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Build Powerful Marketing Frameworks with Melanie Deziel
The Agents of Change

Great content travels farther when it’s easy to teach, share, and remember. Melanie Deziel breaks down how to turn messy expertise into clear, repeatable frameworks. We dig into what makes a framework work, how to choose the right shape and name, and practical steps to start building yours this week.

Why Your Marketing Needs a Framework (And How to Build Your Own)

Every time someone asks your customer what you do, you’re hoping they can give a decent elevator pitch on your behalf.

And if you’ve ever tried to explain your own business to someone at a networking event, you know how hard that is—even when you’re the one who does the work every day.

Now imagine your customer trying to do it. They know you helped them. They got results. But when their colleague asks “Oh yeah? What does [fill in your name here] do?”—they’re stuck with some variation of “He does digital marketing stuff” or “She’s a really good coach.”

Not terrible. But not exactly making the phone ring either.

Melanie Deziel has built her reputation helping speakers, coaches, and businesses transform their expertise into frameworks—not because frameworks sound impressive, but because they solve this exact problem. They give people something concrete to remember and share.

And in a skeptical market where everyone claims they can help, being memorable might be more valuable than being perfect.

Why Marketing Frameworks Work

Anyone who grew up in the US has encountered the food pyramid at some point. Even if you couldn’t recite the exact serving recommendations, you probably remember the basic concept: eat more of the stuff at the bottom, less of the stuff at the top.

That’s remarkably better than trying to remember a laundry list of nutritional guidelines, serving sizes, and dietary recommendations. The pyramid gives you something to hang your knowledge on.

Melanie put it perfectly: “Having those frameworks–giving people something really simple–allows them to retain that information better than if you had simply been given a list.”

But there’s another benefit that’s even more powerful: frameworks make your customers your salespeople.

Think about it. When someone asks your client what you do, what’s easier to relay: “Oh, Rich helps businesses with their digital marketing” or “Rich has this framework called the Bare Essentials—Build, Attract, Retain, Evaluate—and it’s how he approaches building a complete web presence”?

The second one does two things the first doesn’t: it makes you memorable, and it makes you sound like you know what you’re doing. (You probably already knew what you were doing, but now other people know it too.)

Why Most Frameworks Fail Before They Start

Melanie sees the same mistake over and over: businesses pick a catchy name first and then try to shove their ideas into it.

“I can always tell when someone picked a name first and then forced their thing,” she told me. “I’m like, two of those pillars are exactly the same. Why did it have to be four? Maybe this was meant to be three.”

It’s like watching someone pick out a suit they love and then trying to alter their body to fit into it.

The other big mistake? Choosing a shape that doesn’t serve the function of the ideas. If you’ve got a sequential process but you’re representing it as a pie chart, you’re creating confusion instead of clarity. And confusion is the enemy of conversion.

The IRON Framework for Building Frameworks

Melanie developed what she calls the IRON framework—a framework for building frameworks, which is meta, but also practical.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Information – Start with the info dump. Get everything out of your head and onto paper (or post-it notes, or a whiteboard…whatever works). This isn’t the time to edit yourself. Just brain-dump all the key ideas, processes, values, or differentiators you want to convey.

Relation – Once you’ve got your ideas out, figure out how they relate to each other. Are they all equally important? Do they fall into categories? Must they happen in a specific sequence? This is where you start seeing the structure emerge.

Operation – How do you want people to use this framework? Are they scoring themselves against it? Moving through it like a process? This is where the shape starts to reveal itself. If there’s a fixed order, you need progression (top to bottom, left to right). If everything’s equally important, maybe you’re looking at pillars or a circle.

Naming – Only now—after you understand your information, how it relates, and how people will use it—do you tackle naming. And yes, this is the fun part, but it has to come last.

As Melanie explained, “Early on, we don’t necessarily know what we’re dealing with. Like, is this a process? Is it a pyramid? Is it a ladder? Is it a flywheel or a cycle? Understanding how those ideas relate to one another and how people will use it helps you determine how to name it.”

