#duke2019

“My grandma has been a huge part of my life. She has always encouraged me, always pushed me. She's really, really smart, but just because she grew up in a tiny town in rural Kansas in the 30s, she just didn't have any opportunities. She's so inspiring. She's really, really pushed me because she didn't have the opportunities that I do. She's the only reason I'm at Duke partially because she pushed my parents to let me do things I would have never have done without her, but then also because she's helped me a lot financially. She'd never actually been to Duke. I told her all these great things about it. She had this amazing idea that Duke is like the pinnacle. But, then spring semester of my senior year when I got into Duke, she was actually in the hospital. She had open heart surgery. She was in cardiac ICU for a month. You're not supposed to be in there for more than a week. She was dying. I never thought she would be able to make it because she couldn't even walk across a room for months. But, she finally got better. She finally got to the point where she was able to walk long enough distances so she could fly out and I got to show her around the campus and show her where I was doing all the different things that I told her about. It was really special.”

Eliana Lauder is a bubbly and excited member of the Class of 2019 that oozes enthusiasm for her recent start up BinderChecked but also could write an autobiography about her relationship with Mochi Ice Cream or Hershey's Cookies n’ Cream candy bars. She is also gifted with an extra stomach designated exclusively for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and abnormally small fingers (especially her pinky). Find her with her canvas and watercolors in the Duke Gardens all spring and cozied up at Cocoa Cinnamon with her favorite hazelnut sipping chocolate all winter long.

What’s is the name of your company?

It’s called BinderChecked. The whole idea is that I was essentially doing all of this, not for a class or not even to try something new in college, I literally was just pissed off.

Hahaha!

I just was not feeling the fact that I was expected to be productive and my different sources of productivity were disorganized in themselves! How can you be productive when you have to-do lists on five different apps on your phone and then one crumpled up at the bottom of your backpack and one on your computer? How can you be organized when your source of organization is not organized in itself?

So for me I just started making these little planners. I would make planners that were all categorized. That really helped me, because I could suddenly have everything I needed to do on one sheet of paper and it was one master list. I could plan out my day and it worked! At first I would go to stationary stores but no matter what everything I found was just really bad!

Yah, that’s so true! They are horrible!

Exactly and my day doesn’t go horizontally, like how most of those planners are arranged, my day goes vertically. So I made my planner that way. I would fill out my day hour by hour and would write down what’s urgent, what I want to do today, errands I need to run, things I need to order, people I need to contact, and little things I can do when I have time.

So whenever I’m feeling unproductive all I have to do is pull one of these out and I know exactly what I need to do and I can just start crossing things off.

You must be every parent’s golden dream child? You’re just the most organized person ever.

Haha, noooo! I personally make myself be organized. I don’t think that anyone is inherently organized. I think that some people have more intrinsic motivation to be organized. I think that a lot of people need hand-holding and anyone can become organized.

I know a lot of people that really struggle with organization and have never found something that worked for them and then through my planners have changed, gotten on top of things, and on their grind. It’s really exciting, especially because I study psychology and it’s psychologically proven that if you go through the act of crossing something out you feel so much better. Like I’m thinking of selling sharpies along with this! That’s why I didn’t try and make an app and instead went with paper.

It’s so helpful and we all feel so much better! Sometimes I even add subsets to my to-do lists just so I can cross out even more.

It’s just a lot less daunting when you break things down.

Exactly, exactly. The act of crossing things out just really worked for me. In the beginning of the year I was on Varsity Rowing, and that was incredible, but people would always ask me how I would balance being a student athlete, having a social life, having rigorous academic load, working in Dan Ariely’s lab, and starting this company.

The reason I was able to do all of that was because I had different planners for different parts of my life. That let me compartmentalize it all and work through each task one at a time.

It must help you so much here. Especially because everyone at Duke seems to be over-book and doing a ton of things. It can get very overwhelming.

That’s why I love this idea for Duke. Duke is a place that is well-rounded. It has high-caliber sports, academic excellence, and a really vibrant social and cultural scene. It attracts people that value having all three of those things. So as a result you get an entire student body of people that are that one person from their high school that was able to do it all, balance everything, get good grades, do sports, participate in community service, have extra-curriculars, and maintain friendships.

