Free your Framework SuperPowers, with Susanna Reay

Welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Susanna Rea. Your framework must be able to work on its own. It doesn't rely on you as the business owner. It works beyond. If everything you do is just a performance and when you leave the room, people forget about you, that isn't a framework that's going to fuel your business. Whereas if you build in the components that people understand the journey, they can see what they need to do and where they need to go, that becomes true transfer integrity. And that's when you can start looking at the courses, the memberships, licencing, franchising, and it just moves completely beyond you. Hi there and welcome back to Building Your Leader Brand. My name's Bob Gentle, and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing and monetizing their expertise and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. Before you go anywhere, take a moment and subscribe or follow. If you're on Apple Podcasts, it's follow. If you're on Spotify, it's subscribe. That way you won't miss a single thing and my numbers will continue to climb, which is honestly the best thing that can happen in the universe. It's good for everyone. Similarly, if you enjoy shows like this, you will love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. 100% 100% free as a gift from me. So everybody who knows me knows that I have a fetish for a framework. Frameworks foster freedom. You do your thinking once, you codify it, you never forget it, and other people can enjoy it and they can champion it. There's so many reasons why frameworks are awesome. And to help me play in the framework paddling pool today is the crown princess of the framework, the very fancy Susanna Ray. Susanna, welcome to the show. Ah, what an amazing introduction. Thank you, Bob. Lovely to be here. Before I hit record, I was telling Susanna, I have no idea how I'm going to introduce you. I've written nothing down. Normally, I would make a mess of that. Today it worked. For the listener who's meeting you for the very first time, I know you very well, but what do people need to know about Susanna? Oh, what do people need to know about me? Well, yes, I am passionate about frameworks, specifically visual frameworks. And this has come from living and working around the world globally, across cultures with many different people, and equally attending probably far too many conferences, listening to far too many other speakers and experts, and seeing the moment when things land is when we see it visually, that it puts that imprint in people's head. And my background started with— well, I've always been a creative. I've always drawn. Back in my school days, if I look back to my history books trying to understand all those complex dates and everything, I was drawing a framework to make, like, the Battle of Hastings make sense to me. And it took quite a long time and quite a circular voyage as well when I was working in design. I've been working in marketing and business coaching. But to come around into this space and realise that framework thinking, which is my trademark term, is the centre of everything that happens. But that has come from this lifetime of learning, watching, exploring, developing with fellow business owners. And that sort of created my passion. And when people go, ah, so yeah, you're a designer. I went to art school, I went to business school. I've like covered so many things. I think many business owners do. Many of us have come from really varied backgrounds and a framework helps you pull it all together into one. So, that's where my passion is and happy to explore where you wish to go with that, Bob. Well, I think there are probably people listening who know exactly what you mean by a visual framework. And then, there will be other people who don't quite understand what you mean. I would love to jump in and start waxing lyrical about the impact visual frameworks have had on my business, but I think it makes more sense if you maybe illustrate the effect that a visual framework can have on, on a business, really. Yeah, so just to clarify, actually, one of those points up front is if people are listening and going, "Yeah, if someone's listening, but what do you mean by framework?" is, for me, at its simplest, it's about connecting ideas together. It's not about creating a rigid wireframe. And that's one of the biggest concerns people fear because they think, "Oh, it's got to be, you know, like those old process flows where you had your square boxes and triangular boxes and it must go down this route." So for me, the effect of connecting your ideas into your business and showing it visually is that your audience understands what you do, what you cover at a glance. And the impact this has, particularly if you're then wanting to go onto stages, write books, create courses or memberships, is it gives you really important boundaries as well as to where to stay for what you cover. And it's a bit like a great tourist map that it shows you exactly where you're going, where you want to go, and you'll get there fast because you're not being distracted by the things around. So, the impact on the business is massive for the business owner because it saves them, it keeps them on track and on target because many of us love going down those like procrastinating side quests. But it keeps us centred in our work. But most importantly, it keeps your audience understanding what you do, who it's for, and therefore your message is so much clearer because everything you do out of your framework, whether that is your marketing, your sales, your offers, everything comes from that as the foundational piece. Some people come across this just like, by chance, and they're the lucky ones. Most of us need to do the excavation work to uncover it. And I say excavation because we don't invent this for our business. It's based on your real expertise and your real experience that you're already doing with your clients. The