GoHuman Blog

Today marks 40 years of working together to live in balance with the planet’s limited resources. Here are 5 easy things you can do to help!

1) Take part in the Official Earth Day 2010 Campaign – Sign the Climate Declaration

2) Click here to tell Congress to pass a fair, ambitious and comprehensive climate bill.

3) Add a pledge to Sierra Club’s map and win a trip to Hawaii

4) Sign the Rock The Vote petition for Energy Independence

5) Cut down on your daily disposables – it’s easy!

Thanks for doing your part!

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.

We’re two weeks into GoHuman’s first micro cause and we’re very happy to report our success!

Out of our goal of $14,900, we have currently raised $999.17 to send Sunshine to an intensive autism treatment program in Massachusetts. We’re on our way, but still need to spread the word far and wide.

We seek 10,000 people to donate $1 or more. Can you help?

In addition, GoHuman will donate $1 in your name for every friend who joins GoHuman and mentions “Sunshine” through March. You could help Sunshine just by telling a few friends about GoHuman and what we’re doing to help local businesses.

Thanks!

Congrats James Wood, of Abbotsford, B.C., Canada — our latest Flip Video camera winner!

James is a local business consultant. Call him today for help finding new business opportunities!

James said, “Since being a part of GoHuman.com, it’s changed my life. I’ve met so many small business owners that have enriched the world I live in. They have inspired my own growth, they have rekindled my artistic flame within me, they have dared me to be not good..but great in what I do, each and every day.

”GoHuman.com is not a passing fad. It truly is a family of like minded individuals concerned with the communities they live in, bringing out the best in all, and realizing that we are ONE!”

James, you are truly one of a kind. Thanks for everything you’ve done to support GoHuman over the past months!

GoHuman is all about empowering small businesses and independent professionals by connecting them with the right customers in their community to establish a more sustainable economy. We’re not the only ones with this idea, which is a great thing. We can’t do it alone, and we depend on people everywhere who believe there is a better way.

But how do we do it?

Word of mouth has proven time after time to be the single most powerful form of marketing. People trust people like themselves, who are typically people they know well like friends or family.

At this stage in GoHuman’s growth, we are connecting with as many small businesses as possible in Chicago; L.A.; Madison, WI; Knoxville, TN; and Vancouver, Canada. You might ask why we’ve chosen those particular areas and I would tell you that in a way they chose us.

We believe in involving people who share our vision for a better, more equitable world, no matter where they are. We’re looking for people to join our grassroots marketing teams, whether they are in one of our existing markets or if someone has the gumption to get a new market going. It’s happened before, and we welcome anyone who is up for the challenge and the rewards.

Businesses everywhere are hurting. People everywhere are being shut down by the powers that be. GoHuman.com represents a genuinely better way for business to work to support themselves and their community.

There is nothing more inspiring than meeting new people who want to join the cause. Some have established themselves in their community and others are just looking for a way to help make things better. Either way, it’s the fuel that moves us forward and gives us hope that our dream can work.

And guess what? People just like you are growing GoHuman.

If you’re interested in joining our team and becoming a Founding Member of GoHuman.com, just email refer@GoHuman.com for more info. We guarantee that an actual human will respond.

Congrats to Reinhard Klett of Morristown, TN, who won our 12th Flip HD video camera by posting his business on GoHuman.com. Reinhard can help you get a home if you’ve had trouble with conventional financing.

When asked why he chose GoHuman.com, Reinhard said:

“Our society has become increasingly mobile and we tend to move often. Especially when we are new to an area, it is great to have a website we can go to and look for a service that has a good reputation. This way we can get a service done often much more reasonably than having to go through a national franchise, where a lot of the money is siphoned off by some corporation far away, which does not really add any value to the service I am getting.

“Here is a picture of my family Reinhard, Emilee, David and Daniel.”

Thanks Reinhard!

WIN your own Flip HD camera by sharing a local service you provide or need!

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.

I recently blogged about how the top 20 Global Companies dramatically highlight the unbelievably unsustainable nature of the current global economy.  I’m following up with an online article about #43 on the list.

End of the world predictions are usually the domain of fanatics and fringers, but this global powerhouse is advising its clients how to prepare for global collapse.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

#2 of 19 random reasons Why GoHuman.com? is that a strong, connected, local community is an essential insurance policy if the worst of doomsday predictions were to come true. And investing in a local economy is by its nature more sustainable, not to mention the marketplace we are creating.

We hope you’ll catch the vision and spread the word. We can make a difference. We can change the way the world works.

Reason #1;

Reason #3; Reason #4; Reason #5; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

Speaking of gargantuan corporations, Fortune’s Global 500 proves our planet’s economy is completely unsustainable.

Seven oil companies: Holland (1) UK (4) France (6) China (9) and the U.S. (2, 5 & 7) are in the top 10.  These giants exploit nonrenewable resources.  #3 is big-box retailer Wal-Mart, under siege by environmental and local activists.  Dutch financial services titan, ING (see #1) is #8.  The world’s largest car company, from tiny Japan – which could be car-free, is #10.

By 20 we get 4 more oil/energy companies and 3 more car manufacturers.  If you are horrified, or at least care, watch the award winning documentary The End of Suburbia. Even if you don’t buy the logic of “peak oil production” (which I don’t) or Who Killed the Electric Car (which I do), it’s a revelation.

Sustainability is #1 in a series of 19 Blogs, in no particular order, of answers to “Why GoHuman.com?”.  A shocking recommendation by company #43 is next.

Picture of Crude Awakening – a Burning Man Event

Reason #2; Reason #3; Reason #4; Reason #5; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

Death is something we usually don’t like to think much about, but I thought it was fitting on the anniversary of 9/11 to highlight friend Gemini Adams’ business and book, Your Legacy of Love, with the message of living consciously. I can’t really say it better than this:

“Award-winning British grief expert, Gemini Adams, gently explains how moms, dads, and grandparents can realize the gift in goodbye, by taking six simple steps to share their wisdom and affection in a legacy of love, so that surviving loved ones will suffer less, when the “worst” happens.

“After losing her own Mom to cancer at a young age Gemini quickly learned that a typical inheritance doesn’t give surviving family, especially children, the ongoing loving support they really need. So, she started a survey asking: ‘If one of your parents died, what would you prefer: to inherit their money, or a letter saying how much they loved you?’

“Over 90% expressed a wish for the loving letter.”