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I’m super excited and very honoured to be part of Le Web ’09 in Paris this year (as an official blogger)! I haven’t been back for years and Les Blogs (pre-Le Web) was also my very first trip to Paris. I know, I know. I kept saying it for the past year and a half: “I’ll be back” and I even booked flights and coordinated with friends. But last minute something would come up: another conference or a deadline or I was just flat broke. But this time I’m so committed that I applied to be an official blogger and now that I’m accepted, I’m taking my role very seriously.

I can’t wait to see my old friends from Silicon Sentier and FINALLY visit La Cantine. I plan to come in a few days early to shake off my jetlag and wander aimlessly around one of my favourite cities. Then I’ll also be bright-eyed to see the awesome lineup, including Laura Fitton (who just launched the amazing OneForty) and Violet Blue! Also great to see Ben Metcalfe speaking as it was him I first met at Les Blogs in 2005 and who caused the big hubub! I think I might have to organize a ‘Bullshit’ mob.

Either way, I’m looking forward to being in Paris, going to Le Web, seeing old friends, eating some nice food and drinking some good wine and reconnecting.

If you want to join me at Les Blogs, use the discount code: BLOG09 for 10% off!

I was reading an article in the New York Times about painful shoes today and it felt as if I was looking at a former version of myself. Throughout the comments and reviews, people defended the practice of beating up one’s feet for fashion, such as:

Contrary to popular belief, today’s extreme shoes are not designed to torture women’s feet. Pain is not the goal, it is just an unfortunate side effect — collateral damage? — to the visual impact of the shoe’s extreme design. – Valerie Steele

Wearable art? Creating illusion and desire is a way that a woman seeks power? Increase in height equals increase in self-esteem? Whatever it is, I’ve been part of it for my entire life.

I recall my Mother telling me when I was younger that she sought out comfort, not glamour. I also recall thinking that she was an alien for doing so. But I find myself buying for comfort more and more these days and not feeling alien in the least.

And I don’t know why this article sent me down this path, but it made me start thinking of all of the ways we externalize our power. And somehow I thought about religion and dating and politics and identity and painful shoes all being part of the same system of externalized validation.

Religion, from my perspective, is a way that people can have hope and faith and believe in something beyond what they see to validate a way of being in the world. Dogma, mantra, karma – whichever – it helps guide people externally to do ‘the right thing’.

Dating is a complicated arena full of people looking for love. Only, I have observed that there are very few amazing matches that result in the dance. And, from my own experience (being part of those mismatches), I feel like we settle too quickly into situations that aren’t good fits for us because being with that other person externally validates our worth. I know…this seems like a terribly negative view of love, but I’ve finally gotten to a point in my life that I’m happy enough with myself that I don’t have to settle for someone who doesn’t complement me.

Politics? Left or right? Socialist? Capitalist (arguably, not even a political stance, but used nonetheless)? Libertarian? Humanist? Whatever all of those mean, are we really so in love with categories that need to file ourselves into one or the other? How did we become such experts in what the ‘right’ way to run a country is? Not from personal experience. It’s learned. It’s transfered. It’s external.

Identity is a wider reaching ball of muddle. I’m a woman. What does that mean? Why are so many pre-conceived notions packed around that definition and why do I need to put them on as uncomfortable as they are? I’m just as guilty as anyone for generalizing identities to make a point (i.e. Canadians are more community focused, etc.). I know where it’s useful. But I also know where it ceases to be useful. These external generalizations of identity are good for figuring out what we have in common, but they cease to be useful when we start expecting individuals to act a certain way because of the generalization.

Which brings me to these shoes. A good step back (so to speak) would reveal to us that wearing 12″ heels or pointy toes or strappy sandals that we can’t walk in more than 1 block and cut our feet to shreds is the unsexiest thing we can possibly ever do. I was at drinks with some friends of mine the other night and they showed me a photo of a male friend who is single and who makes his dates fill out a test before he’ll go out with them. I looked at the photo and thought, “This man is bald, overweight and not particularly handsome, how does he have the power to administer a test to women who desire to date him? Would an overweight, unattractive woman be able to do the same?” And when I read the article on the shoes, I thought, “Oh geez, I balked at the test, but that’s what these shoes are.” Another test. A way to seek external validation that we are worthy…to be looked at…to be desired…to have someone with comfortable shoes and way more power ask us out on a date.

