“Everyone wants your attention, but not everyone deserves your attention.”

In this episode, author and keynote speaker Neen James explains the importance of using the lens of attention and how marketers can earn the attention of their audiences and improve their ROI.

Want more advice on how to get the best content marketing ROI? Sign up for our monthly podcast newsletter to get exclusive access to bonus interview content and resources!

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to earn your audience’s attention
• The three types of attention and how to apply them to your marketing work
• How to prioritize the way you spend your time to improve your ROI
• How conceptual models can help you get internal buy-in

Related links/resources:

• Michael Barber

• How to Win Friends and Influence People

• Attention Pays

• FoldingTimeBook.com

• How to Come Up With Countless Content Ideas (And Get Buy In For Them) [Podcast with Melanie Deziel]

• Neen’s Daily Tracker
• Asana
• MarketingProfs B2B Forum
• Ann Handley
• Jay Baer

Transcription:

Amanda: Hey, friends, welcome to Cashing in on Content Marketing, I’m Amanda Milligan, the marketing director of Fractl and every week on the show, I interview marketing experts about ways to know the value of your work and get buy-in for your strategies. This week, we’re exploring systems of attention with the one and only, Neen James, who is a keynote speaker, author, leadership coach, and much more. Welcome to the show Neen, so excited to have you.

Neen: What a treat to be able to serve your listeners. Now, I would not call myself a marketing expert, even though my MBA is in that, my gosh, things have changed so much since I did my MBA, but I’m delighted to serve in any way I can.

Amanda: Wonderful, you’re going to have so much fascinating insight, I’m 100% sure of that. So, you know, we’re talking before how your work is all based in attention, right. So, from a marketing standpoint, why is it important for marketers to be mindful about the way they spend their or pay their attention?

Neen: Well, think about it, yeah, Amanda, we’re in the attention business. This is our job. And marketers know that attention is about connection. And so, what we want to think about is all those impressions, those likes, those repost, those shares, all the things we’re craving for that engagement, we need to be able to not only capture the attention of people that we’re chatting to, but we need to be able to keep it, that’s the key. We want to create content, so they don’t just scroll on by, we want to grab their attention with the image, the quote, the thought, the video, we want to be able to stop the crazy scroll, and we want to be able to stop them and go, you know what, this is worth your attention. See, everybody wants your attention, but not everybody deserves your attention. And as marketers, we have to be able to produce quality that then ask people, hey, I think this is worth your attention, give us another look at that. And so, attention to me, I think what’s happened over the years Amanda is, attention gets a bad rep, right? Think about it. We get told to pay attention since we’re kids, like our parents tell us to pay attention, our teachers tell us to pay attention. If we have little people have very babies in our life, we’re like paying attention. We, the whole word attention has got this bad rep. You think about it on social media, people like ooh, she just wants attention, like, hold on a second, attention is something we crave as a baby, we learn, we cry, somebody picks us, first attention lesson right there as a baby, right? So, think about this, and how we can use that as marketers that we are tapping into something that we know is really important. But it’s also something we have to consider is, there are so many things competing for attention. There are so many things hijacking our attention. It means you have to be able to produce quality, not necessarily quantity in order to be able to capture and keep attention.

Amanda: Yeah, I’m really glad you brought that up. Because that was one of the things I was thinking about when watching your other interviews and such, which is like how powerful it is to ask for somebody whose time, that’s what we’re doing when we send them an email, we expect them to read our social posts or whatever it is, that we’re asking them, spend time out of your life consuming this information that we’re giving you. How can a marketer, I know we talked about like, okay, create something valuable, how can marketers better tune in to like what’s actually going to help somebody and make sure that they’re earning that time?

