Ecopreneurist

This post answers a question posed by @jonat82 in a Twitter conversation:

How do you convince your property managers that greening the building is a financially sound investment?

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet argument for this one. Like the majority of small businesses you probably lease your facilities. If you do, you’ll find that some greening strategies require the cooperation of your landlord.

You may also find that your landlord does not yet see the financial benefits to making efficiency-related capital improvements because, in a typical commercial lease the landlord pays for improvements but the tenants, who pay the utility bills, reap the benefits of the savings.

Don’t give up hope.The inclusion of environmental criteria into relevant lease clauses, such as requiring Energy Star appliances or providing recycling services, are becoming more commonplace. So, the best time to talk to your landlord about greening is when you are signing or renegotiating your lease.

Read the rest of this entry »

You hear so much about people striving to live a greener, more sustainable life. You may at times wonder, who else is doing it, and is all that happy talk translating into real world results?

Three friends decided to find out. As they put it,

Mandy, Ryan and Brady are ‘bikepacking’ 12,000 miles to the East Coast and back to California, using solar-powered electronics and leg-powered bicycles.  The result is a feature-length documentary film that will present a realistic experience of seeking out and living in sustainable community.

Started October 2008 and 3800 miles into it as of this writing (with 209 PB&J’s consumed if you must know) they have been filming and Twittering their way across to country, giving a peek into what it looks, feels, and works like to live in sustainable, intentional community, the end result being a film called Within Reach.

It’s clear that these people are 21st century environmentalists - they don’t shun businesses supporting their venture, and in fact proudly list their sponsors on the front page, all of which bear relevance with what they’re doing. This project is Creative Commons licensed, and they are a non profit, allowing for people to support their journey and the making of it into a film afterwords.

So what have they found?

Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s rapidly changing sustainable business landscape, it’s becoming increasingly important to be aware of what’s happening, emerging, and yet to be created where you could fill a need. How best to do that?

Newspapers and magazines play a part, but with their shrinking staffs, it’s a smaller role by the day. Blogs? Definitely, it’s where people with the freedom and foresight to look broader, more critically, think more bravely share what they’re observing, researching, and wanting your feedback on. Microblogging sites such as Twitter take the time frame even more immediate, currently breaking.

But, you may be asking, where do I find the time to go to all these sources? A fair question, one which a tool like Feedly handily integrates all together in one place, allowing for you to easily interact with both your information and the people talking about it.

The next question you may have is, how do I even find what I need to keep track of in the first place amongst all this big swirling pot of information? And how do I know what’s best?

Read the rest of this entry »

A special guest post by Aaron Schoenberger for Green Printer’s ‘Design Goes Green’ series.

A common misconception, one that I’ve seen a thousand times, is the idea that simply printing on recycled mediums, with soy ink, will make one’s marketing materials green. In essence, it’s not only the printing that makes a company green, but also the research and time spent identifying target markets, concocting copy that’s both precise and somewhat vague at the same time, limiting the want to send promotional material to everyone on the planet, and a host of other factors that, if not done properly, will result in a slap on the wrist from good ole’ Mother Earth. Read the rest of this entry »

By Contributing Writer Melissa Chungfat | Part of Green Printer’s ‘Design Goes Green’ dispatch.

Thanks to blogs, websites, Facebook, and the ever-growing list of social media tools, people have the ability and power to educate themselves about anything they please. It is harder for companies to get away with lies about their products and misleading messages. People can easily look up “greenwashing” or “what is an organic product?” in a search engine and in a matter of seconds, they have a list of resources that cuts through the PR.

So how can companies who are taking sincere environmental initiatives market themselves credibly? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week BusinessWeek published an article: 10 Ways To Cut Business Costs and I was pleased to see that four of the 10 were also green.

It gave me the idea to write about green ways to cut costs in these difficult times. Starting with the four cited in BW, here are some ideas:

Reduce energy use. Energy is the number one expense for almost one-third of small businesses, and whatever your industry, increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy costs is good for business. ENERGY STAR for Small Business has free information, resources and technical advice on hundreds of energy and cost-savings practices.

Telecommute. Telecommuting is often cited as one of the most valuable benefits to both employers and employees. Telecommuting has been credited with improving work/family balance, supervisor-staff relationships, job satisfaction, worker retention, productivity and career prospects, as well as reducing stress, absenteeism, recruiting, office space and parking costs. It may also be one of the most effective greening practices you can embrace: The American Consumer Institute projects that telecommuting alone will cut CO2 emissions by more than a half million tons over the next decade.  Best Work Places has great tools for implementing telecommuting and other commuter benefits program.

