Talks & Training
Shel Horowitz has such a clear command of the ways business can profit by building social and environmental benefits directly into profitable products and services—and delivered with such inspiration and passion—that I had him back a second time.
Tony D’Urso, Host/Producer of The Tony D’Urso Show
(#1 show on VoiceAmerica & #1 worldwide on Chartable)
Create Momentum, Inspiration, and Action with a Dynamic Presentation to Help Them Change the World, Profitably
Stop thinking of green practices and social equity initiatives as burdens, and start thinking of them as profit opportunities! Shel Horowitz’s inspiring, educational, motivating, and interactive presentations may be just what you need to perk up your next meeting or conference.
He’ll show your audience…
How ordinary people make powerful change
(examples: a seamstress, a shipyard electrician, an autistic teenager, and a prisoner serving a life sentence who each changed the world—you already know their names)
How business can build social equity and environmental initiatives directly into profitable products and services:
Your organization and community can thrive by turning hunger and poverty into abundance; racism and othering into justice; war and violence into peace; and catastrophic climate change, pollution, and atmospheric carbon into a healthy planet
Two key mindset shifts
That turn these huge challenges from “impossible” to practical
How this approach builds customer and employee appreciation, involvement, positive press—and revenues and profits
Why guilt and shame don’t work—and what positive motivators we can use instead
What lessons activism has for business, and which lessons business has for activism
SHORT BIO
An IPA-certified international speaker and TEDx Talker who’s spoken as far east as Istanbul and as far west as Kauai and Honolulu, Shel is the multiple-award-winning author of ten books—four of them on the sweet spot where profitability meets environmental and social progress.
Known as The Transformpreneur℠, he highlights the work of “practical visionaries” who show us we already know how to solve society’s biggest challenges. His talks use examples ranging from Fortune 100 familiars to little-known solopreneurs.
Shel Horowitz, “the Transformpreneur℠”: your Social Transformation Sherpa
What Shel Can do For YOU
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Videos & Photos
Shel Horowitz Speaker Demo Video
TEDx talk “Impossible is a DARE: Business For a Better World”
Shel Horowitz Speaker Demo Video
Mehlaqa Samdani Testimonial
Ira Bryck Testimonial
Shel's Pecha Kucha: 20 Seconds for Each of 20 Slides
(6-1/2 minutes, total)
Excerpt from Shel’s popular talk, Making Green Sexy
Shel Horowitz: Brief History of Sustainable Food and a Glimpse at the Future
Jeannie Levinson (Jay Levinson's widow) video testimonial on Shel's speaking
More Photos of Shel
Shel is willing to provide you, at no charge, with up to three (non-exclusive) articles for you to run in your internal newsletters, in pre-conference emails, or linked from your web page about the conference. You would run these with a bio block that mentions the upcoming speech.
“Impossible” is a Dare! How Business Can Not Only Solve Hunger/Poverty, War, and Catastrophic Climate Change, but Make a Very Nice Profit, Too
Taking off from this quote by Muhammad Ali, “Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare,” the talk begins with a quick review of “impossible” accomplishments that we now take for granted—from iPods to space travel, from organizing to save a local mountain to a South Africa emerging out of apartheid and into democracy. Then, this inspirational and empowering talk moves into the advantages to business of solving the biggest problems of our time. Motivating not through guilt or shame but by combining the vision of a better world with the power of profitable business, this talk demonstrates that real change is not only possible, but profitable.
Examples (curated for each individual audience) may include:
A company whose solar-powered LED lanterns are a ladder out of poverty for thousands of households in Africa and Asia
A fair-trade organic coffee roaster who funds village-led community development projects that attack poverty and injustice at their roots
A major carpet company that not only shifted its entire enterprise toward sustainability but slashed costs by initiating eco-friendly, economical manufacturing processes
A retailer that created a NEW $15 billion/year market, selling organic food to people who mostly don’t go to Whole Foods
A company that makes a soccer ball into an electric charging station: play for 30 minutes, and charge a device for up to 3 hours
A major UK department store whose soaring profits after publicly measuring 100 sustainability indicators caused the company to add another 100 metrics
A solution to mobility for wheelchair users that replaces bulky, fuel-inefficient, and slow paratransit with individual transportation the size of a Smartcar
Numerous creative ventures that are pushing the boundaries of physics and biology, developing new “biomimicry” products and systems that model nature’s principles: high materials strength, waste-as-input, adaptability, and other state-of-the-art, innovative approaches to the most challenging issues that we humans and our planet must solve
Making Green Sexy: Marketing Green Products and Services to Green AND Non-Green Audiences
You have three audiences you need to market to:
1) Deep greens who already know why going green is important.
2) Lazy greens: want-to-be-greens who will do the right thing only if it’s easy and cheap but won’t go out of their way.
3) What’s-in-it-for-me consumers who will never be convinced that going green is worth extra trouble or expense (who may even be hostile to the idea), but who WILL buy on value, quality, and other attributes.
