America’s economy is back! Factories are running hard to keep up with demand. Restaurants are re-opening to cheerful diners. People are booking travel again.
But this is not a return to 2019. In just the last month ExxonMobile and Ford have disruptively changed how your business will get a loan and win customers. They are examples of how “going green builds business” has moved from a cliche to a business competitive reality for winning investments and sales in today’s post-Covid world.
Need Financing? Think ExxonMobile!
A corporate governance earthquake just shook ExxonMobile to its core. A majority of ExxonMobile investors just voted to place THREE strong sustainability advocates on its Board of Directors.
This ExxonMobile voter activism is a sea change example of how investors, and increasingly banks, assess capital risks. Major pension funds and investment companies like BlackRock now accept climate change as being real and an existential threat to human health. As a result, they are actively pushing carbon-centric companies like ExxonMobile to adopt a decarbonization business strategy and they are shifting more funds into organizations that deliver clean technology solutions. The ExxonMobile proxy vote was a thunderbolt investor activism statement that electric vehicles (EVs) fueled with zero emissions renewable energy will demolish oil’s market share because EVs and renewable electricity will win on both least cost and higher performance.
Investor ESG activism like what ExxonMobile experienced will impact your business. All of America’s largest banks now have position statements recognizing that climate change is real. What is changing is that they are now actively re-adjusting who they loan to and how much they loan based on a business’s green commitments and executions.
Think Your Conservative Consumers Won’t Buy Green? Think Again!
If you think Republican, conservative consumers will not buy green then think again. Roof top solar is a huge winner with Republican conservative homeowners here in California. They bought their systems to save money and as an act of freedom from their local electric monopoly. Then, I watched them buy electric cars because they could fuel them for free!
The just launched Ford F-150 Lighting all electric, full-size pick-up truck may be the sea changing green product that unites conservative and progressive consumers in their embrace of clean technologies.
“Less is more” was going green’s initial marketing mantra. It failed to win more than a niche market share. We are a “Super Size Me” consumer economy. The full sized, gas or diesel guzzling pick-up truck is a poster child example that America’s consumers want more, not less.
The Ford F-150 Lighting electric truck is America’s first “Super Sizer Me” green product. It will go faster and haul more than fossil fueled pick-up trucks while refueling at 75 cents per equivalent gallon cost. And if the electric monopolies that serve Ford F-150 Lighting owners don’t stand in the way, these Ford Lighting owners will race to buy rooftop solar so they can go faster, haul more and do it for free!
Green Builds Business, NOW!
When I first started coaching business owners on how to make money going green I was mostly working with pioneering business owners. No more! American businesses, from giant corporations to main street businesses, are going green because it wins customers and cuts costs.
If 10 years ago you knew the cloud was going to be what it is today, then how would you have shaped your business strategies? How much faster and more aggressively would you have invested in digital to find and win customers? How much would you have invested in brick and mortar compared to digital technologies?
Those are the questions your business must be asking itself now regarding clean technologies and sustainable business practices. Ten years from now green products will have dominant market size because they cost less and mean more to your customers. Green technologies and business practices will be as important to your business as the digital cloud is today.