Ep 292: How to Read People with Vanessa Van Edwards

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Being an entrepreneur and launching a new business is a daunting task and having a brilliant idea is only the beginning.

Your soft skills and leadership qualities play a huge role in the future success of your business, especially since you need to build meaningful connections and a robust network if you want your business to grow and thrive.

Here today to help us make sense of this essential topic is Vanessa Van Edwards.

She is a celebrated author, keynote speaker, and recovering awkward person, who has helped thousands of individuals learn crucial interpersonal skills and become charismatic speakers.

In our conversation, we delve into her new book Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication, why she wrote it, and the years of scientific research behind its ideas.

Vanessa breaks down the four key ways that we broadcast our cues and explains why charisma is the perfect combination of warmth and competence.

We also discuss how understanding these cues can help you interact with people, why it’s important, and how you can utilize your charisma to better represent your product and yourself, both in your content and in person.

Make sure you tune in to gain crucial insight into what charisma truly means, in life and business!

KEY POINTS FROM THIS EPISODE

  • Introducing today’s guest, Vanessa Van Edwards.
  • An overview of Vanessa’s latest book Cues and why she wrote it.
  • The important moment when Vanessa first took note of the power of a non-verbal cue.
  • How Vanessa conducted research for Cues over the course of 17 years.
  • A breakdown of the four ways that we broadcast our cues: non-verbal, vocal, verbal, and imagery.
  • How to break down someone’s cues to help you interact with them.
  • Why being both warm and competent results in being charismatic.
  • How to communicate warmth and confidence in your writing, online, and in sales.
  • Examples of how recognizing and reacting to cues can help you during a sales call.
  • Learn the process Vanessa follows for her book launches.
  • The role that YouTube plays in Vanessa’s book launches and exposure.
  • How to use online tools to optimize your success on YouTube.
  • Why every entrepreneur should be on YouTube.

TWEETABLE MOMENTS

“Highly charismatic, people have the perfect blend of warmth and competence.” — @vvanedwards [0:06:55]

“We like people who answer the two questions, ‘Can I trust you? And can I rely on you?’” — @vvanedwards [0:07:28]

“I think that every single entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter what you do, you should have a YouTube presence.” — @vvanedwards [0:24:21]

“What I teach all my writers is we are aggressively helpful, relentlessly helpful.” — @vvanedwards [0:29:34]

About Vanessa Van Edwards

Vanessa is Lead Investigator at Science of People. She is the bestselling author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, translated into 16 languages, and Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication. More than 50 million people watch her engaging YouTube tutorials and TEDx Talk.

Vanessa shares tangible skills to improve interpersonal communication and leadership, including her insights on how people work. She’s developed a science-based framework for understanding different personalities to improve our EQ and help us communicate with colleagues, clients, and customers.

Vanessa works with entrepreneurs, growing businesses, and trillion-dollar companies; and has been featured on CNN, BBC, CBS Mornings, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, USA Today, The Today Show, and many more.