listener will have heard me mention the Personal Brand Business Roadmap at the beginning, and This is what I would call my flagship framework, and I have a funny storey to tell you about it. So the, the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, it has 5 stages. The first stage is the foundations, and on that stage is you need to codify some kind of framework. Now, I'm not going to go into the, the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, but I need to become accustomed to calling it the Leader Brand. Business Framework. But whenever I've been on a call with somebody, I've always led with that because it's a great way of illustrating the whole. And I'm not embarrassed to say, as a sales tool, it's incredibly effective because consistently— and so when I'm on a sales call, I make a point of not really qualifying people too much because I like doing them. I like giving people value in these, and I happily spend a lot of time with anybody. But I was on a call with the ideal client about a month ago, and I've been finding increasingly over the last 6 months, I've been a little bit embarrassed about it because it just looks a little bit Fisher-Price. I look at the design and think, oh my goodness, it doesn't really fit the senior leader or or people higher up the value ladder. And so I was on a call with this guy and I didn't pull it out, and I started having a conversation about features and benefits, and he couldn't have been more ideal, but I didn't see the light going in his eye at any point. And then at the end of the call, oh, could you send me a proposal? And then 4 days later, I got an email saying, I don't think you're a good fit. And I thought, what? But you're wrong. You're completely wrong. And it was my fault. What I've taken away from that— I spent a lot of soul-searching afterwards, and now it's all redesigned and beautiful. But I was speaking to his head, and the visual side of the framework speaks to a completely different part of the human being. It's the imaginative, creative part that needs to visualise what this journey looks like. It's the tourist map, like you described. And I bit the bullet and redesigned it. But what I take away from that is, if you want enlistment from people at a fundamental level, if you want people to really buy into what you have as a vision, appealing to their head is the wrong place. You really need to appeal to the whole person. And I think this is why frameworks are so important. There's a whole load more reasons that we will talk about, but They just talk to a different part of the brain, which most people neglect, which is a huge opportunity. Yeah, there is so much research in neuroscience behind the impact of visuals on our brains because it does go straight down to the heart. And it's not only about that head and heart connection. And I love when you say, well, it was a bit cartoonish, but I'm like, Everyone's human. Just because they're a CEO or a leader, it doesn't mean they don't appreciate a cartoon feel as well. I think sometimes, and this is why the tagline actually of my book, Framework Thinking, is sketch, scale, be sort, because it's the sketching element of showing that you're working with those base ideas. And when the neuroscience backs up that when we see something, we remember it for longer, it's retained. It has greater impact. And I mean, you will have been at conferences as well where you see the speaker on stage and everyone's kind of trained in their head that when the speaker's talking through their framework in the same way as when you're on a sales call, when you get to the completion moment, you've closed the loop for them as well because you open the journey at the start, you close it at the end. And then at conferences, out comes the phone cameras. Click, and you've just placed, as a speaker, your business card directly in their pocket because they now know exactly what you stand for. As you said, the journey they go on and your LeaderBrand roadmap is very much— they can see exactly what that is and where they're going. But there is an element that I always encourage everyone to keep your framework really simple. Don't overcomplex it, don't make it too refined because people like to see. There's also space to push some boundaries. And like any template, I think they're there to be broken. So you have your framework that gives you the overview, but I don't see it as a rigid box. Normally it's more like— the analogy I love to use is an umbrella. That with an umbrella you've got the central shaft, the spine, which is the core of your understanding and your premise, and then you've got the spokes, which is brought together by a fabric that holds it in a certain structure. And this is like your framework, but then you might use it in different circumstances. So you might use it in the rain to protect you from the water, or you might take an umbrella to the beach and protect it from the sun and angle it in a certain way. So within your framework, it's really important to have these different elements that depend on who you're speaking to. You might shine a light on a different element dependent on your audience at the time, but it means as a business owner, you are that full umbrella, you're covering it all, and that helps you stay contained, still in your boundaries, but have different aspects so you can lean into different aspects of you at different times. So it's maybe useful to illustrate for the listener how a framework can position you with a competitive advantage. And I remember, and I'm going to invite you to maybe share some storeys in a minute, but I'll tell you one that again I'm possibly a little embarrassed about. I was at a big networking event, probably 100 people, and the presenter that day was an accountant, and they presented essentially accountancy but through a framework. And I thought, this is really good. Now, the problem with accountants, and if there's an accountant listening, I'm sorry, accountants are really good at