It’s an unfortunate truth that body image and self-esteem issues don’t only affect adults, but it’s very much a part of the experience of children.

Since elementary school, my body has been a staple topic for strangers, peers, relatives and inherently myself.

As an adult, I’m always battling with my body image issues, and I know I’m not alone.

It’s challenging to love yourself when you’re haunted by negative body image experiences from your childhood and living in a society that belittles you unless you have the ideal body type–whatever that means.

I continue to put efforts into building a healthy relationship with my body, loving my curves and honouring the mere miracle that is my body. This isn’t a one-and-done type of situation, it’s a constant conversation I have to have with myself for the rest of my life.

Social media can be a controversial topic; it’s both helped and hurt my body image experience. Ultimately the ability to love yourself, and celebrate your body needs to come from within. But, getting there doesn’t need to be done alone.

Of course, you can get support from your personal community, or seek professional guidance, whether that is counselling or other means of support.

However, one thing I’ve found that has helped me develop more of a body-positive conversation with myself has been filling my social media apps with people who celebrate their bodies, and reinforce the type of love I want to have towards my own body.

If you’re reading this and you’re looking to follow people who will make you feel empowered and remind you why different bodies are beautiful and deserve to be celebrated, check out the list of these baddies below. Please know, you’re loved.

1. Maddie Dragsbaek (@maddiedragsbaek)

2. Kayley Sims (@kayleysims)

3. Dr. Heidi Cooke (@doc_heidcooke)

4. Allison Jacobs (@allison.jacobsss)

5. Hanah Witton (@hannahwitton)

6. Zoe Roe (@zozoroe)

7. Cassandra Voelker (@cassandrajvoelker)

About the Author

Hello 👋 my name is Danielle, as you know from my above ramblings I’ve struggled with my body image since the beginning of time, and I’d gather a guess that you might be in a similar boat if you’re reading this, or know someone who is. All I have to say is I love you! I hope this article helped make your social feed a bit more body positive because let’s face it, we need to take all we can get especially on those low days.

Back in 2021, our team, at BinoBooks, was figuring out what book topic we wanted our first children’s book to be written on. Knowing how I faced a lot of body shame growing up, I had a mission to make our first book centred around body image, and celebrating all bodies. So, we did it, we created our first personalized storybook, “Humans Can’t Fly, But They Can!” Knowing there is a possibility I can make a young version of myself feel a bit more accepted and celebrated for her beautiful and strong body brings the biggest smile to my face.

So from our team to you, we hope you enjoy having a peek at these lovely women’s Instagram, and be sure to tag us @hellobinobooks on Instagram, or comment below, to let us know who we’re missing from this list.

About BinoBooks

At BinoBooks, we create personalized digital storybooks on complex topics, such as body image, that act as conversation starters between parent and child while making the child feel represented through character customizations.

We initially started our venture in the Queen’s Innovation Centre program in 2020, which you can find here, with a prototype book on covid. As of January 4th, 2022, we successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign for our first official book “Humans Can’t Fly, But They Can” on Kickstarter, which you can find here, and is on the topic of body image.

We’ve now launched our first customizable storybook, ”Humans Can’t Fly, But They Can” on our website, you can check it out here.

This is where my deep love for personalized gifts came into play! To help you find that perfect gift for your bestie, we’ve compiled a list of 10 custom gifts that are sure to please any friend and make a lasting impact (so go get you those bestie brownie points!).

Please know, gifts with this symbol 📍 are businesses local to the Ontario or Canada region (if you’re not in this area, we encourage you to use these businesses as inspiration to #shoplocal in your community).

These gift recommendations are ones our team members at BinoBooks have received or given ourselves, so we can definitely vouch for them!

1. For the best friend who drinks too much sparkling water

Shelly Kein | Personalized Family Coasters

$23.00 — $102.00

These personalized coasters not only prevent watermark stains on your special coffee table but help your friends and family know whose drink is whose, in a cute and fun way! No more screaming, “Hey! That’s my drink” is needed with these adorable coasters. Check them out here.

2. For the best friend who loves making their place homey

@_meandthree_ | Personalized Door Mats 📍

$30.00 — $50.00

If your friend is looking for something unique to spice up their indoor or outdoor home decor, then you’ve got to check out the personalized doormats made over at @_meandthree_. Whether it’s a quote your friend lives by OR a way to make your friend think of you and smile each time they come home, make your mark and check out Cait’s mats.