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Vanessa Van Edwards

Vanessa Van Edwards on YouTube

Vanessa Van Edwards on LinkedIn

Vanessa Van Edwards on Twitter

Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People

Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication

Ahrefs

Moz

Qaya

AJ Vaden on LinkedIn

AJ Vaden on Twitter

Rory Vaden

Rory Vaden on LinkedIn

Rory Vaden on Twitter

Take the Stairs

Brand Builders Group

Brand Builders Group Free Call

Brand Builders Group Resources

The Influential Personal Brand Podcast on Stitcher

The Influential Personal Brand Podcast on Apple

RV (00:02): Vanessa van Edwards. I met her, we shared the stage together at GLS global leadership summit. She was awesome. She got amazing feedback, you know, from close friends and clients, people that I love and trust. I started following her, checking out what she’s into and the more I get to meet her, the more I think she’s just awesome. She’s got great content. We’re gonna talk about, we’re gonna talk about that a little bit today. So she has a new book out called cues. So her first book was called captivate. The science of succeeding with people it’s translated into 16 languages. She’s had more than 50 million people watch her videos on YouTube and her Ted talk. She has a massive YouTube channel, hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Mm-Hmm , she’s been featured in, you know, fast company, entrepreneur USA today, all, all the big ones she spoke at south by Southwest MIT, CES, Google, Facebook. And so I wanna hear about cues and, and we’ll talk about that. And we’ll, we’ll also get some behind the scenes from her, cuz she’s really, really good at what she does, but Ette Edwards. Welcome. Hello. VVE (01:08): Thank you so much for having me. It’s so great to be back with you and talk about everything. You know, I love a cue. You send good cues, worry. I love your RV (01:16): Cues. You do. Oh, what is okay. Tell us. Okay. So tell us cues, tell us about the, so this is the new book and yes. And everything you do is basically science backed communication skills ish, right? VVE (01:29): Oh man. That’s it. That’s it. So, yes. So I’m a recovering awkward person. So I learn social skills and communication with black and white formulas blueprints. I like to lay it out. And so this journey for this book, so a queue is a social signal, human sent to each other. I never thought I would write this book. I never thought I would write it. This was a, a secret science that I was embarrassed about. Like it started off for my own use. And I’ll tell you the moment it started. So 17 years ago, I was in my, the peak of my awkward stage and I was watching Lance Armstrong on Larry King live. And Larry King asked Lance Armstrong, have you ever DOD? Now spoiler alert. Lance was doping. But in this interview he told a flat out outline. He said, Nope, I’ve never DOD. VVE (02:16): And then right after he said it, he did a lip purse. He pressed his lips into a firm line. Hmm. He pressed his lips down together. And I remember watching that interview and thinking, what was that? Like? My spy sense knew something was off, but that specific cue, I didn’t even know it was called the queue back then says, what was that? So I began to look in the research. What is that body language gesture. It turns out that is a universal sign of withholding. When humans wanna hold something back or keep it together or keep it in liars often do it. They press their lips together. We press their lip together to say, don’t say it don’t get yourself in RV (02:49): Trouble. Interesting. Interesting. I VVE (02:51): Was like, what? And so I started to see this lip purse on people, in shame, people in people who were lying. And I wondered, okay, what if we could study humans? Like we study foreign languages where we break down behavior into specific cues, into our trust cues, our power cues, our danger zone cues, our trust, our, our charisma cues. And that’s exactly what this book was. I was spent the last 17 years cataloging all these queues, seeing if we could learn to speak them. RV (03:25): So , I love, I was taking notes here the 17 years. You’re cataloging these. Yes. VVE (03:33): Yes. RV (03:33): Are they all physical? I mean, are, is that like, like, will you, cause when you say study it like a language, you know, when I hear like science back communication, a lot of times it’s like your voice and your, you know, you’re you’re but are these like more like gestures conscious or subconscious gestures? VVE (03:49): That’s a great question. So in the beginning it started off as all gestures. I was like, okay, nonverbal, right? Facial expression, gestures, posture, movement, eyebrow raises. Right. But then I realize, and the research actually backs us up as well is there’s actually different ways that we sh broadcast our cues. There’s four of them. So the first one is non-verbal and that’s actually the biggest 60 to 90% of our communication is non-verbal. And when I say that, people are always shocked. But think about, if someone were to say that they were fine, I’m