For over a decade, Shel Horowitz, “Transformpreneur” at Going Beyond Sustainability, has shown business how to profit by addressing hunger, poverty, racism, climate change, war, etc.–inspired by his “impossible” success protecting a threatened local mountain forever. Now he’s looking at how COVID opens doors to deeper solutions.
He will happily help you reinvent your business to focus on helping society get beyond these seemingly intractable problems, and developing profitable products, services, and marketing that turns “impossible” into “what are we waiting for? Let’s get it done!”
As a strategic consultant, trainer, speaker, and PR copywriter, he can help you:
Identify opportunities to create new social transformation products and services that fit your existing skills and customer/fan base, create new revenue streams, and address one or more of these big issues
More effectively market your existing green and social change products and services to existing *and* new audiences
Develop lucrative win-win partnerships with businesses, nonprofits/NGOs, and community organizations that open up new markets, revenue streams, and credibility for your company
Shel has spoken in cities as far-flung as Davos (Switzerland), Istanbul, and Honolulu. His most popular talks are “Impossible is a Dare” and “Making Green Sexy.” He’s the author of ten books, including the long-running category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and his latest, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. He’s been on social media (as it existed in the pre-Facebook/Twitter era) since 1995.
What is Going Beyond Sustainability all about?
Going Beyond Sustainability helps companies find their unique sweet where their particular capabilities and interests can lead to *profitable* products and services that make a difference on issues like hunger, poverty, racism, war, environment, catastrophic climate change, and public health in a pandemic. I provide strategic consulting, training, marketing strategy and copywriting, a well as a non-technical analysis of possible or existing green initiatives.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
When I relocated to Western Massachusetts in 1981, I couldn’t find a job so I started a term paper typing service (yeah, using a typewriter). Very quickly, that expanded to resume writing, small business marketing writing (such as press releases and brochures–and later, book covers, web page copy, emails, etc.). But I also had an activist side going back to my teens. In 1999 and 2000, those two sides came together in a successful campaign to save a local mountain. After we won, I started thinking, hey, I just did an activist campaign that used everything I knew about marketing. How can I bring the activist world into my business? That began the gradual evolution into the current focus on business as an agent of restorative and regenerative change.
My last four books and my recent speaking (including a TEDx have been about this. The current book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, has endorsements from Chicken Soup’ for the Soul co-creator Jack Canfield and Seth Godin, among others.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Creative Thinking: People pay very well to “rent my brain.” I can look at a situation and see opportunities that others miss: where tweaking a product can open up a whole new market; what potential new partners can benefit from my clients’ success and how could they work together; how a holistic solution might solve more problems at lower cost than going piecemeal, what “story-behind-the-story” marketing points can be harnessed…
Listening in both the broad (keeping an eye on trends that may affect your business) and narrow (what people are saying directly to you, in person, on your web comment forms, in networking sessions or mastermind groups…). That enabled me to evolve my business multiple times BEFORE my then-current revenue stream became obsolete. I think the last thesis I typed was in 1990.
Delegating: At first, I tried to do everything myself, and that was a mistake. I use Virtual Assistants and freelancers to off-load many tasks I’m not good at (such as web design) or that take time but don’t produce revenue–so I can concentrate on the strategic thinking, writing, consulting, and speaking, and on nurturing my public presence. Now, if I could just figure out a viable way to delegate email…but I haven’t figured out how to find someone who would intuitively know which emails I actually need to see (many of which wouldn’t be obvious at first).
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
I’ve managed to run a home-based solopreneurship for 40 years as of June 2021. I’m not really interested in growing my business–but I *am* interested in growing my legacy. When I’m 80, I’d love to be able to point to companies where my consulting led to changing a whole industry. So far, I’ve been more effective in spreading awareness of the good work others have done (as an author and speaker), and the clients I’ve consulted to have been very small. While they’ve benefited enormously from my work with them, it hasn’t really rippled out to making global changes.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
I partner with them and they refer business to me! My favorite example is the founder of the Guerrilla Marketing series, the late Jay Conrad Levinson. Like me, he was a marketing speaker/author/consultant. When Wiley gave me an offer to update a self-published book and traditionally publish it, I went to him (with their blessing) and asked if he would consider it as a Guerrilla Marketing book.
