for ECOpreneuring |  |
for ECOpreneuring | |
I came to Inn Serendipity expecting a bed and breakfast -- Idiscovered something more. Lisa and John, you created yourown eco-zip code here. From the organic breakfast ingredientstraveling 100 feet from the garden to my plate toelectricity generated from the wind turbine to passionate discussionsaround last night's campfire, your efforts break thestatus quo, cookie-cutter business model. Everything integratesunder a green umbrella of having both purpose andprofit, spiked with creative, innovative zest for living.
-- Elizabeth, written in the Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast guest book
Our job title doesn't fit on a two-by-three-inch business card. Infact, our diversified business could be its own zip code: an award-winningbed and breakfast; a creative services consulting company; book authors and freelancewriters; an electricity utility, harvesting power from the wind and sun; anorganic farm producing vegetables, fruit and herbs; a micro biofuels processingfacility, transforming waste fryer oil into biodiesel to use in the backup heatingsystem in the greenhouse. We're experimenting with growing tropical plants inour strawbale greenhouse and care for our son without hiring someone to help. Some enterprises generate revenue; others save on expenses, all with a mindsetof wanting to make this world a better place.
Our micro business super-sizes our quality of life, not our bank account. Sitting under the starry Wisconsin sky around a campfire shared with guests, we serve up a bowl of warm apple crisp while the wind turbine blades spin atop the tower in the field. Conversations among our guests flow between peak oil to preserving pea pods, covering everything in between. Our six-year-old son, Liam, breaks in with a refrain on his kid-sized accordion.
We're the CEOs -- Chief Environmental Officers -- of our business,responsible for the "success" of our operations and its environmental and socialimpacts. Mostly, we eat what we grow, use what energy we generate ourselves andcreate the meaningful work we desire. In other words, success is relative to ourworldview and based on what we value and find meaning in. Rather than makemoney from working at a job, we put our limited funds to work for us to servewhat we call our Earth Mission, the purpose for which we're here on Earth. Wedefine our business qualitatively, not quantitatively.
Earned income in the form of wages is over-rated. Our limited funds generatepassive and portfolio income; we invest in income-producing assets, notsplurging on stuff we really don't need. We try to be conservers, not consumers. As a place-based operation, only we can offer exactly what we sell, our interpretation of the B & B experience. Rather than franchising in the financial sense,we've put most of our business plan and operations on the Internet, right downto the electric diagrams of our renewable energy systems in a Home Power magazine article -- and write books about what we've done so others can achieve theirown version of the good life. Rather than trying to achieve more meaning through spiritual or personal development alone, we -- like millions of others --are turning to for-profit and non-profit businesses to make a difference.
ECOpreneuring: Putting Purpose and the Planet before Profits buries the staidnotion that "doing business" and "doing good" can't blend -- as if one must comeat the expense of the other. This book stems from our experiences and those ofhundreds of other green entrepreneurs we've met from coast to coast at energyfairs and green conferences or roasted marshmallows with around our campfirewhen they came our way as B & B guests. Others we have interviewed for magazinearticles or partnered with on various consulting projects and events. Someecopreneurs have taken junk bicycle parts and turned them into unique pictureframes and bottle openers. Others have opened up eBay stores in the middle ofnowhere Montana, running wine tastings on the side. Each has a story to tell;many do exactly that right on their package, website or blog. Each of us, in ourown ways, sidestepped the stereotype ingrained by society that the coveted endgoal of business remains never-ending growth and financial riches beyond ourwildest dreams.
There are millions of small business owners and more on the way whenabout 77 million baby boomers start "retiring," half of them starting the dreambusiness they've always wanted. One entrepreneur, Brian Kurth, startedVocationVacations to offer others an opportunity to "turn their passions into their career." Forget the gold watch when you work in a companyfor more than 30 years. How about losing the watch? Now that's freedom.
No one seems to know exactly how many small business owners, entrepreneursor free agents there are. While definitions run the gamut, the vast majorityof small businesses are very small businesses. Dan Pink, author of Free AgentNation, estimates free agents account for about 1 in every 4 workers. The USSmall Business Administration (sba.gov) estimates that there are 4.5 millionsmall businesses with 9 or fewer employees. Like us, you might be among the 15million full-time or part-time small office/home office entrepreneurs, orSOHOs. Or maybe you're among the 75 percent of all US businesses with onlyone person at the helm, typically self-employed with no one else on the payroll.Amazingly, the US Census Bureau doesn't even bother including these so-calledpersonal entrepreneurs in much of their statistical analysis because they compriseless than five percent of business tax receipts. For personal entrepreneurs,you don't even need a cloaking device; you're practically invisible.
