How do you create a new movement? In this episode, Alex Mandossian talks about the three important elements you need to create a movement. Movement drives change as you would learn from the story Alex has in store here. You’ll know how the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous started a movement by understanding or learning a new language, building a new community, and developing new leadership. Learn how creating a movement applies to your business and how it relates to you as an ethical influencer.

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Listen to the podcast here:

How to Create A Movement

Ethical influence is a learnable skill. In this episode, you’ll discover, number one, why learning a new language is part of one of the three parts to creating a movement. Number two, you’ll learn why building a new community is part two of the three parts to creating a movement.

Third, you’ll learn why developing new leadership is part three of the three parts of creating a movement. You got to go 3 for 3. In the preview, I normally don’t give the answers but I’m doing it for this episode, because it’s that important. If you want to create a movement, you can do it by creating a new language, a new community, and new leadership, whether you have a course, workshop, a book, or however you decide to conduct business.

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Alcoholics Anonymous: Creating A Movement

On May 11th, 1935, William G. Wilson, also known as Bill W, encountered a threat to his newfound sobriety. During a business trip to Ohio, he was standing in the lobby of a hotel and he was craving alcohol. He was craving a drink. With anxiety, he started to contemplate his options. He came down to two choices and this is all in his mind.

Order a cocktail in the hotel bar or call another recovering alcoholic, ask for help and staying sober. Bill knew that his stakes were high-stakes. Like an alcoholic who had nearly drunk himself to death several times, he had gone through four hospital stays for detox. He knew what was at stake. He wanted to stay sober. Ultimately, in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio, with dim lights in the bar, and pacing through the lobby, he decided to call a church.

He found a church directory and within a few minutes, he was on the phone with the local minister. A series of calls put him in touch with an alcoholic surgeon named Dr. Bob. He was a surgeon who was also a self-proclaimed alcoholic because it’s a self-diagnosed disease according to Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill arranged to visit with the doctor at home.

Dr. Bob initially agreed to see Bill for about fifteen minutes, but their meeting lasted for hours. Bill simply told of his drinking history, and Bob could identify with it immediately because he had gone through the same thing. Bill thanked Bob for hearing him out and for his fellowship, which would be a big part in the upcoming months, years, and decades of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is still in existence beyond both gentlemen’s death. It’s their legacy.

After about four years, the men became good friends. They published a book called Alcoholics Anonymous, which was in 1939, where they put together all the stories of the many thousands of men and women who had recovered from alcoholism. It’s also called the Big Book.

According to Wikipedia, over 30 million had been sold. I can tell you probably 4 to 5 times that has been passed on to other people struggling with sobriety not just with alcoholism, but with drug addiction, sex addiction, gambling, addiction, etc. In 2012, the book was put into the Library of Congress as an example. It was designated as one of the 88 books that shaped America. Like the Bible, the book is full of stories. That’s the new language and that’s what it came down to.

[bctt tweet=”Ethical influence is a learnable skill.” username=”AlexMandossian”]

That’s why stories are such an important part of ethically influencing people. If you’re struggling with anything, a story can get you over that struggle than someone in a logical or in an emotional way, argue with you and convince you otherwise.

Through their friendship, Dr. Bob also gained sobriety. I’m not sure who the sponsor was. Dr. Bob was Bill W’s sponsor. Bill W was Dr. Bob’s sponsor, but either way, they had new leadership. They were meeting with each other, not so the other person would stay sober, but so they themselves would stay sober, sponsoring each other, and through their fellowship.

There was a new language that they spoke, and eventually the twelve steps. The twelve-step programs, if you’ve heard of them, over the years, it was first developed by Dr. Bob and Bill W. They had a new language within the big book and the twelve steps. They had a new community where they would meet daily, sometimes twice a day, weekly. There was new leadership with their sponsors.

Those are the three elements of creating a movement, which a twelve-step or recovery program is. It is a movement toward health. It’s a movement away from drugs, alcohol, and whatever other addiction there may be towards health and living happily. That doesn’t mean there’s no struggle after that, but it works for millions of people. The new language, the new community, the new leadership. That’s how you create movements.

