Are You an Analyst or an Evangelist? Assess Your Communication Style to Differentiate More Easily

I don't have any tattoos and I'll never actually get one, but I still have a favorite tattoo.

"I am certain of nothing." Anthony Bourdain had that written in Greek on his arm. It's a reminder that you bring with you expectations, but you still need to be open to learning and to changing your mind.

That perfectly sums up so much about creative work, but lately it sums up something I teach publicly: premise development. How do you take your perspective and ideas and turn them into a tightly articulated Big Idea you explore, distribute, and own? Your premise is that big idea. It's an assertion you make about your space, about what should be or what others should do, which would be better than their status quo but isn't something they embrace just yet.

Your premise is like drawing a coherent circle around everything you do, informing your internal choices and your public reputation. It's a high-stakes idea. Is it any wonder people get stressed out when I talk about it? Because it constantly changes, evolves, iterates. It's easy to say, "I figured it out! I found it! I nailed it!" You're certain you've got THE idea.

Then you learn, create, converse, and start to doubt things. That's good! That's the process of premise development, really. You have a current, best articulation of your thinking and your ideas. But that shouldn't be fixed forever. You walk in with certain expectations of finding "it," then you realize "it" is "iterative."

(I know, I'm proud of me for that line too...)

I have something to say to the world. But I am certain of nothing.

Holding both together in our heads can be maddening, so today, let's try to make things a little less stressful. Let's get out of our heads and into a visual framework we can use to constantly strengthen our premises, which in turn differentiates our messages, our speeches, our content, our thought leadership.

Because the idea of having and owning a premise is so central to both my teachings and, I believe, the success you experience as a public voice, I've spent a LOT of time trying to remove the stress of the process. It can't feel daunting. It must feel attainable. To help bridge that divide, I've done three things:

Thing #1: illuminating the need for and the benefits of developing and owning your premise.

I've written a lot about this topic, covering things like...

Thing #2: offering actual services to work with folks to develop their premise. Yes, most come to me asking about their messaging, storytelling, and speaking needs, but it's my duty to show them that it all gets easier and more effective if we craft a distinct premise and learn how to step into it, embody it, and use it everywhere.

Thing #3: inventing "grounding devices" to help you move from theory to action in concrete fashion

Aside from my sick rhymes, I've also worked hard to master something else about how I communicate: developing methodologies and frameworks to take something emotional and theoretical and make it actionable.

I hear from a lot of people about their stress and struggles, and it always sounds the same: "I haven't found my premise yet."

No! It's premise development, not premise brainstorming or premise lightning strike moment or premise just happened upon it while walking in the woods.

This is a craft. Your premise is not found. It's built.

But we can make the building process more clear and concrete. Because we need to embrace that hard truth from the top of my essay today: it won't ever be final. You need to allow for iteration, for new ideas and data and learnings to change how you show up in the world. To do anything else would be to hitch yourself to a wagon driving straight off a cliff. Instead, we need our messages and our ideas to evolve, to twist and turn along the winding road of reality.

I have something to say. I know things. Also? I am certain nothing.

How do we operate while embracing THAT truth? I have some ideas.

Start by Identifying Your Natural Communication Preferences

Below is my Idea Impact Matrix. (If you're new to this framework, ​save this article for later.​)

The impact of an idea is proportional to its value and its originality.

As our work gets more insightful and feels more personal, it becomes more valuable and more original, respectively. It becomes higher-impact, that is, having a greater and more lasting effect on others and our own causes.

We can begin the process of developing a premise for a project or for our entire public platforms in the same place: by first identifying how we already communicate with others. The good news in this daunting process is ... you're already doing the thing. It may feel bad. It may not yield the results you want. But you are already communicating with others, likely in public too. That's good! You've left a bunch of breadcrumbs we can follow. You're just not noticing them. But make no mistake, YOU have a tendency for how you're already trying to differentiate your ideas and your message.

We all tend to lean towards being either an analyst or an evangelist. (Remember, this is about tendencies and preferences. This is a false sense of precision, but we're going to use it to ground big, stressful ideas and important, business-changing work in something concrete. Yes, you are BOTH analyst and evangelist, and not always to the same degree at the same time, but go with me here to make it easier on yourself: let's assume we have to pick just one, and it's based on our tendencies and preferences. Cool? Cool.)

Analysts are disproportionally instructional and/or insightful, but they may struggle with emotional connection and originality. Evangelists are disproportionally emotional and/or personal, but they may struggle to ground those feelings with instructions and insights to add value day to day.

