Principled Profit

I’ve had the good fortune to meet many people over the years who’ve truly made a difference in the world. I met another one today, in a nursing home in Bellingham, Washington.

Bob Luitweiler is 87 and ill with cancer–but he still talks about the alternative school he’d like to start. He demands a lot from his visitors: hearty, probing conversation that goes deep about personal lives and about the state of the world, punctuated by references to various books and magazines that surround his sickbed. He sprinkles his conversation with several snippets of other languages, and we have a long talk about whether to be optimistic that people will come out of their self-centered cocoons in time to avert the coming environmental crisis (I’m more optimistic than he is)–and about life in the post-Word War II, pre-NATO Denmark of alternative folk schools, peace, community, and an excellent safety net.

Bob is the founder of Servas, an international traveler/host network that fosters peace through international communication. As a member of this organization since 1983, I have enjoyed fabulous times both as a traveler and a host–and when our host offered to bring us over, I was delighted. It has made traveling not only much more affordable, but also much more of an experience of abundance (I strongly recommend this organization–here’s an article I wrote about the basic concept, and another describing ten of my favorite homestay moments–scroll down past the response to 9/11 article). Servas was started as a peace organization after Bob (who has been to 53 countries and speaks something like seven languages) experienced that remarkable culture of Denmark in the days following World War II, and now offers no-cost homestays in over 140 countries. We’ve enjoyed this very special way of travel in four different continents so far, including stays in Paris, London, Prague, Athens, Jerusalem, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and numerous small towns, backwoods cabins, and more.

Knowing that he was ill, I expected we’d visit for 20 or 30 minutes–but Bob didn’t want to let us go. He seemed thrilled to have a deep conversation, and when we finally excused ourselves after an hour and a half, he was deeply disappointed. He said he wanted to know us better and asked if we could come back another time before we leave the area. (Postscript: he called the following morning to tell us that our visit had been “the greatest gift of the last six months.”)

Clearly, this man who has accomplished so much has a lot more he’d like to do before his time is up.

The other day, I bought a loaf of artisan bread at a supermarket. It even happened to be a locally owned, single-location supermarket.

But then I looked at the label and saw it was made in California. I live in Massachusetts.

I’ve got plenty of stuff in my pantry that made a long trip–but for the most part, it’s stuff for which there is no local source. I can’t get chocolate of any sort, let alone the organic fair trade chocolate that I buy, that’s grown within even 1000 miles of my house. Ditto with olives, Indian pickles, etc. I can buy from local companies that import the stuff, but it will never be locally grown unless global warming happens a *lot* faster than I think it will.

The bread made me feel guilty, though. Within 10 miles of my house there are close to a dozen quality bakers, most of them locally owned and operated. I buy a lot of bread from them.

And part of my belief in people helping people is buying local, keeping money in my own local economy (or the local economy where I happen to be traveling)–as well as, where practical, reducing my environmental footprint. So I shop local a lot. The majority of my food dollars, at least in the summer time, are spent at farmer’s markets, our local Community Supported Agriculture farm store. I’ve even managed to find a local supplier for the recycled paper I feed my computer printer.

But in two ways, I’m not a purist. I do spend a fair amount of money in the local branches of nationally owned food stores, because selection, price, and convenience make that a sensible path for me, at least in the winter. (I’ve been shifting more and more to local markets, however–and when I happen to be in the town 25 miles form me with that local supermarket, I shop there.)

And I’m not yet willing to live the stark and barren life without the stuff that doesn’t grow around here. I want my daily cup of cocoa, my wife wants her black tea, we add those Oriental hot sauces to our cooking.

But bread? What was I thinking?

Resources:
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a nationwide network working on keeping money in the local economy. Website is unintuitive–even s a member, I had to hunt for it: http://www.livingeconomies.org/

Community Involved in Local Agriculture, a group here in Western mass focusing on buying local.

29,10o answers to the question, “Why Buy Local?”

…And they should be trying to invest in this.

In three days at Book Expo America, I saw one technology that could really alter the world.

Because FedEx’s whole model is based on the need to transport paper around the world quickly–in situations where fax or e-mail isn’t practical for one reason or another. Situations that require a physical signature on an original document. FedEx, DHL, UPS, USPS, and all the other courier services need to know that the real business they are in at least as much about transporting signatures as in transporting large documents that would be unwieldy via electronic technologies.

