horsepigcow

As I prepared my talk at TEDxConcordia last week, I was told by countless people that certain talks would be ‘a tough act to follow’.

I was told this over and over again in my speaking career. Someone is either about to get on stage or they’ve been on stage and everyone is buzzing about the talk. This will be the one that nobody wants to follow. The speaker either has an amazing reputation or amazing content that everybody is eagerly awaiting. As someone who is always concerned about being the ‘best of breed’ on the stage – this used to be a daunting task…especially if I am following that ‘tough act to follow’.

But somewhere along the line, I decided to stop being the person who follows the tough act and start BEING the tough act. I thought to myself, “Screw it…Tara Hunt follows nobody…tough or not…I have the ability to set the bar high.” And so it went…and I carved my own path. That act that was not an act at all…that would be authentically me. The best me. The VERY best me. No more compromise. No more following. No more act. There would be no comparison because, at the end of the day, I offer something uniquely me. Some people would hate me and some people would love me and there would be nothing in between.

And it spilled into everything else in my life…well mostly everything else. I would be a tough act to follow to everyone around me. And the only reason I was a tough act to follow was that I would no longer compare myself to anyone else. There were no other ‘acts’. There would be peers and entrepreneurs and people carving out their own paths, but nothing quite like mine. And there never will be.

People have a tendency to compare. Unless one person is emulating another or copying another, there is rarely a comparison. We have crossovers and similar traits and experiences. We have politics and religions and experiences that may touch others, but at the end of the day, we are unique snowflakes. Yes, you can segment me in certain ways and get me 9 times out of 10, but that doesn’t mean you *know* me. And the thing I love most about people I meet is not only how we connect, but how we differ and experience the world.

Being a tough act to follow means that I am going to be the best, most authentic ME available. I drop all pressure about whether you will love me or hate me. I am a divisive person. I know that. I know that there are people that don’t like me…for whatever reason. I also know that I will connect deeply with others. And that is what matters to me.

What some call brave or radically transparency, I call ME. The most authentic person I can be is someone that shares her highs and lows to the world. I sometimes wonder why more people don’t. I see way more benefits than I do negative consequences. It holds me accountable. It pushes me through the times I feel most vulnerable and alone. And, above all, this transparency helps others feel like they are not alone. I don’t know a person throughout history that changed the world who wasn’t radically transparent. The passion. The crazy, audacious, delusional dreams splattered wonderfully all over the pages of history. All of that was part of their every day life.

Being a tough act to follow means putting yourself and your beliefs out there in a raw way. Everything that captures us has to do with that. It’s not bravery, it’s admitting we are human beings living in the human condition in odd, changing, crazy human times. Imagine the world as a place where we could all do that! Where could we go then?

We shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, but we CAN be our authentic selves and join those ‘tough acts to follow’ in being our own tough acts to follow. That’s how I became a tough act to follow. And every time I get scared that I don’t quite measure up…I recall that there isn’t really, truly anything to measure up to other than the best self I can possibly be. Because the toughest act to follow is always my own potential.

[hopefully the video will also be put up soon]

I am 37 years old and this month marks the first time in my adult life that I had to call up my landlord and tell him I couldn’t pay my rent on time. I’m not telling you this for pity and it isn’t a rags to riches story. I am doing what I love. I am more alive than I’ve ever felt. And though I’m more broke than I’ve ever been, I’m also happier.

Hello, my name is Tara and I am a startup entrepreneur…

Let me tell you…that it takes HERCULIAN levels of strength to hold the faith day after day as you travel down an unclear path.

Imagine this. You are an entrepreneur standing in front of a group of important people, people who hold the power to change your future – venture capitalists, media, potential employees, and YOU – and you pour your heart out to them. You present your vision in the best way you know how to articulate it. Your palms are sweating. Your heart is beating out of your chest. You are so excited and filled with passion and you just know they are going to recognize it. They will understand your vision and want to be part of it. They will want to help you get there.

But then you start noticing them checking their blackberries and looking bored…their furrowed brows…and you know what is coming. They proceed to tell you every way in which your business will fail. It’s been done before, so it will fail. It’s never been done before so it will fail. There are too many competitors, so it will fail. You come into those meetings with your heart on your sleeve and the reach across the table, grab your heart, put it in their teeth and take a big, juicy bite out of it, hand it back to you and say, “good luck with that.”

