Ecopreneurist

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.

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Today you can call your senators for free and tell them that a green recovery is important to you.

Yesterday, I posted about green jobs advocacy day on Capitol Hill and some of the ways in which a green recovery will benefit ecopreneurs. Thanks to 1Sky, the nonprofit with the single goal of seeing federal action that can reverse global warming, today (and actually tomorrow or the day after, etc…) you can quickly and easily call your Senator and tell them that you support green measures in the stimulus package.  All you have to do is click through to the 1sky site and the handy, dandy Click-to-Call webform asks for your email address, name, address and zip code as well as a 10 digit phone number where you can be reached so that they can connect you directly to your senator. Here’s the 1sky pitch:

Right now, the Senate is working on the economic recovery package passed by the House. This is a pivotal opportunity to invest in green projects like public transit and energy efficiency, which will jump-start our economy lay the foundations of a new, clean energy America. We’ve made it easy for you to call Washington–at no cost to you! Call your senators today and tell them to keep the economic recovery green!

Making that call couldn’t be easier. Whatcha waiting for?

Photo by Lusi at sxc.hu

Climate change entrepreneurs………… your time is now!

The world believes that entrepreneurs are key to climate change solutions, so get set to present your business plan.

Forum for the Future, a not-for-profit sustainable development organization has collaborated with the  Financial Times, newspaper and technology giant HP to announce the FT Climate Change Challenge, a competition offers a $75,000 prize for the best innovation to tackle climate change.

The FT Climate Change Challenge aims to find the most promising new innovations designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or help increase our resilience to the consequences of global warming. The winning entry can be from any field, including construction, energy, transport, or social innovation.

The competition, which closes for entries on January 30th, has been supported by Innovation Exchange – the world’s first ‘collaborative’ open innovation marketplace with an international community of innovators and thought leaders that work individually or collaborate in teams to solve clients’ business innovation challenges. Innovation Exchange’s clients are Global 5000 companies and not-for-profit organizations that want to increase their innovation capacity beyond their internal teams to discover their next important innovation, minimize their innovation risk and accelerate time-to-market. www.innovationexchange.com Read the rest of this entry »

Here at Ecopreneurist, we believe in the power of sharing and building upon our resources and knowledge, so that everybody has a chance to accelerate the expansion of the launching of green businesses, and the effective, useful greening of what’s already here.

So it was a pleasure to learn about startingupgreen.com. Spearheaded by Glenn Croston, scientist, entrepreneur, and frequent contributor to Fast Company magazine, he’s created a site where would be ecopreneurists can learn from those currently succeeding at it, like Lyndon Rive, CEO of Solar City, the company taking residential solar much closer to the masses.

Recently launched is a forum component, where there’s sections on going green in a down economy, low cost startups, and opportunities in the energy sector. Their opportunities section offers many interesting possibilities you may not have even considered before. Read the rest of this entry »

The verdict is in from the top social media honchos: social media isn’t just a fringe benefit to add as a complementary side dish to your regular, marketing plan – it is your main marketing plan for 2009.

Case in point. Etsy.com, branded by the New York Times as a cross between Amazon.com, eBay and “your grandmother’s basement” has over 100,000 sellers worldwide and had online buyers spend $4.3 million purchasing 300,000 items in November 2007.

What is interesting is that Etsy, an online marketplace for quality, handmade goods, has intentionally avoided big glossy ads in magazines in favour of seller-created street teams and video content to pull off the best, tried-and-true marketing strategy of all: word of mouth (WOM). Read the rest of this entry »

Websites are an often-overlooked green way of promoting your business. Instead of printing brochures and other literature, you can just send people to your website. If you don’t already have a website for your business, you should make it one of your New Year’s resolutions to create one in 2009. Luckily, building a website for your green business really isn’t as hard as you may think, even if you don’t know HTML and rarely use computers.

But before you start building and promoting your website online, consider this: websites themselves can be “greened.” Most people don’t know that there are green choices when it comes to hosting, site design, building, and content! You don’t can actually create a green website for your green business.

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A post by contributing writer Melissa Chungfat.

