But there are millions of ecopreneurial enterprises prospering throughout the U.S. and around the world. Perhaps you’re one, too.

So, we have formed a partnership with EcoSector.com, an on-line portal serving as a unique conduit for growing the green economy, offering opportunities to share video clips, feature photographs of products or services, and display blogs. Besides EcoSector.com’s search function, find possible funding support, announce new products or services, or inspire other ecopreneurs. It’s a dynamic ecopreneuring portal that incorporates ideas from those business owners who use it. Perhaps best of all, is completely free to use.

Among the many features which might help you launch or grow your business include:

• Secure possible funding support for your enterprise
• Foster business-to-business networking with other sustainable business enterprises
• Share your knowledge and experience to help inspire other ecopreneurs in as they launch or develop their enterprise
• Garner new business leads or sales
• Locate new employees or interns eager to work in the green economy for a sustainable enterprise
• Submit timely new information (for example, a press releases about a product launch) or events

Share Your Ecopreneur Profile on EcoSector.com

Submit your own ecopreneur profile on EcoSector.com and connect with other enterprising ecopreneurs who are changing the world for the better through the businesses they create. There is no fee to join the EcoSector.com portal.

For some ecopreneurs, it might even bring the needed capital to get their enterprise off the ground or develop it further. We look forward to learning more about your green business or enterprise.

For the average American working for a paycheck, May Day — a pagan spring ritual where you dance around a Maypole — marks yet another, less festive occasion.

From the first of January until around the first of May, all the money many of us will earn goes to pay our share of income tax to the US government.

Kiss those months — that money — goodbye (the present tax stimulus package is really just a refund).

We followed the advice of our parents, as most children do: get a good education, go to college and get a job — a nice, secure, well-paying one, with great fringe benefits, stock options or profit-sharing. But the bimonthly paychecks — after the government gets its share for income, Social Security and Medicare taxes — aren’t enough to keep up with the bills. Even with raises and promotions, many of us feel that we keep getting further in the hole, since the more we earn in earned income, the more it’s taxed. The reality is that the system is largely devised this way, not to tax the very rich but to exact a fee on the middle class and poor to keep these wage earners on the treadmaster of a job — or “promising career.”

When you’re earning wages, you’re making money for someone else or, often, something else called a corporation and its shareholders. For your job, you get a paycheck, from which income taxes are withheld to pay for an ever-expanding governmental bureaucracy of the size that even the Romans or Greeks would envy, according to William Bonner and Addison Wiggin in their exhaustive and provocative book, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis.

Besides buying a new car to commute to your job, usually purchased with bank financing, many people acquire a mortgage from another bank to buy a house or condo. Now you have property taxes on top of income and payroll taxes. So you’re earning wages to pay taxes to the government, interest payments to the banks that hold your car loan and house mortgage, and insurance premiums to cover yourself if anything sours.

All the while, you help make more money for the company you work for and the shareholders of the business. You’re working so you can afford to keep paying the bills to keep your house, your car and your life. Meaningful work — working passionately for something you care about — is relegated for those retirement years, increasingly elusive thanks to rising energy, food and healthcare costs. Anyone you know putting off “retiring” because their stock portfolio didn’t deliver enough returns for them to feel comfortable enough to try living off interest and dividends? Either they’re still working or had to get a job to make ends meet.

It doesn’t have to be this way, as many ecopreneurs are discovering. In our unconventional business how-to book ECOpreneuring, my wife and I write about how small business, especially a green business that operates in a way that restores nature and values human life (not exploit it), can be a one-way ticket to keep more of the money you earned while doing good for the planet. Forming your own business as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), C Corporation or S Corporation are among many options to garner the greatest return on your investment of life energy into a project and increase your savings, allowing you to do the things you want to do, not have to do. These ecopreneurs, in how they manage their green business, leverage the power of their business to make the world a better place. In so doing, they may earn less income but power their business with renewable energy, operate carbon neutral (or carbon negative), and focus on serving all the stakeholders of their business, including their local community, by operating a diversified portfolio of enterprises that fill niches.

Many ecopreneurs make a life, not earn a living. Today, I planted 30 trees in addition to caring for my son. The tree planting didn’t add much to GNP (a topic for a later blog), but it will help address climate change, help stabilize the soil on the edges of my family’s small farm, provide a future revenue stream for my son if he mindfully stewards the land. I even broke a sweat doing it, burning off a few calories to boot.

