Taking on our Biggest Task

If you've read our post about how our TaskRunners journey started you'll realise we we're pretty much stuck in the busy-ness of life like millions of Australians. Simply overwhelmed.  

When I first thought of TaskRunners, I wasn’t looking for a specific “collaborative consumption” business to start. I didn’t even know the term or movement existed. I sure wasn’t looking for an online start-up that could make use of the latest in technology because I’m almost a complete technology dud. Start-up culture and practices weren’t even on my mind.

No. It sounds a little cliché but I just wanted to help and connect people which brought some joy into their lives. I’m not talking around help in a charitable way (that’s another one of my passions that I’ll save for another post) but in a sense that made people’s lives easier, more enjoyable and just so they have the freedom to choose what they wanted to do with their time. I know it was what I also wanted for myself and my family.

What I was seeing around me was (and have since found out):

• Parents, especially mothers, drowning under the weight of the domestic burden, sleepless nights and a lack of ‘me’ time.

• Overworked and stressed out individuals who were working ridiculous hours without time to even enjoy their families let alone look after their own health.

• The growing Grey Army (of which my parents are a part of) who have all this skill, experience and knowledge to share but don’t get a lot of opportunities to make the most out of that without a lot of digging.

• A huge underutilised workforce in the form of stay-at-home mums, university students, carers, the disabled, underemployed and the unemployed.

• Freelancers who were stressed by the growing number of eBidding sites denting their livelihoods as more and more work went overseas.

• Small business owners who saw less and less of their families because of impossible ‘To Do Lists’ attached to their workload.

Mission Impossible

With all these people leaping around in my head, I began to wonder what I could do.  How could I do something to cater to all these different markets or it just impossible? It literally bugged me for months before I began to realise it was TIME that was everybody’s problem. It took me that long to come to that realisation because I was just so caught up with life myself. 

So what if I could find a way where people who had spare time on their hands could help others who didn’t and redistribute what everyone needed to do and re-balance time? Sounds a little far fetched but I did my research and I knew I could introduce a localised solution to cater to the Australian family. The task was on! On now, just mere weeks away from going live, we're ready to get things happening for people.

Sign up here to be the one of the firsts to know when we launch. 

What do you think of TaskRunners? Love it? Hate it? Not quite sure?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

x Cheryl

TaskRunners Springs into action!

We heart TaskRunners!

Sky blue and canary yellow balloons filled a perfect Spring day at the Breakfast Point Spring Fair on Sunday 16 September. And what a day it was!

As TaskRunners’ first public appearance, we received a big warm welcome from the residents of the Canada Bay community and had a pretty darn good time ourselves. Young families were out enforce, with kids absolutely loving all the rides and games. Cuisines to satisfy every taste bud filled bellies and stalls of every type wrapped the village green. Check out the photos of the day on our Facebook page and tag yourself as well.

Family, fun and a bit more fun

We are family!

Gourmet cupcakes from Anna Trivedi Cakes

In keeping with making time for the family and fun for all, we had heaps of giveaways including kid magnets – balloons (of course!), puzzles, truly scrumptious cupcakes from Anna Trivedi Cakes and an ear for listening to what everyone would like a hand with, TaskRunners style. From help with cleaning, cooking meals, through to organising the kitchen, we heard what busy families would cheerfully swap for an extra couple of hours of free time. With such genuine enthusiasm for helping your neighbours lighten the workload at home and more, you can be rest assured we’re very keen to make it happen for you!

The ‘1 Minute Task Challenge’

And your time starts...now!

To keep the big kids amused, we ran the hugely popular ‘1 Minute Task Challenge’. Contestants had to write down as many Tasks they could think of in 60 seconds for their chance to win a $100 gift voucher from RedBalloon.

Task Master, Helena, scores the $100 prize

The amazing Helena Tosello aced the challenged with a huge 19 tasks (our own Cheryl scored 18 in her test run) and will be off enjoying some ‘Me time’ courtesy of RedBalloon and TaskRunners. Well done, Helena! As a stay-at-home mum with kids, Helena’s keen to earn some extra income around her family’s schedule. So if you’re looking for some help around the home – Helena might be your lady. Drop us a line.

And the $50 RedBalloon voucher goes to….

We still have a $50 RedBalloon voucher to give away so stay tuned into our Facebook page when we announce the lucky winner on Wednesday 19 September. Oh the joys of giving!

Thank you!

Bird's eye view of the Fair by Katrina Davis

We can’t forget to say a very heartfelt thanks to the organisers of the day, Breakfast Point Realty  for putting together a great community event that was just seamless.  As well as all the wonderful people we met during the day that spent some chatting with us as we listened to how people felt TaskRunners could help with their lives, in either with things around the house or providing assistance with the skills they have.

