Whether you are an aspiring social entrepreneur or already have a sustainable business you want to take to the next level, you will get valuable information just by attending this FREE virtual event series.

The Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit

The Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit is a FREE virtual, week long, alternative Green MBA, featuring the visionary leaders who are DEFINING the green economy and ethical marketplace, plus marketing gurus who will help you take your business to the next level.

Here are the details:

April 16-20 Earth Week 2012

To get access to the calls, please register:

http://www.greenbusinessentrepreneurs.com/

This is a FREE Event brought to you by Green Marketing TV

Who Should Attend

• Established green business owners and green business professionals
• Mission driven entrepreneurs who believe in sustainability
• Green marketers & green product designers
• Forward thinking intrapraneurs driving corporate sustainability initiatives
• Early stage green startup entrepreneurs
• Aspiring green and social entrepreneurs researching innovative business ideas
• Changemakers seeking to unite purpose, passion and profit

What You Will Learn

• Evaluating the Marketplace & Identifying Your Niche
• Developing Your Visionary Business Idea
• Raising Capital Through Business Plan Competitions, Crowdfunding & VC Investment
• Growing Your Business Without Going Crazy
• Marketing Your Business on a Bootstrap Budget

Panel Topics

Monday April 16 | Track 1 – The Growth of the Green Economy & Ethical Markets:
Here we cover the state of the sustainable economy and socially responsible markets. We are going to explore the ethical marketplace, as well as uncover the hottest opportunities for green jobs and green entrepreneurship. We’ll discuss sustainable business as a global movement and the greening of mainstream America. We will discover extraordinary companies that are solving the world’s most pressing concerns and learn how they succeeded.

• The Hottest Solar Trends & Keys to Selling Solar Online
• Sustainable Business as A Global Movement
• What Will It Take to Co-Create a Green Economy?
• Making Green Sexy: Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Small Green Businesses
• Emerging Green Career Opportunities and How to Land your Green Dream Job
• New Ways to Create Wealth and Grow the Ethical Economy through Socially Responsible Investing.

Register Now

Tuesday April 17 | Track 2 – From Visionary Business Idea…

This series will help you identify your unique genius, leave your day job, create a business plan, and embark on your journey to financial freedom. From business plan competitions, to online fundraising tools and social venture funding, we also look at some funding options for social entrepreneurs and what it takes to attract investors.

• Keys to Manifesting Entrepreneurial Success Using the Law of Attraction
• Hacking Social Enterprise Business Plan Competitions
• How to Attract VC Investors to Fund Your Social Enterprise
• From Hobby to Thriving Handmade E-Commerce Business
• The Art of Defining Your Niche & Attracting Your Perfect Fit Clients
• How to Launch a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

Register Now

Wednesday April 18 | Track 3 – …To Thriving Green Enterprise
Once you’ve launched your sustainable social venture, what does it take to reach your target audience and scale your business, without going crazy? In this track, experts talk to us about what it takes to succeed as an emerging entrepreneur. Plus, we’ll cover some high impact green businesses that are coming out with innovative products to feed your creative mind and keep you inspired.

• The New Rules of Green Marketing: What Green Entrepreneurs Need to Know Now
• The Greening of Mainstream America
• How to Power Network Your Way to a More Sustainable World
• Online Productivity Tools Every Small Business Should Know About
• The Whole Systems Approach to Keeping Your Small Business Sanity
• Why Cradle to Cradle Will be the New Strategic Advantage

Register Now

Thursday April 19 | Track 4 – Grow Your Good Business With Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a powerful and free way to grow your business, expand your reach, and create a community of fans around your business who will promote you and buy from you over and over again. But many small businesses don’t see the ROI in social media and have a hard time getting it to work for them. In this track, we will show you what you are doing wrong, and how to do social media right.

• Your Small Business Social Media Command Central
• Cracking the Code to Profitable Social Media Marketing As a Small Business
• Your Social Media Launch BluePrint & Advanced Strategies for Savvy Marketers
• What it Takes to Build a 6 Figure Business For Good Blogging Empire
• Facebook: From Social Time Vortex to Lead Generation Machine
• Boost Your Street Cred with Self Publishing,Sell Your Book with Social Media

Register Now

Friday April 20 | Track 5 – Bootstrap Internet Marketing for Green & Socially Responsible Business
Small businesses have smaller marketing budgets, but this doesn’t mean you can’t compete with big brands, and even out market them. As an SMB, you have the advantage of strategic agility, while big businesses often take months to execute on a simple web strategy because of the politics and bureaucracy. This track focuses on your optimizing your website and content marketing strategies that drive organic web traffic.

