tad hargrave

region: Canada and the USA
website: marketingforhippies.com

Tad Hargrave is a hippy who developed a knack for marketing.

Despite years in the non-profit and activist world, he finally had to admit he was a marketing nerd and, in the end, he became a marketing coach for hippies. Maybe it was because he couldn’t stand seeing his hippy friends struggle to promote their amazing, green and holistic projects. Maybe it was because he couldn’t keep a 9-5 job to save his life.

Whatever the reason, for almost a decade, he has been touring his marketing workshops around Canada, bringing refreshing and unorthodox ideas to conscious entrepreneurs and green businesses that help them grow their organizations and businesses (without selling their souls). And, over the years, he has become recognized as a leader in the wider movement towards green and local economies.

His approach to pricing has made him a pioneer and documenter of the provocative new economy that is being written about and explored globally – the Pay What You Can Economy. It’s an economy where people decide on the price tag themselves.

When he isn’t hosting potlucks, spending too much time on facebook, designing a new product or puttering at Remedy Cafe in Edmonton on his laptop he’s likely working on www.e-sage.ca – a project he c0-founded in 2008 which has become one of Edmonton’s leading hubs for green and local lifestyles. Tad seems to have spent much of his adult life building community around positive change and creating events for people to come together to make good things happen.

His work has been featured in publications from the Edmonton Journal, Alberta Venture, The Edmonton Sun, The Globe and Mail, Alberta Report, IONS Review, Ed Magazine, React magazine and nationally on CBC Radio. He was recently featured in the book Global Uprising and was chosen as one of the thirty leading young visionaries in North America by Utne Reader magazine in their September, 2002 edition.

Tad is also a funny fellow. He has been a founding member of 3 comedy troupes, and recently completed his seventeenth season with Edmonton’s Rapid Fire Theatre as a senior member where he performs improv comedy weekly at Theatresports and Chimprov. This means the other performer’s think he’s really old.

Between Sept 2004 – Feb 2006, Tad dedicated himself to learning his ancestral language, Scottish Gaelic, in both Nova Scotia and Scotland. He can speak Gaelic pretty good now.

He also has a blog called “Healing Whiteness: An Exploration of the European Indigenous Soul” at which is woven around the core question, “Are white people indigenous? If not anymore, can they reclaim that?“

Every once in a while Tad leads workshops on Non Violent Communication in Edmonton for the community. He’s not certified or anything – but he finds it fascinating.

Tad continues to live in Edmonton, Alberta, where he was born. He’s also an accomplished sleight of hand magician and an okay musician.

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