looking backwards. And this drove me bananas. When my business was perhaps— why would I put this— maybe not thriving as it was. And it drove me nuts that on business, on paper, my business seemed to be doing well. And I would go into the accountant and they would say, oh, you had a good year, you made a good profit. And I'm thinking, where? Where is this profit? Because I haven't been paid. Accountants are great at looking in the rearview mirror, but this accountant was presenting their business through the lens of a framework so that I could see, I understand how this accountant is going to work differently with me. It wasn't any different, but I bought into the framework. Now, if the service had paralleled that, it would have been extraordinary, but they did a great sales job. There's a question of the business needs to live up to the framework and the framework needs to be a true representation and not a marketing tool. But I'd love to hear from you about how frameworks have provided that point of difference and perhaps also become the engine in a business that wasn't there before. Yeah, and I think what you're shining a light on there is the fact that some people see frameworks as a bit of a buzzword, particularly if they've worked with Speaker coaches, sorry, apologies if you're one of these who just says, "Oh, you need an acronym that goes with your industry to put it out there." So if someone's in sales, they might go, "Oh, I'm going to have my sales framework," and then they try and force in something to begin with S-A-L-E-S, and then you're like, "Ah, there's two S's in there. Does that work? Does it now need to become sale?" And they're trying to invent and create. I would like every listener instead is for a framework to become the engine of your business. It does need to be based on evidence, the impact evidence you have with clients already. I'm a huge fan of if an acronym works, fine, but that is like the icing on the cake. At the end of the day when we've uncovered everything. And there's 4 elements to framework thinking that really make the framework become that engine for your business. The first is impact detection. You need to know what's already happening because your framework becomes the fuel for your business when you're amplifying what you're already doing well with your clients. So when you can highlight and see those patterns in your business, then that is really important. So that's impact detection. The second, which I've touched on already slightly, is boundary setting, and that is understanding where you want to stay focused and who your side strategic partners are. Most of us in business will have a core function And then there will be people we want to hand things across to or over to. So again, if you're keeping your fuel centred on where you've got the most power, it becomes very powerful to your business. The third is visual recognition. And as you've just mentioned, you recently upgraded the visuals as you've been developing Leaderbrand and who you're speaking to. Because it needs to align to both your brand and your audience. And when people see your framework, they want to know instinctively that belongs to that person. It doesn't belong to anyone else. So, we do weave the branding in. But most importantly, and in fact, the Framework Thinking 4 elements, I'm going to share this. I could hold it up. And in fact, I will for those who might be on camera. Because at the centre, framework thinking is based in a large triangle, equilateral triangle of 4 smaller triangles. And in the centre, the central triangle is transfer integrity. And it sits at the centre of framework thinking because ultimately, to really fuel your business, your framework must be able to work on its own. It doesn't rely on you as the business owner. It works beyond. If everything you do is just a performance and when you leave the room, people forget about you, that isn't a framework that's gonna fuel your business. Whereas if you build in the components that people understand the journey, they can see what they need to do and where they need to go, that becomes true transfer integrity. And that's when you can start looking at the courses, the memberships, licencing, franchising, and it just moves completely beyond you. That makes perfect sense. I think the thing that I recognise in a great framework, and you touched on this, is it is inherently— there is an inherent obvious truth to it. There's a completeness to it. And I think what you described as the boundary setting. I've, I struggled with this for a very long time. I'm, I'm a, I'm the kind of person who struggles with— I need a unified theory of everything, and this held me back for years. So what I ended up with now, and is I have the top level framework, but within this there are all kinds of nested frameworks that I will use for very specific things that I want to illustrate. For me, that was really quite liberating. What would be useful, I think, is— and I think your book is a great resource for this— if anybody's thinking, how on earth do I do this? If you just go on Google, framework ideas is probably unhelpful because you'll get a very narrow view. With Susanna's book, there are so many examples of frameworks to inspire you. It's really, really useful. But one warning I would offer, and you may build on this, you mentioned the word sketch, and something I paid attention to in the beginning with my framework, and I continue to, is that if you think about how an artist works, they begin with a small sketch. It's wrong. It's just an idea. It's a corner of an idea, and it lives— if you watch an artist's work, it lives in their physical environment. And I think that's important. If you just have this as a Canva thing, it's not working on your subconscious in the background. And so if I do something in Canva, I'll print it and I'll leave it lying around for a while, and then over time the idea emerges. And allowing it to emerge rather than forcing it to happen in one sitting I