I’m learning slowly to find my power from within. It’s easier said than done. There is so much to unpack in terms of identity and messages and everything else that leads to self-doubt and feeling unworthy in the world. I’m a million miles away from achieving full-on internalized validation, but what I can say is that I don’t require religion to tell me what is right and make me a better person in this world, I don’t require a political label to define how I believe we should be treating people in our countries, I’m done with dating people who don’t fit and am more than happy to be single for as long as it takes (even if it never happens), I work hard to unpack notions of identity for myself and the people I meet everyday and I won’t wear shoes that hurt me anymore. I’m more desirable without them.

It seems there is a rash of talented people who have spent years, time, energy and their own money to build their knowledge, connections and skills enough to provide value who are constantly being asked to transfer all those knowledge, connections and skills along to others for free. I know this because: a. many of them are friends and people whose work I admire and have spoken out, b. I am one of them.

Some who approach me even have the balls to say, “You’ll get alot of Whuffie out of it!”

Um. That’s why I built up my whuffie in the first place, dude.

I think it’s useful to explain the process of how and why someone would work for whuffie and then at what point one gets paid in earth dollars and why (although the why should be obvious).

Why work for whuffie?

• Your name isn’t widely known and you need to build your reputation. By speaking or doing pro bono work, you will start to build up that valuable whuffie that is needed to get the paid work you need to cover your bills at the end of each month.
• Your name is widely known in one vertical, but the conference or cause that has approached you can give you exposure in another vertical you are highly interested in building a name for yourself.
• You really, really believe in the cause or the conference. It’s something you are crazy passionate about.
• In the case of a conference, you were 100% going to be there anyway (like SXSW Interactive).
• You are good friends and you know that friend will have your back anytime you ask in the future.
• Doing this could land you a gazillion more paid gigs (like speaking at TED or PopTech).
• You are pretty much guaranteed of being compensated another way – selling books, CDs, seminars, etc. (but this one is tough – I’ve asked the conference to pony up for a minimum number of books to give away in lieu of a fee).

That’s pretty much it. Free tickets aren’t payment. I’ve actually been offered a free ticket only the DAY ON WHICH I’M SPEAKING, which means they are saying, “Sure, we’ll let you in to talk, but then you need to pay to come back.” Wow.

After you have built a name for yourself, you should be charging. And even if it’s a friend’s conference, they need to pay to get you there and put you up for it. Your friend should also buy you a beer or two and recommend you to other conference organizers (who will pay you). Really good friends will actually pay you. Money coming out of your pocket to help someone else’s event (or business in the case of consulting or a workshop) rock is not sustainable. If you continue to do this after you’ve built a name for yourself, you have completely squandered the reason for you building your reputation in the first place! Really. If you will continue to work for free, why not just spend nothing and go nowhere? It’s more sustainable.

Why? (and here is obvious part)

Because your landlord/bank won’t let you pay your rent/mortgage with whuffie. The grocery store won’t take whuffie either. Neither will your utility companies, clothing stores, universities for your kids, bookstores for your reading materials or the many other realities of day to day bill collections. At some point, you need to cash in on some of that whuffie and put some money in the bank.

So, the bottom line for me is: I will work for whuffie if I really believe in something, but I will work for cash if it is for your benefit. And I will do the same for others. I pride myself on making sure that people get paid when I benefit more from their labor than they do. And I won’t ask if I don’t think I can pay them.

And personally, I think that conferences that pay their speakers are better. The speakers feel valued and transfer that feeling onto the audience, who also feel valued. Very few exceptions exist and where there are exceptions, there are HUGE benefits to the speakers (not empty promises) for speaking there.

As a sidenote, I’m pretty sure that perceived value also works into the scenario of working for free as well. Once you say yes to it, you lose value in the eyes of the client or conference organizer. In the words of Don Draper: “I don’t think you’d be in the presidential suite right now if you worked for free.”

