take this idea

Feel free to take one home with you.

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Lockdown

No nonsense budgeting for when willpower isn’t enough

The problem: Creating and sticking to a budget is hard.

Despite people’s best intention to use personal finance software like Mint or You Need a Budget, it’s easy to delete a reminders about surpassed budgets. Once an attempt to feel better about their spending, the app reminders and very existence only serves to remind them of their failure.

Part of this is human nature. We think in the short term and have a hard time delaying gratification. Part of this is that even beginning to know how to set a budget feels incredibly daunting to people, especially those who have various and substantial debt (i.e. most of the country).

An answer: Lockdown is built to help save you from yourself. Lockdown is the only finance app that actually forces you to budget to stick to a daily spending limit.

Lockdown helps you breakdown the budgeting process via an easy to use questionnaire (like TurboTax helps prompt you to do your taxes) and helps you stick to a daily budget by only allowing you to spend your daily spending limit.

Lockdown is an app that connects to your main checking account and only lets you have access to your daily spending limit. This an app for everyday kind of budgeting. A simple, straightforward way to be confident that you’re not spending beyond your means.

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Slasher

Make the different parts of your life talk to each other

Goal: increase decision making power around how to spend your time with insights effortlessly derived from automatic tracking.

What is it: All in one tool for people managing multiple identities. “Quickbooks for your time”

Project management platform that unites website, email, financial, and word processing activity to provide overview of time spent and money earned per across all projects and jobs.

Slasher provides people with multiple and varied sources of income insights necessary for optimizing how they spend their time.

Features:

Create customized pages for different services and view overview of all activity on sites to compare activity, engagement and conversion rates

CRM Links to all pages and tracks time so you can see how long you're spending engaging with clients, partners and associates respective to each site

Access to Community of "slashers" in similar industries, using similar revenue models/platforms

Robust help center for people customizing their work week and income streams - option to connect with experts in the field

Integration with - Harvest, JustWorks, QuickBooks

Reminders Sent: Upcoming Due Dates Set Financial Goal/ Baseline Remind you when an upcoming job is about to end so you know how much money you need to replace it.

Details:

Only one project can be open at a time - in order to help you focus and to ensure tie tracking is accurate

Example of Project Window: 

[takethisidea-blog]

Open Books

Open Books is a platform where company founders give behind the scenes access into their founder story, their company’s history and trajectory, and (most importantly) their legal and financial set up. Companies pay a one time fee to sign up to join

Open Books and then receive commission each time someone pays to see their profile. Existing and potential business owners benefit from Open Books by getting insider information into how similar businesses run. They can pay a monthly subscription to get business tips and have access to other’s books. They pay extra for each “look” inside someone’s books.

Existing businesses win from Open Books - they feel good about helping other aspiring entrepreneurs and they build their brand awareness. Aspiring entrepreneurs get valuable insights into the nitty gritty of running a business that they wouldn’t normally be privy to.

Open Books would require business owners to include certain information - i.e. legal structure, start up investments, break even point, etc. It would also offer additional menu options for businesses to further customize and flesh out their profile.

[takethisidea-blog]

Feedback Generator

Companies try to improve the way that they collect feedback and to train their employees to give better feedback. They would save time and provide more guidance throughout the process if they utilized a Feedback Generator platform that offered customizable feedback templates. Both individuals working at a company or freelancing on a project could select what exact kind of feedback they’re looking for from a menu. They could customize feedback surveys that would help ensure that the receive the kind of feedback they’re looking for.

This program might risk taking some of the creative thinking and originality out of the feedback process, but it also promises to deliver more accurate feedback on average across a company. The feedback prompts would be plentiful enough to ensure that more playful and specific feedback collection would still be possible.

[takethisidea-blog]

Leafs for Communal Tables

Rather than pushing two tables together at a restaurant, why not design a table that has a connecting leaf that can easily pop out from underneath a table and popped up to connect to a neighboring table. This would be a great way for restaurants to customize their dining rooms. It could also be an opportunity to add varied wood or color patterns to the room.

With the popularity of reclaimed wood tables for dining room and communal tables, the malleability of tables has been lost. What ever happened to tables with leafs that let you expand or contract the size of the table?

[takethisidea-blog]

Transformer Bag

It is a known fact that people - especially women - lose things in their purses and bags all the time. Bags are everywhere but few options exist to be both stylish and organized. If you added up all the time you’ve spent looking for your wallet, phone, keys, pen, charges, you’d likely wish you could have spent that time doing better things.

The Transformer Bag has a high quality, nice looking exterior with room for interchangeable inserts depending on what you're doing - i.e. "going to the gym" insert for shoes, clothes, phone and wallet // "going to work" insert with laptop slot and pen holders, etc // "grocery shopping" insert, and so forth.  

