When talking about how to create frameworks in your business, we seriously have the best person to talk to about this. Mel Abraham is the number one bestselling author of The Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of the Thoughtpreneur Academy, Influencers Intensive, and Business Breakthrough Academy. He’s globally recognized as a thought leader, business advisor, CPA, and financial expert; sharing stages with a long list of Fortune 500 companies as well as beacons in the personal development industry. We met in a mastermind that we’re in together, and he not only brings an incredible level of expertise, but he’s a real jokester.

Jen Casey (JC): I just love the energy that you bring.

You just find a way to making intimidating topics really fun, light, and easy to implement.

So, thank you so much for being here. I’m just excited to get to chat with you and have my audience learn a little bit more about you and what you do.

Mel Abraham (MA): This is so cool. Thanks.

JC: So, I would love for you to just fill in any gaps on that intro, because you’ve done quite a long list of incredible things.

MA: That’s just a nice way of saying I’m old! It’s been an interesting journey. Like you said, I’m a CPA. It’s certainly not a traditional journey of a CPA, and I never really took a traditional journey as a CPA. I realized really early in my career that I hated the stuff that CPAs did.  

There was no vibrancy, there was no life to it.

It was not right. So, I started to look at what other angles I could take. And so I started to value businesses; buying and selling businesses. That was a positive way that I could take my skills and my talents, and go out there and make a difference. So that’s where I routed my journey. And it’s interesting. One of the things that I did in my career to get moving so fast was..

Honestly, I took on all work that the other people didn’t want to do… and I got known.

I was in one of the large consulting firms years and years ago, back in the 80s. (that is dating me also) If there was a project that didn’t fit in the box, they said, “Give it to Mel, and he’ll figure it out.  He’ll get it done.” But, what that did was open up doors of opportunity that I would’ve never imagined.

So, from that process is how I started to build my very first expert business back in the day, before there was internet.

How would I go into a situation where no one knows me, no one wants me, nobody has a clue what my name is…and yet I need to build the business?

I was trying to transition from this concept of swapping hours for dollars. The accountant community operates on, “What are your billable hours?  What’s your hourly rate?” I wanted to get to the point of being able to say, “I don’t care what my hourly rate is. That business model should be burned at the stake.”

The time sheet was invented in 1919.  I think we’ve come a long way since 1919.

So I said, “Here’s my fee.  Pay my fee, and we’ll look at the outcome.”

Now, that was obviously maverick as I was going in. But, that was one of the things that I did. The challenge that I had was that it was an uphill trajectory. In the 90s, I had partners, and those partners had a more traditional view of a CPA firm. I was doing this thing, and they said I didn’t fit in with this new direction I was going in.  So, we agreed that I should go my own way.

That was fine, except that at that time, I had just purchased a house and was $300K+ in debt.
I had no clients and no client backlog.
I had very little reputation or notoriety.

So, I struggled. And at the same time that happened, I became a single full time dad. So, I raised my son since he was 5 and 6 years old. He’s now 28.
(I told him that he’s going to take care of me soon. He started his business at age 16.)
So, I had to figure it out really quickly. I was being shoved out of the partnership.

I said, “How do I build an expert business?”
Not an extra business, that would be swapping out time for dollars.
The expert business that commands premium; that sets me apart.

The same things that I did back then are the same things that we do today to get that to happen again. The only difference is that we’ve got technology and we’ve got tools. We can make cost effective, more efficient, and easier to get a broader reach than we did back in then.

JC: So, what was your first expert business that you would step into while you were still working as a CPA?

MA: There’s two focuses to it. One: value in the businesses; valuation and consulting. The other side of it was litigation. So, I was hired as an expert witness in financial matters. Like, the kind of guy that they would hire to testify and pull a Bernie Madoff.  

Testifying leads into a lot of other frameworks. When you’re testifying, it’s typically to a jury – which, most of they time, they are not financial experts. Most of the attorneys in those cases didn’t want financial experts on the jury, because the events skewed the jurors. So, they may have degrees in marketing or sciences or something, but they don’t understand the financial.