fine. And hold like a really angry face. You would know they were not fine. In other words, we give more weight it’s nonverbal. So that’s the biggest one. The second one is vocal. So how we deliver our birds words, our pace, our cadence, our volume, our pitch. So how we say our words is just important as what we say, the third one is verbal. VVE (04:35): So the actual words we we use, of course, that’s how we communicate lots of cues and the hidden signals in our words. And I have a whole chapter on sort of the secret things you can find out about someone’s charisma, simply based on the words they use in emails. And the last one, the one that’s forgotten is imagery. The colors we wear the props in our background, what we’re carrying in our profile photo even personality, even fonts have personality. The props that we use and jewelry wear. So imagery is the last small one. RV (05:04): Mm-Hmm . So you said that I have good cues. Are there, are you reading me? Is there something that I’m, that I do that I, well, VVE (05:14): Right now you’re you just got RV (05:16): Nervous, not fixing my hair. You VVE (05:17): Just got nervous. I saw RV (05:19): It cause you’re reading me VVE (05:21): Well a little bit. I can’t help it once. So this is a blessing and a curse. I will warn you. I should actually, I thought about having a warning at the beginning of the book and my publisher said no, which was that these cues, once you see them, you cannot unsee them. so once you there’s 96 of them, right? They’re very learnable. Once you begin to learn, then you see them everywhere and you can’t really turn it off, which is both a blessing and a curse. So yes, the very first time I met you, you immediately broadcast the two most important types of cues. So there’s four different ways that we communicate our cues. But the next thing we have to understand is what are we looking for as humans when we’re interacting? Like, you know, we’re listening to this show, we hop on a video call. When we meet someone in person, how do we break down someone’s cues in a way that actually helps us interact with them. And it turns out this is research from Princeton university. They found that very, very highly charismatic people. The people that we love to be around, the people that we’re we’re, we’re drawn to. I think that it were, you are a very highly charismatic person. The reason why they’re yes. Oh yes. The reason why you’re highly charismatic. If I, if, if you would let me break you down for RV (06:23): A second. Don’t me break me down. Break me down sister. VVE (06:26): Okay. Let’s do it. So the reason why highly charismatic people are so charismatic is because they are purposefully sending off very positive cues of two traits. And this is exactly what the researchers found. Highly charismatic people have the perfect blend of warmth and competence that when we’re interacting RV (06:44): With competence with a VVE (06:45): P competence with a P not confidence, that’s, that’s, that’s a, RV (06:49): Yeah, that’s a big distinction. That’s an important distinction. It’s VVE (06:51): A really important thing. It’s not confidence. It’s competence. In other words, really highly charismatic. People are at the very same time, warm, open, collaborative, trustworthy, likable, but at the same time, they’re also competent, powerful, efficient, impressive, and productive. And the reason for that is because we like people who answer the two questions. Can I trust you? And can I rely on you? And so when I first met you, you were broadcasting. I think you might do it subconsciously. Cause since you haven’t read, I haven’t cues just came out. So I don’t think you read that one yet, is that you naturally are picking these cues that are both trustworthy and very competent, which makes me want to talk to you, engage with you, makes me wanna level up with you. And that’s because when we’re around care about people, we wanna catch that charisma. We like to, we feel like it rubs off on us too. RV (07:43): So what are some of the cues let’s talk about? Buying signals. Okay. Yeah. So if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a personal brand. You may be a CPA or financial advisor, real estate mortgage, or maybe you’re a coach and you’re, you know, trying to go like, is this person ready to buy? Like those are classic cues. And that’s, you know, the world we came from was, is sales. And that’s part of it probably where I developed this, these learning queues is I knocked on, I knocked on over 20,000 doors. Like I did five years of knocking on doors. Right? So you, you pick up some of these things. What, what can I look for that tells me that somebody’s ready to buy, they’re ready to book me for the interview. They’re ready to buy my, my keynote or buy my book or buy my service or what, what am I looking for? VVE (08:31): Okay. So before we even get to that, I’m gonna make a really big statement, which is starts with a corny metaphor, which is that very, very brilliant people have, are it’s impossible for them to share their ideas if they have bad cues. And the way that I think about this