The Post-It Note Method (Low-Tech, High-Impact)

When I asked Melanie about her process, she kept coming back to post-it notes. There’s something about the tactile experience of moving physical objects around that helps your brain make connections.

“I like something that you don’t have to feel like you’re committing too much when you’re doing it,” she said. “If you’re editing yourself too much in that info dump process, like, oh, this is my good notebook, so I’m only going to write down my very best ideas, it kind of backfires on you.”

I’m on board with this method; I can’t count the number of presentations I’ve developed on the wall the left side of my desk with just a pack of sticky notes and a sharpie.

There’s freedom in knowing you can rearrange, throw away, or start over without feeling like you’re wasting anything but a dollar’s worth of office supplies.

Finding the Sweet Spot: Not Too Much, Not Too Little

Here’s where it gets tricky: how much information is the right amount?

Melanie’s suggests, “I want someone to ask me questions because they want to learn more instead of because they don’t understand.”

In other words, if people are asking “What do you mean?” or “How does that work?” out of confusion, you’ve included too much or explained too little. But if they’re asking those same questions out of genuine curiosity—”Tell me more about how you do that!”—you’ve hit the sweet spot.

Most frameworks that stick land somewhere between three and eight elements. The food pyramid works. Four pillars work. The seven habits of highly effective people work (though that’s pushing it). But the 47-step system? The 113 characteristics of successful businesses? Nobody’s remembering that, including you.

Why Rhyming Sounds True (Even When It Isn’t)

Here’s a weird psychological quirk: things that rhyme seem more believable.

I know. It’s irrational. But we’re irrational creatures.

That’s why acronyms work so well, especially when they spell actual words. That’s why alliteration sticks. That’s why Melanie’s IRON framework is easier to remember than her QRST framework would be (I just made that up, but you see my point).

When you’re in the naming phase, grab a thesaurus and start playing with synonyms. Can you get all your pillars to start with the same letter? Can your sequential steps spell something memorable? Just make sure you’re checking definitions—sometimes a word sounds perfect until you realize it doesn’t mean what you think it means.

From Frameworks to Everything Else

Once you’ve nailed down your framework, it becomes the lens through which your entire business operates.

Your sales scripts? Built around your framework. Your onboarding process? Follows your framework. Your social media content? Showcases different elements of your framework. Your email confirmations? You get the idea.

Melanie mentioned seeing frameworks implemented on packaging, sales collateral, email sequences, blog posts, courses, and even the check-in experience at brick-and-mortar locations.

This isn’t about beating people over the head with your framework at every opportunity. It’s about having a cohesive thread running through everything you do, so customers experience a consistent brand no matter where they encounter you.

And here’s the bonus: it makes your life easier. When you’vei got a framework to fall back on, you’re not reinventing the wheel every time you create a piece of content or have a sales conversation. You’ve got a reliable structure.

Your First Framework Starts This Week

If you’re thinking “this sounds great but I don’t even know where to start,” Melanie’s advice is simple: do the info dump.

Get everything out of your head. Post-it notes, whiteboard, voice memos into your phone while you’re driving—whatever works for you. Then find a thought partner (a colleague, a friend, your AI Assistant) who can help you sort through it.

Ask yourself: How do these ideas relate? Are they sequential? Hierarchical? Equally important? What do I want people to do with this information?

The structure will start to emerge. And when it does, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this years ago.

Melanie has resources on her website including her IRON Framework Cheat Sheet and a Framework Inspiration Doc with sample shapes and structures. They’re in the printable resources section if you want a head start.

But honestly? The most important thing is just to start. Dump those ideas. Make sense of the mess. Build something that makes your expertise shareable.

And a good framework is your secret weapon for becoming remarkable, unforgettable, and an Agent of Change.

Melanie Deziel’s Episode Transcript

Rich: My next guest is a creative systems architect, keynote speaker, an award-winning branded content creator, who is passionate about helping individuals, teams, and organizations unlock their creative potential and organize their creative efforts.

She produces the Creative Constructs newsletter, and is the author of both The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas, and Prove It – Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust.

