NOW THAT WE’VE DISCUSSED THE HISTORY OF SHARING, and why collaborative consumption is good for our communities, wallets, and the environment, I hope you’re feeling excited. Maybe you’re starting to think, “Hey, this sharing thing isn’t so radical after all, and it sounds like there are some pretty big benefits to giving it a try.” Here’s what usually happens when I get excited about a new idea: I imagine all the potentially positive effects it could have in my life and in the lives of those I know. Then, I think about all the different ways to give it a try. Then I start to get overwhelmed. That’s why, in this chapter, I’m going to talk a little bit about “how” to share. What’s the first thing you should try to share? How do you find a way to share it? Will you have to pay a membership to a bunch of sharing services? When you start to confront so many questions, you might feel tempted to bail on the whole thing, putting it off until you’re in a place where you’ve got more time/money/brain space to think about it. But that time might never arrive. The best way to figure out this whole sharing economy and where you fit in is just to give it a try. However, it’s a good idea to know a little bit about the different types of sharing, and the communities where you’re likely to find it.
If you’re an entrepreneurial spirit, you might have already noticed a need that could be met by sharing in your community. If you live in a place where collaborative consumption is just catching on (or maybe unheard of), it might be better to try an established online community that can help you learn the ropes. Either way, taking the first step is important and likely to be life changing without really requiring you to drastically change your life. The metamorphosis is more a shift in thinking than anything else. Here’s the awesome thing about living a simpler, cheaper, more sustainable lifestyle through sharing: it’s free. Unlike putting solar panels on your house or buying a hybrid, there is no investment required to start sharing. You don’t need to take a class, attend a workshop, or get a permit to start sharing (although sometimes these things can be helpful for really big shares).
Collaborative consumption requires only things that you already have and people you already know (or are willing to meet). If you’re able to make a phone call, attend a Meetup, organize a get-together, or conduct a Google search, you’ve got all the know-how that’s needed to reduce waste, conserve resources, and connect with other people who are also striving for a low-impact life.
Peer-to-Peer Sharing
Informal, local collaborative consumption is often called peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing. As the name suggests, this style of sharing is conducted for and by peers. Just about any type of sharing service can be executed at the peer-to-peer level. In fact, some people think that this is the purest and most powerful style of sharing. P2P sharing is all about people sharing resources to meet each other’s needs. It’s yet another way that regular people can opt out of a system that doesn’t fit their lifestyle or personal goals. Peer-to-peer sharing often (but not always) means the people involved get to make up the rules about how things will work, so solutions can be customized to the community they are meant to serve, rather than employing a one-size-fits-all attitude.
In P2P schemes, the shared resource (time, things, experiences) is usually exchanged during a direct encounter with another person or group of people. This is different from collaborative consumption businesses like coworking or Zipcar, where the thing that’s shared is owned by a single person or part of a managed fleet owned by a business entity.
P2P sharing can also mean that people pool their resources together to create something that can then be shared with a larger community. Examples would be a church group that builds a tool sharing library, or neighbors building a community garden. Most of the time, peer-to-peer sharing takes place in the communities where members live, work, or play in close proximity to one another, but face-to-face interaction isn’t a requirement for P2P sharing. In fact, some of the most successful P2P ventures are those that allow complete strangers to barter, rent, or trade with each other. It’s probable that there are plenty of examples of P2P sharing happening right now in your community; you just haven’t recognized them as collaborative consumption.
Perhaps there is a group of people who all work for the same company, and they figure out that they all live on the same side of town. Instead of all fighting the traffic individually in otherwise empty cars, the coworkers decide to carpool. Each day of the week, it’s another person’s turn to pick up the others and drive to and from work. This splits the cost and decreases each person’s individual carbon footprint just a little bit. In addition, they have the pleasure of each other’s company and a full car along the way. This is peer-to-peer sharing.