This May Day, perhaps it’s time to think about launching the green business you’ve always wanted — either a for profit or non-profit. Isn’t it time to put your life energy toward something greater than just paying off mounting and unsustainable US government debt this May Day (including the cushy retirement packages politicians seem to end up with, while we end up with little or nothing)?

This May Day, we’re celebrating: our wind turbine spinning our meter backwards; our gardens planted to provide about 7o percent of our food needs without the use of chemicals (or a tractor); our good health; and our business that provides enough revenue to support our family and a quality of life that doesn’t have to come at a cost to the Earth.

We’ll dance to that.

After all, we, like many ecopreneurs we’ve interviewed or met, don’t live to work. Instead, we find our livelihood and the businesses we navigate deeply satisfying as we make the world a better place through the green businesses — for profit and non-profit alike — that we own or direct.

The key to our approach to ecopreneurship is looking to nature for inspiration. Our green business is both diversified in enterprises as well as the products and services we offer, filling economic niches in much the same way as plants, animals and fungi fill ecological niches that create sustainable, interdependent and healthy ecological systems. For example, there are thousands of bed & breakfasts in the U.S., but only a few that specialize in serving vegetarian (or vegan) organic breakfasts with ingredients mostly harvested a hundred feet from their back door, like we do. That the Inn is completely powered by the wind and sun and welcomes children as guests, serves as additional niche experiences we offer our guests who we generally refer to in our ECOpreneuring book as “conserving customers,” not consumers — but more on this in a future blog.

In any given year, our green business receives mini-paychecks from about 50 businesses including publishers and non-profit organizations, plus thousands of dollars from individuals who stay at Inn Serendipity, order products from our website or buy books at our speaking events. What we work on changes or adapts to new opportunities, interests, passions and our evolving Earth Mission.

Our Diversified Income-producing Portfolio of Work can be summarized as follows:

(a) Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast (29%): We manage all facets of this two
bedroom bed and breakfast, sharing cleaning, breakfast preparations and hosting guests.

(b) Consulting (18%): Because of our varied backgrounds and educational experiences, we’ve consulted on projects including database management, public relations, advertising and marketing endeavors.

(c) Freelance writing and photography (14%): Among our passions is the need
to express in words or photographs how we interpret the world. John’s photography and writing clients are varied and international, with a focus on tourism, environmental issues and sustainable development.

(d) Special projects (12%): Sometimes one-time opportunities offer the ability to generate our electricity or work on specially funded projects. This is the most serendipitous aspect of our income.

(e) Inn Serendipity Woods cabin rental (9%): We manage cabin rental contracts, website marketing and guest relations, while also maintaining the cabin and property. Much of our work on this 30-acre property is devoted to sustainable forestry (silviculture) and reforestation and organic agriculture (we rent a few acres to an Amish neighbor to grow corn organically, tilling, of course, with a horse team). Because we have no quarterly sales goals we must meet (or profits-focused shareholders), we can invest in the future abundance of the land and practice stewardship.

(f) Workshop facilitation and speaking (8%): Conferences and fairs allow us
to share our perspectives while learning about the many inspiring ways others
have embarked on similar journeys. From the renewable energy and sustainable living fairs to the Green Festival, our presentations or workshops hopefully jumpstart others into action and reinvigorate our commitment.

(g) Cottage retail store and book sales (8%): We sell our books, photography prints and handmade mugs to B & B guests.

(h) Authoring books (3%): Much more involved than writing for magazines or newspapers, authoring books provides an avenue to address in a comprehensive and artistic way those issues closest to our hearts. Income varies greatly from nothing in one year to several thousand dollars in another.

(i) Farm-direct agricultural products (1%): We sell super-energy-efficient LED lights for greenhouses, surplus flowers, vegetables, fruits and herbs grown on the farm, and eventually, unique, niche agricultural crops grown in the strawbale greenhouse.

We search for synergistic business activities that cross over from one project to the next, or help lead to new opportunities. While hired to complete a business and marketing plan for one non-profit organization, for example, we prepared a sample three-page feature article for a major statewide magazine and submitted it on spec (non-assigned) as a part of the public relations plan. It was accepted, helping position the organization as a conservation leader in the state. We synergistically cultivated both our PR skills and writing abilities to produce a better result for the client and possibly lead to future freelance writing projects for a statewide magazine. As knowledge workers with varied skill sets, we seek a natural balance of interrelated projects that challenge us while also helping us achieve our overarching Earth Mission.

