The 24/7 Customer Evangelist by Lynette Chiang

06:17 pm | 0 recommendations | 5 comments

Work/Life: Selling a dream? Don't make returning it a nightmare

For my birthday, a thoughtful friend bought me the Wolford Fatal dress. This killer dress is basically a long tube you can wear any which way, but not loose. A pricey toob at that - $165. There is a picture of it at the bottom of this blog if anyone cares.

But oh, how versatile for a work/life road warriorette, who doesn't want to look like she's sold her soul to REI/MEI and those beige pants with zip off shorts that scream 'I been to Annapurna too'.

You can wear the Fatal as a skirt, a long dress, a top, maybe even a turban, and best of all, you can ruche it nicely around your tummy for days when you leave your washboard on the kitchen sink.

I'm a big Wolford fan. As in, I have a pair of stay-up stockings that are 15 years old with zero holes, ladders or pilling. I can't afford much else in this premium store, but I endorse it based on my tiny sliver of experience – a quality product that simply stands the test of time. Or so I thought.

After excitedly wiggling myself into my Fatal cocoon and attempting to sashay a block and a half past the projects in Chelsea, disaster struck. A sliver of protruding Velcro on my Timbuktu cellphone holder brushed ever so lightly against it. ZZZZZZSHWIIIIP! A giant furry ladder appeared, basically trashing the entire dress.

First, I think it's about time that someone blew the whistle on Velcro. It's been a gripping success, but how many of you have short and curlies on your favorite stuff? It's never the soft, woolly bearded side that catches, oh no, it's the nasty, three-day stubble side. I think Velcro should be reclassified as a weapon of mass destruction and banned.

Naturally, I wanted to return the dress, now as useful to me as a combine harvester to a ballet dancer.

Holy helmet gal, you ruined the thing with your frigging cellphone holder, you think you can return it?

Well, I really thought so (yes I had the receipt, and yes, the friend even accompanied me) ... based on the following logic:

Performance not meeting reasonable expectations: I expect an expensive, multi-purpose piece of apparel to stand up to reasonable wear and tear, certainly more than the rigors of draping oneself over a Le Corbusier chaise in Design Within Reach.
But no …
Wolford employee: It's an exclusive fabric to us by DuPont, it's like cashmere. It will ladder and pill just like our stockings.
Me: Sounds like every working woman's $165 best friend!

Lack of disclosure: Nowhere on the garment was there a tag: 'Warning, this garment is extremely delicate and will fall apart if you bat your eyelids at it.' I've seen these warning labels even on the $20 sweatshopped threads at Forever 21.
Alas …
Wolford employee: You're supposed to know these things. We have customers that have 4 or 5 of these in different colors, they just know.
Me: Great, a trial and error dress only for the most affluent who can say: 'what the hell, I'll buy five'.

Lack of disclosure II: the sales assistant made no mention about the fragility of this garment at the time of purchase.
Wolford employee: It looks lovely on etc.

Customer satisfaction: Would a premium product company like Wolford really turn a customer out on the street with $165 down the toob (literally)?
Seems so …
Wolford employee: I understand your concern and appreciate your honesty but it's not a manufacturing fault. I spoke to my boss and she said we can't resell it, so sorry.
Me: Can you give me the name and number of your area manager, please.

I confess the avenger in me was already holstering some heavy handed artillery to get even – like raising a dispute about the purchase to the credit card company, to lying to the store and insisting the item came damaged, to slagging them off on fastcompany.com. Oh how the mind runs amok … hell hath no fury like a consumer scorned!

Well, surprise, surprise, and to Wolford's credit, the Wolford area manager, Suzie P, actually listened over the phone to my situation, and as a 'one time only', allowed me to exchange the item for something else.

We want our customers to be happy, she said. She thanked me for sharing my concerns and made a note tell her staff to ensure the customer is fully aware of what they are slithering into, when they make that Fatal purchase. Suzie clearly knows what the real bottom line is and I commend her. The bad thing was having her frontline unable to make the judgement call, and so spare us from the confrontation.

The point of this smalltalk on a Sunday is less about my $165 and subsequent goof, and more about how a business operating in the 'touchy feely' zone of retailing needs to treat the customer as being even 'righter'. Touchy feely products are those appealing to the primal senses, they're 'close to the bone'. They include high fashion, intimate restaurants, lifestyle toys, anything to do with kids and pets etc. They often make the user feel in some way powerful: a dress can make a woman feel beautiful and sexy; a good meal, satiated. However, if there's any argy-bargy in the transaction it turns everything around, leaving the customer with a very sour taste in the mouth, a feeling of being robbed of that power, and perhaps even subconscious embarrassment about their extravagance. I'm not a psychologist but I've been it and seen it.

Thus to make a customer argue a legitimate case about a dress under a chandelier is embarrassing all round, a scene more congruent at an auto mechanic when haggling over a bungled head gasket replacement. You're far less likely to show your face again in a boutique, intimate restaurant and so forth, if you've had any kind of grief.

Yet, many companies, small and large, still focus only on today's sale, ignoring that old adage: a happy customer will tell several others, an unhappy customer will tell others with quadruple the zeal. Big box stores like Home Depot can probably afford to diss you even though they'll take back that slit shower curtain without a quibble. You, oh retailer of fine toys and accoutrements, need those yuppie hummingbirds to come buzzing around your flower every season. If you don't have a decent margin for error, remorse and attrition, you need to sell up and get a job in the civil service.

My mother worked in fashion. She said there were unscrupulous women who would buy items with the sole intention of wearing them once, and taking advantage of return policies. I even have a couple of friends who tend to do this, and I hope they read this. It isn't noble, there are people employed and families to feed in those stores. My mother said she could usually detect those cases, nail them while still being utterly respectful, and even then, it was a judgment call. Some people would subsequently return and happily spend five times more and go away happy for good – that first item they bought was a mistake. It's tricky, but businesses who are able to make these distinctions can, when the poop hits the mirror ball, find themselves thriving purely on customer loyalty.

A big part of this is empowering your front line force – for some reason, often gum chewing, snippy, iPod-grafted post teens – to be true ambassadors for your business. They need to be able to make these managerial judgement calls. Oh yeah, do us all a favor and hire the occasional older person will you? As I said in a previous post, older people know what it is to 64 and younger because they've been there, and they treat it with the respect it deserves. My mother is 70 (scroll down) and still socking it to Sydney yuppies of all ages and stages ...

Stores like REI, TJ Maxx and Circuit City make a policy of allowing people to return items after thoroughly playing with them, even years after, in the case of REI. Sure, there are going to be some blatant abusers of the system, but when they show up with old hiking boots encrusted with the wear and tear of several treks across Tibet and ridiculously ask for a refund, they WILL have to make a damn good case. Water finds its levels. It's called 'taking responsibility'. Just because a customer can abuse a privilege, doesn't mean they can and will.