One of the challenges is a struggle that technical experts deal with as well: creative expertise.

Our audience is broken up into four parts; how do you communicate to them?  
That was the challenge that I have. I’ve got 30 people on a jury. I’ve got to come across in my opinion as believable, authentic, and trustworthy. They’ve got to understand it, and they’ve got to remember it when they go into the deliberations.

JC: Wow. So, is that where your passion for frameworks began? Or, were you already thinking in that way prior?

MA: That is where my passion for influence and communication began.

One of the key vehicles that I found was what I call “diagrammatic framework,” not narrative frameworks. A narrative framework is basically bullet points: do this, do this, do this, do this. A diagrammatic framework is a diagram. It’s a picture, a square, a circle, a triangle that is put together in a way that communicates a message. It instills emotion and creates some impact psychologically.

I was in the process of searching on how to be a more effective communicator.
I was speaking and I was writing, but I was also testifying and consulting. So this question of “How do I become a much more effective communicator?”… all of us need to do.
I think that the greatest skill we can nurture in society today is communication.
We don’t give it the importance.  I mean, I’m a left-brain thinker. I’m an accountant. I think I got a “C” in my business communication classes because I didn’t take them seriously.  But think about this! Everything that we have going in the world today – whether it’s unrest, problems, or the relationships between them – it can be solved by communication. If we have the ability to have a meaningful, authentic, trusting conversation and we can communicate effectively (whether it’s in marketing or anywhere else); that to me is a lot of the most core skills that we can nurture and help people grow.

JC: Oh I totally agree. And especially when you’re growing an expert business, being able to clearly communicate your message… if you can’t do that, you don’t have a business!

MA: You really don’t! Because, if we think about the term “thought leader” or “expert,” all that means is that we are in a leadership position. That means that we’re going to show people a new way.
What we are ultimately looking for is new results. But, if we backtrack, those new results can’t come unless we get behavior change. We can’t get behavior change until we get thought change. So, thought leaders show people to a new way of thinking.
This also means that we may have to also push up against their beliefs. So, for them to think differently, they may have to behave differently. But, if we are successful in the thinking and the beliefs, they will behave differently and ultimately get different results.

JC: So you definitely see a clear distinction between a good thought leader versus an expert?

MA: Yes, a very clear distinction. Further dating myself, I remember when the Encyclopedia salesperson came to our door and sold us the Encyclopedia Britannica. We got these books, and now all of a sudden, we had all of this information.  We thought, “Wow, we’re really in good shape now.”

That was back in a time where the keeper of the information was seen as value.

But, in the Google era, the information is ubiquitous. It is all over the place.
So, the information doesn’t carry value. It’s become a commodity.

What carries value is two things: the expert’s ability to interpret the information, and to create transformation from that information.

So, an expert knows stuff, but the thought leader is known for the stuff that they know.  

And, that’s a huge distinction.

JC:  I love this. This is so good.  I think there are so many people that don’t realize how much of a commodity information is.  There’s so much content around us. The world does not need more content.
So, for somebody who is looking to step forward and create programs (for example, I work with a lot of women in health and wellness), the market is incredibly saturated. So they might be thinking, “How do I make money then if my information is not valuable?  What can I package and sell?”

MA: Well, let me let them off the hook. I probably shouldn’t say it’s not valuable. It’s valued more like a commodity than it is a luxury or a premium offering. So, you and I can be in the same market. You could be teaching people how to build an Instagram following, and I could be teaching someone how to build an Instagram following.
The results of our teachings are the same. Where the distinction and the value lies is in the process of getting there, and the distinction of how we deliver it.

So, you might be in the health and wellness space, and really the outcome between two or three people could be the same.

The question is, how do you get there in a distinct way that sets you apart?  
This is the other element for thought leaders. We get caught up in the marketing piece. “Let me just go market and set up Facebook ads.” Marketing is on an awareness scale, or to create awareness. If we’re not careful, your marketing can be putting your business in the poorhouse.

