The headline of this article is not a gimmick meant to lure you inside – it is the literal truth. By the time you reach the end of this post, I think you’ll agree that world-changing results can be obtained with two simple things: numbers and organization. I’ll be handling the organization, and I’m asking all of you to be the numbers.

Here’s how it works.

Late last year, during a one-week leadership seminar I attended through work, I was instructed to do a bunch of self-reflection exercises. One of them was a one-page essay, with the only direction being to complete the following sentence.

“Next year, I will . . .”

I finished it with “. . . change the world.”

I know that may sound trite, but I actually meant it. I spent months thinking about how I could accomplish this task, and finally settled on the project you see before you now. If you take a look at the charter I designed, (click on it for the full-size PDF), you’ll notice that it has three distinct parts. The first part is this blog, and if you’re not familiar with the kind of stuff I write about, you can learn more here. I haven’t started building the second part yet, and the third part is what I’m publicly launching today.

Here’s the idea behind the A-Team. As the name implies, we are an underground group of people who go around doing cool things. People may know that we exist, but there’s no way to know who all the members are. Seriously, even I don’t know who all the members are – for some folks all I have is a first name and an email address!

We’ve been running with a pilot group for the last three weeks, and they have been doing the following:

• Participating in small weekly “missions” to help people out and make a difference
• Communicating with me and other members of the team via a private forum on this site
• Contributing to this site by adding ideas and suggesting stories to feature
• Remaining as anonymous or as public as they choose

The time commitment to being in this group adds up to about 15 minutes a week. Missions are assigned via email, and consist of cool little things we do both online and offline to make a noticeable difference in someone’s life. It’s working out very well so far – we’ve already been able to share some amazing stories. Below you’ll find a small sample of the reports we get back on a weekly basis. These were pulled from the “Make A Difference In A Stranger’s Life” mission we did last week (the first one is mine – I’ve removed the usernames from the rest):

Last week sometime a college student from UW-Milwaukee knocked on my door. He was gathering signatures for a cause. The cause wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t something I was interested in. His name was Bashir, and he was a very nice guy, and seemed pretty cool. He was politely persistent, and I was politely resistant. I told him that I liked him, but I wasn’t going to sign his petition. After a few amicable minutes, we went our separate ways. Well, after assigning this mission last Friday, I was on my way home from work, wondering what I was going to do to complete it. When I got about 5 blocks from my house, I saw Bashir and another girl sitting on a big rock by the street, looking over their petitions together. We’ve been having a heat wave in Milwaukee recently, and it was pretty hot. So I drove home, grabbed two cold bottles of water from the basement, and sped back to where they were (Michael Jackson blaring on the stereo). I hopped out of the car and approached them. They looked confused for a moment, but then Bashir got a big smile on his face and said he remembered me. I handed them the waters, introduced myself, asked the girl her name, and asked them how their canvassing was going. We shared a couple laughs, a minute of conversation, and then I said I had to go, telling Bashir as I left that I still wasn’t gonna sign his petition. We all shared a laugh, and I drove off, with them waving as I left. It wasn’t much, but it was so cool to see the happy smiles as a result of an unexpected treat. I loved doing this, and I think we should do it again every once in a while.

my mission was short and sweet, but made with love. i cooked an organic dinner for my neighbors.

After reading the email, I’ve realized how little it takes to touch someone or make them have a good day. This past weekend I attended the Strawberry festival in Cedarburg. There were a few minor instances where I lended a hand and noticed some positive feedback in the process. For example, one individual was hanging a banner in front of their store and definitely looked like it was a two man operation, so I politely said, “hello, it looks like you could use a hand” and introduced myself. I ended up holding the other end of the banner while he was securing it to his building. It may sound cheesy or corny, but at the end of the day, I gained a phone number from this individual who told me he was looking for some brief web consulting on the side, someone who could give them an overview of their website and offer some insight as to what one would do to ’spruce’ it up. Well after kindly declining money from him, I sent him some quick and easy pointers via email that could give him some general direction.
Long story short, had I not taken the time to introduce myself or offer my help, perhaps this man’s day would have been just as regular as everyother, but I believe I touched and brightened his day a little bit, at the expense of maybe a half hour max of my own time, which was entirely worth it! I gained a networking contact for whatever I would need down the road and made a friend.
BAM.

