My interview on Slow Hustle

I have been a long time fan of the Slow Hustle Podcast since episode 1.  My friend Peter Awad does a fantastic job and has some really interesting and super successful guests on his show.  That is why I was truly honored when he reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to tell the Beat Cancer Today story on his show.  

Here is the link to the audio on the web.  Otherwise you can find it by searching out the Slow Hustle podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast player.  Please check it out and let me know what you think!

For those of you that aren't in the position to be able to listen to the podcast for whatever reason, I had the interview transcribed so you could at least read it.  Apologies in advance for any transcription issues you may see, it was a fiverr.com deal.  ;-)

"The little things don't matter. You know the big things are what matter and the big things are: your family and your friends and how you spend your time. You know, I've got a full time gig. I am an IT guy and this is just something that I do and that other volunteers help with because we feel driven to do something that matters." - Aaron Horn

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Peter: (Intro) Hey everyone, I am recording this intro to my conversation with Aaron Horn sitting outside a coffee shop one of my favorite spots here in California. Because of that there are some background noises. You probably hear somebody talking, probably hear some cars driving around so I apologize in advance. Today's story features a guest who has a powerful story. He’s endured a lot and despite having gone through more than what many of us will ever face, prepare to be inspired by his positive outlook and if anyone understands grief that's Aaron Horn.  He’s my buddy, longtime supporter of Slow Hustle, super excited to have him on the show and you are going to learn a lot more about what he has gone through in just a few moments and yet despite all of that, he has turned it around and made a serious positive impact on many lives.  He’s a busy guy involved in many different things, but one of the things is he’s a co-founder of an organization called Beat Cancer Today which creates awareness of childhood cancer and provides financial support for childhood cancer research. So get ready to be inspired, what you are going to learn in today's episode is how a unique fundraising event raised $2.4 million in 2015 for patient and family support programs, valuable advice for a family of a child recently diagnosed with cancer, how stoic philosophy impacts the way you can look at cancer with an interesting perspective and why God allows bad things to happen to good people. I think you’ll be intrigued to hear his response to that and many, many more topics there. And we know it is easy to get distracted with the little things and as you listen to Aaron’s story, you will be reminded that there are many more important things to worry about than the trivial, like your kid running on the carpet with mud on their shoes, things getting spilled, things getting broken, people getting sick, jobs getting lost, things like that and so because of that, we've prepared a bonus to help you stay focused on the things that really matter, so make sure you stick around to hear more about that after my conversation with Aaron. And now… on to the show.

Peter: Hey everyone and welcome to another edition of the Slow Hustle podcast. Today I get to chat with Aaron Horn. Aaron is the co-founder of Beat Cancer Today where they create awareness of childhood cancer and provide financial support for continued childhood cancer research and patient and family support programs. He is also the founder of Corrobo, a communication review service for your startup and Director of IT at the Iowa Interstate Railroad. Oh, and the dude is obsessed with all things technology. Aaron, thanks so much for being here man.

Aaron: Hey Peter thanks for having me, this is awesome.

Peter: Yeah dude and I just want to give a quick a huge thanks to previous guest and friend Ash Kumar thanks to him I have a quiet place with a reliable internet to record from while we are here at our next stop in Southern California so check out his site tradecraft.com. So Aaron, you know am looking forward to sharing the story of Beat Cancer Today and the motivation behind it. You also just happen to be a huge fan and supporter of the Slow Hustle movement, so I really am feeling really fortunate to be able to spread the word about what you are working on man. To start us off, would you mind telling us a little bit about the organization kind of at a high level and then we'll dive deep?

Aaron: Sure, so Beat Cancer Today was formed in 2009 it really started with a couple of moms that were sitting at a pool and they saw Beat Iowa and Beat State shirts so you know here in Iowa we have the University of Iowa Hawkeyes and the Iowa State University Cyclones and since we don't have any professional teams, those are the big teams of the state and so that rivalry is really intense and so any where you are it's easy to see a Beat State or a Beat Iowa t-shirt and these moms are sitting by the pool and they thought “wouldn't it be cool if everybody just got behind Beat Cancer instead?” and so that's where the idea sparked from and we thought “we can do that”. So we started making shirts we went through the whole licensing thing with the University of Iowa and Iowa State so we could get their logos on them and we did Beat Cancer shirts and they were very, very popular and so we ended up becoming a 501C3 nonprofit in 2012 and in addition to the t-shirt to raise money we would do a silent auction fundraiser once a year called the 'Gold Gala' and we decided right away that I mean none of this money obviously was for us or what we were doing, it was purely for the organizations that supported the families and so we take a hundred percent (100%) of the proceeds from those shirt and hoodies and bracelets that we sell and we split it up evenly between the University of Iowa Dance Marathon, Children's Cancer Connection in Des Moines and the Children Oncology Group Foundation that's base out of Pennsylvania and that's the national research organization exclusively for childhood cancer and so that's where the money goes, from the t-shirts and from the events that we have.