think that's an important part of the process. Obviously, as the framework ambassador, you probably codified and structured this a lot more. So if people are thinking, I want to begin working on a framework, how would you advise them move through that? Starting with your framework in the way like an artist, and I am an artist, I went to art school, and design thinking which was a term qualified by IDEO in the early '90s. And it was funny, when I started hearing about it, I was like, "This is what I've always done as a designer," is you do start with brainstorming everything. And I'm a massive fan of large pieces of paper and the pen and paper as well in the physical space, because what I see with many business owners You need to put down everything that is going on in your head, and that's gonna take more than a small piece of paper, more than an A4 piece of paper. It's going to get big. You can start taping pieces of paper together if you don't naturally own large paper like I do, 'cause I'm a huge fan of large paper and lots of coloured pens. And the way to get started is to download everything But looking at those impact moments, and this is where I say as well, get lots of colours. So, if you're thinking this belongs with this item, start colour coding your work so you can see how it pulls together. Because ultimately, with a framework, for it to be really effective, it will reduce to under 5 significant phases or places because The human brain, we can't remember more than 5 easily. And this is where I've got my SPARK process that inside the book takes you through these steps. And yes, there's actionable activities. In fact, I've had many people since I launched say, "Oh yeah, no, no, I started reading it. I wanted to leave a review, but then I started doing the exercises and now I'm going through it and I'm waiting till I get further along." because the book will take you through these 5 steps, which first of all is looking at yourself. So, it's my SPARK process. It is an acronym in this. It just happened to land that way as it finally went through about 5 years of iterations. And this is what I want to make clear as well, is developing your framework, your signature framework, or as I call it, your authority framework, because it's the one that really projects your authority. It doesn't come overnight. It comes, and the self phase is about looking at that impact evidence as you're working with clients, as you're working with customers, seeing what's actually going on. What are you naturally advising more? Because you might know 10 different things, but it's a bit like the 80/20 rule. You're probably leaning on 20% of what you do the most because that creates the biggest impact. So, that's what we then want to start drawing out. Once you've started seeing that impact, the next and really important phase that many people forget when they're looking at frameworks is your premise. This is the P in the SPARK process. And by premise, I mean, what is your unique service premise? So this is something that drives you. It's probably a frustration in your industry that you're seeing other people talk about and you're going, "Ah, but that's not right," because you've got the evidence behind you. Evidence is really important here. So you can be confidently sharing what your premise is. And a great premise disrupts your industry a bit. You're sort of making yourself that bit more Marmite. In the sense of, if people are listening, "What's Marmite?" It's a British spread that's based on yeast, very strong tasting, people love it or hate it, but I always say, "Don't try it like jam, it's not a jam." So, we want to encourage that and bring it forward. So, you've got to think about, "What is it that I'm seeing?" And an example here for myself, Having spent the last almost 25 years now watching entrepreneurs and business owners grow their business, and for the first 10 years, people were following a more traditional route, and then personal branding came in, and then there was a huge sway in the business community that it was all about visibility, build a massive audience, because social media hit the scene, and it was all like, you've got to be there, here, everywhere at once. But then I saw that same sector of business owners go into burnout. And what I realised was the difference between those that made it and those that didn't, they had a framework that they had based their visibility on because visibility without the framework. So my premise is framework first, visibility second. And Bob, absolutely, I know on your roadmap you've got it in that foundational phase. Because if you're building without that, you can be gone. You're an influencer, you're not a business owner, is really where you are at that point. I think what I certainly find is it gives you this anchor. And something I see a lot is when somebody doesn't have a framework, they're just smart. And I have specific people in— if you're listening, it's not you, but AI experts, for example, emerge very quickly. And then a few months ago, they were a crypto expert and a blockchain expert. And then a few months before that, they were something else and something else. It's whatever is the zeitgeist. They seem to be all over. If they had one thing that they were known for and they really went deep, and they showed their workings, and they had a clear point of difference. And more importantly, they had a method that was externalised, that they could, A, they could champion more confidently, but other people could champion on their behalf. They wouldn't have needed to blow with the wind, and they would also have been pinned down. I don't know if I'm really articulating myself very clearly, but what I do know is you're absolutely right. If you can anchor your value visually for people in a way that they can believe in completely, and that they could, if they wanted to, take your value away and work with it without you being present, now you have something. Whether that's your roadmap expressed or