One Red-Headed Celebrity

Posted by Gabe on April 15, 2011 under Kids are Heroes, Trade for Coco | 9 Comments to Read

I’m the type of guy that if I see an idea I like I will grab it and run with it. I make no bones about, that’s just how I roll. I did it with the donor walls. I liked what a company called SupporterWall was doing, and I couldn’t wait for them to go live, so I created  a bunch of them myself. They were a pretty good source of income at first. A bunch of our followers jumped on the walls. Now I find myself spending a lot of time trying to recruit more supporters.

Then it happened. Thanks to a campaign I ran last December, where I contacted about 150 celebrities asking for their support, I received something in the mail today. It was the picture you see here, a signed photo of Conan O’Brien. It was postmarked from zip code 91510: Burbank, California. There was no note or anything else in the envelope, except for a piece of cardboard that was supposed to protect him from the long trip across the country. I thought it strange that he would send me a picture of himself, as this was not requested. I wondered what I would do with it. I put the image up on Facebook and Twitter and got a great reaction. “Go Team Coco!!” Conan is AWESOME!!” People were so excited to see his picture. That’s when the idea hit me.

Do you remember Kyle McDonald, the guy who traded One Red Paper Clip for a house? He continuously traded up for something better until he got a house. (Yes, a HOUSE!!)  (I may steal ideas, but at least I give credit where credit is due.)

Well why not do the same thing? I plan to trade up One Red-Headed Celebrity (using the #tradeforcoco hashtag on Twitter) until I get a full page color ad in USA Today for Kids Are Heroes OR a one-hour sit-down consultation with Sir Richard Branson with the promise of him appointing someone to our advisory board. Either of these options would help us to grow this organization to the level of our vision. As you might imagine, it is rather difficult to do this without a LOT of support. Since our inception we have tried to think outside the box and this certainly follows that pattern.

So here’s how it works. I put this great autographed picture of Conan up “on the block”. People send me offers up to a particular deadline. I choose what I will swap for the Conan picture. Then we start the process over with whatever bounty I make from Conan. I continue that all the way up the ladder till I hit our goal of $100K or a sit-down meeting with Sir Richard Branson.

Just like Kyle I will keep all the trades on this blog till I get there. If I have to travel, like Kyle did, that might be a problem because I have no real budget to trade my red-headed celebrity. So I’m hoping I can do stuff by mail, and that this goes a lot quicker that it did with Kyle. Nevertheless, let’s get started.  The first deadline is Monday, April 18 at 5PM EST. Anyone have a signed 8×10 of Norm MacDonald?

TRADED — see what we got for him.