---
feed: "DANIEL_ON_SLOPE"
codex_section: "S09"
source: VideoTranscript
title: "IN_TipSeries_Creating_a_Movement-Dancing_Man"
conv_id: "video-IN_TipSeries_Creating_a_Movement-Dancing_Man-20131127"
share_url: "N/A - Private 2013 Recording (Tip Series)"
created: "2013-11-27"
message_count: 1
category:
  - "Leadership & Movement Building"
  - "Marketing Strategy"
summary: "In this November 27, 2013 Tip Series episode, Daniel Comp uses Derek Sivers' iconic TED talk 'How to Start a Movement' (the shirtless dancing guy video) to teach entrepreneurs how to grow their company by creating a true movement rather than chasing sales. He brilliantly connects the first-follower principle, diffusion of innovations curve, and network dynamics (hubs and preferential attachment) to practical business strategy, warning against the 'shining light of sales promise' and emphasizing that leadership is over-glorified while the courage to be the first follower is what actually creates momentum."
keypoints:
  - "The first follower is the real leader: without someone publicly joining and showing others how to follow, even a brilliant lone nut remains just a lone nut."
  - "Movements become unstoppable when they go public—new followers emulate other followers, not the original leader, reducing perceived risk and creating the tipping point."
  - "Diffusion of innovations shows that only ~16% of the market (innovators + early adopters) buys the 'latest and greatest'; the early majority (34%) needs time and social proof, dramatically lengthening the sales cycle for most companies."
  - "Network dynamics reveal that growth happens through hubs and referrals; nurturing your first few followers as equals is more powerful than trying to be the lone hero leader."
  - "Michael Gerber's insight: many entrepreneurs stay stuck in the 18–36 month innovator/early-adopter window and never reach the much larger early majority because they fear slowing down to serve those who need more education and proof."
tags:
  - "derek-sivers"
  - "how-to-start-a-movement"
  - "diffusion-of-innovations"
  - "network-dynamics"
  - "first-follower"
  - "leadership-myth"
  - "tip-series"
  - "michael-gerber"
monomyth_stage: "06 - Tests, Allies, Enemies"
gameboard_position: "Camp 2: Tests, Allies, Enemies"
truth_score: 89
entropy_score: "Low"
tone:
  sentiment: "Visionary"
  emotions:
    - "Earnest"
    - "Insightful"
    - "Encouraging"
  sycophancy_level: "None"
  notes: "Daniel speaks with calm passion and intellectual generosity, weaving Derek Sivers' visual story, the diffusion curve, and NetLogo network simulations into one cohesive lesson. He openly shares his own company's struggle with the innovator trap and Michael Gerber's advice, making the teaching deeply personal and practical."
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  - "video-IN_Nano_BAT_Tour-20050503"
  - "video-IN_Content_Management_Demo-20050503"
  - "video-IN_Affiliate_Introduction-20040227"
syndication_status:
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ma5_inheritance: "None"
pre_silicon: false
voice_print: false
codex_candidate: false
phase: "Tip Series Episode: Creating a Movement – The Dancing Man Lesson (2013)"
enriched_date: "2026-04-19"
---

### Original YouTube Description

November 27, 2013

(upbeat music)
The best possible outcome for this episode is for you to get a really good grip on how to grow your company by creating a movement.

---

### Cleaned Transcript

**Daniel:** The best possible outcome for this episode is for you to get a really good grip on how to grow your company by creating a movement.

Now, if you recall from another episode where we talked about the attraction to filling your boat very quickly with lots of sales and how being duped by that shining light of sales promise may really lead to some disasters.

In this video, what I'm gonna do is introduce you to the ideas of network dynamics and the diffusion of innovation, but I'm gonna really make it stick this time with a visual created by a friend, Derek Sivers, and his presentation at TED.

[Embedded Derek Sivers TED Talk – “How to Start a Movement” – full transcript as delivered in the video]

**Derek Sivers:** So ladies and gentlemen, at TED, we talk a lot about leadership and how to make a movement. So let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under three minutes and dissect some lessons from it.

First, of course, you know, a leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed. But what he's doing is so easy to follow. So here's his first follower with a crucial role. He's going to show everyone else how to follow.

Now notice that the leader embraces him as an equal. So now it's not about the leader anymore, it's about them, plural.

Now there he is calling to his friends.

Now if you notice that the first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.

And here comes a second follower. Now it's not a lone nut, it's not two nuts—three is a crowd and the crowd is news. So a movement must be public. It's important to show not just the leader, but the followers, because you find that new followers emulate the followers, not the leader.

Now here come two more people, and immediately after, three more people. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point. Now we've got a movement.

So notice that as more people join in, it's less risky. So those that were sitting on the fence before now have no reason not to. They won't stand out, they won't be ridiculed, but they will be part of the in crowd if they hurry.

