Episode 92: RAK Friday Reveal

The Link School is weighing in with 907 random acts of kindness committed in Colorado.

Yes, and there you have it. Welcome to the weekly Yes! And podcast. What a fantastic intro from the students at the Link School.

Cool.

Out there in Colorado, and my good friend Heather Barron. And what a great way to start off this special episode of the Weekly Yes And Podcast. I am your host, Travis Thomas. Really excited about this podcast because this is the great Rack Friday 17 reveal show. Yes, it kind of sounds epic, doesn't it? The big reveal show, which just so you know, I am going to reveal at the end of the episode how many different recorded random acts of kindness committed and posted during Rack Friday 17. And yes, there are still some coming in and some that have not been reported, and I'll talk about that a little bit. But this show, I'm really excited. I've got some contributors whose voices you are going to hear during this podcast because I wanted this to be about the people who are out doing the racks, not just about sort of me and my posse and what we did. But I wanted to celebrate all of the different examples out there. And again, I'm still coming off a high from experiencing Rack Friday 17 and all the awesome stuff, but I wanted to start off with that great group, the Link School out in Colorado, who I had the opportunity to work with this fall. And this is the second year that Heather has rallied the troops to go out and, and do some awesome things. So here's what they did this year. They single-handedly are responsible for over 907 random acts of kindness. And this is what they did. They went into the town of Buena Vista on Wreck Friday, and they have a big parade and festival in the town, which is right near the school. And so they were prepared with 440 inspirational quote cards. They baked 350 cookies and gave away 110 cups of cider, as well as 2 cheesecakes that they passed out and shared. And from Heather's perspective, just the joy, the smiles, the hugs, that came as a result of that. And they did all of that in, you know, a couple-hour span, you know, with the cookies and with the cider and everything. And so 907 racks. So we get off to a rocking start with the LINCSchool. And so that's— what a great way to start kind of the celebration for Rack Friday. And so for those of you who are maybe new to this podcast or aren't sure what Rack Friday is, again, Rack Friday was an idea we started 4 years years ago, some friends and family, in response to Black Friday. And so we wanted to have a counter-response or third-way thinking to what you could do on Black Friday. Instead of getting sucked into the madness that is Black Friday, what if we spent the day doing the opposite? Instead of thinking about what we needed to get, we could spend the day thinking about what can we give? So instead of Black Friday, Rack Friday, going out and committing as many random acts of kindness as possible. And it has grown a little bit by a little bit by a little bit each year. And our goal this year was 2,017 random acts of kindness committed and then posted via social media using the hashtag Rack Friday or the hashtag Rack Friday 17. And then I could get online, search hashtags, and And tally what people posted. Now here is the difficulty, is, and I've run into this, is a lot of people feel uncomfortable posting what they did because they don't want it to come across as bragging. And they like the anonymity of doing random acts of kindness, which is totally fine, which is why I know as much as people posted, There are probably just as many that are unposted, and so getting this official tally is, is really difficult. Um, and so again, sharing that tally at the end of the show. I'm gonna have to find a drum roll, uh, um, sound that I can use for that. Um, but again, to get back to the spirit of what Wreck Friday is all about, Wreck Friday is not about how much money you spent. It's not about the actual act. It's about—

