Transcription of Heather Chandler for the show Good News, #78
Lisa: This time of year, we’re starting to see the sun in the sky more and more. We thought it would be appropriate to bring in someone who puts a little bit of sunshine in people’s life on a regular basis. This is Heather Chandler, the founder and publisher of the Sunrise Guide. Thanks for coming in and talking to us Heather.
Heather: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.
Lisa: Heather, this is the 7th edition that you’re putting out this year. It’s been quite a journey I would imagine.
Heather: It’s been a whirlwind of 7 years for sure.
Lisa: How did this start up in … I mean I’m fascinated. I have been purchasing the Sunrise Guide pretty much every year. I love what you put into it. I pick it up at the Royal River Natural Foods or at Lois’ Natural Marketplace. I love getting the coupons out. My kids love getting the coupons out. It’s a very interesting concept. How did you come to decide you wanted to put this out in the world?
Heather: It was sort of a confluence of a bunch of things happening at once. I was working in another career and coming to the realization that it was time to make a change. I was doing all those things you do, reading books, What Color is Your Parachute and all of that. Around the same time, I traveled to the Northwest and visited friends in Portland, Oregon and Seattle. Both of them had a similar publication on their dining room tables. Of course, I was on vacation. I had plenty of time to sit and read.
As soon as I picked it up, just fell in love with the idea. It just seemed to bring together so many of my interests and experience. I’d always had a background in marketing and publications. I’d always been interested in healthy living and ecofriendly lifestyle. Light bulbs went off and I thought, “Oh my gosh, we have got to do this in Maine.” That’s really how it started. I initially contacted the company out there to see if they would come to Maine and do something like that. They were wonderful but ultimately decided that was a little too far for them and so put it down for a few months, continued on my journey of trying to figure out what was next for me. I kept coming back to the book and just realized it was the only thing I really wanted to do, that I was really excited about. That’s how it all started.
Lisa: What was it about this book that you kept picking up that kept saying Heather, you need to do this?
Heather: It was really … It represented so many aspects of things that I was interested in. I love that. This publication, the Sunrise Guide, is modeled pretty closely after the publications I found in the Northwest. I loved that it was a resource kind of a one-stop shop that pulled together all of those aspects about my lifestyle that I enjoyed, yoga and healthy foods and constantly learning about sustainability. It pulled together all of those resources in one place combined with coupons so you had a motivation to go out and try new businesses that maybe you hadn’t before. Back 7, 8, 9 years ago when I was developing the business plan for this, green and healthy products weren’t as prevalent as they are today. There was some hesitation I think for people to try something new like that, that they hadn’t before.
There were perceptions that green products didn’t have the same quality, that they were more expensive. The idea of pulling all these resources together and giving people financial incentive to try them and realize that wow, these are great. They work. It was that and then I also saw it as a way to support the businesses in Maine that I love and I want to see continue to be successful and prosper. It just made sense. It brought it all together. Yeah, I felt like it was sort of like taking those community bulletin boards that you see in natural food stores and yoga studios and putting it all together in a book where you could in one place figure out where to find all of those things.
Lisa: Tell me about some of the businesses that you have brought into the pages of this book?
Heather: Specifically some of the businesses?
Lisa: Yeah. Tell me what the range is for people who are listening who have never picked it up. I can’t imagine that by the way. Everybody has one of these on their coffee table. We’re just telling them what they already know, but for people who aren’t familiar with the Sunrise Guide.
Heather: It ranges from … There are 6 different categories of businesses that are included. Food and Dining is probably the most popular because we all eat. There are coupons for natural food stores, local markets as you said Royal River Natural Foods, Lois’, places like the Rosemont Market. There are coupons for restaurants that have a commitment using local and organic produce, vegetarian restaurants, restaurants where you can find a selection of gluten-free options, where you can also find natural meats and sustainably source seafood so really trying to pull together those places so that if you care about that, you know where to find them. That’s Food and Dining.