Peter: It's awesome man and so how do you feel like Beat Cancer is making an impact on those organizations? Do you have feedback or stories that you want to share?

Aaron: Yeah so this year in 2015 we were actually really blessed to be able to donate $57,000 to those three organizations.

Peter: Wow!

Aaron: Which is awesome and so over the course of the last three years alone it's being over a $100,000 and so  Dance Marathon and Children's Cancer Connection those specifically are family and patient support programs that benefit the kids and their families directly and so Children's Cancer Connection for example has summer camps where the kids can go to free of charge that are actually staffed with nurses and people who can administer medicine for them where the parents can feel comfortable and the kids are there with other kids fighting cancer and so there's just a comradely and a bond that is unbelievable that goes on at those camps. Then they also offer siblings camp which is free for siblings that often get forgotten when  their brother or sister are fighting cancer, the sibling kind of get's pushed back cause all the focus is on the patient and so they offer camps for them as well. They offer things that seem simple but are super important like binders for the parents that are full of information about “ok your child is being diagnosed with cancer, here's what's next, here's all the drugs we are going to be talking about, here are the side effects, here's some local support groups”, that kind of thing and Children's Cancer Connection does offer family support groups where people can get together  on a monthly basis and just talk about what's going on and some of the things that they are facing and then Dance Marathon, they do things like buying hospital beds, they are helping fund the children's hospital at the University of Iowa to the tune of over $10 million I think.  You know, Dance Marathon just had their huge, huge event a couple of weekends ago and they raised $2.4 million in one year to go towards these patient and family support programs to the hospital itself and Beat Cancer was actually awarded a "miracle maker award" which is a sponsorship of the highest level because we were able to donate $17,500 to them in 2015 so that was really exciting.

Peter: It's so cool man. I love that  an idea that was sparked around the pool as you say this lady sitting around can turn in to something and making it real like a real impact on people in a time where likely it’s as difficult as it gets so I commend you guys. It's awesome man  from there do you mind telling the story of like how you got involved in this and why it's important to you sharing Eli's story?