It's about—

well, it is about the act, but it's not about what the act is. And as you will hear from the different voices that we share today, and then just sharing from my own personal experience, what Rack Friday to me is all about is how it shifts our own attention from thinking about ourselves, of what can I get, to thinking about others, and how it shifts our perspective and our intention from just going out there and blessing others. And even more specifically, to me, it's all about us connecting with humanity, connecting with our brothers and sisters who are strangers on a real human level. And I think what happens as, as we go out and we do these random acts of kindness is you're blown away at how just the simple recognition of, of, of seeing someone else and their humanity is what the real connection is all about. And that's where the joy comes from. It's us stepping out of our, our individual lives to recognize the person across from us in a very compassionate human way. And them feeling and being the recipient of that recognition is where the real joy is. I will share my favorite experience from what we did was in our group, our posse. We were in St. Louis and between my family and then some friends said, hey, can we join you? And another friend said, hey, can we join you? And then another friend said, hey, can I join you? And we had this posse that got into 3 cars. We divvied up all of the things we had prepared, from sack lunches for homeless people to a ton of gift cards to a ton of cash to all of these different things. We spread out and we went our way, and then we met up and had lunch and shared our stories afterwards. But I was at Walmart and I was buying some more supplies, and this nice woman was working the register, and I was like, how are things going for you? You know, this was Black Friday. And she's like, oh, I'm hanging in there. Kind of laughed about it. So she rang me up, I paid for my order, and I said, well, you know what, today we're spending the day doing random acts of kindness, so I want to give one to you. And so I gave her just this little envelope. I had a gift card inside. She didn't even know what was inside it. She just knew that I was giving her something. And she looked at me like, what? And she go— and she goes, can I come give you a hug? So she ran around the register Her eyes were teary, and she just gave me a big hug, and she said, "Thank you so much." I said, "Yeah, that's what today is all about." She had no idea what was inside the envelope. She was just the recipient of that goodness, and that to me is what Rack Friday is all about. And so, to kick things off, I'm going to actually share the voice of a good friend of good friend of mine, Carrie Bradley, better known as Karoo, and. She and her husband and daughter, Joe and Sydney, joined us for Rack Friday. And so, here is Carrie sharing in her own words what some of the things that we did on Rack Friday.

So, some of the racks that we did on Rack Friday this year, which were super fun, were packing lunches for homeless people. We put them in little brown paper bags, and the kids in our group drew hearts all over the bags and put notes inside, notes of love and support, as well as some good food to nourish them. We hid a bunch of money in dollar stores on the racks with a little note about random acts of kindness and what Rack Friday was. We handed out Starbucks cards to employees at different locations who had to work on Black Friday because they have really long days, just a little note of encouragement to them. And We put popcorn on red boxes. Oh, and we went, we had a bunch of Schnucks gift cards, which is our local grocery store chain, and we handed out Schnucks cards in front of the grocery stores to people who were heading in to do some shopping. So it was a super fun day. Loved all of the smiles and hugs and just the joy that we got to feel and share.

Well, thank you, Carrie. And again, it was so fun to spend the day with friends and with family and some of the people that we love most in this world, and Carrie and Joe and her family being one of them. And so a cool example that she didn't share was one of the things that we did is that we went into a couple of dollar stores and we pasted— or pasted— we taped dollars throughout the store. So as someone's literally in the dollar store, they see these dollars taped, and so they could grab them and use them buy whatever they're buying, right? So they were doing that in one of the stores, and all of a sudden this woman came chasing them down and gave them a big hug because she had found one of the dollars, and she was just so grateful for that. And so she chased them down and gave them a big hug. Over a dollar, right? That's the simplicity of this. It was over a dollar. And so I just love that story, and I love that Just that, uh, that's what it was all about. So I wanna kick it down now to, uh, my niece, one of my nieces, Teagan. And, uh, the cool thing about Rock Friday is I've got so many fran— framly. Uh, we should call that framly. Just take friends and family and put it together. It's framly. Alright, I'm going with it. We've got so much framly spread across the country that we literally were just all spread out. So we were in St. Louis, my sister was in Virginia, another sister in Michigan, my brother and his family who were in Michigan but were in Florida, good friends in Colorado. I mean, good friends up in New York State. It was just all spread out. And so Tegan, who's from Michigan, my niece, was actually in Florida with some of her family celebrating Thanksgiving. And so they got together and they went out and they did some amazing things. Again, they did As a family, over 60 racks from doing a beach cleanup to donuts for police and fire department, and then gift cards and cash for just so many different people from workers to strangers. They did over 60 racks altogether, and I wanted to capture Teagan in her own words, sort of one of the, the special racks that she shared. So here it is.

The one that really stuck with me was when I gave donuts and coffee to a FedEx woman, because this one really stuck with me because her first initial reaction when I offered her the donuts and coffee was, well, what's the catch? Like, do you want money? Like, what do you want? And I think that's like a thing that's going on in our world where no one can just do kindness just to be kind. There always has to be a catch. And her reaction was amazing when she found out that I was just doing this out of the kindness of my heart, just to be nice. And that is why that one really stuck with me, because she was so overjoyed when she was just being treated kindly for no catch, for no reason. So me and my family had a great Rec Friday, and yeah, thanks Travis.