• Creating Your First Small Business Website on a Bootstrap Budget
• WordPress SEO Strategies for Time Strapped Small Businesses
• The Art of Turning Website Visitors Into Adoring Customers
• Why Local SEO Matters for Your Small Green Business
• Grow Your Sustainable Business with Green Affiliate Marketing

Register Now

28 Visionary Speakers

Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director Green America & Green Festivals
Andrea Vahl, Social Media Consultant and author of, “Facebook Marketing All-In-One For Dummies”
Bob Doyle, CEO Boundless Living & Wealth Beyond Reason, Law of Attraction and “The Secret”
Daan Elffers, Founder ELCAMEDIA Cradle to Cradle Marketing Agency
David Mihm, Co-Founder of GetListed.org & Local SEO Consultant
Elena Christopoulos, Interim President Green Chamber of Commerce
George Kao, Holistic Marketing Coach
Greg Wendt, CFP and Founder of Green Economy Think Tank and Co-Founder of Green Business Networking
Jacquie Ottman, Author of The New Rules of Green Marketing
JD Lasica, Founder SocialBrite.org & SocialMedia.biz
Joey Shepp, Founder Earthsite and Sustainable Programs Director of Dominican University of CA School of Business and Leadership
Joost de Valk, Founder Yoast.com & Creator of WordPress SEO Plugin
Karen Lee, Founder EcoKaren and Eco Etsy Team Captain
Katrina Heppler, Founder 77webstudio
Kriss Bergethon, Founder Solar Sphere
KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz, CEO & Founder of Sustainable Life Media & Sustainable Brands Conference
Kyle Rutkin, Author and Founder of Palooza Press
Lorna Li, Founder Green Marketing TV
Morgan Morris, Co-Founder Inspire Green
Nick Aster, Founder Triple Pundit, Co-Founder TreeHugger
Nikki Pava, Co-Founder EcoTuesday
Rich Brooks, President Flyte New Media
Scott Cooney, Founder GreenBusinessOwner.com
Shawn Berry, Co-Founder LIFT Business Coaching
Shel Horowitz, Author of “Guerilla Marketing Goes Green”
Tyler Gage, Co-Founder Runa Amazon Guayusa Tea Company
Tad Hargrave, Founder Marketing for Hippies
Warren Fligg, Founder Performance-Based Green Affiliate Network

Register Now

About Green Marketing TV

The Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit is brought to you by Green Marketing TV, a business blog for green and social entrepreneurs – entrepreneurs who care about people, profits, and the planet.

Our mission is to provide socially responsible entrepreneurs with marketing strategies, tips and tools that help them grow their small to medium sized businesses. We offer insightful entrepreneur interviews, news coverage of inspiring organizations, actionable marketing advice, and useful guides on how to start and grow a triple bottom line business, without going crazy.

About Lorna Li

Lorna Li is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Green Marketing TV. She is the host of the Entrepreneurs for a Change Podcast and the Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit. Lorna specializes in Social Media SEO, the art of using social media to increase web visibility and search engine rankings. She works with socially responsible business owners as an Internet Marketing Business Coach.

Batlow Apples Turns Trash into Cider Treasure with This Green Business Idea

Made with 3.5 apples per bottle, Batlow Premium Cider was developed out of a need to find a use for waste products produced in the apple growing industry. The apple co-operative, Batlow Apples, found that its waste fruit was just that – waste.

So instead of throwing the apples that weren’t deemed suitable for the supermarket into the trash, Batlow Apples decided to create a side business making apple cider. Their beverage is made without concentrates or sugar, is gluten-free, and apparently a favorite of Australians. Check out their quirky video on the selection of apples for the cider:

MyFarm.com Crowd-Manages Agricultural Production, Supports Small Farm

A Portuguese farm is now being run by the masses through MyFarm.com. This conventional farm was converted into farm land which is now being crowd-managed by urban dwellers, giving them the opportunity to participate in farm life without having to move to the farm.  Functioning much like a game (think Farmville), MyFarm.com makes real-life agriculture fun and creative.

Members of the farm co-operative are able to purchase 49 square meters of land for EUR 60, which gives them 600 points, with the opportunity to purchase more points at a rate of EUR 1 per 10 points.

