Sustainability: If You’re Not Patagonia . . .

You’re Exxon

Today’s top talent won’t work for you, buy from you, or tell their friends about you. Instead, they’ll attack you. I have a way forward.

If you have or want customers, employees, shareholders, or media attention, sustainability matters, especially to top talent, especially talent younger than 35. They were born into a dumpster fire of an environment. Damn right, they’re furious. They feel they have to suffer because of the self-indulgence and entitlement of everyone older than them.

If you don’t act, these talented people will abandon you. If you act fake they’ll attack you as hypocritical or greenwashing. But act with genuineness and authenticity and they’ll flock to you. They crave someone doing more than just posturing.

It’s become a badge of honor to attack through lawsuits, marches, activist investors, regulation, the media, boycotts, and more. Once, they targeted only big polluters. Now, nearly everyone.

Because so many companies faked sustainability, we’ve become jaded. We expect greenwashing. Any company that thinks PR will help, find spending more money works against them. Insincerity is met with disgust, like parasites.

Some firms, like Patagonia, acted decisively. They earned respect and loyalty, though at great risk. They bet the farm more than once.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t?

Feel helpless? Confused? Do you have to risk everything just to show you’re sincere? (Spoiler alert: you don’t.)

What if you weren’t born hugging trees?

A decade ago, you could have hoped someone else would act first. Waiting was a cop-out of a “strategy” then. It’s a route to irrelevance and abandonment now.

You can’t delegate leadership. If your strategy is half-assed posturing like forming a blue-ribbon committee or other bureaucracy, but you don’t personally act—authentically, genuinely, and effectively—you’re not leading. Those you think you are leading will attack you as hypocritical and spineless.

They’ll probably be right.

Three pieces of good news

One: You don’t have to solve all the world’s problems. You just have to show you are doing your best—a much lower bar. But you have to show it authentically and genuinely.

Don’t hide your flaws and vulnerabilities. Nobody is perfect. Share yours and those you lead will want you to succeed so they can follow. Instead of attacking you, they’ll support you. It may look like you have to walk a tightrope, but I’ve led some of the world’s top leaders to do it confidently. I make that tightrope a boulevard.

Two: The problem isn’t too much CO2, mercury, or plastic. They are effects. Our behavior causes them, driven by our culture—our beliefs, stories, role models, images, and so on.

That’s good news because leaders can change culture. Systemic change begins with personal transformation.

You will love the transformation. Your customers, employees, shareholders, and media will think, “Finally! Someone acted so I can follow.” They will feel gratitude and loyalty.

Three: I can help. I’ve been doing this for years, for people like you facing problems like yours.

I Will Help You Change Your Culture

I’m not saying changing culture is easy. I am saying that you’ll love it and they’ll thank you for it. You’ll create a legacy.

Most leaders don’t act in the area of the environment because they think in this area they have to be perfect. You don’t. You only have to do your best. The trick is you have to do it genuinely and authentically. That’s where I come in. I’ve led hundreds of leaders to transform themselves and their teams so they love the experience.

Even—especially—people with no knowledge or experience in sustainability or science at all. I’ve led politicians representing “the reddest district in the reddest state,” hard-core Trump supporters, people who have never acted on the environment before, old, young, rich, and poor. They love the experience and recommend me to their peers.

I have decades of experience in that intersection, almost uniquely. I know how to bring joy, freedom, fun, community, and meaning to the process—in as little as two training sessions.

Effective leadership in this area requires experience in leadership, science, and living by the values you promote. Lacking such experiences means not knowing how to act, where to go, or how to get there. And they’ll attack your flaws instead of supporting you for them.

I lead workshops that are the opposite of lecture or coercion. With stories, role models, listening, and simple but unforgettable exercises, I lead your teams to discover and share their intrinsic motivations around nature, act on them, and share their results. Intrinsic motivation makes the experience meaningful so they want to lead others, multiplying the effect, changing individuals and cultures.

This isn’t about shaving a bit of plastic here or emissions there. Learning and practicing the Spodek Method empowers your teams to collaborate to find ever greater solutions because they want to. They learn to lead themselves and others to sustainability.

The experience is supportive. Participants find that we all feel vulnerable. Then they can open up and finally act. They learn to replace guilt and shame with enthusiasm, expecting success. Instead of pointing fingers, they act with confidence.

The results are genuine. Your customers, employees, shareholders, and media followers will stop judging your teams and start supporting them. They’ll want you to succeed so they can follow.

Nobody Else Is Even Close

I’ve lived and led sustainability leadership for decades. On the award-winning This Sustainable Life podcast you can hear my results. World-class guests join because they love the experience and refer me to their peers.