Today we’re going to be talking all about building frameworks with Melanie Deziel. Melanie, welcome to the podcast.

Melanie: Thanks for having me back. It’s nice to chat.

Rich: I told you I emailed you this morning, I saw you replied. I’m excited about this topic. Now, you built a reputation as a leading voice in content marketing and frameworks. How did you first get started down the path of thinking about frameworks?

Melanie: So it’s one of those things where you often don’t realize you’re strong suits until the people around you tell you, right? If it’s something that comes really naturally to you. And so I think that was the case with this.

I’m autistic. I’ve always thought in visuals, thought and systems, I think in pictures. And so I didn’t realize that this was something that was a unique benefit. And I had been working with several friends who said, “Your talk is really good. Let’s see if we could build some more structure into it.”

And I got into this habit of helping people find the underlying structure of their ideas. And I did it a number of times and someone was like, “Why don’t you advertise this?” Like, why is this not something that you’re really focused on? And I think that was the light bulb moment for me, was realizing this is actually something that can be really beneficial if I’m helping others do it. But it’s something that I’ve always done instinctively.

I think my first book, The Content Field Framework, is very much a grid structure, very organized. And looking back now, a lot of my own talks, my blog posts, things like that are always very structured. So I think it came very naturally, but it wasn’t something I realized that I could be using to help others.

Rich: Yeah, and I think that’s great. There’s a lot of marketers out there, myself included, who have used some sort of framework over the years. Even back in the infancy of my company, I talked about the Four Pillars of Web Marketing, and then it was the BARE Essentials of Digital Marketing, so I think this makes a lot of sense when people say to you, “What’s the value of having a framework? Why can’t I just teach this?” What’s your argument for creating that framework?

Melanie: To be fair, I try not to convince people because I think if you’re not sold on it, then it’s probably not the right fit for you because it is abstract. But I see a ton of value in it, and I know that people who use the framework see a lot of value, too.

And a big part of that one is it becomes easier for you to teach because there’s a clear way to do it. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. You can fall back on reliable organization of that information. But it makes the information a lot easier for other people to understand and remember, too.

The example I like to give is we all have some familiarity with the food pyramid, at least vaguely. Even if we’re not using it on a regular basis, you’re aware of some foods you have fewer of, they’re at the top, some foods you need more of, they’re toward the bottom. But that’s very different than trying to convey the entirety of nutrition as a space, as a practice. And so I think having those frameworks, giving people something really simple, allows them to retain that information better than if you had simply been given a list of, here’s how many servings of grain you should have per day, and hoping that information sticks in there somewhere.

Rich: Yeah, I definitely think the information becomes easier to digest and also easier to remember when you learn about it in some sort of framework. Especially if there’s a catchy title to it or if things work together.

When I developed my Remarkability Formula, I had four lenses, and they all started with the letter F. Those kind of things make it easier to teach people.

Melanie: Yeah. I also was going to say, it makes it easier for them to share it with others, too. If they’re turning around, what did you learn in that talk? Or, how was that book? Or, I heard you know Rich, what’s his deal? What’s he up to?

It’s so much easier for someone to turn around and repeat, oh, he’s got these four Fs, right? These four things, or, I learned this great process, the A, B, C, D, or the three pillars of X, Y, Z. It’s easier for them to relay it, and that helps you with word of mouth and referrals and all that, too.

Rich: That’s a great point. So basically, you can have people go out and be your acolytes because you’ve given them, instead of a bunch of information, you’ve given them a small package or a briefcase that they can hand off to the next person. Excellent, I love that.

We’ve talked about it, you and I are both content creators, but why do you think frameworks may be so powerful for any type of business, not just for content entrepreneurs?

Melanie: I think there’s that sort of word-of-mouth factor that we just talked about here, right? Which, especially in this skeptical market that we’re all operating in, I think getting word of mouth that way works so much better than a lot of the other options available to us. So that’s definitely a bonus.

But I think it really helps build a cohesive brand, too, when we are trying to. We have so many places that we need to be present, whether that’s our website or social media channels, it’s the collateral or the packaging that we’re creating. There’s so many places where we need to show up. Having a really clear framework of some kind to fall back on allows you to unify that conversation across the board.