3. For the best friend who guesses everyone’s astrology sign

Birthdate, Co. | Birthdate Candles

$46.00 — $56.00

If your amigo is looking to dive deeper into their love for all things astrology, then this custom birthdate candle is meant for them! All you need to do is enter your bestie’s birthday and you’ll have a scent designed just for them, with fun astrological details printed on the candle. Have some extra cash to go all out on your friend? Have a look at the birthdate book, which goes as deep as one can go into a person’s astrological birth chart. Ready to smell the roses, uh… we mean personalized astrology candles, have a peek at them here.

4. For the best friend who loves a classic morning routine

Bed Bath & Beyond | Personalized Towels

$20.00 — $30.00

Does your friend soak in their morning routine? I mean who doesn’t love a good warm shower (if you or your friend prefer cold showers, then you’re a whole other beast)! This gift is super practical, I mean towels are essential, between wash clothes, hand towels, and bath towels it’s hard not to come in contact with one of these towel variants during your daily routine. So make your friend’s daily routine even more special with this personalized towel gift.

5. For the best friend who is endlessly creative

Crock A Doodle | Pottery Painting 📍

$20.00 — $48.00

Is your bestie always creating stuff, trying new hobbies or projects out? Then, this might just be the gift for them! Crock A Doodle is a paint-your-own pottery kind of place. So whether you want to make something special and gift it to your bestie, OR give them the experience of creating something special themselves, this is definitely a gift they will enjoy. Browse the different pottery painting options at Crock A Doodle here.

6. For the best friend who can’t pass up statement jewelry

JewelNora | Personalized Initial Bracelet

$19.95 — $44.95

Want to tug on your friend’s heartstrings, with a classy but beautiful gift? Then customize your friend their own unique bracelet. Whether you want a bracelet with one letter charm, or a mix of different letters, symbols and/or birthstone charms, you can make a super personalized piece of jewelry for your friend that they are sure to never forget. Play around and personalize your friendship bracelet here.

7. For the best friend who always asks for music recommendations

Spotify | Digital Mixtape

Free

We couldn’t pass up an opportunity for a classic mixtape. Why do you think Guardians of the Galaxy was such a hit? Well of course because of Groot nonetheless, but Peter Quill’s “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” gave us all the feels! So why not put your creative juices to the challenge and make a one-of-a-kind Spotify mix for your bestie. You can even go the extra mile, and give them a Spotify gift card (totally optional). Want some pointers on making a Spotify playlist, check out this “Best Friends” Spotify playlist for inspiration (or honestly just go listen to Doja Cat’s song “Best Friend”).

8. For the best friend who is addicted to Starbucks

Starbucks | Custom Drink

$5.00 — $15.00

I might just be living under a rock, but I haven’t even made a dent on my Starbuck secret menu bucket list. I mean who knew that a Minnie Mouse Frappicinio existed, nevertheless a Hocus Pocus Latte! If your friend is already obsessed with Starbucks, then getting them a drink they haven’t tried before will put a big smile on their face. I mean look at all these custom drinks, just make sure you check if they make them at your local Starbucks. (P.S. if your friend loves a good cocktail, you can always DIY a custom drink yourself and have a friend’s night in, or as we like to call it a GNI-Girls Night In).

9. For the best friend whose place is decorated in art

Guch World | Custom Friend Portrait 📍

$65.00 — $90.00

I know what you’re thinking, “You said this was $50.00 and under gift ideas” and honestly, you’re right! But I had to give a shoutout to an artist our team at BinoBooks’ loves over at Guch World, Alex Smyth! With some insight from you, Alex can create a cute custom illustration of you and your bestie that’s sure to make a mark on their wall space. This is a perfect way to go the extra mile and show your friend how much you care, especially for those we haven’t seen in a while. So what are you waiting for? Create your custom order here.

10. For the best friend who is a superstar parent

BinoBooks | Personalized Digital Storybook

$12.50 — $14.99

We’re getting into the territory where our besties are starting to think about and build their families. Give your friend and their kiddo the ultimate gift by putting their child in a storybook. These storybooks subtly touch on hard topics, like body image, and allow the parent to chose if they want to dig deeper by providing discussion questions at the end of this personalized digital storybook. Personalize your friend’s kid’s new favourite storybook here.

About the Author

Hello 👋 my name is Danielle Baxter and alongside my co-founders Sydney Terry and Jessica Dassanayake we wanted to compile this list of 10 personalized gift ideas for friends because these are gifts we’ve personally received, given, or wish we had and wanted to share these ideas with you!

