GoHuman Blog

The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) concept of “People, Planet, Profit“ demands that a company’s responsibility be to the people who are influenced in any way by the actions of the firm rather than the people who own it.

TBL is typically discussed in a big business context for two reasons: One, big businesses are by nature the farthest out of human touch with sustainability. Two, if you have to choose one business to make sustainable, a bigger business will have a bigger impact.

But what if we could create an integrated network of small local businesses and independent professionals with an eye on the ecological, economic, and social concepts expressed by the Triple Bottom Line related to their communities?

What if people all over the planet quietly frustrated with the status quo could find the voices of power they’ve lost in the wake of unprecedented corporate growth over the past century?

GoHuman’s vision is a world where these ideals are not afterthoughts, but rather integral and essential elements connecting every community and every business within those communities. We cannot afford for these to be abstract thoughts or luxuries. They are a necessary part of the emerging global consciousness and we need to integrate them into our personal and professional lives by igniting our tribal instincts.

In the United States and other parts of the world, the motivation to adopt this sustainable lifestyle is neither handed down by the government nor encouraged by our existing capitalist economic model. An intricate web of subsidies and loopholes has all but extinguished the basic humanity enjoyed in simpler times in favor of the almighty profit margin.

It’s not all doom and gloom. There is hope. We believe in a better way. It’s the passion that fuels GoHuman and the real people behind it — people just like you with the vision and gumption to do something about it.

It starts simply. It starts with an equitable marketplace that promotes balance amongst the people who use it by rewarding those who provide value with something equitable in return.

It starts with you.

What does green mean to you as a business owner or consumer? It’s certainly a buzzword that gets a lot of attention, especially this month as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.

In 40 years have we accomplished as much as we could to sustain a sustainable ecosystem for our planet? Probably not, but it’s human nature to move incrementally until disaster strikes.

GoHuman is a marketplace devoted to helping local communities achieve sustainability. Local energy and ideas serve as the foundation for the site’s growth, and allow for mutual prosperity. Local means:

• Fewer resources to transport goods and services is better for the environment
• Money spent by the community stays in the community
• Services tailored specifically to the needs and challenges of the community
• Reduced costs due to lower overhead of the individual provider
• Greater flexibility for better quality of life
• Bringing back the unique downtown communities this country has lost
• Helping the economy-at-large by feeding it at the smallest level
• Taking the current crisis into your own hands rather than waiting for someone else to fix it

If you are a green-certified service provider, you’re one of us. So why not join us? I welcome you to post your services to GoHuman and join a growing community of like-minded businesses and community members. Together we can help local communities and the environment.

Thank you for making a difference in your community and ours. Read on for ideas on marketing a green business.

All this speculation about Google buying Yelp for half a billion dollars starts to sound suspiciously like some of the other high finance deals that led to the current economic crisis. But at the end of the day, these are two corporations beholden to shareholders and investors with wealth aggregated at the top and controlled from the top. Worse still, that wealth is still leaving your community.

Where’s the little guy in all this? The independent local professional or small business who just needs to get more customers in the door, no matter who happens to own the search traffic or content at that particular moment.

Google was supposed to be in the business of objectively aggregating the world’s information, not owning it. Buying Yelp ensures a degree of control over the content that is created. And remember who’s creating all that content? You and me.

Yelp was a directory created to give consumers a democratic voice in recommending brick and mortar businesses. I believe their motives were pure, but they leaned so far in favor of the consumer as to alienate businesses who now tell extortion-like tales. The review system is limited and features such as business responses and custom business info are afterthoughts at best.

There is a better way.

What if the website that contained all the customer feedback alllowed businesses to express themselves and interact in a more natural, independent way?

Better yet, what if the people who contribute to the website community end up owning it?

GoHuman.com represents something completely different — 1000’s of sustainable localized business communities connected through the Web yet protected from the rampant evaporation of local wealth. We’re building a unique collaborative economic structure that directly rewards those who contribute to its growth. It’s a revolutionary concept that takes a bit of faith to absorb, but we truly believe it will transform local communities from the inside out, equalizing the gap between the big guys and the little guys.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Labor Sunday, we’re giving away one Flip video camera each week from Labor Day to Halloween. Enter by signing up at GoHuman.com and creating a posting for a service you provide or need in your community and/or giving or receiving an endorsement. The more you do on the site, the greater your chances of winning each week. We hope to see the winners use their cameras to create videos telling the world about their favorite local businesses in our Million Dollar Video Contest.

Visit http://GoHuman.com/launch on Labor Day for information on how to enter.

I’m going to be in Los Angeles right before our Labor Day Launch (actually I’m splitting Labor Day between our two largest launch markets – L.A. and Chicago).

Please join me for an informal lunch in Culver City to celebrate this momentous occasion and kick-off our Flip for Your Community Contest. I’d love to meet as many GoHuman.com friends as possible. No need to RSVP, feel free to come as you are. Here is the info:

Friday, September 4, at 12PM Noon
Industry Cafe And Jazz
6039 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232-7425
(310) 202-6633‎

See you there!
Andy

This world is critically unbalanced. I truly believe that GoHuman.com has the power to help rebuild local economies by rewarding the businesses who perform the best work and work to develop worthwhile relationships with customers. Large corporations can’t compete with the individualized and specialized service that a local service provider can provide, yet communities all over the country are feeding these huge entities with seemingly no way out.

GoHuman.com is a way out. But it’s more than that. It’s a way to collaborate and empower individuals who desire a flexible work life and higher quality of life. People with multiple skills and services can use GoHuman.com to represent themselves without creating multiple businesses or renting office space. As we build the site, we we construct tools that allow all independent businesses and service providers to convey their administrative and sales activities as professionally as they complete the quality work performed. We will help people form ad-hoc work groups as needed to perform any number of flexible tasks and projects. We give businesses a way to express themselves and build reputation unlike any other site.

GoHuman.com encourages a culture that doesn’t expect perfection, but understands we are all human and we all make mistakes. What matters is our willingness to make it right when things go wrong. To support each other and progress together. Those who provide value to this site and their community will be rewarded for their integrity, skill, and effort.

My entire life I’ve done what I can to fight against the prevalent greed in our society, believing that we can’t just chock it up to “human nature.” Recently I’ve become convinced that Web technology holds the power to re-distribute some of that wealth among people who need it the most. Finally I found a group of people who not only share this vision, but are willing and able to work with me to develop technology and culture to make a real difference.

Each of us has the power to change the world. I’m trying to do that through GoHuman.com, and I challenge each of you to do the same. Join us in the movement towards change and help make the world better for everyone.

Andy Swindler
GoHuman.com Co-Founder