When I was still in high school, my mother belonged to a food co-op. Instead of being run out of a storefront, this co-op was simply made up of a few savvy neighbors who realized that they could pool their buying power to make healthy foods more accessible. Once or twice a month, these families would select their goods out of a natural foods distribution catalog. There was no cost for membership, and deliveries were made to the house of the organizing family. When deliveries arrived, individuals volunteered to help unload the truck and sort the goods into piles that represented each family’s order. As long as there were enough people interested and the orders were of a high enough dollar amount to make it worth the delivery company’s time, the pop-up co-op provided a more convenient, affordable way for families to eat well. This is peer-to-peer sharing.
A few years ago, a woman who worked at my coworking space decided that her huge yard was going to waste. She already had a garden, but it only took up a small portion of the space that was available. She talked to a few friends and neighbors and found that many of them wished there was an affordable CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) within biking or walking distance. As my friend discovered, these people were more than willing to come and help her turn over new sections of her yard so that the growing capacity could be increased. All they wanted was a share of the harvest. Thus, a tiny hyper-local CSA was born. This is peer-to-peer sharing.
The cool thing about these examples is that, at the time, no one involved realized that they were peer-to-peer sharing. They were just clever people who realized that, by coming together, they could solve their problems in an efficient manner — and probably have some good times along the way. That’s why P2P sharing is the easiest way to experiment with the sharing economy.
Online P2P
The caveat of P2P sharing is that it requires, well, peers. People living in remote communities or in areas where sharing is still a foreign concept might find it hard to engage in this kind of sharing. But even a lack of interested friends or urban density doesn’t have to keep you from sharing. The explosion of online social networking over the past few years means that communities can form among people who live far away from each other, and perhaps will never even meet. Online sharing services make it possible to swap, barter, and learn from people living thousands of miles away from you, even in other countries. These online services and marketplaces can be a great way to experiment with relatively low risk.
The Internet has spawned “an unprecedented degree of interconnectivity as well as an infrastructure for participation,” write Rachel Botsman and Roo Rodgers in What’s Mine Is Yours. “Our immersion in innovative information, communication and technology (ICT) platforms, specifically online social networks and handheld mobile devices, is…driving us toward a ‘we’ mindset.”
No matter what it is you want to share, from your backyard to your collection of Star Trek DVDs, there’s almost guaranteed to be a website that will help you get started. The great thing about online sharing is that it can allow you to expand your community without having to travel or take time away from your busy life. Although nothing can replace the experience of meeting a new friend in person, online relationships can be just as valid, creating networks of support between people who have never even spoken a word to each other.
RelayRides, a car-sharing company based in San Francisco, is a great example of what this looks like in real life. The company uses its online platform to help people rent out their vehicles during the hours or days when they’re not needed. Vehicle owners get the joy of a few extra dollars in their pocket to help offset gas, insurance, and maintenance fees, while renters gain access to a reliable vehicle for a fraction of what traditional car rental companies charge.
thredUP.com, an online clothes swapping community, is another example of how P2P communities can function without being tied to a specific city or neighborhood. The thredUP website acts as a virtual consignment boutique for parents who find it hard to afford high-quality clothes while their kids are still growing. The website offers cash for gently used, brand-name children’s clothing and shoes, and it pays the shipping for parents who’re willing to clean out their closets. The like-new clothing is then listed on the site at drastic discounts compared to retail prices. The process allows cash-strapped parents to purchase high-quality clothing, while decreasing the amount of clothing that’s thrown away prematurely.
Sharing Companies and Business-to-Business Sharing
Communities are needed for sharing, but you might be surprised to learn that communities aren’t always made up of people. Well, ok, there are people involved, but the major players can be something else. Businesses, especially locally owned, small to mid-sized businesses, have a huge capacity for sharing. Not only can businesses share with the individuals in their larger community, but they can form communities and engage in sharing behaviors with each other as well.