as a metaphor is that if your ideas are a car, cues are a gas and this is the problem with really smart entrepreneurs, really smart business people is they have great ideas, a great product, a great service, and they cannot get it to move. They literally cannot get the gas for that car. And that is because really smart people rely too much on their ideas. I think. Well, my idea is great. I don’t have to worry about how I talk about it, cuz the idea is so good that it will just speak for itself. VVE (09:11): That does not work. Our ideas have to have cues deal to communicate. And so the very first thing that we think about before you even look for buying signals, which we can talk about is you need to make sure your website, your LinkedIn profile, your social media profile pictures, all are signaling or broadcasting, warmth and competence, your digital first impression when someone Googles you or they look at your LinkedIn profile, they look at your website. I actually count on our website, how many warmth and competence queues we have. I’ll give you a really basic example of how this works. Warmth are things that create the warm and fuzzies for us. Their stories they’re relatable, they’re likable. Competence are data, research, numbers, proof recommendations. So Casper mattress is one case study that I like to use. Cause it’s very, very easy way to think about this. VVE (10:00): Cause the reason I think that Casper blew up, I mean literally just destroyed the mattress market is not only because they have a great mattress. There’s been a lot of great matches in the past. But remember that’s like having a really good idea, not knowing how to share it. If you look at Casper’s website, they have the perfect balance of warmth sales cues and competent sales queues. Their tagline is obsessively engineered at outrageous comfort. Those are two. So talking about words, right words can also be warm and competent, competent words make us wanna do things. They make us wanna achieve things. Warm words make us feel good. So obsessively engineered are two competent cues. We like things that have a lot of research done, balanced with outrageous comfort and that makes us feel good. So their tagline is the perfect balance of warm and competent. VVE (10:50): If you go down their website, you’ll see pictures of kids jumping on beds, warm proof of our Casper labs with guys in lab coats, competent quote from Vogue about how your bed is your new desk. Funny, warm research, five stars, right from consumer reports, competent, warm clouds and pictures of people sleeping, warm comp like right? So you literally all the way down the website, you see this perfect balance that is tingling something deep inside of us as humans of I can trust this brand and I can rely on this brand. Does that make sense? That kind of breakdown. RV (11:31): Totally. Yeah. I mean that, that, that’s fascinating, right? I mean, if you’re gonna hire somebody, I mean, even if you think about how am I gonna, if I’m gonna hire someone to do a job, it’s like, can they do the job and am I gonna like working with them? Like it’s pretty much, what else is there? Are they gonna do a great job? And am I, are they not gonna annoy me? And like, you know, are they gonna, are they gonna be reliable and dependable and, and yes. And show up? I think that’s, I think that’s really fascinating. So, you know, cause that would translate to hiring. And so, you know, the way I process what you just said in the, in, in the reverse of, of sales is to go, what can I do to make myself more attractive in what I’m selling is, is go. So if I’m talking, then that means I’m using customer testimonials and stories and our purpose and our why. And then the competence is like how many clients we’ve worked with and the results we’ve achieved. And the testimonials VVE (12:25): Got five star test, five star testimonials all the media outlets, right? Like, so even my bio, right? You read that at the very start that if you count the number of warm and competent queues, you’ll find a perfect balance. So like science to people, my company’s name is very competent. I did that on purpose because I know women tend to default to higher and warmth. That’s just a, a, a basic gender difference. And so I knew that I had to use, I have to use a little more data, a little more research, a little more science to sort of balance out that natural aspect of who I am. So science of people, then the media logos, the media mentions, those are competent helping people that’s warm. Right. So exactly. As you mentioned, you’re balancing that out on the queues side for your buyers. So there’s two sides of queues, decoding and encoding. We’ve been talking about encoding, the signals you’ve sent to others. What’s just as important though, is decoding making sure you’re spotting the right queues in your, in your folks. Here’s my favorite sales queue where I would say customer report queue. If we don’t even say sales, which is the lower lid flex, I know this is a really weird one, but the lower lid flexes, we harden our lower lids as if we’re like swinging to