Category: Announcements

The idea was born while I was brainstorming viral marketing ideas. It evolved into a plan to spread great ideas of all sorts. Yes, it took a while for me to write the code. But now it’s finally ready to go.

What is the 1+1=4 Project? It’s a vision. It’s a philosophy. And now it’s a website you can use to get involved and recruit people to your great ideas.

Vision

If you want to change the world, how do you spread your influence? Unless you’re King Midas, you don’t buy up a bunch of media and politicians and push your ideas out on the world. Instead, you get people involved, and they spread the movement in the most powerful way possible: person to person.

Think about it — which are you more likely to respond to: an ad or a friend? Yeah, the friend wins every time. You know them. You know they don’t have a hidden agenda. You trust their judgement. So the best way to spread ideas is person to person.

A recent example that proves the point is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Thousands upon thousands of people poured buckets of ice over their heads to raise awareness of a disease called ALS. Why? Because some company spent a fortune advertising how great an idea it was? No. Because someone they knew issued the challenge directly to them.

Philosophy

Here’s my philosophy: the smaller and simpler the better.

Would you rather make a big commitment, or a small commitment? Would you rather do something complicated, or something simple?

Given the choice, most people will choose “small” and “simple”. And that’s okay. Our lives are already filled to overflowing with commitments and complexity. We’d like to make a difference, but nobody has time for everything they’d like to do.

Sure, there are people in the world who will take on big, complex challenges. But if you want to start a movement, you’ll get a lot more milage asking a little of a lot of people than a lot of the few who are willing and able.

So the key is to find a way to turn small commitments into big results. That’s why the 1+1=4 Project only asks you to recruit 2 other people to each project you chose to participate in. And the great thing is that that’s all it takes. If you follow through on that one small commitment, you’ll have done your part to double the size of the project. Then it’s the job of the 2 people you recruit to help double it again. And so it goes.

Website

This website is now yours to use to find worthwhile projects to participate in, to post your own projects, and to use the tools we offer here for free to change the world.

Normally, I’d delete the “Hello world” placeholder post that automatically shows up in a new blog. But this time, I’ve got something to say to the world: I’m here to change you, and to help other people change you.

The world is full of people with ideas that could change the world, if only they had a little help spreading. The problem we run into is that the founders of many great ideas only have enough influence to make things happen with the few people in their social circle. They may get a few people involved. But then growth fizzles, they burn out, and the movement never reaches a tipping point.

Last weekend, I was thinking about how to start a viral marketing campaign that wouldn’t require constant work from the founders to keep it growing, and I came up with a simple idea: ask each participant to make one small commitment. All they have to commit to is spreading the message to two other people.

Just two.

That’s a small and easy enough commitment that anyone could do it. And it won’t burn anyone out. And yet, it’s all that’s needed, because each new person in the movement will become 3 new people (their self plus two more), which will then become 7, then 15, then 31, 63, 127, 255, 511, 1023, 2047…

Sure, there will be people who don’t keep their commitment. But there will be people who catch the vision and spread it to more than 2. And the easiness of the commitment, along with a little follow up from each person’s “Leader” should make any worthwhile Project easy to sustain.

Movements will spread from person to person, friend to friend. The effort required to make it grow will be spread between all the participants. Each generation that meets its commitment will double the Project’s size.

The idea for the 1+1=4 Project started as a marketing plan. But it didn’t take long to see that its potential was too powerful to limit to just that. This website is for all you visionaries who have an idea — big or small — that the world could benefit from, and for the rest of you who are looking for a place to get involved, improve yourselves, and build your communities.

Are you ready to commit to spreading a movement to just two other people? If so, join us. Together, we will change the world.