Frustrated by the demands of wearying multicity author tours, acclaimed novelist Margaret Atwood was signing for a package on an electronic tablet. I’m sure you’ve done it. Mistakenly, she believed that she was actually creating a physical signature on a piece of paper, remotely–so, she thought, why can’t I sign a book in my house? After all, it’s been possible for years to do author events by video or audio, remotely. Why not a long-distance book signing?

And now she can. Using two-way videoconferencing, she can interact with a fan or group of fans anywhere in the world, and when a bookstore staffer puts a book under the pen at the other end, she can inscribe and personalize the book.

Interestingly enough, a lot of the company’s promotional material focuses on the “Green” feature: the amount of carbon saved in not flying. Of course, the author who doesn’t have to slog through international border crossings, airports, hotel rooms, and the rest of the grind may or may not be thinking about carbon offsets. And, of course, it’s going to be waaaay cheaper than a year’s worth of book tours–though once the novelty wears off, readers/fans may not find it as satisfying as a real in-person appearance.

Atwood’s company is called Unotchit and the product is Long Pen (TM). I couldn’t find any pricing information on the site but I’m sure that in most cases, a bookstore or other venue will install the device and then loan out the writing tablet (and, if necessary, the video cam) to the author, so the equipment cost will be relatively manageable. And I’m guessing, ironically enough, that a lot of those tablets and cams will be shipped by FedEx

This has huge implications–not only in publishing but in sports, finance, real estate (think about closings with absentee owners), music, international business, and probably dozens of other industries.

You heard it here first.

OK, so in December, I turned 50–and since I love discounts, of course I sent in my $7.50 to join the AARP (used to stand for American Association of Retired persons, I believe).

Well, I was looking at the organization’s magazine today and I was astonished by the lineup for the fall conference in Boston, just two hours drive from me: Headlined by Rod Stewart in concert, and featuring such Boomer luminaries as Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Maya Angelou, and Bill Russell.

I’ve got a wedding in Maryland that weekend, but I just might drive in for Friday’s program. Cheap, too–member price is $15 for the speakers and $25 extra for each concert.

Wow! Not at all what I expected, with my memories of AARP (from my days as an organizer with the Gray Panthers, back in 1979-80) as a very stodgy organization.

Millard Fuller founded Habitat for Humanity, was kicked out in a power struggle, and started another organization to continue the work.

In this powerful interview conducted by Cynthia Kersey, the best selling author of Unstoppable and Unstoppable Women, Fuller discusses his accomplishments and challenges and faith. He comes across as remarkably humble and extremely effective.

I’ve always believed that one person can always make a difference, but that difference is greatly magnified if that person finds others to work with. If you’re not convinced, you need to read this entire interview. If you are convinced, read it for inspiration.

Couple of excerpts:

We thought that the work of Habitat for Humanity would be exclusively in third world countries and in the rural south. And Habitat has grown in third world countries, it’s all over Africa, it’s all over Asia, it’s all over Central and South America. It’s all over the rural south, but Habitat today is in every province in Canada. It’s in a number of European countries. It’s in New Zealand, it’s in Australia.

It is in all of the places we expected it to be, plus a whole lot more. Incidentally, that goal that we wrote about in our minutes of our first meeting was achieved in August of 2005. We dedicated the 200,000th house for the 1,000,000th person in Knoxville, Tennessee in August of 2005.

CYNTHIA KERSEY: How many years is that? Twenty seven years?

MILLARD FULLER: We started in 1976, so just shy of 30 years. Currently, Habitat is building about 30,000 houses a year.

* * *

CYNTHIA KERSEY: How many communities took your challenge to eliminate poverty housing in that particular area? As a city wide, not so much just the affiliate, but the city said, “This is what we’re going to do.”

MILLARD FULLER: You mean accept the goal of trying to eliminate poverty housing?

CYNTHIA KERSEY: Yes, exactly.

MILLARD FULLER: That was done here in Americus, Georgia, where we live, with Habitat for Humanities headquarter and where now The Fuller Center for Housing is located. In 1992, I called together a community meeting in Americus; we have a community college here called Georgia Southwestern State University. I called together all of the leaders of this community and I said, “Let’s eliminate poverty housing in this town and in this county, because that’s what we advocate for the whole world, let’s just model it here locally.”