your, your, um, framework expressed in a one-page PDF. It could be that, it could be an entire book, it doesn't really matter. If your value depends on you delivering one-to-one creatively from zero every single time, burnout's inevitable. And I think this is another huge benefit to me of having a roadmap, is my thinking is codified once. The decision fatigue, the creativity fatigue is eliminated because I don't need to work out how to organise an orchestra every day. I've done that once. So I just rock up and I decide, well, what music are we playing? Who are we playing it for? And that's a completely different thing. So my ability to be rapidly effective for people is significantly enhanced. I'm not really speaking to your point, but I think I kind of am, if that makes sense. No, it is. And this is why in my SPARK process, the A in the middle is the art. And I wanted to start and share with the self and the premise because if you're not underscoring what you're doing with your evidence and then creating that toolkit and seeing what it is, it's impossible to do the art element, which is actually visualising your thinking. And I see a lot of very flimsy flame— frameworks out in the world that it's very clear to me they haven't done that base work behind it because that is the difference between a framework that really will fuel your business and help you direct every day to one that is just created. But at the end of the day as well, for me, a framework We actually want it to get it down that you can sketch it out simply on something as small as a 3x3-inch sticky note because it needs to be that higher level, your 5 phases, not the full roadmap, that belongs in a different place. We need for anyone to be able to understand, "Okay, where am I going and what does this look like?" Because we want to simplify things, the human brain, loves simplification. We love patterns as well. We're sort of born to recognise patterns. And only when we've then established what those patterns look like— and there's some really simple patterns I encourage people to start with in my book, and that's looking at things like those old school day Venn diagrams that everyone goes, "Oh, why do I need to know how many red, blue, and green cars there are and what the intersections are. When we use that simple tool instead for your ideas, you can bring them together and see what happens at the intersections. Again, I've seen far too, far too many presentations where someone is using a Venn, but they're ignoring the intersections. The intersections is where the magic happens. I don't really mind what's in the outer circles. We care about what's actually happening at the intersections and right in the middle. That's where it is. And there's other simple geometrics like the pyramid. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is one of the most well-known visual frameworks. And it stays in people's brains because they understand with a triangle, you start at the bottom, you move up, and you reach a mastery level. In that space. And when we've started visualising what that looks like, we're then creating that simplification that helps people understand where we're going. And only then, when you've done those foundational, which is going to the SPA— another advantage of SPA is the first 3 letters is self-premise, art, SPA. And I'm like, when you've taken your business to the SPA, you're understanding, you're refreshed, you're rejuvenated, you've got everything that you need, only then do we move to the next stage, which is the R, which is Reach. And that is looking at how can you embed your framework that you've created throughout your whole business ecosystem. This is across your website, in your socials, in all your offers, because it is the fuel that drives it forward. And lastly, K is actually Kudos. Because that's when you've gained the authority. And you can't actually control that. It's a bit like, what's a brand? It's what other people say when you're not in the room. Kudos is when your authority comes back to you and you get that feedback from putting your thinking out in the world and it is affecting other people. Just yesterday, I had a lady in Ukraine reach out to me on LinkedIn. And she said, "I bought your book and it's creating amazing differences in how I'm thinking and I'm making endless notes. Thank you so much for creating it." That is kudos. It's coming back. I wasn't connected with this lady. I'd never— I think she was a third connection on LinkedIn, but she created— we're not first connections, but she created that impact without me being in the room. And that's when kudos comes in. And there are ways we can help and encourage that to happen. But this is the final stage where I do encourage people, once you know your framework is working, it's creating the impact, people are referring to it, you're getting known for it, that's the time to then look at writing your book about it, speaking on stage about it, and taking it to the wider market, and even licencing, franchising, if you're looking at the bigger picture. So what you've described, and I think particularly the Kudos component, is experts can tell. And for me, that's been one of the most affirming things with the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, is people in the marketing industry giving me the feedback that it's awesome. Um, people who I would never have imagined even sharing the same oxygen as. And that actually says something really important, that in a great framework, you have managed to isolate a truth and not created something that wasn't there. This is not trying to find an artifice. This is trying to uncover something. Which brings me to, I think, the most obvious question. And it's— so when I did the personal brand business roadmap, leader brand business roadmap, it began with probably 2 packets of sticky notes on a wall over 6 months. And that was probably the culmination of several years' worth of scratching my head. But these days, I don't know if I