They're far less likely to if you treat their money like it was your own*.

Raw materials can go up, workers get sick or throw a tantrum, equipment breaks down … any of these factors can affect your bottom line dramatically. But I truly believe that doing just that - treating a customer's money as if it was your own - is both a guaranteed investment in sticking around, and fire insurance against the tyranny of the returned purchase.

And the more personally you treat people, (don't use that word 'policy' carte blanche), even in big box stores, the better chance you have of generating the loyalty that makes a customer see you as a person with a mortgage and mouths to feed, just like they. It gets back the the Lovemarks concept. It leads to less war. Ultimately.

I admit I've gone on a bit about this, and you already know it all, but as They Inc say, people do not have to be informed, so much as reminded …

The Gal believes in dressing for the part, no matter where you travel. Read about her other road warriorette gear

* A bank in the UK had the slogan "We never forget whose money it is." I wish I wrote that.

A fine garment for a traveling wilbury, as long as you don't eat, breathe or hug a Velcro bunny with it! If you want to see me in it, before I trashed itclick here, but the picture above is way more impressive.

02:21 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

Work/Life: This post is not about the iPhone (really)

I've just spent a week riding my bike 80-100 miles a day with 2000 customers and other folks on Cycle Oregon. I was looking forward to impressively blogging last week from the saddle using my new, all-singing-all-dancing iPhone, but it turned out to be a mute, club-footed wallflower.

On the few occasions I managed to get a connection, the entire emailing process was so slow I basically gave up. I have tiny fingers, yet couldn't string letters together without making loads of mistakes. Somehow along the way the talk mechanism got discombobulated when I plugged in the headphones to listen to the iPod function, and even my former Apple developer pal who's on dinner dating terms with Steve J couldn't recombobulate it. And the number of times I accidentally brushed that shiny glass keypad and called the same person 10 times, or restarted a song 10 times ... but it did come in handy as a mirror to get at the spinach stuck in my teeth.

Bah, it was worth the 10% restocking fee to try it out, but I'll gladly revive my old Crackberry for now. For serious handheld wordsmithing, it's hard to beat. (I just wish I could get PocketMac to sync my 1000+ addresses instead of choking at 350).

On the ride I had a lot of people coming up to me following an impromptu screening of my Route 66 digital camera movie. As usual, I spent a lot of time in bicycle-travel-Apple-moviemaking tech talk, and a lot of my conversations were with men. Married men. Men with girlfriends and intendeds.

At one point, from somewhere near by left shoulder I detected a shuffling, a certain disquiet. The man in front of me was blithely blathering about battery life and CCD artifacts, quite unaware that his soulmate was getting hot under the collar. I won't go into all the minutiae but the situation escalated to an unveiled hostility towards me before hapless Harry was hit over the head with the proverbial frying pan and dragged back to the family cave.

Which brings me to the completely unrelated-to-iPhone topic of today: If you're female, single, and a consummate networker, beware of unintentional homewrecking.

Your completely innocent banter with members of the opposite sex can be completely misinterpreted by their gatekeepers.

I never thought I would come across this phenomenon in my field, believing that bicycling promotes a truly genderless camaraderie. I mean, no one seriously turns heads clumping around like Quasimodo in lycra that looks like a rainbow threw up on it (thank you Janet Fitch for that insanely great simile). On a bicycle you're focused on the most mundane hierarchy of needs, like how much oxygen is left in your lungs, how much food is in your muscles, and whether you're going to make it before it's dark or it pours. If you're traveling self supported, it's 'what do I eat, where do I sleep, where am I going?'. You're rarely focused on what your partner thought that you thought that they thought, or why they haven't put the trash out.

My first brush with being a potential homewrecker came back in 2001, when I'd just landed at Bike Friday. I'd arranged to ride tandem on a 1-day event with a cyclist I'd been in friendly contact with for several years, but had never actually met. I was excited to meet him and his new wife at long last, and have two new friends in my life. The night before I was due to fly out he called me up. There was a problem ... his wife suddenly turned to him and said, so, you have to ride a bike with this, this soulmate, right? He said there was no convincing her. I was flabbergastered, as this was the first time such a thing had happened to me.

It was a mad scramble to find another tandem captain at the eleventh hour, and I was not allowed any further contact. To his credit, he chose his marriage; I do admire decisiveness, far better than those who sit on the fence, dragging their dissatisfaction out for years unwittingly passing negative vibes onto everyone who comes in contact with them.

On another occasion I was chatting with a customer who shared his difficult family situation with me. I was completely unaware that my admiration and verbal acknowledgement of his incredible substance under dire circumstances was viewed as 'making a move on him'.

A third case is where someone read my book and it so resonated with him that he announced to his wife that he'd fallen in love with me, but not that kind of love, understand, just this other kind of love and no, he wasn't leaving her for me, just that blah blah blah. To which I said, thank you for the compliment, please cease and desist immediately from mentioning the words 'love' and my name in the same sentence in front of your wife ...

So does this mean, oh sober suited sirens, you must shrink yourself down and keep your life contained, perfunctory, polite and painfully politically correct?

I hope not. Your magnanimous, well-intended outreach and measured mischievousness is what got you where you are. You're a breath of fresh air in this era of bland corporate speak, phone menus and petty office politics. In this technologically connected but spiritually disconnected world, true networkers must continue to take risks in order to bring people together for mutual benefit.

You just need to be aware of what you're doing.

Marianne Williamson has a great anecdote in her cassette tape called 'Intimacy':

You walk into a room with a man you love, and he spends all night talking to a beautiful woman. What is your reaction? "Bitch!" And: "How dare he, how dare he enjoy himself. I'm just going to be all insecure here and that'll make me attractive ..."

Ah, what a wonderful world it would be if people were able to stand on their own two feet, and catch themselves out when they fall prey to insecurity - I believe there'd be less war.

But where I used to adopt a high and mighty position, proclaiming that 'you can't break what's already broken', I've since softened after reading "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps" by Alan and Barbara Pease. It clearly explains why measured insecurity makes the world go round. Quite simply, men are easily titillated, or - nature is cracking that procreational whip - so a woman who keeps a tight rein on him with just the right amount of slack is simply ... being smart. Knowing this makes the ride a little less rough if and when you inadvertently rock the boat.

What on earth has all this to do with being a fast company man/woman? More than you'd care to know.

08:40 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

Work/Life: Sustainability - 1 More Adoption, 1 Less Footprint

I'm 45 today.

It's Labor day, so appropriately, I'm laboring over this blog entry in the stickily sweet environs of a Ben & Jerry's ice cream parlor, the mediocre drone of generic strummy rock competing with the Kelvinator. Hey, that's why you don't see me in Starbucks, when it's free wi-fi I don't complain.

