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Charitable Marketing

I think we're gonna shift gears here a little bit. I got the housekeeping done, and I just kind of want to open up and share a little more about some of the things that are important to me because I think that anybody who's seen my show, they know that I always end on a charitable note. It's It's it's really where my heart is. The foundation of my company has always been charity has always been giving back the principal. Really, I've just been very, very blessed, and I've had incredible miracles in my life. And so for me, it's always been How can I help somebody else in need? And all of the charities I work with come directly out of, ah, personal situation? It's never just Hey, that looks like fun. It's always, you know, I know somebody who knows somebody that needs something. So So there are several types of charitable marketing. Charitable marketing is really a marketing cause, so it is a win win for both parties, and you have to look at it that way. Ah, lot of people talk about char...

itable marketing and they don't realize that there's a difference between charitable marketing and true charity. And so I want to make sure there's a little clarity here. Charitable marketing is something where you're gonna generate funds, and a percentage of those funds usually are is going to go back to the organization. So a part of the money is gonna go back a part of the money you will keep for your time and service. It's also an opportunity to network and create relationships and to build relationships in your community. There is nothing wrong with charitable marketing. What is wrong in my eyes is somebody who tells me that it's wrong to charitable market because you can't do everything for free. If you could donate all of your time and only serve people, I know you would. I know you would. We can't. We have families and lives and things we have to do. But if we could make it possible to create awareness and to provide and generate funds for an organization that would not have them otherwise, it's a gift and it's OK. In fact, I always tell people you don't Not only should you do it, but you should let people know that you do it because people want to work with good people. There's a difference between letting people know on bragging and boasting, by the way. And I think you guys know the difference. So general marketing is an opportunity to grow your business, to give back, to do something good and to make a difference in the world now. True charity. It's different to me. One of the best quotes I ever heard to charity is something you don't necessarily want to dio. But you do it anyway because you know it's right. True charity is something you do from your heart. There is no payment. There is no kudos. There's no rewards. In fact, most people who are doing to charity work don't even talk about it because they believe that the right thing to do is to be private and quiet, and the blessings will come if there to come. And that is another piece that I think is really important component in our life. So keep that in mind. I believe in both. I believe that I've served in both, and I believe I've been blessed by both of those items. Now, one of the I think the greatest examples of to charity is now. I lay me down to sleep. I promise you, we're not going to bring you to tears here. I'm gonna keep it life and airy because having taught this for years, I never want to leave you on an emotional downer. So we still have a long We saw 40 minutes of fun to go, I promise. But I do want to make This is an opportunity for me to let alone a whole lot of people become aware of one of the most powerful organizations that I have ever seen. And this is truly one of those where I stand in awe that I had any part to do with this. Now I lay me down to sleep was founded eight years ago, and as many of you know, last fall we had the opportunity of teaching how to become. And now I lay me down to sleep member here on creativelive. It was a really big blessing us. It helps spread the word across the world. So I appreciate you giving me a few minutes to mention it again because now I live me down to sleep. When we founded this, it was myself. and sure. Cheryl Haggard. It was eight years ago today which still heart just in the last month, which is still hard to believe. When we found this, it was just a grassroots effort. I had the honor of photographing Baby Maddox, the baby you're looking at now on his final day and his final breath. And it was one of the most. At that time, it was the most eventful thing that I had ever seen or felt in my life. When I went to that hospital, they had seen my work in a hospital display those displays that I showed you they found when their son was born, that he had a condition that was incompatible with life. And so they realized on this 10th day that they would have Teoh take him off of life support. And one of the things his mother Cheryl requested is that she wanted portrait's like the one she saw in the hospital of her son. And so when I went, when they called me when they first called me, I had had plans that evening, and I had said I had had the receptionist say, you know, we could get there first thing tomorrow. They then told us that tomorrow would not be an option, and that changed everything. At that point, I said, OK, we'll come tonight and I changed my plans with my kids and we headed to the hospital had no idea that this would be the most life changing session not for me, but for tens of thousands of people now across the world. We went down there and we met Mike and Cheryl and Baby Maddox. Maddox is the fourth child. Maddox would be taken off life support and Maddux's father at that time, Mother was very. Cheryl was very