on showing the opportunities does.

Boyd focuses on workforce issues, Hagel apparently on organizational transformation. My own focus is on opportunities for transformational social/environmental change to intersect and overlap with business profitability. In my own work, I often talk about the need to motivate positively. I’ve spent the last five years demonstrating those opportunities. I show business how to identify/create/market profitable offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance–not through guilt, shame, and fear, but through enlightened organizational and personal self-interest. Thus, my speaking and writing focuses on building profitability through those social and environmental change products and services. A successful initiative:

  • Finds money in making the world better
  • Creates brand loyalty leading to repeat and ever-larger purchases
  • Encourages customers to spread the word about your good work, inspiring an army of unpaid brand ambassadors
  • Reduces operating costs and internal resource consumption (in keeping with Hagel’s challenge to avoid igniting the corporate immune system by minimizing new initiative’s need for resources )
  • And of course, actually does improve things for those suffering the consequences of crises like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change

Want to know more? Please visit https://goingbeyondsustainability.comFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

Let’s start with the last few days:

Now, a little history recap:

Two years ago, possibly the most corrupt, venal, and dishonest presidential candidate ever nominated by a major party managed to come up with an apparent majority in the Electoral College.

Forbes leads 13mm Google results on DT bullying (screenshot)
Forbes leads 13 million Google results on DT bullying (screenshot)

Why do I say “:apparent majority”? We knew immediately, in November, 2016, that a lot of funny business went on; Green Party candidate Jill Stein filed for a recount in three key states (we still don’t know why key elements within the Democratic Party supported the Republican efforts to block these recounts, only one of which was carried out). We know now that at least one foreign government was actively interfering in the election. To me, this means the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania is not there legitimately.

Immediately on taking office, this man began actively suppressing human rights, starting with the first Muslim entry ban; I’m proud that I was one of hundreds of thousands of protestors who fought that attempt, which we overturned).

The past 21 months have been a barrage of broken promises, broken treaties and international agreements…sabotaging the environment, education, and the safety net…diverting billions in tax breaks to those who are already among the wealthiest people and corporations in history, while slashing funds to human services…inciting violence against his opponents…attacking people of color, women, disabled people, the press, his critics, and others…tearing immigrant children from their families and imprisoning them, and failing to keep good records of what kids they stole from whom…threatening the citizenship of children born in the US…appointing a proven liar and probable multiple sexual predator to the Supreme Court…blaming others every time something goes wrong (which is frequent)…appointing corrupt Cabinet members who snack at the public trough while making no pretense of actually carrying out their departmental mandates–it’s far too long a list to fully document here; it would go on for hundreds of pages. I am more ashamed of this administration than of any previous one. Being an American is embarrassing these days.

It is time for this disgraceful man to leave office–preferably in handcuffs. It is time for his enablers in Congress to step down and apologize to the American people. It is well-past time. We have at least two paths to get him out: impeachment and the 25th Amendment *removal for incompetence).Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Entrepreneurship, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Under the guise of protecting small business from frivolous lawsuits, the House of Representatives just gutted the Americans With Disabilities Act—a major piece of civil rights legislation signed by George H.W. Bush. I have to say, I’m on a LOT of small business discussion boards, and I haven’t heard any business owners screaming about hardship. Small businesses in pre-ADA buildings are exempt unless they do major renovations.

Kangaroo electric wheelchair car—One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users
One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users

It’s up to us to make sure the Senate doesn’t follow along. Contact your Senators and let them know this is a vote where you will hold them accountable. And if your Rep was one who voted Aye, give them a piece of your mind too.

Of course, we’ll be tempted to argue on the basis of compassion. But remember who we’re dealing with here. These people have a long history of NOT acting out of compassion, often of doing the opposite. So compassion arguments “ain’t gonna cut it.” We have to get to them on the things they will listen to: costs to taxpayers, personal hardship to them, and of course, voting and campaigning for and donating to their opponents.

For 15 years, I’ve been making the dollars-and-sense business case for going green and building social entrepreneurship into business, which means I have some experience discussing issues with people who are predisposed to oppose my position. So let me offer some talking points I think they’ll actually listen to:

