After an hour and thirty two minutes of what felt like doom and gloom, the movie screen faded to black. I was frozen solid. Unlike the Greenland ice sheet that is melting twice as fast than just five years ago. Global warming. So what do I do now? What do WE all do? Everyone sitting in this theatre? Everyone everywhere? The time between fade-to-black and the fade-up of Al Gore’s simple and singular messages of hope seemed endless. But thankfully they arrived. And, for me, the most important part of his film, “Inconvenient Truth,” began, thirty seconds from the end. The first message read:

Are you ready to change the way you live?

For me, it doesn’t get any more basic then this. Am I willing to change? To do my part — however insignificant it seems? Just seconds before the next message scrolled across the screen, this is what scrolled across the movie in my mind:

But I am already committed to green living. After all, I bought a relatively “green” house. I eat organic. The skin cream I slather on each day doesn’t contain parabens or any artificial ingredients. And haven’t I recently taken up the habit of picking up at least five pieces of garbage a day in parking lots and Santa Fe streets? Even my kids love this “I Spy” game. (My husband however is suspicous of the Colt 45 bottles in the trunk of my car).

Before I could squeeze in another thought, the next message slid by:

Here’s what you can do.

What followed was a montage of messages like, “Tell your parents not to ruin the world you will live in.” I have to admit, this one still chokes me up.

So? What now? What can I really do to slow down the carbon dioxide emissions that are thinning our atmosphere?

And what about the current threat to water down the certification criteria for organics so more big businesses can get into the action?

And whatever happened to the electric car?

According to the Roper Green Gauge study, more than 50% of Americans want to do something, and would do it if they only knew what and how.

This is where we can all get immobilized.

Or…

Thoroughly charged.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

Rarely does anything change from the top down. It all happens in the trenches. And that’s you and me and a million other Americans speaking out and making it happen in our own, unique way. What is needed is not just big solutions but many people doing small things that add up to big things. When enough people reach a critical mass of consciousness and don’t leave it for the next guy to do it, then real change happens. It always does.

“If enough minds are changed, we cross a threshold,” Al proclaims in “Inconvenient Truth”. “We have everything we need — but political will. But that’s a renewable resource.”

From your mouth to God’s ears, Al. After all, this whole green thing isn’t about right verse left. It’s about right versus wrong.

So here is what versus I have committed to do.

America the Green

Being a communicator, marketer and life/business coach, I have created a forum with a couple of fabulously committed partners-in-green, Irv Weinberg and John Biethan, that is meant to wake up and inspire people across our beautiful country to green up their lives. The forum is in the form of podcasts at AmericaTheGreen.com. Each week we speak up and out with green business leaders, forward thinkers and people like you from sea to shining sea. Here you can find out how others are greening up their businesses, homes and hearts, being the change they want to see in the world. But that’s just me.

Here’s what Beth Walker is doing in Centennial, Colorado…

The Green Team

Every week, she and an inspired group of citizens have committed to getting together to advance the greening of their community through environmental awareness and stewardship. How it works is each person in their Green Team heads up a project in one of five resources areas: water, energy, solid waste, chemicals and transportation.

The Green Team then meets regularly on what’s is being done and not done in their community. Then they make it happen. It is said that graduates in their programs save between 10%-30% in each area - as well as a fair amount of money. And the best part is Green Team is a nationwide educational movement. To form one in your community or neighborhood, check out GreenTeamProject.org.

For Rudolf and Amrita Reitz in Santa Fe, their greening goes back over 20 years with…

BioShield Healthy Living Paints

Being a true pioneer, Rudolf has been greening homes, buildings and businesses across the country for a long, long time with non-toxic paints, floor finishes and cleaning products. Here’s a couple that turned their passion for people and the planet into profits and in turn became an industry leader in healthy home improvement. Don’t you just love it! Check out www.bioshieldpaints.com.

Now What About You?