The eco-holiday tips are beginning to pour in everywhere. Al Gore was on Oprah last week discussing the impacts of global warming and giving advice on how people can help the environment and save some cash this holiday. And, Obama is certainly doing his part with his plans to green the White House.

If you are an early bird ecopreneurist who wants to distinguish your business this holiday season or are at odds on what to give your customers, staff or business partners, one thing you can do is get a CarbonFree® Product Certification from the non-profit, Carbonfund.org. With CF, with the click of a mouse, you can give the gift of carbon neutrality.  Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I had the pleasure of hearing Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy, talk about his vision for a green economy at The Center For American Progess.

It was an oversubscribed crowd and Jones sat comfortably on an arm chair on a slightly raised platform, giving the impression of a living room chat. He started by talking about how the floor on America has been torn out, but so has the ceiling and now is the time when we are “free to fall or to fly.” He spoke of our unsustainable economic model that is based on consumption not production, run on debt vs. savings and thrift, and environmental destruction vs. preservation. But soon after the gloom, Jones shifted the rhetoric to one of hope. He spoke of building a new economy with clean energy power centers and a clean enemy corps. An economy where all people, including people often left out of economic expansion such as the poor, people of color, etc…, have a place at the table. He spoke of the low hanging fruit in a new green collar economy: retrofitting. He laid out his vision where out of work construction workers — workers he predicted would be idle for 12, 24, 36 months — are put to work retrofitting existing building across America.

And therein lies the ecopreneurial opportunity. In Jones’ vision, people from all economic strata can start a business that provides retrofitting services or produce the products needed to retrofit. And, retrofitting is just the beginning. Jones went on to say that the days of the environment being a “a box you check off” are over and we have entered an era where environmental impacts are a lens through which all economic activity must be viewed. The result is an economy with a host of ecopreneurial opportunities and where our two worst problems, the economy and climate change, are solved by ecoprenuers. In Van Jones’ world, there never been a better time to be an ecopreneur.

Photo courtesy of Van Jones.

Maybe the title should instead read “How to Fail at ‘Greening’ Your Business”. Often times companies seem to approach “green” or eco-friendly as just another product attribute that can simply be added to packaging or website to reach the “green” consumer segment. In the rush to be eco-friendly, and due to the typical structure of many organizations, the marketing team will take the lead of the greening effort and, in the interest of time & energy, they’ll create a brilliant plan to communicate “green” to a target consumer group, but no internal alignment.

The sustainability and marketing strategies of a typical entrepreneur are often times based on the same model – the shotgun approach. Typically, entrepreneurs start to think about marketing after at least 6 months of hitting the pavement, and then sustainability appears as part of a new “marketing plan” or is seen as some kind of charitable giving / community relations campaign. Sustainable business is neither part of a marketing campaign nor a community relations effort. Neither is it about shifting revenue, but rather how revenue is generated.

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Are you ready for the holiday mail season?  Maybe this is the year to trim your DM waste.  The fundamental problem is that direct mail marketing is inherently inefficient. 44% of all direct mail is thrown in the trash without ever being opened and that which is opened only yields an average of a 2.77% response.  So, if you want to get 1,000 customers to respond to your direct mail piece, you have to mail, on average, 36,101 pieces of mail.  Multiply that by millions of customers and millions of companies and you can see the problem. The good news is that a March 2008 Aberdeen Group study found that direct mail waste reduction is an area where “environmental concerns and shareholder interests coincide.” But, you may already know this. They also found that 40% of companies said direct mail waste reduction was one of the top two areas being focused on for improving eco-friendly business practices.

The goal is to achieve the greatest precision with the lowest number of pieces mailed, but there a lot of other benefits. You can save money and enhance customer satisfaction which will in turn improves customer loyalty, purchase behavior and profitability. Here’s 9 ways:

#1: Maintain good list hygiene. Updating your mailing list to remove unwanted, duplicate and undeliverable addresses regularly and thoroughly is a cheap, quick and effective way to reduce waste. There are several ways to verify mailing lists and all outside list mangers are able to perform this function or you can buy your own address verification software. You will mail fewer pieces and, under some circumstances, lower your mailing rates. Consider offering incentives (such as the offer of a discount on their next purchase) for notification of duplicate mailings and incorrect addresses.
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