Tag: Climate Change

The Little Actions Count

“Masks only make a tiny difference,”
a friend told me yesterday.

They might only make a tiny difference
but that tiny difference
taken every day
multiplied by three years
has resulted in me
only having had COVID once
while my friend, a non-mask-wearer,
has had it three times.

Those multiple infections
means he can no longer walk
around the block
without needing a rest.

(And yet he still mocks people
who wear masks.)

Small actions make a difference
over time.

I pick up a bit of garbage
every day.
Our neighborhood,
years later,
is now quite a bit cleaner
than neighborhoods located
close to ours.

I post an extra promo
on social media
every day.
My sales have stayed level
while the sales
of many writing buddies
have dropped.

Little actions matter.

Literally Stop And Smell The Roses

We will soon
be encountering
many ‘lasts’
– the last Monarch butterfly,
the last snowfall,
the last Autumn leaves,
the last bite of
a banana.

The issue is…
we won’t know
it will be our last.
Not until the moment
has passed.

So stop
and relish each one.

Look at that ladybug
on the leaf.

Smell the roses.

Take an extra minute
while walking from the office
to our cars
to gaze up at the night sky,
feel the cool breeze on your skin.

I know.
I know.
We’re all super busy
building our businesses,
changing the world
in our own special ways.

But a minute or two
out of our day
doing this
won’t make a huge difference
to our business building
and it is a good investment
in our happiness today
and our happiness in the future.

Our souls
need us to do this.
We need to savor
these things
while we have them.

Stop and smell the roses.
Literally.

Do It For The Children

In the Before Times,
before the pandemic,
charities and other entities
would plead to adults
to do (X) “for the children”,
leave a better world for them,
make their lives better.

This, they believed,
was a valid marketing angle.

People care about kids,
right?

Wrong.

The pandemic showed us
this display of caring
was complete bullsh*t.
The average person won’t wear
a piece of cloth across their face
to keep their own kids alive.
They certainly don’t give a sh*t
about kids halfway around the world
or
what type of planet
their kids will inherit.

People give to charity
or buy from certain entities
to make THEMSELVES feel better.
It isn’t about the kids.
It is about them.

The ‘do it for the kids’ angle
isn’t enough.
There has to be something
in it
for the adult.

Giving Advice

Most people don’t want
our advice.

That’s the brutal truth.

But some of us
(points to myself)
feel a responsibility
to share what we know.

There are ways
of doing this
that are less…pushy.

One of the reasons
I started blogging
(first at
Road To Forbes
and now at client k)
is because
I had so much life experience
and knowledge
and
no one to relay it to.

I put my insights here
where people can find them
if they need that advice.

A loved one
is very much aware
of the climate situation.

He makes jokes about
being a prepper,
a doomer,
preparing for the end
of times.

People laugh.
They tease him.

But they also ask questions.
They are now aware
there IS a situation.

There are a multitude
of ways
to give advice
without forcing it
on unwilling recipients.

Find the way
that works for you.

Extreme Weather Days

When crafting my schedule
for the upcoming year,
planning my book releases
(project rollouts),
I’m accounting for
extreme weather days.

They’re becoming
increasingly common.

The rain is too heavy
to safely drive.

Blackouts happen
during heat waves.

It is too hot
to ask customers or employees
to go outside.

In my area,
I am currently planning
for 1 extreme weather
working day
a month.

If those extreme weather days
don’t happen,
I will have free days
to push ahead of schedule.

Plan for extreme weather days.
Then hope you don’t need them.

If You Need It, Will It Be There?

I’m installing rain barrels
around my house this year.
I don’t need them
this year.
Our area, thankfully,
has a lot of water.

Now.

But I’ve seen the trends.
I’ve seen how the UK,
a part of the world
that normally has a lot of rain,
is dealing with drought.

And I know
if drought can happen there,
it can happen in my area.

Once drought arrives,
there’s no rain water to gather.
The rain has to be gathered
well BEFORE
there are any signs of drought.

Our businesses are faced
with these types of situations
also.

Marketing funds, for example,
should be ‘gathered’
when sales and cash flow
are healthy.

Because we REALLY need marketing
when sales suck
but, at that time.
we likely don’t have a healthy cash flow
to pay for the marketing.

We need to fill up
our marketing barrels
before the sales drought comes.

Preparing For Best AND Worst Case Scenarios

There’s a scuffle happening
right now
between
folks with
an optimistic view
of future climate change action
and
folks with
a pessimistic (doomer) view.

The thing is…
leaders should be listening
to BOTH views
and preparing action plans
based on BOTH scenarios.

As a project manager,
I usually craft
three scenarios
– Best Case,
Worst Case
and
Most Likely Case.

Then I prepare
for ALL THREE
scenarios.
Because ALL THREE
are possible.

Will some of that preparation
not be utilized.
In the case of the worst case scenario,
f*ck, I hope so.

But if the worst case happens,
that preparation
could be the difference
between surviving and perishing.

Prepare for the best
AND
the worst case scenarios.

Lying About Bad News

Climate reality is
currently
bad
and it is predicted
to become much worse.

There’s a never-ending conversation
in the climate change spheres
about whether or not
reality is too bad
for people to handle
and debating if scientists should try
to ‘soften’ it
with…well…happy lies.

This is so f*ckin’ patronizing.
And unhelpful.

I’m building businesses.
I want to build them
based on reality,
not some ‘softened’
i.e. falsified predictions.

I’ve had to dig
into the stats
because I can’t trust
the people deciphering the stats
to tell the whole truth.

Don’t lie about bad news.
You don’t have to volunteer
the truth
if doing that will hurt you
and others.
But don’t lie about it.

Should You Start A New Organization?

A well known marketing guru
is setting up an organization
to help fight climate change
(and, I suspect,
to sell more books).

The thing is…
similar organizations
already exist.
Their structures are in place.
They are ready to go,
are getting to work,
are making a difference in the world.
Today.
They merely need more support
and more people involved.

In contrast,
when the founders started #TeamTrees ,
they set it up
as a conduit for Arbor Day Foundation,
an existing organization
that plants local trees by local people
worldwide.

#TeamTrees could focus
on the huge task
of driving awareness and support.

They’ve helped plant
over 19 million trees thus far.

If your goal
is to make a difference
in the world,
ask yourself
if you can make a bigger difference
by supporting an existing organization
rather than starting a new one.

Is It A Problem Or A Situation?

One of the pushbacks
to dealing with climate change
is the assertion
the climate is always changing.
Sure, there have been
two 100 year floods in the past 2 years
but 100 year floods HAVE happened
in the past.

These climate change deniers
argue the relentless and increasingly wild weather
is a situation,
nothing we can change.

That has been disproved
for over half a decade
but this IS a question we should ask ourselves
– are we dealing with a situation
or a problem?

Seth Godin
shares

“We can also have a conversation
about whether
it’s a problem
(problems have solutions)
or whether
it’s simply a situation,
something like gravity
that we have to live with.”

Is our current problem
solvable?

If it isn’t solvable,
then perhaps we are dealing with
a situation
and we have to live with it.

If it is solvable,
then we should move forward
and implement
the best solution
for our problem.

Note: Climate change WAS solvable
a decade ago.
It could be solvable now.
Eventually, unfortunately,
it will become a situation
and that will be disastrous for all of us.