Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World
Stirring It Up: How to Make Income and Conserve the Planet
A correct force for adjust, Gary Hirshberg has been at the forefront of movements working for environmental and social transformation for 30 many years. From his early days as an educator and activist to his existing position as President and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world's largest natural yogurt organization, Hirshberg's good outlook has inspired 1000's of folks to recognize their capability to make the world a much better place. In Stirring it Up, Hirshberg calls on individuals to comprehend their po
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True Business Success Stories,
this is a great book because it shatters one of the big myths and that is that there, somehow, is a disconnect between being successful in business and doing something right for the earth
the stories about Timberland, Patagonia, and even Wal-Mart are really interesting and it's very interesting read - especially for a business book, something I rarely read
plus there are about $10 in coupons in the back for Stonyfield products
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|A practical zealot gives good business advice,
Gary Hirshberg is the CE-Yo (I'm not making that up) of Stonyfield Farms where they make great yogurt. I love it because it's good. It is also organic. For me, the yogurt eater, that is mostly irrelevant.
Hirshberg titled his book, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World. The subtitle should be a clue that there are two kinds of material in this book.
There are the places where Hirshberg writes as if he's trying to pass some sort of environmentalist purity test. These are mostly long expository sections that may be of great interest to you. If so, read them. I found them stupifyingly boring most of the time.
If you're reading this as a business book, you may be tempted to write Gary Hirshberg off as a nut case. But consider the following.
His company makes a great product. The only limit on his production is the number of organically certified cows he can get to supply his farm and meet his standards. And his company makes a lot of money. That's why you want to pay attention to the other parts of the book.
The other parts of the book are where Hirshberg tells the story of his business and several other businesses including Timberlake and Patagonia. He tells about how Wal-Mart is making "environmentally friendly" changes to its operations because those changes are good business.
Those were the parts of interest to me. They are written in a less formal style. They are mostly stories. And there are a lot of lessons in them about business, business practices, and what both successful businesses and Mother Nature might have to teach us about them.
Here's an overview of the book.
The first chapter, Natural Profits, begins with the simple, but profound, observation that nature does not produce waste. When nature is functioning naturally, everything thrown off by one process is used by another. Hirshberg suggests that following that principle with business practices will make things more efficient and, thus, more profitable.
He tells us the story of how he wound up at Stonyfield Farms. There's info on the early stages of the company and how many of his principles about how to live on the planet also helped his company survive and grow. The story of Stonyfield Farms runs through the book.
Mission Control gets us into the mission statement for Hirshberg's company. Frankly, this is as good a chapter on mission statements as I've seen anywhere.
Hirshberg says that a mission statement, in addition to guiding operations, should be simple and enduring. He also points out that Exxon's mission statement at one time only cited "increasing return to shareholders" as a guiding principle and he describes how that informed the company's response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Hirshberg makes the point that if you have only one purpose, as Exxon did, it's relatively easy to make decisions and to be blind to other concerns. But if you have several sub-missions or groups of stakeholders to consider, things get more nuanced. The main story in this chapter is about Patagonia, whose CEO, Yvon Chouinard, says: "Profit is what happens when you do everything else right."
From CO2 to COno is about Stonyfield's efforts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. There's excellent material on doing analysis of a problem, seeking solutions and using metrics to gauge success or lack of it. This chapter includes the stories of Timberland, Wal-Mart's recent changes and Adobe's efforts to make its campus carbon neutral. Hirshberg describes cost-saving benefits to the corporations.
Hands Across the Aisle has a lot of excellent material on Hirshberg's marketing methods. In the beginning there was no money for marketing so Stonyfield had to be creative. They were. They also developed the idea of marketing as making a "handshake connection" with everyone. He has important things to say about how the quality of the product is important because that's what gets customers to come back.
The Delicious Revolution includes the story of Honest Tea. In 1998, Seth Goldman left his job at the Calvert Group of "socially responsible" mutual funds to join Barry Nalebuff and found Honest Tea. Nalebuff was Goldman's professor at Yale, where Nalebuff is known as an expert on business strategy and game theory. You may know him for his books such as Co-Opetition : A Revolution Mindset That Combines Competition and Cooperation : The Game Theory Strategy That's Changing the Game of Business and Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life.
No Such Place as Away is all about recycling and re-using and planning in ways that leave you with less to transport somewhere...
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|A compelling case for sustainability in business,
Hirshberg does a great job of showing how reducing a company's environmental impact can do wonders for the bottom line. As a businessman, he recognizes that telling people to buy a product because "it's the right thing to do" won't work. Instead, he focuses on producing a quality product using sustainable practices.
Unlike a lot of books written by CEO's, this one doesn't focus on just the author's company. He profiles about a dozen other companies (Terracycle, Patagonia, Timberland...) that are breaking new ground and making money with earth-friendly strategies.
One bonus feature - there are a number of coupons for products from Stonyfield and other profiles companies in the back of the book.
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