And you leave those meetings with two things. Number one, a broken, bleeding heart and number two, a burning desire to prove to them just how wrong they are. And you hold onto that second thing, imagining yourself handing them their hats on a silver platter when they come to you to beg to be part of your success some day.

But those meetings are the easy ones. At least you know exactly where you stand when you leave them.

The worst meetings go something like this…once again, you are presenting your vision with passion and this time, the reception is different. You see a sparkle in their eyes. They are nodding their heads. They start to ask you deeper questions about your marketing strategy and technology and you answer these questions like a pro. You know your business. You know your market. They tell you they want to follow up! You leave those meetings in a very different mood. You are giddy. You practically skip back to your office.

You get back to your office all fired up and send that follow up email, “great to meet with you! Here are those things you asked for!” finally! Someone who gets it! You want to celebrate! Your business is going to move forward!

Then a couple of days pass….nothing. Days turn to weeks….still nothing. Your spidey senses start tingling…well…maybe they got busy? Perhaps a family emergency? Maybe an illness?

So you send a follow up email, “hey! Just following up to see if you need anything else from me! If you have any questions, just ask!”

And then comes the reply. It’s vague and flat and sounds nothing like the previous meeting. It goes something like this:

“Tara, thank you for coming in and showing us what you are working on. We really enjoyed meeting the team and though we like your idea, we are just going to pass on it right now. Keep in touch!”

Huh? This is the point that you take a drink. Tequila has become my personal favorite. Take a pass? What? What happened? Where is the love?

It’s as if everyone you meet with is directly or indirectly telling you that you are chasing a pipedream….that you should just give up.

Give up? Never. Isn’t this what a startup is about? Building something with unknown results? It’s never certain. We have a great team, a product that is well on it’s way, a vision, a community of users, connections, an exciting roadmap….and we believe. All we need are the resources to get us there and one person to provide that so others follow….you are breaking my heart!

But you won’t break my spirit.

Entrepreneurs have an unbreakable spirit. We have to. Because we only have two choices: chasing the dream, this unclear path or going stark raving mad. Yes, building a product and raising money is difficult, but spending the rest of your life being haunted by “what if” would be much harder.

There has been a lot of talk recently about what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

I won’t put any parameters around what is and isn’t an entrepreneur other than to say that you have to be “all in”. So, if you are building projects on the side, that is awesome and creative, but it doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. And I was a consultant for many years and thought I was an entrepreneur, but I know now that was better defined as self-employed. When you are all in, you spend every minute of every day focused on how to survive and make your business successful because you have to. Whatever it takes to succeed, you get really creative in finding it.

You go to bed every night and dream about finding it and you wake up every morning and start planning how to find it. Every morning I wake up and think, “what are all of the things I didn’t do yesterday to make it happen that I can do today?” and over my morning coffee, I start to make a list of all of these things and that list includes things like “sell everything I own and live in a cardboard box.” Until you put that on your list, you aren’t all in.

I don’t believe that entrepreneurs can be made. It’s not something that can be learned. Sure, you can learn how to run a business. You can learn sales. You can learn operations and coding and everything that goes on behind the scenes. But what you cannot learn are those fundamental and innate characteristics that prepare you for the roller coaster of the unclear path.

These are:

1. Delusion
2. Desire to change the status quo (…that dream…that big idea); and
3. Sheer and utter audacity

And it isn’t enough to have just one or two of these characteristics, you a need all three of them to prepare you for what you will face as an entrepreneur. Let me explain…

Delusion is my personal favorite. I come by this particular trait very naturally. In fact, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a pirate when I grew up. Of course I had a fallback plan…if that didn’t pan out, I could be a princess, but it wasn’t my first choice. I had no idea what swashbuckling entailed, but it sounded like a hella good thing to do day in and out. So while all of the other kids were dreaming of being doctors and engineers and lawyers, I was sporting puffy shirts and singing, “yo ho a pirates life for me!” Thankfully, I eventually found the web and entrepreneurship and found a whole new outlet for my swashbuckling.

As you can imagine, it was interesting to be my parents. Perhaps other entrepreneurial types in the audience had a similar relationship with theirs. Even though they were trying to encourage me to do what I wanted to do, I could never quite escape their concerned looks.

My parents and I are wired very differently. Though we share many of the same characteristics, fundamentally we want very different things out of life. This has always been tough because it meant we didn’t quite connect. And being raised in a small town and in a family who saw the world different than I did meant that I always felt alone…like an outcast…like there was something “wrong with me.”