Even now I think a lot of Duke students struggle with this balancing act. I was reading a survey recently that claimed, unsurprisingly, that college students don’t get enough sleep. I think sleep is what is usually sacrificed when we can’t organize ourselves.

Mhmmm, we are all struggling to balance and these planners are how I was able to do that. There are four different planners: a daily to-do list, a social planner, an academic planner that is customized for each person, and then a weekly planner that helps block out your week.

So did this all start in high school?

I started making the planners for myself in high school, but the creation of a brand around it just started last semester in the first few weeks of school. That’s how this entire thing essentially started: in my dorm room. Cliché as that sounds. As the demand grew I decided to just launch a website and start some social media for it to see what happened.

I was also in a class called Building Global Audiences and my professor, Aaron Dinin, taught you how to build young start-ups and online market! That was incredible because every day I was taking notes not because I was just curious about the class (which I was) but because I was thinking about how I could implement those methods and concepts that night on my website. That just worked out so well for me because by being in this class I was able to develop a mission for this company. To build this community of stressed out people into a community of people that feel like they are on their grind, on their peak productivity, and can help each other out in getting there.

Along with reaching peak productivity, there’s a reason these planners are so simplistic without any color. It’s not because color printing is expensive. I wanted something simple to maximize productivity. I just want to get shit done and get down to business. I don’t need excessive flowery designs. I want to make an upscale-high end brand that is more custom and sleek than Office Depot and Staples but also scaled back from Lilly Pulitzer and Kate Spade and more “down to business.”

I’m also finding a way to connect each success story to each other and build a community of Checkers.

So now that we are in the second semester how is that community building growing?

What I do is that every time someone buys a binder we do a little mini photoshoot where I take a ton of photos of them with their binder and (eventually) I post those on Instagram and on the Checkered Blog on the website. I’m slowly trying to build that community but the main community building that I am doing is building an ambassador program.

Essentially what that is, is finding a way to link up a bunch of people who believe in this cause and believe in building a community and spreading a sense of having a straight to the point, productivity products tailored towards college students. Soon I will be having applications for people to apply to be ambassadors.

Would this program be across the country?

Yes, at different colleges across the US. They will get a bunch of gear, a free binder, different planners, propaganda merchandise and some other things that I’ve been working on and they will make a commission on their sales. It will help spread consumer advocates across the nation.

Right now I’m building past the original big, bulky binder. It worked great and it let everything be in one place but I’m trying to experiment and build it in different ways. Like I’m selling a new color but more importantly I’m trying to get involved in the community in new ways.

For example, during finals last week I handed out BinderChecked hair ties, pins, and little cookies and cream Hershey’s kisses. I passed them out around Lilly during finals saying “Good luck on finals!”. It worked really well. A lot of people are using the pins and there was a peak in views on the website. It definitely helped. That type of PR is very important because I think it makes people feel that I can help you with your productivity whether its food or actual planners! I’m helping you somehow!

Who is your market at Duke?

At Duke it tends to be girls. It’s pretty much exclusively girls. I haven’t targeted guys at all. It’s kind of intentional. I think if I tried to extend my niche market too early I won’t get anyone. That’s why I’m zeroing in on the ladies.

Right now I don’t have a ton of visibility. I haven’t invited my Facebook friends to like the page or posted in the All Duke group. I’m trying to build it up a little more before releasing my baby to the world. I feel like I was building it up all last semester and that’s why I’m so excited to speak with you now because now I feel like we are on that strong trajectory now. Now’s a great time for people to start hearing about it because it’s getting exciting!

This is like heaven for organization lovers! I love this type of stuff.

That’s exactly how I feel too! I’m really eco-conscious, so I’m trying to make that clear through partnering with a local Durham start-up. It’s been really great meeting them through American Underground. They are called Bound Custom Journals. We are going to work together to manufacture exclusively in Durham.

I’m basically starting an entirely new line of small on-the-go planners that are going to be more about planning out your time. I’m not going to have the academic or social planner in there, as of now. I think it will be more monthly and weekly formatted planner. I’m still going to experiment around with it and see what happens!

They’re going to be pretty small 140 page journals that this company makes and we’re partnering to make a BinderChecked line of their journals. This is a serious sneak peak so stay tuned!!!

You keep saying “we” but who is “we”? Is “we” you? Are you doing all this alone?