emotional. Mike was Mawr under control at that time, and he came to me and he said, Look, he said, As you can see, we have to take Maddux off life support. But I'm way have a favor to ask you. And of course, at that time I'm like, Yeah, sure, whatever, You know, I was so nervous. I said Whatever you want, he said. Well, as you can see, Maddox is covered in tubes and wires. He cannot be really held. He cannot can. I can't breathe on his own, he said. So what We really want our images of Maddox now with the tubes and wires as he is, he said. But what my wife wants more than anything in the world is a portrait of her holding her son like the ones that you photographed in the hospital. Skin on skin, no tubes, no wires, just the mother and the baby. And he said, So would you consider waiting until he passes away, and then would you photograph him the way that she really wants you to? And of course, I swear to you, it felt like a wrecking ball with. I literally felt my chest cave in and I couldn't even breathe that I don't think I said yes, I think I nodded. Yes, and I kind of I felt tears welling up in my eyes and I walked out. I couldn't even my head was burning with thoughts, and I thought, I can't do this. There's no way I could do this. I also knew there was no way I couldn't do it as well. So it was that session we photographed Maddox as you see him with tubes and wires. There is literally a nurse directly below that tube that is breathing for him. She had to continue toe breathe the entire session. So for about 25 minutes, I photographed his face, his eyes, his hands, his lips, his toes, every square inch of that baby. I photographed. And I was so scared, I will tell you. All I kept thinking is Don't stop. Because when you do, they're going to take this baby off. Life support. Keep going. Just keep shooting it. I don't want to miss anything because I knew that this was it. This would be the last session they would have him. And so we went through that session. And then at the end of the session, what I knew there was nothing more I could do. I turned to his mom, and I nodded my head and I said, Okay, we're done. And we turned and we left the room. And when we left the room, the nurses and doctors came back in and we sat out in the waiting room and there wasn't a word that was spoken for. That entire hour was about 45 minutes. And then finally a nurse came back and she she came back and she said he's gone. And one thing I remember more than anything is her face. Because she had been crying hysterically. She her eyes were almost swollen shut. And I remember looking at her going always wanted to be a nurse. I don't want to be one anymore. I don't want that job. It seems so overwhelming. And so we sit up and we very quietly picked up our cameras and we went back in the room. And the difference was this all of a sudden, total role reversal. Dad was very hysterical now very upset, and Mom was sitting there and you would have thought she was an angel. She literally had a little sleeping baby in her hand and she was tucked up with him, and tears were streaming down her face. But she was so quiet and so common without a word. We started that session again, and I photographed his hands and his feet in his face and his lips and every piece again Onley. This time she was skin on skin, chest to chest with that baby. And it was one of the most beautiful sessions I've ever created in my life. It literally just hair on my Skin's did up because it was so incredibly out of this world with the experience. So from that session, a lot of things happen very quickly. I went home, devastated All There were three of us at the house before of us. Actually, the hospital we got in the car, nobody said a word. I went home. I couldn't even think I was. This was late at night. All I remember is going and picking up my kids and holding them and thinking, you know, they were sleeping. My oldest was 14 at the time, and I picked her up and she's like Mom and I was just crying. And I'm like, Don't say And I went through all of them and all I remember is I woke up in my youngest bed and the first time in my life, in my entire history of photography being sick, being pregnant, I didn't ever matter never stop me. This is the first time that I woke up and I thought, I can't do this. I can't take pictures at a full schedule. And I knew I wasn't gonna be able to shoot. I didn't have anything left in me. And so I called my studio and I said, You have to cancel my day, I can't do it. And I remember going and thinking that these were so important needed to go get these done for this Mom and I pulled him up on the computer screen and oh, my goodness, it was so startling to me because what I thought was the most surreal, beautiful experience of my life was stark and raw. This baby in full color at, you know, after passing away, not nothing like what I thought I had seen the night before. Very stark. You could see that all the blood had drained. It's pooling at the bottom of his body, the bruising and the tape. And I kept looking at thinking, I can't give this to her. There's no way I can't do this. And so I determined that something we had to do something amazing, and we started working on creating a series of very beautiful images. Now, Cheryl came in with her family about 13 days later to see these images, we put them to a slide show. All of them were converted to black and white like you see, here they were all made so that he would look as beautiful as possible and that experience. When she saw those images, I put her in a salesroom and I knew I didn't want to be in there because I knew this was very personal to her. She had been calling the every day for 30 days. Are they done yet? Are they done? And I knew I had so much angst trying to get these to