Make No Small Plans by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2022-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

21

DON’T WORRY ABOUT MAKING MISTAKES WHEN YOU’RE MAKING HISTORY

Landing back in Washington was a stark contrast to the crisp, cocoa-filled afternoons we had just enjoyed in Montana. And not just because of the lack of luxury.

With Michael Hebb’s advice to keep things surreal, DC10 was quickly becoming infinitely more complex than any event we’d ever done before, and we were so far in over our heads that mistakes seemed to follow our every move.

As 2010 began, there was a lot of excitement around President Obama. So we booked the JW Marriott, a few blocks from the White House, for our May event. No surf. No snow. We were looking for a sense of gravitas. We did keep one constant, though: As usual, we doubled the size of our previous event. Now we were planning for five hundred guests.

In order to attract more attendees, we asked speakers and performers who were not easy to get: people like CNN founder Ted Turner, investor Mark Cuban, Teach for America co-founder and CEO Wendy Kopp, Napster co-founder Sean Parker, Washington, D.C., public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, futurist Ray Kurzweil, musician John Legend, and NASA astronauts.

We miscalculated—badly. With four months to go, all of the speakers we reached out to had either declined or were unsure, and we were four hundred tickets shy of our target. The tricks we’d learned up to that point weren’t working. Brett decided to turn to the same strategy he’d always used as a teenager when he got in trouble: He called his dad for advice.

The four of us huddled around the speakerphone as Brett laid out the situation to his father. Michael wasn’t exactly a seasoned life coach—but he was someone who we trusted to always give it to us straight in the way only a parent can.

“Dad,” Brett said, “we’re in trouble. We just don’t know what to do.”

“You’re doing it all wrong,” Michael said. “You know what your problem is? You’re not thinking big enough.”

We all looked at one another. Not thinking big enough? Ted Turner. Mark Cuban. Astronauts. “We’ve already asked all these big names,” we said. “How much bigger can we think?”

“You need to think even bigger. You need to get Bill Clinton back. If you get him, everyone will fall into line.”

It clicked for all of us as soon as he said it. Brett’s dad was right. If we could get Bill Clinton again…

We reached back out to the president, and he had an open date. It meant writing another check to the foundation, though. It wasn’t an easy decision, but after a lot of back-and-forth, we decided we were okay with it because the money would support good causes through the nonprofit.

Plus, we needed to turn DC10 around—and quick.

So we squared away everything with the former president’s team and officially confirmed him for the event. As soon as we did, we immediately called Ted Turner’s office. “I’m so sorry. I know you just said no to our event. But we’ve had a change of plans.

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