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Updated: April 2, 2025

How a Westbrook entrepreneur grew a ‘green home’ publishing business

A person speaks into a microphone while another person holds a camera. Photo / Courtesy SunriseGuide LLC Heather Chandler speaks at the 2023 Green Home + Energy Show, established in 2019 as a spinoff from her Green & Healthy Maine magazine.
By Laurie Schreiber

Heather Chandler is the owner and founder of Green & Healthy Maine magazines, the Green Home + Energy Show and the SunriseGuide LLC, a regional media company founded in 2006.

Green & Healthy Maine Homes magazine was established in 2015 to focus on healthy, sustainable, energy-smart, and future-ready Maine homes. The brand includes an online directory of experts, bi-annual print magazines, the annual Green Home + Energy Show, Home + Energy Chats monthly webinars, e-newsletters and a social media community. The business has four staffers and uses many freelancers.

Chandler graduated from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses entrepreneurship program at Babson College, the Institute for Civic Leadership and the Top Gun business acceleration program.

Mainebiz asked Chandler about how she grew the business.

Mainebiz: What inspired you to start the business?

Heather Chandler: The seed was planted two decades ago on a trip to the Northwest where I visited friends in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. Both friends had this book on their coffee tables that included a compilation of environmental resources and information coupled with coupons for local businesses that featured eco-friendly and wellness products and services. With a background in publication design and technical writing (my first career was developing documentation for Apple computer peripherals), I fell in love with the product and thought we needed it in Maine. 

I contacted the company to see if they would open a Maine office and let me run it. They were intrigued, but it was ultimately too far away and they were too small to take it on. So I decided, with their blessing, to do it on my own. 

MB: How did you spin that into a business?

HC: I networked up a storm, meeting with anyone and everyone who was involved with environmental issues and greener, healthier products — from food co-ops to building products. The result was a publication called the SunriseGuide, which we published for 15 years and laid the groundwork for the products we produce today. We stopped publishing the SunriseGuide during the pandemic. 

We launched our first magazine — the Green & Healthy Maine Visitor’s Guide — in 2012. In 2015, we expanded that with the Green & Healthy Maine Homes magazine and became a quarterly magazine in 2020 with the launch of a winter edition. That’s distributed throughout Maine and we have subscribers in 20 states. 

A stack of four magazines.
Photo / Courtesy SunriseGuide LLC
Chandler started Green & Healthy Maine magazine in 2015, with interactive elements such as Home + Energy Chats monthly webinars, e-newsletters nd a social media community.

In 2019, we recognized an opportunity to provide opportunities for our readers to meet face to face with industry experts focused on green homes and launched the Green Home + Energy Show, a large trade show that attracts around 1,000 attendees. This year, on April 5, will be our fifth show. We’re expecting over 70 exhibitors. There will be 18 workshops and there’s an electric vehicle expo on site where attendees can talk with EV owners and even test drive cars. 

MB: How did you finance the startup?

HC: Initially, I created sponsorships, put together bundles of benefits and networked like crazy.  I was young and ambitious and just asked anyone I thought might be interested in supporting it. We haven’t had to take out  much financing over the years. It’s been self-funded from the business, with a couple of exceptions during the pandemic, when we had to take out some loans.

MB: Who’s your market?

HC: We are seeing — and really have been for quite some time — increasing interest in homes that use less energy and are more energy independent, are less expensive to heat and cool. Homes that are healthier for the people who live in them and that reduce our fossil fuel usage

We’re also seeing increased interest in retrofitting. On the sustainable lifestyle side, we’ve been seeing a shift back toward more local foods, local businesses and local products for years now. And there is evidence that travelers are prioritizing businesses with sustainability practices and commitments. 

MB: Future plans?

HC: Continue to stay on top of advances in building science, and technologies and approaches that help make higher performing homes — those that use less energy, are healthier for inhabitants to live in and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels — more accessible for more Mainers. We will continue to innovate the ways that we can connect with Mainers, and in ways that reach them where they are, from our printed magazine to our robust website content library and business directory, webinars, podcasts. 

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