What are you willing to commit to right now that will have a permanent, positive impact on our environment? What is the one thing that you know for sure you are really good at? Now, how can you morph that skill and creatively use it to have a lasting impact on the environment in your home, your community, your world? And be fun too? What are you willing to do to advance that idea today? Will you commit to emailing me your action step?

If you’re stuck for ideas, visit my website at AmericaTheGreen.com or www.ClimateCrisis.com. But I have a sneaking feeling you know in your gut what you can uniquely do right now that you would really shine at. Trust that. And tell me about it so I’ll tell the world. Big or small. Soft or steely. Extravagant or extra simple. No action is insignificant.

We are but one species of an incredibly complex interrelationship of flora and fauna. We belong to the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us. It’s not hopeless and it’s not a foregone conclusion that’s its all over and too late. Just do your little acts of environmentalism and spread the word. As Mother Teresa once said, “There are no great things. Only small things with great Love.”

With that, I am happy to report that Arnold Schwarzenegger has placed all his Hummers into storage. See, anything is possible.

New Mexico Business Weekly - June 30, 2006
Small Business Strategies
by Megan Kamerick

Actress Marsha Mason had been growing acres of organic herbs and flowers for years at her farm in Abiquiu when Carolyn Parrs first walked into her business.At the time, Mason’s company Resting in the River had just two products made from the herbs — tinctures and a salve — and company staff was trying to figure out how to grow to the next level.

“We knew the efficacy of herbs,” says Albert Granados, business manager for Resting in the River. But things like tinctures tend to be very specialized, he says, only for the die-hard organic types who like their medicine natural and not necessarily flavorful.

Within a year and a half, Parrs and her husband and business partner, Irv Weinberg, as Mason’s chief consultants, had reconfigured the company, creating an entire line of products, building distribution channels and sales networks and putting Mason’s face in stores across the country and in Japan. Tinctures became tastier wellness sprays and the therapeutic herbs are now in a whole line of skin and bath products.

Parrs and Weinberg moved to Santa Fe three years ago and launched Mind Over Markets after highly successful careers in advertising and marketing in New York. Along the way, they also created a company called Poochi Canine Couture Inc. selling upscale clothing and accessories for dogs at a time when no one thought about putting antlers on their canines for Christmas (an item they introduced to the marketplace). They launched that firm in 1987, built it to millions in sales and sold it four and half years later to ConAgra Foods Inc.

The experience planted a seed that they sought to nurture with their move to Santa Fe: Offer start-up companies not only marketing and branding guidance, but also business development, with the experience of having been down the same road themselves as entrepreneurs.

“It gave us a great niche,” Parrs says. They also have enough experience in things green and sustainable to find a willing audience with Santa Fe companies. Indeed, the focus of the firm is moving rapidly toward the green, sustainable and socially responsible sectors. The organic market is the fastest growing niche in the world, Parrs says, so they see great potential.

“Over the years, many clients have asked, ‘What would you do if this were your own money?’” Weinberg says. “We are one of the few companies that can answer that question.”

It may seem obvious, but the firm’s strategy is to sit down and figure out what a company really needs. That could be rewriting a business plan or even changing the firm’s name.

“A lot of entrepreneurs know what their product is, but they’re not sure what their business is,” Weinberg says.

The firm worked with a company called the Center for Regulatory Compliance, which makes software to help companies comply with various regulations and laws.

“It sounded like a government agency,” Parrs says. They helped the Center distill its mission down to one basic idea: It was in the business of simplicity.

Thus was born the new name of Simpliance, based in Ohio, and the slogan “We’ve got simplicity down to a science.” The campaign included the song “Don’t worry, be happy” and marketing materials in bright, cheerful colors.

Finding that simple idea then teaches salespeople how to talk, Parrs says, and retailers how to sell the product.

“Marketing is your stationery, your business card, the way people answer the phone,” Weinberg adds.

Gifford Keen, a founding partner who is no longer with Simpliance, says he had previously worked for a number of software companies and dealt with many marketing firms, from New Mexico and elsewhere.

