Ep 69: How to Develop a Winning Framework with Mel Abraham
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How to Develop a Winning Framework with Mel Abraham
If you're like most people in the online education space, you've probably heard the buzz about frameworks and their importance in developing a successful business. But have you ever had the chance to sit down with someone who truly understands the psychology behind building a winning framework and has used it to grow multimillion-dollar businesses?
Today, we have the privilege of hearing from Mel Abraham, a renowned entrepreneur, mentor, and strategic thinker. With decades of experience in the industry, Mel has built a reputation as one of the most sought-after financial experts and thought leaders in the online space. He's the founder of the Thought Entrepreneur Academy and Business Breakthrough Academy, where he helps entrepreneurs bring their businesses to the world and build the lifestyle they desire.
One of Mel's unique talents is his ability to leverage frameworks to drive success in business. We'll explore Mel's insights on how to create a winning framework for your business, how to use it to build your brand and increase conversions, and how to help your members make meaningful progress towards their goals.
Favorite Community
Talk about your favorite community that you've ever been a part of and what you love about it.
So, it was actually an entrepreneurial community. It was a mastermind that I was involved in. It was a number of years ago, but the reason I liked it wasn't all business. Every time we would come together for business, there was always a day that was dedicated to service.
That service was working at an orphanage, building homes, making a difference. We're blessed, we're privileged, however you want to put it. I don't think we're lucky because we've worked hard, but I think that we've had the blessings of our life. To try and pay that forward is important.
Too often we can see that people may be successful, but are they really? I believe that legacy is something that we create at the moment. It's not something that we have to die and leave behind, but that when we interact with someone in a moment, we can shift a life, we can give them a smile, we can make them better.
When we use our talents, our skills, our tools, and our gifts to make a great life for ourselves, but at the same time give a path to a better life for others, that's where I think we should be playing. That was one, probably one of my favorite things to do.
In fact, one of the pictures in my first book is of me and a little boy whom we couldn't speak the language with, but we spoke the language of connection at an orphanage. I walked into the orphanage and he saw me. I saw him, and he just came running up, and he would not leave my arms the whole time I was there.
Importance of Frameworks
How did you discover the power and the beauty of frameworks? Where did the framework piece become so important for you?
It's an odd story. So I'm a CPA by education, but I didn't do typical CPA stuff. I primarily valued businesses, bought and sold businesses, and consulted to build businesses. But I got involved with being an expert witness in financial matters. So I would testify in front of a judge and a jury.
I'd be the kind of person they would hire to testify against Bernie Madoff and people like that. So one of the things that happened is the first couple of cases, I would go in, and here I am going on the flip chart and doing math for a jury. It's about as interesting as watching paint dry.
So my opposition, the opposing expert, would do the same thing. I had an idea one time because I was studying the influence, persuasion, and communication. I said to my attorney, "Will you trust me on this?" They said, "What are you gonna do?" I said, "I'm gonna try and draw a picture for them."
When I got called up to testify, I got the person's permission from the judge and said, "Is it okay if I drew a picture for you and told you a story?" So I took the numbers that I was using and drew it into a framework, into a picture, and told them a story around the numbers without necessarily doing all the intricate math and everything.
Then I just sat down. Now, when the jury went to the deliberation room, the only thing they remembered was the story and the picture. They never understood the math. But what happened is that we won that case hands down. From that point forward, I started to really dig into how to become more influential with your communication.
The key with frameworks for me was that I realized that when I talk about frameworks, I'm talking about diagrammatic frameworks. Not a mnemonic, not an acronym. An acronym is just meant for memorization. But when you create a framework, a diagram, the proper way, you create simplicity out of complexity.
You connect emotion and logic, drive them to action through understanding, and have layers of influence in it because of the way you unpack the framework. So what I started to do is look at how can we do this because a visual intake is actually an emotional intake. It's why we have an emotional response to seeing a baby or a puppy.
But because there's structure, deliberate, intentional structure to the framework, squares, circles, triangles put together in a specific way, it creates logic. So it's the one tool I found that I can marry the emotional side of our world to the logical side of our world and have it become vivid.
