"Do the homework to make sure you can find a market if you follow your heart" with Shel Horowitz
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Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondsustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good—creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book (endorsed by Seth Godin and Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield, and with guest essays by Cynthia Kersey and Frances Moore Lappe) is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
Going back to a one-toddler action against smoking in my house at around age 3, I’ve been both an activist and a marketer pretty much my whole life. My real start as an activist was going to my first peace demonstration at 12 and then participating in the first Earth Day six months later. I originally got into marketing to promote the causes I was supporting.
But over time, I began to fall in love with marketing—with making it easy for people to support a product, a service, a cause, an idea, or a brand. And that’s what marketing is to me. It’s not about intrusive hard-sell messages, it’s not about buying a lot of ads, and it’s certainly not about spray-and-pray social media spamming. Rather, it’s about things like collaboration, making the world better, and making it easer for people to achieve something special, avoid something bad, solve a problem, get a cool experience, or meet a personal or community goal.
What inspired you to start your business?
Back in 1981, I’d just relocated to small-town Western Massachusetts after living in Providence, NYC, and Philadelphia for the previous five years. The area was experiencing a recession, and jobs were scarce. Since there are many colleges in the area, I decided to start a term paper typing service “to tide me over until my freelance writing career took off.”
That business kept morphing, first into resume writing, then writing marketing materials for small businesses, authors, and publishers, consulting on marketing and publishing, consulting on ethical, green, and social-change oriented business. And with each transformation, I enjoyed the work more (and for most of them, I was also more financially successful). Most of these were in addition, rather than instead of. I still do most of the things I’ve done in my 39 years in business—except that I haven’t typed a term paper or thesis since around 1990.
Where is your business based?
Hadley, MA, USA
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
I bought a used electric typewriter and hung fliers on physical bulletin boards! I didn’t get into the online world until 1994.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Since I write books about marketing, I’ve explored many promotion strategies. Many of the best focus on being seen as an expert and a resource: writing books/articles/blog posts/newsletters, being interviewed in print and electronic media, speaking at live or online events, creating web content that gets found when people need what I do…
For about 15 years, most of my marketing consulting and copywriting clients found me because of my participation in email discussion lists, but those forums have gone away—and I don’t find that Facebook or LinkedIn groups generate the same results. These days, I’m getting a lot of business from repeat clients and referrals. They’ve always been a big part of my new client attraction, and the percentage from that sector is much higher now.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
1) Before starting my business during the recession of 1981, I’d been doing a 9-month activist training program in Philadelphia after a year and a half as a VISTA Volunteer organizer for the Gray Panthers of Brooklyn, making $82 a week for the first year and $100 per week for the remaining 6 months. So needless to say, my financial resources were extremely limited.
Culture was also an issue. Other than at college, I’d lived my entire life in dense, diverse urban megacities. Growing up in the Bronx, diversity was a constant. Moving from a majority-Black neighborhood in Philadelphia to a mostly-Catholic, almost-entirely White working-class town of 20,000, I found that being a New York Jew made me exotic. As an unknown who didn’t know the local culture, didn’t have a network of relationships and didn’t have any spare capital, I had to figure out effective ways to land clients that cost little or nothing. That eventually led me to learn a lot about marketing, and eventually, to write, teach, and consult on it.
Still, the first few years were very lean. I made $300 in my first 6 months before we moved 20 miles south to a more cosmopolitan city of 29,000 and the business became viable. Once we moved, and once I got better at marketing, by working 60 hours or so per week, I was able to pull in barely enough to live on. Glad those days are over!
2) Technological obsolescence has been a shadow over my business almost from the beginning. Typing was my bread and butter for the first couple of years, but I could see that personal computing was eventually going to make that service obsolete. I taught myself to write resumes, and that became the bulk of my work—especially once I bought my own first computer (an original 128K Mac) in 1984 and could begin offering while-you-wait resume writing (which I still offer; I took it virtual in March).
But once Microsoft started bundling a resume template with Word (as terrible as that template was), I knew the resume market would shrink a whole lot—so I started shifting into marketing copywriting—specializing in the more informational, less hard-sell, in-your-face side, like writing “story-behind-the-story” press releases and book covers.
And the pattern repeated yet again. Once offshoring or mechanizing professional work became a thing, I was suddenly competing with people on the other side of the world who would work for a tenth of my price. I had to pivot again. I began to concentrate even more on green and social change businesses and authors/publishers and to present myself not just as a copywriter but as a full-blown marketing and profitability strategist who can also write exquisite copy. In these two niches, my industry expertise can attract clients even if I could no longer compete on price because the quality of my work is always going to be better than a generalist writer.