Hear me out: how many of our colleagues are following the marketing tactics and they’re doing it to the T… but they don’t get the results coming out of it?

JC: All the time.

MA: All the time. And so the challenge is not the market. The challenge is what they’ve done before the marketing. What things have they done that we don’t necessarily see, or it’s not so apparent? This is where I said there’s two things that we need to master if we want to be in a space. One is the notoriety, which I mentioned earlier and the second is the knowledge. The thing is that the notoriety is the glamorous stuff; or wanting to become known. So, a lot of people will focus on getting known first. But, we need to really focus in on what we’re known for.

For us, when we capture what our knowledge is; our wisdom, our unique perspective, and distinct signature, frames, proprietary processes, the delivery all of those things.  Then, we take it out in the marketplace.

What ends up happening is: instead of marketing for the sake of sales, we market for the sake of the positioning.

That extra business that we talked about, that I started to build years and years ago? I have not marketed in that business for over a decade. If you go to my website, there’s nothing about it. But, every single year we will do in the multiple six figures without marketing. And the reason for it is that I’ve positioned myself in a way in that when the topic comes up in the industry and a search is done, my name comes up.  So, our focus should be positioning.

We should be positioning obsessed, not marketing obsessed.
Everything we do should be to further our positioning in the space of real time.

JC: This is so good, and not something that a lot of people are talking about. Everyone is selling marketing, but they’re not talking about this other layer. So people might be reading this with a big question in mind, “That sounds amazing. How do I do that?”

MA: It is a big question.  So first, one thing that all of us need to think about is that each and every one of us has unique DNA. We are a unique genius that generates brilliance from our experience or expertise or journey.

That becomes our fingerprint. For instance, I got taken in a Ponzi scheme. It wiped out one third of my net worth. Everything that we owned in 2005. Now, I’m the guy that they would hire to put these guys away. In fact, I helped put them in jail for nine years.  But, I still lost one third of everything I had owned. I was embarrassed to go out and speak about it. I was embarrassed to let people know, because that shouldn’t happen to me.

But, there’s a richness to the lessons and the process of recovery and the process of rebuilding.

I gave myself all these doggone excuses that held me back until I had a friend kick me on the behind.

He said, “Here’s the deal. That manuscript has been sitting on your shelf. I’m not putting you on my stage anymore. I’m not promoting you. I’m not helping you. I’m not doing a damn thing for you until you put that book out.”

JC: Wow. I was just going to ask what happened!

MA: That’s what happened!  It was an external force. So, I had to put it out. And here’s the beauty behind it and the lesson. We put the campaign together, we did the promotion…and we moved 16,000 books in just under three weeks.

I was speaking at an event, and a young lady comes up to me with my book in tears.  The book is dog-eared, it’s marked up.  She says, “I read it three times and I feel like you wrote it to me.”

I think that we are caught up in our own shit.
That book impacted 16,000 souls, but the important one is someone like her.  Morgan, who came up to me in tears and said, “My life is different because I heard it.”

So what came out of that for me was this: maybe everything’s been done before, but they haven’t heard it from your perspective.  It’s not about capturing market share. It’s about finding that segment of the market that you could share with that belongs to you.

We figure out what that distinction and uniqueness is, and we put it out there and we own it. Then, we take that knowledge and say, “OK, how do I package it in a distinct way?” It isn’t just information, but transformation that allows them to create content that has depth and breadth to it and allows them to stand out.

Too often, I see in the space (and this is may slam some people…) they just do a little booklet and throw it up on Kindle for 99 cents. Then they screenshot for the 30 seconds that it’s in the number one spot.  

I’m offended by it because it’s not true. “The Entrepreneur Solution” was number one on Barnes and Noble. It was a USA Today bestseller. It was through the bookstores.  It wasn’t gaining an Amazon system to get a number one bestselling book.