The points are then converted into power that can be used to dictate what happens on the farm. Members can choose from activities like selecting which seeds to grow, determining when seeds should be planted and how many to sow, as well as some of the techniques used for cultivation. And if members aren’t sure what’s best, they can consult the online information available to them on how sustainable farms are managed. The workers on the farm are then to set to work within three working days (weather permitting) to carry out the plans of the members. They also receive updates on how their garden grows.

Once the season is complete, the members receive a portion of the crop to get a taste for what they’ve cooperatively created! Members are also required to pay a monthly lease of EUR 25 which goes to supporting the farm. It’s a great concept for educating people about the origins of food while supporting small farmers at the same time.

Zéro Gâchis Helps Businesses Discount Food to Avoid Spoilage Waste

In another stroke of food-saving brilliance, Zéro Gâchis, a French based green enterprise, has created a way for businesses to avoid food waste by advertising sales on foods that are near their expiration dates.  When a grocer or bakery finds that they have items that will soon spoil if they are not consumed, they can create promotions to offer the foods at a discount. Buyers are notified of the sales via the site and can take quick action to purchase the goods before they go. Buyers also earn points for using the site, which gives them even further discounts in the future or be given at donations that help to avoid food waste.

Green Enterprise Makes BioLite CampStove Prevents Deforestation, Powers Devices

The BioLite CampStove, which is now being manufactured in time for your next camping trip, is a small, durable little camp stove about the size of a conventional water bottle and super lightweight. By concentrating the heat created by burning organic matter, it reduces air emissions by more than 90% while providing an affordable source of energy for small electronic and electric devices.

The CampStove, which is an adaptation of the larger BioLite stove used in many developing countries, has a usb plug that allows you to charge devices like your iPhone and other portable electronics. This provides an on-demand source for electricity that you can also use to power things like lights, and makes it a great solution for people living in developing countries who are otherwise not connected to the grid or cannot afford electricity.

Check out the video to hear some of the stories of these green entrepreneurs as they worked from prototype to commercially-available product over the period of two years of field testing and user feedback on over four continents.

The team hopes to launch large-scale promotion of their stoves in India, Uganda, Ghana, and Kenya. Your purchase of a BioLite CampStove helps to support this social enterprise working to solve some pretty important environmental problems.

Green Enterpreneurs Create Wonderbag for Less Stove-Time Cooking

With another ingenious take on saving cooking energy, the Wonderbag helps home chefs everywhere cut down on stovetop time to reduce their carbon footprints. What is essentially an insulated bag, the Wonderbag works by allowing you to heat a pot of food on the stove to get the cooking started. You then transfer the hot pot to the Wonderbag which insulates the pot to continue the cooking for hours longer.

This cooking alternative can reduce your fuel consumption by 30%, while diminishing your production of greenhouse gases and toxic fumes associated with cooking fuels. It’s also a lot safer for children because it reduces the time you need to use an open flame or hot stove for cooking.

When applied in a developing world context, the Wonderbag also has the benefit of reducing wood burned for cooking, which is another way to prevent deforestation. Additionally, because food spends very little time on the stove, there’s less chance of it burning, which means it reduces food waste. That’s good for North America where we throw out tons of food waste every day, but also good for cash-strapped mothers in places like Africa.

Wonderbag hopes their green business will help save 8 million tonnes of carbon in 5 years, which is like preventing 1.5 million flights around the world. They estimate that with 5 million homes using a Wonderbag, 2.5 million carbon tonnes are saved every year.

What do ‘trade incentives’ mean?
The US Commerce Department, through a complaint filed by American solar manufacturer Solar World, charges that the Chinese government subsidized the solar panel market with massive loan incentives, cheaper power costs, and actual cash disbursements. In the world of international trade, this is considered unfair as it obviously lowered the manufacturing cost for Chinese producers.

Doesn’t the US government give incentives to US solar manufacturers?

The US government over the last 6 years has helped domestic solar production with its own incentives. But they are very different than what China offered its own manufacturers. The Department of Energy offered loan guarantees and tax incentives, which essentially made the US government a cosigner on loan applications. And while it while it may seem like splitting hairs, the Chinese government’s actions had a far greater impact on the actual price of the finished product.

How much are the tariffs?
The tariffs are scaled to punish the biggest violators. There are as such:

• Suntech, 2.9 percent
• Trina 4.73 percent
• All others, 3.59 percent

But this is likely just the beginning of the tariffs. The Commerce department is not finished with its review and this decision opens the door to more sanctions. The US government will review the charges of ‘dumping’ (meaning the industry sold its panels at a loss) in May. Industry insiders believe (and hope) that the final tariffs will be closer to 10%.

