Ep 292: How to Read People with Vanessa Van Edwards
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
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
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
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.
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
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):
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
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.
Ep 114: Top Secrets to Effective Speaking with Vanessa Van Edwards
RV: (00:06) Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview, we are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. From anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) I am so excited for you to meet Vanessa van Edwards. We shared the stage at what I believe is the largest speaking event in the world is the, it’s the biggest one that I know of. It’s called the global leadership summit, and we got to share the stage. And you know, most of you know, I’m, I’m a nerd for technical speaking and built my career coming out of Toastmasters. And she got up and talked about her book captivate and some of the concepts that she studies as the she’s the founder of a company called the science of people. And her book is called captivate, the science of succeeding with people and she analyzes and studies body language and interpersonal communication and human behavior and relationships. And it was just so practical and applicable to everybody. The audience went nuts. I was, I was also tracking book sales. RV: (02:02) So I haven’t shared this with everybody. I was watching book sales with there’s three different tools that we’re using to monitor that. And I was watching Vanessa’s book, which was selling apparently from what we could tell was the top selling book from all the speakers who were there, which is exciting and also a little bit nerve wracking since our book was also for sale. But pretty sales. You got presales. Yeah. I’m I’m I’m sure. I’m sure. So anyways, the other thing to know about her in addition to being this bestselling author she’s very much into data, which I love and, and research and science and analyzing you know, her craft, but she’s also spoken obviously at the global leadership summit. She’s spoken at South by Southwest Google, Facebook, and she has a Ted talk as well. That is called, you are contagious. That also is gone viral. So she’s got over a couple million views on that within just a few years. So anyways, you’re, you’re talking to a pro and I was like, gotta have her, you guys are gonna love her. So welcome to the show, Vanessa. VV: (03:14) Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to talk and dive in. RV: (03:17) So I want to start with your actual work, like what you actually teach, because it’s super relevant to our audience. And you know, we’ll put a link to your Ted talk. You are contagious in the show notes. But can you give us, you know, a little bit? So, so a lot of our audience speaks all of our clients speak. We teach them that the spoken word is the number one marketing tool. There is. So whether it’s free webinars or free speaking, like I spoke for free 304 times, that was how I started my career. In that we eventually turned that into an eight figure business all by speaking for free. But you study a lot of, you know, a lot of your craft relates to speaking and you analyzed Ted talks. What are some of the things that you learned from the viral Ted talks, the successful Ted talks and then the not so viral ones? VV: (04:16) Yeah. You know, I was really intrigued as a speaker on why some Ted talks go viral and others don’t. And what I, when I was searching on the Ted website, I typically watch a Ted talk every day at lunch. I found that there were Ted talks, you know, like Simon Sinek, Tedtalk has millions of views. And I noticed, and I noticed when I was on the website, that there was a very similar talk that came out the same month of the same year. It was released the same on the same year on ted.com, a very similar topic, both 80 minutes, long excepted. Simon’s had millions and millions and millions of views. And this other top had less than 40,000. And I wondered why these were both experts, relatively unknown experts before their Ted talks, by the way. Sure. But something about Simon’s talk, it made it explode. It went viral. And so we decided to analyze thousands of hours of Ted talks. We looked at every Ted talk in 2010 and we split them up based on view count. So the most popular Ted talks versus the least popular Ted talks, RV: (05:19) You looked at weight, you looked at every Ted talk since 2010 in 2010. Oh, in 2010. Wow. Okay. VV: (05:30) I’d still be doing that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And also by the way, this was maybe four or five years ago now. So we looked at every, to every Ted talk that was released in 2010, where there’s a limited number that go on ted.com and we didn’t know what we would find. Right. We were looking at all the variables. I was looking at color of clothing. I was looking at entrance. I was looking at smiles. We actually clocked the number of seconds that they smiled. And we found that the biggest difference, the biggest you could actually see it when you put these talks side by side, was that the most popular Ted talkers used an average of 470 gestures, 465 gestures to be precise in 18 minutes, whereas the least popular Ted talkers by view count, use an average of 272 gestures in 18 minutes, almost half. VV: (06:21) And when I looked at this, I realized there were sort of two things happening. One is hands show trust. They show intention. We like to see hands, right? The moment we can see someone’s hands. We feel like we understand them a little bit more, but the second thing was even more important, which was when we know our content exceptionally well. We can actually explain it on two tracks. We can explain it with our words, but we can also explain it with our gestures. And so the very best Ted