We created an organization called The Sumter County Initiative. We set a goal to end poverty housing by the year 2000. We got organized, we gridded the county. We knew what families lived in each little grid and we wrote all of that down and got a plan in place and systematically, grid by grid, we built every family a house that needed one in each grid, or in some cases renovated houses, or in other cases houses were too bad to be fixed up so they’d just be torn down.

On September 15th of the year 2000, I stood in front of the Thomas family house and we had a big sign out front that said, “Victory House.” I led 400 people singing an old southern gospel song, Victory in Jesus because that house symbolized our victory over substandard housing. We got rid of all of the slums, we got rid of all substandard housing, and we built 35 houses that week. In the last week, we put up the last 35 houses in five days.

CYNTHIA KERSEY: How did that impact the community?

MILLARD FULLER: It had a very, very positive impact, a huge impact. We saw crimes go down, children doing better in school, all of the indicators of what makes for a better community, improved. I might do a fast forward, Cynthia, and I think the people who are on this call would find this very interesting. In December of this past year, I went to the little town that I was raised up in, over in Alabama. It’s the little town of Lanett and Valley, Alabama, two small towns right on the Georgia border and in West Point, Georgia.

Those three towns, West Point, Georgia; Lanett and Valley, Alabama make up what is called the Chattahoochee Valley. Population wise, it’s about the same as here in Americus, Georgia. I was invited over there to meet with a group in December and I challenged them to do there what we did here. They accepted that challenge and they have now created the Chattahoochee Fuller Center Project. On March 16, we will kick off a 500 house build in my little hometown area.

Again, the article is at http://www.healthywealthynwise.com/article.asp?Article=5211.

Out of the blue this morning, I received a fascinating e-mail:

Hi Shel,

I’m Joel Falconer, lead singer and songwriter of the Gold Coast,
Australia-based Grok Rock band Midnight.Haulkerton. I don’t want to
bother you, but I thought you might be interested in this.

Earlier this year we came up with the idea of the Tuneback. A
Tuneback is a song recorded under the self-imposed time limit of one
hour from conception to publication (making it more of a concept or a
’sketch’ than a complete song) and a new one must be posted once a
week, every Tuesday.

Given that most songs take weeks to go through the recording process
alone, not to mention conception and publication, it’s no mean feat,
but it’s quite a fun way to interact with an audience online and keep
us thinking.

I guess it’s a frugal, grassroots way of not only publishing music,
but creating it too!

This week I wrote the Tuneback with my good friend and colleague, NDK
Creative Artist, who said you’d know who he is and sends his regards.
He first introduced me to your work a couple of years ago, and I must
thank you for your article on frugal weddings, which helped to shave
a few pennies from my own last year.

This Tuneback was inspired by the idea of Principled Profit,
something NDK is a strong advocate of, and so am I. We are all
interested in solutions to the poor state of culture and
civilization rather than the continual whining of most mass media
(who I think cause many of the problems in the first place) and self-
pitying artists.

The fact that there is someone actively doing something about the
problem of unethical marketing is inspirational and we want to honor
you with the dedication of this song.

To which I say–go right ahead and bother me, Joel. Any time you write a song about my ideas, I’m delighted to be interrupted. I had never heard of Joel before this e-mail (although I have corresponded with NDK–we used to be on the same discussion group), and I’m impressed that I made an impact all the way to Australia–without even discussing the Business Ethics Pledge (which does have a number of Australian signers).

The song is kind of a synth/metal thing, not the sort of thing I usually listen to. But I really like the lyrics (used with his permission, of course):

Principles of Profit

The principles of profit
Say make your money in the honest way
Good work, hard work
Quality all the way
It pays
Shortcuts to profit, don’t really exist
You gotta be alive just ask Ken Lay

There’s nothing wrong with making money
There’s nothing wrong with making hay
It’s all in the way you make it
The principles of profit say
Make it the honest way

The cheating culture, full of vultures
Picking over scraps
Pluck the vultures, cook their goose
Change the cheating culture
You want to be loose, you want to be free
Live the life you want to live
We gotta keep on changing, re-arranging
So we can make profit in a principled way
There ain’t no shortcuts to profit
That’s just cutting corners to hell

There’s nothing wrong with making money
There’s nothing wrong with making hay
It’s all in the way you make it
The principles of profit say
Make it the honest way

Make honesty pay,
Make honesty pay,
Make honesty pay
Profit the principled way

I also really like the way Joel manages to refer obliquely to several of my websites and book titles in his message, subtly cueing me that he has taken the time to study my stuff a bit.