How will this affect solar panel prices?
It is anticipated that prices will rise briefly, and then continue their long descent down. Many suppliers have spoken of raising prices 10% in April 2012. Those numbers will move closely with the tariffs. But the long term economics of solar won’t change drastically, as technology and manufacturing efficiencies continue to drive the price per watt down. Consumers should not be fearful that the prices will continue to rise.

Why will prices rise now?
Many solar panel manufacturers are operating at or near a loss to compete with the Chinese manufacturers. This rise in price will better reflect the actual economics of solar panel manufacturing and allow some companies to turn a profit and reinvest in research and development. The US buys over $3 billion in solar modules from China every year, and more of this money could be directed toward American made products.

So overall is this a good or bad thing for solar?
This will be tough on installers and designers in the short term. With solar incentives and rebates drying up and labor costs on the rise, this certainly won’t help the economics for home and small business systems. The best a local installer can do is to explain that now American made products will be more in line with Chinese solar panel costs and that the costs were skewed to begin with due to Chinese government interference.

In the long term, this will probably be just a bump in the road for solar panel prices and they will likely keep falling over the long term. Overall the goal is to achieve grid parity with fossil fuels, and solar is on track to do that in the next decade.
The outlook for solar power is still bright, and with global economic recovery on the way, that outlook will only get better.

Kriss Bergethon is a writer and solar professional from Colorado. Visit his website at Solar Panels today.

Kickboard Software Helps Teachers Teach More Effectively

Too often, teachers (especially those in public institutions) are so overworked that they really can’t be the change they want to be in their students’ lives. And though they’re required to submit all manner of reports to their superiors, rarely do they have the time or mental capacity to work with the data themselves to track trends and see problems before they come.

Enter Kickboard, created by Jennifer Schnidman Medbery, a computer science graduate from Columbia. This web-based software makes it possible for teachers to use the data they collect to actually improve student performance. With an easy to use interface, teachers are able to quickly enter information and then analyze it efficiently to determine where interventions are necessary. The great news: a teacher can sign up for free and track unlimited students on an unlimited number of academic and behavior indices.

Code for America Working to Create Greener Cities through Software

Frustrated by the lack of services found in many American cities, social entrepreneur Jen Pahlka started Code for America, a web technology firm focused on tackling municipal issues of sustainability. Their motto: “Helping governments work better for everyone with the people and the power of the web.”

Fielding project proposals from cities and towns throughout the US, Code for America carefully identifies projects it will tackle each year – using web-based solutions. To date, the collaborative tech firm has developed things like a platform for Detroit residents to track data on vacant properties in the city to battle the decline in population. They also created WeLovePublicService.org – a website where citizens can thank their local public employees. Who knows what new and interesting social problems Code for America will tackle next?

Style Seat Connects Consumers with Stylists from City to City

Ever feel lost when you move to a new city? Finding a new hair stylist can be particularly annoying if you don’t know anyone who could recommend someone trustworthy for styling your hair. But Melody McCloskey is trying to solve that problem with Style Seat, an online tool where consumers can find stylists, book appointments online, and get inspired by photos of a professional’s previous work. The site also hopes to make it easier for stylists to overcome the challenges of a slow economy. By using tools on Style Seat, stylists can track trends in their own business, and target marketing and promotional campaigns to increase interest in their work during slow days or seasons. Ingenious!

Halfsies Restaurants to Donate to Nonprofits, Social Enterprises to Fight Hunger

This concept should put a smile on your face. Halfsies, operating on the assumption that if we share, there will be enough to go around, has developed a fund-raising concept for nonprofits focused on hunger. Their scheme: Whenever you order half-sized meal (a “halfsie, otherwise known as a healthy portion), from one of their partner restaurants, that restaurant saves on food waste, and makes a donation to an organization fighting hunger.

They’ve got some great statistics in this video to back-up their concept:

• Most restaurant portion sizes are 2x to 4x larger than recommended by government health authorities.
• Nearly half of all the food produced in the US is thrown away, totaling close to 200 million pounds or $44 billion worth of food waste every single day.
• Food waste contributes to climate change by rotting in landfills where it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
• 1 in 7 people or nearly 1 billion people go hungry every day.

Halfsies is starting a pilot project in Austin, Texas and hopes the concept will spread. If you’re a restaurant owner, why not check it out as a great addition to your socially responsible business?