Aaron: Yeah, so my oldest son Eli when he was three and half years old he was diagnosed with neuroblastoma cancer which is a super rare cancer back in 2007 and so that started with a stomach ache that turned into going to the doctor multiple times, getting X-rays trying to figure out what was going on to the point where he was having a really hard time walking and so I called my pediatrician at seven o'clock in the morning and said “I am coming in and am not leaving until we have an answer because he can't walk right so this not just constipation or something like that this is more serious” and so they agreed to do a scan there and he came into the room and said yeah we have a big problem, there's a tumor, it starts in his adrenal grand and we can see it going up into his chest and down into his pelvis and its massive, you need to get to the University of Iowa today. We can either get an ambulance or you can go, so we jumped into the car and we drove to Iowa City and we were there for about thirty days straight just diving right into chemo and doing the whole “your child has cancer” speeches with the doctors and here's the plan type of thing. So after that, we started researching and started Googling neuroblastoma and trying and get over the shock of all the horrible things that you see and the bad statistics and I think at the time that statistic was somewhere around the 30% survival rate and a survival rate in childhood cancer just means they'll live five more years, so when you are talking about a three and half year old they are saying you have a thirty percent chance of making it to eight and half, which is pretty, obviously, that's pretty shocking and so then you just start looking at every option available, at least we did.  You know, there are a lot of families that it is just super overwhelming and so they are just kind of numb and they go through whatever they are told to do and I've come to find out that's an ok reaction too because it is super overwhelming, but we did tons of research and what we found is the biggest facility in the world doing the most advanced research on neuroblastoma was Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City and so we talked to the doctors there and they said “Yeah, you'll probably do stem cell transplant or something like that in Iowa City. We wouldn't do that, we would actually do this immunotherapy where we would actually do chemo just like Iowa City is going to do, but as soon as we can get the tumor down in size we have the best surgeon in the world that does a neuroblastoma surgery every single day to get the tumor out and then we would use antibody therapy. It's called 3F8 and what is going to do we are going to boost up his white cell blood count and we are going to give him this basically highlighter drug marker that goes in and attaches itself to the neuroblastoma cells and that's part of the problem is that your body doesn't recognize the cancer cell as being bad so it doesn't fight it off so this 3f8 actually attaches to the neuroblastoma cancer and it highlights it says ‘Hey, I am bad” and your own white blood cells then attack it. There's really no long term side effects, but the biggest side effects is that it actually also highlights your nerve endings and so your white blood cells are not only attacking the neuroblastoma cancer, they are attacking your own nerves and so it's the most painful experience to go through that treatment”. So that was a hard reality to face, but you know what are your other options? So that's what we went for. So we went out to New York we lived out there for a year straight just basically doing round after round of 3F8 and it actually cleared Eli of the neuroblastoma after just a couple of rounds. They redid scans and said it was gone, but it can be undetected and so we just keep doing it for as long as it was possible to do.  Then in 2010 they found a spot on his brain very, very tiny it was just a routine scan they weren't expecting to find anything, but as we were literally walking out of the door the Ronald McDonald House to get on a flight to come home, they called us and said “hey we found something you better stay” and so that started a whole another round of brain surgery, 8H9 which is another antibody that actually breaks the blood brain barrier so that he can get treatment in his brain actually put you know a port in his brain so that they can administer the drug directly there as well as radiation. He was so incredibly radiated that we had to carry a card with us because the New York City police actually scan for radiation just in case of you know bombs or anything like that they are in cars and if we got pulled over we were suppose to show this card that says “no this is actually my (at the time) five year old son that is emitting so much radiation that is setting off your detectors” so it was pretty incredible we went through that and they cleared all of that and then we just went through scans he was able to go to school kind of like a normal kid.  We would just go back to New York every three month for some scans and then just one regular normal blood test showed some abnormalities and you know it was a risk at the time, but one of the side effects of chemo is that it can cause a secondary cancer and in this case it was AML (leukemia) and so the only option for that was a transplant. They found a perfect donor match for him and so we started the whole transplant process, but unfortunately he didn't make it through the transplant. So that is my motivation for …. we actually started Beat Cancer while he was in the fight. So it was 2009 they pulled me in because I had connections at Iowa State and they wanted to get Iowa State involved and get the licensing figured out, so they called me up and said “hey! could you help us with Iowa State and we are thinking about doing this what do you think?” And I said “I’m all in” and Eli loved wearing the Beat Cancer shirts and all that. So there were four of us families that kind of started that whole thing back in 2009 and really got it rolling. So that's my motivation for getting involved with this thing.

Peter: Man, thanks for sharing that story man. So I mean, going through that process you know I have to ask like what's your advice for a parent that's going through what you went through, If they are going through it right now? You know what's your advice for that person?

Aaron: Yeah, well one thing I definitely learned over meeting literally hundreds of other families mostly at Memorial Sloan Kettering three blocks away is the Ronald McDonald House in New York City it's the largest one in the world, eighty three (83) families can fit there now. They are expanding thankfully, but of those eighty three (83) families probably eighty percent (80%) of those are neuroblastoma patients that come from all over the United States and all over the world actually to get this treatment and so one of the real advantages of that is you get to bond with these families, you get to I mean literally just to hang out at the Ronald McDonald House and have lunch with him, have dinner with him every single day and so you know these other kids really start to feel like family and so bonding with all of those families, I learned that everybody does handle it differently. Not everybody goes out and does all the research. The other thing is whenever I hear about another case, people immediately send me all their contact information and say “hey! reach out to these people, reach out to these people and let them know about Memorial Sloan Kettering and all that” and I do that, but you know as a parent going through especially early on you are super overwhelmed. Super overwhelmed and so like I said Googling is a great thing and also a horrible thing because you hear all the really bad stories, but it's also super helpful because you can see what is going on.  So I would say as hard as it is, do the research because the best advocate for your kid is you. You might like to think that it's your doctors and most of the doctors that we ran into were absolutely fantastic, but some of the doctors we ran into definitely had egos and definitely had other agendas.  One of them that we knew actually wrote the protocol, so they were interested in getting as many kids through that protocol as possible to see what the statistics were at the end of it. That's unfortunate and it's super rare, but I will definitely say that as hard as it is, if you have a child that was recently diagnosed, do some research and do some reaching out. Especially on some of these programs that are there to help like Dance Marathon and Children's Cancer Connection and those are just the ones in Iowa. There are plenty of those usually associated with the children hospitals wherever you are getting treatment at there's probably a similar program in the area, so to actually seek those out.  I will tell you there's been a couple times where I've being talking to other parents and I'll say “hey did you get a PET scan to see if that's active cancer or not?” And they say “no we didn't even think of that” and they come back to me a week later and say “I talked to my doctor about doing a PET scan and they thought that was a fantastic idea” and so I was like “why did that have to come from me?” But there's real value in connecting with other parents, sharing stories, figuring out what they went through and see if anything is applicable you know to your child's situation.

