The Framework Secret That Gets Speakers Paid Big Money

This story appears in the

May 2026

issue of

Entrepreneur.

Subscribe »

I’m a professional speaker who brings in seven figures a year. People often ask me what separates a good speaker from a great one. They think I’ll say that the best speakers have lots of energy, or tell the best stories, or can be the most emotional. All of those are important, sure, but here’s the thing everyone misses:

The best speakers have the best frameworks.

Frameworks! It’s not sexy, and it’s not what people dream of building when they aspire to speak publicly. But it is the cornerstone of memorable teaching — not just in speaking, but in writing books, teaching courses, and any other space in which you’re positioning yourself as an authority. Bottom line: If you want to be paid for your ideas, you must understand frameworks.

So, what’s a framework? It’s a comprehensive concept, broken down into useful and memorable steps.

You’ve seen plenty of them. Ben Nemtin is a sought-after speaker who teaches a framework called “5 Steps to Make the Impossible Possible.” The steps are: write down your dream, talk about your dreams, persist, take moonshots, and give. The speaker Erica Dhawan teaches a framework called Connectional Intelligence on stages, which helps leaders and teams build trust and connection based on five C’s: Contextualization, Community, Combination, Combustion, and Courageous conversation. And I have my own framework, designed to increase emotional processing speeds and change adoption rates, which I call Change Enthusiasm. I even trademarked the phrase. And it consists of three steps: the signal, the opportunity, and the choice.

Why is this important? To start, let’s look at what happens when speakers don’t have a framework: They get on stage and say a lot of stuff. Good stories. Fun jokes. A mishmash of ideas. But it feels like a big soup — and days later, nobody in the audience remembers what the speaker said. Which means nobody is repeating their ideas to others. Which means the speaker was forgotten and won’t get booked again.

When you offer a framework, you spend the entire time on stage (or in a workshop, a book, etc.) teaching one single thing. You break it down into memorable steps, building toward a whole. And you effectively lay claim to an idea, making it your own. I don’t teach people how to navigate change, for example. That’s big and abstract, and lots of other people teach it too. Instead, I teach people Change Enthusiasm — because it’s mine. I own it. People pay for things that are distinctive, proven, and memorable.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Change Enthusiasm Global

So, how can you build your own framework? Here’s my step-by-step process, and how I used it to build mine.

Step 1: Identify the problem you solve.

It’s a truism in business: Nobody just wants to buy something. Instead, they want to solve a problem. That’s the only reason people spend money!

We are motivated to solve problems — whether that’s something broken in our home or in our lives. So when you present your knowledge, you must frame it similarly. Your ideas must solve the problems of those you serve. And the better you are at defining the problem, the more compelling your idea will be to a buyer.

But here’s what most people get wrong: You can’t just state a problem. Most problems sound generic or obvious. Instead, you must get underneath the problem — and identify the larger deficits that the problem creates. Why does someone hate this problem? What’s missing in their lives because of this problem?

Here’s a challenge: Ask yourself, “Why is someone’s life worse because of this problem?” That’s the level of nuance you want to define.

For example: I speak about navigating the difficult emotions that change inspires, in order to deliver desired results faster. But I wouldn’t want to say, “The problem is that change is hard.” That’s too obvious! When I say that, I don’t display any unique knowledge about change. And if a company is paying me top dollar to talk about change, I’d better understand it at a level deeper than anyone else.

So here’s how I’ve come to define my problem: “The problem is increasing levels of emotional resistance, fatigue, and disengagement when leading through constant, complex change today.”

See what I did there? I identified what happens because of the problem — resistance, fatigue, and disengagement. That’s bad for everyone, but it’s especially bad for organizations that need engaged employees delivering breakthrough results in the face of constant change and uncertainty. Organizations are also the ones that hire me to speak. So what I’m really doing is telling them: If you don’t address the problems driven by the emotional unrest of change, you’ll have disengaged, burned-out employees, and your business will suffer. Now that’s a problem worth solving.

Step 2: Dissect your case study.

You’re an expert in something. Now the question is: How do you implement your knowledge, step-by-step, in