Analysts try to earn trust by highlighting credibility indicators like fancy logos (past employers, clients, or partners), fancy job titles, or the number of years they've been doing something. Evangelists try to earn trust by creating emotional connections with others: motivating people, telling stories, using humor or charm, even volume.

Analysts offer practical ideas and smart strategies to help others get results. Their thinking helps people intelligently optimize their current situation. Evangelists offer big ideas and emotional pleas urging others to be exceptional and do exceptional things. Their ideas help people radically change their current situation.

Analysts often make sense of industry trends and new technologies for others. Evangelists often make sense of foundational or evergreen ideas for others.

If you're an analyst, your tone of voice is likely a bit more academic or stoic. If you're an evangelist, your tone of voice is likely a bit more colloquial or distinctive.

Analysts have a long list of subtopics they can speak to, whether in their head or on their websites, as with a speaker page full of talks they've given. Their content about these topics can sometimes feel dense or cold. As a result, the analyst's knowledge can feel overwhelming to others.

Evangelists have a long list of creative ideas they want to pursue, whether inside an existing project or by launching new things. Their content thanks to this creative enthusiasm can sometimes feel unfocused or inconsistent. As a result, the evangelist's process and emotions can feel overwhelming to themselves.

Analysts are easily frustrated by things they deem to be "fluff." Evangelists are easily frustrated by others forgetting the "humanity" of it all.

Analysts try to stand out through expertise.

Evangelists try to stand out through emotion.

By identifying your own tendencies and preferences, the path towards differentiation feels more clear and more attainable.

How Analysts Differentiate 📊

If you identify more as an analyst, you might need to prioritize creating a stronger emotional connection with others. You're refreshingly insightful but lack a personal feel. You add value but that might not be clear because it's hard to get "into" your orbit and agree to invest time with you. More originality would help you stand out without needing to push your advice harder and harder.

At the extreme, the analyst who can't connect personally and isn't producing anything original starts to make their advice more aggressive. That's why we see people saying stuff like, "STEAL my playbook..." or "99% do this thing wrong" or sharing what should be helpful advice but with photos of them holding wads of cash, mouth hanging open in surprise. There's nothing original on offer underneath and they struggle to make a personal connection, so they think that to stand out means they have to press harder, get more sensational, and get louder. They're busy taking things not actually built to connect and trying to force the issue, because they don't know how else to resonate with others. But using the Idea Impact Matrix, we can diagnose this problem and figure out a better way to do just that: ensure others care.

  • Analysts need to take more seriously the power of creativity and storytelling. They need to get in touch with their own feelings of frustration and curiosity—and approach those as just as (if not more) strategic and practical as their advice and expertise. As they push harder on their knowledge, they should arrive at bigger ideas and deeper insights, i.e. the peak of the value spectrum, rather than take commodified information and sensationalize it. Analysts need to dig deeper internally to benefit from the ideas and perspectives and feel unlocked by getting in touch with their own emotions and perspectives, AND they need to dig deeper into their area of expertise to find a first-principle insight to color everything they do. A simple way to start is to observe the trends, conventions, and experts at the top of their field and find things they miss, things that are broken or misunderstood, and points of disagreement. Those all point to a need in the market for a big idea, a deeper thinker, and a leader, not just an observer.

Leaning into strengths as an analyst means going further up the value spectrum to arrive at foundational insights. Can you go beyond teaching tactics or prescribing strategies to find the first principle or the big change others need to make? Can you use that to inform and elevate everything you share, including using the insight to make your basic advice feel even more potent? (But again, this is leaning into strengths: analysts already index pretty highly on the value spectrum to start.)

The biggest changes analysts should consider would be to make the work feel more original to them: tell more stories, find your own tone of voice and personal style, and generally bring more emotion and tension into your communication (​here's a means to do so​). In short, be a storyteller.

How Evangelists Differentiate 🌸

If you identify more as an evangelist, you might need to prioritize "grounding devices," or ways to help others turn motivation into action. You get stuck on the big idea or paradigm shift, maybe the emotional rally cry, and need to help others with their tactical execution. Whereas analysts are all about applied thinking, the evangelist struggles to get there. Hence, grounding devices ar needed: defining key terms, offering practical methodology, designing and teaching through visual frameworks, and taking seriously that others may want to get on board with your ideas, but they've got an ugly reality to navigate full of bosses, clients, near-term needs, and existing ways of operating and/or understanding things. They can't just drop everything instantly to embrace your thinking all at once. Change happens incrementally. Help them with that.