From the moment we arrived till pack down at the end we were buzzing with excitement. The community spirit, sense of fun and the simple enjoyment of sharing time with our families, friends and neighbours was just fantastic! We look forward to giving our members more time to enjoy days like this when TaskRunners launches!

I’d like to thank my…

Lizzie, Cheryl, Corn & 'Magic Hands' Dave

Corn, Chery & Anf'Mazing'

Meet the parents

Naturally, we couldn’t have done it without the help of a great team:

• Bek Lambert, our marketing guru from Unashamedly Creative (incognito and missing from the photos)
• Anfernee, who happy snapped the day (beats an iphone any day!)
• Dave and Lizzie for playing with helium and helping us spread some blue and yellow lurve
• Our friends and family that dropped by during the day to show their support (you rock!)

The fun's just begun

We're only a few weeks from launching the website but in the meantime, you can already start Posting Tasks and Become a Task Runner. Woo hoo! 

And if you missed meeting us on the day or for anyone else keen to join the TaskRunners community, feel free to pop by our Facebook page and say a big HI! 

Yours in tasks

Cheryl, Cornelius and Team TaskRunners

Corn & Chez

How a renovation nightmare sparked an idea

Chalkboard 48 by Chalkboard Wisdom

Many moons ago in 2009, my husband Cornelius and I, had not long nailed our last nail in a gruelling 10 month renovation of my parents' home (thank god!). They were overseas working and we were renting from them. Ok, so we were a tad naive and overly optimistic to think that living in the home whilst renovating and working full time would be 'an exciting challenge'. We'd done Tech classes and made jigsaws at school, how hard could putting up plasterboard walls and ripping out a cast iron fireplace be right? Fools! Turn back, wrong way!!

So as much as it was a, putting it nicely, 'growing experience' for our marriage and our wood working skills, we swore from then never to lift another paint brush in our lives again. On the plus side - the place looks pretty darn fantabulous now. Just no jumping around and loud talking you hear me. 

Word of advice: if you ever have to stick a 6 foot, 150kg fish tank into a wall make sure you measure the space 99 times plus one more and then get someone else to measure it for you another 50 times. Just saves soooooo much heartache. 

Return of the Parentals

My parents were due to return in 2010 for their grand retirement and back to their sparkling newly revamped home. As life would have it, my mother discovered a tumour in her bowel and did a bee-line straight home to Sydney for the operation. We hung around to help with her recovery and provide morale support. My step-dad, we call him Uncle Bob, in the meantime, embarked on continuing with minor renos and given the garden a face light. Slight problem was with a sore hip and knee moving around wasn't particularly easy. So really, progress was p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slow (sorry UB!) and our weekends ended up back in our trackies, covered in dust, hammer and paint brush in hand. Argh!! 

Excuse the language but yup, it felt just like that

The reality was, it was all minor stuff that needed done. Painting the top of the car porch, hammering in plasterboards, touching up paint. Really anyone that was a little handy could have done it in a flash and but we were flat out like squashed possums by Monday absolutely exhausted. Problem was, no tradie was going to want to take on little jobs like that and who else apart from family could you get to help out? A neighbour maybe, or even a uni student but how or where would we find them?

Mini Bob saves the day

So happens UB did manage to find, through the Plumber, a uni student (Bob, aptly named Mini Bob) who, for a daily fee, was there to help out with the planting, the weeding, the ladder holding, anything! It was a match made in heaven. UB happy. Mini Bob happy. We had our weekends back! UBER HAPPY!

That 'Light Bulb' moment

We thought, wouldn’t it be great to be able to have somewhere to go to find people like Mini Bob to help out with tasks, small jobs and things you needed done which could be a little random (or not) which would mean time strapped families could get more done and spend more time doing the things they really wanted to do. It would allow people to earn an extra income using their skills, time or knowledge to help someone out. It just made sense. Haven’t we been doing this for centuries? Isn't this what community is about?

Stuff it, let's get it done!

So to cut a long story short, that’s where it all began. It took a while for us to actually act on it with full time jobs keeping us busy but a chance encounter with Magic Mike (Michael, our brilliant developer) in late 2011 ignited the fire. We've since moved out and then in May 2011, after our return from a soul searching trip to South America,  I took the crucial step of living my cushy job to embark on this journey. We hadn't flushed out the nuts and bolts of exactly how it would work or whether it would work but we knew it was about connecting people and creating a win-win.  We called it TaskRunners. More on how we came up with the name in another post.

Our soul searching trek in Patagonia, South America

The biggest leap of faith, or act of stupidity? Well, you'll just have to join us to find out. 

Have you ever made a leap of faith into the unknown? What was it for and how did it turn out?