Neen: You know, I think there’s several points to this. In the marketing world, there is a genius brain by the name of Michael Baber, I love him. He’s so good at what he does, he’s an email genius. I mean, he’s a genius on multiple levels, if you’ve ever met him he’s good looking, doesn’t hurt either, such a great human. But you know, Michael really taught me some valuable lessons when it comes to email marketing as well. I hired him to help me really elevate the engagement. I had great engagement on my newsletter list, I was really pleased, and he was surprised at how I think surprised in comparison to other people in my industry about my open rate and the engagement that I got. But even working with professionals like Michael, I realized that there are so many things that are at play when it comes to attention, email marketing, for example, algorithms and all of the different things that are happening out in the world that it’s very different and you’ve got to be able to write say an email. For me, if you get an email from me, chances are honey, it’s exactly the same kind of language I’m going to use in an email as it is if you meet me at the bar, for champagne, after my keynote or if you run into me at the airport, like when we used to travel, at the time of recording, we’re in COVID, that’s not the case. But one thing that I think from a marketing point of view, Michael, and others who are genius, in their particular expertise, realize that you have to be able to not just write content that is worthy of being read. But you also have to capture someone’s attention through the visuals that you use so it’s appealing to their brain in that way. One thing that I’m fascinated about is the way people think, I’m so attracted to the way people think. And so, I find it really sexy when I see the way someone unpacks their thinking for someone. Marketers often need to showcase to the people that they’re serving. What are they thinking, teach people to think differently about your product or service, let them peek behind the curtain about why you created this, how you created it. That’s why people love those how-to videos, that’s why people love the Q&A with the actor after the movies being shot, you know, they like to peek behind the curtain. And that’s the beauty of using tools like an Instagram stories, your grid can look polished and pretty and fancy. But the stories, if you ever look at my Instagram, it’s all beautifully curated on the grid, you know what I mean? I use the tools and I spend time on that. But the story is loading, all bets are off. It’s what I’m cooking, it’s me on the boat, on a bike, whatever it is, right? Because I believe as marketers, we have to show the whole story, we have to show the humaneness behind it. People spend hours writing the perfect email and sometimes it comes out so perfect and polished that it loses its authenticity. And now at the time of recording, I am, I sound like I’m five to all your listeners but if you add a zero, that’s my real age. And but what I’ve realized is there’s a uniqueness to being Australian, sounding like I’m five, I’m 4’10 and a half, which you can’t tell on an email. But there are ways I can play with these unique attributes that are very authentic to me, I call everybody gorgeous. I always say, good day gorgeous at the beginning of an email, it’s a very standard thing. Now, I shouldn’t really admit that in public because people think it’s just them. But there’s way to brands that market is that you know whether you’re a freelancer, whether you’re an internal person, maybe you’re internal in an organization, there’s ways you can use tools that are at your disposal in more clever ways for the tension. Email is a great example, you’ll sign up, what is your out of office say? I think Tamsin Webster has one of the coolest sign offs, like out of office messages, Emma, she’s so smart, she has this beautiful product called the red thread, her out of office is another touch point for people. Marketers need to think about every touchpoint, whenever you get my, out of office, it’s something very cheeky, it’s probably naughty. It probably says something about champagne or my boat or something ridiculous, right? I have clients who send me notes knowing I’m on vacation just to see what my out of office is. Amanda, these are all the tough ones that we take, we just don’t even think about them. Think about, what’s that page where if you’ve got a website link that’s broken, is that a 404 page, is that the technical term, okay. So, like if you try something on my site, and you get my 404 page, it’s a funny photo that’s not anywhere else. And I love when there’s ways you can use attention and imagery and unique things as marketers. By the way, you don’t have to be a 50-year-old Australian who’s 4’10 and a half to make fun content. And it doesn’t always have to be fun. It has to be on brand. And that’s the key, I think. If you are a very serious lawyer and I have serious pharmaceutical clients and are very serious but there’s a beautiful consistency in their message that is authentic. 

Amanda: Right, that was the word I was going to say, it’s the authenticity side of things that will really resonate with you.