Perhaps you picked up this book yearning for something more than a paycheckor growing weary of a paycheck without a purpose. You want your work tobe more about leaving a legacy than making someone else rich or working fortheir dream, not yours. Bored, you want to do something you feel passionateabout that also gives back to our world, makes it a better place. You want more time with your family, growing tired of living with the nagging threat of your jobbeing outsourced or company being acquired (and you being pink-slipped ortransferred somewhere away from friends or family).
Or perhaps you want more than commuting to the office in a hybrid car ordonating time or money to a charity. Welcome to the emerging social sector, or"citizen sector," of our economy, embodied in the not-for-profit organization that,instead of rewarding shareholders with dividends, devotes resources to solve andserve social, ecological or community issues too often neglected, if not created, bybig business, big government and free market globalization. Writes DavidBornstein in How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of NewIdeas, "Social entrepreneurs are demonstrating new approaches to many social illsand new models to create wealth, promote social well-being and restore the environment." The number of non-profit organizations has skyrocketed over the lastthree decades, with little likelihood of diminishing.
Today our family thrives on less than what one of us made 15 years ago at thead agency. Our quality of life has grown exponentially, despite the fact that ourfinancial income on paper declined. There are tricks to the trade that many millionaires-- and most of our millionaire politicians -- use that allow us to makea life without having to become wage slaves. We agree; it's almost impossible tobe amongst the working or middle class and get ahead. We've discovered a differentway to bend the ends that never seem to meet, instead forming a circle, whereassets generate income and liabilities are minimized. Working with passion andfor the Earth is the core of our daily existence. Our diversified enterprises blendand cross back and forth into for-profit and non-profit sectors of the economy, aswell as serving or partnering with, at times and very selectively, governmentalagencies and big business.
Creativity blooms as we freely hopscotch between a buffet of projects, fromrunning the two guest rooms at Inn Serendipity, writing and photographing fora magazine article for Mother Earth News or Natural Home, authoring books (someending up award-winning), consulting on marketing projects for various nonprofitorganizations as subcontractors, tending our organic growing fields,speaking at conferences, and home-schooling our young son, Liam. Both ourlifestyle and livelihood blend and reflect our values, like eliminating our contributionto global warming, eating healthy and local, forming community andrenewing the Earth.
While hanging out our shingle and becoming a small business owner is nothingnew, mindfully serving the planet through what and how our businessoperates is. Today's "ecopreneurs" recognize that profit, while a necessity in ourworld of mortgages and motors, is not enough. We keep a holistic outlook on thebig green picture: How can we do well, make a difference and make a living? How can we take advantage of existing small business structures and incentives to benefitboth our business and the planet? Running a small business providesfreedom to independently control inputs and outputs, from the projects andclients we may work for to the 100 percent post-consumer-waste recycled paperwe put in our printer.
We've suffered too long from Free Market Economy Dementia: a state of suspendedbelief in the free market despite the existence of an alternative reality:ecological destruction, concentration of financial wealth in fewer hands anddiminished happiness, community life and family cohesiveness. Free market capitalismfails to optimize societal benefit when companies provide neededproducts or services at prices "consumers" are prepared to pay. The free marketcannot grow infinitely, because we can't find substitutions for everything whenthere's nothing left on Earth. It's not the economy but the ecology that matters. For lots of reasons, as discussed in this book, no economy can be sustainable inthe long term without a balanced, prosperous ecological system and at least somesense of social equity.
A swelling movement of multifaceted innovators -- seeking meaning overmoney, satisfaction over status and preserving the planet over growing profits --have emerged because Free Market Economy Dementia has been treated by anawareness of the reality that if we don't start solving our planetary problemssoon, we will face what Keynesian economic theory calls diminishing economicreturns -- with declines in our quality of life, condition of our natural environment,and, perhaps, human civilization itself. In fact, the non-profit organizationRedefining Progress offers compelling evidence that, for many, hard times havealready arrived.