Peter: Yeah, I think it's tremendous advice. I mean my mother in law went through some cancer treatment and passed away a few years after, but I remember my wife kind of playing that advocate role and you know this is kind of a negative story, but it's funny I think in the end where she just fired this lady you know. I think it was like during hospice she's like, cause I remember her pointing to a lady and being like “you, you never coming back here” you know and it's just like one of this things where you wish that you didn't have to do that, but it's just the reality that like some folks are going through the motion and they have other agendas and you really can't just defer to everyone like, you have to take control of it and that was one thing that really surprised me the first time going through that type of thing. I was like “Wow! You really do have to play that advocate role.”

Aaron: Yeah, absolutely.

Peter: And so for someone who maybe finds himself supporting a friend that's going through this, what's your advice to that person?

Aaron: Yeah, so this advice might be based on the personality of your friend, but one of the things, I am not good about asking for help. I think I learned maybe to get that way over time, but my default reaction whenever someone offered help was to say “ok thank you, no we’re good” so if applicable and if it's a really good friend or whatever, if you can just do things without having to ask them, that's huge.  I had some friends who just showed up at my house and mowed the lawn for me while we were in New York you know they didn't, I didn't have to ask them to do that cause it probably would have being awkward to ask “hey can you mow my lawn.” They just did it, or when they knew we were home they just brought over meals without asking and they were freezable and if we already had dinner that night it didn't matter we can just throw it in the freezer. You know that kind of thing and you know the other thing I think that's probably mostly applicable if the child passes away, people are really hesitant to talk about the child because they are afraid about bringing something up thats sad or reminding the parents that their child died, as silly as that sounds. I think it's a real concern that you don't want to make them sad by talking about them, but I can tell you that there's nothing better to a parent who has lost a child than to hear someone say their name or when they hear someone talk about them or you know I mean this is why I absolutely am in love with Facebook because that is the one place where people will send me notes and just say “hey being thinking about Eli today” or even better still, send me a picture and be like “hey I was looking through my old 2010 photos and came across this awesome one” and sometimes I've never seen that picture before or at least I don't remember seeing it and now that is just a huge thing for parents because I think your number one fear when you lose a child is that they are going to be forgotten. So if you have a friend that has lost a child (and that doesn't even have to do specifically with cancer), but anybody who has lost a child is definitely afraid that their kid is going to be forgotten.  So do not be afraid to say their name, to bring them up and to make sure that the parents know that they are remembered

Peter: Such great advice man. I think that's just a real fear right, like you don't know how to act you are like “man I don't even know what to talk about and I can bring it up” you know?

Aaron: Yeah

Peter: Or you know you just don't really know how to support that person so I think that's huge advice.

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One of the things that I chatted with you about prior to getting on the phone here is that you know I talked previously about negative visualization there's a stoic philosophy I'd wrote this really short post about it prior before I knew what the phrase “negative visualization” was. It’s essentially this practice of thinking about like what if the worst things happen and you do it because it puts in the perspective your "big problems" and realizing that they really are nothing. Like they are not a big deal, and I think that when I was kind of ranting about it you know somebody that was a friend of a friend had lost a child like really you know suddenly I think it was over a course of a weekend or something and I remember thinking like “that person would take on all of my problems to have their kid back” and if that's the case then you know these problems aren't a big deal. I want to get your take on that and that practice and if you have any kind of thought or perspective on that, that maybe we don't you know someone listening or myself and how applicable that you know that practice could be in effect. Having effect on your slowness in life because I mean one it's like taking the time to spend with the people that matters most, but then also putting into perspective your problems and how you really shouldn't you know fret about them so to speak.