Neen: People know when you’ve taken a template and cut and pasted and stuck their name in there, right, they know. But if you want to get their attention, that level of customization is one of the keys to attention. Simple attention-grabbing strategies are using people’s names. You know that’s the simplest thing like the personalization and my gosh, the amount of templates you can create, the way that we can leverage technology to do that, there’s no excuse not to personalize. Dale Carnegie wrote a book that should be compulsory meeting for every marketer, and it’s called How to Win Friends and Influence People, written in the early 1900s. This advice is as true today as it was back then and Amanda, he said this, “a person’s name is the sweetest sound, it costs nothing for us to use people’s names in our materials, in our phone calls, in our social media posts, nothing and yet people love it. So, attention doesn’t have to cost you a lot, but it does connect at a deeper level. 

Amanda: Something, actually the main thing that really excites me about your expertise and applying it to this show is how many levels it does apply to for marketing because like we’re talking right now, right about how marketers can use this knowledge with their target audiences, with their customers and clients. But also, I feel like there’s a lot of application for like the marketer themselves and how they approach their own work, right? 

Neen: Oh my gosh, there is because when I wrote the book, Attention Pays, blatant self-promotion plug being inserted here and Attention Pays, is what I realized was, you know, I had written a book a while back called Folding Time, which let’s give all your listeners a free copy of that, all they have to do is go to foldingtimebook.com, and they can get the whole book for free. Okay, that’s it. And when I wrote that book, what I said in the Folding Time book was, you can’t manage time, but you can manage your attention. And that started me on this path of, time is going to happen, you and I said, whether you like it or not, you and I get 1440 minutes in a day, doesn’t care how long you’ve been in marketing, time doesn’t get what’s printed on your business card, time doesn’t even care if you have business. God, time is a great equalizer. So, you can’t manage time, but you can manage your attention. So, when I was researching my book, Attention Pays, what I discovered is, we pay attention in three ways. We pay attention personally, which is really about, that personal attention is about being thoughtful, this is about who deserves your attention, right? The second way we pay attention is professional attention, which is about being productive. This is about what deserves your attention. And then the third way we pay attention is global attention, which is about being a contributor, it’s about being responsible, it’s about how you’re paying attention in the world. So, personal, professional, global. And when you think about the way that the book has been divided, one of the contextual models we use in the book outlines that, as marketers, when we think about that we often have to think about who is the person that I’m serving or writing this for? What is it that they need to know and understand about us, our product or service or whatever it is? And how are we showing them that they are important and how what they’re going to be using from us or with us, is going to change their world, personal, professional, global, who deserves your attention, what deserves your attention and how you’re paying attention in the world? Every marketer can very easily apply my framework, when they sit down to write a blog, to post a tweet to create a video, to write a work paper, to create an FAQ document, to write an about-us page on the website. There are so many applications of this framework. 

Amanda: Absolutely. What about marketers who are thinking more, at the strategic planning level? I think I was struck by something you were saying where you recommended, everybody takes 15 minutes of themselves every day to check in, do you want to talk about that?