If we’re truly going to be a leader, we need to think deeply about the things that we are delivering.
Do the heavy lifting. You look at the Usain Bolt, who runs the 100 meter dash in the Olympics. In order to get ready for that one race, he runs 200s, miles, lifts weights, stretches, and lunges.
He does all these things that build him up for that one moment.  And, as a thought leader, I think we need to think like him when it comes to our content.  

We do the work to capture thinking in a way that when we get called into action, we can deliver it in any way. Whether it’s speaking, whether it’s writing, whether it’s an interview. You and I did not prepare for this interview. But, my content has been captured in a way that I know which way to go.

I was speaking at a conference two years ago, 1400 people. We were supposed to only do Q&A.  We were going to go out there for 30 minutes, do a Q&A, and then I was going to get offstage. 20 minutes before I got on stage, the promoter comes to me says, “Hey, I’ve got to give you an hour.  Just go teach something.”

Now, I’m not saying that I didn’t freak out a little bit. But, the good news is that when you have a system to capture your thinking in a way that you can deliver it, it’s alright.  

I have these communication pathway templates that I use.  It’s my cataloguing of my thinking.
So I thought of 3 things in those templates and I said, alright, let’s go. An hour later, we’re done teaching.

I think when we do that, we become the thought leaders were meant to be, and not the thought repeaters that most people are.

JC: Ohh that’s a Tweetable moment!  That’s really good to know, and I really appreciate that. I come from a theater background, so in in the world of musical theater, there’s a heavy emphasis on honing a craft; especially in the professional acting training that I’ve done.

It was not about the short term wins.

It’s like, you spend 90% of your time (maybe more than that in the beginning) going to class, doing the work, so that when you walk in to that audition and have 16 bars to sing, you know how to deliver. You’re not nervous. But, a lot of people are not seeing the 90% of behind the scenes. Obviously, as you start to really hone your craft and develop your expertise, then it starts to change. Exactly what you said: you knew what to talk about. You had that catalog ready to go. So, when you were on that big stage with thousands of people waiting, you didn’t blink. And I think what I’ve seen in recent years is a missing link; people repeating things, as opposed to really developing a mastery level in their area.

MA: Huge. It really is huge. And here’s the good news behind that:

Those who are willing to do the work are the ones that are going to stand out.  

JC: 100%. And as more people are getting interested in this online marketing thing, it’s not that there’s more competition. You just have a greater push. I think it’s going to help everyone really elevate, because they’re going to have to. So, the people who are willing to do the work are going to succeed no matter what.

MA: Back when Facebook changed the algorithm, it was like the sky was falling. And the thing is, we are founding our success and our future on the tactical platforms or the manipulative marketing; hacking the algorithm. The reality is that, if I focus on one thing, and I think this goes for whether we’re online or in bricks and mortar businesses…

If our sole focus of our products and services is to improve the human condition, the profits become the byproducts, not the sole focus.

JC: So good.  Service over selling, right?

MA: It really is. Because then, we attract the right people for the right reasons. Then, they speak about it because their lives are impacted.

JC: Amazing. OK, moving through this. Let’s talk a little bit more about the tactical things that new entrepreneurs might need to do. They’re an expert or they’re hoping to become an expert and hoping to become a thought leader in their area. One of the things that you teach is helping people develop frameworks. Would you be interested in sharing a little bit of what that looks like?

MA: Yes, and I’m going to do it WITH a framework. Because I think that this will help to get context. So I said earlier that we need to go from information to transformation. There’s a five step process to go from information to transformation. So, when we’re creating content, we need to be able to use this as a checklist. There’s a process to each of the five steps, but if we still just understand what the steps are, it’ll go a long way from just raising the awareness of if you’re doing them.

The first step is that information that you want to provide has to be essential.
In other words, it has to land in their lap or in their life in a way that solves a problem that they want solved. A lot of experts will see a problem to solve… but do they want it solved? Because, if it’s a problem in your eyes but not their eyes, they’re not buying.

JC: Yeah.

