Every Great Product Solves A Problem

The problem: How to schedule side jobs around parenting and a full-time job

For whom?: Josh , a 28-year-old hospital social worker with a three-month-old son and wife whose demanding, high-stakes job makes her the primary bread-winner. “I’m not the one really paying the bills, I’m just bulking up our savings as my wife pays the majority of the bills monthly.”

In their own words: “I have a ton of different DScout™ missions that I’m a part of, but It’s a Tuesday so I’m full time dad today. I’ve spent the whole day taking care of him and I’m exhausted after being up at night with him. I’m just trying to get these missions done so I can make some extra spending money on the side that I will find some time to spend at some point.”

Goals: He wants guilt-free spending money while still socking away all of his full-time earnings in savings.

Tactics: After a full-time job, work in short bursts while the baby sleeps, doing work-from-home missions for DScout™ and other app-based task curators.

Success is: “Yesterday I was able to use just secondary income to purchase a new smart phone, so it didn’t come out of any of my regular primary job primary income…so that was pretty good.”

Challenges: Exhaustion, strict primary focus (child), and lack of work/life balance. “I wish I had more time but I don’t and I think that’s probably just a standard working person kind of experience, honestly.”

Josh’s take on non-traditional work: “When making money from multiple sources the most difficult thing is just balancing the time to get everything done…the best part is that I get money from multiple sources, there really isn’t much more to it than that. And (dips camera to show son sleeping on this chest) the hardest thing about balancing time is having this little guy.”

Problems Steady™ can solve for this user:

• Scheduling: Database his actual (not preferred) work pattern, then find all opportunities that fit and prompt him to apply ahead of time so that best-paying missions/tasks are queued up when he is ready.
• Goal-setting: Database his earning patterns and give him a set of reinforcements and reminders that help him reach the goal. This might include some basic time-management lessons from Covey, et al.
• Life Lessons: Provide a small stream of quotes, videos, longer pieces about the new science of happiness so that he owns his schedule, maybe even adjusts it, and has a rubric to find happiness by seeing meaning in his work.
• Financial Literacy: Provide a small stream of lessons about the time value of money and other concepts that will grow with him and encourage investing, budgeting and expense-management.