Neen: Yeah. So, I think the key to productivity is 15 minutes, nobody has an hour anymore, that’s stupid. Nobody takes a lunch hour, that’s dumb, that happened in the 80s, if anyone’s old enough on this call to remember. But the reality is that people are living these lives have permanent connection, right? So, we’re connected 24/7 and given that people’s situations environmentally have changed as well, because at the time of recording, people are predominantly working from home and they don’t have their routines that they were used to. Melanie Diezel did a great job on your podcast, if listeners haven’t heard that, definitely go back and have a listen to Melanie and the frameworks that she talks about. But what I realized in all my research is, Amanda, I tried everything, I tried every plant, every book, every app, I tried paper, I tried digital, I tried everything, and I realized the only thing that worked for me was if I could start to think about time in 15-minute increments. And then I realized a vital system of attention is what we call the 15-minute rule. One thing I’d encourage marketers to think about is at the top of every day, everyone listening to this, even if you’re not a marketer, can you invest a strategic appointment with yourself for 15 minutes every morning, at the top of your day, and what I’d love you to do is in your 15-minute appointment, I’d love you to identify your top three nonnegotiable activities. So, before your head hits the pillow tonight, what are three things you absolutely must get done and take it a step further, write them down, your brain is this amazing attention machine that craves completion and every time you ask your brain to do something or think about something, it’s like opening a new tab on your computer. Now, I don’t know about you but there’s a lot of tabs open in this little brain in mind sometimes, right? So, what’s really interesting is every time that you write something down and you cross it off, your brain gets so excited, and it gives you like a high five, like little shot of dopamine. It’s like yay, Amanda, go you, yay, you did it, you crossed it off. And because our brain is constantly craving this completion, the act of writing it down and crossing it off makes your brain feel safe. And you and I both know there are people listening to this call, this podcast and they’re thinking, yeah, sometimes I write things down just so I can cross them off. And you know what, me too, I do that as well. So, 15 minutes in the morning, your top three nonnegotiable activities, these are the things that will move you closer to the goals that you have. Now, I took it a step further, Amanda, I’m happy to share this with your listeners as well, I created my own daily tracker and so on my daily tracker now, what I’ve realized is it’s more than just the work I need to get done, I’ve got to look after my body, I’ve got to make sure I drink water, nowadays, you got to take vitamins drink water, move your body, there are a 1000 things you’re supposed to remember in a day. So, I created a daily tracker. And my daily tracker focuses on my top three non-negotiables, but it also has little checkboxes. Did you drink enough water? Did you work out? And then I have other things on there? Did I meditate? Did I read something? Did I call someone? Did I send a love note to someone? I believe in writing a handwritten note every day, did I post something on social, did I promote someone because I also believe I have a responsibility to promote others every day. And so, this is my daily tracker, we can put that in the show notes for people who want to be able to download that

Amanda: I want to be able to download that.

Neen: So, many clients have success with this. And believe me, if you have a system of attention that works for you, do it, use it. But my challenge was all the app related ones Amanda, I’d be like on the app, very diligent for the first two days and then I’d be like, oh, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, oh, like, so distracted. All the things I teach my clients not to do, so that’s why I have stepped away from digital tools. And then I love tools like Asana, you know, that’s a great tool that Michael had recommended to me. And it’s great, except when I’m on my laptop, then I’m like, oh, maybe I should write and I’m sure the people listening understand that. And by the way, people listening, I’m a so-called attention expert so I’ve written books on this, nine books on this very topic and I still struggle with these things. So, people need to know that I haven’t mastered this. But one thing that has worked for me is this daily tracker and the key is the 15 minutes system. 15 minutes in the morning, identify what your focus is, and here’s why I want you to write them down, Amanda, they become your decision filtering system. All day you see those three things and they’re going to remind you; do you really want to be spaced out scrolling on Instagram or do you want to be achieving things and crossing them off your list? So, it just brings us back and our attention back? 

Amanda: Yeah, you answered one of my other questions with that answer, which is basically how you can be more accountable to your own marketing objectives and this completely went itself through that.

Neen: Oh my gosh, two things. Yes, absolutely write it down but accountability, my belief is public accountability drives private accountability. So, you as a marketer, just knowing what your objectives are, that’s great and when your performance review comes around, or your client update or the debrief, you know, if the proposal is done, then sure, you talk about it. But I want to add another layer, Amanda, the second strategy I want marketers to think about is, who is your accountability partner, I’ve had the privilege of having a phenomenal accountability partner for the past five years, every Monday, I send her my goals, every Friday, I send her an update. Now, my goals at the time of recording are double pages, because at the time of recording, it’s like nearly the holidays, right? So, wherever you listen to this, whether it’s years in the future, you know that you have this mental to do list, you have all these things you want to get done in the week. So, now what I do is I send her my email every Monday and then I tell her how I did every Friday, she does the same for me. That level of accountability, honey, on a Thursday night, sometimes I am frantically trying to cross things off that list, but it pushes me to do it because I want to be a person of integrity. I want to do what I said I would do. It used to be just professional, Amanda when we started it and then we realize it’s not just our professional lives that are important, it’s our personal lives too. So, one thing I’d encourage marketers to think about is, can you get someone to help you be accountable, declare what you’re going to do, if you’re going to do some extra research, or you’re going to do some AB testing or if you’re going to shoot a video series, tell someone what you’re going to do, by when and how you’re going to deliver it because you don’t want to let them down. You’ll happily let yourself down. You’ll happily bypass a deadline that you set because you’re like no, I didn’t tell anyone. But the moment you make it public, the moment you’ll achieve it. Public accountability drives private accountability, and it helps direct your attention. That’s another system of attention as accountability partners.

