The $89K T-Shirt: Episode 2 - Everyone Matters

One of the reasons people don’t think they have any power is because they don’t think they matter.

How do you respond to tragedy?
How do you respond when there is a crisis in your life?
How do you rebound in life when “life” happens?

Below is the story of a tragedy that happened to my community and how we rebounded from it.

Welcome to The $89K T-Shirt: 7 Steps to Rebound From Adversity.
Episode 2: Everyone Matters

One of the reasons people don’t think they have any power is because they don’t think they matter.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. ~Alice Walker.

In Episode 1, we talked about recovery and how recovery is possible.

I wanted to lay the foundation that my community was able to recover from that devastation. As we dig deeper into how we rebounded, I want to talk to not about how everyone matters.

I hope you’ll stay to the end. I have a bonus tip to share with you.

Friday, the day that tornado hit, I was really frustrated because I hadn’t done anything to help. I stayed out of the way. But I went to bed that night with an idea to design a T-Shirt. The idea was to sell t-shirts to raise money for those individuals who were impacted by the tornado.

Saturday, after the tornado, I designed the T-Shirt and on Sunday created a Facebook page. Before going to church that evening, I asked a few friends to follow the page.

Eight people initially followed the Facebook page on Sunday. That number grew to over a thousand people by Tuesday night!

We started with no money on Friday and we’re making over a thousand dollars an hour on Tuesday evening. It was absolutely amazing.

Once the T-Shirts started selling, we had to go into production. Honestly, we were flying by the seat of our pants. We hadn’t attempted anything on this magnitude before.

It was amazing how so many friends stepped up. People called and volunteered to do whatever they could to help out.

To illustrate the idea of everyone matters, I would like to share the story of one friend who did what she could to help. What she did still amazes me. Her name is Carol. Like me, when the tornado hit, she was very frustrated.

Carol wanted to help but she didn’t know what she could do. When she heard we were selling T-Shirts, she said, “I can buy a shirt.” And she did.

As she thought more about it, she said, “I can buy a shirt but I can also help fold shirts.”

So Carol came over to our house to fold shirts. She wasn’t the only one. Other friends came over and folded shirts too. That was such a big help.

We had friends who volunteered to help with a database. We had friends who helped package shirts for mailing, and friends who helped distribute the shirts.

It was so amazing how everyone pitched in to help our town and our community recover from this tornado. When it was all said and done, we had raised $89,000. To this day, that figure still staggers me. I just can’t believe we were able to raise that kind of money.

There was power when everyone did what they could.

It was all of the individuals who came together to do what they could. This was so encouraging because we were all isolated with our different frustrations. We wanted to help, but we didn’t know how.

There were so many people doing other things to help our community. Everyone came together. And that’s how we rebounded.

I’ll get to the bonus tip now. You might think that folding shirts is just a little thing, but I’ll tell you what, it’s a big deal when you’re printing close to 2,000 shirts.

What Carol did and what others did to help get those shirts ready to be distributed was a big deal. You can’t overlook the importance of the little things.

And as I learned from this T-Shirt story, it was all the little things that came together to make a big impact and help the people in our community.

Daily Doable: Remember every one matters and that includes you. When we all do what we can, a lot of good can come from it.

So until next time, I want to encourage you to do what you can now.

In future stories, I’ll share more details of how we recovered from that tragedy.

Next time: REBOUND, the letter B, Be There for Each Other.

This is Tim encouraging you to Do what you can, Where you are, With what you have, Now!

I’m an Author, Storyteller, and T-Shirt Designer, Tim Maudlin. I would love to connect with you. Please see the comments on how to connect with me.