see something better. Just your lower lids. There you go. RV (13:33): Your lower eyelids, VVE (13:34): Lower eyelid. Yeah. So if you, so if you try to see something across the room, you’ll harden, your lower lids. This is a natural biological response. And what research has found, the reason all humans do this across genders and cultures and races is because when we’re trying to see more detail, our lids close to block out the light, to see more detail, they found that when people are listening and their brain just went from listening to doubting or listening to scrutinizing are lower. Lids will flex as if our body’s going. I don’t know about that. This is the single biggest missed queue in sales. If you were on video call or you were in person, you’re going through your pitch, you’re sharing your great idea and you see that lower lid, flex pause, stop and ask questions. Does that make sense? Does that all good? You know, let me explain something else here. How’s that sound to you? You are going to get right in that moment. Any doubt, the biggest problem for sales folks are entrepreneurs is they don’t realize why they didn’t get the job. You know, they, they think it went well, they leave. And they’re like, why didn’t I get the job? Why didn’t they say yes, it’s probably because you missed that little lower lid flex. It’s signaled literally a, a, a Twitch in their brain that went, I dunno about that. RV (14:47): So you’re saying that that is a sign of skepticism. VVE (14:51): Yes. It’s a sign of, RV (14:52): So like when you focus, it’s like, you know, it’s like a side eye, VVE (14:57): It’s a side eye. It’s like, so yes. And it’s also it’s right before skepticism. So the nice thing about it is it just means intensity intense focus. So if you stop and you address it, you can actually prevent a future. No. Or skepticism from coming. We in our lab, we analyzed, you know, the show RV (15:14): Shows, I love that. That’s really, that’s really huge and important. VVE (15:18): It’s so powerful. It’s so powerful. And you see it now, you’ll see it all the time. You can see it on video too, which is amazing. RV (15:22): It’s like I critical, but I’m not yet skeptical. But if I catch you, if I catch you while you’re critical, I can win you back. VVE (15:31): There you go. Exactly. Right. So we saw this on we an I love the show shark tank, which is a show obviously where me RV (15:37): Too. VVE (15:38): I love, love that show. So we analyzed 495 shark tank pitches. It was thousands and thousands of hours of data looking for patterns. Was there things that successful entrepreneurs did in the tank that were more likely to get them a deal? And we noticed, and again, we’re, we’re looking at the show and you see a lot of cut footage, but on shark tank, the successful entrepreneurs would spot a shark, hardening their lower lids and then address their concern. Right? Kevin, you know, I see that you’re skeptical. Let me bring up some more data for you or Laurie. You know, I know this is a surprise for you, but here’s what we’re planning. We really wanna work with you. They were a dynamic on their feet, the worst pictures. And I, I talk about this a lot in the book. I break down Jamie Simoff shark tank pitch who pitched ring in the tank. VVE (16:23): So ring is a billion dollar company. He pitched ring in the shark tank and it completely bombed. This is what’s critically important is Jamie. Simoff had a billion dollar idea, right? Amazon acquired it for a billion dollars. Richard Branson invested Shaq invested, but he went on shark tank with this brilliant billion dollar idea. And it totally bombed that is because our ideas cannot stand by themselves. He delivered it so poorly without competence and warmth cues that everyone was out. And a couple years later, he came back into this shark tank as a, as an investor. So what happened in that pitch is he actually gave away all of his competence and warmth. He wanted his idea to speak for itself. But even though this company had amazing numbers and amazing growth, they could not buy into the idea because his cues were so bad. RV (17:10): What are some of the other common cues let’s go back to end coding. So what are the other common mistakes that people send? Like you might be on a first date, you might be trying to make a sales call. You might be trying to, you know, get a job. VVE (17:24): Let’s talk about what Jamie’s seminar should have done. Right? So like this is his pitch is so demonstrative. So end coding on the end coding side, the very first few words out of your mouth. So that could be hello. That could be, my name is Rory. That could be so good to see you. Okay. So the first 10 words out of your mouth are incredibly important for your vocal. First impression we are listening for confidence cues. I do say confidence with an F confidence. That is because when we hear someone who’s anxious, we don’t wanna catch it. And so we’re in the first 10 seconds, we’re listening for any vocal anxiety. The biggest way we give away our vocal anxiety is we use the question inflection on a statement. So Jamie’s seminar. He