Aaron: Yeah, no I think that's good. I used to do that too and it only became a problem when I started doing that during the trial itself. So when Eli was actually in the battle and going through chemo and just throwing up all day long and just sick and weak and all that, that's when some of those thoughts can start to creep in and then you start to realize “I am realizing my worst nightmare I need to stop thinking about that now because it's kind of losing my sense of hope” and that sort of thing. But if you are not in that situation and you are getting worked up over the guy who cut you off in traffic, if you are yelling at your kids because they drug mud through the house and getting totally upset about that and verbally berating them for forgetting to take their shoes off, that's the kind of stuff where I have definitely learned a huge lesson. That stuff doesn't matter and you know it could be far worse and in fact even in my worst situation, it could have being worse. As weird as that is to think about, one of the things that I feel oddly very fortunate about is that Eli passed during his sleep. I woke up at six o'clock in the morning with doctors all around his bed trying to revive him, but he had passed away in his sleep and I know so many families that, that is not the case for their kid and you know their kids gets sent home on hospice and they have to go days, weeks even months going to bed every night or just going through the day wondering “is this the moment?” with nothing but pain meds to try and help with the pain. So I have so many good friends that had to experience their child passing that way and I think “wow! How fortunate I was that Eli just slipped away in his sleep and it wasn't anything like that.” It can always be worse and so I think that was probably one of the biggest take a ways for me throughout this whole thing is that the little things do not matter. I mean getting so upset and worked up over these little things to me is embarrassing at this point because there are so much more important things going on in life. So during the times where it was super scary and Eli was going through the fight, I liked to think of those kind of thoughts in my mind as playing it on a VCR and I would physically picture myself hitting the stop button and saying “no not now. I am not going to think that way because I think it's going to hurt my sense of hope that we can get through this and  that he can beat this” But outside of that when I am getting worked up over little things I definitely stop and think “hey what have you been through? it can be far worse. it has been far worse!” and so I think that helps you kind of refocus on what matters.

Peter: Yeah I can only imagine. And so how has that affected your, I mean is that perspective that you've kind of gleaned after the fact, do you feel like far different about that now as you did before? And do you have a hard time dealing with folks complaining about their situation now?

Aaron: (laughs) that's a good question, I try not to, because I understand thatnot everybody has gone obviously through that situation, a lot of people you know you live in your world and what's real to you and then if you haven't known anybody that's gone through something so drastic, then some of these little things are a big deal to you. I get that, but in the back of my mind I am just thinking “oh my gosh are you kidding me?” and if it's a good enough friend I will say that “are you kidding me?” (Laughs) Not to shame them, but you know I think the people who know me know “ok yeah, certainly it could be far worse.”

Peter: Yeah and the thing is that's just one of the things I was really looking forward to talking to you about. One of the reasons is because I want folks to have that perspective you know cause for me, I am like it's one thing to have the perspective as a parent especially words like “oh! They grow up too fast” everybody tells you that and you going to look back fondly at the times when they were little and you know wish they were still small and all those things, but it's a whole other thing to be like “dude you can't take for granted that they going to be around forever” You know whether its kids, close family members, friends you know things happen you know and sometimes I think morbidly. Like today this morning when I left the house is like man I didn't get to see them before they woke up, what if I get into a car accident you know like things can happen and so it's like keeping that perspective in the forefront of your mind at all times so that you can remember what's most important.

Aaron: Yeah

Peter: Because that I mean that may help you to let the power of these little problems to diminish and to be you know quite frankly, a happier person because you are truly appreciating what's most important.