That's how it started to come about. If you follow me for any length of time, you'll know that everything I do is driven by a framework. Everything, and I start to see things in frameworks. I remember sitting in an audience of a dear friend of mine who had his live event with 500 people there.
He's teaching, doing his thing, and I'm on my iPad, and by the time he is done, I walk up and say, "That's your last two hours right there in a picture." And he goes, "You're like the cartoonist at Disney." That's how I started to do it and explore the ideas of using visual frameworks as a mechanism and method to get my point across, make it memorable, make it valuable, make it distinct, and have me stand out.
What Makes a Good Framework
Understanding the Different Learning Styles
There are two things to think about, and I'll walk through the four pieces of a powerful framework in a second here. There are a lot of different learning styles out there, so when I'm speaking and creating content, I actually catalog my content in a very specific way.
I know the point I'm trying to make, but then I catalog it by defining upfront what my analogies or metaphors are. I capture them on a document and decide upfront because that speaks to the visionary, emotional, abstract thinker. I capture the stories that will bring the point home, that speaks to the more detailed emotional person.
So it's really the right brain that we're speaking to. I capture the stats or the steps that they need. That's the data work, the people that are detail-oriented and want the logic. And then I capture the framework. So what happens is I'm exercising the muscle of capturing and cataloging the content that gives me the flexibility.
Say I'm going to speak to a group of engineers. I know that I'm going to lean to the left side of their brain. I'm going to lean to the logic side, but I don't have to go research. It's already done. And I've done the work to allow me to speak to creatives, to speak to logic folks, to speak big thinking, detail thinking, all of that.
And I think that we tend to not do the work to allow us to set things up, but there have been times, and I'm betting that you've watched someone on stage, they do a presentation. It could be 30 minutes, could be 45 minutes, could be an hour. And you look at them and you go, "Ooh, that just dented the surface."
There is much more to them, and the reason there's much more to them is that they did the deeper work. When we take your framework, you've got years and years of knowledge that go along with that framework that you might present in a half an hour, but the people are sitting there realizing, "Oh my God. There are so many more layers to her and to what she knows."
So, that's the first thing to realize is that it's not just something that we slap together. I'm going to throw this out at the beginning. Cute doesn't sell. I want effective. Okay, so I know that we want to keep it in brand colors, but you know what, red, yellow, and green have an impact psychologically on us.
And if we understand the psychology behind it, we will depart when it's necessary from our brand colors and trying to make things cute.
The 4 Things you Want in your Framework
Formation
There are four things that you want in your framework. The first is the formation. That is a combination of circles, triangles, and squares, okay? Those are the only three shapes that are out there in the world. If you want an oval, squash the circle. If you want a rectangle, squash the square, but those are the only three things. But if you think about it, the question is, what is the impact on the mind, the psyche of a specific shape? If I think about a square, it typically has boundaries; it's structure. If I think about a circle, it's a lot of inclusiveness. And so there is this underlying psychology behind the shape. A triangle can sense growth or direction or movement. So we need to understand what shapes are going to tie to the point we want to make with the formation.
Information
The second piece is that we want to look at the information that we want to put in place. The information is the stuff they need to know. Here's the challenge that a lot of us will do, we know a lot of stuff. The first time I did my live event was in 2012, and I had 30 people in the room. I gave them three days of entrepreneurship and all kinds of stuff. It was a ton of good information, and it was totally useless because I dumped everything on them. We need to think about using the three-hour rule. We're going to go to a gourmet coffee shop like Starbucks, and we're going to sit there for three hours. I'm going to have the time with you for three hours. What are the points, the three to five things I need to know if I'm never going to see you again? That's it. Stop there.
Because our job is to help them achieve a micro success, we need to provide them with information that gets them from point A to point B, not overwhelm them with information all the way to Z. This is where a lot of people stop, but the other two elements are where it starts to come to life.