her. And so when she came in, I had set it up so that she just had to hit play. And I said, You know what? Just go and push this button. Watch the show. If it finishes, you can replay it this way. When you're ready, open the door. And so I remember walking out. My heart was racing and of course, I heard the music start in a song play. I stood by the door until the music stopped and I waited a few seconds and all the sudden I heard the music play again. And then I walked away from the door, and so they played that I heard them play that probably 13 to 15 times over and over and over, and Finally, it got quiet. I was sitting in my office, right across the hall, in the door, opened and she came out of the room quite abruptly. I stood up on my desk and came walking out, and she kind of beeline towards me. And I remember she grabbed me so tight and she said, Do you know what you've done? And it totally, like, startled me, and it actually scared me. I looked at her and she I could see she'd been crying and she looked at me and she said, You've given me my son and I I'm sorry. I'm gonna keep it together. I promise you. And that was it. I looked at her and I realized the power that to power of what we do from that session. We started talking. And there's a lot more history that goes into this. Within six weeks, I have had another client call me with their sister's baby was passing away. Would I photograph them? And in my head I'm going. What the heck? I mean, I was literally going. Okay. Hello? What's going on here? It was through that session that Cheryl and I continued to talk and I had so much guilt because the second baby I photographed was completely incapacitated. Could not be moved. We all knew he was gonna pass away. His mom and dad didn't. The whole time I was photographing baby Matthew, I kept thinking, Oh, man, our baby Daniel, I'm sorry. I kept thinking, if I could just tell them that I could come back when he passes away, I could could hold him and I couldn't give her that. And so when I told Cheryl that I said, I feel terrible Cheryl told me that when she was in the hospital with Maddox there were several other babies that had died and how much guilt she had that she had these beautiful portrait's and they had nothing from that conversation. She said we should start an organization that provides portrait's for babies who won't leave the hospital. And I said, yeah, we should. And that was it. That was the beginning. And the difference between me and Cheryl is, if I would have thought of it, it would have been like one of those great ideas that I was gonna get to. She took all of the grief and all the pain that she had and she put it into action and she started working on this. Within two days, she was down with the paper brochure with clip art all over it going here. I made a brochure and I'm like, here, let me remake the brochure. It was it was just really bad. And I said, I'll do that. And then she was at the hospital saying, Hey, we have this organization And right out of the gate, she was talking to hospitals and creating relationships. And within weeks we were We attended our first session, and that first session is a whole story in itself. But from that first session we founded, now I lay me down to sleep. Now I lay me down to sleep. Are job is to provide bereavement photography. Sadly, all of the babies we serve will not leave the hospital. We have very few miracle stories. All of these babies pass away. So we started. It was just four of us. There were two photographers myself in Helen and then Aaron assisting and Shantel assisting and Cheryl, of course, from those humble beginnings, it started with one session and then two and then three and then six a week, and then it was drawing out of control. And then I had the ability to teach. And so we were sharing this message and we went from 300 to 900 to 1200 to I remember when we hit 2000 I couldn't believe it. 2000 volunteer photographers. At this point, we have over 14,000 photographers in 42 countries that do this work that provide this service. So these air, it's an incredible organization. And like I said, I tried to keep it light. I want you to understand the power in the value of what we have done here are volunteers really are angels. These people go to the hospitals. They provide the service. They provide all of the images after their edited 10 to 15 images on a disk. No money exchanges hands. They do all of this for free. It is a true gift. It is to charity. So this is something that I encourage all of you. If it's something you think you could handle, please look into it. It's now I lay me down to sleep dot org's. We have all of the training creativelive helped us produce an incredible training video. I mean, there's just so much other We're not going to just throw you into this. It is gonna be incredible. And the last thing I want to say is the one thing I hear more than anything is I love your organization. I'd love to join, but honestly, I couldn't. I'm too emotional. Hello? Are you talking to here? I look at those people and I say, Look, I'll tell you this right now. You will cry every session. I have photographed more babies that are no longer here than I will ever say the number After I hit 100 babies, I stopped counting because it literally was too hard to think about when you watched 100 babies. Ah, 100 families say good bye to a child. It's too much. And now I far surpassed that number. You wouldn't even want to know the number. But every session I cry and I cry in tears fall and I've come to the conclusion that it's okay. The parents, actually one of the things we hear often his parents say You know what thing I remember most? I don't remember a lot, but I remember you crying too. So don't be afraid to cry because you don't have a choice. It comes with the job. But when you provide, the biggest thing is you might be afraid. But the biggest thing is you can't change what's happening to these people. But you can change the way they heal for the rest of their lives. You will give them the only tangible thing they have that will remind them of that baby. So I do want you to consider this organization. And of course, there's a 1,000,000 other things you could do. The biggest thing I want you remember is find something that means something to you. Uh, I showed this already, so I'm gonna keep it brief. This was in tots to teens. But just to give you an idea of something that you could do that it might be a little more light and fun and refreshing. We do a Santa charity every year. This is Santa Larry Santa. Larry has been with us for 14 years. Santa Larry is been with us as long as my second son has been on this Earth. When Nick was born, Nik was born with very serious medical condition, and we did not think he was not supposed to survive his first few weeks, let alone his first year. So so it was through that journey Him. He spent the first year in Children's Hospital was through that journey when he turned a little over one and he was released from the hospital. I made a commitment to give back to that hospital to ensure that I did something to say Thank you for saving my son's life. So 14 years ago, we started the Santa charity. Nick is now 15. Um, this is very simple. It's an easy thing to do. It's a 15 minute session. Unlike the normal stuff we do clients view and order immediately. That's very not the norm here. They pay $50 to deposit to book decision. There's no session fee. The deposit goes towards the order. The first package is $100. The second packages 75. The third is 25 and even idea packages 18 by 10 15 by seven and four wallets, one packages one pose. So if they want three poses, they're gonna buy three packages. Average client buys four packages, so they spend about $225 on the sad to charity. When I started Santa Charity, I wanted to make sure you understand that when you start something, it always start small. The first Santa charity we did, we had 15 people sign up. I offered 15 free sessions. Some of my friends, the first year we did 30 sessions. That's how many we had. And I wanted to fill every single one of them and the friends that I gave it to free. I said, It's free if you want to make a donation, Great. If not, please come. And that's what I did 30 people. The second year we had 45 people sign up. By the third year, we had about 65 people showing up. By the fourth year, we were turning people away. We've done this for now, 13 or 14 years. I'm gonna show you a very short video on what it looks like. And then we'll talk about the final outcome. It's a list. What on that list would you like to have? That was last year like that. An IPad galaxy sand his eyes. He's like what? So we've done this for years now, and when I started this, I was very poor photographer. I had very sick son and I could have never imagined year after year these donations that we make. I remember a few years ago when my bookkeeper came to me and she said, Do you want? She said, I have a surprise for you and I said, What is it? And she said, Do you know you have donated over $100,000 to the Children's Hospital? I was literally blown away and then I thought about it. I thought, You know what? I didn't do that. I didn't do that at all. I didn't have $100,000 to give to the hospital, but my clients did, and the way it works is it's like a big bucket and everybody puts a drop in the bucket. I can't do this without them, but with their help, with their support, with their love and their commitment to what I do, we fill that bucket and now since then we were we far surpassed that number, so it's very, very exciting and that's what I was telling you earlier when you asked me about charity is you have to stick with it. You have to. It doesn't It doesn't happen overnight. It took me years to get to this point. Santa Larry is now in his seventies and you will hear in every legacy. If you guys follow me on Facebook every time we post a legacy video, almost every client's gonna say we did every. We've done Santa's charity for years. Santa has been with us for 14 years. He's in his late later seventies. I have clients that are coming in saying Hold the Santa, Is he gonna be around for a while? Because they love him so much? He's the real deal. He comes from Alaska to do this for so he's a really, really good guy and just an amazing, amazing experience. But these babies, we have families that they have 15 year olds that they bring in to be with Santa every year because it's so important. So the last piece of homework cares and talk about our last project is I would like you to find a charity that means something to you. I want you to make a commitment you can commit your time. You can certainly commit money. If that's easy thing to do. Product. Find something that you could do if you research our Facebook page. We have a lot of charities. We worked with Susan G. Komen. We work with, We do the food bank of the Rockies. We do a big Halloween charity. I showed that in the last show we did hear we do a food bank, food drive. We take pictures of kids in their howling costume. We work with nine major charities, and so we're constantly posting the work that we do. And there are a lot of great ideas there. But the most important thing is find something that means something to you. Something that you connect with that you feel that you could put your heart into because if you put your heart into it, honestly, the blessings will come not just for you, but the blessings will come for the people that you're doing it for. So so I encourage you to find that and make it happen.