Aaron: Yeah, I have seen people that have been in the same situation whether they lost their child or whatever and they can come across as being you know super bitter when they are pounding that on to people's walls on Facebook. “hey it could always be worse at least you have your kids” and you know that kind of thing. I don't think that's the right attitude to take heed there, but it's certainly something that to me it's been great to hear from other people who will say something as simple as “hey you know I hugged my kid extra tight tonight just thinking about you guys and gave me a sense of appreciation, not that I didn't have appreciation for my kids before, but just that you know that this is a gift.” Our kids are a gift and that there are no guarantees that we are going to have them forever and so that makes me feel good that people who followed Eli's story were definitely impacted by that. I get constant notes about “hey I just want to let you know that Eli's life made an impact on me” and honestly they will be from people three, four years later who have never said a word to me, that I don't even know who they are, and I'll just get a random message or email that says “hey you don't know me, but I feel like I know you very well because I followed your blog the whole way through every single day. I got all the updates I feel like I know Eli personally, even though we've never met and so I just wanted to tell you how his story kind of impacted my life.” and that's huge. So I really chaulk that up as an answer to prayer. One of my private conversations with God along the whole way has always been, “you know why is this happening, can you give me some reasons here? can you show me how this is doing any good? I really don't get it.” You know I battled with that, ironically Eli really didn't. He asked one time why I thought that God let him get cancer and that was….man… I was sitting on the hospital bed and it hit me in the gut. I assume that he's gotten his answer directly from God Himself at this point, but my best answer for him at the time was “Eli, I think that God knew that he could use you to reach a lot of people, and that a lot of people would be impacted by your story and that you were strong and that you could go through it.” He just kind of nodded his head like “yeah that sounds good to me” and so when I hear from people via email, calls whatever that say “hey! I just want to let you know this is what my life was like before I read Eli’s story and this is what it's like now and it's totally changed my perspective on this or even my relationship with God.” Those are answers to prayer to me because that's God telling me “Aaron this is how I used Eli's journey, this is how I used Eli to impact people.”

Peter: Speaking on your faith man I’d like to touch on that for a minute, how has being a Christian, how did it help in your kind of walk through this situation?

Aaron: Yeah so for me my first reaction was to kind of throw my hands up and say “ok God this is all under your control. I am not going to sit here and pray ‘thy will be done’ and expect you think that I don't want you to fully heal my son, because we both know that's what I want. So let's just put that on the table, but I will also say that I know that you can use this for your glory and I am going to sit back and try to be the tool and make the decisions that I have some control over, but understand that You ultimately know what's going to happen here.” That's difficult. I was I was raised in a Christian home and so that felt very natural to me and I understand that does not feel natural to a lot of people. I was really blessed to be able to meet people from all walks of faith throughout this whole process. There are a lot of people that really struggled with being angry at God for allowing this to happen to their kid. I met plenty of people that didn't believe there was a God and that this was just really bad luck and so you know it was really interesting to be able to kind of talk to those people and just kind of share my perspective on it.  So for me it was kind of natural to just turn to God and say here's the situation. You are in control of the situation what do you need me to do?”

Peter: How do you feel, your strength and your faith helped the folks around you?

Aaron: Well from what I hear other people commenting on, I have had a couple of people reach out to me and say “hey I had no relationship with God whatsoever and just seeing how you kind of counted on Him and that you put your faith in Him to work this all out really inspired me and made me realize if I was facing something that dire, I don't know where I would turn and so it gives me a sense of hope that I saw you turn to God and I saw God give you comfort through that and so I realized that was what was missing in my life.” So again to me that's just a huge answer to prayer that they would see Eli and that they would see Eli's journey and that they would go ahead and apply that to their lives as well. I think that's being the biggest thing for me is just seeing how other people react. A lot of times they don't make any comments until well after, and that kind of shows me that people watch how you live your life. They listen to what you say, yes, but they also watch and so I had a lot of people watching how we would react and what we did throughout this whole journey. You know when Eli passed away that morning, the first thing I did was I reached for my iphone and I turned on some old hymns and just let it play in the room. To me that was comfort. The Bible says “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord for believers” and Eli very specifically told me he believed in Jesus.  That always made me smile and so for me I was of course super sad and wrecked, but I was also super happy that he was perfect and that he was in heaven you know with his Creator and so that gave me a huge amount of comfort. That level of comfort isn't there for everybody because some people believe that when it's done, it's done and that's it. To me that's incredibly sad and so I like to talk to people about that and I like to hear what their feelings are on that. I just like to tell them what I believe and I think there's a lot of hope there. One of the things we did when Eli was first diagnosed and it happened to be a thing that people do I guess when their kid is diagnosed with cancer, is you make this silicone bracelet. You know I am known around here as the “bracelet guy” because I've got two arms full of bracelets and they are from kids that are either fighting or have fought and so on the inside of Eli's bracelet we put Romans 8:28 which says "we know that all things work together for good for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose." That was kind of our banner thought was that this is going to work out for good. We don't know how and it's hard to see that especially throughout really hard times, but we just believed that to be the case and like I said it's being great when we can see where that's been true.