It also ranges to there’s a whole bunch of home-related businesses, whether it’s the Habitat ReStore. It’s a place where you can go and get building materials that are either surplus, new materials that are donated to the ReStore or maybe they’re gently used but still fully functional at a discount, so places like that. There are garden centers, home services. If you’re looking for a lawn care company that uses greener methods or home cleaning company that uses greener methods, you would find them in the Sunrise Guide. A whole bunch of health, there’s a huge health and outdoor living section. That’s bike shops, kayak outfitters, yoga, massage, chiropractors, acupuncture, all of that sort of thing.
Then, there’s a personal care section. That’s consignment clothing stores, maybe cloth diaper companies, that sort of thing. So really runs the gamut, the whole goal is to be comprehensive and what do you need for your life in Mane if you’re interested in healthy and sustainable living.
Lisa: What are your criteria? I know that you don’t let just anybody advertise in the Sunrise Guide?
Heather: Right. Basically, we’re looking for businesses. Criteria’s applied on a product-advertised basis. We are asking businesses to promote their products or services in the Sunrise Guide that are more environmentally friendly than the average competitive product. You may see businesses in there that cover a whole line of products. But we’re asking them to put their greener products upfront. For example, Hammond Lumber Company, they promote their FSC certified wood products in the Sunrise Guide. They carry other products but that’s what they put upfront.
In a nutshell, that’s what we’re looking for is products that are greener than their average competitor. We have a pretty elaborate matrix of how in the past, we have figured that out. Nowadays, it’s just sort of … We kind of know it. You just suss it out. We also understand that there are a lot of things that go in to … For example, one of the things that we recognize are third-party certifications. In a food example, that might be that they’re organic-certified. We also know that there are lots of farms out there that don’t have the organic certification but they operate in as organic a way as they can, maybe they just don’t pay for the certification.
We’ve sort of learned over the years that there’s a lot of grey area. We really just try to determine whether that they’re being authentically greener than the average. I hope that answers your question. It used to be a very specific criteria and it’s gotten a little bit more just developed a general sense of really who’s doing something that rises above the norm.
Lisa: Do you think that that’s an important point? We’ve had other people on the show who have talked about organic certification or we’ve talked about fair trade certification and the process entailed and how that can have interesting and not necessarily positive ramifications on individual businesses. I think the fact that you’re able to evaluate these businesses or their products on a sort of person by person or business by business in a manner that that’s more consistent with the type of living you’re espousing anyway.
Heather: Right. I think once you … when you’re involved in the community and you sort of get to know people as individuals and you get to know what’s happening in each of those fields, you can develop a sense of really where is the bar and who’s really striving to be above that.
Lisa: Why did you think that it was important? Why is that you’re interested in yoga and sustainable living? What was it about your background and growing up and your earlier years that caused you to head in this direction?
Heather: That’s a good question. I was raised by very … I’d say I was raised by hippies in Western Massachusetts in the 70’s. We lived in North Hampton, Mass which I don’t know if you know anything about Western Mass but pretty liberal gathering place. My parents raised us on really healthy food that I did not appreciate when I was a child at all. When we were kids, we volunteered at the food co-op. my siblings and I, we just laugh at the people we volunteered with at the food co-op. I think at the time, we definitely didn’t appreciate that. I think it really developed a great foundation for me to when I became an adult, choose that because I knew that it was right for me.
I think that those roots helped guide me in this direction. I don’t think that I would necessarily have had to have those roots to go on this direction but on my particular path, I think it was significant coming from that background.
Lisa: What’s interesting to me is looking at the Sunrise Guide and also at the other guide that you produced, the Green & Healthy Maine which is a visitor’s guide to Maine. Have you been doing this for very long?
Heather: That’s our first edition, the summer of 2012 is the first year.
Lisa: I happen to pick this up in the airport. It’s very nice.
Heather: Thank you.