He gained instant credibility in a market he’d never been in before without having to do very much work, and I gained a famous brand and access to the 84,000 fans on his mailing list. My half of the advance we shared was the same amount Wiley typically paid for books by authors at my modest level of fame.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
Not being willing to delegate. Not seizing the first-mover advantage I could have had as a green business guru. Failure to understand the power of business, channeled by the profit motive, to make the world better and be part of the solution and not the problem.
What has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
Even though I make a fair bit of my living crafting marketing messages for my clients, I’ve gradually shifted toward marketing my own work toward marketing through personal connection. It was not a coincidence that Jay collaborated with me on two Guerrilla books, and Godin and Canfield endorsed the second of those. I had nurtured relationships with all three for years, long before I asked. I have similar relationships with dozens of influencers because I send fan mail, share material I think they will find interesting, add value on communities where we all hang out, and connect them with people who should know them.
Even for the lowest-end service in my business (resume writing), I get a significant percentage of referrals (mostly from existing clients). And once someone becomes a client, because I have that relationship not just with them but with the person who connected us, when I suggest opportunities for more work together, it’s often favorably received. Just a week ago, I was given a referral by another major marketer. She sent me a client she felt was not right with her. And when I turned in the sales letter, he immediately commissioned some other pieces that I suggested. This is not unusual.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
How much I would enjoy being in my own company. Coming out of activism, I had a deep skepticism of business generally, and my one experience in the corporate world had been very unhappy.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
Zoom, which has allowed me to continue the one remaining portion of my business that was local and face-to-face during the pandemic–and expand the market possibility to the entire world. I’ve also been very successful at making new friends and business connections by networking in Zoom breakout rooms and following up with 1:1 Zoom calls.
WeTransfer.com, the easiest and most fun way I know to send large digital files.
Search engines (I tend to use Ecosia, which plants trees for my searches–falling back on Google when I don’t get the results I need). My books from the 1990s have acknowledgments by name to the reference librarians in my local library. But now, I can do my own research, judge which results are trustworthy (a very important step!), and incorporate the material (properly attributed, of course) immediately into blogs, social media posts, newsletters, speeches, and of course, books.
What are three books or courses would you recommend to entrepreneurs?
- The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer
- The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, by Vishen Lakhiani
- Mitch Axelrod’s course on licensing your intellectual property
The first two help rewire your brain to overcome obstacles and achieve any goal. They are the best self-help books I’ve ever come across. The third is a mind-blowing reinvention of the traditional business to look at how to rent out your best thinking, chunked up in little pieces or all at once.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
I’d go much earlier into parlaying my expertise in how business can heal the environment, fix social problems, and be profitable. And I probably wouldn’t have gone so deeply into the frugality market, where I invested far too much time and resources in the 1990s and 2000s.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I started my business with $200, so having a whole thousand would feel luxurious. I would hire a virtual assistant to identify the best Internet discussion communities where I could get in front of prospects and referrers repeatedly, nurture those communities by being helpful, get members of the group who hired me to share their positive experience with the group. This strategy got me most of my clients when I was in a different industry. And I’d make sure my homepage looked good.
What is your favorite quote?
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
– Muhammad Ali
I built my 2014 TEDx talk around this quote, and I use it to frame an entire chapter of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Follow your heart–but make sure it leads you to a viable market.
Who should we interview next and why?
Raj Pabari, a 16-year-old green entrepreneur in San Diego. I met him on a Zoom call where he was pitching.
How can we get in touch with you?
My phone is 413-586-2388, and I’m open to calls from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. US Eastern Time (this is a landline, so you may get voicemail–I will call back). You can also email me via my web contact form on the Going Beyond Sustainability site. And I’m happy to schedule a 15-minute no-charge conversation with anyone who wants to discuss how you can become a profitable green/social change business, harnessing the unique strengths of your existing business.
Entrepreneur Interview: Bo Parfet of Denali Venture Philanthropy: Profound Social Change