First, businesses can share knowledge. In the traditional business world, when businesses conduct market research or develop new technologies, they keep their findings under lock and key. Proprietary information can be as small as a secret recipe or as large as a new marketing campaign. Traditionally, sharing information with others in your industry was considered stupid because it would eliminate your competitive advantage. But this is only true if profit is a company’s sole reason for existence. The sharing economy has given birth to an entire generation of business people who think it’s more important to fill a need, improve a community, solve a problem, or reduce waste than it is to make a profit.
This new perspective on what it means to be a successful business removes the barrier for businesses to share resources and information with each other. Because they’re more interested in serving their community in a smart, efficient, sustainable way, these businesses don’t mind letting their “competitors” in on their secrets. After all, two heads are better than one. When businesses take a collaborative approach to innovation, instead of patenting and hoarding everything to themselves, smarter products or ideas make it to the market faster, which is a win for everyone.
“We’ve been trained to believe that for businesses to be successful, they have to rake in as much profit as possible and deliver short-term gains at all costs,” wrote Sara Horowitz, founder of The Freelancer’s Union.13 “But the quiet revolution is creating a new social market ecosystem that values transparency and responsibility … The simplicity of it is what makes it so appealing: it’s not led by government or big business, just a group of people with shared needs and a common vision. That doesn’t mean government and business play no role. In fact, their active participation in this quiet revolution is critical.”
So how can an entrepreneur or brick-and-mortar business support the sharing economy? Well, companies can build their business model around the idea of facilitating sharing, either between people, like Airbnb and Kickstarter, or between a customer and the company, like Zipcar, which offers a fleet of cars for sharing that belong to the company. But what about traditional businesses that are already built around the one-direction, profit-driven mode? There are opportunities for them to share as well. B2B (Business 2 Business) sharing is best exemplified in the quiet but robust commercial barter markets that exist around the world. These marketplaces allow businesses to conduct transactions with each other without the use of traditional currency. You might be surprised to learn that major companies, corporations we think of as “The Man,” and even national governments often engage in this efficient type of sharing.
As you might expect, B2B sharing works a little bit differently than P2P swapping or bartering. First, it’s probably not a good idea for companies to meet each other in a parking lot to conduct a trade, the way a person might do with someone they met on Craigslist. Instead, businesses typically utilize recognized trade exchanges. These trade exchanges facilitate B2B indirect barters while keeping track of the exchanges through trade dollars. Second, also unlike you and me, businesses can’t just give stuff away because it’s taking up too much room in the warehouse. For a company to share, it has to make good business sense. “What businesses offer in a trade exchange is excess capacity,” explains Howell. Excess capacity is the difference between what’s available for sale and what’s actually selling. “It’s better for a business to barter away what it can’t sell in cash, and barter within a trade exchange is an easier sale,” Howell continues. If you’re a pizza restaurant with lots of food but very little cash, barter exchanges make it possible to trade your “excess capacity” for plumbing repair, marketing, or even just a nice dinner that isn’t pizza.
This method of putting idle inventory to good use as barter fodder isn’t limited to mom and pop shops, either. In his book, Jerry Howell tells the story of one of the most famous trades in history, transacted between PepsiCo, Inc. and the Soviet Union in 1990. “PepsiCo agreed to give the Soviets soft-drink syrup for Stolichnaya Russian vodka and 10 commercial ships. The New York Times reported the agreement was worth $3 billion, and maybe three times as much when Pepsi sold the vodka retail.” Both companies benefitted immediately from the trade of excess stock, and made inroads into new markets that would be even more lucrative in the long term. This same serendipitous scenario is repeated daily in the global marketplace. The Ormita Commerce Network, a recognized global trade franchise, estimates that approximately 70 percent of all Fortune 500 companies barter on a regular basis, totaling billions in official non-cash exchanges each year.