  1. Don’t Waste My Tax Dollars: How dare you make it harder for productive citizens to work, just because they have disabilities. If you think I want my tax dollars squandered on welfare payments to people who could have had a job until you made it impossible to get to work, you’d better think again.
  2. Don’t Hurt the Economy by Hurting Disabled People: For new construction, it’s really easy to design in ADA compliance from the ground up. By allowing builders to take shortcuts because you took away the teeth of this legislation, you’re encouraging them to stop designing in ramps and wider doorways, setting aside parking, making elevators disabled-friendly, etc have you noticed how many people with disabilities who in pre-ADA days had to sit home and be a burden have gone on to start job-creating companies making our economy better (like the personal-transportation vehicle for wheelchair users in the photo—designed by a wheelchair-using Texas woman)? There’s even an organization of disabled business owners that was named one of President George H.W. Bush’s 1000 Points of Light. Do you really want the blame for squashing that on your shoulders?
  3. Protect Our Veterans: Do you realize that veterans have much higher disability rates than the general population (due to war wounds), and that many have a hard time finding work and frequently start their own businesses? Thus, many of these job creators are veterans.You are hurting the people who served our country and defended our freedom.
  4. Pointless Government Meddling: The ADA has been around since 1990. Most public buildings are already accessible. This is bringing in the government to break a system that’s working just fine right now, and that has enabled millions of people to be productive members of society. And if buildings are allowed to come online without meeting current ADA code, it will be expensive to retrofit them later, when (not if) this weakening of the law is repealed.
  5. Personal Inconvenience to the Senator (this one takes a wee bit of research): I noticed that [name a family member of theirs with a disability] uses a wheelchair [cane, walker, seeing-eye dog, whatever]. Do you really want to be called away from important Senate business every time [name]has to go to the bank? How do you think I’m going to feel as a [business owner, manager, productive employee supporting my family] if I have to leave work to help my Aunt Mary do things she could have done for herself until you put obstacles in her way? And what’s going to happen to you, 20 years from now, when you may not be able-bodied yourself?
  6. Vote No or You’ll Organize to Defeat the Senator During the Next Election: Don’t just pledge to vote for your Senator’s opponent. Say you’ll be willing to campaign and fundraise for someone who understands that disability rights are important. If you’ve voted, donated, or  volunteered for your Senator in the past, be sure to let them know.

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By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, language, People Helping People, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

Let’s finally bury the terms “wheelchair-bound” and “confined to a wheelchair”!

For someone whose legs don’t work or don’t work well, a wheelchair is a device of liberation, opening up many places s/he couldn’t reach otherwise. With the aid of a wheelchair, a person with walking disabilities can run errands, walk in the park, hold a job that might be otherwise unavailable…

Language, too, can be liberating, instead of restricting. How about “uses a wheelchair” or “is in a wheelchair”? The way we frame things influences how we and others perceive them—that’s the secret of marketing, of politics, of education, and of changing the world. Let’s market the idea that people with disabilities can be strong, healthy, active participants in society, not bound to the furniture.

And while we’re at it, let’s do a better job of making more things accessible to people who use wheelchairs. That means more curb cuts, wider doorways, and wider bathrooms. It means rethinking transportation of people with disabilities,

Kangaroo electric wheelchair car—One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users
One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users

changing the ways we wait in lines, and of course, how we design wheelchairs. It means thinking about the field of vision of someone whose head is several feet lower than a standing male adult.

And also it means being much more accurate in our descriptions of just about everything. Example: If you run a restaurant and the bathroom is a 24-inch-wide sliver of space on the main floor with barely enough room for a standing human to turn around—or worse, down a steep flight of steps and a narrow hallway in the basement—don’t describe your restaurant as wheelchair-accessible, even if the front door is barrier-free.

Fix things so your place of business really IS accessible. As Boomers age and our bodies get less reliable, this makes good business sense, because more of your customers will continue to be able to visit your business.

Note: I am able-bodied. I wrote this in response to seeing a “wheelchair-bound” comment from a marketing friend in his late 50s. My views on this have been shaped by:

  1. My experience in my early 20s as a paid organizer for an elder’s rights organization
  2. Seeing the incredible things that people with disabilities have been able to accomplish when society accepts them as people who can contribute and doesn’t treat them as a burden—and noticing how much more that was in evidence after physical barriers began, slowly, to be eliminated once  the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 took effect.
  3. Hosting a meeting and discovering that someone who wanted to attend couldn’t come because I lived at the time in a second-floor walk-up
  4. 6 years in my 30s and 40s as an official city-appointed member of the Northampton, Massachusetts Commission on Disability, dealing with such issues as how local theaters could provide access to people with mobility impairments

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Guest post by a writer who wishes to be anonymous.

The most common reason as to why a lot of the companies shy away from joining the green initiative to save the planet is because they think it will cut heavily into their profit margins. Unfortunate as it is, the promise of ensuring a better future for our children and the planet as a whole is not a strong enough incentive to trump the lure of immediate gains in most cases. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be the only incentive because eco-innovation can also be profitable for businesses. The following points should shed some factual light on the misconception that environmentally friendly business practices can only be economically demanding without the promise of profit.

A Shadow on the Earth. Photo courtesy of Pixabay
A Shadow on the Earth. Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Investors

Investors realize the potential of eco-innovation and they know that going green will become an unavoidable option in the future, once all other options begin to run out. What this means is that banks, government agencies, private agencies and even crowdfund projects will be more interested in you if the new business you are starting is geared towards making the planet a better place to live in. The same also applies for established companies that are willing to make the transition to greener practices.