way he did this is he entered the tank where he knocked on the door. VVE (18:08): So he closed the doors to the tank and he knocked on the door cause he was trying to show like a doorbell. So he knocked on the door and his first line was this it’s Jamie here to pitch. So the question inflections, we go up at the end of our sentence, as if we’re asking a question, the problem is, is research has found this when people hear the question, inflection mistakenly used on a statement. My name is Vanessa. It’s Jamie here to pitch our brain goes from listening to scrutinizing. In other words, we know, wait a minute, something wasn’t right about that. So the most important thing you can do is in the first 10 seconds in person on the phone in video is go down at the end of your sentence. So it’s so good to see you. My name is Vanessa, and I’m really excited to pitch you this idea today, that’s downward, right? I’m keeping my words down. It actually signals high confidence. If I said, my name is Vanessa, I’m here to pitch. So happy to be here today. No, like you would know, I don’t want you don’t your brain doesn’t know why, but you know, you don’t like it. RV (19:10): Mm-Hmm yeah. It’s like a SUBC you pick up a lot of this is totally subconscious in terms of what we’re sending and what we’re, what we’re receiving, but it’s, it, it it’s, it’s huge. So this is fascinating. Y’all the book is called cues. All right. So Vanessa van Edwards is who we’re, who we’re talking to. I wanna just spend a couple minutes Vanessa talking about the business behind your business, because you do a brilliant job. I mean, your YouTube channel is awesome. Like and it’s so straightforward. Like I would encourage, I’d encourage our audience to go look at it and, and disco, you know, it, it, it’s not a bunch of razzled dazzle and cameras, no. And motion graphics. And it’s just, it’s just delivering value straight to the camera, a few basic cuts. And it’s super inspiring to me because I, a lot, a lot of the people listen to this show. RV (20:02): It’s like, they’re an expert on something and they get lost in, oh, it has to be beautiful and perfect. Where do I get a graphic designer and a video editor? And it’s like, you’re such a great example of like deliver the goods, add values to people’s lives, do it consistently a few basic things. So I love that. How do you do book launches? I’m curious about this because your books have done really, really well. And, and we do a lot of big launches, right. And we’ve done for our own books, big launches, but the thing that really makes the career, I mean, it helps to hit the New York times for sure. But what really makes the career is when you can have that book, you know, or books that sell 500 units every week, a thousand units. I mean, if, if you’re, if you’re, you know, if you’re lucky, you’ll, you’ll write, you know, John Gordon’s energy bus or Patrick, you know, Len’s five dysfunctions of a team and he’ll sell 2000 units, 5,000 units every week. But you know, like Ryan holiday is another person who’s done a great job of this. Like he, he does good launches, but it’s like, it’s not really about the launch. He sells 800 book, 800 units every week of all of his titles and you know, there’s spikes of course. And you’re you do that? And I love that. How do you do that? VVE (21:19): Yes. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you for, by way, for the kind words. So captivate came out in 2017. We had a nice, really big launch. I think we remember four on the wall street journalist. And since then, even, you know, five, six years later, we sell about 300, 600 copies a week and that, you know, amazing doesn’t include our spikes, right? Like sometimes we have spikes from events. Queues is doing extremely well, even better than captivate. We’re seven weeks out from that, but it’s still selling extremely well, probably a thousand or more a week. So the way that I like think about this is very weird. I have a very weird approach to this, which is YouTube is a search engine. And what I mean by that is people put YouTube in a social media category. It is not social media. It is a search engine, meaning people are not only going into YouTube and searching their needs. VVE (22:07): Google is also serving up YouTube as an answer to their needs. So for this reason, we think about, okay, who is our ideal person? Our ideal person is an incredibly brilliant professional entrepreneur, entrepreneur, both male and female. We literally have almost exactly split usually around 30 to 55. Okay. So I know my person, they’re really smart. They’re trying to level up their career. They’ve often been held back by some communication or soft skill. Okay. I know that person is what we do is we do specific keyword research and a reps. That’s the service we use. It’s like a software you can use. I think there’s a couple different ones out there. RV (22:41): Yeah. MOS or yeah, there’s a whole bunch of them. Yeah. Suggests et cetera. But AHS is, I think, I think that’s what our team uses too. VVE (22:49): A has a secret tab. It’s not so secret. Cause I’m