talkers, it was like they had a two track talk, they had the verbal talk and they had the gesture talk. And what was amazing about it was that it allowed you to have sort of these memory hooks when someone said they had three ideas and they held up the number three, the brain would actually wait, you’d wait to hear all three. And that would also help you remember those three. So I think what was happening is that the really memorable, amazing Ted talks just make it easy to be understood. RV: (07:22) Interesting. And so would you say that Bernay Brown and Simon Sinek and you know, Jan pink? Yeah, sir. Ken Robinson, do they all pass that test or are some of ’em outliers? VV: (07:38) No. Everyone passed the test. The only kind of odd outlier in our data that we looked at was Jamie Oliver. So there is no, yeah. The chef. Yeah. Yeah. So what’s really interesting is most really charismatic speakers. They use hand gestures in a purposeful way. So if they’re talking about something big, they show you how big it is, beach ball big, or is it, you know what ball would this be like? RV: (08:06) Like a Sumo, a Sumo, VV: (08:10) How big is it? Or is it really small and little and just between the two fingers. Whereas Jamie Oliver, his talk is so passionate that he’s actually just making gestures for no reason. He’s just shaking. So that one, I found a little distracting. Now he had a lot of gestures cause he was literally just, he would walk off, he was pacing the stage and just kind of move in his hands. That was the one exception where I thought, Hmm, I think that we, we like the purposeful gesture, the distracted gesture, make someone look out of control. So whenever I teach hand gestures, I like to teach on a spectrum that purposeful is what we’re going for. Jazz hands is not what we’re going for, or even I created some hand monsters in my career and I feel very bad about this. So I taught this research and a couple of students in one of my classes, they thought that I meant like modern dance. So I saw their speeches after my class. And then they came on like this today. I want to talk to you about a big idea. And the sun is going to come out. I mean, it was like, it’s bitsy spider, you know, RV: (09:21) Dan just like interpretive dance, like full VV: (09:24) And so purposeful is good, but like we’re not talking modern dance. I think that with Ken Robinson and Bernay Brown and Simon Sinek, they probably didn’t script out their hand gestures. And I don’t think that we should necessarily either, but we should be so comfortable with our work that we’re able to understand it and explain it visually. RV: (09:43) So gestures. So that’s really interesting. Cause it’s like, what you, where you saw the pattern, wasn’t the type of gesture or like, yeah, it wasn’t like the type of gesture. It was the volume of gestures. And basically twice as many. So that, that, that tells us that that humans are, are nonverbal, which we kind of, we know instinctually, right? It’s like, of course we’re nonverbal. So for an audience of people who are speakers or aspiring speakers or potentially speakers in addition to gestures, are there any other big kind of salient discoveries that you would point to and say, Oh my gosh, if you are speaking a lot, here’s another thing that you really need to know. Like you can’t miss this. And I know, you know, in captivate you talk about voice and you talk about facial expressions. Like in the book, you go through a bunch of different ones, but w VV: (10:43) For many speakers, the book I’m going to give it to you. RV: (10:46) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give us one. That’s not in the book VV: (10:48) Book. Is there, if you want to read it, that’s great. But I want to give one, that’s just for speakers. Cause I love talking to audience and speakers. So one thing that I noticed not only in the Ted speeches, but also in working with students is the really, really powerful speakers use the stage as a content aid. And this is a really advanced technique, but once you get it, I think it’s, it’s like you can immediately apply it, which is you want to know where you’re going to plant. And that’s really important. Where are you going to deliver your first line or your first impression? So your first impression happens either the moment the lights turn on at the moment you walk on stage, the more purposeful you all are with that plant. Like I’m going to walk right to the center of the stage that makes your walk more purposeful. I noticed that speakers who don’t have a plant, they kind of wander onto stage. They kind of wander and they’re a little awkward and they, then they don’t quite plant. They kind of, they kind of pivot back and forth. Whereas Vickers who walk out to that plant, that’s one of the reasons why that Ted talk red circle carpet is so brilliant is it just gives speakers. A piece of confidence is this is where you stand. RV: (12:00) Can you explain that? Not everybody knows about what the red dot mean, like what it is. VV: (12:04) Yeah. So in Ted talks, one of the secret ways, I think that they’ve had so much power with their videos is they have a small red circle. And I think that every franchise of Ted talk, they have to have a red carpet on stage or the requirement. And they even have a measurement that they like it to be. And it’s actually a brilliant Lee measured carpet. I think of the red, that circle carpet when I speak without it, like when I just do regular speeches because it’s a plant. So you have someone who walks right out on the stage, they plant in that red circle and then you’re not supposed to leave that red circle. So they really don’t like you to leave it for the cameras, for the lights. I think that Mel Robbins and her Ted talk, she not only left her circles, she actually walked out into the audience was very fair. VV: (12:51) It was a very, you know, avant-garde move and she wasn’t supposed to do it, but I think it worked for her. So the first thing is to know where you’re going to plant have an imaginary red carpet for