A green business needs some money to make money. For ecopreneurs, money is a tool to serve their Earth Mission. Many have discovered how little they need, balanced by how creative they are in their approach to financing start-up. In today’s world of outsourcing and subcontracting, you really don’t need to own the factory any more. Profits can be plowed back into the business to grow and enhance the enterprise or be reduced by expenses associated with off setting carbon emissions, restoring the land or compensating vendors or employees beyond the “free market price” established for their services or products.

How have you created a diversified portfolio of work for your green business? More importantly, how have you used the profits of your business to reinvest in making the world — or your community — a better place? Within the next week, please consider sharing your own ecopreneur profile on our ECOpreneuring book website for others to be inspired by — or perhaps help you secure needed funds for your enterprise.

From an enterprising individual operating a small retail business to an inventor who comes up with a better way to fuel our vehicles, from the founder of a non-profit organization to the organic grower who feeds our local community, just about anyone can be an ecopreneur and run a green business.

Are you one? See how many questions you answer affirmatively below.

• Are you more interested in what you do and with whom you work than how much you make?

• Does community, environmental and social issues drive what you focus on with respect to your livelihood or volunteer time?

• Do you view your experiences, growing and diverse knowledge base and unique skills sets as the primary value you can offer clients, customers or workplace?

• Do you think the late Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman ate too many Big Macs after he argued — much to the chagrin of the massive multinational corporations and millionaire politicians — that “the only social responsibility of business is to make profits”?

• Do you focus your life pursuits on helping others or restoring, enhancing or preserving the environment?

• Are you more concerned about achieving balance in your life, seeking quality of life that doesn’t adversely impact the Earth or exploit people?

• Do you readily try new ideas, explore new ways of doing things or adopt new practices or use new products or services that reflect your values?

• Are you mindfully aware of your direct and indirect impacts on life on Earth, and accept responsibility that results in you being actively engaged as a steward of limited resources for the benefit of all life, not just for the present generations but for future generations as well?

• Is work a reflection of your passions and values, deeply fulfilling and providing meaning and purpose, or merely only the focus for paying the bills, building personal wealth and funding your retirement?

If you answered “yes” to one or more of the questions above, then welcome to the ecopreneurial movement that is changing the world for the better.

Everyone can follow their dreams. Everyone has them. No more specialized training is needed than what you’ve already experienced up to now. As explored in ECOpreneuring, a change of perspective, a new approach to money and wealth and the necessary hard-thinking work of pruning your passions and forming your Earth Mission, your life purpose and business plan, are the necessary ingredients.

This is the first of many blogs that will touch on the many aspects that define ecopreneurial enterprises and the ecopreneurs who guide them. I hope to learn more about your approach to ecopreneurship, since diversity is both the foundation of the “honey bee economy” and the Earth’s ecological systems on which we depend.

Related to this, within the next week, Lisa Kivirst and I will be collaborating with another organization to provide a web portal to share your approach to ecopreneurship, learn about other enterprising ecopreneurs, seek funding support, and network with other green businesses.

It was a time when prices were increasing at the gas pump and grocery store, and when the economy sputtered along with little or no growth. Some neighbors saw their wages flatten — or their jobs disappear altogether. Gold, often seen as a barometer of economic confidence, was at an all time high (adjusted for inflation). I was pre-teen in a comfty Detroit suburb with a father who worked at then stalwart, GM, so a roof over my head and food on the table was never a concern.

But here we are today, with Priuses outselling Suburbans. Oil and gold are at all time highs. Things seem far more perplexing, interconnected, global. First, there’s the perception of a housing crunch, even though fretting over a 15 percent decline in home values over the last year or two seems rather odd given the incredible run-up of many homes over the past decade, sometimes by over 100 percent.

Second, the sub-prime mortgage mess has snared many who agreed with greedy lenders that living beyond our means was okay. That more jobs are being outsourced overseas or replaced by fancy machines in this increasingly global marketplace isn’t helping either.

