On Frame

I have this mentor…

Most don’t know his name, but they’ve seen his work.

If you’ve seen Billy Mays shouting at the screen about OxyClean…

Or one of those GoPro commercials where the guy points the camera at himself and then proceeds to perform something insane like jumping out of a helicopter and then snowboarding down a mountain…

You’ve seen his work.

Ron is an underground artist that’s produced so much money for companies it’s honestly hard to believe.

$4 Billion.

Crazy.

But this man is my mentor and on top of being one of the most genius marketers I’ve ever encountered…

He’s one of the greatest humans to have come into my life.

Ron pours wisdom into me and consistently asks difficult questions which force me to be more and do more.

(That’s when you know someone’s a keeper by the way.)

I have many hilarious stories with Ron, but I have many deep and significant ones as well.

The story I’m about to tell you is a mix of both.

It was a chilly night in Austin, Texas and I sat in an uber with my eyebrows lowered, fuming at the dinner I had just left.

I originally wanted to grab dinner with a good friend of mine, and at the last minute, I was informed someone else would be joining us.

This “someone else” was a formidable intellectual opponent, him and I mentally sparred pretty much all night long.

We were debating what purpose looked like in life, and I was being told how limited my experience was, how I had seen so little of the world, and that at the age of 22 (at the time) I was in no position to speak on purpose.

Sitting in that uber leaving dinner on the way to my mentor’s house, my pride was peaking like a 19-year-old girl on molly at her first rave.

I’m very competitive, I don’t like losing, but even worse is when I lose to someone intellectually.

I struggled to articulate my points, and just flat out felt like a total idiot.

Eventually, I got to Ron’s house, his welcome was warm, and I was so happy to see him.

He made me one of his signature martinis which was so strong my lips started to feel numb after my second or third sip.

I explained to Ron what had happened at dinner, I vented my frustrations while sipping his martini which felt like it was getting stronger with each sip.

Ron very calmly responded, “You lost the argument because you lost control of the frame.”

After I got done puckering my face after a sip, wondering what the ratio was of olive juice to gin, I asked him “What do you mean? What’s frame?”

Ron smiled

“It’s a bit too late for me to explain frame to you.”

It was 10 PM.

“Ah crap, yeah you gotta head to bed, I do too, I got calls in the morning.”

Ron put his glass down and gave me that signature stare of his which removes everything else in the world but you and him.

“Why don’t we get up in the morning, I’ll take you to this breakfast spot down the street, we’ll get some waffles and some bacon, and then I’ll explain frame to you. 7 sound good?”

“Yeah, that sounds good!”

Here I am sitting in his living room, using all of the juice in my brain to imagine a scene similar to the diner from pulp fiction…

The waitress chewing gum calls the both of us “hun” and scribbles our orders down with a small cut-off pencil.

She rushes back to the kitchen to tell a man named “Chico”  to get some pancakes on the griddle, you can tell she’s stressed because she’s a single mom but she still works hard.

All of the guests in the restaurant are in pairs except for one old man who sits by himself in the corner, he’s been a regular in the mornings since his wife passed away.

The smell of bacon, sausage, and coffee fill the diner with a pleasant American aroma.

The waffles arrive at our table with squares of butter melting on top and we proceed to pour maple syrup which flows off the fluffy edges into a moat of processed sugar.

It felt like I was there, but I wasn’t, I was still sitting in Ron’s living room with half a martini left to down…

But Ron was still leaning in…

And he had a very clever smirk on his face…

He was intentionally holding silence, almost like he was waiting for me to get it.

That’s when it hit me.

“That breakfast place doesn’t exist, huh?”

“Yup.”

He leaned back and did one of his signature old guy cackles, and after he wiped the tears of laughter out of his eyes, he leaned back in and asked me…

“Did you understand your lesson on frame?”

“Sort of…can you expand?”

“You lost the argument because you let them control the frame or the scene you were in. You’re too young, you’re inexperienced, you’re not in a position to talk about this kind of stuff. They put you in their waffle house, they set up the chessboard. Right?”

“Correct.”

“You could’ve easily reversed the frame on them by just asking “Where were you guys at 22?” and shoved it right back in their face. You position the frame in your favor which in this case is that you have your life together at a really young age while most men don’t achieve that until their mid-30s. I know for a fact both of them were total messes at your age.”

“Damn.”

Ron smiled and sipped the last of his martini.

I was pretty sloshed off half a martini (which really was just a glass of gin with two drops of olive juice) and decided to call it quits for the night.

But I still had a craving for bacon and waffles.

We made a hefty breakfast for the whole family the next morning, and to this day I still remember eating my waffles thinking…

“Frame just tastes so good.”

Remember, position the frame in your favor.