Ten years ago I celebrated my birthday in the living room of two total strangers I'd met less than an hour or so earlier, who presented me with a cake, a card, and the key to the spare room somewhere in Edinburgh. Bedtime reading.

Today, I'm in exactly the same position, except now I get paid to sleep in the spare room.

So what are you other 45 year young women doing right now in a 10 mile radius of where I sit? Perhaps playing playing ultimate Frisbee with your nephews? Hooting over crotchless G-strings at a hen's party? Throwing spendy Wholefoods kebabs on the Barbie? Talking on the big white telephone after a big night at the local tavern? Studying for a PhD you're no longer that interested in? Blogging alone in Ben & Jerry's …

Turning 45, at least for me, has thrown some switches to the 'OFF' position. For a start, any last desires to populate the world with my own image have been strangled along with any last hallucinations of being a Singapore Airlines calendar stewardess. A good thing, the use-by date on my eggs suggest they should be composted post haste.

If I was married, statistics indicate that soon, my death-do-us-part vow would be in danger, because male mid-life crisis and associated infidelity has been shown to coincide female menopause. Poor blokes, no more prospects to further populate the planet … damn nature, doesn't it know we have a Yeti-sized carbon footprint stamping around out here?

Yet, if science could cope with the medical issues that can arise from old eggs and wizened sperm, 45 could be such an ideal time to have a child. Think about it. You'd have realized your career (3 times different), traveled 'til you you're well and truly castled, stone-circled and Himalaya'd out, paid off your house, renting out a second, and you should be wiser and mellower, thus imbuing your offspring with the very best a parent can offer … the emotional tools to cope with this insane and unfair world. And you actually have time to spend with them.

And, by the time your child is 20, you're about ready to kick them out of the house rather than be left bereft and struggling with the empty nester syndrome (I hardly ever see my daughter, she's too busy!') as I have witnessed in several of my customers.

Recently I attended one of the pivotal events in my career as a spokesperson for a bicycle company. The Little People of America Convention. I urge you to read my report, not because I wrote it, but because I cannot tell you how life-changing is to experience this community. Please read it now, even if you have to skip this birthday diatribe of mine forever, http://www.bikefriday.com/lpa07

Adjacent to our booth was the WACAP http://www.wacap.com (World Association for Children and Parents) booth, who were offering dwarf children for adoption.

Did I want to put my name down on their list? Not really. I haven't saved enough for in case I live, let alone a dependent. But I did, out of politeness. I received in the mail a catalog describing the kinds of children you could adopt.

It was a head opener. Kids of all ages and abilities. Some medical issues, emotional issues, some issues no worse than some that I, or many people I know, cope daily with.

Normally adoption costs a lot of money. $20-$40K. This is enough to put all but the most committed and cashed up off. A subset of these children, however, are adoptable for considerably less. And the fees for some are completely paid for by donations, as the organization has promised them a home. This latter group, called 'Promise Children', typically have some challenging issues, or are simply … older. Say, 8 to 16.

Older? I think I'd rather like a child out of the diaper, search-and-destroy, poke-fingers-in-electric-sockets, sneak-a-cigarette stage. Further, my need to 'imprint' and 'mould' a babe in arms to my own tastes is no greater than my desire to pass on certain personal characteristics I'd rather leave in this body, thank you – which is partly why I never wanted kids.

Then it occurred to me … we all talk about global warming, carbon offsetting, and ways we can reduce our carbon footprint. What could be more sustainable act than adopting one of these children rather than having your own?

The last time I experienced this was when after biking over the highest paved road in the world, (16,000 feet in Peru), we came upon an orphanage of 85 children whose parents had been killed by guerillas 8 years ago. A 3 hour, rocky and grueling taxi ride into the jungle, brought us to the Ocopa Orphanage. Such wonderful children, who stood politely when we were giving them gifts and food, the little ones at the front, stair stepped to the bigger children at the back. To wash the only set of clothes they had, they would stand out in the frequent rain and soap themselves down, both clothes and their bodies. One nun looks after them on her small subsidy, with a little help from a couple of older women. I tried to get them to smile for the camera. It took a lot of time and coaxing, but they obliged, and I wondered why I even coaxed.

Some of the nicest kids I know ... orphans at the Puerto Ocopa Orphanage, Satipo, Peru. More photos from this expedition

Every year Lon Haldeman goes personally into the Orphanage and takes them supplies. Read about it and if you care to donate you know the money will go absolutely, positively and directly to them:

http://www.galfromdownunder.com/peru

Christ Lutheran Church Fund,
PO Box 303, Sharon, Wisconsin, 53585
A tax-deductible receipt will be sent to you.

From the moment I met these kids, I realized that there are many children in need of loving parents as people wanting to be parents.

Adoption is not only an act of love and social responsibility … it's an act of sustainability.

08:30 am | 0 recommendations | 3 comments

Work/Life: When did you last give your customer some business?

I recently sat through a 1 hour family musical co-written by one of my customers, Karl Greenburg. It was a low-budget NY Fringe Festival production called Angela's Flying Bed.

Now what was I, a single income no kidder with an aversion to musicals doing at this PG-rated pantomime on my day off, with so many other bleeding edge options on within NY cabbing distance?

Not only did I sit with a grin on my face throughout, I posted a mini-review on my personal blog and encouraged all our customers in the area to go see it.

Karl wrote to me very excited, telling me that, despite its lack of sugarcoat, my review was 'the best he'd ever had', and forwarded it to others.

Karl wasn't my only customer doing his shtick in NYC. Puppeteer Jennifer Levine was performing her show Miracle on Monroe St at the same festival. She says she uses her Bike Friday to tow her puppetry paraphernalia to her gigs and 'always arrives with a smile on her face'. I ran out of time to catch her show, but made sure I let our community know.

Am I 'sucking up' to my customers big time? Perhaps, dear cynic. To me, it's a no-brainer, and just another hour in my 24/7 seamless worklife.

For a start, I wouldn't be doing my shtick for very long if customers didn't come out and support me.

I was in Chicago giving an evening presentation of my Route66 film at the Apple Store. Jackie Huba, the very busy co-founder of CustomerEvangelists.com, had relatives visiting but at the last minute decided to make time to see my show. I am profiled on her site and this has been a convenient place to point people to when the ask, what the @#$% is a Customer Evangelist? When I am interviewed about CE, I know who I send people to.

Chris Grimm, a sales manager of Globe-Pequot, publisher of my book The Handsomest Man in Cuba, heard about my presentation to the Appalachian Mountain Club and said, "shouldn't someone here be going to this?" The movie has nothing to do with the book, but he drove many miles to introduce himself and be at my show. I know who I'll be sending my Jon Krakauer pals to.

