people and i was thinking when i first became a coach and two thousand and one i would meet people and say i'm a coach and tell them all about coaching and the start looking you know around the room so i really had to learn how to network i want the simple rules of networking is never talk about yourself you know talk about the other person and and what i usually do is i asked them where they are where they live so then they feel comfortable and then i ask them about their business and people love to talk about themselves and then after a while they will ask you about your business but i don't talk that much about it because i give them my caught and i want them to contact me so that's a rule and if you have any other blogs that you follow  networking send them some way and i'll share it with the audience and my email address is helen love yourself coaching the next and today we have to special guests and and so i'd like to introduce them this is john and this is sharon so why don't you tell us a little about yourself as well as helen said my name is sharon and this is my husband john we have two boys is alex and brian unfortunately we lost alex to cancer five years ago this month so that's how we got started with our not profit to keep his spirit alive and we're both in health care so you know we know a lot about it and we just wanted to give back to the community that helped us during that time you know that when a beautiful gift so john what type of health care you  k i'm an e m t ok i wasn't always i was formerly a real estate manager ok and during the time that alex was sick i decided that i needed something that would let's say benefit my soul a little bit more night yeah terms of payback so i decided that i wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to helping people i didn't immediately decide to become an e m t i kind of stumbled into that had an epiphany so speak what we're able to do with alex forever is it's our way of paying it forward ok for the significant help that we got while alex was sick  when when a child is diagnosed with cancer and thrust into that world the entire family is is thrown into a appeal for lack of a better term and everyone needs help not  that the patient or family may need and significant needs in terms of we got help paying bills and what we're trying to do now is again pay it forward and a way that i like to put it is it's it's a way to work the pain the pain the pain over the last doesn't go away it's and it's a negative energy that you have to work with and convert  t and turn it into a positive energy and that's what we're trying to do what a beautiful gift giving other people and it's also a gift to give yourself you know to help other people it thirty years and right now and the clinical director of a hospice and i actually took that position three months before alex was diagnosed was so i don't know if that was a good thing or bad thing but yeah during his illness when he was eventually on hospice i feel like i was able to i had a dollar role i was his mother and i was a hospice nurse so i know how to really keep them comfortable right so it worked but i  to tell us about alex alex was full of life he loved life he loved the outdoors he loved his friends his family he liked helping people he was a boy  scout he wanted to be a police officer of course never got to do that he just loved living yeah yeah he had lots of friends girlfriends and yeah yeah  alex didn't let cancer beat him he didn't because he lived his life to the fullest until the very end he he did everything he could possibly do at the point where he was in it able to get around and drive his friends help them he did not stop him right and he always had a sense of love and caring and giving and and that's the legacy that that we're trying to to continue it had alex prevailed in his battle yet i don't i won't i don't use the time or terminology you notice i didn't say had alex survived he didn't survive it did not defeat him unfortunately he passed away but it didn't it never defeated his spirit is  hard had alex prevailed again he would have been doing this he would have been paying it forward he would have been helping people he would have been providing service to the community to others as he was so in essence where we're continuing what he would have been doing right now that's you know that's really from when what was it a hurricane or the flood alex collected food for the people who were affected the bell broke by him one of the more devastating hurricanes in that affected bound brook and i've lost track of the names now because there's been so many he took it upon himself as a boy scout to start a collection of personal personal items and collect them and then he himself delivered a trailer load of goods to somerset county that's really something and this is just all certainly we want to help people you know make it easier for them right but i always say when i'm trying to get people to come to our benefits is help us put a smile on a child's face help us do that because some of the things we do is we buy kindles for the children who are in the hospital so they have something they can do while they're waiting for their chemo we even bought a few laptop computers for high school students who needed to continue their schoolwork  and these things you know it just brings a smile of the day they get so excited and they're so happy and if it were to do that for five minutes for a child you know wasn't undergoing such harsh treatment right there so i think that's the main mission right we're basically helping on the any level we can look look look seven the grass roots level right while we want there to be a cure for cancer right that's not our mission our mission is  help people personally so as sharon said if patient a is fourteen years old and needs and i can do all tablet right to stay connected to whatever was going on in school then right then we'll do that if if it's someone who needs an actual laptop will do that if it's a small child it just puts a blanket will do what we can right if we have enough funds today to know and like you said you're putting smiles on people's faces remember many years ago i was in this program with self development and we had to take on a project and  one of the projects i took on was i went to children's hospital in philadelphia because they saved my granddaughter's life a few times she had a breathing problem when she was born and she would stop breathing chance it and so but thank god she's twenty six years old and she you know it's ok so we went and i got a company to donate ice cream i don't know what clown so she brought in a couple a collapse and so and then i got people to donate guess and so the kids all got gifts and the children that