Tegan says it all right there. No catch, no reason. That's— again, that's what Rack Friday is all about. I had this funny experience. We were outside a grocery store in St. Louis called Schnucks, and Joe had bought, I don't know, like 6 Schnucks gift cards. So I'm out in front of Schnucks with these gift cards, and as people are walking into Schnucks, I'm like, hey, we're celebrating random acts of kindness. Let me give you a Schnucks gift card. And I had about six people look at me and not take the gift card. And I kept saying, "No, no, no, no strings attached. No strings attached. Just take the gift card.

Random act of kindness." They're like, "No, no, no.

I'm fine. Give it to someone else." And so I'm out there yelling, "Free money! I have free money!" And it was difficult to do. Why? Because again, we've been so conditioned to think that there are strings attached to our kindness. And we need to get out of that. And again, that's what Rack Friday is gonna help us do. So now I want to share a good friend of ours up in New York, Aubrey Graff Daniels. Friendship with Hollister goes back to college, and just, she and her boys have been doing Rack Friday since we started this in a huge way. And this year, again, she and her 2 boys, they did over 50 random acts of kindness. Again, donuts for the police department, fire department. They put $5 and $1 bills in envelopes envelopes and gave them out everywhere, and they passed out gifts to strangers. And Aubrey, so sweet, uh, just the heart and soul of what Rack Friday is all about. And so she sent me this, um, of just how powerful and meaningful this experience was for her. And so here is Aubrey in her own words.

I can honestly say, and it does make me cry a little bit, Seeing the joy on people's faces when we explain the reasons why we're doing this is one of the best reasons to do it. To see the surprise turn to joy, to shock, to amazement, the thank yous. It just—it warms our heart. And to hear people say, "This is such a rare thing," and "This is so amazing," and "I'm gonna." I'm gonna continue us on and I'm going to share the racks. That's the best part of this. Travis, thank you so much for bringing this into our lives. It literally is the best day of the year. Love you so much.

How cool is that? Thank you so much, Aubrey, for sharing that. And you know what, Aubrey, it makes me cry a little bit too. So, you know, the great quote, your why should make you cry. And I honestly feel that Random Acts of Kindness, that Rack Friday, is a genuine expression of what my purpose is all about. And it's such a great side venture of just spreading love and spreading compassion and being able to sort of bless the world in a very little way because there's so much more that I would like to do. But Rack Friday has become that thing that I get to be the biggest cheerleader for because clearly it's not about me. It's about all of us doing even just the simplest act of kindness and how transformational that can be. And Aubrey is all about that. And so now I get to share this amazing guy. His name is Darrell Ray. Sounds like a country singer, right?

Darrell Ray.

But he's not. But Darrell lives in North Carolina now. He is the good friend of a good friend of ours who's Chris Harbour, who he talks about here in his memo. But a little bit of context. So, Rack Friday is a, you know, this was started with family and friends. It's completely nondenominational. There's no religious affiliation to it. We're not tied to any type of organization. This is just friends and family wanting to change Black Friday into Rack Friday. But this year, my wife and I belong to— we're members of a small church, a small Christian church. And we love doing creative things. And we told our church about this, about Rack Friday. And they're like, hey, we voted on it as a church. Let's give everyone in our church who wants to participate some money. to go out and the church will reimburse for some of your random acts of kindness. We're like, awesome, we're gonna spend money anyway, so we can do more. And so Chris, who's a member of our church and a friend of ours, lives in New York City, and he decided to take half of his money and give it to his friend who's in North Carolina so that he could do random acts of kindness. So I've never met Darryl, only know Darryl through Chris, and then Darryl shared with us what he did, and I'm like, get out of here.

That's awesome.

out of town, man. Can you please record a voice memo sharing what this was about for you, the impact it had on you, what you did? And I need to share that with everyone. So this is Darryl, Chris's friend, about what he did for Rack Friday and the impact it had on him. Here's Darryl.