Video Production Company Uses Buy One, Donate One Scheme

In another act of corporate generosity, a Belgium online video production company called Timbooktwo has pledged to make a free video for a charity for every paid video they produce. This is at the heart of their business model, not just a passing promotion.

Timbooktwo’s forte is report-style travel videos for the web, operating all over the world in any language, so making videos about some of the great social enterprises and charities working around the world is a natural fit for this company. Their theory is that when nonprofits and social entrepreneurs can show, in video, their projects, they’re able to raise more money to continue their work.

With the transition to digital media being the norm, these days, one has to wonder if printed promotional campaigns can ever be green?

Marrying tried-and-tested marketing methods with the responsibility of being a greener business can seem like a difficult task, particularly at a time when many companies are feeling the strain financially. One of the oldest tools used by companies to promote their products and services are leaflets and brochures, but in a world where sustainability is becoming a key consideration, does the printed promotion still have its place?

In addition to being cost-effective, it’s possible to ensure environmental issues such as sustainability are still considered as part of a traditional leafleting strategy by purchasing promotional flyers from an eco-friendly printing supplier. If you are considering embarking on a traditional leafleting campaign, or would like to produce some printed promotional literature, it’s best to approach potential printing partners armed with a few questions that should help you snag the best deal for you and the environment.

Many businesses are aware that operating as a green business can help them to attract customers, so in order to ensure you yourselves aren’t guilty of greenwashing and that you don’t fall victim to the attempts of others at doing the same, you should establish a few basics. One point to check is whether the green printing company is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council – a not-for-profit organisation that promotes responsible management of the world’s forests. Companies who are certified under the group’s Chain-of-Custody programme use paper that can be tracked right back to certified wood grown in their forests. This means that the paper used to print your leaflets or other promotional materials has been sourced responsibly.

Waste should also be a priority: as well as making sure you don’t order more promotional materials than you need, you should check your green printers’ waste policy.

Flyerzone, an eco friendly printing company, separates waste into seventeen streams for recycling or processing and use vegetable based inks from large drums. Vegetable based inks are less harmful to the environment and pumping from drums rather than using small cartridges minimises the use of packaging. It’s even possible to recycle printing plates – so ask potential printing partners whether they have a recycling policy. In addition to being more environmentally sound, minimising waste makes solid commercial sense as those who use fewer resources are able to keep printing prices low and offer you a good price for their services.

How to Assess the Eco-Friendliness of Your Green Printing Services

Here are a few questions you can ask to assess the eco-friendliness of printing companies:

• Is the paper purchased by the company, from a certified Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) supplier?
• Do you have an environmental management system (EMS) in place? Is it certified to the ISO 14001 standard or verified under the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS).
• What type of inks do you use in your printing process?
• Do you use cartridges or drums as part of the printing process?
• What do you do with your paper waste?
• How does your business dispose of non-paper waste such as solvents?
• Can you provide assistance or advice if I have leftover printed materials that I need to dispose of?
• Do you recycle your printing plates?
• Do you have schemes in place which reward green ideas from employees?

Beyond the use of promotional printing, keeping waste to a minimum is a good lesson to take into your own workplace; as well as limiting your paper waste you can look to reduce energy use through harnessing natural light in your building, or installing solar energy panels to help you generate your own heat.

Use the lessons learnt in your promotional campaigns throughout your business and familiarise yourself with the waste reduction packaging directive, which tries to minimise the use of packaging, promote energy recovery and encourage recycling. Not only could this gain your business recognition as a green business, it could also net you savings both long and short term.

Microgrants Fund Creative Projects in Cities through Social Enterprise

This innovative micro-funding idea helps to generate money for creative projects in the city of Detroit and others like it. For the past two years, Detroit SOUP hosts a monthly dinner – soup, salad, bread, and pie – to raise awareness and funds for a local project. The entrance fee is $5 per person and anyone can attend the dinner, which takes place on the second Sunday of each month. Local community members and restaurants donate the food to keep costs really low.

During the evening, four creative projects present their proposals and dinner guests are then encouraged to vote on their favorite. Whichever project garners the greatest support receives the funds raised that evening – usually between $600 and $900. Find a guide for creating your own at crowdsourced funding project at SundaySoup.org.

Crowdfunding Start-up Provides Funds to Employ Americans Working for Charities

Yet another creative approach to crowdsourcing funds for charitable organizations, Giifa works to match private donors willing to provide funds for employee wages in nonprofits around the world. Not only does this approach help to solve crushing unemployment problems in the US, it also makes it possible to staff charities so that they can continue their good work.