Good question! I actually mostly say “we” because I don’t want to take full credit. I’ve been working so hard, but with the guidance and aid of so many people. For example, my professor Aaron Dinin has been mentoring me throughout this whole thing. Also, last semester some students in that class worked with me. They were great and gave me a lot of insight about it.

Has it been overwhelming doing this mainly by yourself?

Very much so! I love marketing and I want to go into branding and consumer psychology, but when it comes to manufacturing and dealing with different sorts of logistical stuff like making sure our profit margin is where we want it to be I’m kind of alone so it’s a learning process. It’s forcing me to learn in a very hands-on manner.

How have you been able to handle the stress? Through your binders haha?

Yah!!! It’s a vicious cycle where they make me stressed out and then destress me haha! I think a lot of it is because I am involved in many exciting things on and off campus. But my roommate is my best friend in the whole wide world and she always calms me down and tells me she is proud of me for doing this. She’s just very supportive and my parents and family are very supportive as well. I have a strong support system.

How did your parents react to you wanting to do this?

To be honest, I’m from an area where everyone basically does this and they were like “cool!”. They were more like “We’ll believe it when we see it”. They aren’t funding any of it or anything like that. They told me that if this is something I wanted to do then it was my thing.

It’s definitely been a fun adventure the whole way through.  

blue devil, 

You don’t understand how much I miss you! I have been reading these although it does not seem that way considering this is my first post. I’m so bad. I come up with this and I can’t even follow it myself. I am so sorry. Ok so I just decided that I’ll write down the highlights of my past few days (basically ever since I got here). So, I’m warning you, this post is going to be incredibly long (please bear with me as you have done for so many years somehow). Ok so basically move-in day was super exciting but also really stressful. I was so paranoid that the 3 hour time slot that they gave us to move in wouldn’t be enough, and of course it wasn’t. Luckily I was able to move in a substantial amount of stuff, and after many more trips to Target, I think I am finally all moved in (give or take a few little, lingering items). On the evening of move in day, we had an event called first night, which was basically just a thing where a dj played music in the quad near our dorms and made us do some socializing and dancing and shit. It was pretty fun and I found my birthday buddy (person with the same birthday as me)! That was really cool in my opinion. Then again, I get excited by very insignificant things. The guy was kind of weird though. We got to talking and when I told him my major was CS, he gave me this weird glare that read “NERD!!”. Then I figured out he was a hotelie. Or so I thought. He told me he was in the hotel school, but then I saw him at a freaking engineering advising meeting the next day. It was so weird...this is the first of many stories by the way. Well the day after that, we had some other orientation shit during the day. I know it was only a few days ago but I really don’t remember. At night, we had another mixer/social event. My friends (omg did I forget to mention that I’ve made friends?! I’m so surprised because I never saw this coming!!! LOL) and I ended up following a herd of nantucket red shorts down to a collegetown frat party. I know I shouldn’t be partying on the 2nd night...oops. Well I was pretty calm...the other people there obviously weren’t. It was still fun I guess. I have too many weird things to tell you from that night so I’ll just tell you when we facetime. The day after was our last day of orientation events and we had our silent disco!! I remember I was super excited about it at home and would talk to you about it all the time. Cornell did a good job of making it hella fun, so I was actually really happy, but extremely tired. Finally, my first day of classes was the following day. It was a blessing to start at 11:15 because all these orientation events made me sooo tired. Also, we have to walk a SHITLOAD on our campus. I have been using the health app on my phone to see how much I have been walking, and it’s always between 8 and 10 miles. I was able to find my classes, and I think we texted for a little bit so that was fun as usual :) My math discussion got cancelled that day because we hadn’t even had our lecture, so I ended at 2:15 since I only had 2 other classes which was nice. In the evening I went out to dinner with some friends. We’ve claimed a huge table in our favorite dining hall and all of us are obsessed with Friends so we call it “Central Perk”. We also have names for each other. I’m not to thrilled with mine though...they call me Chandler’s mom (the one who writes porn...) and I thought you would find that funny. After dinner we went back to someone’s room to watch Netflix, listen to music, and just chill. It was a pretty nice day. I’ll do a separate post with day 2 of my classes because it’s still fresh in my mind since it was just yesterday. If you even made it till the end, then I really applaud you. This was longer than a brohad reading, so I’m very sorry about that. Let’s facetime soon!