I’ve been lucky because I’ve been able to spot these trends when they’re still small, and by the time they really become a force, I’ve moved on—usually to something both more interesting and more lucrative.
3) My most recent shift, from general small-business and book marketing to helping businesses and authors who combine transformational social change with greening the planet, has been slower and more difficult than I’d expected. I literally felt called to do this in 2013, feeling an internal voice informing me that this is why I was put on this planet at this time—and this would be an important part of my legacy.
This was only the second time I’d gotten that kind of a call. The first was when I started a successful movement to save our local mountain, in 1999-2000—while the “experts” were all moaning, “this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do.” That victory is what influenced me to build more social change directly into my business, and by 2003, I’d released the first of my four books on that topic. I did my TEDx Talk, “Impossible is a Dare,” in 2014, opened GoingBeyondSustainability.com in 2015, and published Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World the following year.
I’d thought that within two years or so, changing the conversation from “sustainability” (keeping things the same) to “regenerativity” (making things better) would have filled my speaking calendar and my client list. But it’s been harder to find those clients than I thought. I’m still making the bulk of my income walking writers through the journey of becoming well-published and well-marketed authors—but now, most of the books I work on have a change-the-world component.
The good part is that the clients I do have in the green/social change space allow me to engage in deep strategic analysis. They’re excited when I think way out of the box and reach or ways they can address multiple issues at once with a single integrated solution. I am so energized by this work! It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done, and I love seeing how it plays out in almost every imaginable industry.
As an example, a radio interviewer once asked me what I would suggest to a pizza shop owner. Without any idea this question was coming, just spontaneously, I recommended teaching inner-city high school students to grow organic vegetables and make pizzas with them to sell to their classmates on days that were slow for the pizza shop—building both entrepreneurial and food production skills among the participating students, providing nutritious alternatives to junk food, and generating income for the shop on a normally slow day.
How do you stay focused?
I’m blessed with an undiagnosed helping of ADD. I’m interested in almost everything; I became a writer because it gave me the freedom to dip my toe into whatever catches my fancy at that moment. I work in short bursts, bringing intense focus to a task for anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours. After that, I need to stop and do something else, both because that part of my brain needs a rest and because I do suffer from computer fatigue: eyestrain, tired hands, etc. I’ve gotten very attuned to the signals, so when I feel my mental edge, my creativity to address that task begin to wane, I either interrupt with a non-work activity: a walk or bike ride, sometimes with a crossword puzzle, reading, a nap, a call with a friend or colleague, food task such as harvesting, reserving, or cooking…or a task on a completely different work project that uses a different part of my brain. I always have several things going at once, so I’m never bored.
Typically, I’m working very short pieces of a very long day, starting my computer by 6:15 or 6:30 a.m. and shutting down the work part of my day by 10 or 10:30 p.m. and then reading, playing a game, or watching a cultural performance until around midnight. Often, the first task of my workday is to scan reporter queries through a service that matches reporters and story sources, and the final one is writing the daily Gratitude Journal I’ve been posting on Facebook since March 2018. Something like your list of questions will be several short work shifts.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
For each sector where I work, I look for the uniqueness factor—what the marketing industry calls a USP (Unique Selling Proposition). What really does differentiate me from my competitors:
· For the social change work, the unique experience I have of being both a marketer for 48 years and an activist for 50, as well as the rare ability to see not just the big picture but also the small details the vision needs to make it work—and my wide range of interests become a strength here: cross-industry knowledge, a long history of drinking information from business, activism, nonprofit, academia, and the ability to see how a solution used in one sphere could apply elsewhere. The restaurant drive-up window would not exist without the banking industry, which pioneered the concept a couple of years earlier.
· For book shepherding and book marketing, knowledge of several different publishing models, the strengths, issues, and steps involved in each, the ability to recommend appropriate editorial and design vendors to those who choose to self-publish, and skills in marketing the book and the author as brands, pre- and post-publication—as well as direct experience as an author who’s published with big houses, small houses, subsidy, hybrid, and my own publishing arm, with and without co-authors.
· For career services, I don’t know of another shop anywhere that offers while-you-wait resume and cover letter writing personalized to the individual client, and since March, I’ve been offering this remotely over Zoom.
· And for speaking, I offer an authentic voice of hope and inspiration, saying that a better world is not only possible but can be profitable. I leave audiences inspired and excited.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
I use a mix:
· Actively soliciting and encouraging referrals—from past or current clients, industry leaders, colleagues in complementary businesses, and even competitors.
· Publicly demonstrating my expertise through speaking, media interviews, and my own writing (books, articles, blog posts, social media posts, participation in online discussion communities, etc.)—both in channels I control, and in channels with wider visibility.