Amanda: That’s so relatable. Just listening to this, I’m like yeah, I always need somebody to be able to hold me accountable for something because I can let myself down so easily but anybody else…

Neen: We think about January right in the freezing cold, you set these stupid New Year’s resolutions, you’re going to lose 10 pounds or drink more water, stop smoking, whatever your thing is, right? And then so you join a gym, right? Think about this, if people listening have ever been involved in the gym, you cannot get a car space in the first few weeks of January in the gym, because everybody has decided that’s their new year’s resolution. And if it’s cold, and you’re on the East Coast and it’s 6 AM, you’re like, oh, it’s too cold. But you’re like I told my friend, Amanda I would meet her at this class, so I have to show up. Because if I tell you, I’m going to show up, I will but if I’m not meeting Amanda, I’ll be like, oh, it’s cold and go back to sleep, because you know what, nobody knows. So, what I want people to think about as you’re not alone, if you are facing some of these challenges, but you need to put systems of attention in place to not only help you stay more accountable, but also to drive your productivity and the profitability of your business or your business unit. You might be an internal marketer, right so you might be trying to get the buy-in of your leadership team or being, you might be in a matrix organization where you’ve got to lobby multiple people for an initiative and get their buy-in for things. If you have accountability partners in place, if you have plans in place, if you have systems of attention in place, you’re more likely to achieve those goals of getting quicker buy-in. I was coaching one of my executives in a manufacturing firm this morning and she had a huge presentation to do, was a very, shall we say sticky topic in this particular company. And she had to present to the executive leadership team, and I had suggested I need you to go and have one on one meetings with every single one of these, I need you to position it, this is the language, this is the model, this is the Q&A, this is the FAQs, like all the tools, right? So, basically, she did 12 hours of work for a 25-minute presentation. Because one on ones with all these leaders, right? In the room, she had all these advocates built, she had people who had already bought in, she had one person super resistant in the meeting and everyone pounced on them, because she’d done the work in advance. As marketers, we have to think really differently about what kind of strategies we need so that when the client sees your proposal, they should be able to say, of course, of course, because they already bought-in, they shouldn’t be shocked by the sticker price are shocked by the deliverables are shocked by how long it’s going to take. You need to really pay it attention in advance of all those touch points so that proposal or that email, or that presentation, or that video delivery is just the final delivery where they go, of course, it’s perfect. I love it. But if you are internal as a marketer, you’ve got to work even harder, especially in a matrix organization to get buy-in and to build advocates internally.

Amanda: I’m really glad you brought this subject up because you mentioned that it would be good for us to talk in this episode about contextual models. Can you tell us why those are so important and why they can help marketers get that kind of buy-in? 

