The Color of Green: Eco Friendly Products, Friendly Education, Friendly Collaboration

                                                              GREEN LOVE

 It's Not That Easy Being Green?   It may seem tough, because being green might mean being stereotyped--weak and green, expensive and green, boring and green.  Just listen.  Kermit is feeling a bit down, as he "spends each day the color of the leaves...seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things."  But it doesn't take long long for Kermit to change his tune, " ...but green is the color of spring... green can be cool and friendly-like and green can be big like an ocean or important like a river...."

Overuse, carelessness, distortion of his favorite color.  Has "Green" become cliche, meaningless, sort of like the way we often use "Love" ?  Green products, green cars, green clothes.  I love you, too.  I love cold pizza.  I love colored Sharpie pens.  Really?

 Doesn't GREEN mean doing the best we can to protect our natural resources and educating ourselves on how to protect our resources and our future? How to grow viable, meaningful thinkers? Doesn't LOVE mean how we love our kids, friends, pets?   Surely,  the Beatles' song (last blog post) about love has more depth than how I feel about my little, faded blue 1981 Chevy Luv truck (Gosh, I love that truck, not just for the dented and scratched metal or stumbling of the engine but the great gas mileage, the physics professor who owned it for 26 years, for who rides in it with me because he or she has to sit  pretty close so there's some potential for conversation, and I love it because of what it helps me do). 

Eddie rides amidst reclaimed vinegar bottle boxes.  Sunday morning ritual.

 Important like a river. Why dig a new well when you have a river?  Ken Krogue, entrepreneur and contributor to Forbes, just published his article about critical marketing and the "Divert a River rule"--fill a need that already exists, use what's already there.

Just this morning, I was searching on how to approach my next step...of letting the impatiently-waiting WARHORSE out of his small pasture and into a bigger one.  Our natural degreasers and products provide a solution for a need that already exists--plant based products that can do some kick butt cleaning.  Pet and people cleansers that use natural ingredients and NC green energy. Ok, our green process is working...but the work is just beginning.  Now, I'm feeling like the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams--"If you build it, they will come."  If we make our lovely, green products, will they sell? What's our marketing plan?

 Don't dig a well, shape the river.  This strategy can help the WARHORSE and be kind figure out our next step--how to market and get our local products out into distant pastures while overhead, cash flow, accounts receivables, flu season, fatigue, washing clothes, and -what-to-do-next tries to chip away at our momentum.  Shape a river--develop collaborative relationships where established experience and knowledge can be shared with others.

Well, we be GREEN by making healthy business decisions working with other companies, universities, and organizations who are trying to do something similar.  We embrace the other 'Naturally Aggressive: Fiercely Kind' WARHORSES who want to leave the world better than we found it, who want to revitalize education, who see a need and want to fill it.  And we keep collaborating with talented, creative, experienced people in our local communities. We remember, "This is business and it is personal." And we eat our green, leafy vegetables. 

Green and Love do not have to be ordinary words we use carelessly. They can really mean something, something important like a river.