Articles about Alcoholics Anonymous started to become popular in the press and many groups started to rise in different parts of the country and world. The first international convention for AA was in 1950, where there are about 3,500 member groups. Today, there are nearly 100,000 groups across the world registered with AA’s General Service Office. AAs international membership stands at about two million, but again, many people come in and out. There are probably many times that.

There are three reasons why this has worked over the years. My belief is number one, the new language. Number two, the new community where people speak that language. Number three, the leadership. This isn’t about alcoholism or the twelve-step recovery. That’s not what this episode is about.

It’s about creating a movement and AA is a movement that has allowed men and women to overcome the intense struggle that has almost taken their lives. Some people have much lower rock bottoms than others, but the bottom line is, you want to avoid what’s called in medicine, recidivism.

Recidivism means backsliding. Typically, it’s talked about when the tendency of a convicted criminal is reoffending. In other words, someone who’s in jail, a felon, they come back out of jail and because they don’t have all three of the elements of creating their movement, moving away from jail and becoming someone who will cultivate their options and become a contributing member of society again.

If they don’t have a new language, a new community, or new leadership, and their leadership could be their parole officer, who may have also been in jail many times that’s the case. Just like sponsors in AA are alcoholics. In the case of a felon, it’s not self-diagnosed, the court will diagnose, “You’re a felon, you’re going to jail.” It’s not funny, but that’s the difference between AA and someone going to jail.

 

Recidivism is the same thing. It’s the backsliding process. In the meetings with parole officers, telling stories about other felons and how they stayed out of jail. If they stayed with the same community they were part of, they went back to their same circle of friends back in their neighborhood, then they’re going to start doing the same things they did to get them in jail.

Whether it’s AA or with felons, an entire movement can take different forms. In your case, you want to develop a movement with your clients. If you’re a coach, if you’re a consultant, if you’re a service professional, you want to create a movement so people say, “I know that person, they’re unique. They do this thing,” whatever this may be, whatever it is that you do.

The Bad Side Of Creating A Movement

The concept of creating a movement has a good side and a bad side. The good side, you can look at Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They were on Earth at different parts of the twentieth century but they did the same thing, which was non-violent resistance.

Gandhi, in India, against the British Empire and MLK, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. against the government and the rest of the people in the United States, who were still part of the old mindset against African Americans. Both had the same type of movement. They had a new language, they built communities and new leadership.

With leadership, I’m going to explain to you what that looks like if you’re in a service business because it’s not just you. Leadership is overrated. Leadership is about having a first follower.

How do these things have a dark side? Look at Stalin. Look at Hitler. Look at Mussolini. They had a new language with their movements, whether it’s fascism or Nazism. Communism is a new language, a new community. There were new communities that were formed versus the old community using the new language and new leadership. That’s the dark side.

The reason I mentioned that is because creating movements work if you go 3 for 3 with these 3 elements. New language, new community, and new leadership. They work, but also, they’re powerful. There’s a dark side to it. With felons, that means people have gone to jail. Within five years of release, about 1/3 of all felons are back in jail, rearrested once they were released. That’s over 76% so we’re told by some of the statistics. Why is that?

Many times, they don’t create a new language, they go back to their languaging-patterns. They don’t have a new community speaking that new language and they don’t have new leadership. They either don’t show up with their parole officer or whatever meetings that they’re assigned to attend.

[bctt tweet=”In a service business, it’s not just you. Leadership is overrated. ” username=”AlexMandossian”]

Creating A Movement As An Ethical Influencer

How does this impact you? You want to be an ethical influencer. Let me tell you what you do because I know a few people that do this, but I’ve been doing it again and again for years. I create how-to courses, I create workshops, and I have private clients. I have students and clients. Students pay fewer clients to pay more.

When you look at the way I built my business, every single course I’ve ever designed a curriculum for going back to 1995, when it first started, the new language meant a glossary of terms. How easy is it for you to create a glossary of terms? There are probably words that you utilize all the time with your clients, customers, patients, students, members or whatever you call them. They should belong in a glossary.

For example, if you’re on Facebook, share, that magic word would be in a glossary of terms. Post and like would be in a glossary of terms. If someone didn’t know what Facebook was, then it’s important to put words into a glossary of terms so that you can take ownership of that language.