My love language is mainly acts of service, words of affirmation and quality time. But don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the satisfaction of seeing my friends and family truly enjoy the gifts I give them. I’m no pro, but as I’m approaching my quarter-life milestone, I’m learning the importance of showing the people I love exactly how much I care about them (sometimes we slip up and forget gifts, we’re only human but it’s the thought we continue to put overtime that matters).

So from our team to you, we hope you find these gift ideas useful, and if you do, be sure to tag us @hellobinobooks on Instagram, or comment below, and let us know what ideas stood out most for you.

About BinoBooks

At BinoBooks, we create personalized digital storybooks on complex topics, such as body image, consent and more that act as conversation starters between parent and child while making the child feel represented through character customizations.

We’re a team of three ambitious female founders and graduates from Queen’s University. We initially started our venture in the Queen’s Innovation Centre program in 2020, which you can find here, with a prototype book on covid. As of January 4th, 2022, we successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign for our first official book “Humans Can’t Fly, But They Can” on Kickstarter, which you can find here, and is on the topic of body image.

We’ve now launched our first customizable storybook, ”Humans Can’t Fly, But They Can” on our website, you can check it out here.

Today we wanted to give you a bit of backstory into the name BinoBooks and how it came to be.

First and foremost, when we decided we were working on a literacy startup we thought a lot about life from the perspective of a child.

To a young kid, everything is interesting, new and to be explored.

We saw this YouTube video by Big Think featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson called “Want Scientifically Literate Children? Get Out of Their Way.”

In this video Neil deGrasse Tyson is asked how to raise children that are interested in science, his response:

“Get out of their way! […] Kids are born curious. They are overturning rocks, picking petals off of flowers, and creating disorder in the lives of parents around them.”

He goes on saying at age 11 he had a pair of binoculars, and looked up to the moon and explored the edges between light and dark.

Picking up a pair of binoculars and looking up to space, as a city kid transformed him.

This got us thinking.

Binoculars = exploring.

Exploring = child-like creativity and freedom.

We shortened it down to Bino, but it felt a bit empty.

So we thought it was only right to add Books to it.

This is how we got BinoBooks.

If you’re interested in watching the video referenced by Big Think feel free to check it out here:

#buildingbinobooks #binobooks #edtechstartup #edtech #literacy #explore #businessname #businessbrand #branddevelopment #startupstories #femalefounders #bigthink #childrensbooks #startup #storytime

This week we were reminded of something very important… can you guess what that is?

We’ll there’s a lot of important things in life, and in creating a startup from scratch.

What we wanted to talk about is:

The power of networks and connections 💥

We were fortunate enough to be awarded a 1:1 session with Melanie Ewan from a pitch competition we participated in with Volition.

During this session, our team was hoping to get some tips and tricks on finances and sales.

In the session, Melanie was transparent with us that finances/sales isn’t the domain she’s seasoned in. She primarily concentrates on pitch coaching and communications, on top of a bunch of other useful skills and tools for founders.

However, she was happy to connect us with other people in her network who could help us get the answers we needed. 😊

We’re really grateful for this experience we had with Melanie, and it just makes us thankful for all the connections people have made for us over the past year.

It’s hard to conceptualize the impact of these connections, but it is HUGE and we couldn’t be more appreciative.

#BuildingBinoBooks #FemaleFounders #Startup #Education #EdTech #Network #Community #Connections #Grateful

What comes to your mind when we say MPV?

Personally, for me MVP (Most Valuable Player) 🏆 comes to mind. And all the trophies I didn’t win when I played soccer as a kid.

The entrepreneurial space redefines MVP as Minimum Viable Product, which basically means getting your idea/solution across to users without much effort or cost to get feedback.

When starting BinoBooks, we had a lot of MVPs.

But, the one MVP I want to talk about today is the prototype we made for our pitch deck.

How did it start? Well, we sketched out on many (and I do mean many) pieces of paper what we thought our website and app needed from start to finish.

After a lot of back and forth, we landed on a general design.

Then we had to find a platform to make this prototype for free. We used PROTOIO INC.

Not only did we learn from scratch how to use this platform, but we assembled an on-brand clickable MVP we could provide to users in order to better communicate our idea.

Our learning? If you don’t stay subscribed to the platform you build it on you will lose full access to be able to go back and edit. Aha, growing pains.

But we hope you can enjoy this recording, and let us know what you think?

#BuildingBinoBooks #prototype #MVP #startupstories

If you’ve been following along, you’d know that we recently hired an illustrator who is working hard to bring our second personalized e-storybook to life.

