How to Make Yourself Fascinating So People Seek You Out

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Your marketing is not just failing to attract customers, it is actively repelling them. Dan Kennedy and Sally Hogshead spent an entire conversation on the seven triggers that make a message impossible to ignore. Sally is the author of Fascinate and has helped Starbucks and Microsoft stop being forgotten. She and Dan Kennedy break down why you remember one person at a cocktail party and forget the rest, and why the same reason is costing you prospects right now.

This episode answers one question. Why do your customers remember your competitor and forget you? Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_2 (0:33)

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy.

SPEAKER_3 (0:40)

The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril.

SPEAKER_4 (0:44)

They're not really the lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by.

SPEAKER_3 (0:47)

Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

SPEAKER_2 (0:57)

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

Russell Brunson (1:01)

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

SPEAKER_4 (1:05)

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

Dan Kennedy (1:11)

Hello everybody, Dan Kennedy with you. And shortly, our guest, Sally Hogshead, author of terrific book that you have seen me praise, Fascinate. Sally who is with us has done just a brilliant job. And you probably already know from memos that have been sent to you, but she basically helps companies like Starbucks and Microsoft, as well as entrepreneurs, figure out how to make themselves fascinating to their marketplaces.

However, the work goes far beyond business, has personal applications as well. You may have seen her on TV, Today Show, MSNBC, etc. So, Sally, thank you for being with us.

Sally Hogshead (2:00)

Dan, thank you for inviting me to join you. I appreciate it.

Dan Kennedy (2:03)

And I know you're eager to have as much time as possible, so I will skip pleasantries. We talked a little bit before the call started.

And I'll just start with some questions to kind of get into this. Great.

Sally Hogshead (2:17)

Bring it on.

Dan Kennedy (2:20)

One of the things that I noted sort of as the reason why this is all important is what you identified as the rise of the ADD world. And I wondered if you would just sort of set the stage by talking a little bit about that and why the whole issue of Fascination is now so critically important.

Sally Hogshead (2:44)

Sure, this comes down to the fact that we're all operating in an intensely competitive environment. We're competing not only with other companies and other, maybe even other people within our companies, but we're competing to be heard and we're competing to have our messages acted upon. This is every time we communicate, there's so many messages out there, so many things competing for our own attention that the most fascinating option, the most fascinating message will be the one that wins. It used to be 20 years ago that most of us had a pretty long attention span. The human attention span is generally about 20 minutes long or one minute long for every year that you are old until you're about 20 years old. So a five-year-old would have a five-minute attention span, a 10-year-old, 10 minutes and so on. But then this little thing came along, this thing you may have heard of named the Internet. And the Internet has literally changed our brains. It's hardwired our brains to take in information differently and make different choices about what we pay attention to and what we ignore or forget. And the BBC just released a study that the addictive nature of web browsing can leave you with an attention span, get this, of nine seconds.

Most people have an attention span of about nine seconds.

Now, nine seconds is about the same as a goldfish. So when you think about yourself as a marketer, putting these messages up there, you're not just talking to consumers who are willing to listen to you for 20 or 10 or even five minutes. You're dealing with people who are going to give you about nine seconds before their brains make a decision about whether or not they're going to focus on something else entirely. So the challenge becomes, how can you harness people's attention, excite them, connect with them, earn their trust within a short time span so that you fascinate them before they swim away to the other side of the goldfish bowl?

Dan Kennedy (4:46)

So the premise here, so it winds up you and I are in agreement. The premise is not to really deliver sales and marketing presentations that are too short to do any good and sacrifice efficacy. The job here is to find the right person and quickly fascinate them so that they will force themselves to pay attention or be compelled to pay attention.