were able to come to the supporting and the other children that couldn't a group of us went around and gave them gifts and i'll never forget that experience you know i remember they will look a little girl she was in a and yeah it is yeah so how telling us all that you know some stories that you know heartwarming stories well you know we kind of people know that that gives her from alex forever but we don't necessarily give them out we are charity is to embrace kids foundation and that's where we get our charity five zero one c and so everything that we do they help us with dom we are allowed to decide where we want our funds to go right but then they sort of organize it for us ok so you know when we buy the  deliver them for us so we don't have that much contact with the patient the children we did do one thing that we were volatile two things one was we gave a mother's day lunch t moms who were on the unit because you know they couldn't go anywhere so when i sponsored the lunch there was someone to do their hair someone to do their nails oh my there was a whole lunch and it was for mother's day for the moms who couldn't leave the hospital there because of their children so that we were present for them we were involved with a christmas party one year and we had someone and we had someone donate to us red velvet cupcakes so we were able to be there to give them out to the  alex alex forever is us and that great work under grace kids foundation which is a new brunswick and we only deal really with the bristol mild excuse me the bristol myers children's hospital in new brunswick ok so that's where you know all  exactly what alex forever is is it's a fund within the brace kids ok so it's a five hundred one c three organization donations are fully tax deductible right and and it everything donation things like that work out well because it's passes meaning and i'm not asking you to write a check you can go to a restaurant and do anything from have a beverage to have a family dinner right and we benefit from that right we have done a number of vents like that we've we've done it events with merchants such as alex ani ten thousand villages where again during a certain period of time a percentage of proceeds is give them back to alex forever you know as a donation and that helps that helps build up our so again we're able to donate spend the money right back on the children one hundred percent in addition we always encourage them or are heavily dependent upon cash donations directly through our our website ok that's what i was going to ask you that you know like you know what donation financial done if you go to our website all everything's on there in terms of our history what we do what we've done plans for the future and the links to make direct cash donations and that's w w w alex forever spelt with a four ok dot org ok tell us it's it's you know i like the information that you have in the links it's really set up where you can basically find our life history there ok everything is there a lot to learn more about alex right yeah great yes so what are some of the fun races coming up well right now with the holidays we're taking a break and i want it will start again after the first of the year so we have we don't plan anything yet but probably it will be a  going into the dispersement part of part of the year now we're right around the holiday time well we'll see what we can do in terms of helping out families we have some things lined up as soon as we total up results of the most recent benefits will be able to see how we can allocate and help some families and individuals out and it could be anything from either gift cards for families who perhaps need help right grocery shopping right fuel gift cards again the electronics if if necessary and we're looking to wrap that up pretty much by by the end of the month and then we usually look to do something around valentine's day between valentine's day and our alex's birthday april ok he was undergoing treatment actually it's not about alex i would not be a good mom if i didn't mention my other son brian who has been up who was wonderful to all of this and is a big part of this that of what we're doing  brian was a bone marrow donor for his brother at fifteen years old and he you know to me he's a hero yes i mean it unfortunately didn't keep alex alive but at fifteen he was donating his bone marrow to his brother so i need to i think it's important for me to bring that up and talk about brian a little bit well actually i have to correct john that i did it it bought us time without getting into huge detail of the various efforts we we went through to try to extend alex's life it all added up and added to the amount of time he was with us and the most one of the most significant things was website there is no alex for aras so it's everything that we're doing it's everything that our friends and family and people who don't know what's are doing right by you know giving us donations it's allowing us to do what we want it not what we want was how we want to help the children write yeah yeah we again yes we we rely heavily on the cash donations and people spreading the news people we need people to share the information we need people to tell others about the website and write about what we do and that work it and then again just just spread the news that there are no limits to what we can it everything we everything we get every penny we get goes one hundred percent to the children and their families right and will do as much as we possibly can i mean that's just having a fundraiser and this is where and it's been there you know and i meant but it's very important yes the more people that know about us the more people that come to our benefits the more i can do the more smiles we can make right and it's really great so if someone would like to donate i know you told us about your your website please give us the address again and a phone number where they can contact you it's w w w dot alex forever dot org contact you can either contact us through the website there's a link that will email to me directly however me email is and a phone number a seven three two six seven two two one four four ok and again all of that's on the website in case somebody didn't get all that it's it's all there yeah that screen i mean it's so beautiful you know wh ten thousand villages pays the artists and then they sell the merchandise in their stores right so when we had our benefit they were you were not only helping alex for us are you also helping these third world country artists who you know would it would be really great if they could give you know financially and also will all the upcoming fundraisers back on the site so you know look around and if there's a fundraiser in your area