Make No Small Plans

Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community

By: Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, Jeremy Schwartz

Narrated by: Elliott Bisnow

From the founders of the acclaimed Summit event series and community comes the story of their unconventional journey to business success and the hard lessons they learned along the way.

“[Make No Small Plans] neatly crystallizes the teachings and takeaways—basic truths—from the past fifteen years of Summiteering.”—Forbes

In 2008, with no event production experience and two college degrees between the four of them, Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz became business partners and set out to build a global events company. With passion and tenacity, they began cold calling as many inspiring company founders as they could and tried to convince them to attend their first event. In the beginning, only nineteen people said yes.

Since then, they have grown Summit into a global community with events all over the world, hosting luminaries including Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Shonda Rhimes, Brené Brown, Kendrick Lamar, and Al Gore. In 2013, the Summit founders—with help from their behind-the-scenes co-founder and partner Ryan Begelman—acquired Powder Mountain, the largest ski resort in the United States, with a dream of building a mountaintop town of the future.

In Make No Small Plans, they reveal the triumphs, mistakes, and cornerstone lessons from their journey, which began during the Great Recession and continues today. Alongside teachings from some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs of our time, the authors offer takeaways such as:

• No idea should go unspoken.
• Reputations are earned by the drop and lost by the bucket.
• The road to success is always under construction.
• Become a favor economy millionaire.

Entertaining and empowering, Make No Small Plans shows that anyone can think big and—with a thirst for knowledge, a talented team, and a little humility—accomplish the impossible.

©2020 Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, Jeremy Schwartz (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“[Make No Small Plans] neatly crystallizes the teachings and takeaways—basic truths—from the past 15 years of Summiteering: ‘authenticity trumps perfection,’ ‘no idea should go unspoken,’ ‘opportunities can come from anywhere,’ and ‘when you know how to listen, everybody is a guru.’”—Forbes

“Making big dreams come true starts with learning the principles of those who did it before you. If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, Make No Small Plans shows how the Summit team did it.”—Ray Dalio

“Elliott, Jeff, Brett, and Jeremy have a singular capacity to bring together leaders and inspire them to do more. I’m grateful that they have paused long enough to put their story, and their lessons, in writing.”—Christina Sass

Amazing

This tells an amazing and inspiring story. The maturing of a company and the people along with it. Every second inspired me to want to make change and pick up the baton. It’s always nice to have the books narrated by the author to.

Loved It!

Fast paced, fun, so much wisdom to apply to life and so many unbelievable stories. Plus, the narration is so well done!

Insider perspectives on making things happen

This is a story of how of four young men , who are bored with predictability and academia’s routine orientation , find each other and put together ideas that are way beyond their wildest dreams . Like a rolling stone gaining momentum and gathering information , they have to rise to each occasion as it presents, and together they must quickly resolve predicaments . Putting your money where your mouth is it’s not an easy thing and when you don’t have it and you somehow have to borrow it or come up with sponsors. But the gift of gab and saying the right thing at the right time is where it all comes together.
This is an exciting journey of relentless energy, yet the reading maintains a cool ,calm ,and collected narration laced with humor . I laughed continuously. It’s a real life story . You can’t make this stuff up !

Love

As an entrepreneur, I knew this book was a must read. Hearing about the failures and successes of Summit was just what I needed to know that I CAN make my business everything I want it to be!

Edge of My Seat

It’s incredible to hear the Summits founders stories and learn how it all got started. How one person has created such an impactful imprint in our everyday lives now. By creating a safe space and bringing people together, he was able to have a butterfly effect that lead to many companies starting and be reinvented. Beyond thankfully and grateful for you Elliot.

So fun! So inspiring!

Loved every minute of this. Such great stories, told so humbly, with so much passion, so much joy. I recommend this so highly, it was it was enormous fun listening!

Fantastic listen! 10/10 - could not stop

Really inspiring journey, been excited to hear this one and did not disappoint at all!! Could not stop listening I almost got fired from my job, just kidding, however felt like minimal work was done yesterday.

Every entrepreneur should read this.

I love how they shared stories about how many times they were in WAY over their heads and how with pure determination they pulled through. What an inspiring journey, it was so motivating hearing about how it all came together. I don’t think we will ever truly be able to see the ripple effects of what they’ve created, but they inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs that’s for sure. Can’t wait to see what comes next.

Inspirational

Helped me to see a bigger picture for my personal business plans. I would like to meet the people behind this journey .

Loved every minute

Thank you for sharing this story! I am inspired and ready to take bigger action than I already am.