“I thought they were useless. I thought I could do better myself, and that’s not saying much,” he says. But Parrs and Weinberg were “head and shoulders” above the crowd, he adds. “They were very quick, very creative and helped us re-write our business plan to give it more zip.”

For start-ups seeking investors, business plans are key marketing pieces. Unfortunately, many times they aren’t very exciting, Weinberg says. So he has become adept at giving them some zing. The firm is currently working with a start-up biodiesel station in Oregon.

“I had chemistry classes that were more interesting than this,” Weinberg says of the original business plan. “You have to paint a picture. Let the investor or funder know you’re going to get this off the page.”

Keen says it worked for Simpliance, which did secure investors after the business plan was reworked.

“The best work was on the first two or three pages in the introduction,” he says. “They just cast it differently so it was a much better and more compelling read.”

When Parrs and Weinberg visited Mason’s farm, they quickly realized that it was the biggest selling point. All the products and the marketing materials feature photos of the farm as well as Mason’s face.

“Green” consumers are savvy and more careful about their choices than most, Weinberg says. If you offer a less-then-authentic product or experience, they don’t forgive easily. So putting a celebrity front and center wasn’t necessarily the best way to sell a product. But, he points out, Mason is more than that. She is chairwoman of the New Mexico Organic Commodity Commission.

They also attended trade shows to get a feel for the Resting in the River products. These offered many revelations, Weinberg says.

“You really get a feel for the clients. We learned the farm is what people were turned onto,” he says. “If I was running a big [ad] agency today, I’d make folks go to trade shows.”

Granados with Resting in the River says he had a good feeling about the team as soon as Parrs walked in the door. “Philosophically, they saw the true meaning behind the farm. Marsha wants to be a steward of the land. They got that.”

Weinberg and Parrs also have donated time to a nonprofit in Santa Fe called Earthcare International, which works with teenagers to educate them about sustainability and social justice, says Taylor Shelby, executive director. One of its projects is a fair trade coffee house staffed by teenagers.

Mind Over Markets came up with a new slogan and logo for the group: Teens creating tomorrow today, with cupped hands holding dirt and a plant growing from it.

Earthcare’s experiences are helping Parrs and Weinberg with BioShield, an environmentally minded paint company in Santa Fe with which they recently began working. They have developed green distribution channels and figured out cross marketing techniques they can apply to expanding BioShield’s business, Weinberg says, which they see as a lifestyle company, not a paint company. They plan to look at retail opportunities in kids’ stores and health food retailers like Whole Foods.

“Forget the hardware store,” he says.

Mind Over Markets is also planning to use Podcasting for its clients and is putting together plans for an environmentally themed show where they will interview green companies and authors.

“There are a lot of new ways of reaching people and we want to be on the forefront,” Weinberg says.

Podcasts offer much more effective targeted marketing because the audiences really dictate the content and the demographics are much more specialized, says the company’s tech guru, John Biethan. “We can create a vehicle for a company trying to reach an elusive demographic,” he says.

The firm is working with a Boulder, Colo. publishing company to create Podcasts of author Noam Chomsky 12 weeks before his new book comes out.

Parrs has some experience in this field already. She was the creator, producer and host of a television talk show on the East Coast called “Inner Journey” that focused on personal growth and health. She also has a private holistic health therapy practice.

The firm finds clients through organic trade associations, speaking engagements and working with Technology Ventures Corp., a nonprofit in Albuquerque that connects investors, inventors and entrepreneurs. But the firm won’t work with a company if the partners don’t believe in what it does.

“We think we have great skills to get things out and we don’t want to use those skills unless it’s something we believe is a good thing for people,” he says. It also lends more success to their efforts, he says. “When you are passionate about something, you are more effective.”

The entrepreneurial bug hasn’t left Parrs and Weinberg. They are already planning a new venture: An organic restaurant concept they plan to launch as a multi-market chain.