Some inserts and purses designed for organization exist (see image below), but none have reached a level or brand recognition popularity. Compelling design is what has been missing from this equation. The Transformer Bag would be both functional and stylish to bring organized on-the-go carrying options to the masses.

Source: Sold on Amazon

[takethisidea-blog]

Booster Club

Booster Club connects self-starters seeking mentorship to a thoughtfully curated group of mentors who provide consistent, trusted support for their professional pursuits.

Booster Club is intended for professionals looking to progress in their project or career who seek consistent support from a mentor with relevant expertise.

Booster Club attracts mentors who have asserted themselves as experts in their field and have enough availability to advise up and coming professionals.

Many who are embarking on new projects or steps in their career would love to look to a mentor for guidance, and yet quality, personal mentorship is hard to find. Booster Club leverages the knowledge and support of a group of mentors to give professionals well-rounded, consistent mentorship.

Tell Booster Club where you work and what kind of professional support you’re looking for. We’ll then show you the available mentorship teams to choose from. You select a team and send them information about your needs. If you’re granted access to the team, you can subscribe to monthly access to the mentorship board which ensures a certain amount of hours per week with the board, or you can contract individual mentors for support on an individual basis.

Let me know what questions you would have about Booster Club after reading this. Do you think you would be interested in checking out Booster Club or could you see yourself recommending Booster Club to people you know? Why or why not?

[takethisidea-blog]

Personal Branding Guide

A growing number of people need to brand themselves. Whether you have a business or work in an industry that asks you to have a digital presence, you need to be able to succinctly explain who it is that you are, what it is that you do, and why it’s worth paying attention to.

There’s often a direct correlation between the number of things someone does and a confusion about how to explain what it is that they do to others. People can default into broad categories, like “freelancer” or “consultant”, but these titles don’t really tell much. One can continue to stack adjectives into their title but as we continue to remix title and ideas and everything becomes more interdisciplinary, there’s a growing need for people to find a connection between all the different things that they do and how to communicate that central axis to others.

While there are many platforms to help you find a digital home for yourself, the hardest thing can be to figure out what to say, to figure out what you want to project and what you want to be known for, to explain the special, specific qualities that make you YOU. It’s a daunting task, especially for those that don’t consider themselves incredibly reflective or succinct.

The personal branding guide is a series of prompts to help someone get to the essence of what they want to offer people and why they’re a great person to offer it.

You can pay a one time fee for the guide to get access to all the prompts. Then you can use the collection of answers for your specific personal branding needs.

This guide is essentially a digital version of a branding consultant, but it’s cheaper, still interactive, and hopefully insightful.

[takethisidea-blog]

Find Your Partner. Start Your Business.

When it comes to starting your own business, it can be frustrating to have an idea, have the enthusiasm, but not have the full spectrum of skills you need to get started. This is where a partner with complementary talents and experience can come in handy, never mind the emotional support aspect of shared ownership.

Some business owners tell stories of serendipitously meeting their partner - like a romantic fairy tale that makes us believe in fate and “meant to be”. Yet, most people have to put in real time and effort to network and find their partner in crime.

There are a number of sites to find a co-founder, but these sites are largely intended for co-founders of startups in the realm of tech. Small business owners, creatives, and basically anyone not looking to apply to Y Combinator still need help to find a partner or team.

This site would allow you to select your industry and filter your search based on variables like scale, estimated funds required, location, etc.

[takethisidea-blog]

#ritual

Urbanites are faced with the conundrum of being surrounded by new businesses and events to hop to every day of the week. Yet, many claim to feel isolated and seek community. Community is only possible with repetition and repeated exposure. Thus, it’s no wonder that stimuli seeking people that tend to gravitate to cities in the first place have a hard time becoming regulars at their local businesses. 

#ritual is a month long challenge for city dwellers. It asks those that accept the challenge to embrace repetition in a sea of options. #ritual asks participants to take pictures and post “evidence” of their consumer behavior for a solid month on their social media platform of choice. They are only able to go to one local coffee shop, bar, restaurant, grocery store, etc. for the entire month. This is an experiment for city folk to see how quickly it’s possible to form relationships with their local businesses and community based on sheer repetition (and a smile and small talk never hurt anyone).

[takethisidea-blog]

Super Lite Yoga Mat

Yoga mats are personal items. You sweat on them, meditate on them, fixate your gaze on them, try to channel your inner peace on them. Most people who practice yoga regularly own at least one yoga mat. But what about those that are interested in trying yoga but don’t own a mat?  There are many people who would take a class or practice on their own at home but don’t want to invest in a brand new expensive mat that they very well may never use again. On the other end of the spectrum, many active yoga practitioners own multiple mats - like outfits for any occasion - and are always looking for the best mat for their current place of practice.

A Super Lite yoga mat solves problems for both the new practitioner and the experienced.