Lisa: Both of the guides that you do are very good. It strikes me that you’ve had to go beyond the traditional natural foods coop way of promotion because we’re not just all hanging around the dusty barrels at the Good Day Market on the West-end anymore. There’s a lot of … people are very aware. There’s a lot of good marketing being done whether it’s a green product or a non-green product. How have you found in terms of … How challenging has it been to wed those 2 ideas, staying green but also being eye-catching, marketing the products that you want to market but staying consistent with maybe FSC-certified paper or having some of the business ideals that you’re trying to espouse?
Heather: That’s a good question too. I would say it’s a delicate balance. We have always published the Sunrise Guide on FSC-certified paper that’s 100% recycled, post-consumer recycled content. Then, when we did the magazine for the first time and I should also say we’ve always published the Sunrise Guide with a Maine-based printer. That’s been really important to us to do that even though we knew that we could publish it for less money in other places. We’re very committed to that with the Sunrise Guide.
When we put together the plan for the magazine, the type of printing, so it’s printed on a web press. There aren’t web presses in Maine that were an option for us. We actually had it printed in Vermont. It was the first time we ever printed outside of Maine. That was a pretty significant decision to do that. We printed this on 50% post-consumer paper. You’re always making those decisions of how are you going to be able to meet your bottom line needs and be true to your ideals. It’s definitely a delicate balance. We, as I said, we’re very committed to keeping the Sunrise Guide a Maine-printed publication but where this was a tourist publication and we couldn’t find that technology to print it in Maine. We had to make the decision to go to Vermont, which feels like family anyway.
Lisa: Yeah, it’s pretty close by.
Heather: Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah, just a few states over. But you’re right, it is interesting because … this is talking more technically but Sunrise Guide has more of a matte feel to it. It’s not quite as glossy as the Green & Healthy Maine publication. On the other hand, if by creating a publication for people who are coming into the state as tourist, that actually raises the awareness of local green businesses, then aren’t you contributing to a greener and healthier Maine anyway, in a different way?
Heather: Sure. There’s so many ways that you can measure whether something is green. Looking at cars, you’re going to purchase a car, does it have the highest miles per gallon, the highest fuel-efficiency? Yes, but what’s the life cycle analysis when the car was produced? Is it produced in the greenest way as other cars? There’s just so many factors that come into making a decision about whether a product is green. I think we tried to weigh as much as possible and make the best decision we can to that end.
I think your other point about appealing to folks who may be outside of the born and raised and food co-ops and sort of more mainstream, I think something that I’ve always felt is important with the Sunrise Guide is good design. I really just have always believe that no one’s going to pay attention to it if it doesn’t look nice and that’s not visually appealing. That’s pretty important. I don’t think it has to be one or the other. I think you can have a really green product and have it looked really nice and be appealing to everybody.
Lisa: I want to be really careful because I have a lot of respect for anybody who’s listening, who’s familiar with the Good Day Market and what it used to represent here in Portland. I think it was a great place and fostered a lot of community and a lot of awareness very early on of organic foods and natural foods. I think there’s a lot of that that did take place in a foundational level. It’s just that when you’re trying to move out into the mainstream and create more awareness amongst people who maybe don’t want to have … or people who needs something a little bit more glossy. I think you need to fit into that paradigm a little bit more.
Heather: Right. It makes me think of … I recently read an article about the greenest car in America this year. The Ford, I’m not going to remember the model. Is it the Fiesta? Anyway, it’s their compact wagon was chosen as the greenest car in America this year over things like the Prius or other hybrids. The reason they stated was that when they looked at all factors considered, it was most likely to have the biggest impact because more people would buy that car than people who could afford to buy the hybrid. They looked at the big picture. I think that gets to your point of if you’re able to bring folks into Maine from out of state and bring them to our great green and healthy businesses, then overall, it’s doing more good than appealing to a smaller segment of the audience.
Lisa: Is there also a process that takes place over the course of 7 years. I’m asking you this personally but I guess it could be more … a larger question of first staring out with a very stringent set of ideals like it has to be this, it has to be that. Then, over time, sort of having to evolve the way that you think about things and maybe … I don’t want to use the word judgmental. I’m not sure. I don’t think that I would apply that in your case but having to be more broad thinking about all of this. Did you find that to be true?