It's gratifying when someone supports our life's work, when they simply take the time, by showing up. It makes us feel like we're not just spinning our wheels after all …

If we can help our customers in their life and work, and vice-versa, we can create real community, which is sustainable and dependable. When there's no distinction between customer and friend.

The hidden lives of customers ... fascinating and mutually rewarding.

If one of our customers has a website, no matter how amateur or small, we link it to our site. And what a fascinating array of stories out there! We also link to sites or articles that may be of great benefit our customers. In this day and age of spam, many are still happy for us to include their email address so that they may be contacted, thus becoming, as Jackie Huba calls it, our citizen marketers.

I call it 'you pump up our tires, we pump up yours.' Cary Pearlman, search engine scrutineer at eclickperformance.com, tells me our random acts of cyber-generosity can carry a penalty, that is, if Google ranks our site higher than Aunt Edith's Snood site, linking to Aunt Edith lowers our Google ranking.

"But if you're offering a great service to your customer, that should take precedence," he said. "At the end of the day, providing fresh content and a service to your customers wins the race."

And so that's what we do.

We put our customers first, and in this day and age of offshoring, outsourcing and Wal*Marting, we're still here.

Try taking an active interest in your customer's lives and see where it leads. You might get emails like this one from Saatchi& Saatchi Lovemarks winner Richard Vallens: "Lynette, you're just masquerading as an employee of the company. We know you're one of us!"

Lynette Chiang aka The Galfromdownunder

01:30 pm | 0 recommendations | 4 comments

Work/Life: Fortune Favors the B(old)

Wow, that last post was quite a rant on my part about Sydney. It sounded like I was down on it, big time. Actually, I think it was the opening of the /cities article that set me off:

You're smart, young, newly graduated from a university with the whole world before you. You could settle in a small town with well-tended lawns, pancake suppers, and life on a human scale. Or you could truck it to the big city, with all its din and dog-eat-dog lunacy. Your choice?

OK, I admit it pushed a button. The button that connotes "unless you're smart, young, newly graduated from a university" you might not be reading that Fast Cities article at all. Instead you'd be sitting constipated on the can thumbing for the leaf blower ads in last month's AARP.

In my work and travels I meet many, many folks who are late-forties, fifties, sixties – smart, accomplished, bored. They feel stuck in their job, marriage, health issues, location or the whole dang lot. They're not necessarily whining, nor washed up and past their prime, despite the media constantly trying to convince them of that. They just have an inkling that deep inside is an unlit bonfire that would light up several sleepy subdivisions given the right opportunity. You know who you are. You mightn't know exactly what that opportunity might look like, but if it was thrust at you on a plate, you'd grab it with tooth and nail, to hell with the knife and fork.

A change of city could well be the answer. 'It's not that easy,' say some. Dealing with stress, cancer, divorce et al ain't easy either.

I've spent six years whooping it up with our adventurous senior customers, and I'm bored of the way the media and business world tends to champion youth, 'a youth we all lose'.

My customers, at 55 and over, some approaching 90, constantly defy society's attempts to swathe white-haired ladies in polyester floral dresses, grumpy old men in trousers up around their armpits and bundle them off on a belching tour bus to see the poinsettias in bloom …

When 'over the hill' means 'Nice passing you young man' - he's 71 and just rode 500 miles at speed ... who cares if he rides a daft looking bike.

Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with polyester floral dresses or poinsettias (although white lace up leather sneakers are the true crime – who is responsible for that?).

In other, typically non-colonial cultures, elders are revered. Nothing new here, but I'll mention it because 'people do not have to be informed, so much as reminded'.

'Oldies' make crucial contribution to the next generation, something all the money in the world cannot buy. When we want to build a bridge, fix a light bulb, make peach cobbler, build a space ship … we don't go re-inventing the wheel. We base it on the knowledge of what's been done before. We're good at calling the achievements of past 'human doings'.

In the area of being a human being, we've had even more practice - it's been a long time since Adam and Eve neglected to back their SUV over that tubular Satan. You'd think we'd be pretty good at it by now – doing relationship with self and others. But no. We still make the same debilitating mistakes, get jealous, insecure, neurotic, defensive … and these affect our work and personal lives, and ultimately, all-round success.

We don't defer to seniors for their smarts to help us. We just rile at our mother in laws for getting in our way. We tell them 'they're past the post', give them a job stamping library books or scrutinizing our boarding passes, and go kick the dog or pay a therapist $200 an hour.

If someone is even a year older than me, I respect them for having been on this planet and endured 365 more days of hard knocks. I can learn something from them. They might have been or done something in those days that can save me great trouble and pain in my next waking day. They can give me an insight that might take me years to 'get', when they duct-tape me in polyester and shove a laxative somewhere long and narrow to keep me quiet. And if they've been out living life as if age was not an issue, like my customers, or my 70 year young mother who loves electronic music and even gave poledancing a swing 'just for the helluvit' (now you know it was entirely her idea), I can learn even more.

If I had a dream, it would be to have an elderly person sit in every classroom in the world for part of every day and just talk about whatever occurred to them. And have our youth just listen. Now wouldn't that be a great way to employ them and keep those neurons firing instead of misfiring?

I just believe that by focusing wholly and solely on fast and faster, young and younger, in many ways we're getting dumb and dumber.

The Gal

PS: I just had another dream, writing this piece. One of our 70 year young customers, Leslie, lives alone in a retirement village in Oregon. None of the other residents do anything remotely like she does. She rides a racing travel bike like mine - the same model Tour de France commentator Phil Liggett owns. Here she is:

70 year young Leslie in action in Arizona. Read more about it

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Leslie could look forward to having folks living next door she could ride and do adventures with, where the recreation shed is full of performance bicycles, instead of electric golf and shopping carts?

If I can't muster the resources to to start our own retirement enclave (and I think there is a forestry group with a similar idea that has actually created their own), I'll ask our customers what retirement villages they are considering retiring to, and publish those as a list. Those wanting to avoid the walking frame for as long as they can pedal can look there first ...

You know, in this way, I feel like I can actually make a teensy weensy difference.

05:48 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

Work/Life: It's Fast, but is it Liveable?

I've just returned from bouncing around like an email peddling Viagra .... NY, Philly, Texas, Eugene, Seattle and finally IOWA, where I rode across the state with 10,000 others on RAGBRAI. Including Lance, who, at all times, seemed to be riding his bike just outside my field of vision. Try as might I could not track him down. Since I probably couldn't tell him from a bar of soap I was looking for a jersey that said 'Hi I'm Lance' front and back but I don't think he was wearing it that week.

Over 40% of riders hailed from IOWA. It is great to see people lovin' their own state, in this day and age of 'I'm here I want to be there'.