Peter: Totally, totally you are a strong dude, man. I want to ask you couple of final questions here is first of all someone listening to this story and they want to contribute in some way to Beat Cancer, what's the best way?

Aaron: Yeah so our website is beatcancertoday.org and you can either donate or it lands right on our shopping page so you can see all the shirts that we have. We do have a generic one or two in case you are not an Iowa or Iowa State or Mizzou fan.  We just add Mizzou last week, which am super excited about.

Peter: Nice.

Aaron: Getting NCAA licensing is just a chore, so to get through that process and be able to offer that has been really exciting. So that’s been the fun thing I've being working on recently like I said Beat Cancer Today is a hundred percent volunteer.  If you order a t-shirt, I walk down to my basement, I pick a shirt out of the what we've deemed the “Beat Cancer Room” which is just full of like twenty totes of shirts, I stick it in the package and put it in the mail. One hundred percent (100%) volunteer everything that we do and so that's how we can say that a hundred percent (100%) of the proceeds go to these other organizations.

Peter: Cool, so if you are listening buy a shirt, a hoodie, a bracelet buy more.

Aaron: Yeah.

Peter:  Very cool man, very cool and then so final question here is, why is the message of Slow Hustle important to you?

Aaron: Yeah I think we kind of touched on that with the fact that the little things don't matter. You know, the big things are what matter and the big things are: your family and your friends and how you spend your time. I've got a full time gig. I am an IT guy and this is just something that I do and that other volunteers help with just because we feel driven to do something that matters and something that's important. Even though I have a full time job, I've got this nonprofit that I am running as well and so you talk about Slow Hustle, you know am doing my thing during the day and then I get home and that job creeps in the night as well of course, it's a twenty four hour thing when you are an IT guy. Then I've got Beat Cancer stuff going on and so sometimes I feel like I am hustling all the time, but I think the stuff that am doing for Beat Cancer really matters and we've made it a family affair. One thing that I didn't mention is that I met my wife in New York City as her daughter was going through neuroblastoma treatment with my son Eli. Dakota is ten and she's doing great, but we kind of treat the Beat Cancer thing as a family affair and so we sell t-shirts together, we do that as a family and that kind of thing, so even when I am hustling for Beat Cancer or even if my wife is hustling to get some donation for a fundraising event that we are going to do, we are doing that together as a family and we are doing something that matters and I think that's important.

Peter: I love that man, I love that dude. Aaron it’s been a pleasure. I appreciate you telling the story. If you've listened to this and you didn't shed a tear, you’re a heartless bastard. I am just kidding, but seriously man the story I mean you and I, we've gotten to hang out a few times, but I've never gotten to hear the full story, so I appreciate you sharing it. I think it will hit home for a lot of people so, your time is being well spent I think.

Aaron: Well thank you for the opportunity. You know I am a huge fan of this, I've listened to every episode since the beginning and you’re a great dude, so thank you very much for the platform to kind of share the story.

Peter: Thank you brother, take care.

Aaron: Alright you too, thanks Peter.

Peter: Bye. Alright once again I want to thank Aaron very very deeply for his willingness to come on the show and share a difficult story. I am sure you heard it in my voice, there's a couple of times where I had to take a pause cause it was really tough to listen to and I am just super thankful that he shared that story. It's inspiring to me, likely inspiring to you as well. Like I said in the beginning, it's easily to get caught up in trivial matters and as Aaron will tell you, you know when you focus on a bigger purpose, you'll live a much happier life and make a greater impact on those people around you. So to help you do this, we put together a checklist. It's called three steps to help you focus on what matters.  Don't make the mistake of spending time and energy on the little things or being focused on the small things. So to get that, just go to slowhustle.com/71 you can download that directly for free and that's it for today. Till next week, thanks for listening! [Advert - 45:37 - 47:16]