Hey Travis and everyone listening to the podcast. My name is Darryl Ray and I just wanted to take a moment to share my experience with Rack Friday this year. I didn't even realize that something this cool existed until my good friend Chris Harbour gave me a call, um, and he said that he wanted to split his money that he was given in half and send half to me so that I could also perform random acts of kindness here in North Carolina. Um, I was so grateful that he thought of me in this way, and I was like, sounds like such a great idea, let's do it, I'm in. Um, so he sent me over the money, and immediately my brain just started working and turning and like ways that I could create some joy by performing these random acts of kindness over the next couple of days. Immediately I started to realize that this was going to be a really fun thing for me because I love the idea of having an opportunity to give, um, just so freely based on whatever I thought God was kind of pointing me in the direction to do. Uh, so the idea really, uh, resonated with me and I was like, okay, let's make this happen. Let's figure this out. Let's do some really cool things. And right away, I noticed that I started picking up on things that people were saying and feeling, and just kind of like listening out for ways I could help if I could. Now that I have this opportunity and this empowerment to give. A coworker of mine that day was the day before Thanksgiving, and it was very slow. And she was talking about how she wasn't even going to make enough money to get home to see her family because she didn't have enough gas. And I was like, hey, this is it. This is that moment where you take this opportunity to give a random act of kindness. And because I had the money in my pocket and it was right there, I said, you know what? I'm gonna fill up your tank of gas and you're gonna be able to go home. And I'm doing this because it is a random act of kindness that I'm doing, uh, through this church because we want to share God's love. And she was just so taken aback and was so grateful, but was like, Okay, well, thank you. The joy that she showed and the feeling that I had of being able to do this for her, it was just such a good thing that I was like, okay, now I'm getting fired up. I'm excited to see what else I can do with this money to just kind of spread joy and perform these random acts of kindness. Over the next couple of days, so many different opportunities came up for me. I kind of followed God's lead and just if something stuck out to me, I was like, you know, this is something I can do that's for good. And I was kind of like already spending my money on, on that Wednesday and to perform the random acts of kindness and, uh, knew that on, on Friday I was gonna have a lot of fun just coming up with different ideas and different things to do. I ended up kind of spreading the money out and performing over 5 to 6 different acts of kindness, and they were all awesome. And the reactions and the joy and God's love that was shown, uh, just fulfilled me in ways that I didn't even expect. The, the joy That my spirit was receiving, um, was the part that I didn't, uh, didn't know was going to be happening. I expected other people to feel happiness and, uh, to, to receive my help, but it actually ended up helping me out in so many ways. And perfect example for me was a moment where I felt like God really spoke to me, and it was, uh, all due to the fact that my brain was in this place of thinking about what can I do to spread kindness. Thanksgiving night, I was on the way to a family dinner and I saw 2 seemingly homeless people, a man and a woman, right at the top of the exit ramp. And I got the red light and stopped and had that moment of looking at the man holding the sign. And I saw this older woman that was literally doubled over on the ground. Behind him leaning against the sign. And I had this initial reaction, uh, to be honest, that I sometimes have when I see people who are, um, homeless or asking for money of, do they deserve my help or are they trying to take advantage of the charity on the holiday? But then I had a pause. And while I'm waiting for the light to change, I actually felt God just kind of take over and say, You should help them. Now, the the money was in my pocket, and I knew that I was going to be spending this on Black Friday to help people out. But I didn't have any hesitation, and I just reached for the twenty dollars in my pocket, rolled the window down, looked him in the eye with a smile, and said, "Happy Thanksgiving, and God bless you." He took it with such surprise. I I saw that when he realized it was a twenty dollar bill that he. Was a little thrown back, but he couldn't help smiling and said, said, thank you. Uh, and I felt this real moment of joy from him. Um, and it just kind of gave me this moment of clarity that I hadn't really had before, where I said, you know what, it doesn't matter whatever reason they are there. It isn't for me to judge. You know, it's still Thanksgiving. And even if they're trying to take advantage, or if they're truly in need of help, they still just needed a true moment of God's love to make their day, which is what he intended for us all. You know, a feeling of hope, a connection, a moment of good in God's name. So that was when I realized that I did feel so empowered to give because of the gift that was given to me by Chris, which was given to him by his church and this amazing organization, uh, for this idea. And I realized, you know what, okay, this is what Rack Friday is about. It's what it inspires. We can give God's kindness every day and use all the resources we have to do it. So I became motivated more than ever to keep the Random Acts of Kindness going. I have to say that my entire holiday weekend was just so filled with joy and love, and I was just kind of flying off the feeling of God's love and grace, and everyone Everyone that I touched and helped, their energy and their happiness kind of spilled over into me and just kind of kept me into that state of mind the entire time. So basically, I just want to say, I just really want to say thank you to Chris for thinking about me and empowering me this way. It has just been so great to have God's love, and it's even brought bounty and blessings to my own life these last few days. And Travis, it means so much to me to know that an organization of faith like this exists and does so much good for the world when we need it most.