would have started that way. I'd probably have just said to Claude, I need a framework, which is probably And when I work with clients, I'm hearing this a lot. Don't do it, because what it'll do is create something that doesn't come from you. It doesn't actually reflect a truth, and it'll, it'll probably be way more complicated than you actually need it to be. I'm quite sure you have a lot more to say on this than I do, and I'd love to hear it from you rather than me. Oh yes, yeah, there are elements where AI can help, but absolutely It is about distilling your uniqueness. And AI, at the end of the day, is a probability engine. It's great at pattern spotting. So, where I do encourage clients, if you are great at your work, you probably have hundreds of reviews and testimonials and case studies. You might not be a natural pattern spotter yourself. However, AI, if you use one of the contained sort of project-based systems with this, put in all your case studies and testimonials and ask AI to spot the patterns that they're seeing. That is a brilliant use for it on the impact detection stage, because that's what the machine can do in terms of just helping bring to the surface. But from that point, I'm a step away because you're right, you're uncovering what you're doing. It's your truth. Anything that AI gives you, it's not your truth. It's a made-up truth that's been generated from many ideas around the world. Now, those of us who've been around longer than the internet will know same ideas throughout centuries have developed across different continents at the same time because there's a natural development in human thought that has happened. So even if we go way back in time to the Tree of Life, that has appeared across different ancient civilizations who had no connection to each other. And that was one of the very first frameworks. So I haven't invented these things. They've always been around. Our brains love to think about that. But you need to create your own tree of life for your business, which means it's got to come from your thoughts. And it is a developmental process. At the other end of the scale is once you've done that thinking and working, if you are then stuck on thinking about, right, well, these are my phases, I've got my initial names, and you've got that detail, and maybe you're struggling with naming, that could be your crutch. On that end of the scale, so like the top and tail, AI can be useful then on the naming because it knows all the words in your language and it will give you all those synonyms. I used to always go to synonym dictionaries pre-AI. Absolutely. I would be going, "Ooh, what are these words?" And I'd spend my time looking at that and exploring. So there are ways it can fast-track. But the important piece in the middle needs to come from you. And quite often I tell my clients, step away from Claude, step away from ChatGPT, because I can read and see it's not them and it loses their voice. No matter how well you've trained it, it still takes away that essence that's you. I think a lot of people possibly don't feel very creative, and Claude is a great a great crutch when you're not feeling creative. But I, I say this with 95% certainty that the majority of the classic frameworks, like the likes of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into earning the inspiration. Inspiration doesn't just come. There is, there is, there is no such thing as somebody who can just rock up with the right idea. We have to go through a little bit of pain in order to position ourselves for the inspiration. And it's, it's a fairly predictable thing, but by doing the work, when it finally emerges, it's yours, it's true. And the energy that— I mean, is it possibly a little bit boo? But certainly when I use Claude to create a framework, it feels soulless and flat. When I actually put in the work, I am connected to it. I believe in it. I feel like it wants to belong in the world. It's a very different feeling, and I think that's really important. There's an element there I'd just love to pick up upon, is what I see is— and I got asked this when I was running one of my masterclasses— they say, well, how do you know that AI has created the framework. And I was like, it's in you when you're delivering it because you're not energetically attached to it. And for a framework to really be that fuel in your business, if you want to speak on stages about it, if you want to write a book about it, it's got to come from your lived experience because you'll get caught out the moment you open your mouth if you've just created it in a nanosecond on AI. And that's the difference. Because writing a book based on my framework came, and even writing the book took 18 months, but that came from 5 previous years testing, working, developing with many clients across many industries, checking the theory, seeing what was landing and what wasn't. And this is why I kept the focus on very simple structures as well, because they were the things that created impact, that people could understand, they could implement. And it's that energetic connection to your work that makes all the difference when you're being asked to speak about it. Yeah, people can tell. So in the book, I'm quite sure there are lots of prompts for the people who may be feeling like they are lacking inspiration. I think one of the things a lot of people, when they come to Framework, it's because they sense an urgency. They have a talk to give, or they want to write a book, or they need to find a point of difference. I wholly understand sometimes the pressure is on. Susanna's book will allow you to channel that pressure very, very efficiently. So I would wholeheartedly recommend everybody should read that book. It's a delight to see. It's not your average wall of text. The amount of work that's gone into the individual layout of every single page is just ridiculous. So I congratulate you on that and celebrate every opportunity I can. We need to move into the 3 amplifiers. Susanna Ray, amplifier number 1. These are, these are for the listener, 3 things that you can do, watch, wash yourself with favourite apps. There are no rules. 