@kylemccollom

A big, profitable company with conscious leadership can do more for our world than the startup that stayed small because it put social purpose over the customer.

Sign PDFs Electronically & Unsend Awkward Emails

Hard-to-find, free features that save you time, paper, and maybe even your job:

Sign PDFs Electronically

You can sign a PDF on your Mac without having to print, sign, and scan a document or pay Adobe for their signature feature.

Setup: In Preview’s preferences, go to Signatures, sign a piece of white paper, hold up to your camera, and Preview saves your signature.

Hold your signed piece of paper so the signature rests on the blue line.

Use: Under the Edit toolbar (), click the Signature button (), hover over your desired signature line, and then click. Done!

Unsend Awkward Emails

This is the closest thing to a time machine.

That feeling when you realize you replied all, had a typo, or forgot the attachment is a thing of the past. “Undo Send” allows you to catch bad emails a few seconds after hitting send.

Setup: In Gmail, click Settings > Labs > “Undo Send” lab > Enable > Save Changes.

Other Products / Features that I Like:

Limitless - Turns your new tab into a beautiful dashboard that tracks your browsing habits.
Spreeder - Speed read articles you find online. Use their bookmarklet to streamline the process.

Have any other cool tools you want to share? Let me know!

My friends LOVE photobooths at parties. What if next time, instead of a photobooth, we play Happy by Pharrell Williams and film all our friends dancing to the song in a fashion similar to the music video? Afterwards, we’d cut all the best takes into one music video of all our friends having a blast and dancing like fools!

The Companies You Want to Work for in Nashville

Get to know some of the companies worth working for in this city:

FashionABLE - Fair trade scarves and leather goods.

Dispensary of Hope - Connects surplus medications from manufacturers, distributors, and providers to charitable clinics and pharmacies serving the poor and uninsured. Hearing the founder Jason pitch the model was mind-blowing.

Good Spread - Tasty peanut butter and hilarious co-founders that spread good for days.

Nisolo Shoes - Amazing shoes. Amazing shoemakers in Peru. Amazing team. I am endlessly jealous of their office / showroom.

Thistle Farms - The staple of social enterprise in Nashville - fair trade natural body care products made by women who have survived lives of prostitution, trafficking, addiction, and life on the streets. The founder Becca is one of the most compelling Nashvillians out there.

WELD - A community for people whose superpower is creativity. The founders are rockstars.

Red Earth Trading Co. - Fair trade jewelry made by artisans in the developing world. Also, baller popup stores.

FLO {thinkery} - Need I explain?

Emerge Financial Wellness - It’s kinda like iBankers doing good. It’s scary how smart Mario is.

Batch - The best local goods delivered to your doorstep monthly. I wouldn’t blame you if you snacked your way through the work day.

And, of course, my company:

Everly - All of us love getting to do what we do each day. We aren’t hiring right now, but it’s in the cards. Follow us on LinkedIn and signup for our jobs newsletter to stay in the loop!

These are just some of the awesome companies to work for in Nashville. Have suggestions? Let me know @kylemccollom!

Blood Pressure Kiosks in the Developing World

This business model attempts to address the question: Can we build a social healthcare enterprise that serves the needs of 25 million slum dwellers suffering from chronic diseases by 2019?

Would love your feedback!

Blood pressure kiosks that incentivize drug adoption and adherence through discounts funded by advertising.

Problem

63% of all deaths in 2008 – 36 million people – were caused by NCDs
Nearly 80% of NCD deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries
One category of these NCDs - cardiovascular diseases (CVD) - is the number one cause of death globally
High blood pressure (HBP) accounts for the majority those deaths (13% of global deaths)
Many people in the developing world are unaware of the risk of HBP, do not know they have HBP, do not know where to get tested, and/or are unaware how inexpensive HBP medication is

Solution

75% of reduction in CVD-related mortality in men and 66% of reduction in women in developed countries over past 2 decades is attributable to better risk reduction, not to better post-event interventions
Testing and treating HBP patients with simple regimen of aspirin, statin, and BP lowering agent averts 20% of cardiovascular deaths over 10 years at an annual cost of USD 0.43 - 0.90 per person treated

Product & Service

Blood pressure kiosks: set up in urban centers of the developing world in a fashion similar to kiosks in grocery and convenience stores of the developed world
Diagnosis: kiosks are fun, curious, and automated with signs and a video screen provide guidance
Adoption: barrier reduction and time-sensitive incentives. If a tester has HBP, they receive culturally relevant and compelling reason to medicate, an expiring discount for HBP drugs to create urgency, locations of the nearest provider and pharmacy
Measurement: people tested, BP drug discounts offered, new patients tested by provider, and discounts redeemed at pharmacy