Okay, how cool is that, right? How awesome is that, that Darrell found Rack Friday through a friend, and as a result of that, it completely transformed his entire Thanksgiving? Here's what Darrell left out, and I got permission to share from Darrell because he sent First of all, he sent me an email of what he had done, including this, but he didn't include it in the voicemail. I'm like, Darryl, can I share what you put in the email? And he said, absolutely. So this is an email from Darryl. At the end, he says, today, after praying about it, I decided that I'm going to give my car, which I cannot afford to get fixed and has been broken down and sitting in my yard the last 3 months, to a former coworker who lost his job right before the holiday and doesn't have any way to get back and forth since his car was totaled. I let him know that the car was a '99 Volvo with high mileage and it was going to be several hundred dollars to get fixed, but he was still overjoyed and said he actually has a friend that works on cars and he will be able to fix it to get it going, and then he'll be able to pay it off as he makes money once he starts his new job. He has 2 children and is such a great guy, and since I am in a position to use my dad's car right now, I know how much it can I know how much it can knock you down to have no transportation. I knew that doing this was what God wanted, so Rack Friday lives on. So there's Darryl giving away his car because he was inspired by Rack Friday. Yeah, this is kind of a big deal, right? And again, if we go back to Rack Friday isn't always about the recipient. Rack Friday is about how we as individuals are transformed when we shift our attention and our intention to blessing others instead of only thinking about ourselves. That is how we change Black Friday into Rack Friday. So, so moved by that. Thank you, Darryl, for sharing that. A couple of other things. My sister who was in Virginia, she and her family did a bunch of different racks, but not as many as she wanted to. So she has decided That December, she is going to do 25 days of Rack. So leading from December first up to Christmas, a different random act of kindness every day. You can participate with her if you want to do that. Let's go ahead and call that hashtag Rack 25 if you want to participate with Tiffany. She's also the one responsible for the logo for Rack Friday and just super creative. So Tiff. Awesome. And again, I want to thank the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation out there for all their support all these years, and everybody who participated, and the people that I've never met who continue to, to share and share the idea, because this is going to be a movement. So here it is, the grand total. Travis, insert drum roll right here. I really hope that I found a drumroll audio link. If not, here we go. The number of random acts of kindness committed and then posted for 2017: 1,800. Right? So that's the ballpark, uh, because it's, it's not an exact science, but what I've been able to gather and tally is 1,800 random acts of kindness committed and then posted. And I know there's so many more out there. Our goal is 2,017. There were absolutely 2,017 random acts of kindness out there, but just not as many as I could post and say that. So 1,800 is the official count I've been able to find. But here's the thing, this was year 4. Year 5 is the tipping point. I can feel it. We are making this a movement. We just need We just need you all. We just need you all to to share it with us, to spread the word, and we're going to create Rack Friday groups next year where you guys get together in groups and do things, and then one person from your group is responsible for posting and sharing. We're going to get that 2018 next year, and of course, we are always a tweet away. From Ellen and Oprah getting on board and turning this into a movement of transforming Black Friday into Rack Friday. So there you have it, everyone. Thanks so much. This is my favorite day of the year. Thank you so much for spreading the love, spreading the rack. Rack on! And of course, we love you, Juju. Have a great, great day, everyone.