Let’s talk about the community. For Facebook, it would be a Facebook group, whether it’s a public or private group. For you, if you have a glossary of terms for your clients. That’s one of the first things I would give to them. You could email it and attach it on a PDF document, I like to take mine on a single page. Sometimes it’s back to back if there are a lot of terms and laminate it, and give it to them as a leave behind. It’s such a great thing to leave with someone because you have the new languaging.

Otherwise, they’re guessing and if they don’t know your language, if they’re intimidated by your language, you’re not going to gain the rapport, you’re not going to ethically influence them. With the community, that’s where you can speak the language with other people in your group. Remember, if you’re creating a movement, it’s about creating a group and you alone can’t do it. Your leadership is overrated, you need to find others to do it.

Let’s say your new community could be a weekly meeting on a Zoom chat or a webinar. If you’re in a community of people who want to write books like my good friend Tucker Max does with Scribe Media. Then once a week, for me, every Tuesday, the group gets together. It’s a meeting of fellowship because people are having challenges in writing their books. There are all kinds of challenges that come up, kind of like a twelve-step meeting.

Listening to it makes me feel that it’s okay for me to struggle if I don’t have time to write the book because I had no intention of writing the current book I’m writing. Tucker, my friend, had a mini intervention with me in front of a lot of other authors. I thought I was there to audit his training. In fact, I got baited and switched back to like, “Alex, you’ve got to write a book. Many of your students have, you haven’t yet. You need to write a book.”

I know the book I’m going to write and I’m writing it. It comes out to about 300 to 400 words a day. On that basis, if I write every day with my writing plan, then it’s done in about 4 to 5 months before I start editing.

The community and the glossary of terms with our guided author workshop that Tucker puts together with Scribe Media, what ends up happening is, I’m a part of that community, we were speaking the language.

 

I’ll give you an example. One of the words in the glossary of terms is the vomit draft. What’s the vomit draft? That means I just finished the book. If you talk to any author, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, they say, “Finish the book.” The first draft is like vomit, but you’re done, now you can start editing. The big mistake is to edit as well as write at the same time. You’ll never get it done.

There are all these other terms, such as chapter brainstorming, the parking lot. These terms may have other meanings to you, but if you’re part of the Guided Author Workshop community, which is just one of many that Tucker has with his company, then you end up having a new language and a new community to be part of a group.

When you stop coming to the meetings, it’s not like I want to go to these Zoom meetings every Tuesday evening, but I’ve carved out time to do it at 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM Pacific Time, just so I can chime in and be a part of it. Many times, I don’t even say anything. It’s not a matter of sharing. Sometimes I’m asked, “Do you have anything to share?” Sometimes I say yes, sometimes they say no, but I want to stay part of the community.

You can do that with your clients. You can do it also within a Facebook group, a support group such as MarketingOnlineSupport.com, that’s for online Help Desk as it used to be called. Now, that’s a new community of people who publicly are asking questions and many times my mentors who are mentoring them, who are my first followers, they’re the new leadership.

They don’t even have to answer the question because the community becomes a learning community. They learn with each other because they knew the language and they start growing the community. I get new first followers from them.

You have a new language that could be a glossary of terms for you. A new community that could be a Facebook group or a weekly meeting that you have with your clients. Number three, new leadership. I promised I talked to you about what a first follower is.

The first followers start at students, and then they have an option to be certified as mentors. Now, they’re my new leadership. They are leading the students who are going through the ranks and learning my courses which have a new language in the form of a glossary of terms and have a community because they’re part of the support desk we have online.

They’re part of the coaching groups and then I have a twice a month meeting with them, where they’re part of that community and then they get to choose whether they want to stay in a community and pay more or leave the community and no longer pay. If we did our job, they stay. That’s why we have nearly 80% of the people continuing because the community and the languaging are so strong.

[bctt tweet=”Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. ” username=”AlexMandossian”]

I’m not the leadership, because I’m not a first follower. I’m the creator of the curriculum, the course, and the training. My first followers are my mentors who were once students, now they’re leading other students.

If you do a YouTube search. You can search for lessons dancing guy or first follower, then you’ll see a video less than 300 seconds. If you haven’t seen it, I think you’ll find it entertaining. Watch it again and again, because leadership is overrated when it comes to creating a movement.

The reason why William G. Wilson also is known as Bill W and Dr. Bob, their legacy still is in existence and growing with AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. The reason why there are tens of millions of books of the story of how many thousands of men and women recovered from alcoholism. That’s the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, also known as the Big Book. The reason that carries on, there’s no advertising for that. It’s all word of mouth or word of the mouse in the digital world.

