Sam Horn is an Intrigue Expert, a world-renowned author, keynote speaker, and communications strategist. She’s a woman who deeply cares about helping entrepreneurs and leaders communicate more effectively and in her Paper Napkin Wisdom she warns us: “If you’re not intriguing… you’re out of sight, out of mind.”
There’s little doubt that in this new media society the constant assault on our senses has created a dynamic in which it’s hard to get someone’s attention and even harder to keep them interested. Sam tells us that in order to break through that noise we need to make ourselves intriguing. “When we’re intriguing,” says Sam “it’s a win for us and everyone we meet, everyone around us.”

It’s about connecting

Sam says that being intriguing is about connecting with people, and talking about things that are mutually beneficial and rewarding. Are you worth people’s valuable time and mind space? How can you take responsibility for making every conversation with somebody a win for both parties involved? These are the questions Sam wants us to be asking ourselves. “People fail to recognize,” says Sam “that if we can’t connect quickly with people, we’re alone.” If we can’t capture someone’s interest initially, they aren’t listening to us, they’re waiting for us to stop talking and that benefits no one.

“If we can’t connect quickly with people, we’re alone.”

As Sam explains the way in which we can make ourselves more intriguing and capture the attention of those around us, it becomes clear that we need to shift the way we approach conversation. It can be so difficult to articulate our thoughts. As entrepreneurs, we often have a vast scope of perspective that can be difficult to translate to anyone who isn’t in our particular line of work. Sam helps us distill that and make it possible for us to make ourselves understood to those around us. She encourages us to switch from trying to explain what we do to explaining how it benefits the person we’re talking to. The advice is a valuable; if we can’t explain ourselves to the people around us, we’re alone. So much of what we do as entrepreneurs hinges on teamwork and the connections we have to people around us, we have every reason to make ourselves as intriguing as possible.
Listen to my conversation with Sam here:

Books by Sam Horn:
POP!: Stand Out in Any Crowd
What’s Holding You Back?
Tongue Fu!: How to Deflect, Disarm and Defuse Any Verbal Conflict
Take the Bully by the Horns