Individual donors can give one-time gifts of $20 or more, directing it to a charity of their choice. The social enterprise is still in its infancy, but hopes to grow to help provide many jobs to member organizations in the coming months.

Calling All Eco Entrepreneurs, Social Entrepreneurs, Sustainability Consultants, Green Businesses Owners

Do you want to help me co-create the Ethical EcoBiz Toolkit? Not only will you get a chance to be featured in my upcoming book, you’ll get a chance to be featured in the Entrepreneurs for a Change podcast, which is awesome publicity.

More importantly, your story will serve to inspire thousands of aspiring social entrepreneurs. The Ethical EcoBiz Toolkit will be released with the launch of the Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit, this Earth Week 2012 – that is April 16-20, 2012.

I am looking for YOUR personal stories that illustrate the challenges and success of social entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs with the BEST stories will be featured on in our podcast, and highlighted in our Green Business Entrepreneurs Success Summit.

Here’s What You Need to Do

1. Share a story that fits into one of the 4 categories below in the comments section of this post. You will get an awesome DOFOLLOW link to your website just for taking the time.
   
2. Sign up to our private Ethical EcoBiz Co-Creators Email list using the form BELOW - this will help me stay on top of my conversations with the group.

Join the Ethical EcoBiz Co-Creator's Group!

Name:

Email:

We respect your email privacy

 

Here’s What You’ll Get

• You & your company will be featured in a highlighted section in the book
• You get to pre-order the Ethical EcoBiz Toolkit at a rock bottom discount – if you want
• If decide you purchase the Ethical EcoBiz Toolkit, you get free upgrades to the product, FOREVER

If your story is really compelling & you are invited to the podcast, you’ll get:

• An audio MP3 of the interview
• A slideshow video, using photos & screen captures of your website
• 2 blog posts with links of your choice, one from Green Marketing TV & one from Entrepreneurs for a Change
• Social media promotion of the blog posts – great free publicity
• Inclusion in the Ethical EcoBiz Toolkit in a highlighted section in the book or as an audio download OR
• Inclusion in the Telesummit as speaker or in the bonus package
• You get to pre-order the Ethical EcoBiz Toolkit at a rock bottom discount – if you want
• If decide you purchase the Ethical EcoBiz Toolkit, you get free upgrades to the product, FOREVER

All just for sharing your story.

Here Are The Stories We Are Looking For

Please post your stories in the comments section of this post. DO NOT submit your story by email as this is too much for me to manage. Take advantage of our DOFOLLOW commenting system and get an awesome backlink.

1. Inspiration.

We want hear about your life changing moments that erased all doubt from your mind that you were meant to be a social entrepreneur.

My favorite story in this category is the story of Jacqueline Novogratz, who started the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit social venture fund that invests in companies that use entrepreneurial approaches to solving global poverty. When she was young, she traveled to Rwanda, where she started a microfinance organization. There, she was driving along when she spotted a small boy wearing a sweater that she recognized as her own – her favorite sweater as a child, which she’d given to Goodwill many years earlier. When she ran out of the car and checked the interior label on the back of the sweater, it still had her name on it.

For Novogratz, the blue sweater served as a symbol and reminder of the interconnectedness of all humanity.

What’s your story?

2. Failure.

The most successful entrepreneurs have failed over and over again. My favorite quote about failure comes from Michael Jordan:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

My favorite social entrepreneur failure story was the story of mountaineer Greg Mortenson, author of 3 Cups of Tea and co-founder of Central Asia Institute, a nonprofit that has built 171 schools in the remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, a region where few education opportunities existed. In 1993, Mortenson attempted to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain. After over 70 days on the mountain, Mortenson and 3 other climbers had their ascent interrupted by the need to rescue another climber. After this 75 hour ordeal, Mortenson gets lost on his descent from K2 and arrives, alone, weak, and exhausted, not in Askole, where the porters awaited, but in the village of Korphe. He was taken in by the villagers, treated as an honored guest, and nurtured back to health. In order to repay the remote community for their hospitality, he promised to build them a school. Thus, in failing to climb K2, Mortenson discovered his life purpose – to bring a balanced, modern education to rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Do you have a story of an endeavor, project or business venture that went down in flames, only so that you would rise like a phoenix from the ashes?

3. Mentorship.

Successful entrepreneurs almost never succeed alone. Most have had at least ONE mentor steer guide them in their entrepreneurial journey. Sometimes these are long lasting relationships, other times, these may be brief, but memorable encounters. Is there anyone you would like to honor as having impacted your life purpose in a meaningful way?