We engage in and facilitate a lot of thinking around our campfires and breakfasttables these days. Thinking is the hardest work of all -- related to cultivatingyour Earth Mission -- and ecopreneurs do a lot of it. The deeply emotional andpersonal questions that guests pepper us with -- and we openly encourage --reveal that we have many kindred spirits on this journey:
Question: Did your family get it when you kissed off paychecks?
Question: Can you really live on income less than $20,000 ayear (mostly passive rental income)? Do you have healthinsurance? Do you need to keep tight records of businessmiles, receipts and income?
Our first joint book, Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest for the Good Life, narratesour personal experiences of moving from urban lifestyles to an organic farm,offering essays about sustainable living, energy conservation, green design, naturalbuilding, renewable energy and organic growing. Our narratives balancedwith practical resources solve the puzzle of how we managed to prosper without destroying the planet, generaterevenues without destroying natural capital or exploiting people, and create awonderful life filled with meaningful relationships, work and experiences.
Following Rural Renaissance, our cookbook Edible Earth: Savoring the Good Lifewith Vegetarian Recipes from Inn Serendipity explains how important local and sustainablefood systems are to our collective national security and why eating loweron the food chain is better for your health, the environment and your budget.Edible Earth explains, through recipes, how we transformed our relationship withfood and eating, acknowledging the central role it plays in our life. By eatingthrough our pantry and refrigerator, by selectively purchasing only what we canuse, we can avoid wasting over $600 worth of food thrown out each year, thenational average. Waste is a concept that defines the industrial era of factories,mass production, free market economy and economies of scale. But waste equalspollution. The elimination of waste redefines our ecological sensibility for the21st century and is one of the building blocks used by ecopreneurs.
Are You an Ecopreneur?
Is this the job ad you are considering -- or perhaps you already applied for this joband got it (like we did for a few years working for an advertising agency in Chicago):
Join our team and work in a cubicle with no fresh air or a windowfor 35 years on projects you could care less about for oneor more bosses who care more about organizational growthand the bottom line than your growth and happiness (letalone earning enough to pay the increasing bills). Put offdoing what you love until, at age 65, you can retire to eke outan existence on half your earned income, attempting to try tophysically do some of the things you always wanted to do. Bythe way, when you retire, the pensions we promised may notbe available. Ditto for the healthcare coverage.
Or do you share a personal backpack of dreams like our guests around thecampfire do, yearning for a way to feel like the way you spend the majority of yourawake hours, energy and talent add up to more than just a paycheck to pay the bills,putting faith in institutions that many not be solvent in 30 years. Stock optionsare worthless if the company that issued them files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.Perhaps you share a vision like the following:
"I'd love to work for myself, live in the mountains, do freelancewriting and teach yoga."
"I want to do something that involves my family and helpsteach my kids that there's more to life than money, like makinga difference and leaving a legacy."
"I want to help people, be independent and make a differencein this world, I just don't know where to start, and I'mscared of leaving a company paycheck behind."
Everyone can follow their dreams. Everyone has them. No more specializedtraining is needed than what you've already experienced up to now. A change ofperspective, a new approach to money and wealth and the necessary hard-thinkingwork of pruning your passions and forming your Earth Mission, your life purposeand business plan are the necessary ingredients.
Adapting to a World of Increased Variability and Instability
We live in an abundant yet fragile world, with regular waves of wounding naturalevents such as the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004 or Hurricane Katrina'sdevastation of 2005. Hundred-year and 500-year events are happening withindecades of each other. Every year, new record highs or lows are being set acrossthe globe. Downpours swell to floods. Droughts lead to massive wildfires.Oceans are becoming scarce of fish, or filled with vast dead zones of pollution.
Despite our gains in productivity and innovation, the fuel mileage of the averagecar in the United States today is the same as Henry Ford's Model T, about25 miles per gallon. We have so much food that we're getting sick and growingobese eating it. Competitive eating contests have emerged as a new sport. We'rewired, but lonely. Some have great wealth, but are starved for time. This bookwill delve into this Paradox of Progress from the perspective that technologyalone will not solve the ecological and social problems that now face humanity.