And that can include your sales scripts, if you’re doing phone calls. It can include like the check-in experience at your brick and mortar location. Having those pillars to fall back on, I just think makes everything feel a lot more cohesive. And it reduces decision fatigue, right? Imagine you don’t have to think every single time you’re picking up the phone, or writing a post, or sending a confirmation email. Those kind of templates and scripts just make things a lot easier.

Rich: Oh my God, it’s so funny. I’m literally working on a presentation right now and I’m talking about decision fatigue and how Obama famously would only wear two color suits, so he wouldn’t have to think about it every single morning. It’s absolutely true.

Melanie: Yeah.

Rich: I feel like a lot of businesses struggle with differentiating themselves. How can creating a proprietary framework help them stand out?

Melanie: That’s a really good point. I think in a world where your customers are not only skeptical, like we just talked about, but they’re also looking at a lot of different options and may not be able to recognize quickly which is best for them or see the differences clearly, a framework is where you can show that you have a clear process behind things.

So in a world where they’re choosing between one or more coaches or one or more service providers, and they all do the same thing, but this one has a time-tested system, or this business has the four key pillars. The other ones say that they’re great and they’re going to help, but these four key pillars they mentioned are the four things that I really need help with. And so that feels more tangible, right? So I think it allows you to make your case more clear, in a way that they can better understand, they can better share that sticks with them longer.

And so I think it just really makes that whole process easier as long as you are clear on what those differentiators are. And you could build that into your process, into your framework. Then it becomes something that, again, helps you stand out in a world where everyone’s just saying, “Oh yeah, we do that.” Sure you do, but what do you do differently? How do you do it differently in a way that I’m going to remember after this pitch or after this conversation.

Rich: I also think that if a company has gone, or an individual has gone through the process of developing out an IP, developing out a framework, it also speaks to how invested they are in the success of that framework as well as somebody who just says, “Yeah, I do websites”, or, “Yeah, I do consulting”.

Melanie: Yeah, totally. It’s like a credibility marker as well, right? A framework isn’t something anybody could put up a shingle and say, “I make websites”, like you’re saying. But if you’re able to say, look, I build websites based on this formula that I know has worked with my X number of clients. I always include these key things, and here’s why that works.

And if you’ve got rigor around what it is that you do, you’ve got structure. It makes the promise a little bit more tangible, a little bit more clear, and it shows that you know what you’re doing. It didn’t just spring up outta nowhere.

Rich: Yeah, and I love something you had mentioned earlier, which I hadn’t thought about. Like you can also use these frameworks to train your frontline employees. So if you have somebody greeting somebody at the door, or when they first walk into your offices or whatever it may be, understanding the core concepts that support your business, helps them communicate that more clearly as well.

Melanie: Absolutely. Because the framework that you use can be based on all kinds of things, right? A lot of times if I am working with coaches or speakers, then it is information they’re trying to teach of some kind. It’s the four pillars or the six steps or something like that. But your framework can also be your sort of brand values. It can also be the way that you operate. It can be the various services that you offer. And you have a very clear, I don’t know, A, B, C, D list of your offerings. That can all, can inform every part of your process, right?

That informs the copy on your website. It informs the customer service folks who are answering questions. Here’s what we can do, here’s how we can help. Here’s what we don’t do and what we can help with. I think it can really become something that you rely on, it becomes a lens through which your entire business can operate in a way.

Rich: Absolutely. So there’s obviously going to be some frameworks that outperform other frameworks. In your opinion, what makes a framework successful?

Melanie: Ooh, there’s a couple things that are really important. I think finding the right balance of how much to include is probably one of the biggest challenges, but also one of the biggest deciding factors.

I know we were talking earlier about some frameworks that we’ve each encountered, and something like the four pillars or the eight steps is a lot easier for anyone to remember, including you as someone who has to share it, than the 25 steps or the 43 characteristics, right? So finding that balance of how much is enough to convey the idea, but not so much that it becomes cumbersome and it no longer serves its function. So that’s a sweet spot. Having that right balance is really important.