Eventually I grew up, left that small town and went far way to discover that there wasn’t anything wrong with me at all. In fact, I started to meet hundreds…and eventually thousands…of people who had all sorts of different perspectives on the world. And when I discovered this, I started to feel comfortable in my own skin and I began to soar. Really soar.

Still, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder, “What the hell am I doing?” and those voices enter my head, the ones that say, “well, Tara has never chosen the easy road.” but the truth is, this isn’t about an easy road or making it hard for myself. My goals in life have never been to be comfortable. My goals are very different…to explore, to question, to live, to learn, to grow and…ultimately, to make a positive impact in the world. And that requires taking risks and leaps and making mistakes and taking the unclear path.

What appears to some as instability is merely me getting back on that path. If I wanted the mortgage and the nice husband and kids and 9to5 job and the RRSPs and everything else that comes from having that “ideal life”, I would have it by now. But that’s not MY ideal life.

I choose to follow this unclear path and throw my life into uncertainty, not because I’m a masochistic, but because I’m pursuing a dream. I don’t like being late on my rent but it doesn’t make me feel like a big loser or a failure, I know that I’m making the sacrifices I need to in the near term…I can feel it in my gut. Every day, I’m so excited about the future that my heart beats out of my ears and I wake up every day with an exhilarating panic that there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish what I need to to get there.

And where is this road taking me? Well, that’s the craziest part of all…I’m not entirely sure.

However, I was heartened to learn recently that this is a keystone of being an entrepreneur. A study on a swath of successful entrepreneurs in INC Magazine found that, though we have lofty goals, like luggage, these goals may “shift during flight.” it stands to reason that unpredictable outcomes are bound to happen as one pioneers uncharted waters. Instead of nailing down a clear goal and barreling towards it, entrepreneurs ask questions that lead them towards answers.

Did Twitter understand the impact 140 characters would have on the world? Did they foresee the way it would be used in revolutions? How about Zynga the company behind games like Farmville? Could have they predicted their average user would be a 43 year old woman? And Facebook? In their wildest dreams, could they understand the level of activity they would enjoy worldwide today? Sure, the entrepreneurs behind these companies had an inkling…a big idea and a dream of where they could be…but in their wildest dreams, they couldn’t predict the outcome. Lucky for all of us, they had enough delusion to follow their crazy dreams and lucky for them, they had delusional people with money to support them towards their outcomes.

Which brings me to audacity. That ability to risk it all. The arrogance of believing in something so strongly that you will drive all of the people around you completely bonkers. It’s no secret that I am single…and not for lack of trying. But the truth is that I probably couldn’t BE in a relationship right now. My company is way less of a Venture Capital investment risk than Tara Hunt is a boyfriend investment risk. I’m obsessed with building my business 24/7. I walk around a ticking time bomb stress ball 99% of the time. My highs are hysterical and my lows? You don’t want to know. This is the type of roller coaster that I shouldn’t be involving anyone to join me on emotionally. Even my dog feels the fallout. And I’m lucky because my son moved out of the nest last summer and doesn’t see this daily.

But audacity wasn’t only essential to getting ON this roller coaster, it is also essential for being able to STAY on it. The difficultness, the arrogance, the impudence – that’s key to the drive to keep going. It’s behind the perseverance. It’s that thing that helps me get back up after being rejected over and over and over and over again, brush myself off and keep on keeping on.

You know that saying about hearing 99 no’s before you get to a yes? Well that ratio is pretty much accurate. Even the most brilliant, charming types that could sell a fur coat to a bear experience the same ratios. They just have amazing audacity.

At the end of the day, entrepreneurs choose an unclear path not sanctioned by mainstream society. We need to be delusional, audacious people with big dreams just to carve out a life in a world we don’t “fit”. Luckily, we have plenty of folk heroes to look up to and say, “look at her! She was rejected and faced all sorts of opposition, but she proved them wrong and look where she is now! That’s going to be me someday!”

And even if we don’t get there it’s that path…the journey that is the best part of all. We can be knocked down and kicked a hundred times, but we get back up and try again until we succeed. Because no matter what, the unclear path is the only one we can gr0k. So, to my fellow entrepreneurs -the successful, the unsuccessful and those on the journey – I salute you. Thank you for being delusional, audacious dreamers and continuing to inspire me.

And in the words of the Apple Think Different campaign (join me please):

“Here is to the crazy ones. The misfits. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.”