The committed greens are already on board; now, you’ve got to reach the rest of the world! They’re not going to buy just because it’s the right thing to do—but they WILL buy when you show them how your offering is actually better: higher quality, greater comfort, lower price, and yes, sexier. You’ll succeed when you have different sets of messages for these three different types of customers. Using eye-catching slides and examples including some of the world’s largest and most successful corporations, like General Electric, Marks and Spencer, and General Motors, Shel Horowitz, lead author of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, shows how to attract all three groups.
We’ll discuss:
- What goes through the minds of these three different kinds of buyers, and how to harness their psychology to your advantage
- How to identify the triggers for each audience
- How to craft those triggers into powerful marketing messages that clearly show the advantages of your products and services
- How your superior green product can educate the nongreen buyer on why this stuff actually is important
Don’t waste money sending the wrong message to the wrong people! Learn how to create highly-targeted marketing messages that will move green, want-to-be, and nongreen prospects to action. Using case studies ranging from large, well-known companies to smaller niche brands and even solopreneurs, green/social justice profitability strategist Shel Horowitz shows how to successfully market a green product to each of the three audiences. We’ll look at what kind of messages they respond to: what motivates them to buy. Finally, we’ll brainstorm together on a real-life green product: Participants will generate potential audiences, marketing ideas, and message points aimed at creating sales for this product—and then discuss how they could apply those techniques to marketing their own green products and services.
Beyond Sustainability…to the World We Want: Three More Steps on the Journey to a Healthy Business and a Healing Planet
Sustainability is building systems that keep things the way they are. But that means atmospheric carbon stays above 400 parts per million, high above the safe limit of 350. It means 805 million people around the world are not getting enough to eat, and 3.1 million children die each year of preventable hunger, while preventable air pollution kills another 7 million people every year.
So just going green, just being “sustainable,” isn’t enough. We can do better, make the world better—and make a good profit at the same time.
Step 1 is sustainability:
Making sure things stay at least as good as they are, with inputs balancing outputs, so the world can continue to keep up with human impact. You’ve probably made a great start on this—but again, it’s only the first step. Let’s take three more!
Step 2 is regeneration and thriving:
Creating systems that restore the functions and capabilities we’ve lost. We’ll bring atmospheric carbon back below 350 ppm, return disrupted ecosystems to balance, increase the population of species on the brink of extinction—and create flourishing, profitable businesses based on these concepts.
Step 3 is social change:
Tackling the world’s deep, systemic problems in ways that not only address the root causes but build an economic foundation for long-term success. For example, as eco-friendly business ventures lift the most disadvantaged out of poverty and the earth out of environmental disaster, the formerly ultra-poor begin to gain economic freedom; they can become a new, untapped market.
And once we’ve “stopped the bleeding,” it’s time for:
Step 4 is creating the world we desire:
Shel will lead you on a hands-on visioning process to design that world. Then, together, you’ll pick one project you can move forward to move the world closer to that vision, and implement in a profitable way.
Business for a Better World: How Business Can Profit by Fixing Hunger, Poverty, War, and Catastrophic Climate Change
It’s true that “traditional” business practices have led to some of these crises. But because of this, business is uniquely positioned to address systemic and deep problems including hunger and poverty, racism/othering, war/violence, and catastrophic climate change. And your business can reap multiple benefits by doing this work.
Learn how to turn touch points into tipping points—how to move the planet toward a sustainable world with enough for all, and how to benefit from the newly empowered consumer class you help create.
- Why and how businesses can make a real difference
- Benefits to the business: More revenue, lower costs, higher trust and credibility, easier and better marketing…
- Additional benefits to society, and to the planet
Leading with a Green Heart: Creating Lasting Change Inside AND Outside Your Organization
Unilever… Patagonia…Ben & Jerry’s…Walmart… Marks & Spencer…Marcal…Interface—what do these famous brands in very different industries have in common?
They’ve made environmental leadership a cornerstone of their corporate DNA while continuing to sell very successfully to mainstream audiences. Going far beyond mere “sustainability,” these forward-looking companies embrace restorative environmental and social practices. They actually help reverse negative human impact! At the same time, these practices increase revenues, reduce costs and build reputation, productivity, customer and employee retention—and shareholder value.
These terrific outcomes didn’t happen by accident! They happened because their leaders exercised leadership! Top executives carefully and deliberately created a corporate culture and a customer base that allowed these companies to become thought-leaders, heart-leaders, and action-leaders in green business and creating a better world.
And almost any company can get those same benefits if they’re willing to do the work. Are YOU ready to take on this challenge?