about to tell you about it, which is most people use a for Google, we use a for YouTube. So I will go in the YouTube tab and I will search at first, first I think about what are the 50 to 20 keywords or search phrases. I think people are gonna use to get to a book. So for cues, I, you know, we, I started writing cues over two years ago. The very first thing I did is, okay, cues are about reading people, breaking down behavior, communication, charisma, right. I made a whole list of all those terms short and long. And then I had my writing team begin to pump out articles and especially video scripts for me on those specific keywords so that I can already come up for what I know my people are searching for and then serve them really helpful content, like really helpful, like free content, but then also the book. So before queues even came out, we were ranking one, two or three in those big spots for our YouTube videos, the articles are actually less important than the YouTube videos so that when someone is in YouTube and they search charismatic conversation or how to make small talk, RV (23:57): How, yeah. How to be more charismatic, like VVE (23:59): Ex exactly our videos come up and on the back end of the video, I’m selling the book and the bottom of the video, I’m selling the book. And so I think that every single entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter what you do. You should have a YouTube presence. And by the way, I don’t work for YouTube. I don’t teach YouTube courses. I don’t teach you how to sell on YouTube. So I had no reason to recommend this because I, I actually, it hurts me the more people who come on YouTube, but I feel so passionate about it because whatever your product service book is, if YouTube is a search engine, you have to have a presence on there for your top 50 keywords, because that’s a way that you’re gonna be able to drive people to your product or service. That is exactly how we sell books. RV (24:38): I mean, that is so brilliant. And, and, and, and simple, like simple because cuz I, we understand search engine optimization. We understand, you know, even like YouTube optimization, but just the idea of putting your book on there. And you said you put your book at the, at the back of the video and on the bottom. I, and I, I think you’re, you’re saying literally there’s like a, a, an ads, a buy button. Yeah, VVE (25:04): We literally, so at the, so first of all, just to get really into tactics is typically our videos will our videos around 10, 20 minutes an average, but you should have, you should mention your book organically or your service organically, ideally in the first third or half of the video. So while I’m teaching, while I’m getting highly valuable, really engaging tips, I never want someone to click on a video and feel like it was a waste of their time. Some point in the first third or half of the video, I will say, and all this research comes from queues. Be sure to check out on an Amazon or an audible. And then I keep delivering, keep delivering in the description of the video. I have not only a link to the Amazon on the audible, but I also, we use a plugin in YouTube. It has a little by mech shelf. VVE (25:44): So on our little by mech shelf below every video, actually, we don’t do it for every video. We only do it for videos that directly sell our books. I have cap date. I have queues. I have people school, our big master course. So it’s right below the video. And at the very end, I put a little promo to our book where I’m like, Hey, if you like these tips, check out cues, check out captivate, give this video a light, give a subscribe. I’ll be putting out free content every Wednesday. So that way there’s a couple of mentions. And what I found is I either get a subscribe because I’m delivering good content or they literally go go by the book. RV (26:16): You said there’s a, you’re using a plugin in the description. VVE (26:20): I am. Yes. It’s a special plugin. It’s QA. Y a I dunno how to say ITA, Chaya, Kaya. I don’t know QA. Y a but it’s a, it’s a plugin that we literally enabled for YouTube that adds a merch shelf, which is like another, that a lot of people, a merch shelf. Yeah. You can sell anything on there. So like if we have a course launch, like we have a lie detection course I can SW swap that into my me shelf on my LA detection related videos. RV (26:47): Oh. So basically like you, you can just make a change and it’ll roll through all those videos at once. VVE (26:52): It’s manual it’s manual RV (26:54): okay. So you have to go manually update all the videos. Yeah. wow. Yeah, but like, see this, this makes so much sense because like, you know, cuz now we have access to book scan and, and we’re doing all these book launches and blah, blah, blah. You know? And so we are seeing like which books are trend and the natural life cycle is a huge spike, you know, hang on there as long as you can then like it disappear. And then a lot of times it just disappears. Yeah. But like the, you see some of them where it’s just this steady, like it’s just going and, and, and part of it is, you