[TEDxConcordia]

I love this quote by Marc Andreessen found here on Tim Ferriss’ blog:

“First and foremost, a start-up puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You flip rapidly from day-to-day – one where you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over. And I’m talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs. There is so much uncertainty and so much risk around practically everything you are doing. The level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify things incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude. Sound like fun?”

Yep. I’ve said it before…and pointed to other references. Startup entrepreneurship is one helluva rollercoaster.

I love rollercoasters and I always have. And not only the literal sense of the word. My mother used to accuse me of being manic depressive. Although I think that pathologizing it may be taking it a little far, I certainly am a person who experiences highs euphorically and lows despondently and very little in between. I’m a woman of extremes: I work hard, I play hard, I love hard, I hate hard…I don’t know how to ‘kind of’ think, feel or do anything. I’ve smoothed out the highs and lows a little bit as I’ve aged, but I’ll always be who I am.

The other day I was having a conversation with someone who brought up the fact that she had heard from several sources that they were concerned about my level of commitment to running my company because I “am always posting my runs to twitter.” Yes, I have become a little more than obsessed with running these days. It’s about the only thing that keeps me sane and even-keeled enough to function on my little rollercoaster. I also don’t have much of anything else going on. I live alone. I don’t have a partner/boyfriend (yes, I’ve tried, but that is short-lived at best and I’ve decided I can’t add that extra curricular stress to my life at this moment). I hardly have a social life (unless it involves my startup circle). My son is off and out in the world on his own. I have a dog, but he’s a pug so he spends 23 hours a day sleeping. Running is my outlet.

I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but running has helped my lizard brain evolve quite a bit. I used to chew my nails. It was a disgusting, nervous habit. About 2 months into training I stopped and I haven’t bit my nails once since then. Stress used to completely disable me. When faced with rejection, I would go into hiding for days. Since I’ve started running, my crisis coping skills have increased one hundred fold. I get over rejection in hours and even minutes. My thinking is clearer. My focus is stronger. My concentration levels have increased. I feel more creative. And I’m definitely more grounded in reality.

People talk about the runners high. I love it. It’s that one moment of my day where my brain goes into absolute zen state. I recently told my training partner I couldn’t talk during our sessions because that ‘downtime’ for my brain acts as a big recharge. It starts with a tingle, then a wave of something I can’t quite describe sweeps through my entire body. At those moments all I think about is how perfectly in flow my body is. Foot after foot, I fly. I no longer feel the ground beneath them. Every muscle is in alignment like a perfect orchestra. Right after I finish my run, my brain comes back online and it is fired up. I get my best ideas and clearest thoughts in the hours right after I finish.

I don’t feel that my running (and I run 3-5 times per week, not every day) interferes with my focus on running Shwowp. I feel that it helps me run Shwowp. I honestly don’t know if, with my history of manic depressive like mood swings, I could have gotten this far without running. I certainly know that it’s going to get me through everything else. Nothing seems impossible and no problem seems insurmountable when I finish a run.

Consequently, I look around me and see many CEO’s and startup founders running. I’ve also worked with many executives in high pressure companies who ran almost every day. Now I understand why and I understand how they handled the kinds of pressure they were under in stride….so to speak.

So, if you are one of the people who question my commitment to my company because I post my runs to Twitter, I hope I’ve explained how beneficial it is that I run. Also, you should be more concerned when I don’t get my runs in. Just recently as I was traveling in the cold and snow and couldn’t run, I started to panic a little more and feel a little more anxious again. And if it’s merely posting these runs to Twitter that poses the problem, I’d ask yourself, “What of the startup founders who don’t post anything?” At least you know how I’m spending my time 24/7. You should feel secure in my level of radical transparency.

[photo from Flickr Commons]

In early 2006, a group of us dreamers got together in a coffee shop in the Mission District of San Francisco to discuss how we were going to start a permanent space that was “like” a coffee shop, but was intended for independents and digital nomads who needed a place to work with others but separately. That meeting turned into a space and then another space and then something really amazing happened…because we did this all publicly and transparently, it started a worldwide movement.

That movement is Coworking, which at last count is a loosely-joined consortium of over 600 spaces worldwide and growing. There are now more than 3,000 members on the Google Group representing pretty much every country in the world. I have no idea how many people have been touched by Coworking (have worked in a space). But I’m pretty sure we can safely assume close to 100,000.