Even if the Federal Reserve or Congress and the Bush Administration do manage to convince the American people that they should keep on spending by splurging with windfall tax refund checks — thus avoiding a recession — the printing presses rolling off fresh greenbacks and mounting debt on a national level could result in the onset of stagflation. Oil, while swinging up and down with the speculator’s bets and value of the dollar, will continue on its upward trajectory reflecting the reality of “peak oil,” the period by which its extraction and refinement will get ever more expensive and difficult. Our economy, and those linked around the world, are based on this fuel and this fuel is largely denominated in US dollars. When the dollar falls in value, the price of a barrel of oil must increase.

So why will ecopreneurial businesses fare any different than all the rest if, in fact, our economy morphs into stagflation? Because green businesses are based on ecological principles and, more importantly, practices. Self-reliance, localization, community-based interconnections and wise use of all resources, including energy, materials, and people. For the best ecopreneurial businesses, there is no waste. Like in nature, green businesses seek to use resources in the most efficient way possible.

Only the most productive, innovative and energy efficient businesses will continue to thrive during a period of stagflation. As my wife and I write about in Rural Renaissance and ECOpreneuring, our business model — a model that’s rooted in a fiscally and ecologically conservative approach to enterprise — will sustain us and our community because most factors of inflation are less pivotal to the profitability of our business. What if your energy costs are zero or food costs but a fraction of the typical food costs for a comparable business? What if your local market needs the goods or services you provide, fairly priced and based on the fair wages you pay your employees? Many of the ecopreneur profiles in ECOpreneuring actually create products from the waste stream rather than from virgin materials. Some have embraced the “service economy” where products just keep getting used over and over again; for example, Interface Inc. offers floor coverings that are ecologically sound and can be replaced through a service contract with their clients (the old carpets are then transformed into new carpets).

No matter whether stagflation or recession set in, an ecopreneurial business can weather the economic storms ahead. In fact, many will emerge at the top of their game because — as in nature — stress and turmoil spur innovation. Our ecopreneurial business, Inn Serendipity, set out to produce more electricity than it uses. Now we’re exploring ways to eliminate the need to refuel our car at a gas station, perhaps through the investment in a plug-in hybrid. Until then, at least some of our local commuting will take place in an all-electric CitiCar, recharged with a photovoltaic system on site (which also recharges a lawn mower and other items).

How is your ecopreneurial enterprise set up to prosper despite a slowing economy, recession or stagflation? What’s your business strategy of survival, or, rather, as we write about in ECOpreneuring, your business strategy of abundance? In our case, rather than be dependent on limited and decreasing supplies of oil, we’re largely powered by unlimited and renewable wind and solar energy. Worth mentioning, solar and wind energy are also generated tax free (and for businesses, ecopreneurist owners may often qualify for tax credits for actual generation).

My journeys along Highway 1, in search for leading ecopreneurial enterprises, brought me to this healing place and, as I discovered, a thriving residential community that draws energy and sustenance from their surrounding biological richness. It’s this residential community of researchers, staff, and educators, along with the enrichment programs and remarkable natural setting, that have drawn over 300,000 visitors from around the world seeking a greater connection to community and the land.

In their Solarium, a building attached to the main lodge where all the meals are taken in the community, I talked with Juliet Johnson, a former water engineer turned sustainability guide for the Esalen Institute as its Sustainability Coordinator.

“We’re really about the human potential,” sings Johnson brightly while sipping on herbal tea. “How can we evolve to the next level. How can we be better than we are? Part of the answer rests with being in harmony with the land and each other.” This same perspective guides their prosperous nonprofit organization with educational workshops that provide the bulk of the financial support for the work of the organization.

The Esalen Institute’s approach to ecopreneurship is remarkably similar to what my wife and I write about in ECOpreneuring. There’s more to a bottom line than never-ending growth of profits year after year. Says Johnson about many of their programs and their approach to sustainability: “How do you value things that don’t fit on a spreadsheet?” This sense of human query has guided Esalen over the years, harnessing the power of their community to help transform all who arrive to their peaceful coastal enclave.

After spending the morning with Johnson and walking some of the 120 acres that make up the grounds, I realized few other places I’ve visited seem to reflect this nexus of sustainability consciousness better than Esalen. Once on the grounds, you’re a part of their community.