Revenue

High value advertising: while BP measurement is in progress, ads for products sold in the area play for the viewer’s undivided attention
Potential customers: multinationals selling soap or detergent, local politicians, etc.
Licensing rights for multinational to talk in the developed world about supporting these kiosks
Revenue funds kiosks, maintenance, electricity, and drug discounts

Marketing

Educate and involve influencers - matriarchs, patriarchs, store owners, etc.
Signage near kiosks in high traffic areas

Future Expansion

The BP kiosk could evolve over time to provide adherence incentives and education for how to maintain normal BP
After establishing the distribution, maintenance, vendor, provider, pharmacy and software infrastructure necessary to support the BP kiosk network, the company could introduce new healthcare kiosks to address other diseases in the developing world in a scalable, revenue-generating manner

If you want to build a ship, don’t gather people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

This quote encompasses a lot of the theory behind my Overview Trip idea (a birthright trip to outer space for low income students).

We have the tools to end poverty. Now, we need to distribute these interventions. Make it happen with the D-Prize.

The analogy I sometimes use is…the Batman movie. It’s pretty freaking awesome. You’ve got incredible special effects, great script, multiple takes, amazing actors, great sound, and it’s very engaging. But even if you were to have the same script, and you say now…we are going to have that script performed by the local town troupe in every small town in America, they would then have to recreate the Dark Knight with home-sown costumes, jumping across the stage, not getting their lines quite right, not really looking like the people in the movie, and no special effects. That would suck. It would be terrible. That’s education.

Elon Musk illustrating how much the education system needs to be disrupted in this video.

Mind. Blown.

I call myself a Republican because I am one. I believe in market solutions and common sense realities and the necessity to defend ourselves against a dangerous world and that’s about it. The problem is now I have to be homophobic. I have to count the number of times people go to church. I have to deny facts and think scientific research is a long con. I have to think poor people are getting a sweet ride. And I have to have such a stunning inferiority complex that I fear education and intellect…in the 21st century. But most of all, the biggest new requirement, really the only requirement is that I have to hate Democrats.

- Newsroom’s Will McAvoy

A new political party may not be a feasible first step for catering to people who feel the same way. But what if there was a rating system for politicians similar to the NRA’s Grades & Endorsements system but based on conservative fiscal policy AND liberal issues?

What if there was a birthright trip to outer space for all human beings? We’d live in a more peaceful, sustainable, and intelligent society.

sxeworldwide:

That’s why they invented ColaLife

http://colalife.org

mikaelahamilton:

dreamy sunset outtake from my shoot with Everly yesterday.

Don’t settle. Find your sweet spot.

Creating Our Own Happiness
by WAYNE COYNE
from NPR’s Special Series: This I Believe

I believe we have the power to create our own happiness. I believe the real magic in the world is done by humans. I believe normal life is extraordinary. I was sitting in my car at a stoplight intersection listening to the radio. I was, I guess, lost in the moment, thinking how happy I was to be inside my nice warm car. It was cold and windy outside, and I thought, “Life is good.” Now, this was a long light. As I waited, I noticed two people huddled together at the bus stop. To my eyes, they looked uncomfortable; they looked cold and they looked poor. Their coats looked like they came from a thrift store. They weren’t wearing stuff from The Gap. I knew it because I’d been there. The couple seemed to be doing their best to keep warm. They were huddled together, and I thought to myself, “Oh, those poor people in that punishing wind.” But then I saw their faces. Yes, they were huddling, but they were also laughing. They looked to be sharing a good joke, and suddenly, instead of pitying them, I envied them. I thought, “Huh, what’s so funny?” They didn’t notice the wind. They weren’t worried about their clothes. They weren’t looking at my car thinking, “I wish I had that.” You know when a single moment feels like an hour? Well, in that moment, I realized I had assumed this couple needed my pity, but they didn’t. I assumed things were all bad for them, but they weren’t. And I understood we all have the power to make moments of happiness happen. Now, maybe that’s easy for me to say. I feel lucky to have fans around the world, a house with a roof and a wife who puts up with me. But I felt this way even when I was working at Long John Silver’s. I worked there for 11 years as a fry cook. When you work at a place that long, you see teenagers coming in on their first dates; then they’re married; then they’re bringing in their kids. You witness whole sections of people’s lives. In the beginning, it seemed like a dead end job. But at least I had a job. And frankly, it was easy. After two weeks, I knew all I needed to know, and it freed my mind. The job allowed me to dream about what my life could become. The first year I worked there, we got robbed. I lay on the floor. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t think I stood a chance. But everything turned out all right. A lot of people look at life as a series of miserable tasks, but after that, I didn’t. I believe this is something all of us can do: Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves. This I believe.