Everyone knows the presidential candidates and has an opinion about them. But as you get to smaller races, that evaporates and you can win through sheer elbow grease.

If you had told me when I was at high school that one day I would be working for a for-profit company, let alone running one, I would have said you were crazy. But I am interested in how you can empower individuals to make change, and Causes is doing just that.

I believe in being positive.

Remember all of the 'me too' social networks built just to have a social feature Facebook and MySpace didn't have? I built one for political discussion called Essembly. It enabled unique and potentially transformative social interactions, but only 20,000 people ever used it.

People can care about changing the world. But what gets them to act is pressure and social reward.

I was quitting…As I was taking those steps I was saying, ‘Somebody please stop me.’ Lionel Taylor, our receivers coach, said, ‘Hold up a minute,’ and he sat down in the car and we talked. I don’t know what we talked about but I was glad we talked because I went back. And that’s when it started.

As I and the rest of my Pittsburgh Steelers teammates prepared that week in late December 1974, we knew one thing: The road to the Super Bowl in the AFC went through Oakland. To achieve your dreams as a team, you had to slay the Oakland Raiders. They were the barometer of what it took to be a championship team.