I searched long and hard for a solid fund raiser that was a TRUE WIN WIN.
And maybe a WIN-WIN-WIN even.
One that YOU would benefit from, personally.
Like a fundraiser where if I handed you a $20 bill, and you handed me just $10 back.
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTT? Am I crazy? No.
That’s not a typo. That’s upside down fund raising.
MEANING – YOU MAKE MONEY to help someone out.
Would you be open to participating in a FUND RAISER that puts MONEY back into the DONOR’s pockets?
Not only will you help us, and help yourself- but once you prove this concept, you will then have a solid tool in your tool belt to help your favorite charity, your church, your ministry, and more. If you picked up a fresh pizza in town, and they have a collection change jug on the counter asking for donations for their manager who just had a horrible accident and can’t work anymore and she has to support her 8 young kids, you have a TOOL now that can help them.
Second, we are not the family that asks for help so this is as close to asking for help as I can get. Maybe you experienced this too- like you thought about a GoFundMe for a cause, but thought, no one is going to support it.
That is HARD for me to ask for help – and I would say hard for most. A lot of times you don’t want to be a burden to folks as they have their own hardships, often worse than yours. We have so many blessings, so to ask people for money when they may struggle to put food on their table doesn’t sit right with me. BUT if I can help you out MORE than I can be helped in return, that is something I can get behind. And if enough folks get behind this, we have a real opportunity to do more of what we are called to do.
My wife and I personally love to be on the giving end of this transaction- and even when we don’t that is where we usually end up falling. My wife had someone reach out to me on Messenger a few months back asking for some medical advice for their sick children. By the end we not only gave them free advice- in the middle of the night – but the next day we paid to have them delivered a large pizza and a triple order of chicken wings. This was after my wife offered to make them a home cooked meal and the mom replied with, “Well, we are really, really picky. Could you just send us a pizza instead?”
Imagine if we did that and the pizzeria sent me a check for $100 for doing that favor. I could then go and order myself a sheet pizza, an upgrade for helping someone out. A fundraiser you can’t out give for anyone who “kneads the dough”.
So yes, it’s hard for us to ask even for $10 if we were to give you $20- as we would rather let you keep it all but it’s a win win on so many levels that I am inviting you to our cause.
BUT I also know if I don’t take some steps to help our current situation we are facing, we are headed for a train wreck. I would rather wait for the collision and see what pieces are left, but my family needs me to do something before that happens.
The fundraiser website will say “SUPPORT Michelle”, my wife, BUT it’s really multiple things going on-
Let me first share what is going on with me– I have been a pharmacist for over 20 years now. It’s not that I hate my career, it’s just I am doing it cause I stuck, not because it’s this deep calling that brings my God given talents for all the world. If you can’t tell I love to write instead- my grandfather pushed me into pharmacy because he said I would always have a job when I wanted to be a writer. I should have read the fine print where I also wanted a job I was called to do.
First physically I am seeing more and more I need to step back. In general, once you get a health care job, it’s almost this duty where you are now obligated to not abandon your post. Like back in 2001, I was a new pharmacist and my dad had died of cancer after we sat with him in the hospital all night, and that morning when he died I still went in to work because I didn’t even know if you could call in sick. I herniated my back soon after and ever since I have leg pain on standing still. And I broke my wrist a few years ago and have a plate in. The day after I was in a cast, I was counting meds one handed and my wife was teching for me.
So the pharmacy condition now is you fill double you did when you got out of school, and with me it’s for less money and no benefits that I was making 20 years ago, plus inflation – and the more you work the more scripts you get and the more work you do. So I am exhausting myself trying to provide, but this week I filled 500 scripts IN ONE DAY’s WORK and from standing in one spot for nearly 11 hours and opening 500 bottles, the pain I feel in my legs and hands is getting worse and worse but I just ride it out. Yet I won’t do anything about it because it’s embarrassing asking for help when you are a licensed health care professional – yet I have zero life insurance and no real retirement savings- that was wiped out when we built a home a few years back and a month after we moved in the pharmacy back then that I helped open – suddenly closed- because we weren’t doing 500 scripts a day.
I have some deep pain, perhaps, but the CONFLICT of pharmacy is another issue. When I was in school before 2001 we didn’t do vaccines. We learned some hidden truths about them- such as in EVERY case of the ones they tell you are life saving- measles, mumps, rubella, etc – the pandemics started going away, and vaccines arrived AFTER and stole the credit. Only later on when pharmacists started giving the vaccines did we now just repeat the mantras of the pharmaceuticals and our employers. We take the OATH OF A PHARMACIST when we get licensed – and the first VOW is FIRST DO NO HARM – and I do not believe we are doing that. The pharmaceutical industry doesn’t care about health and there is no profit in a cure of anything. Watching my dad die of cancer a year out of school from a system of FALSE HOPE where Pharmacy school convinced us we would save the world turned my cynicism toward the profession. Being forced out of jobs for warning against the drug interactions or refusing to fill something on ethical grounds has made a long term career rather difficult- BUT I finally see a way out of this and I can really help people now. It’s not FROM pharmacy but I can help folks by delivering folks FROM pharamcy.