MA: So, the question, is the information solving the problem they want solved?  Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t give it to them at some point. But, it’s like walking up to someone on the street and saying, “You know… you’ve got a disease.”  They’re not going to listen! So, is the information you’re going to put out there going to solve something they want solved.

The second step is to consider – is it expansive?
In other words, are you increasing the body of knowledge or the perspective in the world, or are you just repeating? I’m not saying not to build on those that came before. Everything that I do is built on those that came before, and I give credit where credit is due. But, am I expanding on the thought, or am I just repeating?

The third step (which is where a lot of folks will fall off in this space, because they’re stuck in conceptual) – is this actionable?

JC: Okay, this is huge. This is huge.

MA: What I’ll tell my people that I work with is to “land the plane.” They’ve got to see it go from point A to Point B. And the way they do that is to make sure that you have a proprietary process that gets them from Point A to Point B.  And why is that important? It’s important because, when I tell you that I have a process that can capture your thinking in a way that puts you out there distinctly and uniquely, it provides you certainty.

When our customers and our clients are coming to us in the expert and thought leader space, they’re saying, “I’m broken.  I want to be healed. I’m not happy. I want you to solve the problem. I need help.”
They need to trust you. They need to trust that process. And so, we need to build that actual piece. Otherwise, they don’t have the certainty and they can’t see themselves through it.

JC: You just put this so clearly. So many of my clients are getting engagement from people who are inspired by them, but those people are not buying.  They don’t understand. And this is why: because they’re not clear about the problem that they solve. and they don’t understand how you’re going to get them to point B.

MA: Exactly. Our customers need to pass three lines:  I need it, I need it now, and then they have to say “I can do it.”  And maybe they say “I need it” and “I need it now,” but if we can’t get it through the “I can do it,” then they’re not going to step into it.

The fourth step is that we need to refine the content. This is where frameworks come in. In other words, we can talk all about the science of health and wellness, but if it’s too complex, we’re going to lose.
I remember one of my first times speaking, I started doing math for the audience. It was a disaster.

The idea behind the framework is that it allows you to communicate complexity on the other side of simplicity.

I used to do this with the jury.  An expert in financial aid would approach the jury and put their numbers up, do the math, and say, “Here’s how I got my result.”  I would walk up to the jury and say, “Is it OK if I draw a picture?”

When they go into the deliberation room, do they remember a bunch of numbers or a picture?
So, we break it down to simplicity. Now, I’ll give you the fifth one, and then I’ll go back to what it takes to build a framework.

The fifth one is distinction. I’ve got to deliver it with style and distinction in a unique way. The problem is that people try to start with distinction first. So you’ll see people with unique hair, dressed differently.  

Yes, it is distinct… but is it valuable?
So, we don’t start with distinction.  We END with distinction.

Ok, so now, what are frameworks?

In order to build a framework, I base it on what I call, “The Framework Formula.”
There’s six types of frameworks we can build, but every single one of them will have these four elements to it if it’s done right.
The first: every framework will have a formation.
Shapes.  Squares, triangles, and circles meshed together in a way to demonstrate a message. So, for instance, if I think about a circle, typically that creates a psychological feeling of inclusiveness. If I take those circles and I put them in concentric circles of focus; or, if I take a triangle and flip it on its edge, it’s expansion.

So, there’s a psychology behind all the shapes that we use and how we use them in the process.

What we need to do when we start to think about frameworks is consider, what’s the psychology? What’s the element of the shapes that will be congruent and consistent with the message I’m trying to convey?

So, if the first thing is about formation, the second will be the information. In other words, there’s going to be content to it. So, the content is what they need to know.

This is where simplicity comes in.
I can chunk things down.
Like, earlier today I said there’s two things we need to master: the notoriety and the knowledge.
What do you know, and how do you know?
Everyone in the audience goes, that seems easy enough…

JC: I can do that!