Emotion
The third element is emotion, and we need to decide upfront what emotion we want to instill in the framework and the delivery of it. Is it angst, desire, frustration, or possibility? We need to create an emotional and compelling element in our framework to attach it to the heart.
Orchestration
The fourth element is orchestration, which is what brings the framework to life. We have formation, information, emotion, and orchestration. We should never just slap our framework up on a slide or board because our job is to control their focus. If we present a framework with eight or ten items, when we're speaking about item one, they may be distracted by item four and lose their focus. The magic is in the orchestration and the reveal. We should build the framework step by step, ensuring that they are with us every step of the way and in the right emotional state. When it is complete, they will understand, appreciate and be motivated by it.
Leveraging Frameworks for Sales and Results
How to leverage frameworks to get more sales, to keep people in your programs and help them get more results.
Let me walk through the beginnings of my Affluent Blueprint framework, and I'll do a portion of this that I typically do in my keynotes. I don't unpack the whole thing because there's another part of this. When there's open space, the mind wants to fill it.
That means I keep a connection and they know there's a gap and they go, "Oh, I need the answer. I need the answer. I need the answer." Here's how this goes. This is about me trying to help people become what I call an affluent entrepreneur. I'm gonna do it as if I was presenting it. You'll start to see it, and then I'll unpack it if that works.
The Affluence Blueprint™ Framework
Three Critical Outcomes of an Affluent Entrepreneur
Here's the thing that I've been obsessed with for most people: I want you to become an affluent entrepreneur. What that means to me is that in the years that I've worked with entrepreneurs and their money to try and make that happen, there are three critical outcomes that we need.
Richer Lifestyle: The first critical outcome is that they end up with a richer lifestyle. Now this isn't about the money in the bank. A richer lifestyle is about the feelings you have and how you're experiencing life. We know a lot of people that have probably made a lot of money, but they're miserable. Their health sucks, their relationships suck, and that isn't richness. Richness is the experience and the joy that you have. It could be a tent in Tuscany, a yacht in Monaco. No judgment here, but I'll take the yacht in Monaco. The question is, what's your richer lifestyle?
Deeper Impact: The second critical outcome is that you have a deeper impact. As entrepreneurs, we know that we're impacting our customers, our clients, the people we serve, but there are two other impacts that we fail to really deliberately think about. The second impact is to the right and left. It's the people we love. It's the people that share life with us. And we have to ask ourselves deliberately, how are we showing up in that space? To make that impact as well as the impact for us. The third impact that we typically leave off the table is the one in the mirror. Who do we become in the process of becoming an affluent entrepreneur? And when we know that we can impact and become the kind of person we want to be, and that we're impacting the people we love and the people we serve. That's the kind of impact we're looking for.
Complete Freedom: The third critical outcome for an affluent entrepreneur is that they have complete freedom. Now I have a lot of people that say, "I just want financial freedom." Well, that's the most rudimentary freedom because it really isn't the money we want. It's the things the money can give us. There are two other freedoms that I think we actually are looking for. The second freedom is time freedom. The freedom to decide what we're going to do with our time. I actually think our wealth should be measured in time and not money. If I asked you today, how much of the moments of your life do you control, that would tell me how rich your life is. The third freedom is mind freedom. It's about having the freedom and the peace of mind to know that the people, the causes, the missions, the movements that you care about are taken care of long after you're gone.
Three Systems in Place
Now you sit back and go, "Great, Mel, what do I need?" You need three systems in place.
The first system is you need a system to generate. This is to generate income. This is where you scale and optimize your profits. This is how you go from a drip of cash flow to a flood of cash flow. This is how you make the money. Most entrepreneurs are really good at that. They make the money. What they don't do is they end up spending the money. So they don't do the second thing.
The second system you need is a system to accumulate the money. How do we take the income and convert it to assets? Because that's where we multiply the money. It's where we create a money machine that gives us the support we need to do the things we want, to have the time we want. It's not tied to just making money. We create a way to multiply the money we make.