Neen: You know, it’s so funny you and I met at the lovely Ann Handley marketing props conference and she is, we’ve already established one of my gold crashes and if you want to follow a genius marketing minds, I do love Ann Handley, she was a great speaker and one of the things she did was she invited me to keynote her event, which is such a privilege. The legendary Jay Baer and I were her conference keynotes, and we had a blast, I love him. And one of the things I did on stage was a contextual model, I bought someone out of the audience, it was random, and I drew a model on the stage and showed everyone how to position themselves very easily using this, what I call an attention matrix. It’s a framework. And everyone in the audience is like, oh my gosh, like wow, right? My belief is contextual models are what I call idea shaping, is really important. Because if people can see your idea, they can hear your idea. If they can hear your idea, they can share your idea. And that’s what we want as marketers, we want people to not only grabbing capture their attention, but we also want them to take a step further and say, hey, did you see this repost this, we email this, forward this, tell someone to subscribe to this. And so, the beauty of contextual models is that they can communicate often quite complex things in beautiful visuals. Now we have contextual models around this, Amanda, think about the late Stephen Colby, he had this concept of urgent versus important and it’s a quadrant model. If you think about, if anyone did psych as part of their marketing degree, we learn about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is what a triangle right? If you think about the food pyramid, well, it’s a little outdated now but the concept is a pyramid. We have contextual models all around us, and great marketers and great leaders, they know that a contextual model will elevate their intellectual property it will make them stand out, a great contextual model will be able to grab the attention of your clientele and be able to help them understand what you’re thinking, saying, doing what you want them to think, they can represent processes, they can represent concepts. And last night, I was working on a contextual model with the CEO of a wealth management company, and he had this very convoluted concept, process, and it was in his collaterals and I was like, whoa, like, I don’t get it, like, what are you trying to tell me? And he was trying to tell me everything and then I said, look, I said, would you consider an alternative? Would you be open to a different way of and he was like, yes. Well, I got to tell you, Amanda, we landed on this beautiful, elegant, if I do say so myself, amazing model, will totally transform his conversations, because now it will appeal at many, many levels, not just to his avatar, not just to his type of clientele but he can use it across different verticals, he can use it in a speech, on a website, on a napkin, in a prospecting meeting. Great contextual models help people see ideas, so they can hear them, hear them, so they can share them. Isn’t that what we want as marketers?

Amanda: That’s fantastic. How does somebody go about knowing how to build that kind of a contextual model? 

Neen: So, you can cheat, you can go to my website, and like Google, I do shape, you’ll find that I have a work paper there. And if you can’t find that, let me know, we’ll obviously get it to you. But there’s a couple of steps to creating a contextual model, right? So, now that you’ve got your head around the fact that you agree with me, you need a contextual model, right? The first thing you want to think about is when you’re thinking about your model, is it going to be a process model or a value model, meaning is it going to show a process you’re going to take a client through or is it be a concept about some sort of value you’re going to deliver? And that will help dictate what kind of shape? So, the second part is what shape? Is it a square, a circle or a triangle? It’s that simple. What’s a rectangle? It’s kind of a swoosh square, you know. So, when you really think about, we have these models around us all the time, we’re often putting pie charts or bar charts in client proposals, right? And so, we use contextual models, but being able to represent a concept in a shape, that’s what you want to think about. What does this shape, what does this concept feel like? I always think that circles for example, think about, remember back in school, where we had to learn what a Venn diagram is and I’m like drawing the circles and everyone now is drawing the three circles and that’s one thing you remember from geometry, right, is that three circles intersecting is called a Venn diagram, right? And that the whole idea behind that is where they intersect is one of the most important points, right? So, when I think about ideas intersecting, or concepts that rely on each other, a Venn diagram makes sense to me, makes even more sense if people are involved. Because I think of circles is like a cuddle, right, like a hug and so when I’m representing concepts around people, they tend to lend themselves to a circle. If you think about a hierarchy, where you’re trying to get people to a certain point, that often lends itself to a triangle. Often, if you’re comparing ideas, one against the other, it tends to lend itself to a square, square, circles and triangles, right? So, the second step is just what kind of shape does it feel like and then you think about, well, what’s your model trying to do? What’s your point, right? And then you can start to think about the language that sits in a model. So, I have a language like many marketers, I love alliteration. Oh my gosh, I get so excited about alliteration, which I may overdo occasionally. But I think that idea shaping, all you want to think about is what kind of model you’re trying to create, what is the shape and what’s the point of it? What kind of words support that, just see if we can work it out. But I love contextual modeling. That’s something I love doing with people one on one.

Amanda: Yeah, I’ve never heard that explain so well, and so succinctly. And I think just having those steps can really help you communicate something that might feel very complex in your mind, to making theories simple and easy for somebody to comprehend.