Besides the exceptional line-up of workshops for the public (90 percent of all visitors are workshop participants), the Esalen community has tapped geothermal energy for heating, added several solar thermal systems and a small 3 kW photovoltaic system, with plans for more. Esalen harvests about fifty percent of the vegetables served by the Esalen kitchen from their own organic farm on site, and conserve resources, whether through composting food waste to using energy efficient lighting. Most recently, Esalen added a “Living Machine” to biologically treat grey and black water. Their bathhouse renovation incorporated a sod roof and many of the renovations have focused on reusing building materials on site. Even a Gazebo School was created to serve the pre-school age children of staffers, guests and the Big Sur community, complete with a learning garden, farm animals and compost pile.

“At Esalen, sustainability is about abundance and a deeply connected human experience that is grounded in community, spirituality, personal growth and connection to the natural world,” writes Johnson in their Friends of Esalen newsletter that features programs that include workshops by such acclaimed visionaries as Amory Lovins (Advanced Energy Efficiency and Alternative Supplies for Profitable Climate Protection) and Michael Ableman and Steve Harper (From the Good Earth: Reclaiming our Relationship with the Land).

Like most ecopreneurial enterprises, the Esalen Institute continues its evolution, seeking a deeper, richer and more enduring relationship to fellow humankind and to nature. As captured in one of Esalen’s six Values Statements: “Transformation of consciousness is the basis for transformation of the world, individually, collectively, and in social systems.”

I look forward to returning to this community of kindred spirits, to see how their sustainability consciousness reaches new faces and places.

Not always. There’s nothing in the IRS tax code preventing businesses from investing in renewable energy systems (and energy conservation/efficiency) that allow these businesses to operate more efficiently, sustainably, and green. In fact, often there are tax credits and other incentives to encourage these kinds of investments. Some businesses, like ours, generate a surplus of energy, essentially wiping out energy costs not to mention cutting carbon emissions (more on this another day). Taking such an approach to business, boosts our bottom line profitability.

Around the Summer Solstice every year (this June 20 - 22 in 2008), the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, or MREA, hosts the world’s largest and longest-running “Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair” in Custer, Wisconsin, a fifteen minute drive from Stevens Point in the central part of the state. It’s one of the places where we learned the basics to transform our business, Inn Serendipity, into an independent power producer by harvesting the wind and solar energy with a 10 kW Bergey wind turbine and .7 kW photovoltaic system, respectively.

More than 18,000 fair goers, exhibitors and leading renewable energy experts gather under big top tents for novice-to-expert-categorized workshop presentations, talk with renewable energy system dealers in the exhibition area — filled with plenty of wind turbines, PV modules and biodiesel processors — and get the latest on pending federal policy implications related to funding the systems that will largely eliminate the need to ever send a check to a utility company. In our case, our public electric utility pays us for our net surplus electricity generation.

The MREA’s Renewable Energy Fair got its start in 1990, after a catalyzing question was raised by HomePower magazine publisher Richard Perez: What ever happened to those energy fairs of the late 1970s? “We were an action-oriented, community-based group of homesteaders with an environmental bent, often living out VW vans with everything plugged into a cigarette lighter, powered by a solar electric module on the roof,” chuckles Mick Sagrillo, one of the MREA’s founders and current president, explaining their humble beginnings. The resulting Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair has spawned an energy revolution in the Midwest.

The fair takes place on the grounds surrounding the ReNew the Earth Institute, headquarters for the MREA that features several wind turbines, numerous solar electric PV arrays, a masonry heater and solar thermal systems — among many other things. It’s all about walking the talk here. Just about anyone you’ll strike up a conversation with is doing something related to sustainable living. The entire event is practically waste free; “disposables” are composted because they’re made from corn. When the grid went down in a storm several years ago, the energy fair kept running on its back-up batteries and renewable energy systems.

Besides the workshops offered as a part of the fair admission (entrance to the fair is free for MREA members), there are sustainable food tents, a kid’s tent, musical performances, keynotes and additional, more intensive and longer workshops. This year we’ll be presenting one such intensive workshop related to topics from our ECOpreneuring book on Saturday morning of the fair.

So, consider planning your summer travels to Wisconsin for the MREA’s Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair, and enjoy the advantages of transforming your business into a net power producer (or take it off grid). There’s economic freedom in meeting your own energy needs with renewable energy. Your wise business investments can make it possible today.

