Sean Young
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Homepage: http://www.borrowme.com
Posts by Sean Young
Cooperation as rebellion: Change is coming to consumption.
Nov 4th
Cooperation as rebellion: building sustainable change against the tidal wave of consumption.
Increasingly over the past 50 years we’ve bought things we didn’t need, with money we didn’t have to impress people who didn’t care. We hijacked the American Dream of equal opportunity & personal freedom and labeled unbridled consumption its successor.
We promoted this new ‘consumption myth’ in virtually every motion picture, music video, television, magazine and billboard advertisement. We used ubiquitous images of luxury transportation, homes and an ever expanding list of ‘must have possessions’. By extension – we increasingly viewed those with different values at best as something akin to simple or at worst we cast them as complacent, weak and unintelligent.
Even in the face of the growing epidemics of drug use, high profile suicides, failed marriages, bizarre behaviour, character failures and countless examples of suffering and ruined lives – we all persisted in our believe in the infallibility of this twisted dream. We became convinced that this is what we are suppose to want, despite the personal, social, environmental costs. This is the high watermark of all human achievement — the very pinnacle of the new definition of success.
We likely put the nail in our collective coffins by actively participating in a caste system based not on character, education or even contribution – but one based almost exclusively on the basis of unbridled consumption of stuff. The commercial system, and increasingly the people on the street value us by our consumption, or consumption potential (youth).
The consumption myth tells us to buy everything we need (status & convenience), show off some of it, hide the rest in the largest home we can afford, and use it to lord over the people who clearly ‘can’t afford to buy their own’. Justify your fear of cooperation on the basis that it will either:
- ruin the economy;
- my stuff will be destroyed by the kind of people who can’t afford to buy their own;
- technology will dig us out of any environmental hole we dig for future generations.
Change may have come to America with the election of Barrack Obama – but now, change must come to consumption. Those who are willing to begin the revolution against the consumption myth have a powerful tool, in the form of COOPERATION. Online platforms like borrowme have begun to allow individuals, groups, clubs and companies to engage in sustainable, responsible consumption activities that recognize the myth for what it is, and seek more of what really matters with their dollars and their time.
It will be those who are willing to swim against the current, take a chance, and rebel against the momentum of the consumption myth. If you’re up to the challenge – we are here to help you.
– Sean
Does this make sense to you? TAKE ACTION before you leave, and make a small change in how you deal with your stuff.
Create a wish for any kind of special item on BorrowMe.
Create a listing to lend any book, dvd, tool or treasure to a friend or neighbor.
– Sean
http://www.borrowme.com/sean
Contact me directly.
Don’t forget to Come be a Fan, follow us on Twitter, or consider Getting Started.
There is nothing here: BorrowMe is new!
Nov 4th
BorrowMe is an idea that is new, and one that matters. We launched this new, complete site to the public just a few months ago. If you are here – you are the vanguard. You are the early birds that will determine what happens next. If you like the idea of borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor, renting out your ladder for a few dollars, or getting a stroller, a textbooks a DVD or a purse from someone you didn’t know had one to lend … then take 30 seconds to get involved. You don’t need to join BorrowMe – simply connect with your Facebook Account. you can do so in less than 10 seconds right here.
There are a few ways to jump in fast – so we don’t lose each other:
a) Create a simple wish – take a look at mine for a few ideas, or create your own.
b) Add a common item that you might consider lending, or perhaps giving away to the right person. Here is my list of stuff. I mostly lend just to friends, but some things to others too.
c) Follow us on Twitter. We send small notes out about 1x each week – so you can watch our progress, and come back to see how we are doing.
Lastly, take a moment to read about what BorrowMe is about, and why we are here. Our content is expanding daily, and I post to our blog here every week.
If you’d like to speak to me, or our small team directly – you can contact any of us.
– Sean
Does this make sense to you? TAKE ACTION before you leave, and make a small change in how you deal with your stuff.
Create a wish for any kind of special item on BorrowMe.
Create a listing to lend any book, dvd, tool or treasure to a friend or neighbor.
– Sean
http://www.borrowme.com/sean
Contact me directly.
Don’t forget to Come be a Fan, follow us on Twitter, or consider Getting Started.
Job #1 for every Start-up: Change the World.
Nov 4th
New ideas that inspire us, that drive us. It is our opportunity, our job – a bold and ambitious goal. A few and compelling future. Speak to those who can see it to. Inspire to involve and persist and advocate.
Screwing up, falling down and the messy process that is both inspired and difficult. we do it because what it can create, destroy, recreate, change, disrupt and grow.