4. Success.

Success comes in all forms. I was at the Hub SoMa, for an evening talk featuring different social entrepreneurs. Premal Shah, of Kiva, a nonprofit that enables microloans to entrepreneurs through peer-to-peer lending spoke of the day their web traffic “hockey sticked.” That is to say, after nearly a year and a half of low, steady traffic, suddenly, visitor traffic shot through the roof. Kiva has now enabled over $281M in loans with a 98.88% repayment rate.

Please share with some of your most amazing breakthrough moments.

AGAIN – Here’s What You Need to Do

1. Sign up to our private Ethical EcoBiz Co-Creators Email list using the form BELOW – this will help me stay on top of my conversations with the group.
2. Share a story that fits into one of the 4 categories below in the comments section of this post. You will get an awesome DOFOLLOW link to your website just for taking the time.

Join the Ethical EcoBiz Co-Creator's Group!

Name:

Email:

We respect your email privacy

 

Thanks for collaborating!

Some entrepreneurs create a business around their passion.  They firmly believe if they follow their passion, the money will follow. Other entrepreneurs research the market, then create a business based on a gap, or need in the market. IMHO, these guys are the truly savvy entrepreneurs. Because they’re not personally attached to their business idea, and they’re not going to spend tons of time and money to create a product that they HOPE people will buy.

So here’s an awesome story from Zack Kalter, whom I met at Think Tank, the most awesome affiliate marketing conference around. Zack is working with Clearly Filtered these days, a green startup that makes portable water filtration products, including

Not only are their filtered water bottles BPA free, their filters remove 99% of chemicals, viruses, bacteria, and other nasty stuff.  I wish I knew about their bottles before I started travelling in the Brazilian Amazon for 5 months, especially after my UV water purification device conked out after month 1, forcing me to use toxic, government issued chlorine drops as my only alternative.

I’m particularly intrigued by their process. What does it take to research a market, then come up with a compelling product that sells? Here’s Clearly Filtered’s story, plus advice to aspiring green entrepreneurs on how to research a market and pick a product to sell:

Clearly Filter’s Green Startup Launch Story

As a startup in the green industry, we have spent the last 6 months choosing a product, coming up with a business concept, and implementing a full e-commerce solution for distributing our products online. We are a young company, but we have gone through some growing pains and would love to share a few key points for anyone out there looking to start a green business. Hope it helps!

Choose A Green Niche You Can Be Passionate About

When we first started thinking about what kind of business to start, we really wanted to do something that would have an impact on the world. We considered various initiatives in the green industry but when we were presented with an opportunity to market portable water filtration products, we knew we wanted to move forward with the idea immediately. This would allow us to do our part to combat the global water epidemic. We believe that starting a business without a purpose is setting yourself up for failure from the start.

We happen to believe that clean drinking water is a basic human right – not a luxury. We all need water and lots of it. But how do you know that the water you’re drinking is clean and free of contaminants? That’s the very problem we’re trying to address.

The typical solution, at least for those who can afford it, is to buy bottled water. But it’s terribly overpriced, the quality is poorly regulated and once used, the plastic bottles have a nasty habit of ending up in our landfills and oceans. Just because we have something at our disposal doesn’t mean that we should dispose of it.

It was these factors and more that led us into this business venture. Below the surface – at the very core – we knew it was vital that we keep our mission statement at the forefront of our daily activities. We want to help people save money, live a healthier life, and do our part to help preserve our planet. But none of this can be accomplished without laying the foundation of a successful business.

Niche Market Research Is Key

When starting any business from the ground up, you have to have to be aware of your competition. We knew that the water bottle niche was very competitive and filtered water bottles are just now becoming more popular. Our initial goal was to determine if our filters could stand a chance against the many competitors in the marketplace. Initially, we did some keyword research using Google’s keyword tool to get a gist of which keywords had the most traffic. Then we Googled certain key phrases like “filtered water bottle” to get a rough idea of who was advertising, which sites show up in the SERPs and which product images show up.

This gave us a clear look at who is making an impact with their SEO and PPC marketing. We began to jot down every company selling a filtered water bottle and we kept it all compiled in Google docs for easy collaboration. What we found was that there are a few huge players in this market. But, more importantly, we found out that our competitor’s filters aren’t anywhere near the caliber of ours. On our spreadsheet, we included how many contaminants each filter removes and it turns out that our filter can eliminate up to 99.99% of all fresh water contaminants while our top competitors only claim to reduce chlorine.