Barter, while possibly the most attractive way for businesses to share, isn’t the only way companies can thrive by sharing. Those willing to reject the entrenched model of “create, sell, collect money, repeat” find a whole host of new opportunities perfectly suited to the current generation’s desire for something more than the same old consumption. This new model is what entrepreneur and investor Lisa Gansky calls “The Mesh”: an ecosystem of businesses that specialize in shareable products and the use of advanced Web and mobile data networks.
“Mesh businesses are knotted to each other, and to the world, in a myriad of ways” writes Gansky. “Some connections are formed directly, such as an agreement among companies to identify a market and make coordinated offers. These companies share information to facilitate access to new customers, customer preferences, and goods. Other connections are formed indirectly through third parties…or via customers’ social networks.”
These companies are interested in meeting the specific needs of their technologically savvy audience, not in convincing them to buy something they don’t need. Unlike traditional corporations, Mesh companies refuse to rely on “built-in obsolescence” to ensure repeat customers. Instead, they use transparency, communication, and convenience to demonstrate the value of collaborative consumption, and focus on making it as easy as possible for people to share without sacrifice.
Attributes of a Successful Sharer
Sharing may not be new, but adopting a lifestyle centered around collaborative consumption is still uncharted territory for many of us. To be a good citizen of the sharing economy, you must have an adventurous spirit and be willing to blaze a new and wonderful trail. The most successful sharers are those who aren’t afraid to be early adopters; they are willing to explore new ways of doing things and share those experiences with the rest of the community.
The exciting thing about this movement is that we’ve never seen anything like it before. We’re still trying to figure out what a people-centered economy looks like. For some people, not knowing the rules and not being in charge of the process will be nerve-wracking, but we can’t give up. Nothing worth doing has ever been easy. Successful sharers have to be willing to experiment, to try even though it might deliver lackluster results, or even failure. But what’s out there to be gained? Very likely it’s new connections, enjoyable experiences, and the opportunity to relish the thrill of solving a problem without wasting time, energy or money! All of those benefits are out there, just waiting for us, but we have to be willing to take the first step of that unpredictable journey.
Ready for Adventure
Part of developing an adventurous spirit means learning to be flexible. Our consumption-obsessed culture has us trained to think that we are always a customer — and always right. As consumers, we’ve learned to be selfish, concerned only with our specific wants and desires. Even giving has become self-centered. Just look at what’s happened to the holidays. Advertising tells us that buying things for other people will make them love us more, or make us appear more successful, or will just make us feel good about ourselves. It’s become less and less about the recipient and more and more about the buyer (giver). We have the attitudes of emperors rather than the humility of servants. As Annie Leonard points out in “The Story of Change,” at StoryofStuff.org, we’ve forgotten that we are merely citizens of a world shared with millions of others just like ourselves. We’re used to getting everything “on demand,” right when we want it, as quickly as possible. When you plug into a community of sharers, on the other hand, you need to be patient. You may need to work with other people’s schedules, and, in some cases, take action on a moment’s notice. If you list a need on a peer-to-peer marketplace like Yerdle and someone contacts you with a way to fill it, your response is probably going to be time sensitive. If you’re looking for a ride home for the holidays through a ridesharing service like Ridejoy, you might have to leave at a different time than you had wanted or be willing to take a different route in order to accommodate your fellow travelers.
Being adventurous also means not turning back when things get hard or seem to go wrong. Where would we be today if Lewis and Clark had turned back the first time they came to a dangerous river or mountain pass? What would have happened if Jonas Salk decided that three attempts to develop the polio vaccine was enough, and he might as well give up? Even though the sharing economy has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years, we’re far from having figured it all out. New ideas about how to build a life around sharing are being born every day. Some of them are brilliant, some aren’t. And some may be just a little ahead of their time.
Although collaborative consumption can deliver so many positive benefits for our families, communities, and environment, it’s not a silver bullet or a one-size-fits-all solution to everything. Sometimes, sharing services don’t catch on. Sometimes, your peers aren’t interested in attending a community potluck. Sometimes, no one shows up to a clothing swap. Sometimes, the thing that you rent isn’t as awesome as it looked in the picture.
