Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community

if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

We had discovered that although they might not trust us, they most certainly trusted their friends. We knew if we could get one person to say yes, then their friends were more likely to say yes as well. It wasn’t the event that really mattered; it was the people with whom you were experiencing it.

By the end of the weekend, everyone was asking how they could help build this community with us. We told everyone no photos were allowed. They could tell as many people as they wanted in person, but they couldn’t email anyone about it or post on social media. We wanted it to be shared one-on-one. We’d learned just how crucial this strategy was when

The more diverse the inputs, the more complex and impactful the outputs. It’s a creative numbers game. The more unexpected ideas you hear, the greater the possibility they’ll lead to something unexpected.

We’re not the smartest people in the room; we’re simply the ones who put the room together.

It was as if everybody had discovered the double bottom line: doing well and doing good.

We’ve long believed that entrepreneurs lose a great deal by not sharing their ideas out of fear of having them ripped off. Nobody is really thinking about the same thing you’re thinking about, let alone plotting to steal your idea to monetize it. Even if they tried, could they be more successful at it than you?

“Someday,” Tim loved to say, “is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”

We had raised a quarter of a million dollars for charity, and we knew we could do it again, because, for the first time, we had a double bottom line. Not only had we helped the UN Foundation, but our event had sold enough tickets to make a slight profit.