I’m a professional speaker who brings in seven figures a year. People often ask me what separates a good speaker from a great one. They think I’ll say that the best speakers have lots of energy, or tell the best stories, or can be the most emotional. All of those are important, sure, but here’s the thing everyone misses:
The best speakers have the best frameworks.
Frameworks! It’s not sexy, and it’s not what people dream of building when they aspire to speak publicly. But it is the cornerstone of memorable teaching — not just in speaking, but in writing books, teaching courses, and any other space in which you’re positioning yourself as an authority. Bottom line: If you want to be paid for your ideas, you must understand frameworks.
So, what’s a framework? It’s a comprehensive concept, broken down into useful and memorable steps.
You’ve seen plenty of them. Ben Nemtin is a sought-after speaker who teaches a framework called “5 Steps to Make the Impossible Possible.” The steps are: write down your dream, talk about your dreams, persist, take moonshots, and give. The speaker Erica Dhawan teaches a framework called Connectional Intelligence on stages, which helps leaders and teams build trust and connection based on five C’s: Contextualization, Community, Combination, Combustion, and Courageous conversation. And I have my own framework, designed to increase emotional processing speeds and change adoption rates, which I call Change Enthusiasm. I even trademarked the phrase. And it consists of three steps: the signal, the opportunity, and the choice.
Why is this important? To start, let’s look at what happens when speakers don’t have a framework: They get on stage and say a lot of stuff. Good stories. Fun jokes. A mishmash of ideas. But it feels like a big soup — and days later, nobody in the audience remembers what the speaker said. Which means nobody is repeating their ideas to others. Which means the speaker was forgotten and won’t get booked again.
When you offer a framework, you spend the entire time on stage (or in a workshop, a book, etc.) teaching one single thing. You break it down into memorable steps, building toward a whole. And you effectively lay claim to an idea, making it your own. I don’t teach people how to navigate change, for example. That’s big and abstract, and lots of other people teach it too. Instead, I teach people Change Enthusiasm — because it’s mine. I own it. People pay for things that are distinctive, proven, and memorable.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Change Enthusiasm Global
So, how can you build your own framework? Here’s my step-by-step process, and how I used it to build mine.
Step 1: Identify the problem you solve.
It’s a truism in business: Nobody just wants to buy something. Instead, they want to solve a problem. That’s the only reason people spend money!
We are motivated to solve problems — whether that’s something broken in our home or in our lives. So when you present your knowledge, you must frame it similarly. Your ideas must solve the problems of those you serve. And the better you are at defining the problem, the more compelling your idea will be to a buyer.
But here’s what most people get wrong: You can’t just state a problem. Most problems sound generic or obvious. Instead, you must get underneath the problem — and identify the larger deficits that the problem creates. Why does someone hate this problem? What’s missing in their lives because of this problem?
Here’s a challenge: Ask yourself, “Why is someone’s life worse because of this problem?” That’s the level of nuance you want to define.
For example: I speak about navigating the difficult emotions that change inspires, in order to deliver desired results faster. But I wouldn’t want to say, “The problem is that change is hard.” That’s too obvious! When I say that, I don’t display any unique knowledge about change. And if a company is paying me top dollar to talk about change, I’d better understand it at a level deeper than anyone else.
So here’s how I’ve come to define my problem: “The problem is increasing levels of emotional resistance, fatigue, and disengagement when leading through constant, complex change today.”
See what I did there? I identified what happens because of the problem — resistance, fatigue, and disengagement. That’s bad for everyone, but it’s especially bad for organizations that need engaged employees delivering breakthrough results in the face of constant change and uncertainty. Organizations are also the ones that hire me to speak. So what I’m really doing is telling them: If you don’t address the problems driven by the emotional unrest of change, you’ll have disengaged, burned-out employees, and your business will suffer. Now that’s a problem worth solving.
Step 2: Dissect your case study.
You’re an expert in something. Now the question is: How do you implement your knowledge, step-by-step, in a way that’s both usable and teachable?
To answer this, I like to start with a case study. Reflect on someone you’ve worked with who struggled most with the problem you defined in Step 1, and who experienced the most significant transformation because of your help. (If it’s easier, think about how you transformed yourself by implementing your knowledge.) Then ask yourself these four questions:
- What were the biases, beliefs, and behaviors that fueled the original problem?
- What was the desired change?
- What were the actions taken to achieve the change desired?
