At the end of 2006 I was robbed twice at gunpoint within 90 days and realized how blessed I am to be alive. I called FTD on January 1, 2007 and there was dead silence on the other end of the phone when I asked for a quote for 250,000 roses. The good thing is that the person at FTD said I should set up a "myspace" page . . . .
I already had a personal page set up, so I set up one for A Rose of Thanks (
www.myspace.com/aroseofthanks). The connection to myspace goes all the way back to the beginning on my personal myspace. I added a graphic artist from Charlotte as a friend just before I got robbed the second time on 12/26/06. So I emailed Yolanda R through myspace and met with her at Starbucks on the first Saturday in 2007. We came up with the logo and what is the cover of the card.
I sent out the very first card on Valentines Day 2007 to a friend from myspace. How I found her was pretty cool. I was thinking, "how am I going to find who to send the cards to", so I thought of looking up the country of Iraq as the person's home and sure enough about 95% of the people who listed Iraq as home were American soldiers. That is where I found the first person we sent a card to, Jessica.
Since Valentines Day 2007 we have sent out over 7500 cards to our troops. Some of my myspace friends have asked for cards to send to the troops. I would guess that my myspace friends have directly been involved in sending over 1500 cards themselves!
Now, we are getting ready to roll out A Rose of Thanks as a fundraiser for other non profits . . . another myspace story . . . .
Elaine Hendrix, the stepmom to be from The Parent Trap, is a talented artist and we became myspace friends last year. We have met and have become more than myspace friends. She mentioned in one of her bulletins last year that she had a relative serving in the Gulf so I sent her some cards to personalize for him and his unit. Fast forward a year to May 2008, she was putting on a fundraiser event for In Defense of Animals and invited A Rose of Thanks to participate in the gift bags for the event. The play, Because They Have No Words, was awesome! Before the event I emailed her and said I had a crazy idea to help her raise more funds. We are now working on a card for the troops that will have a paw print on the inside cover and the signer of the card can sign for their pet. The proceeds from the sale of these cards will be split between In Defense of Animals and A Rose of Thanks.
So, you can see myspace.com has had a huge impact on the success of A Rose of Thanks. The celebrity friends I have made on myspace have helped as well. And most have all personalized a card for the troops. We got invited out the Emmys, AMA and Golden Globe Gift Suites last year. Friends I met at the suites still stay in touch through email and myspace and include, Zack Ward, Leeza Gibbons, Paula Abdul, Audrina Patridge, Claudia Jordan, Mo Collins . . . just to name a few.
The media contacts I have stayed in touch with through myspace include Jane Emery of
www.lastheplace.com, Mona Loring of MLC PR and most importantly, my good friend,
David Stein, A Celebration of Life through Sports on Sporting News Radio.