Citizen Space has always been my baby, though I still administer the Google Group and I used to be in charge of the blog (now that honor belongs to the fabulous Angel Kwiatkowski of Cohere) and tried to keep up the wiki (which now the equally fantastic Jacob Sayles of Office Nomads makes sure is clean as a whistle). I opened Citizen Space with Chris Messina in November of 2006 and expanded it with Hillary Hartley in February 2009.

When we opened CS, there were some other coworking-ish spaces in town: artist spaces, writers spaces and, of course Teh Hat Factory (which we opened with several others in spring 2006). But there weren’t any Coworking spaces. Today I think there are something like 7 or 8 of them. And they are doing a damned fine job of moving the movement forward and serving the needs of the community.

Which is why when we were told by April (Citizen Space General Manager) that the space was declining in membership and, well, it wasn’t really the community hub it used to be, I sat back and pondered the future of Citizen Space. It used to be the beacon for the movement – being one of the first spaces that launched the movement PLUS being run by a couple of the founders of the movement – but now the movement itself is well on its way and doesn’t need a beacon. It has real momentum and new hubs.

So…the time has come for Citizen Space to move on. We’ve put a call out to see if anyone wants to take it over or otherwise put the time into it that we no longer can (I’m in Montreal, Hillary has a baby and a house outside of SF and Chris is at Google), but really, I’m more than okay with letting it go. It’s done its job. She’s created her legacy.

Stay tuned for the next steps. There will be a sale of the contents if we do end up shutting down and DEFINITELY a big party. I’ll be coming to San Francisco for both.

Thank you for everything over the years. Working there. Supporting us. Coming to the events. Telling others about the space. And generally being amazing ambassadors of the movement that I’m incredibly proud of being a part of from the beginning. I love the community and what has emerged. I know that will live on. I hope you will be able to join me in San Francisco to bid adieu to one beacon of one era and ring in the next!

As I’ve outlined, my life has been a bit of a rollercoaster lately. One day, I’m up in the air – we push a new release and people respond positively, there’s an article written about us, we have a great meeting with another startup or angel or vendor, etc – and the next day I have a hard time keeping it together – we are told someone is going to pass on investing we were sure were interested, something major breaks on the site, etc. From one day to the next, there is no way I can predict whether it is an up day or a down day. But every day, I get out of bed and strive to make it the best day possible.

“Stay strong” is something I’ve heard from many friends. Yep. I have no other choice. I have nothing else to fall back on. I am, as my good friend Erica O’Grady put it, “All in”. Sure, I could quit and “go get a job”, but that’s not an option for me. I think of quitting akin to laying down and dying. I know where we are going…or rather, I know we are going somewhere amazing…and this is just part of the journey. And it’s not supposed to be easy. If it were, it probably wouldn’t be as rewarding to get there in the end.

But something baffles me along the way. It’s how people react to the bad days. Lots of people ask me how I’m feeling/doing/holding up. Most days I say, “Staying strong” or “Moving along” or “Things are looking up”, but occasionally, they catch me on one of those down days. The frustrating moments. The day when rent is 2 weeks past due, we can’t pay our employees, the rejection is piling up and the money coming in is not happening fast enough. On those days when someone asks me how I’m feeling, I just can’t bring myself to say, “Staying strong.” So I get honest. I say, “Feeling frustrated” or “Something’s gotta give” or “Losing a bit of steam.” The reaction to this is not incredibly heartening: “Everything will be fine.” Yep. I know that. But it won’t be fine by the essence of me hoping it will. It’ll be fine because I worked harder. Persevered. Thought more strategically. Found that one thing we needed to do in order to get over the hump. Etc.

I don’t believe in the law of attraction. I don’t. I don’t believe that you can say, “Today everything is going to work out fine” and then it happens. But I do believe that you can roll out of bed in the morning and say, “Things are sucking right now…what can I DO about it?” Quite often we know the answer to that question before we even ask it. It may be something we’ve been putting off or that seems ridiculously trivial (like changing the name of the company), but it’s something. It’s actionable and, if you haven’t tried it, it’s worth your while to tackle it in order to see if it moves the needle forward. And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s not about believing, it’s about doing.