Which brings me to FASTCOMPANY.com's Fast Cities report, where I discover my hometown Sydney was praised as being their 3rd favorite, after London and Paris. Here's the ranking.

Well, having lived in the fast, medium and slow lanes – literally – for the past 20 years (Australia, Ireland, Costa Rica, USA, in boomtown and boonietown in all four countries) as well as loitered with intent in countless others, I have to wonder what kind of criteria these ethnographers languishing on Noguchi sofas in glassy towers call 'liveable'. In my mind, Sydney is not that liveable. Beaches and beer and sun bleached blonde do not a liveable place make.

Hey, I like Noguchi too, but for me, 'liveable' means you and your family can live in a reasonable space, a reasonable walkable or mass-transitable distance from your workplace, afford good food a reasonable distance from where you happen to be standing, and not come home at the end of the day feeling like you're going to strangle someone. It should simply feel easy. There should be a good deli, a good supermarket and a good video store close by, according to an old friend Philip Putnam.

Sydney is one of the most congested and poorly designed cities you could ever imagine, because it wasn't designed – it was colonized, spilling outwards in all directions like a detonated carton of Yoplait, just like most sprawl towns. It does have lots of coastline, a bit like a Lays Ruffle (or Krinkle Kut chip to Aussies) with lots of ins and outs so more water's edge is available to more people. But for the very wealthy. I don't call that liveable, when just a few can suck on the seedless slice of the watermelon.

Sydney's real estate is NY-ridiculous. You have to go out in sprawl to get anything larger and cleaner than a cockroach infested broom cupboard. I struggled to buy my shoebox of an apartment off my ex, just so my mother would have a place to live for the rest of her life and not feel like she was left on a mountain to be snacked on by dingos. And so I wouldn't follow suit. I got very little for what I paid. I can't even have a sofa and my poledancing pole in there at the same time (just had to throw that in). Along with neighbors who wouldn't know if I was dead inside even if there was a terrible smell. In poor countries, they do know when their brethren are dead, contrary to what you might think. They don't spend their time insulated from bad smells behind glass and concrete.

It has no storage and a parking space that would be a delight for experts in jamming square pegs into round holes. Oh yes, there's a view, facing due west so that you fry in summer unless you plunge the place into darkness. But I am thankful it is somewhere my mother and I can rest my weary head, as long as I can continue to afford the dues. It's a sliver of Australia I hope I can offer to my many Bike Friday host families who have been so generous to me.

It's hard to park anywhere in Sydney, so the streets are constantly jammed, and roads in and the rivers of concrete are paved with rivers of duco. There is good food and good beaches if you can bother doing battle with the traffic to get there.

A lot of these 'foreshore developments' and 'gentrifications' you see in big towns are just huge cookie cutter concrete and glass fabrications designed to make you feel like you're as far above soil as possible. Hands up who's bored s***less with the generic 'Pier 1' concept? Why not just leave the gloriously rotting pier as it is?

Why do you think that old suburbs with old architecture suffocating under ivy are still in much demand? I don't know where all this obsession with minimalism and hard shiny surfaces comes from but if I see another wall of brushed steel or a granite countertop with a Gaggenau oven I think I'll scream.

Sydney is culturally a little subdued. I think it's because Aussies would rather be out on the beach rather than dreaming up new and strange ways with a blowtorch and recycled steel. They call it multicultural, and are many cultures there of course, it doesn't mean they really like and embrace each other. They tolerate each other. Just because people like some chicken chow mein with fried rice doesn't mean they welcome Asians with open arms. They'd rather keep the stir fry and send them home. That's because the environment isn't that easy to live in. Compression brings out the worst in people. Why do you think there was that eruption of racial violence on the beaches a while ago? Anyone who wants to tell me to 'go back to my own country' should defer to the Aborigines who got here first, and to my ancestors who rowed a godforsaken boat out from China in the late 1800's, just 100 years after the First Fleet dropped anchor and started the whole mess.

The local bicycle advocacy groups do their darndest to make bike lanes, but you can only do so much when a lane is x wide. Putting a shoulder or bike lane y makes it x-y = z wide. Z is about the hit and run distance.

A human scale place does not have to mean you have to live in a backwater ringing with the roar of lawnmowers/leafblowers Saturday (please god banish lawns and lawnmowers), pancakes rather than powershakes for breakfast and reading the Sunday paper in bed rather than on a blackberry while roaring off to the latest open house.

No matter what kind of job you do, if you have to battle with a tough, soulless environment getting there, being there and getting back it wears you down, you end up having to spend money on the quadrinity of therapy, alcohol, Prozac or television shopping to let off steam. Or spend a disproportionate amount of time in artifical environments like expensive gyms and sushi bars, before you're diagnosed with gout.

Yes, I'd like to live with more 'smart people like me', but if you can't actually get to meet them because you can't find a way to connect with them except on email …

Let me give you some comparisons of easy vs hard.

Sydney does not feel easy. Melbourne is easy; Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth are even easier.

New York City does not feel easy. Chicago feels easy, and buoyant to boot. (I am staying in a house which is 2 miles from town, the young owners are not from the Trump family and there's plenty of space inside and out, and between parked cars).

London does not feel easy. Edinburgh feel way easier, and more fun.

Come ON! Paris is not easy!

I just flashed back to my time in Mexico. The internet cafe was in a small private garage a couple of doors down. When the roller door went up, and mama was there rocking her baby with both PC's switched on, hot tortilla chips in the bowl beside the blinking router, I reported in for business. And it felt easy...

07:15 pm | 0 recommendations | 16 comments

Work/Life: Don't Talk About Kids to People Without Kids

Right at the outset, I'll do the politically correct thing and say, I've got nothing against kids.

In fact, I'd happily trade places with a lot of them right now: I'd get fed, watered and put to beddy-bye under a duvet dotted with cottontail bunnies with a gentle kiss; I'd be adored and cuddled when I least want it but that's OK - it's better than begging for it; I'd get driven around to a smorgasbord of expensive activities like soccer and baseball (remember when primary school toss-the-beanbag P.E. sessions were free?); I'd be pacified with the latest iGizmo (some tots are already killing this blog entry on their iPhone) and told to "go fly your Millenium Falcon XIII". I could smear gooseberry jelly all over my face and be 'cute' rather than committed. Oh, to be a kid again! 

But if you want my business, or even my friendship, then as one of the handful of people in your social circle who don't have kids, please spare me the harping on about your kids, and see what turns up.

Someone wanted to do lunch, ostensibly seeking my business. It required a bit of phone and email tag. Every single communication involved a logistic around his stepdaughter Mish. I wasn't particularly interested in a blow-by-noseblow account of taxicabbing and childminding and playgrouping, I just needed to know when he wanted to meet.