Part of being an adventurous sharer means rolling with the punches and trying to learn whatever lessons there are to be learned, even in failure. My first experience renting a room through Airbnb was a huge success: the hosts picked me up from the airport, the room looked just like I expected, and we hung out drinking wine on the back porch the first night of my stay. I was thrilled! So, I booked another room when I needed to travel to attend a friend’s wedding. This time was different. These hosts didn’t offer to pick me up, so I had to rent a car. When I got to the address listed on Airbnb, the house and the neighborhood looked nothing like the pictures, and the hosts didn’t answer when I called to verify. There I was, lost, in a strange city in the middle of the night. I ended up getting a hotel. It turns out, the address was listed incorrectly on the website. When I got in touch with the hosts the next morning, they were very apologetic. They gave me the correct address, I found it without a problem (it was a beautiful house!) and they refunded my money for the first night immediately. I made it to my friend’s wedding without incident, and my hosts set out a great breakfast the next morning. After the first part of that negative experience, I could have decided to go back to the predictable yet boring world of commercial hotels, but I stuck it out and met some great people. Since then, I’ve used Airbnb several times and had more great experiences.
The moral of the story is to remember that we’re all new at this. There is no perfect way to share. Put on your explorer cap and take some pleasure in the fact that you are forging down the road less traveled. There will be some twists and turns. There may be obstructions in the trail. You just have to adjust your expectations, realize that you’re a part of something bigger than yourself, and try, try, again.
Start Small, Think Big
How many times have you made a New Year’s resolution to make a big life change, like riding your bike to work or eating more locally produced food, only to find that making good on your promise is harder than first anticipated? Humans love to bite off more than they can chew. We make big plans, claim we’re going to change the world and then — well, life happens. We get busy, distracted, or remember that no, our garage isn’t big enough to accommodate a microbrewery. Our best chance for success comes when we choose our changes carefully and start small enough that we can make progress before getting too discouraged.
The same rule applies to participation in the sharing economy. When I first learned about collaborative consumption, I was initially excited and then slightly overwhelmed by all of the opportunities. You might feel the same way. And then you might think, how I am going to remember all of these options? Which type of sharing is the most important? If I’m not sharing everything, what’s the point?
Take a deep breath. This reaction is normal. It’s because you’re looking at the entire, massive sharing economy and trying to swallow it all at once. The point is to do something not everything. To embark on a successful, shareable lifestyle, start small. Just like when choosing hobbies or New Year’s resolutions, you’ve got to be realistic. Is it realistic to pledge that you’ll never drive your car to work again? Probably not. But you could probably eliminate one car trip a week. The same principle applies to sharing, especially when you’re new at it. Can you pledge to barter or swap for every single thing that you or your family members need, starting tomorrow? Nope. But with all the sharing options that are available around the world and online, chances are there’s a way to participate in the sharing economy that will complement, rather than disrupt, your current way of doing things. Maybe you travel a lot for business. Choosing to browse Airbnb listings in your destination city, rather than a hotel reservation website, doesn’t take any extra time or effort on your part, but it’s likely to save you some money and result in a positive experience you’ll want to repeat.
Although it’s a good practice to start small, there’s nothing wrong with thinking big. I mean really big. Don’t be fooled, even though many collaborative consumption services seem like simple common sense, they’re still pretty revolutionary. When enough people are thinking, talking, and sharing together, amazing things can happen. When we look to sharing as the obvious choice instead of an awkward alternative, solutions appear and lives are changed.
People at all levels of society have been swept up in the quest to consume more, own more, thinking that their happiness and security can be provided by material goods. Collaborative consumption has the potential to disrupt this lopsided reality without asking people to abandon the activities or people that they care about. We can’t all live in an off-grid eco-commune or make all of our own clothes. We can’t all drive electric cars or give up our cars altogether. What we all can do, however, is change the way we view the things and the relationships that we already have.