These are the domain of the start-up entrepreneur. Those of us who are too blind, too dedicated and too completely enamoured by the sheer possibility of the future with their new widget – that they thrilled by the any new idea to capture the attention and imagination of the people around it – it must be so grand and inspiring. It is the job of the startup entrepreneur to strive to change the world – not just a little, but a lot. It is up to us to get creative, to get aggressive, to inspire and to
Paint a vision of a compelling future that inspires and awakens.
Thank-you to TechCrunch for the kick in the pants, and the reminder of the big calling.
– Sean
Does this make sense to you? TAKE ACTION before you leave, and make a small change in how you deal with your stuff.
Create a wish for any kind of special item on BorrowMe.
Create a listing to lend any book, dvd, tool or treasure to a friend or neighbor.
– Sean
http://www.borrowme.com/sean
Contact me directly.
Don’t forget to Come be a Fan, follow us on Twitter, or consider Getting Started.
Protect your stuff: with Cheese as Collateral!
Oct 9th
Smart lenders on BorrowMe protect their stuff in 2 key ways:
- Choose trading partners carefully (feedback score? vouches from others? friends of people you know?)
- Take collateral (trade DVD’s, take a deposit – or hold an item like CHEESE!) That’s what one bank in Italy has done!
Cheese as loan collateral:
“One regional bank in Italy stores more than 15,000 tonnes of Parmesan cheese which it keeps as collateral for loans. The bank holds about 440,000 wheels of Parmesan worth US$204-million in two climate controlled warehouses. Each wheel holds the equivalent of 550 liters of milk, worth about 300 Euros. Each one is branded with a serial number so it can be traced if stolen. Thieves tunneled under one warehouse earlier this year and made off with 570 wheels. Cheese producers use the loans to buy milk. There are 429 Parmesan producers in Italy and the industry is worth $2.4-billion.”
Wow. I know cheese was getting really expensive – but really … who would have guessed?.
These are just a few of my suggestions on how to get the most from BorrowMe. What are yours? Comment below, and share your idea.
– Sean
Does this make sense to you? TAKE ACTION before you leave, and make a small change in how you deal with your stuff.
Create a wish for any kind of special item on BorrowMe.
Create a listing to lend any book, dvd, tool or treasure to a friend or neighbor.
– Sean
http://www.borrowme.com/sean
Contact me directly.
Don’t forget to Come be a Fan, follow us on Twitter, or consider Getting Started.
1000 Ways to BorrowMe
Oct 6th
The funny thing about BorrowMe is that there are as many different things to share, and ways to use it – as there are people. I thought I would share some of my favorite ideas on how I BorrowMe, to inspire you to share yours. I don’t always share everything with just anyone – but here are some thoughts:
- Plug into your own young mom network to find everything you need for baby without buying new – and much of it for free! We’re working to help support ‘Baby & Free’ Groups around the country to connect you up!
- Share your National Park pass: If you use one, they can costs over $100 per year. We use ours just 2-3 times per season!
- Magazine subscriptions: I get a couple of specialty magazines that I’d be happy to lend to friends. Especially over BorrowMe – because I know I’ll get them back!
- Games, games, games! Whether you’ve got a Nintendo Wii, a PS3, XBox, or any game system – you have many games you don’t play, and those you’d love to try before you buy. BorrowMe is perfect for that.
- Lend or rent out your text books: Text book clubs are an amazing opportunity for students. I wrote an article about this idea here.
- Creating community gardens: Do you have a plot that others could use? Put it on BorrowMe! There’s another resource here.
- Camping gear: From walking poles to an 8-person tent – who really has 100% of everything they need? If you do – maybe you could create a little ’social capital’ by lending it on BorrowMe.
- A fantasy item: I have a Segway, paint ball guns and a rack for my SMART car on my WISH List. I’m not sure I need them right now, but I’d love to know where I could get them when I do. Besides, it would just be really, really fun to borrow a Segway some time! What would you wish for?
These are just a few of my thoughts on the 1000 ways to BorrowMe. What are yours? Comment below, and share your idea.
– Sean
Does this make sense to you? TAKE ACTION before you leave, and make a small change in how you deal with your stuff.
Create a wish for any kind of special item on BorrowMe.
Create a listing to lend any book, dvd, tool or treasure to a friend or neighbor.
– Sean
http://www.borrowme.com/sean
Contact me directly.
Don’t forget to Come be a Fan, follow us on Twitter, or consider Getting Started.
BorrowMe LABS: Experimental Features
Oct 6th
Well, you knew it would not be long before we created an experimental LAB. BorrowMe LABS is where we publish access to some of the experimental features & programs that may come to BorrowMe in the future. We encourage you to play, experiment, try-on and discuss the things we’ve dreamt up.