Great leaders aren’t born with a ‘leadership gene’; great leaders develop the necessary skills and gain confidence through practice and hard work. In Leadership Step by Step Joshua Spodek presents a thoughtful approach to becoming a highly effective leader that emphasizes the importance of experiential learning. It will serve as a valuable resource for leaders at all levels in any profession.

Indeed, Joshua’s practical exercises will help prospective, as well as experienced leaders, to master their craft and ultimately to succeed in leading and inspiring others in their various pursuits.

— U.S. Secretary of Defense, General Lloyd Austin

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Experience

I’ve led leaders and teams from some of the world’s most renowned institutions

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as well as winners of the Nobel Prize, Olympic gold medals, the Super Bowl, and the Pulitzer Prize

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as well as government and the military: members of Congress, Mayors, Generals and Colonels from the Army and Marines, and a Navy SEAL.

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I know how to live sustainably:

• I take 2 years to fill a load of garbage
• I’ve picked up litter daily since 2017
• I last flew in 2016
• I last ate meat in 1990
• A typical monthly electrical charge: $1.95
• My annual carbon emissions: 0.8 – 2.4 tons (US average: 19 tons, global average 5.3 tons)

Our culture erroneously leads us to think of acting sustainably as meaning deprivation, sacrifice, burden, and chore. Most of all, through experience leading myself and others, I make stewardship about joy, fun, freedom, connection, community, meaning, and purpose. Where society expects scarcity, I’ve learned stewardship creates abundance. Where society expects guilt and shame, I create glory.

Back to my CV, for my PhD in physics, I helped launch a satellite with NASA. My business ventures and I have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and nearly every major media outlet.

You Personally Benefit. So Does Your Team.

Your teams will save money and time while generating publicity, but those are just the side effects. More significantly, these workshops will

• Improve morale
• Attract top talent
• Increase loyalty from employees and customers
• Increase retention
• Create competitive advantage
• Create community

On a personal level, the workshops will

• Bring participants closer to family and friends, especially spouse and children
• Replace insecurity with confidence

You’ll sleep better too, knowing you’re helping clean our air, land, and water.

The skills you and your teams learn apply broadly. One client, a manager at Exxon, reported

I saw how to apply the skills I learned applying reducing waste personally in my regular work. But there they affect all of Latin America.

That’s systemic change resulting from personal transformation.

You’ll Be in Great Company

A partial list of people I’ve worked with:

The Opportunity (until I sign with a publisher)

For a very limited time, in advance of my new book’s launch, I’m making a unique offer, slashing my speaker fee, normally $10,000 to $15,000 plus books and expenses. I am offering my workshops for little more than the cost of books only.

The catch? Because I’m building for the launch, you will receive the book when it launches, about a year from now. But you will immediately get its greatest value directly from me, through the workshops, which people who buy the book only will not receive. This offer ends when I sign with a publisher.

I’m offering three tiers of service. All will offer the same world-class quality and passion. All deliver the books and workshops for little more than the cost of the books. For friends of Chase, I’m lowering the minimum purchase to the bare minimum: one book and workshop per attendee. I can’t go lower than one per person.

Click here to register with Friends of Chase discount

All deliver the book’s core value—The Spodek Method to lead systemic change through personal transformation. You will love the transformation and your teams will thank you for your leading them through it.

All will lead you and your teams to authentic, genuine, effective, transparent actions you can share with your communities.

You will learn to navigate the apparent tight rope with confidence, attracting talent, building loyalty, enjoying the process, getting closer to your family and friends.

You can’t pay PR firms for these results at any cost.

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My goal is presales to show a publisher demand—to “derisk” their investment, in their lingo. After signing, I’ll charge my usual speaking fees. I am doing all I can to sign this summer, so act soon.

Even if you want the workshops later, you can lock in the price today. Order now.

Click here to register with Friends of Chase discount

Special value for Chase’s community

A value no corporate client will receive: You know my longtime friendship with Chase and how I started my leadership journey where he did his. We learned together and this world-class leadership material emerged from it. I will add a special section to the workshop to connect Chase’s community’s values and practices to sustainability leadership and vice versa.

You will learn secrets that reveal how leading people in sustainability helps you lead everyone in all areas of life: all areas!

I’ll share juicy origin stories that led me to become one of the top coaches in the community.

Register Now

After this offer, I’ll revert to corporate rates and you won’t get to buy one seat at a time.

Click here to register with Friends of Chase discount

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Make History

Sadly, I don’t have to sell the need for sustainability. It’s been front-page news for generations and is increasing daily. Whether for your internal sense of responsibility or a practical sense that your company will lose to competitors who act more genuinely, authentically, and effectively while you try to figure it out, this is your chance to create a legacy.

In the words of a hard-core Trump supporter after experiencing The Spodek Method:

Nearly everybody experiences these results. You will too. You will create them in your teams and family. Register now.