Thinking back, every other conversation with this person over the years has been similar. We'd become friends of sorts, but I still know little about him because we never get beyond Mish. It left me wondering why I have this family man in my life at all. An acquaintance certainly, but we can find those in a phonebook or the checkout line at SafeWay.

How does his harping on about his kid potentially leave me feeling, even for a fleeting moment?

Left out. Inadequate. One of those poor sods hovering on the fringes of the seething furry mass in "March of the Penguins", eggless and dateless, while thousands of happy pair-nguins protectively flap over their precious orb. But only for a moment. I'm human, I react, I get over things, I move on. But if you knew your words had that effect on me, AND you were trying to engage me to do business, would you be so inconsiderate?

It makes me feel we're simply not pedaling our trikes in the same cul-de-sac.

Now extend this notion – smalltalk is fine, it brings people closer, but choose your subject matter with care. Aim for relevance and relationship. A former business partner would talk ceaselessly about his wife's health as a reason why he could not honor a contractual obligation to me. As much as I empathized, and lost money to him to prove it, there was nothing in the contract about her health. I'd have preferred it if he'd simply said, 'I'm sorry, I just can't deliver.'

I am not saying that you cannot talk about things that are important to you. In fact, by doing so, you can bring people closer. But be mindful - it takes two to make a conversation. You can have all the creds in the world to do a particular job, but you might be sabotaging yourself from real success just by what you're putting out. Bit like having awful BO but being a brilliant hairdresser - you might find yourself relegated to clipping poodles.

So, if you want to do business with childless wonders, spare them your kiddie talk, and I promise I'll spare you the tedium of talking about eating guinea pig in Peru or slumming it in 4-star converted fortresses while biking across Italy.

Besides, if you harp on about your kids, I might just decide I gotta have one.

The Gal

Oh no, I forgot to have children!

05:24 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Work/Life: Trophy Wives and Honesty

I'm sitting on the train to Connecticut and there's a poster for Donald Trump's PARC Tower framed in front of me. Executed in cerise pink and azure blue, it features a big ornate gold key and below it, a blousy blonde in a busty blouse.
-
The headline is: AND NOW ... THE TROPHY CONDO FOR YOUR
TROPHY WIFE.

I like it. It's exactly aligned with Donald Trump the brand, pretending to be nothing more or less and certainly no more noble than thou. It makes me almost like the guy even if I don't want to, just for being authentic. I got almost as big a kick out of seeing it as stumbling across this Charmin' Mega Toilet Roll ad (scroll down)



A charmin'ly honest ad - I know my ad pals will now call me a hack, but I couldn't help but smile when I pulled this out of the 12-pack, and that's more 99% ads have done for me lately...

In advertising they say, 'say it straight then say it great'. Perhaps it should be preceded by 'say the truth'.

The truth, as I said before, is vastly underrated. I have to be truthful 24/7 in my seamless worklife - I'm staying under the roofs of customers, and there's no way to slip into a some persona more comfortable when I get home - it's their home. It's way easier to adopt the one persona and and just live it.

A friend and mentor recently gifted me with a bootcamp run by Aussie public speaking guru Matt Church, www.thoughtleaders.com.au

I was surrounded by a room full of walking success stories, many on already stratospheric incomes with an eye on deep space. I know we've attended our fair share of motivational seminars and we probably agree we always get something out of them - at most, a cathartic change with no going back, at the very least, a shoulder rub by the registrant behind us, or a singed toe from a hot coal.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that authenticity raised its Zen-like head in this boot camp, and the notion of putting more 'being' rather than 'doing' into your work, letting water find its level rather than a lot of splashing around.

We heard a compelling account from a fireman, Peter Baines, who spoke of spending months at a time in the tsunami region helping reunite families with lost ones living or dead, using the money he raises from giving boot camp speeches to build orphanages. He faced a tough decision as to whether to heed the cries of his kids who 'missed
their daddy' and get on the first jet home, or stay and enable thousands take comfort that their lost relatives are now resting in peace in a place they can point to on a map.

We heard from a woman, Lorna, who does not allow her large physical size be an excuse to evade greatness. She knowingly nailed us all for thinking about her size while trying to listen to what she had to say, which immediately dissolved the problem. We were able to absorb her words of extreme wisdom without our judgmental infant distracting
us, an infant few would admit to.

Some may think it's 'woo woo' to do touchy feely courses but I've found it's never a waste of time, whether it's reading a half page of a self-help book for free in Borders or doing a spendy seminar. 'Breaks up the concrete' as one of my customers put it.

Right after I did the boot camp I had to negotiate on two assignments in the bicycle industry, an industry where people earn little and expect to pay even less for any kind of expertise.

The first assignment resulted in an all expenses paid door-to-door trip to Italy reporting on a tour, and the offer to be a part time evangelist for that tour company. The blog I produced as agreed is at http://www.bikefriday.com/italy/bai

The company wanted me to split the airfare with my employer and
other tour company - not an unreasonable request; there's no harm
in trying. After my initial gentle giantess reaction to enter into plea bargaining all round, I was able to tell them that they needed to feel really good about investing in me to do this work. That if the airfare was the problem, perhaps they should postpone my trip and channel their marketing budget into an alternative activity, and absolutely no offence would be taken on my part.

The result? They ended up paying for all my expenses door to door on this 5 star trip, and everyone is happy.

My second assignment was to be the keynote speaker at a major bicycle conference. Again, the committee wanted me to foot the airfare and speak for free - something I'd relish if I was able to. They wanted me to speak to 200 instructors on how
they could market their skills more effectively. Once again, the pang of being a good Samaritan rose its flower-wreathed head, for about 5 minutes.

I put it like this: how can you expect me to speak with authority to 200 people about being commercially successful, when I can't even get YOU to pay me for my expertise?

The result? They paid my expenses, and I think everyone was happy.

Even at the boot camp, I could tell that the core issue running through the mind of even very successful people is that deep seated question: am I good enough? Will you pay me to be my best?

They may have been dealing in tens of thousands where I was dealing in double and treble digit sums, but the feeling of needing to prove oneself, of not being sure, lurks in all of us at times, if not in business then in personal relationships and vice versa.

In all of the above examples I was being honest. The course enabled me not to manipulate or cajole, but really examine what true for me, and have the outcome be based on that. The breakthrough was being able to access my honesty rather than have have it obscured by the reflex action of always wanting to look good, to look right, appear bright and shiny at all times.

Trump probably has no problem being honest in his ad campaign, but you never know. We honestly can't tell for sure unless we sat down with him over a quesadilla and sussed him out. That's the honest truth.

What if someone asks you for a commitment and you're not quite up for it? Who hasn't churned with the obligation of overcommitting? Here's one way to tackle it: a friend told me that when she is asked to commit and cannot, she will say 'I like the idea, but I'd like to make a decision closer to the time, so if you need an answer now, it will have to be no.'

