I am often asked, “how can I expand my green building business?” My answer is simple and the same response I have offered for years, attend the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo.

This year Greenbuild is in Boston from November 8 – 10.

I do not claim any particular business marketing prowess. Nor can I promise you will find the balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence at Greenbuild, but Greenbuild has been a prime source of new clients for my sustainability and green building law practice (.. okay, this blog is actually our number 1 source of new clients, but Greenbuild is second)!

I have attended a lot of Greenbuilds. Actually my first U.S. Green Building Council “Green Building Conference” (yes, pre Greenbuild) held in conjunction with the National Institute of Standards in Gaithersburg, Maryland in 1994 had only 450 people in attendance. While attendance in recent years is off a bit from the huge Greenbuild the last time the conference was in Boston in 2008, with 27,995 attendees (.. that was a party!), last year the 18,079 attendees in LA dwarfed the first Greenbuild in 2002 when 4,189 people gathered in Austin.

Those 18,079 attendees last year were from 96 countries, despite the internationalization of the conference. In 2017 USGBC has expanded the Greenbuild platform to include conferences in India and China, in addition to Greenbuild Boston and Greenbuilding Brasil.

Greenbuild attracts all types. Last year 24% of those in LA were from architecture or engineering firms, 14% were contractors and builders, 10% were utilities and 8% were manufacturers, not to mention the very large numbers of professionals offering services and consulting, including, yes, a large assemblage of real estate attorneys.

And Greenbuild is sustainable. USGBC reported in 2016, it upheld its commitment to offsetting 100% of the 866 lbs. of GHG emissions per participant.

Last year there were 531 exhibitors on the 138,960 square feet Expo Floor. It is all but impossible not to encounter new vendors and innovative suppliers. Educational activities abound and there is a lot to learn.

Those 2016 demographics are proof that Greenbuild is the largest green building gathering each year and unquestionably the best opportunity for networking among “green people.”

Greenbuild 2017 in Boston will be “the” target rich environment for green people this year. It is your chance to meet new USGBC CEO Mahesh Ramanujam, the man to know, and many others who make a living in the environmental industrial complex.

It is only 100 days until this once a year opportunity to expand your green building business.

For those who will complain that this blog post is shameless promotion of USGBC, that may be true, but it is also correct that Greenbuild has been a prime source of new clients for my law practice for more than a decade! LEED is still where it is at in green building. It has become all but a spiritual movement, with nearly 90,000 registered and certified projects and more than 19.15 billion square feet participating in LEED across 165 countries and territories. Every day, 2.2 million square feet of building space certifies to LEED.  I won’t promise you the inner peace and spiritual balance of Eat Pray Love, but if you want to benefit from that business volume, you should be at Greenbuild.

And you may find Eat Pray Love’s true pleasure of nourishment in Boston; it is a great food town. And I will help you. As a reader of this blog, if you email me before Greenbuild, I will contribute to your self discovery by buying you a drink or a cup of coffee at a Boston watering hole. (I made a similar offer last year and had a great time meeting a lot of very fun people for drinks in LA.) I hope to see you in Boston in November.