While tourism is big business, much of the industry can be just as destructive as the other extractive industries (mining, lumber, agriculture), sometimes operating in the same places around the world, places like the spectacular Alaskan Wilderness or rainforests of Indonesia. Oceans containing fish or oil hidden deep below the surface in certain parts of the world, provide the setting for the popular love affair by many people, of living on floating cities called cruise ships, turning port stops into Mall of America-type shopping sprees.

Not all tourism, however, thrives on the consumptive value of mass tourism that burns through resources or exploits people for the benefit of pleasure seekers. A small, but rapidly growing segment of the tourism industry, “ecotourism” has emerged which now accounts for as much as 4 to 7 percent of the industry, depending on definitional terms. While the academics debate these definitions ad nauseum, the industry and number of ecotravelers are growing at double digit rates according to The International Ecotourism Society.

After studying ecotourism for several years while completing my M.S. at Penn State University, I’ve settled on my own definition of ecotourism:

Ecotourism: Travel that sustains, enhances or restores diverse ecological systems, preserves the economic and social well-being of the local and global community, and fosters a greater understanding on the part of the traveler of nature, culture or the community visited.

In many ways, it’s the “triple bottom line of profits, planet and people” applied to the travel industry.

On many occasions in my global journeys — captured in my first book The Least Imperfect Path — I traveled through slash-and-burned rainforest to reach pristine wildlife preserves or active conservation areas. My journey funded stewardship, preservation and conservation efforts through my park entrance fees and payments made for local porters or guides. By frequenting locally and native-owned lodging establishments and restaurants, my travel dollars helped provide viable livelihoods to community residents who might have otherwise been forced to destroy exactly those cultural and ecological features that attracted me to the area to start with. As I’ve written inE Magazine, Mother Earth News and Natural Home, among many others, ecotourism can be both a tool for conservation and restoration, but also guide more socially responsible and ecologically sound business practices.

Studying and traveling as an ecotourist wasn’t enough for me to feel qualified to write about it. My wife and I have operated the award-winning Inn Serendipity for over a decade as an ecotourism accommodation and destination. We’ve seen how the business of sustaining the Earth can be effectively accomplished through ecotravel. We write about our journey in both practical and inspirational ways in Rural Renaissance and ECOpreneuring. Our guests underwrite our organic gardens and soil restoration efforts, the implementation of renewable energy projects, and in myriad other ways help in the healing of the planet and preservation of cultural heritage. We saved our corn crib/granary by transforming it into a strawbale greenhouse. In terms of marketing, our customers search us out. They are also among our most enthusiastic marketers, telling their friends who might likewise enjoy the experience we provide that helps restore the planet at the same time. We’ve even managed to figure out ways to help offset our carbon emissions related to our operations, a big issue all businesses should address by how they operate.

This is the first of a series of blogs related to ecotourism. Future blogs will also include dispatches from the field, based on recent trips and innovative approaches taken by ecotourism businesses to leverage the power of travel to preserve and restore the planet. Please let me know what you’re doing, if you’re an ecotourism business. What businesses do you know that have embarked on a journey to participate in a restoration economy through the promotion of ecotravel?

The economic stimulus package hailed by Congress and seemingly supported by the President is to provide as many as 116 million tax filers with a check for $600 to $1,200 (perhaps more if you have children). But all they’re doing is basically returning money we’ve already paid into the U.S. Treasury. And to do what?

Spend it, according to Democrats and Republicans alike.

These policians and their team of experts believe that what we need to avoid a recession is more consumption. They want us to spend our way out of a recession. Forget that “free markets” go through economic cycles of bulls and bears. Forget about our spiralling federal deficit. Forget about the mounting cost of numerous wars being waged on several fronts to fight terrorism — a bill the next generations will be picking up the tab for. Forget about global warming, collapsing bridges, our addiction to oil. Forget about the highly questionable fiscal shape of Social Security and Medicare in the coming years when about 78 million Americans are fully “retired” and need some money to live on and pay for the doctor bills.

Just take your token windfall and blow it on a new plasma TV, or something else you’ve always wanted.

Last time I checked, however, most of what we buy these days is made by someone living in a country far, far away. So a good portion of the money we spend leaves the country, unless, of course, you’re a supporter of the Small Mart Revolution, buying local, from neighbors or roughly from the region in which you live. How is buying stuff made from far away places going to help our community remain economically viable?