And then ultimately, I mean as much as I hate to say it, having a catchy name helps too, right? If you can get some rhyming in there, or like you mentioned, your four that start with the same letter. Those kinds of things, those mnemonics really do help people internalize that information.

So the key thing though is you have to do that last, that’s the hardest part. Because sometimes people start with a catchy name and they try to shove it in there, and it backfires a little bit. But I think that right balance of information and then a name that makes sense to help them remember what that information is, are two things that will be really important.

Rich: All right. Now you’ve created your own IRON Framework, I.R.O.N., for developing frameworks. Very meta. Can you walk us through what that process looks like?

Melanie: A framework, framework. Yeah. You got it. You have to have one, right? But yeah, so the first thing, the key thing, and I touched on this a little bit, is you’ve got to find that information first.

So the very first thing you need to do is figure out what is it that I’m trying to represent, what’s the information that I am trying to convey in this framework? So this is where you’re deciding, is it our process? Is it our criteria? Is it the steps? What is it that we’re trying to teach? What’s that key information?

Once you’re really clear on, I think I’ve got all the information I need to convey, now the question becomes how is that information related to the other information. So this is where you start to ask really important questions about the hierarchy. Are all these things equally important? Do they fall into some categories? Are they in some sort of sequence? Like how do all these important pieces of information connect to one another?

After that is when you start thinking okay, now for the operation, what do I want people to do with this model? Is it something they’re going to score themselves against? Is it something they’re going to move through, like a process? This is where kind of the shape comes into play. We’re seeing there’s hierarchy. There’s movement along a spectrum, for example.

And then toward the end is where you get to the end. That’s the naming, that does have to come last. But the information, the relationship between that information, the operation of your model for your audience, and then the name comes last.

Rich: Excellent. Now, I’m sure you’ve obviously worked with a lot of clients. You’ve mentioned this friends and also associates, helping them develop their own framework. I get that information comes first, but if they’ve got this messy approach, this content that should be shared with the world, but they can’t seem to put it all together. What are some of the first steps you take them through to start to create some organization out of that chaos?

Melanie: So the first thing I think is important is some sort of information dump. And that can come in a lot of different ways just depending on how you like to work. So doing something like using a whiteboard and just putting out all the key points. Or maybe you need Post-it notes so that you can move things around.

Maybe you want to use some digital tools where you can move pieces around. It’s really whatever you’re comfortable with. But the goal is to say, how do I get what’s in my head, whether that’s your process, your values, your differentiators, how do you get that out of your head and into a place where you can start to make sense of it?

And that’s especially important if you’re working with a partner in this process, right? Oftentimes, it’s because it’s in our head. That’s where it just gets all jumbled up and it’s hard to make sense of it. So getting it out in a way that’s shareable with whoever you’re working with, I think is really important to get those outside eyes on it. So info dump is always stage one for me. But yeah, it comes in a lot of different forms. What’s your preferred format for an info dump?

Rich: Me, personally? As you were talking, I was thinking about one of my presentations that I put together a couple years ago where I used yellow sticky notes, and I had actually, they were multicolored, I just say yellow because it’s default for me. But I put them all over the wall and I started moving them around until I had figured out what the categories that I wanted to speak on. So that’s how my approach is.

Melanie: I like the Post-it notes too. I think I like something that you don’t have to feel like you’re committing too much when you’re doing it, because I think if you’re editing yourself too much in that info dump process, “this is my good notebook so I’m only going to write down my very best ideas in the info dumps”, it backfires on you. So I like the Post-its, especially because it feeds well into those next stages where you are trying to say how do these relate to each other? Which are similar or different, or first or last or more or less important?

Rich: Yeah. And I’ve tried many online tools, the mind mapping tools and all these sort of things. And I’ve never, as much as I love online tools, I’ve never found one that works for me. And I think that this is one of those times where, for me, I need the tactile experience of moving stickies around that wall. It’s actually the wall right here had all my stickies on it. To figure out being like, you know what, this doesn’t actually go over here. And even though this was really important, I realized that it doesn’t fit into this framework. Save this for another presentation. And I’ve done that before, too. So some things just get left on the cutting room floor.