So over the next minute, you'll see all of those that prefer to stick with the crowd, because eventually they would be ridiculed for not joining in. And that's how you make a movement.

But let's recap some lessons from this.

So first, if you are the type, like the shirtless dancing guy, that is standing alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals. So it's clearly about the movement, not you.

Okay, but we might have missed the real lesson here. The biggest lesson, if you noticed, did you catch it, is that leadership is over glorified. That yes, it was the shirtless guy who was first, and he'll get all the credit, but it was really the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader.

So as we're told that we should all be leaders, that would be really ineffective. If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow. And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in. And what a perfect place to do that, Ted.

Thanks.

**Daniel (resuming):** Now you can understand why I really value Derek's observation of building momentum, and especially from the perspective of leadership and market dynamics.

Now let's take a look at diffusion of innovation, and you'll see a different perspective on exactly the same point.

Go to our website, intelligentnetware.com, and go to Learn Glossary. Then to Diffusion of Innovations.

If you drill into this a little bit, you see the illustration here. You can actually go to Wikipedia and get that. Lots of good information.

The closeup of that shows in the gold-colored curve the percentage of market share. Starting over here at the very bottom, we have 0% market share. And as the group gathered, or the dancers went out, or your product is sold, you start gaining market share from different sectors of the market.

So you go from zero to 100% over the distribution of those that adopt your product or philosophy or practices or whatever it might be in the market.

At first, there are innovators. Those are like our company that do the inventing and innovation of things. You find the very first ones that line up at the iPhone store—early adopters. Early majority, a full third of those. Late majority, another third, and then the laggards following up at the other end.

So if you look at the different segments of the market on this blue line, you have to think about: is part of your market share innovators? Those that will buy your product as an innovation to help them grow. This is our market share—is amongst that, and some of the early adopters.

You may have a product that goes to market and has to get from the early majority. So that means that you have a time to market share which burns a great deal of capital. You have to be prepared for that.

One of the points that Michael Gerber drove home to me recently was pointing to my fear that in our company, selling to innovators and trying to get early adopters, that this portion of the curve only represents 18 to 36 months in our market, and that we rarely ever get to the early majority.

And Michael shared, which may be a good point to encourage you, is that people that are in this portion are quite satisfied with not having the latest whiz-bang bells and whistles. They need the time to learn of the advantages, and so we have a much longer selling cycle or time to market.

I always talk about my truck of tomatoes needing to get to the market fast enough. So you may consider this as well, that in fact you can create or gather a much higher portion of the market later because people are not always wanting the most innovative and greatest, latest product lines.

Now let's take more of a statistical approach to it and look at network dynamics and how it says exactly the same thing.

If you go to our site again, go back to the glossary, scroll down, find “Six Degrees,” “Network Dynamics,” and also “Small World Networks.” Both of these describe a very similar function.

If you download and run NetLogo, you'll get it from this website. It's a modeling software and these are customers—your company and another company if you're B2B, or if you're B2C, your company in the center and a customer out here.

And what I'm gonna do is speed this up and it's gonna demonstrate the same thing you saw Derek with the dancing guys. You'll see that what happens is an entire network of your customers grows, but there are specific hubs within those. And this is what he was saying about your very first leader—or very first follower—that you need to treat them as a leader because they're the ones that actually create most of your network.

And you can see from the degree distribution that the number of network hops from one side across to the other—that would be in marketing, would be considered referrals who suggest from one person to another—that the number of relationships across that entire network is fairly low.

And now that you're armed with two new tools—that is diffusion of innovation and network dynamics—let's look again at Derek's presentation and you'll discover the brilliance of his insights.

And I hope that that really empowers you to do far more with the growth of your company.

---

**CODEX ENTRY**

**Date:** 2013-11-27  
**File:** IN_TipSeries_Creating_a_Movement-Dancing_Man.md  
**Monomyth Stage:** 06 - Tests, Allies, Enemies  
**Gameboard:** Camp 2: Tests, Allies, Enemies  
**MA5 Domain:** None  
**Summary:** Daniel Comp uses Derek Sivers’ famous “shirtless dancing guy” TED talk to teach that creating a movement requires nurturing the first follower as an equal, understanding diffusion of innovations timing, and leveraging network hubs—rather than chasing fast sales or glorifying lone-hero leadership.  
**Key Insight:** Leadership is over-glorified; the first follower who publicly joins and shows others how to follow is what actually transforms a lone nut into unstoppable momentum—and most companies never reach the early majority because they stay trapped in the short 18–36 month innovator window.  
**Narrative Significance:** This 2013 Tip Series episode marks a philosophical turning point in the series. It bridges the early technical BAT/NanoBat work with the later 2014 Digital Franchising mind maps by introducing the deeper human and network principles (first follower, diffusion curve, hubs) that underpin exponential, movement-based enterprise growth—the exact mindset that later matured into the Initium and Scotomaville frameworks.

---

**INITIUM.**