E2A 101: The Power of Creating a Framework and Consistent Writing with Scott MacMillan 

In this episode of The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast, your host Scott MacMillan unpacks a common challenge: expertise, on its own, isn’t enough. Without a clear and consistent framework, even the deepest insights can be overlooked. Scott explores why frameworks matter, how they turn scattered ideas into memorable and shareable models, and the five qualities that make intellectual property truly powerful.

You’ll also learn a simple process for shaping your knowledge into a proprietary methodology you can apply consistently across books, keynotes, and client work. If you want to move from being an invisible expert to an influential thought leader, this episode will help you build a framework that elevates your authority and amplifies your message.

EPISODE LINKS  

Free STEPS Guide: grammarfactory.com/awesome-book-guide/
SPARC IP Incubator: grammarfactory.com/sparc-ip-incubator

ABOUT SCOTT:
Scott MacMillan serves as the Chief Strategist and Executive Publisher at Grammar Factory Publishing. While not a professional writer or editor by training, he brings over two decades of experience as an entrepreneur and business leader, having held executive, operational, and management consulting positions with esteemed organizations including Boston Consulting Group, Rogers Communications, and Corus Entertainment. Upon transitioning to entrepreneurship, Scott has dedicated his expertise to strategic oversight, ensuring that authors’ books are closely aligned with, and actively contribute to, the growth objectives of their businesses. 

ABOUT GRAMMAR FACTORY:
Grammar Factory is a Canadian self-publishing company that helps business leaders and entrepreneurs write, publish, and market non-fiction books to boost their credibility and business results. Their expert team guides clients from idea to professionally published book, offering editorial services to ensure high-quality, compelling content. Serving clients globally, Grammar Factory focuses on transforming manuscripts into industry-leading books that attract clients and enhance brands, with a strong commitment to supporting authors throughout the publishing process.

CONNECT WITH SCOTT

Episode Transcript

Please note: The transcript is produced by a third-party company from an audio recording and may include transcription errors.

Scott MacMillan:

You're listening to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast. 

Announcer

Welcome to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast, the podcast that brings you practical strategies for building authority and growing your business. And now, here's your host, Scott MacMillan.

Scott:

Today's episode is a solo episode, and today I want to tackle something that comes up in almost every single strategy call I have with authors and thought leaders. Here it is, expertise on its own is not enough. You can have the deepest insight in your industry.

You can have a resume filled with results, client transformations, years of hands-on experience. But if that expertise isn't structured into a clear, digestible, and ownable framework, you'll struggle to get traction as a thought leader. Now if that's a bit confronting, good, because this is a critical shift, and it's one that separates true thought leaders from brilliant but invisible experts.

Today we're going to unpack why being an expert isn't the same as being a thought leader, what makes a strong framework and what doesn't, the five qualities of powerful IP, and how you can start turning your ideas into a framework that elevates your authority and drives your business. Let's dive in. Let's start with a simple distinction.

Expertise is what you know. Thought leadership is how you communicate and commercialize what you know. I want to repeat that because it's foundational.

Expertise is what you know. Thought leadership is how you communicate and commercialize what you know. I've worked with clients who've led billion-dollar businesses, who've taught at Ivy League schools, who've coached Fortune 100 executives, and yet, when it came time to write a book or build their authority platform, they hit a wall.

Why? Because they hadn't distilled their insight into something people could grab onto. It was all in their head, or in long client reports, or scattered across a hundred speaking decks.

And here's the thing. Confused audiences don't convert. If your ideas aren't structured clearly, they're not memorable.

If they're not memorable, they're not shareable. And if they're not shareable, they don't spread. So what do we mean by framework?

A framework is a structured representation of your thinking. It takes complex, nuanced ideas, your deep expertise, and turns them into a model that others can understand, remember, and apply. It's visual.

Not necessarily a graphic, but a shape of some kind. It gives form to your ideas. Modular.

People can latch on to one part or walk through it step by step. Repeatable. You can use it across different contexts, keynotes, coaching, books, products, pitches.

And ideally, it's proprietary, meaning it's something you can own in the mind of your market. Let me give you a few examples. Simon Sinek's Start With Why, a simple golden circle.

Why? How? What?

It's deceptively simple, but it gave shape to an entire movement around purpose-driven leadership. Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team. A triangle.