You touched on… and the one thing I was going to say, and I usually don’t talk this much during an interview, but I’m so loving this conversation, I just have to share some things with you.

So the other thing is whenever people talk to me about, why do you like to present in person? And my whole thing is, until you have to teach something, you don’t really understand it. It’s this muddle in your head that’s not as clear as you think it is. And then you start saying it out loud and you realize, oh, this is an absolute mess. So putting it into a framework that you can hand off to somebody is so critically important. So I love everything that you’re sharing with us today, Melanie.

Melanie: And I think it’s also important too, because like you’re saying, we can fill in the gaps ourselves in ways that we don’t even realize we’re doing. And then when sometimes, like you’re saying, you go to present that information and realize, oh, this isn’t as obvious as I thought. Or there’s some steps that I’m filling in the blanks that I need to be more explicit about for someone who’s less experienced in this field or less familiar with this process. And I think that’s also the advantage of doing it with an outside person.

Like whether that is a colleague, I don’t know, your life partner, whoever you have that has outside eyes. They can be the ones that say, “Wait a second. You say these two things are similar, but I don’t see how they’re similar. Help me understand that connection.” Or how come you can’t do that thing that you have as number three? Could that be first? Sometimes it’s just really helpful to have someone else interrogating those ideas with you, to really bounce them around and make sense of them outside of your head.

Rich: Absolutely. So you touched on this before, but when developing a framework, you don’t want to have the 47 or the 113 steps or whatever it may be, or too many pillars. So how do you strike the balance between sharing enough to be clear and useful, but not so much that you overwhelm people?

Melanie: Yeah, it is definitely a fine line and it’s hard to have one sort of piece of advice or one line that we can all abide by given how different, how varied all the frameworks are and how many different things we teach to different audiences.

The way you might teach a room of five-year-olds, a room of plumbers, and a room of executives, might be different the way they like to learn, the language they use. It’s hard to say exactly, but my goal is always, I want someone to ask me questions because they want to learn more, instead of because they don’t understand. And I think when you play around with your framework, you can get to that sweet spot where someone says, “Oh yeah, that makes sense. Now tell me how you do that.” Or, “Oh yeah, I think I could use that. How do you work with people?”

You’re getting the, ‘I want more information because I’m curious’ and not, ‘okay what do you mean? What does that mean? How does that work?’ Where the questions come from a place of curiosity instead of a place of confusion. And that’s where, to your point, using it out in the world, sharing it with people is sometimes how you find out if you’ve hit that sweet spot or not.

Rich: Yeah. That’s absolutely brilliant. I love that.

So we’ve talked about the importance of naming and finding something maybe with alliteration or rhyming. And the funny thing about rhyming, I’m sure there’s actually psychological research that shows that things that rhyme are more believable and seem to be more truthful to people, which is crazy.

Melanie: Yeah.

Rich: But, we’re irrational creatures. So talk to me a little bit about that naming process. We obviously don’t want to put a square peg into a round hole, but what are some of the ways that you help your clients find that naming structure that’s going to work for them?

Melanie: So part of the reason why, some people think I’m a stickler, but part of the reason why I stress so much that naming needs to come at the end, is because early on we don’t necessarily know what we’re dealing with. Is this a process? Is it a pyramid? Is it a ladder? Is it a flywheel or a cycle? Understanding how those ideas relate to one another and how people will use it, helps you determine how to name it. So once we make sense of it, it becomes easier to see what our options are.

Generally speaking, I rely on either a name that tells what it is, or a shape that tells what it is. So if we get really lucky, if we have a pyramid or a flywheel of some kind, or something where the shape of it helps us understand the information, then we can be a little more creative and a little less literal with the name.

When you look at the food pyramid, it wouldn’t really matter. Something like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it’s okay to shove your name in there and make it a little bit more about you. Because hierarchy of needs in the shape of a pyramid is pretty easy for people to understand when they see it visually.