It’s about recovery. Recovery from drugs, alcohol, sex, or gambling addictions. That’s a good pain to get rid of because it’s suffering. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. That’s not the Alexism for this episode. Although that is one, you’ve got two for the price of one.

Alexism: “We Did It Ourselves”

The Alexism for this episode is, if you’re a true business leader and you’ve completed your job, then all the followers say, “We did it ourselves.” That comes from a Chinese proverb when the true leader job is done, all the people say we did it ourselves. That’s what you want. You’ll make more money that way, you’ll create a legacy that way. I believe you’ll be happier that way.

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Here’s a quick review about the insights you and I both rediscovered, I hope, in this episode of All Selling Aside. I want you to apply them and I gave you various examples, including the dark side of movements that were created. Why learning a new language is part one of three parts of creating a movement.

Why building a new community that speaks that language is part two of the three parts of creating a movement. Finally, why developing new leadership within the community that speaks the new language is part of three of the three parts of creating a movement.

You need all three parts in that sequence. I’ve taught this to thought leaders over the years. They think it’s brilliant because it works, especially with curriculum design. The bottom line is, whether it’s a book, a service, or a product if there’s a new language, as an Apple product. You have a new community, I don’t need to tell you what an Apple store is, and you have new leadership. Those are the people who are the advocates of Apple.

That’s different than the personal computer side of things. Those two movements are usually going up against each other. Remember, these three insights will only work for you if you work them.

 

Please make sure you execute what you’ve learned in this episode because if you do, your future will be bigger. Your movements will look brighter and they would be created on your terms. That’s 25 years of sales and marketing know-how put into 25 minutes week after week. I hope you enjoy it.

Speaking of reviews, if you’ve already given me a review on iTunes, write down your biggest takeaway or a-ha moment from this episode on an index card and hold on to it. Go back and reread it later on. Hopefully, you’ll have dozens and dozens of those index cards. If you haven’t given me a review on iTunes, then now is the time I’m asking you for it. Go to AllSellingAside.com/iTunes, and write down your biggest a-ha or takeaway from this episode.

Don’t give me a podcast review. Give me an a-ha moment from this episode inside the review section even though it doesn’t say a-ha in Apple. It says reviews. It will mean a lot to me. It will mean a lot to others because we’ll go up in the ranks and the truth will show itself to many more people.

Once you do that, iTunes will ask you to rate the episode and I do hope I’ve earned five stars from you. That’s the rating I’m asking for this episode. Will you review and rate this episode for me now, if you haven’t already done so?

It will take three minutes out of your day, but what you declare could provide you and others reading the specific takeaway, a valuable lesson. Once again, AllSellingAside.com/iTunes and you go directly there. If it sounds, I’m attempting to ethically influence you for a review, you’re right.

I have one final gift to give you in honor of this episode of All Selling Aside. That is a complimentary or free access to my video eCourse which will teach you how to identify your market, create your message, capitalize on the most lucrative media sources available to you now, as well as the big shift and identity change that’s happening because of the digital economy we’re in.

Simply go to MarketingOnlineMentor.com and you won’t have to pay the $197 tuition others pay through another route. Isn’t that cool? That does it for this week. Remember, this is the show dedicated to making you an ethical influencer. That’s not a mind shift. That’s an identity change. That’s what I want to do for you. That will bring more certainty to your life. Please do whatever it takes to join me in the next episode because our topic is called The Five Stages of Conversion.

Many people teach three stages of conversion. I teach five, and I encourage you to invite a friend or a colleague or bring a study buddy because I want you and them to hold each other accountable. It’s a new language. You’ll build a little community and hopefully, you’ll be first followers through our Clear Path Mentoring at MarketingOnlineMentor.com.

I can’t wait to connect with you then. It will be super fun. I’d love for you to share with me what you thought of the episode. That is Episode 61. I want you to join us with your study buddy. I will cross paths with you then.

Links and Resources:

• Alcoholics Anonymous
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• Scribe Media
• MarketingOnlineSupport.com
• Lessons dancing guy – YouTube video
• AllSellingAside.com/iTunes
• MarketingOnlineMentor.com