Human impacts on a global level have led us to arrive at the period of geological time on Earth called the Anthropocene, coined in 2000 by scientist PaulCrutzen, winner of the Nobel Prize. The Anthropocene reflects how pervasive our impacts havebeen on climate and ecosystems from both carbon dioxide emissions and otherpollutants and poor land-use practices like deforestation or urban sprawl that'sengulfing some of our best agricultural lands.
Added to ecological instability are additional human impacts, in what wepresent in chapter 2 as the Four Horsemen of Opportunity -- climate change,ecological collapse, peak oil and our indebted nation -- representing businessproblem-solving opportunities, not signs of the Apocalypse. The dangers that our technological innovations may present to us and the rest of Earth's ecosystemsare symbolized and painfully felt by citizens and ecosystems around theworld near the Bhopal chemical plant explosion (1984), Three Mile Islandnuclear accident (1979), Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in Russia (1986),Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (1989) and the September 11 terrorist attacks(2001), just to name a few of the growing number of human-caused disasters ortragedies. Such events remind us of the frailty of both our lives and our world.ECOpreneuring promotes the idea of using small business as a powerful, positivetool for social and ecological change. By transforming our lives from one ofreliance on others for paychecks and meaning to crafting our own livelihood andlegacy by doing our part to better this world, empowerment erupts and changeoccurs. Think of "ecopreneur" as a subset of "entrepreneur," a business with a mission-driven mindset using creative tactics under the green umbrella to protectthe planet.
While ECOpreneuring will touch on many of the key facets of operating abusiness, this is not another cookie-cutter business book. Running a businessand doing good can and should go hand in hand. Traditional business conceptssuch as improving productivity, reducing costs, minimizing waste (or puttingother's waste to use in your business), attracting and retaining empoweredemployees or subcontracting to other like-minded companies or free agents eagerto help meet your needs, marketing your business and securing access to affordablecapital can all be approached from the perspective of sustainability.Reflecting that innovation and creativity are all but linear processes, the very conceptof sustainability is fluid, evolving with new perspectives and breakthroughs.The only constant is change. As a growing number of books, experts, governmentsand scientists warn, change will become more variable, intense and extreme.Ecopreneurs are at the forefront of this wave and can better adapt quickly toadversity and opportunity.
How This Book Is Organized
ECOpreneuring aims to change the way you perceive money, the role of businessin solving some of today's most pressing problems, and the responsibility we mustseize to reclaim the commons of commerce and cooperatively restore our planetin peril. ECOpreneuring starts off with general trends and perspectives and progressivelybecomes more detailed and practical, so that by the end of the book,you'll be able to write your own business plan and reimagine a more ecologicallysound and socially responsible life, living your dream and leaving a legacy.Think of this book as a guide, a resource, a "greenprint" for generating yourown livelihood that provides passion and satisfaction in leaving our world a betterplace. It's a guidebook for a GBA -- Green Business Administration degree.
Three main sections of the book will guide your journey:
Woven into the fiber of this book, in between the tips on business structureand mileage deductions, are profiles and short examples of small business ecopreneursand social ecopreneurs working in the non-profit sector who prioritizepurpose over profits and community over building market share. We drew thesecase studies as a cross-section sample from our discussions and interviews withhundreds of ecopreneurs across the country over the past decade. Sidebars providethe practical details and resources for you to create your dream business.
This book is not about making lots of money, though some ecopreneurs willachieve (some already have) significant financial returns because the ideas theyimplement and businesses they create find a ripe market today. Ecopreneuringhelps you craft a livelihood to support your values, quality of life and your pursuitof happiness. Money is but a tool to those ends, not the end goal. Andecopreneurial businesses are the types of enterprises that will emerge as the culturallydefining institutions in the 21st century: small, human scaled, ecologicallyand socially responsible, and local.
We envision a nation of ecopreneurs, much like Thomas Jefferson may havebelieved in a prosperous nation of yeoman farmers, harnessing the freedom ofthe free market and pioneering spirit but tempered by the local, social and ecologicaleconomies that have long made America great. We can change the world,one business at a time.
| Advance Book Order Information Order your advance copy of ECOpreneuring today at a 22% discount off list price (a PDF file order form). The book will be shipped when available, most likely in May, 2008. |
About the Authors | Speaking | Media Room | ECOpreneuring Homepage | W7843 County P Browntown WI 53522 E-mail: info@innserendipity.com www.ecopreneuring.biz |