Potential

There is just so much business potential in the sustainability market for both young start-ups and established businesses to branch into that it’s almost ridiculous even from a strictly business perspective if somebody ignores the sector purely on account of misinformed and outdated preconceptions. For example, the promotional bags from Customer Earth are cheap, reusable and recyclable at the same time, essentially making them the perfect example where business meets environmental awareness. The retail businesses that do buy from them don’t lose anything in terms of money or quality, but instead they automatically serve to help the green initiative and gain positive favor in the eyes of everyone for the same action.

Waste Reduction

Waste management is a costly affair for manufacturers around the world and with China refusing to take up any more foreign waste, it is fast becoming a very big problem worldwide. As green manufacturing techniques work primarily towards reducing waste during manufacturing processes in the first place, it definitely is the way to go. Reducing waste decreases significant costs that are associated with waste management and treatment, which in turn makes for better profits. It has been estimated that by adopting more efficient manufacturing techniques, companies in the UK alone could save billions of pounds every year. Given that the UK is not even in the top ten nations list (11th) of countries when it comes to eco-revolution, further initiatives need to be taken to improve the UK’s participation for both environmental and business reasons.

As we progress towards the future, going green is the only way forward and anything that goes against it will only set us back as a race and not only a nation. At this point in time, the biggest issue is that a lot of businesses and some of the most influential people in the US consider sustainable business models to be an enemy of profit. Not only is this just a misconception, it is the kind of misconception that could propel the nation back instead of pushing it forward at the global stage. Hopefully, as technology progresses further and the profits of becoming a green business become more apparent, such views will change more rapidly.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Branding, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Innovation, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

The Washington Post reports that the never-finished, never-operated Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, in Hollywood, Alabama is for sale at the bargain-basement price of $36.4 million. It has cost more than $5 billion to build as much of it as Tennessee Valley Authority managed to complete, so this isn’t just pennies on the dollar. Each penny of the purchase price leverages $137.36 of construction investment—which, if my math is right, works out to a pretty incredible 1,373,626.37 percent return on investment (ROI), if the plant could be amortized that way. Kind of like getting a Ferrari for the price of a Matchbox car (little toys about two inches long).

The unfinished Bellefonte nuke in Alabama is for sale. Let's have some fun figuring out what to do with it.
The unfinished Bellefonte nuke in Alabama is for sale. Let’s have some fun figuring out what to do with it.

Of course, the plant can’t be amortized that way. It was built to turn atoms into smaller atoms and electricity (and, by the way, tremendous waste heat and a whole soup of poisonous and radioactive waste). In all likelihood, the plant will never fulfill its intended purpose. And that’s a good thing!

So let’s think about what we could do with it instead. After all, it’s costing the small town of Westwood, MA more than $13 million just to build a police station, so this really is “the deal of the century.” And let’s have some fun.

I want your outlandish AND your practical ideas. Please submit one of each as a comment on this page, in this format: Outlandish: (describe your idea in one to three sentences). Practical: (describe your idea in one to three sentences). Also please tell me how you learned about the contest so I know whom to thank. If you wish, you may link to a page giving more details. Each entry must include both categories (and the link to your posting address or Facebook screen name must function, so I can contact you if you win).

Oh, and comments are moderated, so don’t even bother posting racist, sexist crap or unrelated commercial spam. It won’t get posted and it WILL get you reported and blacklisted.

All entries must be received by 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Thursday, October 20, a bit over a month from the day I post this.

Want to be a winner? Make your Outlandish entry very humorous but not offensive. And make your  Practical entry eco-friendly and specific. For instance, it’s not enough to say “a renewable energy project.” I want to know the type and why it’ll work there.

The winner in each category will get a 30-minute consultation with me to discuss any aspect of marketing, green/social entrepreneurship business profitability, book publishing, or green living–and a copy of my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (acclaimed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin, and others) as well as my ebook, Painless Green: 111 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. Total value of the prize is $135, which is as close as I can come to the amount of construction cost each penny covers. And you’ll be in a press release I’ll send out announcing the winners.

I am the judge, and I’m not responsible for lost or misdirected entries, I assume no liability, blah blah blah (standard contest disclaimers).Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Uncategorized

Got some flak for my recent blog post entitled “Why I’m Not Joining Bernie’s New Org.” My wife, in particular, worried publicly that people would get the idea that I think Bernie’s movement is flawed.

In reality, I’m objecting to being forced to sign a membership in order to find out (maybe) what the organization stands for. I object to this from marketers and I object to it from politicians. It’s bad marketing.

I support about 95% of Bernie’s agenda and would likely be very happy to join his new org if only I could see its principles before I join. But joining blind is not the way I want to roll.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail