Thirst Relief International Auction
I've had so many cool charity projects and opportunities come my way lately, it's been AWESOME! For those of you who aren't familiar with the Thirst Relief International auction, let me explain….every year, a bunch of top tier wedding photographers who attend the WPPI convention (which is the largest photo convention in Vegas) donate their time for this very worthy cause. Thirst Relief International will be sponsoring its 3rd annual mentor auction this weekend for a chance for the winning bidders to have a one-on-one consulting session with the photographer of their choice during the convention next month to help raise money to provide clean drinking water to people who need it the most. You will have the opportunity to bid on me (a "Session with Hession") to discuss marketing, sales, business management, work flow or whatever else you need help with right now once the auction begins.
The auction will start this weekend on February 9th at 10 a.m. EST and conclude on the 12th. You can sign up and pre-register now on the auction site, fotoVerite. According to Becker, there was some confusion last year about the way the auction runs. Most people are used to using eBay, which ends at a specific time, so people go in at the last second and place a higher bid (called sniping), not allowing someone else to bid even higher. This auction has an anti snipe feature so the auction doesn't end until someone is not willing to pay any more. Once the auction has ended, if there was a last minute bid, it extends the auction by a few minutes, allowing the person who got outbid, to place another bid, extending the auction by a few more minutes allowing the other person the same opportunity. This goes on until someone is no longer willing to bid higher which is the fairest way to run an auction and most like a real world live auction.
Details of which photographers will be available to mentor will be posted soon on the Thirst Relief blog and of course I'll provide a direct link to where you can bid on me as soon as it's up on Saturday morning and if you read my auction bio closely, my faithful blog readers will be the first to know about an awesome service that we're launching next month, specifically geared towards photographers and business owners. 😉 But, you have to come back on Saturday morning to find out the inside scoop!! 😉 Happy Bidding!!!
Jessica’s Update!
In case you missed this post last week, check out the whole story first…but we have AWESOME news to share…in just ONE WEEK, all of my faithful blog readers have managed to raise over $2,300 for Jessica and we still have 1 more week until we surprise her with the donations. 🙂 Her friend Jess, e-mailed me with an update on her condition last night. Jessica had her MRI last week and is scheduled for a partial mastectomy and port placement soon, then she will get a few weeks to heal before starting chemo. She will have 4 rounds of chemo and 6 weeks of radiation (5 days every week for 6 weeks) and even though they still don't know what "stage" she's in for sure because she hasn't had the lymph node biopsy (that will happen with the partial mastectomy) they do know she's at least stage 2 possibly stage 3 right now. She will be going in for genetic testing this week to see if that played a part in her getting breast cancer. The doctors are now suggesting that if she wants children down the road, she'll need to freeze her eggs soon since her fertility will be affected by all of this. Can you even imagine dealing with all of this at age 30?! To make matters worse, she found out that her insurance won't cover that and it'll cost at least $10,000! We are raising money for her for this because we know that she will survive this, like so many other things in life she has already conquered.
Anyway, I just wanted to post an update for all of you WONDERFUL people who have placed donations for her cause and have offered amazing items that will be raffled off next week in connection with the donations. We will be surprising Jess next week with the bank deposit slip from all of the donations and we'll be sure to post pics of her reaction on the blog!!! 🙂 For every $10 that is donated, your name will be placed in the drawing twice and for every $20 that is donated, your name will be placed in the drawing for 5 chances to win one of the awesome prizes she's raffling off. We donated a gift card for a free portrait session with a high resolution CD included (valued at $599.00), a local dentist office donated a free Zoom whitening session, an optometrist donated a gift certificate for a free eye or contact lens exam and free frames, there are several pairs of IU basketball tickets (16th row, valued at over $100 each) to upcoming home games in Bloomington, Julie's Flowers of Geist donated a $500 gift certificate for flowers or home decor, Faith-Full wedding chapel donated a $175 gift certificate to be used for vow renewals or weddings, Indy Candle Lab donated a gift basket of candles, Bone Fish Grill donated dinner gift certificates and more donations from local restaurants and businesses have been pouring in over the last few days…so there are a few ways we're asking for help from our faithful blog readers if you haven't had a chance to donate yet:
1. You can make a donation on her website (and indicate "Raffle" in the subject line) which will automatically enter you into the drawing for the great prizes and most importantly, it will help a very worthwhile cause!
2. If you are a local business owner or manager and would like to donate something for the raffle, please contact Jess at [email protected]
3. Or if you're like us, you can do both!
Thank you again to all of you who have donated, we're thankful to have such a loyal group of supporters!! 🙂 XOXO
A friend of ours needs your help!
This incredible woman with the beautiful smile is Jessica Dean, she has an amazing story and she needs your help. Her best friend, also named Jessica (Jess) is a regular on my blog and we've done a ton of photo shoots for her and her family. Well, a few years ago, we met Jessica Dean through her friend Jess when we found out that Jess was throwing Jessica a surprise bridal shower. You see, Jessica never had the big wedding…she never had the dream dress or all of the pomp and circumstance that goes with most weddings because her fiance had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. In order to get him the help he needed financially (mostly through her insurance) they decided to marry in a courthouse to make it legal and begin their lives fighting to save his. She sat with him in the hospital rooms, drove him to and from appointments and stuck with him through everything. She dealt with this for 2 years until he decided he wanted to move on with his life and surprised her by filing for divorce recently. Their divorce became final the same week that she found out that she now has breast cancer. She has already been through one surgery and has at least 2 more scheduled soon…she will be dealing with chemo and radiation treatments, an MRI, wigs and even more travel expenses over the next few months.
Her best friend, Jess, contacted me about this last week and we came up with a plan to help Jessica financially through this journey. Jess is selling raffle tickets at work and online through a new website that she set up called Jessica's Fund. Local businesses have donated products and services for her to raffle off as donations come in through the website. For every $10 that is donated, your name will be placed in the drawing twice and for every $20 that is donated, your name will be placed in the drawing for 5 chances to win one of the awesome prizes she's raffling off. We donated a gift card for a free portrait session with a high resolution CD included (valued at $599.00), a local dentist office donated a free Zoom whitening session, an optometrist donated a gift certificate for free glasses/frames and more donations from local restaurants and businesses have been pouring in over the last few days…so there are a few ways we're asking for help from our faithful blog readers:
1. You can make a donation on her website (and indicate "Raffle" in the subject line) which will automatically enter you into the drawing for the great prizes and most importantly, it will help a very worthwhile cause!
2. If you are a local business owner or manager and would like to donate something for the raffle, please contact Jess at [email protected]
3. Or if you're like us, you can do both! 🙂
The drawing will be held in about two weeks and Jess has not told Jessica about any of this…it's all a complete surprise…hope she doesn't follow this blog! LOL So, if any of you know her, please do not tell her about this, we want to try to keep it a surprise for her. Jess will be surprising her with the savings deposit slip showing the amount of money we've all helped raise for her when she does the raffle drawing with her in 2 weeks. I'm so lucky to have such amazing clients like the two of them that I can call my friends. 🙂
Happy New Year!
Thank you to all of you who helped make 2007 a fantastic year for us!! We're looking forward to working with all of our wonderful clients & friends in 2008! 🙂
Quick update…
Thank you to everyone who e-mailed about the giveaway! We will be offering some more cool giveaways in the coming months so stay glued to the blog. 🙂
Also, I know you all know how crazy busy it gets around here leading up to Christmas…it seems like we always get slammed with orders before the holidays so in order to increase productivity and efficiency, I'm going to try something new and see how well it works. I'm going to try to focus more on editing & photoshopping by only checking e-mail twice a day. I know, it's going to be super hard for me…you all know how addicted I am to e-mail but if I can focus more on editing, I'll be able to get more done for all of you a lot quicker so I know you'll all understand. 🙂 And yes, that idea came from a combination of "The 4-Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferris and Dave Ramsey's Business Coach class in case you're wondering…I also highly recommend the 4 hour work week book to all business owners too…although I'm still struggling with how to cram 80 hours of work into 4 hours every week but I'm sure we'll get there someday…LOL! I know you're all used to me responding to e-mails within minutes/hours usually but we're going to try this for the next few weeks and see how well it goes. 😉
And on a completely unrelated note, Thanksgiving is THIS WEEK! Can you believe it?! If any of you are interested in participating in the Mozel Sanders Thanksgiving dinner charity project (or if you'd like to make a donation to their worthy cause) CLICK HERE! We helped out last year and it was so much fun!! 🙂