The Super Lite yoga mat is cheap ($10-15 each), lightweight (less than 1 lb), and transportable (foldable). It is half the thickness of your average mat but still offers a non-stick texture.

It is great for:

- new yoga teachers who want to host classes for friends or students who don’t own their own mats. The super lite mat would be easy to carry multiples of and inexpensive enough for a yoga teacher to host pop-up yoga classes 

- potential new students who want a mat at a low cost

- outdoor usage if you want to practice at the park or the beach but don’t want to get your regular indoor mat dirty

[takethisidea-blog]

Super-user

Now, more than ever, companies are using storytelling as a prime means for brand engagement. Many ad campaigns depict everyday people representing their product, advertising testimonials from actual users to show the world how real people love their company or product.

Many companies create their own content teams to source stories for their ad campaigns and many companies run their own giveaway promo campaigns to engage their customers.

“Super-user” is a platform where companies can sign up for an account and create templates for their ad campaigns — specifying what kind of photos they need, how long quotes or stories should be, whether they want audio recordings or videos, etc. Once the company has an account, super-users — everyday people — can submit content for the company according to their specifications. If someone submits content to a company's campaign and it gets selected, they will receive the prize associated with the campaign.

This is a win-win situation: the super-user gets their content out to the world and receives a product that they want and the company gets quality, original content and further engages their community.

Example: Julie loves the company Madewell. She sees on Super-user that they are running a campaign for their new denim shirts. She submits a story about how wearing her Madewell denim shirt she nailed the interview for her dream job. She also sends a picture the quality and size Madewell specified. Madewell sees Julie’s story and selects it for their campaign. Julie is notified that her story was submitted and that her new denim travel bag prize will be shipped to her next week. Julie sees her photo and short story in a Madewell Instagram post the next day.

Why would a company want to use “Super-user” which charges them for having an account vs. running their own campaigns fully in-house? Super-user streamlines the submission process, flags super-users who have a high acceptance rates, and also attracts higher than average creative individuals who are looking to strut their storytelling skills.

[takethisidea-blog]

Digital File Organizer

It’s much easier for digital spaces to get cluttered. We have files and folders hidden in search directories. We can close our computer at the end of the day and put it neatly away. As more of our important documents and memorabilia become digital, there is a greater need for an easy way to ensure that your information is easily retrievable and intelligible.

Computers today do give you the option to designate a specific folder when saving a file. Yet, the design doesn’t force you to select a folder — instead you can quickly save files haphazardly in a default folder. The design also doesn’t require that you follow a specific file title format.

Imagine if every time you saved any kind of file to your computer you had to save it in a particular folder and confirm the location. Those who opt into having this enforced organization ‘filter’ on their computer would be able to chose from a number of formats of ways that files could be titled. They would also have more control over the organization of their folder system.

This file organizer program would greatly improve your ability to visualize and navigate the entire landscape of your digital spaces.

[takethisidea-blog]

Times Square

Riffing off of Humans of New York, this would be a video installation in Times Square, the most insane and arguably seediest part of Manhattan, that would screen scenes of people’s everyday lives on a gigantic screen amongst all of the normal advertisements. 

Videos could be submitted by any New Yorker and reviewed by someone screening them to make sure they are PG. 

Seeing everyday people up on the big screen would be a striking reminder of the distance between “regular” people and airbrushed models. It would serve to humanize New York and make the ads look artificial by contrast. 

[takethisidea-blog]

Community Camp

Intern program to solve a growing company’s need to have more Customer Support and Engagement coverage. Instead of the company having to set this up themselves, they could contract “Community Camp” to interview and hire their interns, as well as train and manage them. 

This would benefit companies by letting them invest in their in-house team, freeing full time employees up to work on bigger projects that would lead to less turnover in the company. 

This program would benefit college interns by giving them insight into the inter workings of a company, job experience, and resume padder. Interns could be hired for the duration of a school semester with the opportunity to extend. 

[takethisidea-blog]

Current State of Man

Photo series of beautiful landscapes, vistas, and lookout points where a singular person is before the view but hunched over, transfixed to their cell phone. 

[takethisidea-blog]

Follow me

When adding an event to your calendar, you’d use a widget that would not let you save the event without including a link and the address. You can choose your privacy settings for your calendar to ensure that only the people you want to see your events can see them. Then follow your friends or tastemakers calendars and have all the information you need available from the same view to ensure that you’re taking advantage of everything your city has to offer.

There are so many things to do when you live in a city. But, unless you have friends that are always inviting you to events and filling up your social calendar for you, finding events and making the effort to coordinate the logistics to get to them takes work.

It’s easy to sign up for newsletters or curated emails to have lists of events sent to you.

However, it would be even more convenient to have curated calendars integrate with the calendar you’re already using - like Google Calendar or iCal. This way you could easily view a curated calendar of events without having to move between multiple tabs.