Nate! I did the mission, late, but I did it. It just came to me, and I almost didn’t see the opportunity. You see, one of the reasons why I’m in this group is because I’ve never been a big giver, always been selfish and self-involved, but I’ve experienced the joy of giving, just for the sake of it and I want to do it more. I want to get used to give and help others anytime I can.
This is why I almost didn’t see this. I recently met this boy in class, I’ve talked to him like 3 times, so he’s not really a friend and a couple weeks ago he looked really tired and I asked if he hadn’t gotten much sleep and he said: “Yeah, I’ve been losing sleep because my nephew’s really sick, he has a brain tumor and we don’t know what to do, and the thought of it doesn’t let me rest”
When he told me that I felt super awkward, the thing just broke my heart but I never know what to do or say to people with this kind of issue. I think that whatever I say won’t help at all, because I think if it was me, all I’d want is to just be someone else, I’d wish with all my soul to just NOT be going through that.
So anyway, yesterday he sent an e-mail to me and to like a thousand more people saying that his mom was selling this homemade sweet dominican dish which is very popular here to collect money for the kid’s operation. I read the e-mail and thought; “Yeah, I’m not buying that, it won’t help” I almost deleted it! But for some reason, just left it there, just in case.
And then, yesterday, as I was decluttering my inbox, I thought to myself HEY, you are supposed to be trying to HELP. So I e-mailed the guy telling him I wanted a dozen And today I talked to him, he got so happy and that made me feel soo good, I know it’s not much, but it might make a difference and I know he’s appreciating ANY help he can get.

Again, this is all your fault. I normally ignore petitions like this, because I never think it helps, but man, the feeling of making someone smile like that is priceless. So thank you and mission accomplished

Those are just a few results from a few people on a single mission. We do stuff like this every week. Sometimes it’s really quick and easy, like reading a blog post and leaving a comment. Sometimes it’s acknowledging the people who mean something to you. Sometimes it’s helping a stranger. I don’t know what the mission for this week will be yet – it’s a very fluid process, and it usually involves listening to what our team members suggest – there’s a spot on the forum to do that. But everything we do has to make a positive impact in the lives of those around us, and many of us share our experiences so that the rest of us can learn and grow.

Imagine what will be possible when this group reaches 20,000 members, which is my goal for next May. Don’t look at me like that, either – it’s much more attainable than you think. Think about what would happen if our mission for the week was to write a brief letter of encouragement to a terminally ill child. We pick the biggest special-needs hospital in the country . . . and every child in that hospital gets 50 letters. What will every postal worker say when they deliver 20,000 letters to that hospital in a single week? What will all the staff members say when they see the effect on all the kids? What will all the family members say when they’ve been touched with such a demonstration of love from strangers? None of these people will ever forget what happened to them that week, and they will tell the story to others for the rest of their lives. And what did it cost you? 15 minutes and the price of a stamp.

As we grow, the news will spread via word of mouth and through major media outlets that there are thousands of people out there who care about others, and show their kindess in amazing ways. People will realize that it’s not just someone doing a good deed . . . it is that, but it’s also so much more. It’s a movement. And people will join a movement, especially for a good cause. The beautiful thing about this is that as more people join, more lives are touched, and pretty soon its reach is global.

And you know what? We just changed the world.

If you’re passionate about helping others and having fun, we’d love to have you on the team. Please join us . . . all it takes is 15 minutes a week.

If you’re interested, please sign up below. Of course I’ll never sell this list, spam you, or take advantage of you in any way, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Thanks,
Nate

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