One Red Hot Country Mama!

I’ve had no energy lately. In fact, I have gone to bed before 9:30 for three nights in a row now. Like with most problems, I have been throwing product at it. I’ve been drinking and drinking teas and lattes bought in clean paper cups, eating lots of dark greens from hard plastic containers from my work cafeteria and restaurants. Last night I had a brand new hamburger made fresh for me and placed in a little paper bag. Maybe I just haven’t been eating enough iron and protein? This morning I have been researching diet and exercise books and my friend was even suggesting some pharmaceutical remedies through the phone last night as I drifted away. But it’s just tired… that’s all.

This morning feels great. I don’t know if it had to do with all of the products, or if it had to do with me needing a few nights of good sleep because I was severely sleep deprived. I have been flying in and out of the province this week after all.

But, I do think that us kids who grew up watching hours and hours of TV get used to thinking that products can be the answer to our problems. Are you bored? Buy our toys and cereals. Are you not cool? Buy these CDs (I’m dating myself, I know) and clothes. And later… Are you lonely? Look prettier with these products and skinnier with our diet recommendations and you’ll attract all the people you want. Are you sad? Buy these pharmaceuticals. Yes, the ad appeals are much more sophisticated than that, but the messages can be distilled down to these points. Marketers know (me being one of them): find the pain point and present your product as a solution.

But, after all of this buying of shiny new things… are we really any happier or is it just an illusion? Also, can our environment sustain more and more people frantically buying in order to be happier? An article in Urban Dharma called "Meditation on a Coke Can" says the following:

Our desire to gain more happiness through having more people consuming more products and services inevitability must lead to less happiness because of an environment that can not support the demands being made on it. It is only through abandoning the illusory happiness of the current consumer culture—a culture that ignores the inherent complexity of a single can of soda–that humans can come into a stable and sustainable web of interrelationships with their environment.

Now, obviously I am not hating on the consumer marketers who made the TV ads mentioned above. They are just doing their job, making their bonuses and making the companies they work for more profitable… also potentially creating new jobs and wealth for a whole host of people including investors and retailers. They are also footing the bill for whatever free entertainment I was enjoying as a kid, paying the salary for the actors, producers and writers of the shows.

But, I do think there is a lot of room for individual critical thought around products being solutions. Next time I’m tired, I’ll take more walks, warm baths and hit the pillow sooner. Much more sustainable, and much less frantic. 

Most of us have had a fantasy like one of these:

1. I am sitting in the coffee shop reading my book and minding my own business, when suddenly a cute, smart, warm-hearted, guy comes to talk to me – we hit it off and we start dating. He turns out to be a great guy!
2. I am sitting at my desk going about my normal day when suddenly I get called into the group manager’s office. She says "Someone in the corporate head office has seen your campaigns and loves them! They want you to move to the US/Europe/Australia to work your magic!"
3. I open my inbox one morning and get an e-mail from some multi-billionaire saying "Stefanie, I have been reading your blog regularly and would like to give you a lucrative contract for our non-profit foundation, which not only is well-run but is also helping to save the world, what do you think?"

So, I think we all have these fantasies where someone will come out of the blue, and instantly make our lives better… but rarely does that happen. Winning the lottery is probably the most common one… but how are you going to win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket? From my experience, things just don’t happen when I am waiting passively. Technically, things COULD happen while passively sitting in the apartment behind a book, but usually they don’t – or not anything very cool anyway.

Lately, things have been going really well. I have gotten three very exciting professional opportunities and am dating a sweet and hilarious guy who I really like. I also just had a birthday and have been reconnecting with old friends and family members. On all of these fronts, I "bought my ticket" by getting the ball rolling and opening myself up to these possibilities but who knew everything would happen all at once! So – I created this cloud of change instead of waiting for it. I am really interested to see how the next 6 months or so pan out. Hopefully more winning tickets which I’ll strive for, but if not, I am cool with that too.

In my second and third year of University I worked in the back office of a consulting firm. I had a boss who referred to associates as "bodies" instead of people. I worked in quality control and soon became a team lead. It was a ‘heads-down’ job, where I analyzed outputs, reports, investigated outliers and did a tiny bit of statistical analysis.

There wasn’t much smiling or inspiration and there was a lot of pandering to my boss, who eventually came to see me as a human. It wasn’t exactly my passion, but if it wasn’t for that job, which I did on Mondays and Fridays, and crammed my Bachelor of Commerce courses in on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I would never have graduated from University with a relatively small amount of debt.