know, write a good book, have a good speaking career, like add value, do all, all of the things. Right. But the way, what you’re describing makes so much sense because it aligns with the way that search happens. It’s it’s steady and it’s organic and it happens weekend and, and week out. VVE (27:44): And it’s going after your specific key terms, right. It’s not book promo for my new book. It’s not what it’s called. It’s called. How do you more charismatic how to read people, how to have conversations with anyone like it’s, it’s specific keywords. And so thinking really carefully about that is extremely helpful. And I think you, you don’t have to have videos forever. Like that’s optimistic it also people make cuz they’re like, oh, once I start a YouTube channel, I can never stop. I’m like, no, it’s a search engine. Create 20 incredible videos. My incredible, I don’t mean fancy. I mean just really high value and RV (28:15): Your like useful, those are useful. VVE (28:17): Those are your 20, like 98% of our ad revenue on YouTube. So we also run ads on YouTube. 98% of our ad revenue on YouTube is from my back catalog. So it doesn’t have to be that you’re posting new videos every week. No, most of my money and our views are from videos I posted eight years ago. RV (28:35): Mm-Hmm wow. When you say you run ads on YouTube, you’re saying you allow people to run ads on your YouTube channel. Yeah. VVE (28:43): Yeah. I enable YouTube ads behind the video. Yeah. RV (28:47): Do, do you, do you run paid ads on YouTube? VVE (28:52): Like I do not run. Nope. I don’t. You RV (28:54): Don’t run ads for your stuff. That’s a completely organic strategy, a complete, like a search strategy. VVE (29:01): We, we, we, all of our traffic, 100% is organic and we have millions of visitors every month. Except for during launch. So during launches, we do do pay ads, RV (29:11): But y’all like Vanessa is the, the, the, the perfect example of how we just talk about it. If you just add value and you just add value. One of our philosophies at brand builders group is we say, save the best for first. We, we tell people save the best for first. Like just put it out there. Eight years later you’re still ringing and you’re still ringing the, the register. VVE (29:35): Yes. And, and maybe this is a good place to sort of end on, which is our same. This is what I teach. All my writers is we are aggressively helpful, relentlessly helpful. Like if I feel that something in a video is boring or not helpful, cut it. I don’t care about the fancy graphics. I have one camera in a room. It’s like a closet I’m in here right now. And that’s it. But it is not relentlessly aggressively helpful. Cut it. That is more important than any fancy graphic, any video equipment that you can get. And so that’s, I think what you have to think about is like, how can you just be aggressively helpful? RV (30:11): Love it. So brilliant. So the book is called cues. That’s the new book. Where would you want, where do you wanna point people to go, Vanessa, if they wanna, obviously we talked about your YouTube channel, where would you direct people? VVE (30:23): Yes. So it’s on Amazon. It’s available. Wherever books are sold. I read the audible book. If you like my my unique vocal power, I do some fun. There’s a whole vocal section. So I do some really fun ones in there. And also I just wanna thank worry so much, you know, you, I don’t know if your, your listeners know that you are relentlessly helpful. Like literally I have to tell you to stop helping me. You’re such a giver. You’re so kind you always give, give, give, and there’s no feeling of like, oh, I, I need it in return. It’s literally just your relentlessly helpful. And so for people who are listening, like worry is the real deal. And I’m so grateful. RV (30:56): Oh, well, thank you so much, buddy. I mean, it’s it’s what works. I mean you know, I was, I, I was mentored by Zig Zeigler and he has that famous quote. If you help enough other people get what they want, you get what you want. It’s like, you can go all in on it. Like you can just, just test it. Like just, it feels VVE (31:12): So good. RV (31:13): It feels so good. Like you don’t have to, you don’t have to sell or do anything. Like all you’re doing is helping people all day long and then just like, it just, it just comes back. And I love seeing that as a content marketing strategy. I need to, I may, maybe I need to do that. Maybe I’m being too stingy with my YouTube videos. Maybe that’s why my way, maybe that’s why my channel’s not growing. Like I’m not being, I’m not being helpful enough there. So anyways, Vanessa van Edwards, brilliant, sharp, intelligent, useful, helpful. We are so excited and, and to, to know you and to promote you and to be associated. So keep kicking butt girl, you we believe in you. Thanks for being here. Woo. VVE (31:47): Thanks you so much for having me.

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25 of the World's Most Recognizable Influencers Share Their Tips on How to Build and Monetize a Personal Brand

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