Neen: And it elevates your sales conversations and elevates your collaterals. And I’ve noticed when I started putting a contextual model in the back of my RFPs, many, many years ago, and I’m a keynote speaker predominantly, that’s what I do, right. And so, but me and 10 other speakers are being considered for the same conference, when I started to put my contextual models in the back as an appendix of my RFPs, or the proposal for the client, it close up astronomically, because the client was like, huh, she knows what she’s talking about. She has substance, you know, she’s actually written books about this. And when people download the folding time book I referenced earlier, just go to page 27, you’ll see that entire book is written around that contextual model on page 27. So, you can use it, you can start with a model and then unpack the model as a white paper as a book, you know, as a slide deck, there’s so many uses for contextual models Amanda,

Amanda: This was so fascinating. I can’t believe we’re already over time. Neen, one question I asked everybody is usually kind of a random one. It’s about creativity, I like asking people, my 2021 question for people is going to be, what advice do you have for people to kind of explore their creativity a little bit and maybe in the context of this is how do you give some time to more creative pursuits rather than like all just very planning or strategic?

Neen: Yeah, well, I would say, first thing, don’t ever tell me you’re not creative, because that’s stupid, like, that’s dumb. Everyone is creative, right. But if you really want to elevate your creativity, some fun things to try is switching on different parts of your brain. For example, if you always brush your teeth with one hand, try brushing your teeth with the other hand, if you brush your hair a certain way, switch hands and try that, switch on different parts of your brain. If you always drive your car, a certain route to get to somewhere, try a different route and take notice of things, right. So, you can start to tune your attention in your brain and differently by tricking it and doing different things. But what I would love people to try is grab a white sheet of paper, just a blank sheet of paper, zero-based thinking, everyone knows about zero-based thinking, which is really just a fancy name for if you start from zero, what does that look like, right? And then take my challenge, take one idea from your particular offering, maybe it’s a product or service or process and see what shape could you draw? What’s the first shape that comes to mind, right? Then test your creativity, make 15 minutes or so you need, 15 minutes, blank sheet of paper and the pen and sit down and then just draw a shape and think, hmm, what would that shape look like to my client? What would be important for them to understand, maybe you stick some words on it, maybe it even gets even fancier. Maybe you add some arrows, imagine that and then you have a contextual model, you are creative, you just need to invest 15 minutes to try it out, another system of attention.

Amanda: Love that, you’ve tied it all together. It’s the perfect way to end the show. But I do have one more question, which is knowing the objective of this podcast, who would you recommend to-be guests on future episodes?

Neen: Oh, I have a list. If you haven’t already had Michael Barber, he is an email marketing genius and a good human as I said. Phil Jones would be a great person for people to listen to his book, learning what to say is one I prescribed to every one of my CEOs that I coach, and he also has some phenomenal language that marketers can start to include to be more influential in their conversations. I also think Erin King, if you haven’t had Erin King on the podcast, she’s a social media guru but she has written a book called Digital Persuasion. She has a new book coming out in the new year, which I’m very excited about for her and she is heaps of fun, super smart and I think your listeners would love her. So, Michael Barber, Phil Jones, Erin King, I think because you’ve already had rock stars like Tamsin Webster on the show. So, I think your listeners would love them, and I’m sure they would deliver enormous value for you.

Amanda: Thank you so much Neen for the recommendations. But more importantly, for coming on the show, for giving us your time, sharing your insights, you’re a delight to talk to, this has been so nice, thank you.

Neen: It was an absolute privilege too and thanks for inviting me on. 

Amanda: If you’ve listened to this and want even more tips, sign up for our podcast newsletter by going to the podcast page on the Fractl website. And if you’ve learned anything from this show, we’d love it if you’d subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and leave a review. Finally, if you have any feedback, suggestions, ideas, shoutouts requests, board game recommendations or explanations as to why I’m always checking Twitter trending topics and then immediately regretting it, or anything you’d like to share with me, shoot me an email at [email protected]. I’m a shameless extrovert who would love to hear from you. Thank you to Sean Kelly for podcast music and editing and to Joao Pererya for logo design. And thank you, dear listener, I hope you’ll join us next time.