MA: Yeah! And that’s what I need for them to do; I need them to cross the “I can do that!” bridge. In order to figure out the knowledge, we go into a thinking hierarchy (which was the five steps). So, I’m layering it and slowly digging deeper. But, I need to spoonfeed the info, not because they can’t get it, but because it’s just too much information for them to process.

So, what are the three to five things that ought to be in this phrase; information or the content that they absolutely need to know now in order to move them to the next step?
Think about college courses. We start at 101, then we go to 201, then 301. one to one go to two one go to three. We don’t start at the 301 level. The tendency for someone who has a lot of experience (which I did this at my very first event) is to dump 20 years of entrepreneurship on a small audience. It was the most valuable content they could have ever got, but it was totally useless because it was too much.

JC: That right there is such a powerful thing. People think they need more, more, more, more. “I need to add another module, another video… I’m not giving enough.”
But, it’s only valuable if they can implement it and they can use it.

MA: I use a metaphor for every time I start a live event.  I say, “So, how many of you ever been to Costco hungry with no shopping list? What do you do? You get a giant cart and you fill it with all kinds of stuff. So you walk out, pay thousands of dollars…and what happens to that stuff? It goes to waste two weeks later.” Costco’s shelves are on your mind, but how about I gave you the shopping list of the eight things you need to know on Monday first, and then allow you to get access to the Costco shelves on the online program when you need it?

There’s a difference between “just in case learning” and “just in time” learning.
What do you need to know now to move you forward?

That’s the content piece. The third piece is, What’s the emotion I’m trying to convey?
Every framework has an emotion attached. It’s what I want to convey. Frustration, aspiration, safety, certainty.
So, I’ve got the formation, I’ve got information, I’ve got the emotion.
The last piece, which is where the magic happens, is called orchestration.
How do we unpack it? If I just slap a slide up on the screen and put the entire framework on it, we don’t know where our people are looking, or what they’re thinking, or what they’re focusing on. Then we lose them. So typically, when I speak, it’s with an iPad or it’s with a flipchart. With an oversized flipchart, I’m doodling a drawing.  In doing that, I’m co-creating.

I’m doing a dance with the audience in a way that we are co-creating the framework.

And the beauty of this in particular is that it’s a visual intake. In your visual intake is an emotional intake. When you see a puppy, when you see a baby, there’s an emotional response to that.

So, with a visual orchestration, you have the ability to create emotions that connects to the audience. And then, the fact that there’s structure to it, connects to the logical side.

It’s the one vehicle that when we do it properly, it connects the right brain and the left brain; the heart and the mind.

We can use frameworks to instill a reason “why.” We can use it to provide them a process of “how.” We can create urgency or immediacy.

The key behind this is to communicate insights and get behavior changes. So, what’s the vehicle that’s going to allow me to do that?

Whether I’m doing my marketing, my videos, my training.

How do I move them to get the results that they’re looking for; to use the tools and the skills necessary to get their results in the easiest way possible.

JC: I’m curious.. Either in others or in your own experience, what has been one of the coolest transformations that you’ve seen from someone implementing frameworks in their business?

MA: One of the coolest things that I saw was a young lady, Karalee Smith. She was in one of my very first trainings on this. I wasn’t going to teach this; it was actually my son that said, “Dad, you’ve gotta teach this whole framework and communication the stuff that you do.” Now, I was teaching just entrepreneurship. I didn’t think people wanted to know about frameworks.  But, I said alright, and I added it onto a Mastermind weekend that I did. Karalee was at that training, and she was a week away from flying to speak to a group of parents. A couple hundred people in the ADHD space. But she told me she was concerned about it. She’s a fast communicator, but had an interpreter at the event. So, she needed to speak for a little bit and then stop so the interpreters can catch up, then try and start again.  She was afraid that she would lose her pace or lose her train of thought. I said, “Great.  Let’s create a framework.”  All you’re going to do is draw a picture with that audience and you can stop at a stopping point on that picture, and then you’ll just pick up where you stopped with the picture. And she KILLED it. They asked her back to that event and now she’s doing some amazing stuff today. She’s running her own retreats and it’s just been an amazing journey.
But that’s the beauty.