Heather: Yeah, I think it was probably related to my transition from being in the non-profit world which is my background where the bottom line is mission and values 100% to being a business owner and my bottom line is multiple things now so I think that transition definitely happened over the years for me and I very early on approached my business with a non-profit mindset because that’s what I knew and have really had too learn how to be a business owner and really look at everything from multiple perspectives. We’re not going to achieve our environmental and social mission if we don’t achieve our financial mission. I definitely have seen a lot of transition in that over the years.
Lisa: Isn’t that the definitely of sustainability?
Heather: Sure, yeah.
Lisa: For the long term.
Heather: Right.
Lisa: Heather, in both the Sunrise Guide and also the Green & Healthy Maine Visitor’s Guide, I’m struck by the stories that you’ve put in place whether they’re about wind power, local artisans or acupuncture and they’re inspiring. They inspire us. I think they inspire me to want to live a more ecologically balanced and centered life. There are the pressures, the external pressures of being a business owner. I know things are probably different than they were 7 years ago when you started. What keeps you on the path? What keeps you waking up in the morning and saying I still want to do the Sunrise Guide, I still want to live the kind of life that I live. I still have these values and this mission.
Heather: Lots of things. Certainly hearing people’s stories so when readers write into us and tell us how various aspects of the publication has affected them and impacted their life, that is really inspiring and that can drive you for a long time. I think I’ve also learned over the years that it’s important to take time off. That took a long time to learn that lesson. I don’t think I took my first vacation really my first vacation until 5 years into the business. I was really burnt out. What happens when you’re burnt out is you start to lose that inspiration. You start to question what am I doing? Why am I working so hard? All of my advisors for years said the same thing. They all said you have got to take a vacation. When you’re in the middle of it, you just think how am I going to find this time? How am I going to get away?
I started working with a business coach. I think that was very helpful for me and finally talking a vacation. Two years a go, I took a 2-week vacation to Italy. Just a month ago, I just got back from my second 2-week vacation to Italy. I think that helps a lot. I really do think that time off helps get perspective and recharge your own batteries so that you can remember why you’re doing what you’re doing. I also think a healthy lifestyle for sure factors into it. Healthy eating, yoga, meditation, time spent outside, they seem really simple but I really think it helps. Those are the things that come to mind. It’s a constant effort to do that. You don’t just do one thing and be set on course forever. You have to kind of keep coming back. I think it’s a combination of all those things.
Lisa: People who pick up the Sunrise Guide or the Green & Healthy Maine Visitor’s Guide, they can find little businesses and little piece of inspiration, little coupons that can kind of keep putting them back on course I think.
Heather: I love that you see it that way. That’s wonderful. I like to think of it as being inspiring. That’s one of our goals is to help inspire healthy and sustainable lifestyle so it’s really nice to hear you say that.
Lisa: Where can people find out more about the Sunrise Guide? What are some places that are in the local area that are selling it?
Heather: We have a website, thesunriseguide.com and so all of the stores are listed there. That’s one location. To folks who are in the Portland area, they’re in over 100 different stores now. Everything from the local natural food stores to Longfellow Books, the Whole Foods carries them. You can purchase them pretty much from Kittery to Belfast, depending on where people live. There’s probably a store near them. If they’re just outside of our distribution area, they can also purchase them online. We can mail them.
Lisa: They’re pretty inexpensive actually. I think it’s … it says still just $20 on the cover. I’ve myself I think already used at least 2 coupons out of the 2013 book. I know that every year before this, I basically made up the cost of the $20 so that’s worth it.
Heather: Awesome.
Lisa: It’s pretty good trade from what I can tell. I thank you for putting the guide out there and for giving my kids and I something to look forward to every year and little adventures that we can do based on that. I’m really glad that we’ve been able to speak with you Heather Chandler, the founder and publisher of the Sunrise Guide and also the Green & Healthy Maine Visitor’s Guide.
Heather: Thanks for having me in. This was fun.