Curb travel expenses. Airplane travel, lodging and rental cars can consume almost one-quarter of a business’ carbon footprint and as much as 3% of its revenue. So, reducing the number of business trips you take is an excellent strategy for greening and reducing expenses. (A friend who is an senior exec at a global liquor company told me it cost them $12,000 every time they sent her overseas.) Taking fewer, longer trips is one solution. Web conferencing is another. Its a win for productivity, expense reduction and the environment because not traveling means not having to postpone regular office work, saving the expenses of travel and eliminating the carbon output from that travel.

Read the rest of this entry »

So you have an interest in sustainability, particularly when it comes to your home environment. You know enough that your friends seem to flock to you for advice. They say, “You should open your own store!” You think hmm, they might be on to something. But you’ve never opened up a store, and it’s a tough economy these days for doing so.

g Green Design Center may be just the ticket.

Begun in Massachusetts, they’ve now created a franchise program for the budding ecopreneurist, where someone with the passion can put the backing of someone already doing it, together with what will increasingly become a known name for such stores.

The flagship g store has a host of green building/design services from interior and architectural design to eco events.

One of the glaring absences in the discussion of how to use social media to achieve marketing goals is the lack of established marketing terms. Since green businesses are big users of Twitter, I think we need to have this conversation!

Traditional marketing terms are just words that have used for quite a long while to name different ways of accomplishing marketing goals.Though tactics may have changed from relying on newspapers to relying on television advertising to new interest in social media, the goals and what we want to accomplish in the end have remained the same. That’s why I find it odd that perfectly good words like “impressions” and “reach” are so often absent from the discussion on social media.

Let’s review.

In advertising terms, “impressions” means how many times a consumer sees your message. This is measured across media. A TV viewer may see your commercial 5 or more times before it registers or sparks their interest in your product. Media buyers calculate the number of times specific consumers see a commercial before making the buy.

“Reach” refers to the actual number of consumers who see your message once. Obviously the more of your target consumers you reach often, with lots of impressions, the greater the chances she’ll buy your product.

And, so I ask, why does this topic not come up in discussions of social media? Yes, people do talk about followers and friends and quality followers and friends and fans and number of followers on Twitter, Facebook, SU, Myspace, etc, etc. This does address the concept of “reach” – sort of.

But what about impressions? Especially on Twitter, we usually tweet a post or an interesting thought…once. And, of course, at least, I’d say 80-90% of our followers don’t even see the tweet…unless it is retweeted. Of course, that is often the goal, but, what about if we tweeted one message a number of times to ensure that all of our key target sees it? Would that be considered bad twettique? Is that abusing our followers? Would we rapidly have deluge of people “unfollowing”? Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I went to a presentation sponsored by the Luxury Marketing Council called, “How to Survive in 2009“.

Seasoned marketing consultant Alf Nucifora gave some very practical advice, which I have pared down to focus on tips that are ideal for green businesses:

> One recommendation is to highlight your products or services that can be considered “luxury within reach“. Organic cotton towels, lotions with essential oils, beautiful bamboo bowls all come to mind, but services fit this bill as well–maybe prepared meals from locally sourced ingredients.

> Family friendly entertainment is big right now. People are staying home or are looking for “staycation” ideas.

> You might also focus on teens, who tend to have a high level of discretionary income (and from a project I worked on, I know that they influence almost all spending within a household).

> Position your product or service as a gift-giving option. Wealthy people aren’t as comfortable these days with conspicuous consumption, but it is still good to be generous to others. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m reading an advance copy of Auden Schendler’s “Getting Green Done,” coming out next week. It’s filled with lots of wisdom from the front lines and its a great read. It has also given me some great insights for the book I’m writing on greening small businesses. I thought I’d share three nuggets of wisdom with you here:

1. Sustainable practices are proving to make business sense—but ethics also have to play a role. We all know that sustainable business, is good business. For example, a recent Aberdeen Group study of green practices among retailers found that green mandates were “essential cost control and customer service practices.” On average, best-in-class retailers achieved a 20% decrease in energy costs, an 8% decrease in their overall logistics and transport costs, and a 5% decrease in merchandise costs through their green initiatives. But, Schendler says, ROI is not enough:

“Ethics have to play a role…an economic pitch in a vacuum may not make sense to managers if there’s no context, no broader environmental mission within the company.”

His point is that it may be easier to “sell” sustainability when you start by getting everyone at the table to agree/admit that businesses have a responsibility to help protect the environment.

2. Do a sexy project. Schendler’s advice is to start the greening process with things that you will find fun to implement. Things that interest you. Things that are sexy. This will get everyone engaged.

Read the rest of this entry »