  • Evangelists need to take more seriously the power of incremental, tactical action. They also need to take more seriously the skepticism others might feel. Instead of the knee-jerk tendency to scoff and write off a person or niche the moment they bring up objections, the evangelist should find ways to meet folks where they're at, acknowledge existing goals, beliefs, objections, and norms, then make a more logical argument for their way of thinking. There's only so much emotional rallying one can do. There needs to be a more lawyerly, logical case to get others on board, which then evangelists can effortlessly imbue with moments of connection, inspiration, and motivation.

Leaning into strengths as an evangelist means going further along the originality spectrum to craft signature stories. Can you go beyond sharing big, emotional ideas or paradigm-shifting concepts to SHOW others (not just tell them) what change actually looks like? Can you share more stories about others, not yourself, in order to motivate and inspire? Signature stories are the next and easiest step to have a greater impact. ​Here are 3 types of signature stories to consider developing.​ (But again, this is leaning into strengths: evangelists already index well on the originality spectrum.)

The biggest changes evangelists should consider would be to offer more concrete advice in the form of how-tos and how-to-think ideas (i.e. your methodologies for applying your ideas to others' realities). Even offering more instruction (squarely in the middle of the value spectrum) is a huge step forward, because most people who focus on instructing are lousy at connecting. The evangelist stands out easier when combining both. But even more valuable is to push beyond the instructional stuff to arrive at that deeper insight, the Holy Grail for an evangelist's premise: not just an emotional rally cry for a change but a grounded insight to drive it. (For instance, rather than just declare, "Self-awareness is the key to clarity," an evangelist with a deeper insight would say, "Internal clarity comes from external communication. If you want to understand yourself, you need to write and communicate and create publicly, constantly." That's a defensible assertion. That's a better premise. Not because it's more emotional than the first one, but because it's grounded in an insight.) In short, if the analyst benefits from acting more like a storyteller, than the evangelist benefits from acting more like a scientist.

* * *

The piece you're reading right now is the perfect microcosm of my own multiyear journey to evolve from pure evangelist to a more well-rounded communicator capable of differentiating and resonating.

I'm a natural evangelist. I feel my feels. I love to motivate and inspire, and I have always enjoyed telling stories. My evolution as a public voice has really centered on leaning into strengths (developing more stories about others and refining them into signature stories) and understanding the larger changes I needed to stand out easier (grounding my evangelism through visual frameworks, techniques I can teach, and methodologies through which I lead clients, bootcampers, and audiences).

I could always connect with others. I could always produce things that felt personal and thus felt original to me. But when it came time to add value you could take with you and use? I fell apart. I'd pivot from a great story inside a speech to a vapid one-liner like "know your audience!" That's something a million marketers before me have said. Or maybe instead of empower, I would scold people, essentially saying they were making bad things when they ought to make good things. Yikes.

The thing is, the only way I improved was to keep shipping the work. Publicly. I needed to keep aerating my thinking, both to establish a feedback loop with other people AND, perhaps more crucially, to get out of my head and make sense of things to myself.

Maybe you're facing a fork in the road like that. Maybe you're weighing your options, looking at your overall message or a specific project or your latest post, and you're thinking, "Ugh, the ideas aren't it yet." Such is the work! You set up camp at a certain spot and declare, this is the place. Then you keep hacking away at the jungle and realize, wait, no, we have to set up camp HERE. No, wait, HERE.

You keep learning and keep creating, so you keep making sense of things in a way that others can't possibly. That's what makes you a leader. You want to change things, want to take them away from what's broken towards something better, but you understand that the path keeps unfolding. There is no final destination. Not really. Just continual progress. That can feel energizing in a sense, because you don't need to worry about finding a perfect idea (that doesn't exist anyway). But it can also feel stressful, because if there is no "it," then how do we make practical progress towards it?

Take heart. This is how it feels for all of us. It's never clean, clear, or concise. But it can feel concrete! I hope the Idea Impact Matrix can help. It helps you take a vague idea or something purely sensed and make it attainable and actionable.

So yes, you've got a message in the world already. But that message could be better. Both are true: it can be great right now AND you can realize progress is needed.

So you write to share your message but also write to think and improve your thinking.

You share the expertise you worked hard to earn, but you also know the more you learn, the more you make your current knowledge obsolete.

You plant a flag firmly for your idea and rally people to it as if it's your forever camp, but you know you'll all need to move eventually.

I have something to say, but I am certain of nothing.

If you feel that way, congrats. That's work worth doing.

Jay Acunzo