Here are links to some experiments:
MapMe – a Google maps app that allows users to look around for items to borrow nearby. Drag the map marker around.
BorrowMe Testers – if you like to experiment with the all the new and pending features – come and join our testing group.
Bulk Add Tool – a feature that helps you add 100’s of DVD’s, Games or other media files very quickly, with the help of the Amazon product database. Listings are complete with pictures and detail! Link TBA.
Renting your Textbooks
Sep 25th
At borrowme we are huge fans of textbook rentals for students. There are 3 reasons:
1/ The money. Borrowme may be new, but as of this writing sites like Chegg.com have already saved students over $44 million in reduced textbook costs through renting. Textbook buyback programs pay 10-15%of the original purchase price, and are immediately resold at 60-75% of retail. That represents an abusive practice in our books.
2/ Impact on people and planet. 20 textbooks is about 1 tree. (http://www.conservatree.org) x the 18 million students enrolled in universities and colleges in the US alone every year. As a comparison - it takes about 100 million trees to produce the total volume of junk mail that arrives in American mailboxes each year.
3/ Private ownership is not the only way. Despite what we have been taught about the high achievement of private ownership – temporary use items should move from person to person (the inspiration behind the creation of borrowme). Some items are not shareable – but textbooks are a prime candidate. Characteristics of highly ’sharable’ items include:
- Durability – does it largely maintain its value from user to user (not easily perishable, damaged or requiring maintenance);
- Temporary demand – do people need them for a short time, and then are largely done with them?
- Availability – are they in common supply on book shelves and in boxes?
The more any item matches these ’sharing’ criteria – the more ’shareable’ it is, and clearly textbooks do. Not only textbooks, but millions of other items from baby cribs & DVD’s to utility trailers meet this criteria. What will be required to bring these items into circulation is a system to match supply and demand. How can a person who needs something find the person who has it? For textbooks it seems – the answer is “the bookstore”. The other option is a place like Clegg.com where you can rent it.
A third option that has been the subject of discussion recently on various money saver blogs for students is the creation of local ‘Textbook Sharing’ clubs on campus. BorrowMe is a terrific tool for organizing a group and quickly listing required and available course material.
To find or start a local textbook sharing group on BorrowMe – go checkout www.borrowme.com/students. If you’d like to discuss the idea with me personally for your campus community, I’d love to hear from you.
– Sean
Does this make sense to you? TAKE ACTION before you leave, and make a small change in how you deal with your stuff.
Create a wish for any kind of special item on BorrowMe.
Create a listing to lend any book, dvd, tool or treasure to a friend or neighbor.
– Sean
http://www.borrowme.com/sean
Contact me directly.
Don’t forget to Come be a Fan, follow us on Twitter, or consider Getting Started.
Dreambank: Another way to give dreams, not Stuff.
Sep 24th
DreamBank helps fund dreams that matter.
Like BorrowMe, DreamBank is a story about having more by buying less. DreamBank.org helps any of us – from a charity to a student or family like ours to describe a dream, and ask family, friends and strangers to support it financially. It is an alternative gifting platform – helping to take us away from disposable trinkets, to the kinds of stuff that matters more.
Temporary treasures.
For some time now my wife and I have been looking for a good way to do something about the flood of ‘temporary treasures’ that well-meaning family and friends send to us, and the kids as gifts at Christmas, birthdays and other holidays. We are very appreciative of the thought, and the kids love opening fancy boxes – but surely there must be a better way. The difficulty of course is that gifts very often seem to separate and move rapidly in many small pieces to a surprising number of different places in our home, cars, and in the yard. The excitement changes to some frustration, much clutter and quite a bit of work to clean, organize, store, repair (often fruitlessly) and frequently dispose of these items. Many I find tucked in boxes with missing pieces, or immediately abandoned. I feel a bit sad to see it all pile up, and so little time spent enjoying it all.
The more toys they have – the less they are valued.
For a few years now our family has been trying to change our consumption practices – buy less, and borrow, fix and reuse more. We think it is the right thing to do for the planet, the kids and the community. In fact, we’ve notices that when the kids have less – there is a change in their attitudes towards their stuff. When there is less – they no longer step on their possessions. This is a primary measurement in our house of how much we value our things. There is a zero tolerance policy for clothes and books. They are never ever on the floor – and we certainly do not every step on one. But – the toys are often another story. With few exceptions – the more there are, the less they are each valued.
Making a decision to buy
If we are considering buying a new item for our home, or a toy for the children – we have developed a simple process, by asking several questions. When we see something interesting in a store or magazine we talk about it, and ask the following questions:
- How will we use it?
- How will we store it?
- Will it make our lives better?
- Is it something we principally already have?