Saying that makes me so flipping excited!

Now that we’ve got the story sussed out, and we’re working on illustrating it there’s time to think about our go-to-market strategy.

Quite frankly, it’s a bit nerve-wracking. 😬

This is our first time launching a paid product to the public, and we want to make sure we do our absolute best for our first launch.

So we’ve spent a lot of time trying to source information from others about, pre-pre launch, pre-launch and launch strategies.

One thing I will say is that YouTube has been a very helpful tool, especially as our founders come from STEM-related fields so we’re learning a lot about the business side of things as we go.

If you have any tips or tricks for launching a product, or what you want to see from us for our book launch. Let us know below! 👇

We really value your thoughts, and perspectives, and hope to make this a mutually beneficial experience.

#ProductLaunch #BuildingBinoBooks #STEM #FemaleFounders #PreLaunch

Each member of our team has their own fruit character based on their favourite fruit (or second favourite fruit if another teammate already had that one).

Early on, when we were deciding what the characters in our books would look like, we saw these fruit characters on Pinterest.

In the end, we decided they weren’t what we wanted in our book.

But they were too dang cute not to use. So we decided to create our own fruit characters because we found them so adorable!

Scroll down to see our fruit characters!

To set the scene, we had just recently formed our team and were beginning the SpreadInnovation Program run by DDQIC. This was all before BinoBooks was even a concept.

During this time, we participated in a session, hosted by the amazing Erin LeBlanc, on HBDI (otherwise known as the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument). For those of you unfamiliar with HBDI it’s a tool to measure people’s preferred thinking styles.

The four quadrants for this model are Analytical (Blue), Practical (Green), Relational (Red), Experimental (Yellow). However, different graphics adopt different versions of these names.

Our team’s goal was to:

1. Identify which HBDI quadrants were our most and least preferred
2. Determine what experience and skillsets we had and preferred

This resulted in us creating a chart where we could each indicate:

👍 Strong Preference/ Experience: We are skilled in this area OR are very eager to learn more about the topic.

👈 Some Preference/Experience: We are somewhat skilled in this area OR okay with doing this task.

👎 Minimal Preference/Experience: We don’t want to do this OR have very basic to no experience.

This chart may seem like a lot. But it really helped us from the start have conversations about what we were good at, what we wanted to do more of and what we never, if possible, want to do.

You can see the full chart linked below. Do tell, have you and your team done similar charts or team alignment documents? We’d love to hear more in the comments.

You name it, an unexpected run to the ER, the death of a loved one, and physical health issues.

The thing about life, is there’s going to be highs and lows, and sometimes the lows can feel really, really low.

But we recognize people come first, that’s why we’ve kind of adopted this unwritten policy of prioritizing our mental and physical health over work.

So at the end of the day, each of us knows if we need personal time to recover, rest or whatever, we can just be open and honest, and the team will have our back.

Like any other person balancing multiple responsibilities, sometimes a ball is going to drop (metaphorically if we’re speaking about juggling).

And honestly, that’s okay, things can wait for tomorrow or next week.

If you’ve been going through anything this in the past little while, we’re here for you, and we can vouch for surrounding yourself with people who support you regardless ❤️

We hired our first freelance illustrator 🤩

That’s right, folks we hired our first freelance illustrator who is working hard to create the designs for our first book to be sold to the public.

It’s a first for us, to say the least. But we wanted to break it down and tell you our overall process from planning to hire. Also, to shout out some of the amazing people who have helped provide guidance along the way.

Our condensed hiring timeline:

• Realized we weren’t professional illustrators.
• Asked our network for advice on the illustration and freelance hiring process.
• Documentation, documentation & more documentation. You name it, job description, contract, social media posts and financing.
• Hesitation, revisions and re-revisions of the above documentation.
• Posted that we’re hiring.
• Built an applicant tracking system (since we had over 100 applications within the span of one week).
• Determined interview questions for our candidates.
• Round 1 interviews, and round 2 interviews.
• A long hard conversation on who we wanted to hire.

Now, here we are, and we couldn’t be more excited, because this means our idea is officially getting closer and closer to becoming a full-blown business.

Thank you to everyone who helped us along the way, DDQIC, QBLC, Jason Thompson and Angela Lyon of Queen’s Partnership & Innovation. Also, a huge thanks to all the illustrators who put themselves out there to be a part of this journey!

#BuildingBinoBooks #interview #hiring #startup #illustrators #firsthire #freelance