Living in a world where it’s difficult to know who to trust is exhausting. It seems to me that there are so many people just hustling to make a buck that I’m constantly on guard. I’m not a hustler. I’ve never been a hustler. Sure, I know the elements of the hustle (there are enough examples around me) and could probably engage in the types of interactions that put me at an advantage, but what stops me is that I don’t think the world needs more hustlers. The world needs more mutual benefits.

I was raised in a small town in Alberta. Hustlers didn’t really exist. They couldn’t. It was a small community and anyone who tried to take advantage of another person’s generosity or naiveté would be quickly discredited and made examples of. We all needed to co-exist in a way that everyone had their needs met. Fairness ruled. This experience, though naive in the ways of the wider world, led me to believe strongly in the idea of reciprocity: I give something of value and you give something of value and we both benefit. It was simple.

Since leaving my utopic small town world, I’ve experienced the Tragedy of the Commons unfolding everywhere. I love big cities – the energy, the excitement, the variety of experiences – but I don’t love the disconnectedness between people that exists in big cities. It’s a problem of scale. If someone screws someone else over in a small town everyone knows, but if someone screws someone else over in a big city, it’s pretty certain that they’ll get away with it. If you want to get the word out to warn others, it takes a great deal of time and energy.

So you do one of two things to survive: you become suspicious of everyone you meet or you become a hustler yourself. Millions of people make that decision daily and I don’t think either is a particularly happy existence. I believe that people make the decision to hustle to survive and the more hustlers we have, the more tragic the Commons grow. As it grows, we spend more time, money and energy to survive.

When I realized all of this years ago, I set out into the world in hopes that I could make a bit of a difference to change this. That’s why I chose marketing. I know, doesn’t seem like a natural progression to set out to make the world a happier, less exhausting place and choose a career in selling stuff. But it seemed to me to be the perfect place to disrupt the hustle. The fact is, we live in a society where we often need the services and products that are being hustled to us. If I could establish a voice in the area most associated with hustle and convert the hustle to a mutually beneficial interaction, I thought, perhaps the amount of hustle will be reduced to the fringe and those hustling would realize their strategy was flawed.

Well, it’s quite a long haul, this goal. But I don’t discourage easily.

I’ve been excited by the power of online communities for quite sometime now as a key piece to how the hustle can be broken. And for quite a while, it was. But the very medium I felt excited about has become a primary source of hustle. Sure, there is Whuffie and Trust Agents and these important cultural norms help to keep the hustle a little more at bay. But then the hustle co-opts the language and behavior of the culture so it looks less like hustle and we celebrate it (“Yay! Look at how we’re changing the world! Coca Cola has a Twitter account and they talk to people!” And “I can get a free sandwich from Burger King if I become their fan on Facebook!”) and the new Commons we could have used to break the insanity of it all becomes tragic, too. We are celebrating the hustle and those who hustle are rewarded.

Ugh. I feel as if this Revolution HAS been Televised. Only, instead of television, it’s YouTube. I’m not sure what to do from here. I tried, with writing The Whuffie Factor, to provide an example of how mutually beneficial interaction is the right business model going forward. I thought that if I write a book, it would get into the hands of hustlers who would be transformed and decide that we need to change the predator/prey relationship. But it doesn’t feel like that’s happening anytime soon. Instead, it gives insight into the culture that I adore just enough for hustlers to become wolf in sheep’s clothing. Is the issue too deep to disrupt it?

I don’t think so. I still have hope. I just need everyone’s help. I need everyone who reads this to speak out when you see wolf in sheep’s clothing. I need everyone who has any role in the marketing space to really think about the core of the businesses you are working with and bring forward mutually beneficial relationships with your customers. I need to see more examples around me of companies like Zappos and Southwest and Clif Bar, who believe strongly in putting an end to hustling and who want to build businesses based on people (customers, employees, etc) benefiting and who end up being more long term profitable companies because of that attitude.

This world CAN become a happier, less exhausting, less suspicious/hustling place where we can pour our energy into positive ventures, personal health, the pursuit of knowledge and reaching self-actualization. We just need to get real. And put the revolution back on the right track. Let’s stop the hustle together.