If you don’t have that inherent shape, it becomes a little bit more important for the name to do the role of helping people remember. So that’s where something like an acronym or having all the letters be the same or something similar, an A, B, C, D for example, becomes a little more helpful when the information itself won’t visually cue how it sets up.

Then you want the name to sometimes help set it up in a particular order. So yeah, acronyms are one of my favorites. And if that’s the route we’re going, my favorite method also involves either a whiteboard or Post-it notes. And so I’ll basically have, here’s our key ideas. They must go in this order. Let’s get all the synonyms for each of those down and let’s see what we can find. Maybe sometimes it spells a word, or we can get them all to be ‘F’ or all to be ‘S’ or all to be ‘P’, or whatever we need them to be. But a lot of thesaurus and figuring out if those words mean what we think they mean.

Because that’s the other thing that happens sometimes is you’re like, oh yeah, I love using this particular term. And then you read the definition, you’re like, wait a second, that’s actually not the best word for this category of ideas. So it’s a fun word play process. But generally, we’re trying to figure out does the visual explain it or does the name need to explain it and go from there.

Rich: So one thing you mentioned, and I hadn’t thought of is this idea of structures. So as somebody’s sharing their ideas with you and you’re working with them, how do you decide oh, this is a ladder, this is a pyramid, this is a flywheel? Like, do you have a set number of structures and you’re like, I’m going to apply this to this, or is it literally something else happens where you’re like, I think this would be easier for people to understand if we use this shape?

Melanie: It can come in a couple different forms. So it’s part of, again, why that relation and operation phase is really important toward the middle once we have our ideas. When we have the answers to those questions, must they come in a specific order. If there’s a fixed order, that tells us we need something that has progression in a particular direction, right?

So if it has to be order A, B, C, D for these ideas, we either need to go left to we need to go top to bottom, or we need to build bottom to top. We can’t have a circle, or people won’t know where to start, right? So understanding how the ideas relate and helps us sort of eliminate the ones that won’t be a fit for ideas that relate in that way.

And some of that comes on instinct and just doing this work a lot and saying, okay, if there’s a particular order, it needs a clear start point. And that’s typically top, bottom, or left. That’s just what you know, how our minds tend to work. But some of it you do have some options. And so oftentimes we’ll play with several and see, okay, let’s put this in a ladder. Let’s put this in a pyramid. Let’s put this on a list and see, does this work? Does it not work? Where’s the hangup?

Oftentimes, I find that people really like pyramids. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the food pyramid thing. But people often think their ideas are a pyramid. And when we see our ideas in that shape and ask the question, “Is the top really the smallest?” Because that’s what a pyramid indicates that the top thing is the smallest. It’s the least likely, the least frequent. It’s the progression, you’re least likely to reach there. Do they really build on each other in that way, such that people get stuck at one layer? And sometimes that’s not the case.

So you know, that’s where, again, it’s just playing around with those ideas. And sometimes seeing them in all those different shapes helps you see, no, this isn’t quite right.

Rich: I’m sure you’ve seen some frameworks out in the wild that work better than others and some that just fail. Ultimately, what are some of the common mistakes that you see businesses make when they’re trying to create their own framework?

Melanie: The number one mistake far and away is, I can always tell when someone picked a name first and then forced their thing. So if they said I’m going to have the four pillars, and I’m like, two of those pillars are exactly the same, why did it have to be four? Maybe this was meant to be three. Or I can see when they say the six step process, but they’re representing it as a pie chart. And you’re like, there’s no clear start in this.

So again, I think that either the name that clearly doesn’t actually represent the ideas very well, or picking a shape that doesn’t serve the function of those ideas, are probably the two most common. But I think everyone does struggle with finding the right amount of information. Because even if you want to do a pyramid or if a pyramid is correct, are you going to have three layers or are you going to have eight?

Like sometimes it’s hard to know where that threshold is. And oftentimes the only way to know is to use it out in the wild. And sometimes that means you’re using one that isn’t quite serving you well for a little bit, to get that feedback, get the response, and then refine.