- What are the beliefs and behaviors which sustain your solution?
Why those four questions? Because the best frameworks aren’t just a to-do list with dry actions. They engineer major shifts in people’s minds and lives. That means you need to look at a problem holistically — and see how your solution helped solve the problem, as well as helped someone evolve personally.
For example, here’s how I used these questions to build my own framework.
Let’s start with my case study: I was leading an organization through a multibillion-dollar acquisition during my first year of sobriety. So I was managing my team’s anxieties and fears while also dealing with my own personal instability. I was distracted and disengaged, unable to numb my emotions with alcohol as I had in the past, and I was frustrated that my colleagues also appeared disengaged and unwilling to just do the work.
Here’s how I revisited this problem, based on the prompts I wrote above.
→Biases/beliefs/behaviors fueling the problem: My team was struggling, unsure how this corporate acquisition would impact them. But I was unable to truly be there for them or connect with them, because I was so focused on suppressing my own feelings. What was the problem? As an executive, I had been groomed to hide negatively-perceived emotions and only bring positivity to the team. Vulnerability was weakness. In addition, my team believed they could not express challenging emotions either, because any emotions outside positive ones didn’t belong in the workplace, and would only slow down the process of change.
→The desired change:I really wanted to connect with my colleagues, talk openly and honestly with them, and bring them all together to help support each other during this time of complex change. Eventually, I realized that emotions don’t suppress change; emotions can actually fuel change. Any emotion. Sadness or fear or frustration — we can use them to adapt more effectively and ultimately faster.
→Actions taken: I began acknowledging my own emotions and vulnerably sharing them with others. The grief. The anxiety. The overwhelm. Then I invited my team to share how they were feeling. I started to see emotions as helpful signals; they were signs illuminating where there was risk or opportunity.
→Beliefs/behaviors to sustain:I realized that, no matter the change, growth comes through embracing our humanity. This means that we must accept and embrace the discomfort that the emotions of change can bring, even in corporate settings. We must see vulnerability as a leadership advantage, because it is within discomfort that our greatest opportunities to evolve present themselves.
Once I broke down the mindset shift that I went through, I had the material needed for the final stage of framework creation: Building the steps.
Step 3: Discover and define your steps.
Now that you’ve identified the problem, solution, and how you engineered personal transformation, it’s time to craft a true framework. This means you must identify a sequence of actions. What happens first? Second? Third? And so on.
For example, as I reflected on the changes I navigated in my case study, I realized that they happened like this:
- I recognized and acknowledged the difficult emotions that change inspired.
- I explored the opportunities (or options) those difficult emotions were inviting me into, and focused on what was in my control.
- I chose which option(s) to pursue and took action. In doing so, I inspired better feelings.
These three steps became the foundation of my Change Enthusiasm framework. And I tell my audiences: You don’t just do this once. This is a cycle that will repeat itself many times as you navigate change.
As you discover your own framework, remember: Keep it simple. The less complexity, the better. Strive for a loop or a cycle — frameworks are most powerful when they can be practiced time and time again.
If you want to go one level deeper, you can come up with a visual or mnemonic device to help communicate your framework. Some people do this with alliterations, like Erica Dhawan’s five C’s. Others do it with images, like a pyramid (giving names to different layers). I use the visual of a traffic light, with red, yellow, and green imagery to represent my three steps.
Now build yours!
The most powerful frameworks come in different shapes and sizes. I’ve given you a formula, but please know that there’s no right or wrong framework. Yours can (and probably will) evolve over time.
But as you develop it, I guarantee this: You will set yourself apart. You will no longer just be someone who teaches a subject. You will instead become someone who teaches a concept. The more you teach it, the more you’ll be known for it. And the more you’re known for it, the more people will pay for it.
Once people are paying for it, you’ve truly turned your ideas into a business.
I’m a professional speaker who brings in seven figures a year. People often ask me what separates a good speaker from a great one. They think I’ll say that the best speakers have lots of energy, or tell the best stories, or can be the most emotional. All of those are important, sure, but here’s the thing everyone misses:
The best speakers have the best frameworks.
Frameworks! It’s not sexy, and it’s not what people dream of building when they aspire to speak publicly. But it is the cornerstone of memorable teaching — not just in speaking, but in writing books, teaching courses, and any other space in which you’re positioning yourself as an authority. Bottom line: If you want to be paid for your ideas, you must understand frameworks.