Closely aligned with honesty us being a person of your word. Things can still happen but with less stress - half truths rent valuable space in your brain, think about it. How many times that thing 'pops' into your mind.

The most successful man in Ireland, a real estate baron, was heard to say, 'I don't have a degree and I haven't read any of those management books. All my success has come from making decisions quickly, and being a man of my word.'

I'm forever working on the first part, the second ... just gets easier.

11:49 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

Work/Life: Great, You're Lookin' Bad!

I've just been chewed over by my well-meaning NY host.

He: I can't believe you posted that negative critique of your book on your blog. What if someone reads it and agrees with him?

Me: Why would I want him to buy the book?

My host was reacting in a normal kind of way. He thinks I'm making myself look bad, as if that's a bad thing. Read the critique.

Hugh Grant and Clinton haven't particularly suffered for their 15 minute stints of 'looking bad'. Paris Hilton makes headlines for something that might leave you and I with cancelled dinner dates and burning ears. And somehow we care, and if they did, they didn't for long.

Whether they admit or not, celebs know that all press, all feedback, is an opportunity. 'Better to be looked over than over looked.' Forget their diet habits, renovation tips and worthy causes, if there's anything to learn from a celeb, it's how they handle looking bad. We should stop putting them on a pedestal for how they earn a crust, and follow their cue. Shying away from something stereotypically 'bad' and you'll be 'looking worse'. Own it, and see what kinds of new people, events and circumstances show up in your life. Just for once. In my experience, they're things with substance, and they bring out the substance in you.

'Looking good' was parodied in the movie American Beauty, the immaculately dressed, disheveled housewife, sobbing, 'Always present an image of success.' Shoulder pads are no longer necessary, but a big cheesy smile, positive comments and material assets still seem to be the order of the day. Years ago I had those things to a modest degree, and I recall a friend telling me 'you have such a great life.' At the time the outside hull of me said 'yeah'. The inside squooshy part said, 'yeah .... but ... '

'Looking bad' is such an opportunity for growth, I call it the new 'looking good'. Let me use that book critique as an example. It got a gut-felt reaction out of a total stranger. When did you last get that in this society of turning your head or looking at your shoes when someone on the sidewalk comes your way? The reader simply didn't like it. OK. Then he expended considerable trouble and energy saying so. Thank you. He actually DID 'get' one of the points of the book, though he's probably not aware of it. Wunderbar! As a result, it gave me the impetus to write this blog entry, given that I was scratching around for something to bleat about today. Saved!

So I scored something far more interesting to me - how something I scribbled entered particular reader's life, how it left an impression, the heartfelt feedback, and the sharing of it with you. My book elicited an authentic response, and that's the only kind of response I am interested in. Authenticity in marketing, like platonic relationships in life, are vastly underrated.

Authenticity creates a kind of 'feedback frisson', and it's this frisson creates movement, change, cartwheels - it's what makes creativity possible.

Conversely, 'looking good' (as opposed to just 'being good') is fast becoming passé. Mainstream advertising has forever tried to snag the big fat hump in the bell curve. It turns out that the big fat hump doesn't buy it after all. A program on the excellent Oregon station Jefferson State Radio reported that while the hump might nod when asked in stilted research studies 'are these people beautiful?', only 13% actually vote with their dollars. That mere 13% makes it worthwhile for advertisers, which is why our screens and billboards bleat banal 'looking good' imagery 24/7. But that's wearing thin. When I see a billboard for an SUV trying so hard to say something old but making it sound new, it's obvious they're scraping the barrel. They don't realize the value of being fearlessly authentic, e.g. that funny line from the Dudley Moore movie 'Volvo. It's boxy, but it's safe,' is a good ad. It's utterly, irrefutably true, and makes you laugh, agree and like Volvo.

I remember being in the hot seat at Saatchi Costa Rica. We showed the client some belly laughs - including a Jack In The Box ad where Jack forces his way into the house of a complainer, chased him out the back and force fed him a shake, burger etc. The client love it and laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair, until we suggested he do the same. All of a sudden he turned white, and the resultant ad was the banal looking good trip that you've come to expect. Here's a spec ad for a tinny little car that got me thrown out of the boardroom - the main benefit and truth was that it was so cheap, it every Costa Rican family seemed to own one at one time or other:

So now, apparently advertisers are resorting to a twist on one of the oldest forms of marketing - paid word of mouth. Ever walk into a washroom and hear someone raving about a particular hair gel? Chances are, they're being paid to rant. I was standing on the street in Manhattan examining a menu outside a sandwich shop. A woman stopped behind us and said, 'this place is just great. Fantastic, wonderful wraps etc'. The result? Already pretty hungry, we went in and spend $25 on some artsy wraps and iced tea. It occurred to me, even before hearing the radio program, that she might be a tout for several vendors in the street, paid to simply loiter and laud and collect her commission later. Travelers to Asia will be familiar with this ancient practice - in Bangkok, my ex ended up with 6 poorly tailored white business shirts after a stunningly authentic tout convinced us that he was just a friendly guy swingin' by, thought we looked friendly and decided to say hi ...

I recall a Mooks streetwear catalog downunder from years ago, which featured what looked like a 70-year old man as the model, way before haute couture supremos got the idea. Wonderful creasyfaced grimaces, deep lines and old wisdom stared out of every page. It was well done, and somehow avoided being self-consciously hip because life was less ironic and more authentic back then. That was the start of 'looking good' by 'looking bad'. Things have accelerated beyond that now - mainstream advertising is constantly desperate to try all manner and means of getting your attention in 1.5 seconds (0.6 seconds adjusted for inflation of consumer expectation). Before long they'll be putting some stealth marketing additive in your food - monosodium glutamate is old school.

20 years ago a Norwegian friend told me a saying in his country which I paraphrase badly, but I hope you get the gist: Man wants most of all to be loved. If he can't be loved, he wants to be liked. If he can't be liked, he wants to be respected. If he can't be respected, he wants to be admired. If he can't be admired he wants to be feared. If he can't be feared he wants to be despised. But the last thing he wants is to be ignored.

If you look stereotypically good these days you might be ignored - I've finally kicked my media-fueled yearning to look and sound like a television newsbleater with a perfect blonde bob.

If you've got the guts to look bad, to not live in fear of phantoms, you'll be noticed, you'll polarize, you'll create 'frisson'. You'll have an opportunity to turn cartwheels, even if it's just in your own lunchtime. People are always going to think what they're going to think, and not say what they're dying to say, but you don't have to be like them.