Rich: When I’ve used frameworks myself in the past, I’ve used them often for presentations as a way of having either a visual or a thematic approach to a topic. I’ve also used the B.A.R.E Essentials – build, attract, retain, evaluate – through my company to talk about how you should approach building a web presence. What are some of the ways that you feel that we can take this framework, once we’ve really nailed it down, how do we implement it in a really effective way?

Melanie: Yeah. I think the first thing is to start talking about it. You want to get comfortable talking about it. Whether again, that’s just explaining to your friends, “Hey, I came up with this cool thing. Tell me what you think.” Or using it with your intended audience, your customers, your clients, whoever that may be. You’ll get a lot of great feedback and hear great questions right off the bat. So I always recommend doing that before you commit anything. Don’t go ordering a giant poster before you’ve talked it out, because you may find you may get some good feedback.

After that, I think, again, you mentioned this earlier, teaching something is the best way to understand how well you know it. And so again, sharing it with others, whether that’s a talk or a podcast or, I don’t know, just go on LinkedIn live if that’s where your audience is, and just try to share it with other people.

If you first content language is writing and that’s where you’re more comfortable, maybe you write a blog post or you write a longer caption for social media. Just finding a place where you can explain it will often give you clarity on how finished it feels.

But I think there’s almost an endless number of ways you can use these things. I’ve seen people implement it on packaging, on sales collateral. I’ve seen it in emails and blog posts, on social media, courses, books like you. Once you have that structure, you can approach all the communication you do through that lens if it makes sense for you to do that.

Rich: If somebody listening wanted to create their first framework this week, what’s the very first step you would recommend they take?

Melanie: I think the first step will be that info dump. Do your info dump. Again, choose your, whether it’s Post-its or whiteboard or scratch paper, just get that information out and then find a partner to help you sort through it and figure out how it all relates. You really have to make sense of what you’re working, you need to know your ingredients before you figure out what you’re cooking.

And so making sense of that ingredients list is going to be really clarifying and understanding. Getting a thought partner to bounce it around with and fill in any gaps will be really illuminating for you. And that’s where things start to take shape. Or you start to rule out shapes too, as you’re seeing how they relate.

If that’s something that feels a little intimidating, I know we talked about, I do have a worksheet on my website that kind of gives you some key questions you can ask at each of those phases. But there’s also, I think once you start with intention dumping those ideas out and asking questions about how they relate to each other, are these the same, different, more or less important, sequenced in any way, those structures usually start to emerge from the cracks.

Rich: All right. Now, I’m not sure if this is what you just teased up, but I do know that you’ve got some resources like your Iron Cheat Sheet and Framework Inspiration doc. How can people get access to those?

Melanie: Yeah, so on my website, melaniedeziel.com, there’s a whole section in the store that has printable resources. So yeah, we have the iron framework cheat sheet that walks you through questions you can ask during each of those phases, information, relation, operation, and then naming to help you make sense of your ideas.

And if you don’t think visually quite as instinctively or if you want some inspiration to sort through, I also have a huge PDF that has a bunch of sample frameworks. So every kind of shape, with six pieces of information, with ten, with two, to walk you through some different options. Because again, I think sometimes playing around with those and plugging your ideas in is the best way to get a feel for if it makes sense or not. So both of those are available on my website for you to play around with.

Rich: Alright, and Melanie’s last name is spelled D-E-Z-I-E-L. But of course, we’ll have all of those links in the show notes. Melanie, if people want to connect with you online, where can we send them?

Melanie: Your best bet is probably to find me on LinkedIn. That’s where I tend to talk most about frameworks and things of that nature. But there is only one of me spelled that way. So if you look for Melanie Deziel, D-E-Z-I-E-L, you will find me on your network of choice and I’m happy to connect and see all the awesome work that you’re doing.

Rich: Awesome. Melanie, thank you so much. This has been such a fun conversation today.

Melanie: Yeah, thanks for having me.

 

Show Notes:

Melanie Deziel is a creative systems architect who helps teams organize their ideas into clear, repeatable frameworks. Through her books, The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas

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