Instead of spending, consider investing for a cleaner, greener future. Invest in conservation and efficiency, replacing leaky windows or switching incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. According to Home Power magazine, the compact fluorescent blubs provide a guaranteed, 120-percent return on your investment over the life of the bulb. Try to get that kind of return on investment on Wall Street.

You could also invest in renewable energy systems like a residential wind turbine system, photovoltaic system and solar thermal system, all of which we incorporated into our operations at Inn Serendipity. We now generate more electricity than we use and get paid by our utility company.

Or we can invest in our community, helping support organizations and institutions that serve the common good. Maybe, we can plant some trees to help mitigate carbon emissions that are contributing to global warming. Or invest in a community supported agriculture (CSA) operation, where, as CSA shareholders, you receive fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables from the farmers in your community.

Alternatively, rather than filling up your home with more stuff, take this opportunity to seize control of your finances by getting rid of as much of your debt as possible. That’s right, save. Stop letting BIG FINANCE ruin your life by gorging you with interest payments on your home, car, and credit cards. We’ve discovered that if you want to feel wealthy, try having as few expenses as possible.

A penny saved can be a dollar earned when you make wise investments in energy conservation and efficiency, local food systems, and renewable energy systems as my wife and I have discovered at our home and home-based business. Our success in achieving our version of the “good life” is captured in the pages of our Rural Renaissance book. Our financial recipe for a richer life is reflected in ourECOpreneuring book, due out in May, 2008.

Suffice to say, we created the good life without spending a penny.

Rather than spend most of my life in a carpeted cubicle, earning-and-spending and, in my case, pimping for the culture of consumption at a large advertising agency in Chicago, my wife, Lisa Kivirist, and I exited corporate America. We resettled on a 5.5 acre small farm in southwestern Wisconsin, endeavoring to learn how to grow our own food, generate our own electricity and in various other ways reclaim the ability to meet our own needs without depending on Corporate America to provide all that we need, for a price. That goes for providing a job as well. The business school I attended as an undergrad primed me for a “successful career” earning income from a Corporation, paying taxes to the government and owing much to the banks that would one day own my home, car and credit worthiness.

By exiting the fast track overflowing with Lattes and legions of consumables (remember, you have the look the part of an Advertising Executive), I’ve settled into my own skin, weeding our bountiful gardens, harvesting more solar and wind energy than Lisa and I can use on our farm, and raising our son with the Earth in mind. Our business, Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast, when paired with our other enterprises like writing, speaking and “green marketing consulting”, provides a lifestyle and workstyle that’s sustaining to us and the ecological community in which we’re inexorably linked. Our journey is reflected in the pages of our book, Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest for the Good Life. What we now do about our nourishment is captured in Edible Earth. And how we live well, on less and without the need to grow bigger and bigger, is found in the pages of Ecopreneuring: Putting Purpose and the Planet Before Profits. Our business and our life is devoted not to growth, but making things better: for our community, the environment and future for our son (and the Seventh Generation). These issues guide our daily experience and practical resources I’m eager to share through my contributions to Ecopreneurist (they won’t be taught at most business schools or found in the pages of the Wall Street Journal).

In a nutshell, ecopreneuring, as Lisa and I have come to define it, will change the way you perceive money, the role of business in solving some of today’s most pressing problems and the responsibility we must seize to reclaim the commons of commerce and cooperatively — not competitively — restore our planet in peril. For many ecopreneurs, it’s a return to family scaled, local, nature-based enterprises where quality of life is the barometer of “success”, not size of bank account or year-after-year growth in net income. We have a ROE (return on environment) not just a ROI (return on investment).

I welcome your ideas, your enthusiasm and your commitment to making the world a better place, be it through organizations you start or work for, profit-based enterprises you launch, or in a lifestyle you’ve created that helps sustain all the inhabitants of the planet.

If you already operate an ecopreneurial business in either the for-profit or non-profit sector and would like to share your story on the ecopreneuring.biz website we’re developing with inspiring and practical success stories, I’d welcome hearing from you. This website created around our Ecopreneuring book will provide support and resources for finding purpose, living well, and restoring the Earth through your business. While the politicians are talking about making the world a better place, millions of ecopreneurs already are. Are you one?