· For one mostly-local service, getting found on Google (and earlier, through the Yellow Pages).
The nice thing is that these all complement and build on each other.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Do the homework to make sure you can find a market if you follow your heart—and once you determine that you have a market, follow your heart.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
App: ScribblePost, which allows me to throw random things into a free-form data collector and retrieve by simple search. It’s an alternative to Evernote, which I could never figure out.
Blog: Seth Godin’s blog, which I get as a daily email. I love the way he sees things differently, breaks out of silos, and quietly advocates for justice and equality. I’m very honored that he endorsed my most recent book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
Books: I read 60 to 80+ books a year and have many favorites. Two closely related books are The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by C. K. Prahalad and Business Solution to Poverty by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick—both of which demonstrate that helping the least served and healing the planet can be profitable in and of themselves. I’m also very fond of books like Natural Capitalism by Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, and Paul Hawken and Cradle to Cradle by Michael Braungart and William McDonough, which make a case for holistic, an integrative design that could take us far closer to our carbon and environmental goals than traditional thinking can. I credit the children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle with helping me survive childhood and teenagership—and I got to sit in her apartment near the end of her life and interview her for two hours. And numerous books on activism, on marketing, and fiction have shaped my perspective.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Help a Reporter, a/k/a HARO. I was member #6, joining on the first day when it was launched as a Facebook group. It’s gotten me coverage in media around the world, including a number of A-list publications. And the cost of zero is pretty attractive, too. I do find that a lot of other people are frustrated with it because the number of queries to sift through is large, and the percentage of responses that result in coverage can be small. But there are ways to increase that percentage. I’m actually writing an ebook on how to pitch media effectively, which I hope to release this summer.
Who is your business role model? Why?
Again, I could list many. Today, I’m thinking about Frances Moore Lappe, best known for writing Diet for a Small Planet back in 1970, and author of numerous books on food and democracy. She made vegetarianism much more acceptable in mainstream culture, which has had a tremendously positive effect on climate and environmental issues, and has also been a relentless advocate for real democracy—for democratizing the present system, and instituting democratic innovations that are not part of the current system. She also has been a consistent voice for food justice around the world.
How do you balance work and life?
As I mentioned, I work in short bursts and mix in many relaxation or recreation activities. I strive for two hours per day of exercise, which will typically be a mix of hiking and/or biking with a daily yoga class (of which I count around ¾ as exercise; I don’t count the opening meditation or the rest period at the end). Once in awhile, I’ll add free-form rock dancing to the mix. I love to cook and will typically spend between 20 minutes and an hour preparing a vegetarian meal. During the harvest months, I am gathering or preserving (drying, freezing, or pickling) food some part of every day. I read, do the crossword puzzle in my daily newspaper, meet with a friend or get on the phone with a new colleague, attend a meeting (in person in the past, these days mostly online)…
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
Bicycling at a fast pace through someplace pretty for about an hour.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
1) If I can get enough participation to make it viable, I’m toying with starting a resource website for activists seeking to use this “COVID Moment” to push major social and environmental change, in areas ranging from climate change to racial justice to reinventing agriculture. I’ve bought a domain (although after buying that domain, I thought perhaps that I should find a made-up single word that could probably grow more effectively) and posted a blog outlining some of the possibilities at https://greenandprofitable.com/build-back-better-lets-start-a-movement/
2) I will release my ebook on how to pitch reporters, especially by responding to HARO queries (though it will cover other approaches as well).
3) I’m just beginning to apply to speak at events in very late 2020 or 2021 and beyond when I’m hoping live events will be viable again.
4) And of course, I will continue both to serve my clients in the four areas I outlined earlier: social change, books, career services, and speaking—and continue my activist work. Since the spring of 2019, I’ve concentrated my activism in a small but very effective affinity group called Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice of Western Massachusetts. I’ve gone on two JAIJ delegations, first to witness and protest at the now-closed prison for migrant teens in Homestead, Florida, and more recently to the border at Brownsville, Texas/Matamoros, Mexico. I’ve also been involved in support and outreach in my own area, giving presentations on what we learned and did on those two trips, organizing public events, meetings with legislators, supporting local and regional immigrants of color, testifying at hearings, and protesting the violent actions of a sheriff on the other side of Massachusetts who has ICE detainees.
How can our readers connect with you?
· Visit the contact page at https://goingbeyondsustainability.com
· Call me at 413-586-2388 (8 a.m. to 10 p.m. US Eastern Time)
· Reach out to me on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelhorowitzethicalmarketer/, or Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/shel.horowitz