I have to say my threshold for looking bad has been raised because of the life I lead. It's pointless hiding anything, it doesn't serve me. To live a life where there is no boundary between work and leisure lets me roam the planet more freely, and experience human nature more intensely, and to feel like I really can make a difference. Key to this is dismantling that stumbling block between looking good and looking bad, and just concentrate on trying to be good.

A friend of mine got himself into a spot of bother with the public once. People were coming up to him and saying,

'[So-and-so] is saying this about you'.

His response was always the same.

'Oh. Is that what people say.

01:01 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Work/Life: Welcome to My 24/7 Seamless Life

I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor of my office in Austin, TX, wedged between a bolster and a hard place. It's a customer's personal Pilates studio.

The night before, I was holed up in my Chicago office, curled up on a futon in a brownstone owned by couple who had seen the DVD my movie about cycling 2,400 miles along Route 66 last year. They invited me to come stay in their home.

The night before that, I was in my groovy Manhattan office, using the south-east corner of my host's gargantuan Design Within Reach desk overlooking the ornamental stove.

I lease 'offices' like this all over the country. They're located wherever I'm invited to lay my bicycle helmet and plug in my 12" Powerbook.

The rent I pay for 15 minutes upwards of use is usually my cheery company, or a healthy diet if they can stand my wholemealier-than-thou cooking.

A wi-fi connection is the only mandatory, but my Crackberry often bridges the gaps when there isn't the luxury of a wanton linksys loitering in the 'hood.

This is the fifth year I've been roaming the world as the Customer Evangelist for a small travel bicycle manufacturer called Bike Friday.

I called it my Galacrossamerica Transcontinental Telecommute.

Before accepting the position with Bike Friday, I'd managed to travel the world for 7 years as a vagabond, living in 4 countries while popping in and out of professional and no-collar jobs in order to fund such a nomadic existence. I'd turned down high paying jobs in advertising to experience complicated operations research positions like waitressing (I was fired after three weeks, but came away with some valuable dents in my ego).

After motion became a static routine, I started thinking, is there a way I can maintain this adventurous life, yet hold down a full time professional job with all the relative kudos, career path and stability that comes with it? It would be nice to know with certainty where my next meal is coming from ...

Welcome to my 24/7 seamless worklife - note the absence of the '/'.

Within a few weeks of swapping my bicycle saddle for a swivel chair in 'merica I started getting antsy. Wondering if there was a better contribution I could make than saying 'and how would you like to pay for that?' To hang onto my livelihood, but see more of the country, get closer to customers, know them, carouse with them, report from where they live their daily lives - within the confines of a modest fixed salary.

A modest salary rules out staying in expensive an impersonal hotels. In the well-meaning bicycle industry, almost everyone except Lance needs some alternative shtick to buy their organic booty from WholePaycheck Market. (BTW, it always amazes me how hotels flourish that 'your home away from home' card - hotels prosper in societies like ours because of 'mi casa es mi casa').

I realized there was only one way to achieve this change of duty statement: work 24/7, and never take vacations.

How to do this and not wind up on substance abuse?

First, one must simplify.
The separation between friend and client had to go.
Having two of any one thing, like two personas, one for work and one for 'home', is way too hard to manage.
So I made my clients my friends, and vice versa.
This is fairly easy - just make sure that whatever comes out of your mouth is authentic and honest and you'll find no difference between how friends and clients interact with you.

If you don't find that easy, go do the Landmark Forum or some other brainwashing course - as someone once told me, 'my brain's got so much s*** on it needs a bit of a wash.' Nothing like a dose of pop therapy now and then to remind you to be a human being, not a human doing. Especially when people tell me, 'In America, we pay money to do courses on how to be honest.'

Managing two 'homes' is also too hard.
On a limited budget you can't be paying for an empty room a frequent flyer trip away, and the place where you are currently loitering.
So I made my permanent address the company offices in Eugene, Oregon, and stashed some stuff in the attic and at a tolerant friend's house.
Occasionally some loyalty card vendor will run a check and tell me my address is not a home address, as if you can't be 'home' on the long and potholed road. So much for putting Kerouac on a plinth.

I was prepared to lavish the modest rent money I'd saved on my hosts, so as not to leave a 'hole'. This is the difference between homestaying and freeloading, an important distinction. Time and energy, however, I now had in vast quantities to lavish on people, places, opportunities.

When I let people know of my intention I was surprised by a generous first round of offers. Most said 'we don't need your money, just come', which helps to keep me on the road. I've since been 'adopted' at all levels - from being a surrogate daughter for weeks at a time in several homes, to looking like becoming an unwelcome third wheel of a bicycle at others. The latter situation begs awareness rather than cautiousness, knowing when to graciously pedal onwards. My manifesto has been carefully worded to try and avoid the latter happening, but I welcome whatever life throws at me, as I always take something useful away.

What can I offer?

By being this close to people living their lives, I can see how our customers really operate. Did I say customers? Friends. I can accompany them in their lives, see how they use our product, encourage, record and share their experiences. I am an consummate networker just by virtue of being out in the world, not in a glazed tower on the 42nd floor looking out at how the other 1% live. I'm can be one of the 99%, parked anywhere between the gutter and a 5 bedroom summer home in the Hamptons (and what a trip that was, thank you Hilge). I am deeply interested in how people deal with the millions of little decisions in their lives, punctuated by the occasional big decision.

As an impartial listener of joys and woes, I can apply lessons from that listening to my own life and the lives of others, if requested. I can be a catalyst for change at the 1:1 level, leaving the mass messaging approach to those more comfortable - and expert - at the mass marketing level. Confidentiality? As you wish. This life has helped me understand, and be understood, like and be liked, love and be loved, in a way that transcends the usual confines of traditional work and personal relationships. My customers - friends - might buy another one of our bicycles, or get their friends on one, but that's not the point. It's not about the product. The product is just a dot in a bigger arena, that called living large.

I once joked on my blog that I've taken marketing to the nth degree, where no textbook or marketing course dares to go. That I'll know I've gone too far when someone writes me into their will. Someone responded with, "Lynette, I'm writing you into my will." I think they're leaving me their bicycle bell. Cool!

But why the hell would anyone want do what I do?

You probably wouldn't. I don't advocate this as a way of life, though if some of us could go part of the way, life - at least your working life - might feel a little different. I am a woman in her forties who lives paycheck to oh, every second paycheck if I'm not extravagant, with no ties, so I am available to simply be available to people.

My counterpart on this Work/Life blog is a father with a family, and will resonate with the majority who have a partner and/or kids. I hope I can resonate with an acutely ignored segment of the population - families of one. Google tells me there's 86 million of us and even a website monitoring our work-life concerns.

I'll be reporting from the road, somewhere between a wild campsite and the jacuzzi in a Trump Tower (it happens).

Thank you for reading my introductory post. I look forward to cyber-homestaying with you in my 24/7 work life.

The Galfromdownunder