I suspect that even though they don’t really talk about it, every entrepreneur out there has gone through days like this. The ones that are successful aren’t the ones that are smarter or have better ideas, they are the ones who persevered through these days until they found the right mix that would take them past the pain into the progress. In fact, an article in INC Magazine pointed out to me by Jen Wojcik, talks about entrepreneurial creativity. People with entrepreneurial minds have the ability to adapt and shift and tweak in agile ways. If something isn’t working, why not just tweak it just a little? Where are the other opportunities. I’m not a fan of the word pivot because adjustments are really part of the everyday life of starting up anything. We test our assumptions. If the assumption is off, we look for clues as to how we can improve our aim. As one entrepreneur says in the article, “I always live by the motto of ‘Ready, fire, aim.’ I think if you spend too much time doing ‘Ready, aim, aim, aim,’ you’re never going to see all the good things that would happen if you actually started doing it.”

My favorite responses to my assertion that ‘today is a hard one’ include feedback. “Hey, I see you are doing this thing…but have you thought of doing this other thing, too?” Those are the people I instantly pounce on. I’m eager for input. I know that I may be caught up in the inertia of things. My best contacts and leads have come from those who help me see past my own tunnel vision. What’s been amazing is the number of smart people in my own personal network who constantly give me the tools, ideas and contacts I need to keep on keeping on. I honestly don’t know how anyone does it without that amazing input. I assume they don’t.

Yes. Everything IS going to be alright. But it isn’t a matter of the power of positive thinking. That being said, wallowing doesn’t help one get out of bed and get the day started, either. But I believe more in strategic thinking than positive thinking. Affirmations only go so far. Action is where it’s at.

[photo lifted from Tara Whittle's inspirational quotes stream on Facebook]

THE BIG IDEA: “Cookies and tracking software? Who needs em? People are creating taste-signals daily with what they choose to buy. Why not let the customer go directly to the brand/vendor and get rid of this guesswork?”

[this is based on an amazing project spearheaded by Doc Searls and housed by The Berkman Center (Harvard) called VRM or Vendor Relationship Management, which I have been a participant in since 2008]

THE BIG ISSUE: “It is a big drag to sit and enter one’s entire shopping history. The incentives are fuzzy and don’t really matter to the average consumer. In order to make this happen, we need to create incentives as well as benefits in the near term while we move towards the big picture.”

The social shopping sphere is in the midst of an explosion right now. What we are seeing are multiple sites emerge that allow people to gather products together in fun and social ways to create everything from collages to collections of the beautiful stuff we aspire to. These sites seem to have a good amount of pick up with all sorts of influential types posting beautiful objects.

So, it’s really daunting as a startup in this crowded space to try and navigate through everything to position ourselves as something ‘different’ altogether. How do we know we will break through the noise and actually achieve our goals?

Well, for one, aspirational is not where we fit. Sure, I really really love that $3,500 Sliding Sofa at Design Within Reach that I’ve coveted for a good 5 years now, but I’m still not in a position to buy it. What I *did* buy, however, is a simple sofa from Ikea that cost me $499. Certainly, the styles are similar, but the price points are very very different. If I’m collecting data on my preferences that will be consumed by future brands and retailers, it behooves me to get back recommendations based on what I can afford rather than what is way out of my reach. When I can afford that DWR sofa, and if I still love it (as long as my taste preferences don’t change), I’ll post it. We do have an option for WANT!, but that data is weighted differently than the ‘haves’.

Other sites are collecting EVERYTHING we buy, which we don’t see as incredibly datalicious either. I may or may not define my taste profile through the stuff that I regularly spend money on. Certain products I buy and stores I frequent are merely because of convenience or sales. Others are because I’m loyal to them. It’s really difficult for any database cruncher to gr0k which is which and what really drives my buying decisions. Groceries, for instance. I would totally define myself as a Trader Joe’s girl and if I lived anywhere near one today (even 3 hours away), I would go out of my way to get to it to do all of my shopping. But I’ve lived in Montreal for the past year and a half and I’ve just gone where it’s convenient to go. Same with Zappos. Living back in Canada forces me to buy my shoes at the mall these days as the selection online isn’t the same as when I was in the US. It doesn’t mean I’m all of a sudden in love with Aldo. Crunching my credit card data doesn’t give an actual picture of my preferences.

Lastly and most importantly, we are focused on putting the customer at the absolute center of everything we do. That means that we are completely vendor/brand neutral. Even if we can’t ever collect affiliate revenue from an Etsy.com store, we work hard to parse emails and make our bookmarklet work for Etsy because many of our current users buy loads of amazing things there. And that is valuable data in itself. Buying from Etsy means you probably like unique, hand-crafted items that aren’t bulk produced. Maybe you would prefer recommendations from more local artisans. This is also why we want to get cracking on a mobile version of Shwowp sooner than later. The ‘buy local’ movement needs to be served as well and is a big part of the way many people vote through buying.