3 things Susanna thinks are fabulous and everyone should have to read or whatever. Amplifier number 1. Amplifier number 1 is to know your way. And you know this because it's you. So I encourage you to stay true to your values and not mimic and mirror other people in the world because that is where I see people getting lost and burnt out. Rather than listening to their inner wisdom, which is how I describe intuition. It's our gathered thoughts over the years. So the first amplifier is being wholly true to yourself and knowing your way. I love that. I think one of the things I've started to really pay attention to in the business is joy is the compass. Whereas previously, there's all kinds of things would direct me, Now I know joy is where I head and it hasn't let me down yet. But that's my way. And I recognise not everybody's like that, but for me, that's very liberating. So amplifier number 2. We've kind of touched on this one. My second amplifier is always have a pen and paper to hand, try and step away from the digital and give yourself the freedom and time to think. So I'd encourage you to block time in your week, just as importantly as meetings, appointments, being with other people, is blocking time— no matter your personality, extrovert or introvert, everybody needs this— is to block time to sit and think with your thoughts and see what comes up. Because we've got amazing human brains, but we need to give them time to percolate and see what happens. And just pick the favourite point in your day for this. For me, it's that first hour in the morning before I get distracted with anything else, is just to sit down and think, what are those strongest things that are coming up? And that can be a really big amplifier for your business. As well, because it will show you naturally the direction you're meant to be taking and where to focus your energy. I think your subconscious is your best friend, and nobody really understands what it is that drives the subconscious. There's all kinds of things that could be if we just paid attention. There's, there's really no anticipating what can come up, but what I do know is I echo that, that if you spend a little bit of time listening to what's actually happening inside, there's more than you realised. I think a lot of us like to think we're not very creative because we're just not listening half the time. So making the space for that's really productive. Amplifier number 3. Amplifier number 3 is lean into persistency over consistency. Now, what I mean by this is when you're striving for a goal, lean in to experiment and change what you're doing. Don't do the same thing over and over and expect different results. Really, it's about thinking creatively, experimenting, trying and testing different things, but aiming for the same goal. And that I've seen has had the biggest effect on everyone, myself included. It's not about what you do every day and having to do the same thing every day, but it's being persistent and knowing the end goal and thinking about different ways you can achieve that. I personally can't do the same thing every day. I'm not built that way. But if I look over a month, a year, then there will be elements that keep rolling. But every year I experiment as well with new ways of doing things. Culture changes around us, the environment changes around us, we must change too. But that doesn't mean you can't be persistent with the goal that you're trying to achieve. I absolutely agree. I think a lot of people— and this kind of speaks to the people who are kind of flip-flopping all over the place, trying to be different things to different people at different times— most people and this is a cliché, I apologise, but they underestimate— overestimate what they can achieve in a short time. And you can get lucky in the short term, but the long term, or the medium to long term, is where the magic really happens. And like you said, persistence, it really, really pays. But also acknowledging that you probably are wrong a lot of the time. If you're the kind of person that thinks, I'm right, I have the right plan, oh my goodness, go home. That's one thing I, I never— I'm guilty of this as well, thinking I've, I've got the plan, I'm doing it right. But if I actually just listened to that and belligerently ploughed ahead, I would— I don't even know where to go with that. This has been so much fun. I am very grateful for this. I've learned a lot. I've had a lot of fun. I've got so much to think about, and I really hope you at home listening have as well. Susanna, if people want to get closer to you, if they need a bit more framework thinking in their life, how would you like them to connect with you? Do come and connect with me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with people on DMs. And I also encourage you to take my Natural Authority Style Quiz, which is the first step in the self-process of framework thinking. It's a free assessment. It's under 3 minutes to take. and it will let you see how your natural style combines with framework thinking, because each technique is just slightly different dependent how you show up. Great fun to hang out with Susanna on the LinkedIn. If you have enjoyed this show today, again, I'll remind you, you will love the Leader Brand Business Roadmap, 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. And again, before you go, reviews on Spotify and Apple Podcasts are pure gold. You will make the very top of my awesome list if you do that. I'm also inviting listeners, if there's anyone you would like to challenge me to have on the show, scare me. I want to really stretch myself here. So please, your recommendations by LinkedIn DM, if you're not sure how to do it, is absolutely fine. Be fine. Don't be shy. Thank you at home for listening. And Susanna, thank you for your time. You have been awesome. Thank you.