Hey, Senator Edwards, if you think a haircut should cost $400, I’d be glad to give you some shopping lessons. After all, I’ve written books and operated websites on frugality for years. I’ll even give you a copy of my e-book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant’s Pocketbook. It’s got a whole chapter on frugal shopping.

Not only did you pay $400 each for two Beverly Hills haircuts, but you got your campaign to pay for it! Guess which campaign I’m NOT contributing to?

And the funny thing is, you’ve got hair any barber could manage. If you looked like, say, Cher, there might be some justification for spending $100 (though not for getting the campaign to pick up the tab).

BTW, I go to stylist, not a barber, and I get great haircuts. I get them two or three times a year, and pay $20 or $22 (I forget). I’d be glad to introduce you to my hair guy. He’s even a Democrat.

Yes, it’s a legitimate campaign function to look properly groomed. But using other people’s money for a $400 haircut, twice, is shameful. Let the campaign pay the first $20 or $30 of each–and you should reimburse for the balance.

In the ‘who would’ve thunk it’ department. George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch turns out to be a model of environmental sustainability. And the surprisingly modest structure was built since he bought the property.

I must say I was pleasantly shocked to read that the Bushes employ such forward-thinking technologies as geothermal heating and cooling, landscaping designed to keep the house cool in summer and warm in winter, even graywater recycling.

Under a gravel border around the house, a concrete gutter channels the water into a 25,000-gallon cistern for irrigation. In hot weather, a terrace directly above the cistern is a little cooler than the surrounding area.

Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground — one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is so-called “gray water,” and one tank for “black water” from the kitchen sink and toilets. The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater. It is used to irrigate flower gardens, newly planted trees and a larger flower and herb garden behind the two-bedroom guesthouse. Water for the house comes from a well.

.

Oh yes, and the funniest line in the whole article: a quote from the home’s architect, David Heymann:

“We’ve got a lot of economies in the house,” he says, noting the Bushes may be wealthy, but they are “frugal people.”

It takes a lot to get me to say Bravo to George W. Bush–but this house deserves a whole round of Bravos. And it deserves to be a model for the rest of the country; why is he keeping it such a secret?

So…my question for Mr. Bush–if in your own private personal life you make such great choices, if you’re aware that the earth’s own technologies can provide all our energy needs–why is your own energy policy such an unmitigated disaster? You’re pushing disastrous technologies like nuclear, fossil fuels that get us into wars…and meanwhile you’ve quite properly created a private dwelling that uses only a tiny fraction of that used by a conventional house. In other words, you know from your own experience that all the green technologies you’ve been dissing and dismissing actually work.

My sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, challenges a lot of my assumptions in 12 years as a professional book promoter. Librarians respond positively to it in a 1:1 interaction, but not so much to fliers, etc. (I was quite pleased to discover last month that Denver Public Library stocks both Principled Profit and my earlier Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, since I had dropped in on the librarian on my previous visit). The mainstream media show very little interest, yet e-zine editors seem to love it. Bookstores don’t want to know it exists, but actual *readers* literally grab it out of my hands and buy it on the spot (it’s happened over and over again). It’s been much-blurbed (78 at last count) and much-reviewed.

If I can “go mystical” for a moment–here’s some speculation.

Thinking about it today, I’m wondering if the universe in some subtle ways responds to the content of books. One of several key principles in Principled Profit is marketing by building ongoing relationships, and another is that marketing is something much deeper and more powerful than the techniques discussed in most marketing books (including my own Grassroots Marketing). Principled Profit does really well when people meet me and see it.