This was the first “a-ha” moment for us because we instantly knew that we had a better product – one that would allow our customers to feel confident that they were drinking pure clean water with every sip.

While it is clear that market research is important, we also had to consider longevity of the industry. With each passing year our water is becoming more and more contaminated and we felt that this market is only going to become more and more relevant in the future. With the amount of natural disasters our world experiences, it never hurts to be prepared.

Cash Is The Lifeblood Of Any Startup

Product creation requires a great deal of work, and we realized that right away. There are many costs to prepare for, such as product costs, web cart creation, web designers, and fulfillment just to name few.

We really wanted to bootstrap the operation but we felt as though it would be in our best interest to bring some investors on board. We took one initial round of capital from two investors which gave us the leverage to complete our website, purchase initial product supply and hire a few key employees to work part time. It was, and still is, important for us to be extremely tight with our money and keep track of where everything is coming from and going to. We use QuickBooks to manage all of our transactions, which makes the process a little easier.

We also had to take into consideration future product redesigns and new releases so that we can have some flexibility in the way we want to position the company down the road. One thing we have learned is that innovation is key and staying stagnant for too long can lead to your death as a company.

Nothing Happens Without The Marketing

Remember that iconic line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come?” Well, that just doesn’t hold true in the world of e-commerce. With so much competition you have to be on the ball and be able to find traffic sources any way you can. While talking about our marketing strategy, we understood that there were a few key ways that can generate the right kind of traffic to our site.

Paid traffic such as search adverting (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and media buys can be great if you target the right keywords, but it can also be expensive and risky if you don’t know what you’re doing. We decided that we would do paid search on a small scale to ease our way into testing the waters and would focus on a variety of free methods to minimize risk. Here are a few of the ways we will be marketing using free methods:

1. Guest blogging – This is actually what I’m doing right now. It often goes unnoticed but guest blogging is probably one of the best ways to gain exposure because it is a win-win for everyone involved. The owner of the blog gets a quality piece of content and as the author, you get the readership value and an incoming link to your site.

2. Facebook Fan Pages – Facebook is huge these days…obviously! We are making a huge push to our Clearly Filtered fan page to help educate our consumers and build relationships with them. Down the line, we’ll also be doing some paid Facebook ads to our fan page to spread awareness but right now we are starting with viral components like contests and word of mouth.

3. Video Marketing – Video marketing is something we feel very strongly about. We will continue to make new videos and promo pieces in order to educate and entertain prospective customers. YouTube videos are one of the best ways to communicate your message and personality and the insight feature is an awesome tool for understanding viewer demographics.

4. Forums – Forums might not work for all niches, but we believe that joining the conversation is a huge part of educating people about clean water and our products. Our goal with forums is to target different markets (such as health, travel and survival) and add value to the conversations currently taking place. The goal here is to not spam and genuinely add value to each conversation.

Philanthropy Is A Win-Win

When starting ClearlyFiltered.com we knew we had to include a branch of the company that incorporated a non-profit organization.

We’re really proud to announce our plans for the Clearly Filtered Foundation. The purpose of this foundation is to provide people with a platform to donate money knowing that their contributions will go directly to giving clean water to someone in need.

That’s the kind of thing that makes all the work we’ve put into Clearly Filtered seem worthwhile. It’s our way of giving back to the people who need it most.

If you can tie a non-profit into your business or help give back in some way (think Tom’s Shoes), it will both reward you as a company and give consumers the satisfaction of actually doing a small part for a great cause.

There is a lot to starting a green business and there will always be challenges. The important thing to remember is that a green business does more than make money – whether it’s a non-profit segment, or simply helping people live greener lives. We as green entrepreneurs need to keep these concepts at the forefronts of our minds and push forward in our entrepreneurial ways. Thanks for reading this post. We hope it gives you some insight into what it takes to start a green business.

If any of you are interested in checking out our products, we’d love for you to visit our site. Also… We are giving readers of Green Marketing TV a 10% coupon as our way of saying thank you for reading our post. Use coupon code: gmtv11

About Clearly Filtered:

Clearly Filtered develops portable filtered water bottles, which aim to help clean up our water, make us healthier, and eliminate the harmful waste of the bottled water industry. We are a young startup based out of Orange County, CA and are doing our best to create a sustainable green business that can both turn a profit and help the environment at the same time.

For the most up to date information about us, our products or how you can get involved, visit us on the web at: www.ClearlyFiltered.com. You can also find us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/ClearlyFiltered