Then the third system you need, which unfortunately we need in our society, is we need a system to insulate. How do we go from exposed to protected? How do we shield what we make and our ability to make it so our causes, our missions, our movements, our family, our loved ones, and our future are taken care of. So that was the basics of it.
Stephen Coveys entire career was based on the idea of four quadrants. When examining the difference between urgent and important tasks, I frequently encounter individuals who express apprehension about the possibility of their work being stolen. Yet, if the work is truly exceptional, it's more likely to attract attention and, as a result, be susceptible to imitation. Nevertheless, the most effective approach to safeguarding your work is to create such a significant volume of quality content that it become here's how this played out. Just so you see it. I started with the why. I started with the emotions. So the center section, the critical outcomes, was all about the emotions. It was all about their why. It was attaching to it, it was getting them because Bernice McCarthy talked about this format system in accelerated learning, where we lose the why people first.
To begin, it's essential to establish the why of the matter. From there, we can move on to the what, and subsequently the how, before ultimately considering the if. In my presentation, I began by conveying the emotional and abstract aspects of the subject, and then transitioned to a more tangible and logical approach. If I were to continue, I would delve into the details and steps involved in the how. However, gaining buy-in from the audience was crucial. Without capturing their interest in the concept of a more affluent lifestyle, I wouldn't be able to maintain their attention for the remainder of the presentation.
Leaving a little bit of that gap of that unknown, that tension of, I see the framework, I see the vision, but I don't have the full picture. Is that part of the conversion?
Part of the process involves the audience recognizing the existence of a gap. When we present information, we can highlight the difference between their current reality and their desired destination, which makes the gap more apparent to them. By doing this, we communicate to them that if they understand their current situation and their desired outcome, they are more likely to know how to reach their goal. The key components of achieving this are establishing credibility and trust, and outlining a process that they can follow to achieve their desired outcome. Even if we were to provide a checklist of steps, there may be some actions that they would struggle to complete on their own. However, we can guide them more efficiently towards their goal by offering our expertise and experience. This is an essential aspect of the process.
The other side of it is every step of the way, if I can, I will have them self-assess. It's far more powerful for me to say, "On a scale of one to five, or one to ten, where are you on this?" Because, and I may not reveal exactly why I'm asking it until later because I want their feedback to be concrete. Once they self-assess, they have a hard time arguing with themselves. But if I turned around and said to someone, "Well, you know what? I think you're about six on this," they're going to push back. So I want to put it in their lap.
At each step of the process, I could have asked a question such as, "In the accumulate pillar of the affluent entrepreneur, if we consider the following criteria, do you possess a critical mass of assets, such as half a million dollars or more? If you are currently on the path to achieving this, you may rate yourself between three to six. If you have already attained this benchmark and half a million dollars is simply a random number, then you may rate yourself between seven to eight. Conversely, if you haven't even contemplated this goal and perceive it as distant, you may rate yourself as one or two. So please take a moment to assess your situation and record the corresponding number, without any judgment.”
Later in the presentation or sales conversation, I may revisit the topic and say something along the lines of, "Do you recall the numbers we discussed earlier? Let's take a moment to review those figures." This is useful because if, for example, all of their ratings were six or lower across the board, I can easily convey that my role is to enhance these factors and elevate them to a rating of nine or ten. However, I allow them to self-assess first.
The Framework Formula
You have a program that walks people through, framework development or training. Tell me a little bit more about that.
I have a larger program called Thought Academy that I could walk through, all the cataloging and all that thought process, and everything. But I also have a tool for those who want to dig a little deeper into frameworks themselves. That's called the Framework Formula. I don't have it off the top of my head, but I can get the link that will allow them to grab a 20-minute training and a worksheet for free to start investigating where they want to go. Because using a framework also becomes your calling card of your brand.
How to Connect with Mel Abraham
FREE Framework Formula: http://melabraham.com/frameform/
Website: melabraham.com
Instagram: @melabraham9
Where you can leave a question, record a question, and I can bring it on my show.: askmelnow.com
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*This article has summarized the interview to the best of our ability. To hear the exact words shared, listen to or watch the full episode.