When I was 24 and first started in the working world, I knew my place. I got a job as a Marketing Analyst at a very large American manufacturing company. Similar to the consulting firm, there was a lot of heads-down work and pandering, despite my graduation from University on full scholarship… at the time, I believed it would all eventually be worth it, and I would come out of the other side of the hard work as a better professional with more interesting opportunities awaiting me.

Now, looking back, I can’t help but wonder if this hard-work thing is a myth. I happened upon this interview with Carissa Reiniger who has just had a 1.4 million dollar year with her Marketing Consultancy business at the age of 24. So… at the same time that I was "getting a better character" by pushing through the administrative and analytical work, she is actually achieving her dream. Now, I understand from a colleague that knows Carissa that she had financing from her family and friends to back her up… but I think she is still a good example of using her skills to the maximum vs. developing character through doing mundane work.

I think that this mundane work thing is a throwback to the old economy – a kind of factory-worker mentality… where using skills to the maximum is more information-age. I strongly recommend to any young person entering the business world: don’t take advice from 40-50 year-olds that you should do strictly mundane work in order to pay your dues. Remember, if they are your employers, that they think of you in a certain way, and when they are giving advice it has a lot to do with what is best for them… not what is best for you.

Don’t feel sorry for me and my early career – I eventually figured it out. I ended up doing some very interesting projects at the company. I released two very exciting products nationally which is amazing for someone under 30 and in managing the website for my product group, I discovered my passion for website marketing. But, I didn’t get those projects because I was the greatest at the clerical work. I did those projects because I grasped for them… I built a foundation of successes and good ideas and earned more and more freedom.

So… in the new economy, success is built on the basis of solid ideas and creativity rather than that mundane hard-work. My advice to people in your early-twenties – work on developing and expressing ideas… and whatever you do… don’t put your head down and for God’s sake, don’t work for a guy who thinks of you as nothing more than a body.

So… The Economist is saying that lawyers won’t prosecute corporate crime if it will reduce share price: here.

Our rule: if a criminal prosecution is likely to hurt a company’s share price, then don’t prosecute.

The idea is based on the absence of prosecution of Steve Jobs in the recent options back-dating scandal. Other people involved in the scandal were harshly prosecuted, but Jobs, being iconic and popular was kept safe. Someone less popular, like Conrad Black for example, is fine to prosecute.

Law Professor Larry Ribstein originally called a similar phenomenon the Apple Rule on his blog.

The Apple Rule provides for an exception from corporate criminal liability when a popular business executive is accused of, or presides over a company that is accused of, misconduct. "Popular" is defined as "liked by journalists." In the event of allegations of criminal misconduct touching a "popular" business executive, said executive or his company may avoid trouble by aiming the investigation toward an underling.

What happened to everyone being equal under the law? Is it naive to talk about that at this point? I admire Steve Jobs so I am saddened by this whole thing… but not so much that he should be shielded from the consequences that the rest of us have to live with.

Had an excellent lunch with my friend today at Live Organic Food Bar. The food was incredible – it was hard to believe that there was none of the "good stuff" (meaning cheese and meat) was in it. For example, there was a cannelloni dish made with nuts that tasted creamy (?!) and Thai spring rolls that were full of unusual raw ingredients that were absolutely amazing! My friend had the vegetable juice called "liquid plumber" (I don’t want to know…) and I had a berry smoothie. Everything we ate was delicious with no bad aftertaste literally… or the figurative bad aftertaste of diet-straying guilt.

I really enjoy these healthy places and I love the trend of regular eateries getting healthier. It has changed the whole ritual of eating out:

• Traditional Restaurant: I eat larger portions than usual; I eat more courses than usual; great looking, thin waiters and waitresses who probably don’t eat a lot of the food at their own restaurant serve me; I go out feeling puffy, guilty, wishing to look more like the slim waitress… but knowing that it wasn’t a good start, eating all of those large portions and courses.
• Health Restaurant: I eat healthier than usual; I eat more courses, but it doesn’t matter because each course has more nutrients and not a lot of calories; great looking wait staff serve me who eat everything on the menu; I go out feeling great and nourished with no guilt.

The raw food diet is one of the most difficult to manage (other than Michal Rae‘s diet of course), since imagine, not only are you forgoing meat and dairy, but you can’t even cook! My friend and I spoke to the owner, who is pregnant, on the way out. She explained that to her raw foods is more of a cuisine than a full-time lifestyle. This makes a lot of sense to me. Of course I still like the traditional restaurants since hey – the bad guilt aftertaste has its own property of deliciousness (like the cheesecake I indulged in last night foe example). But… I definitely want to go to more restaurants like Live… hopefully more will spring up.