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

You have the power to make a difference.

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 to make a difference 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.

Episode 1, was about Recovery is Possible.

My community did recover from the devastation left by the tornado. As I dig deeper into how we rebounded, it’s important to remember that everyone matters.

The day the tornado hit, I was really frustrated because I hadn’t done anything to help. I stayed out of the way. When I went to bed that night, I had 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.

On Saturday I designed the t-shirt and on Sunday created a Facebook page. Before going to church that evening, I asked eight friends to follow the page.

When I got home from church services, there were over one hundred followers. That number grew to over one thousand by Tuesday night!

We started with no money on Friday. When we started selling t-shirts Tuesday night, we were making over $1,000 an hour!

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

So many friends stepped up. People called and volunteered to do whatever they could to help out.

To illustrate this idea of how everyone matters, I would like to share the story of one friend who did what she could to help. Her name is Carol.

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

As Carol 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.

So many 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 staggers me. I just can’t believe we were able to raise that kind of money with one t-shirt.

There was power when everyone did what they could. This was so encouraging. At first, everyone felt frustrated and isolated. We wanted to help, but we didn’t know how.

Until everyone came together around one t-shirt. That’s how we rebounded.

Bonus Tip: You might think that folding t-shirts is just a little thing, but guess 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. Never overlook the importance of the little things.

Add them up and all of those little things made a big impact.

Daily Doable: Think differently. Don’t give up your power to make a difference. Remember everyone matters and that includes you. When everyone does what they can, a lot of good can come from it.

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!

This Inspire Point and Daily Doable were brought to you by Tim Maudlin. Please allow me to introduce myself.

This article was originally published on my site at DoWhatYouCanNow.com