So at the end of the day, how do we differentiate ourselves from the flurry of social commerce sites popping up (what seems to be daily!)? We are about:

• the ACTUAL (not aspirational – no out-hipstering one another!)
• the MEANINGFUL (more interested in the stories behind why you buy and will soon be adding the ability to talk about life cycles of products)
• the TASTE SIGNALING (helping people tell the world how they vote through what they buy)

The customer and the future of the customer’s data is at the center of everything. And though data may not seem to be something incredibly sexy, I believe we will be an incredibly important part of our online identities in the future. We are just trying to make it meaningful and interesting for people to gather it in the meantime. Social is at the core of us being individually interesting beings and that is the most interesting part of the data at the end of the day. Because consumerism, after all, is less about the material objects we buy and more about the signals we send.

One of the reasons I got out of shape so badly in the first place a couple of years back was the amount of travel I was doing. It was nearly impossible for me to keep any sort of routine when I was on the road. Depending on the hotel I was staying in and the events around the conferences I was speaking at, I may have been able to squeeze in a little workout here and there, but nothing as stringent as when I was at home and could plan my schedule.

Working on Shwowp and ‘grounding’ myself to focus on that was a huge blessing and allowed for me to set and stick to a routine. It was freeing to turn down speaking gigs, knowing that it would allow me to continue down my path of getting back into awesome shape. But lately I’ve been on the road again – this time for my startup – and the same challenges of sticking with my schedule have creeped back into my reality. Over the past few weeks in Boston and New York, I ran ONCE. Sure, I justified it by walking everywhere, but it really isn’t the same. Not only did it throw my personal goal of prioritizing M-E into a tailspin, but it was also terrible for my personal state of mind. After two weeks of not sticking to my routine, I felt less capable of handling the stress of running a startup.

That was not good.

A couple of things stood in my way of sticking to my routine. First, I was staying with friends in both Boston and NYC, and neither had a gym in their building or even nearby. Then I was planning on running outside more and even mapped out some good routes through RunKeeper, but the weather didn’t cooperate. It was either so cold it was unhealthy to run outside without the proper equipment (which I don’t have) or it was snowing so heavy that people were calling for a snowpocalypse (it was extreme). I thought about finding a gym, but I packed my schedule so tight that it was nearly impossible to get to one.

I hate excuses. I don’t believe in them. I only believe in solutions. But in this case, no solution I was grasping for was cooperating. It was incredibly frustrating and added to my already demoralizing routine (pitching, as I’ve outlined, is a bit of a rollercoaster ride). I resolved after this last fitness fiasco of a trip that I would plan better going forward.

So, what is my plan?

1. Actually PUT time in my schedule for working out. No compromise. No matter what comes up, I’m sticking to that plan just like I do at home. It’s as important as that meeting with a potential angel investor. I wouldn’t cancel on him/her. I won’t cancel on my body either.
2. Build in enough time to get to a gym that is inconveniently located to where I am just in case of weather woes. In fact, plan for the gym and fall back on running outdoors if I’m lucky enough.
3. Map out gyms around my accommodations ahead of time. Put them in my TripIt itinerary. Email or call ahead to make sure dropins are okay and find out the rates. Have hours and backups ready.
4. If all else fails, create a travel routine that at least gets me some equipment free exercises I can do in a hotel room or at a friends. There are all sorts of at home fitness podcasts out there to use. Jamie Eason has an amazing plyometrics routine I’ve downloaded to my laptop for future use:

What I love about running is there is minimal equipment for carrying, but there are options for lightweight travel equipment if you prefer yoga or free weights:

• Gaiam Travel Yoga Mat is nice and lightweight and works in a pinch;
• Bodylastics Resistance Bands or any other sport bands make for a great traveling gym.

Oh…and something I ALWAYS forget, but have put a note in my suitcase to remember is: a bathing suit! There are usually YMCA’s or other gyms with pools in most cities that provide a good workout in shorter bursts of time. Don’t forget a swim cap and goggles, either. These are super light weight to pack and I find a 40 minute swim is equivalent to a 1.5hr workout.

Speaking of which, I need to finish this post and my work so I can get to my pre-scheduled gym session as I’m, once again, traveling (this time in Toronto). It’s nice to be back on track!