I am thankful, i am not complaining, but I also am stuck because that is the responsibility you feel – you have this “Go down with the ship” duty it seems. I know of a Pharmacist out west who was having chest pain at work at a CVS and they told her she had to stay at the pharmacy until a substitute pharmacist arrived- and it took 2 hours for one to arrive. Tragically she was dead before her relief came.
I can’t get time to heal, I see more and more things that vex my soul in this industry, and I am headed for a major intervention to get out of this. Or I find a way to raise some funds and then we hire someone, I can cut down to 2 days a week, I put time into this fundraising endeavor, and now we can get things improving.
And I know you have your own challenges and problems, so I am not asking for money from you. I am asking would you choose me to let you SAVE MONEY and get money back and support my endeavor and spread the word. Would you test what I have and if you love it, spread the word, maybe even get compensated for your efforts? IF you are taking the time to read this post, I promise taking the next step will take much less time.
In a similar way, my wife’s health gets the short end of the stick. A couple weeks ago she was feeling so lousy after I left for work (but couldn’t call off) when I couldn’t get a hold of her, I thought she was in a coma or worse. That SCARED me and I have no one to replace me at the pharmacy I manage. I couldn’t stay home and help her, and I couldn’t leave the pharmacy to check on her. So I waited and waited for my son to come home from school and had him face time me when he entered the door. She was asleep and her phone had died and she was just weak, but ok.
She has some more mysterious aliments, but they are worsening, and she is in chronic pain. She had hernia mesh surgery years back and a gallbladder out and other stomach issues- we don’t know what is going on now but her stomach pain and GI issues are consistently excruciating for her. From fibromyalgia and neuopathy pain to chest pain that comes and goes from the stress of life (which I am sure we all feel today), at times she feels like her back is broken and her feet are broken, and the leg pain gets so bad at night she tells me she wishes she could chop them off. She says, “Mike I’m only 40. What is going to happen to me when I am 60?”
So personally I am looking to leave pharmacy to put more time into all of this- my wife and myself to find out what is wrong and how we can fix things, put time in my family, and more. I already am helping people on line with addictions and can do more of that, I want to do more with my blogging and writing, and I currently volunteer a few hours a week coaching online for a ministry called GroundWire where I chat with hurting people all over the world.
So what do I have for you to check out?
- First, for individuals, we can LOWER your bills without changing services. If you have a cable bill, cellphone, etc, we are able to partner with an A+ BBB rated company to lower your rate OR let you know you are already on a great rate. If you upload your bills on our secure website- we get credit, whether we can lower them or not. There is no charge if we can’t lower them. If we can lower them we split the savings. For example, If we negotiate a $1,000 savings for your cable bundle, you save $1000 split over the time we negotiated- say 12 months. So $1,000/ 12 is $83 a month. $83 / month comes off your bill and you pay our company $41.50 / month.
- For those in deregulated energy states or COMMUNITY SOLAR STATES we can maybe save you on your energy bills. In a few select states we have limited spots with local solar farms to offer a FREE GUARANTEED 5-40% reduction off your energy bill. When you go to CHECKOUT from the link- you can see if your state offers Community Solar. You can select it and go on a waiting list too so you may be able to get it in the future if that is offered to you. THERE IS NO CHARGE or SPLITTING of the SOLAR DISCOUNTS.
- We can also review your home, life, and car insurance. My friend Chad in Virginia entered his car insurance and saved $400 and got better coverage. You are NOT splitting the savings here either.
- For businesses, we can do other things like bigger bill negotiation, energy and bill audits, eliminate credit card processing fees with our partnership with Net Zero merchant processing, offer energy saving technologies, solar discounts, and do ERC tax credits and audits.
To get started, check out this quick video –
First you should watch this quick video about AutoPilot Bill Negotiation. This will show you how we can save a bunch of money. https://viv-info.com/d/sPTn79
https://viv-info.com/d/MwfMx7 I’ve included the link here gives you a overview of the fundraising.
And to enroll and enter your bills – https://ihcc.justviv.com/supportourorg/
Let me know if you have questions!!!
Thanks,
Michael and Michelle Ilardo and Family