We can start to view our possessions as a type of currency — things that can be exchanged for other things we need or want. We can start to view our friends, neighbors, and social networks as resources instead of competition. When we acknowledge that we are all members of the same global community, the consequences of our actions, both good and bad, become clear. We start to feel pride and responsibility for the well-being of the entire group. What happens to one happens to all of us, and the actions of one are a reflection on the entire community.
While trading clothes or sharing a car may seem simple, the net impact of the sharing economy is far from mundane. Each new person who hears the message of sharing and finds a way to incorporate collaborative consumption into their own lives becomes an example of the serendipity that’s possible when we’re willing to think outside the box. When sharing, or explaining the sharing economy to someone else, it’s important to start small and set realistic expectations. Don’t restrict the scope of your vision, however. Sharing can be applied to every single area of our lives; the only limits are those we set for ourselves.
The current economic system focuses on supply and demand, producers and consumers. These two sides are locked in a never-ending struggle for domination of the market. Producers lose money when supply overtakes demand, so they search for ways to entice consumers to consume even more. The sharing economy operates on a completely different basis. Instead of constant conflict between producers and consumers, the sharing economy views individuals and businesses as members of the same ecosystem. Those who make and those who use operate on a level playing field and can often fluctuate between roles, depending on the situation. Instead of hoping for something good to “trickle down,” the sharing economy brings everyone onto the same level, encouraging the lateral movement of goods and assets so that everyone has access to what they need.
One major fear people have about collaborative consumption is that it requires them to interact with and depend on people they don’t know. Sometimes complete strangers. This is the opposite of what we’ve been taught about society. We’ve been trained to see others as competition — potential thieves and kidnappers. We’ve been taught to trust no one. We’ve become convinced that the only way to get what we need is to fight for it, or to buy one of whatever it is we want, and then hoard it away from the eyes and fingers of the world.
Collaborative consumption breaks down those mental barriers. It forces us to see people as people, just like ourselves. We have to learn their names and faces and even where they live. We have to acknowledge that everything’s not perfect, that we all have needs, and that others might be the key to meeting those needs. In short, we have to trust people. But we also have to be equally worthy of other people’s trust.
The best way to be a successful sharer is to incorporate the Golden Rule into everything you do, online or off. Don’t share something you wouldn’t want to borrow. Don’t be the kind of guest you wouldn’t invite back. More than participants in any other social movement, collaborative consumers understand that what goes around, comes around — literally. Although there are still those who abuse the system, or make bad decisions, the overwhelming majority of collaborative consumers understand that to get good results, you have to be good people.
While the Golden Rule is a good guideline for life in general, in the sharing economy, it’s even more important. Word travels fast in the sharing economy. Nearly every collaborative consumption website is synced with social media. Most have mechanisms through which individuals on both sides of a sharing transaction can provide feedback on each other and the experience. This feedback isn’t hidden or swept into a corporate data-crunching machine. Instead, it’s displayed on the profiles or activity logs of both individuals for all the world to see. If someone drops the ball along the way, the community is going to find out about it. If a sharing participant abuses the system, or behaves in a way that hurts or takes advantage of others, it instantly becomes a part of their public reputation. Too many incidents of harmful or selfish behavior, and their equity takes a nosedive.
In this way, both on- and offline sharing communities are self-governing, rooting out those who aren’t in it for the right reasons. While these checks and balances are one of the beautiful things about the sharing economy, it’s necessary to point out that they, too, require participation in order to work. Reviews and feedback can only help improve a collaborative consumption service if members take the time to provide them. Social capital can only be used as a deterrent of negative behavior if we all agree to build that capital. A high caliber of behavior can only be expected from fellow sharing community members if we, too, demonstrate a high caliber of behavior each time we participate in the sharing economy.