- Can we borrow it?
- Is there an alternative that is better?
- Do we really want or need it?
- Would we want to use this money for anything else instead?
We are careful not to promote a scarcity mentality with phrases like. “we can’t afford that”. We emphasize choices (based on a recognition of the notion of finite resources), and age appropriate consequences of buying decisions. Often, the conversation with the children is very interesting, and the children change their minds on their own when they think about it more carefully.
We also have a few rules for buying something new.
- We never buy something we see for the first time (no impulse shopping for us, or the kids);
- If an item is truly worthy – it must be mentioned several times over the next few weeks – NOT prompted by advertising of any kind.
- When we buy an toy or item for our home – it is often a specific trip for just that item.
Traditional gifting at odds with our values.
It is always nice to both give and receive a gift. The obvious problem is the traditional gifting practices are at odds with many of the things we value, and we struggle with how to reconcile those without hurting people’s feelings, or taking about from their joy of giving.
Dreambank: Another way to give dreams, not Stuff.
We don’t have the answer yet – but one thing we are trying is the DreamBank. We have created a big family dream of going to Disney World in 2010, and have asked our family and friends to support our dream. Our hope is that this platform will be a way to give something truly meaningful to our family, without all the waste, clutter and hidden costs of the ‘traditional’ approach to giving gifts. I am not sure if we’ll be successful, and how our request will be received by family – but I think it is worth a try.
Does this make sense to you? TAKE ACTION before you leave, and make a small change in how you deal with your stuff.
Create a dream of your own on DreamBank.
Create a wish for a special toy on BorrowMe.
Lend one of your toys to a friend or neighbor.
– Sean
http://www.borrowme.com/sean
Contact me directly.
Don’t forget to Come be a Fan, follow us on Twitter, or consider Getting Started.
Don’t lend anything to just anybody.
Sep 18th
Yes, you heard me. Even though you’ll hear us say, “borrow, lend or rent anything from anybody” – you should not. We mean that you can – not that you should. Part of saving money and more than a few trees by borrowing personal stuff is make a few smart choices. The biggest decision is ‘what should I lend to whom’. Here are my suggestions on smart borrowing, whether you’re on borrowme, or looking in your friend’s storage locker.
Lending the right stuff to the right person:
1/ Select the right item to lend: Stuff that is durable and idle top the list. A shovel, a game cartridge (ok – more for a kids DS game) top the list. After that – it becomes more difficult. A digital camera, or a laptop like BrokeGrad lent out… more difficult, and less suitable.
2/ Select the right person to lend to: For very durable items, it matters less who you lend to, with some sort of minimum standard (there are clearly some people you should never lend to – perhaps you know some of them!). For less durable items – it becomes more critical to choose the right person.
3/ Mitigate the risks. There are ways to reduce your risk if you’re lending out your things:
a) Collateral: exchange your item for one of similar value. They get their DVD back when you get yours back.
b) Try using a site like borrowme.com to arrange and record personal lending (you’ll both have a basic record of who, what and when – and such a system can provide automatic reminders to avoid that ackward 4th request to get something back). In more formal situations – you can even take a deposit, held in trust until the item is returned in its original condition.
Good luck, and safe borrowing!
– Sean
Does this make sense to you? TAKE ACTION before you leave, and make a small change in how you deal with your stuff.
Create a wish for any kind of special item on BorrowMe.
Create a listing to lend any book, dvd, tool or treasure to a friend or neighbor.
– Sean
http://www.borrowme.com/sean
Contact me directly.
Don’t forget to join our Facebook Group, follow us on Twitter, or consider Getting Started.
Vitamin Daily: Calgary Edition
Sep 10th
A Vitamin Daily .. daily dose: September 10th, 2009
Scenario #1: Completely obsessed with Jack Bauer and 24, you have all the DVD sets sitting on our shelf. And they’re collecting dust.
Scenario #2: The ceiling light in your condo is burnt out and no combination of chairs and/or boosts can get you high enough to change it. Do you buy a ladder just for this?
The answer: BorrowMe.
The Calgary-based company connects you with all sorts of inventory available in your area. Whether it’s to borrow, to rent or to purchase items, there’s something for every need. Its creators call it “eBay for borrowing meets Facebook,” where you set up an account and begin adding what you have that you’d like to sell, rent or lend and, in turn, what you want.
Need a raft to float down the river? Rent it for $5. A four-wheel dolly for the move? $4 to rent. Trying to get rid of an old futon? No need to distribute flyers around the university.
We can’t wait to get our hands on that sod cutter!
Have a read:
Don’t forget to join our Facebook Group, follow us on Twitter, check out Why BorrowMe or consider Getting Started.