Learn from CEOs in these and other companies how to…
- Create a profitable environment-first strategy
- Harvest and implement the best ideas from employees all the way down the ranks
- Institute a culture where workers enjoy coming to work because they’re so proud of what they’re doing to green the planet
Turning Your Values Into Sales: Effectively Marketing Your Social/Environmental Commitment
Is your company’s commitment to improve the world a “best-kept secret?” Or are you openly using your values in your marketing, but not getting the results you want? Learn how to get the most possible marketing value out of your values. Treating the earth with respect, providing a healthy and welcoming atmosphere for employees, donating a portion of your profits, supporting social and environmental goals–are all marketing points to help you stand out in your prospects’ mind. Harness these points to build not only sales, but customer loyalty–to the point that they become part of your unpaid word-of-mouth army of fans and ambassadors.
- Identify the existing actions and policies most conducive to attracting socially and environmentally conscious fans
- Create marketing strategies that easily bring these to their attention
- Involve your customers with a feeling of “ownership” and participation
- Turn this reservoir of good will into a powerful, virtually free, marketing machine
From Child-Rape Survivor to Champion of Social Change: A Personal Journey
Shel Horowitz will never forget being grabbed off the street by a stranger and raped at age 11. So ashamed he didn’t even tell anyone for more than four years, he had no outlet for dealing with that trauma—except through activism. Shel traces the effect of this experience as it led him to find empathy for others and to become an agent of change at age 12, devoting his life to helping downtrodden people and protecting a threatened planet, while making space for necessary self-growth and healing.
Over the decades, he has taken leadership as both an activist and journalist in causes including peace…LGBT, elder, and disability rights…reinvigorating democracy…and, especially, protecting the environment (which he first embraced in 1970, as a teenager). For the past several years, his primary focus has been leveraging the business community to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, racism and othering into equity, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.
Let Shel take you with him on this personal journey that left him with great faith in humanity and in his own power to change the world.
Trainings
“For organizations that want to combine making a difference and making a profit, I’m your Success Sherpa, your ‘Transformpreneur℠.’ I find opportunities for you to make money doing good in the world, and walk you through the steps to make it real.” —Shel Horowitz
Developing Effective, Appropriate Communication
One-to-one, small-group, and large-group training to empower your staff with competence and confidence as you move forward together: effectively communicating your company or organization’s commitment to a world built on ecological and social change, in your internal and external marketing—including your public presentations.
Your team can learn how to:
Write “story-behind-the-story” media releases and pitch letters—getting noticed in mainstream media in ways that work far better than the rusty old 5Ws
Create messaging to the left AND right sides of the brain—getting people to buy through a combination of emotional and intellectual choices
Be comfortable on camera and microphone, cut quickly to the essence of your message, be a passionate and engaging media guest, and get your call to action included (media training and coaching)
Deliver exciting, engaging, informative presentations. Instead of “death by PowerPoint,” creating a fully engaged audience that becomes your ally instead of your enemy. Hook them in the first moments, keep their attention, and move your agenda forward. Handle hecklers. Win over your audience and still be the authentic you.
Engage your employees and other stakeholders. Motivate them to bring their best selves, their most creative ideas—to be part of something bigger than themselves
Turn tech-ese or jargon into clear, understandable language
Organize, conduct, and facilitate well-run, productive meetings and brainstorming sessions: develop workable, inclusive group processes for brainstorming, project design, implementation
Creating Employee Empowerment and Engagement around Social Change
Moving from a narrow focus on profit to a wider focus on purpose creates enormous opportunity to engage and empower your employees. Creating a sense of ownership in the agenda reaps benefits in morale, productivity, retention, and outreach.
How can you gain input and buy-in for a social change focus?
What issues are most important to your employees, and why?
How can you leverage their excitement to make them ambassadors for your organization?
How can you encourage and harness their best ideas to create something better than you could have on your own?
Effective Activism: How to Organize for Change
Why do some activist campaigns enjoy so much success that they change the culture—while others fall flat? How can yours be one of the successful ones? An activist since 1969 (age 12), Shel started the movement that saved a threatened mountain in just over a year…created a local organization that was still functioning at least 10 years after he moved out of the area…rebuilt a nearly defunct chapter of a national organization…organized large public events…helped many activist candidates get elected to public office…helped to build high visibility for several small-membership-list activist groups…
This training will be tailored to your organization’s needs. Choose from modules like:
Finding (and empowering others with) your success mindset
How to start a new organization from scratch—or rebuild a dying one
Creative messaging that gets noticed
Building workable coalitions and becoming a trusted partner with the other organizations
How to pull a demonstration or other public event together, even on very short notice
Integrating online and offline organizing
Choosing the right strategies and the tactics to carry them out (more than 200 nonviolent social change tactics have been identified)
Influencing discourse and decision-making at the local level (including lobbying)
“Shel brings a natural grace and deep acumen to the topic of profitability and social change. One can see, hear, and feel the depth of his commitment to making the world a better place while designing real business-based solutions that ensure companies stay relevant and profitable in the new marketplace. Shel is that one-of-a-kind expert who can help existing traditional businesses begin the steps to become ‘green’ and assist new businesses to start smart by tapping into the market of social change and green business. Thanks for all you do in service to humanity, Shel. We’re lucky to have you!”