Apr 17, 2023
Folks, we need your help launching something AWESOME today! The story is below but to skip right to it, go to www.cancerrevengers.com, buy a beanie, reserve a bracelet, and maybe even buy a beanie to be given to a kid battling cancer too! Then, tell as many people about this as you can. Text, email, social media, put it everywhere you can, a flyer is attached. Help us light this thing on fire!
Believe it or not, Layla’s classmates inspired this whole thing! Yes, 2nd graders, 7 and 8-year old’s spawned this awesome idea. I intended on starting a Foundation in Layla’s name. But the process is annoyingly restrictive and most Foundations limp along. Instead, I am attempting to launch Cancer Revengers as a consumer brand that makes available wearable symbols of hope and healing. The goal is to be HEAVILY mission driven, and sooner than later generate millions of dollars to donate right into the hands of the best medical minds out there that have the best chance to cure kids like Layla, and in doing so bypassing ALL institutional waste.
As with anything though, one has to “crawl,” “walk,” and then “run.” I believe though, we can skip the walk, and go from “crawl,” right to “run” and this is where you can help us, and help us today. This is “crawl 2.0.” What was “crawl 1.0”? It was something we did very locally and quietly, but it turned out to be AWESOME!
Back in November, I was on the way back from Atlanta with Layla. She put her head on my arm to sleep on the plane and I look down to see a BIG bald spot on her head, caused by the drugs we switched to in October. They were not supposed to cause hair loss but frustratingly, they did. I emailed her Mom, her Mom emailed the parents and her teacher, Mr. Williams. He saw the email right away and addressed the class. The class was informed that she may look a little different or may come in wearing a beanie when she comes in the next day. Well, the class rallied and said if she has to wear a beanie, they all do! Then, a parent in the class emailed saying she could help source beanies, thanks Melissa Rosen! Then the “help the community at all times” force of nature, Principal Kay, caught wind of it all and in the end, Layla Beanie day became a thing school wide, which happened this past Thursday, an absolute sea of beanies, almost 600 beanies sold!
This all didn’t happen overnight. We had to develop a brand and platform to order from which my old Hitachi ad agency dudes helped with, thank you to Brian Munce and Jason Buscema. We first put them up for sale in March and the beanies were very obviously a hit and it got me thinking, thinking a little bit about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, but for KIDS! More on that shortly. Initially this was just a way to support Layla and raise a few bucks. But the passion for it was quite obviously felt almost instantly, and the gears began churning, but I wanted to not promote it just to see what the resulting word of mouth would be. So this is 2.0 of that, to see how powerful word of mouth can be here.
Where do the bracelets come in? This is a wild one. After Layla’s March 2022 surgery in Boston, she was super bored but couldn’t do much. We went to the gift shop. We saw some beautiful bracelets and I said wow, these are cool but to me they looked like they were $200! Turns out they were about $60. Fast forward to this summer,Layla and I were underwater scootering in the pool, because that is TOTALLY something you do with a 3x brain surgery 7-year , and one of the bracelets got frayed in the propeller. I emailed them asking if they could fix it. They told me they were located in Southern California. I said, “where?” They said, “I’m not sure if you have heard of a place called Carlsbad?” I said, “where in Carlsbad?” They told me near Palomar Airport Road and Melrose. I said, “cool, I’m 6-mins from you.” So we got to talking, and here we are, Mala and Mantra led by Judith and Charles Compton, helping us source these gorgeous bracelets, both men’s and women’s styles, 4 of them for now, coming in next month (I am hoping for Mother’s Day but not sure!). Beanies we have here in stock so they will ship right away and bracelets I’ll ship once they come in, no second delivery fee so reserve your bracelets as it’s lesser quantities for now.
The ”you cannot make this stuff up” factor with Layla’s journey thus far is already on level 10, but this is just a whole other ball game with me, frustrated as heck with rules and regulations when all we want to do is help these kids, and then bunch of loud, wild and crazy 2nd graders crack the code, half of which are missing a front tooth or two.
I brought in almost 2,000 beanies and we sold about 1/3 of them quietly and locally. I wanted to see how the word of mouth spread to see if we had a “thing” here. I also wanted to make sure we didn’t come up short with some kids wanting a beanie but having to wait.so here we are attempting “crawl 2.0” to see if it can light this on fire quickly, and then we skip the “walk” and go straight to the “run.”
And what is the run? Simple, hopefully a massive movement and crowdfunding campaign later this summer:
“2-in-10, for 10-in-2.”
“Help us sell 2,000,000 beanies so we can donate $10,000,000 to the real life Cancer Revengers so that they can do 10-years of research in 2.” Layla and her counterparts not only deserve it, their lives depend on it.
The top medical minds in the world spend the majority of their time grant writing, networking, and chasing funding for their work all the while there is a billion dollar endowment that sits on so much cash every year it could not fundraise for 10-years. And the majority of people say “if I just had one more person it would greatly accelerate my research capabilities.” This is wrong.
We’re here to fix it. Will you help us, and help us, today? Purchase, reserve, then text, email, post on social media, post this flyer everywhere you can digitally, today.
Thank you all as always! This is not the world we ever wanted but if someone wants a fight, we’re you’re Huckleberry!
www.cancerrevengers.com
Any questions, ideas, problems or whatever there is a contact form on the site. All will come straight to me.
Last note, this effort and movement is completely separate from the gofundme and not at all associated. This gofundme campaign is a pure donation only thing with no exchange of goods and services (they require me to write this).