Another principle in the book is the idea of abundance coming back to you when you are open to it. And I can trace a number of ways that has worked for me with this book:

By contrast, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant’s Pocketbook got phenomenal media attention (Reader’s Digest, three mentions in Woman’s Day, Bottom Line, home pages of MSN, Paypal, and AOL, among many others)–but it was a slow seller. The content of that book was all about how to afford all sorts of great lifestyle stuff without having to buy it. And just maybe the universe was saying to me, “ok, if that’s how you want to be about it…”

The idea that the universe manifests the type of energy (and results) that you feed it is certainly not new; it’s in dozens if not hundreds of books, and is the key principle of the movie “The Secret.” But it was only this morning that I put it into focus in terms of the sales results with my own books.

“‘Tis a puzzlement,” as the King of Siam would say.

For maybe a year now, there’s been huge buzz about the movie “The Secret” and its cast of well-known millionaire lifestyle gurus. I saw the trailers many months ago and was frankly blown away by them. They were intensely cinematographic, full of sound and motion, filmed at least as powerfully as anything I’ve seen coming out of Hollywood–and, like any good promo piece, they created a desire to experience the entire film. You can see the latest version of the trailer here, although this time it crashed Firefox twice when I tried.

Yet I held back. There’s so much I need to do on the computer, every single day, that it’s hard for me to find the time to watch a 108 minute movie, especially since when my computer is paying a DVD, it hides all the other applications.

Yesterday, after two days in a row where I hadn’t gotten a lot done, I received an e-mail from my colleague Joe Nicassio, containing a link to a copy posted at MySpace, with no charge for viewing. Knowing that such things didn’t happen by coincidence and figuring perhaps it would help me get out of my rut, and understanding that watching it on MySpace would let me work on other things in the background, I gave it a try.

And the movie held my interest all the way through–something that’s not easy when most of it is “talking heads”: interviews of people, one on one. Sometimes they put more active sequences behind the voice, but there’s a lot of looking at people’s faces while they talk. And in the MySpace copy, the picture and sound are slightly out of synch and the film is slightly out of proportion, so that these heads seem unusually tall and thin. I imagine you don’t get these minor glitches if you pay your $4.95 for the official copy.

For the first 30 or 40 minutes, I didn’t even do anything else at the same time. After that, I felt I knew where it was going and started multitasking. Yet there were a few key sections where I stopped and gave it full attention.

However, I really didn’t see it as worthy of the hype. The core of the movie, the big secret of the title, is something I’ve known about for years: the Law of Attraction that says you attract to yourself whatever you focus on. And maybe for that reason it didn’t ultimately move me very far, because I’ve been living that truth for a long time. If this is the first time you’re exposed to it, it could easily shake up your whole world.

I started learning this lesson a few years after I published by fourth book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant’s Pocketbook: a book that shows people how to enjoy a lifestyle that would cost most people a lot of money, while spending little to nothing to achieve it. Perhaps because I’ve figured out many ways to slash the cost of travel, entertainment, fine dining, etc., I’ve never had a desire to be super-rich. I don’t need to. I travel frequently, live in a beautiful home, see lots of top-name concerts, etc., and in that e-book, now eleven years old, I tell others exactly how. But money is a means to these things, not an end. I have achieved them without anything close to a seven-figure income. You might say I’ve used the Law of Attraction–which, in my world, I call the Abundance Principle (and discuss in some detail in Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First–to bring those things into my life, bypassing money as an intermediary.

The film makes the point that you can use the Attraction Principle to improve your life and improve the world, not just on the material plane. But still, far, far too much is devoted to envisioning the car or house or beautiful necklace of your dreams, and far too little to healing the illnesses within yourself or in the world at large.

These small parts of the movie I think actually are life-changing: the woman who cures herself of cancer, the paralytic who beats the doctors and learns to walk again, the idea (quoting Mother Theresa) that if you want peace you don’t attend an anti-war rally, but a peace rally, because you don’t want to attract more war by paying too much homage to it…these concepts I’d have loved to see in more detail, but the coverage is scant. I love the idea that you can overcome even the toughest adversity by focusing on what you actually want, rather than where you’re stuck–and was deeply moved to hear people like Jack Canfield and Joe Vitale talk openly about the adversity in their own childhoods, that they’d learned to move past. I was especially struck by one doctor who was told as a child that his communication disorders were so severe that he’d never learn to write or converse.

When they make a sequel about applying these principles to social change, I want to be there!

My recommendation: see it, but know that what you take away from it may be something other than what the hype has led you to believe.