Even with our conversation today, I’m seeing a framework in my head.

I know the stories, the analogies, the metaphors.  I can work in what I call the four pathways of communication: the visionary, the storyteller, the architect, and the dialogue. It gives me that freedom to be able to talk for days.

JC: Talk for days!  No, but I love this stuff. Personally, I’m very visual. I enjoy frameworks. Early in my business, I naturally started creating frameworks because things didn’t make sense to me. I was not a good student growing up just on my own, so to understand something, I really needed to make a picture and outline it and chunk it down for myself. I think with everything you’re teaching, anybody can benefit from this.

MA: I think so too, and no one is really teaching it this way or they’re not teaching it at all.  But, think about this: Stephen Covey created an almost billion dollar company on a framework. On four boxes. Urgent versus Important. He made a career out of it. So, when you become inseparable from that framework, it becomes your calling card. It becomes the distinction. Now, all of a sudden, they can’t take it away from you.
The Entrepreneur Solution was built on the same four boxes, just redone a different way based on that.

The framework can be the heart of everything you teach.
It allows you to go in layers and depth in different directions as much as you want. So, careers are built on frameworks.

JC: Yup. And just to bridge this gap for anyone who is an entrepreneur, this is what’s going to make your life easier.  Frameworks are so valuable and so important for your business.

MA: Hugely, especially in the expert space. We focus on the marketing and we focus on the technology. Marketing is great, technology is great. But, if we can’t communicate in an effective way to get results, then we’re going to be short lived.

JC: A freakin’ men.  Well, this was absolutely amazing.  I feel like I just have a whole elevated way of looking at this now myself. I really, REALLY appreciate you being here and sharing your incredible breadth of knowledge. So, where can people go and hang out with you and learn more about what you do?

MA:  My main website is MelAbraham.com. I have a closed Facebook group, “Influencers Dojo,” which is where we talk about some of these things. Then, ThoughtpreneurAcademy.com is where I can teach the whole process what I call thoughtpreneurship.

JC: Amazing. Well, do you have any last words of wisdom or thoughts that you want to leave everybody with?

MA: Yeah.  This is kind of the theme of what I’ve been talking about recently. We live in a world that is digitally dysfunctional. We’re digitally disconnected, even though we called social media. We allow the socialist system – commonly called trolls – to impact us. We are afraid of what people are going to say. I will being totally transparent and I will say I’m affected by it. I’ve had people call me Satan because I’m trying to impact people’s thinking.The intent is to help them, but people will claim I’m trying to brainwash. Most of the time, I’ll leave it alone unless they’re offensive or profanity; there’s no room for that and it’s not my value system. Otherwise, I’m okay with people having their own opinions. But, it’s really easy for people that are on a keyboard to take stabs at you and for you to put stock in that.

I think that, as leaders, we’re role models.
As leaders, we may go ahead of the pack.
As leaders, we may take some arrows in the back.

When we’re attached to that higher good or the higher reason that we’re here, that calling that that we’re here to do, the people that we want to serve…. that will make it OK. It won’t take the pain away and that hurts.
People who don’t know us question us, but if they don’t know us and they judge us, why are we giving so much stock to hold us back?

The other thing is to realize that Entrepreneur Solution served 16K people and it’s still going strong, but it’s not the 16K. They all matter. But, the realization is that one gal that came up. We do this for that one person that is on the edge and feels desperate. They don’t feel like they have a chance. And your message with your perspective just might be the combination to get them off the ledge.

Whether you know or not, we owe it to the world to get that message out there sooner than later.

JC: That’s such a beautiful way to really remind everyone that, as you are stepping forward as a thought leader, there may be some people who don’t understand what you’re doing. But, as long as you know that you are showing up from a place of truth and service, there’s going to be those people that you massively impact.

MA: Yes. So true. It’s why I love the space that I’m playing in.