The below article is brought to you as part of elephant journal’s ongoing coverage of LOHAS Forum. For our complete coverage, be sure to follow elephant on Twitter and Facebook.

Green can't be cliche or a lifestyle option to work, for lack of better words. It has to be practical, cheap and easy. That's the key.

So, today is the LOHAS wrapup. I attended a bunch of sessions. There was one called "Surfing..." which talked about taking trailing advertizing dollars and using them to ramp up community efforts like making parks. So much money from the major corporations, with the right management, can be leveraged off the tube and out to your community.

Another forum was called "Following Lance" and the high point was that you don't have to sell "green," but that you could push green by talking practicality. Dollar savings, ease of use, etc. These are points that the masses respond to. Green can't be cliche or a lifestyle option to work, for lack of better words. It has to be practical, cheap and easy. That's the key.

Another speaker shared about electric vehicles and the future. Imagine car parks where your car feeds off of and into the grid! That's the future.

I also heard a new catchphrase: "greenwashing" which, as you can probably guess is what a company might do that presents itself as green but really isn't.

All in all, LOHAS gives a chance for speakers and companies to share their ideas about how to make our already rich lives richer by introducing thought, sustainability and health into the equation. It's all good.



Michael writes for Elephant Journal and founded a "dangerously organic" community called Zoobird. He loves sharing what he's learned about organic lifestyles like living off the grid and bicycle commuting. He calls it "lifestyle entrepreneurship". He's into organic gardening, mindful living, and realizes that we only have this life and each other. His favorite quote is "The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both." (James A. Michener)

If you’re in business for yourself, or thinking of starting a business, you probably have considered borrowing money.

The below article is brought to you as part of elephant journal’s ongoing coverage of LOHAS Forum. For our complete coverage, be sure to follow elephant on Twitter and Facebook.

The presentation on "Raising Capital" provided help to people who consider raising capital for their business. We divided up into several groups and decided what the biggest questions were. There were people with all levels of experience, from complete beginners to experienced entrepreneurs.

We heard from people giving “elevator talks,” which are short descriptions of their business or idea, and what they needed the money for.

Lenders and media folk were present to advise us about how to present our message in an efficient way.

We talked about various ways of borrowing money. The “crowd” phenomenon came up, where a group of people acted as a lending source, like www.Kiva.org. We looked at valuation and a couple of rules of thumb emerged, like valuing your business as a multiple of revenues.

One of the main benefits of LOHAS is the contacts you make at the conference. This isn’t unusual, but if you’ve never been to something like this, a big takeaway is the people you meet.

Have any of you in the reading audience borrowed money for your business? I wonder if you have any tips to share. There were comments that the scene, the borrowing/lending scene has changed a bit over the recent few past years. I wonder if any of you can share any comments about that.

Stay tuned – tomorrow I’ll go to a few more talks and let you know how it goes.


Michael writes for Elephant Journal and founded a "dangerously organic" community called Zoobird. He loves sharing what he's learned about organic lifestyles like living off the grid and bicycle commuting. He calls it "lifestyle entrepreneurship". He's into organic gardening, mindful living, and realizes that we only have this life and each other. His favorite quote is "The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both." (James A. Michener)