Each dysfunction builds on the one below. That simple shape makes it sticky. Daniel Priestley's Key Person of Influence Framework.

Five Ps. Pitch, publish, product, profile, partnerships. A clear progression.

And I'll be honest. At first, Grammar Factory didn't have a framework either. We had great results, happy clients, solid processes.

But it wasn't until we launched the Book Blueprint methodology for writing your book, and later the STEPS method covering the end-to-end authorship journey, and most recently the SPARC IP framework for developing thought leadership, that our business really started to scale. Because now people got it. They saw the shape of our thinking and how it could help them.

Let's look at the flip side. When you don't have a framework, a few things start to happen. You overwhelm people with information.

Without structure, you default to a fire hose of insight. Everything feels important, so nothing stands out. You get commoditized.

If you're just saying, I help leaders grow, or I advise on strategy, or I teach communication skills, guess what? So do thousands of others. Without a framework, there's nothing to distinguish you.

You create internal confusion. This is a big one. Without a framework, you start to struggle.

How do you package what you do? How do you train a team? How do you scale?

How do you write the book? You don't. Or at least, not easily.

So if you've ever felt like your ideas are strong, but your message isn't landing, if you've struggled to explain what you do in a way that sticks, if you've found yourself rewriting your pitch every time you talk to a new client, that's a signal. You need a framework. Now let's talk about what makes a framework work.

Because not all models are created equal. At Grammar Factory, and in our private SPARC IP Thought Leadership Incubator, we look at five core qualities of powerful intellectual property. 1.

Substantive Your IP needs to be deep enough to drive transformation. It's not just a catchy acronym. It has to solve a real problem in a meaningful way.

Ask yourself, does this reflect years of real-world experience and insight? Could someone use this to make a major shift in how they think or act? 2.

Proprietary Is it yours? Not just in name, but in shape, in structure, in voice. A proprietary framework lets people associate a big idea with you.

That's what gives you leverage and defensibility in the market. 3. Aligned The best frameworks aren't just clever, they're strategic.

They support your business model, your positioning, your ideal client. They lead to your core services, products, or offers. If your framework doesn't connect directly to how you make money, it's not doing its job.

4. Relevant Is your framework solving a timely, urgent, high-stakes problem for your audience? Too many thought leaders build beautiful models that answer questions no one's asking.

Start with the pain. Make sure your IP speaks directly to what your ideal audience cares about right now. 5.

Commercialized Last but not least, is your IP monetizable? This is where the rubber meets the road. Have you, or can you, build programs, products, workshops, keynotes, content, or licensing models around this framework?

Can others be trained to use it? Can it scale? If not, it might still be interesting.

But it's not thought leadership, at least not in the way we define it. Okay. So what do you do if you're sitting there thinking, this is me.

I've got the expertise, but I haven't structured it yet. Let me give you a simple starting point. Grab a notebook or open a doc and ask yourself these five questions.

What's the big transformation I help people achieve? What's there before and after? What are the three to five key principles or steps I use to get them there?

If someone asked how you do what you do, what would you say? In what order do those steps occur? And do they build on each other?

Think sequence, hierarchy, or interconnection. Can you name each component in a way that's clear and memorable? Acronyms can work, but don't force them.

Focus on clarity first. How could you visualize this? Is it a circle, a triangle, a ladder, a flywheel?

Shapes matter. This process doesn't have to be perfect out of the gate. Start sketching, start naming, start testing it in conversations.

Your first draft won't be your last, but it'll be your start. Let me leave you with this. When you build a strong framework, you don't just clarify your ideas, you multiply their impact.

You gain a signature methodology you can teach, license, or scale. A clear narrative for your book or keynote. A branded asset that positions you as a category of one.

And a way to move from being the expert who gets hired to the thought leader who gets followed. And that's what this podcast is all about. Helping you shift from expertise to influence.

From invisible to unforgettable. So if you're still trying to build your thought leadership on loose ideas or scattered insights, make this the moment you decide to create a framework. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Entrepreneur to Author.

If this resonated with you, if you're realizing that your next step is to distill your expertise into a framework that positions you for real authority, then I'd love to connect. And if you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend or a colleague who's sitting on a mountain of expertise, but hasn't yet turned it into their next big idea.

As we wrap up this episode of Entrepreneur to Author, remember this.

Now is the time. Time to write, time to publish, and time to grow. I'm Scott MacMillan.

Until next time.