yourself. And then you want to use the stage as a transition for your content. So for example, okay, I tend to deliver right in the middle. I typically go right to the middle when I speak. And then when I’m talking science or background, I typically go to the left side of the stage and I plant and I deliver the stuff. RV: (13:21) When you say the left side of the stage, are you saying stage left or the audiences left stage left? So to the right, the audience is right stage left. Okay. VV: (13:33) So I, I stand there and then when I’m pivoting or transitioning topics, I literally show the audience. I’m doing it with a physical movement. And then by the end, they know when I’m on the right side of stage, I’m usually telling a story, I’m doing something fun. I’m leading an interaction when I’m in the center of the stage, I’m delivering something super important. And I usually save my super important takeaway challenges. Remember this for the center of the stage and my science and background the other side. And I’ve noticed that it helps people as they take notes. I’ve noticed that helps with attention. I’ve also noticed you have certain people, you know, very warm people who like the stories better. And so everyone needs moments where they’re going to tune out and audience is going to tune out. I would rather it be based on their learning style, but not based on their learning style, I’d rather choose it. So what I’ve noticed is very warm people who love stories and examples, they perk up when I get to the right side of the stage and my science heavy, my high competent folks, my data heads, they perk up when I get to the left hand side. And usually everyone perks up for the middle. So it’s a, I, that’s one of the really big things that I think excellent speakers do to help their audience. RV: (14:48) Yeah. That’s, what’s interesting about, you know, using the stage, but in Ted talks, you can’t because of the red dot, but they force you to plant and be powerful by having that confined space. I think yeah, that’s super interesting. Is there, is there anything you did on the marketing front related to your Ted talk that made it go viral? Like VV: (15:10) Oh yes. So I, I really, you know, it’s a little, it’s a lot of pressure when you study Ted talks that go viral, then you give a Ted talk pressure. You have to then give a viral Ted talks. I was very nervous about it. And the first thing was the title and I argued with them about this, by the way, like we went back and forth on this a lot. Now it’s kind of funny because it’s your contagious, which right now in our current state of the world, it’s getting a lot of use for a different reason. So that ended up working in a different way. And you’ll notice that there’s a lot of comments, recent comments where people are like, I really felt this talk was about something else, but I really liked it. So anyway, in the beginning I wanted a command. I wanted a title that was a command. RV: (16:00) I have a bunch of people worried about contracting COVID that are buying the captivate book and just sitting at home, reading it. VV: (16:08) It’s okay. It’s perfect. Actually, captivate sales have been up a lot in COVID. And so I want, I wanted a command. I wanted to have like a you or like a personal pronoun. So I really wanted to have like a, you are contagious or you are confident or you can do it or you are powerful. I wanted something that was a command because I noticed that a lot of the Ted talks that were out there weren’t, they were very intellectual. They were very much like the future of leadership or how thinking will change the future of humanity. Like, there are a lot of like, talks like that, which is fine, but I just wanted to be a different rant. I wanted to have a different thing. So I wanted to use the word you, I knew that. And I wanted RV: (16:54) I analyze titles by the way or only the gestures and like the actual presentation. VV: (16:59) I didn’t, I did, we didn’t formally analyze titles. No, I should. I, that would be fun. That would be a really easy one to do actually with like just put them all in a big spreadsheet, look at them. That’d be super interesting. So yeah, so that, and then once it came out, not only did I share it, of course, across socials you know, YouTube has been a big driver of our business. I’ve been on YouTube since 2007 when people thought it was like, you know, a joke. And one thing that we’ve learned is playlists are really important. So we did a huge campaign on the backend to get my Ted talk, not embedded in websites that I didn’t care about as much, but to get it on people’s playlists. And so we reach out to influencers, but also just friends who watch a lot of YouTube videos and ask them to put it on a relevant playlist with other videos that we thought people would like along with our sock, with the right search engine title. VV: (17:52) So for example, I reached out to a friend of mine who has a podcast, and I asked him if he would add my video to his playlist called human behavior hacks. And he was like, sure. And then it was immediately placed contextually. So I know on YouTube, your best, you have two options for your, for your game. One is search and YouTube search is very different than Google search. We use a tool called H refs. And so when I’m titling my blogs, I use H refs for Google when I’m titling my YouTube videos and my keywords, I use H reps for YouTube because they have very, very different search. And so I knew what kind of YouTube search that I wanted for the video, but I also knew what I wanted it to be related to. So the second thing that you really like for you to, to elevate your game is watch this next or when your video is listed alongside another video. And so it’s critical to have YouTube algorithm know what other videos people would like. And so I had a list of a hundred or more videos that I thought were the perfect audience for my Ted talk. And so very quickly we were able to scale and we got thousands and thousands of views and then millions of views based on, I think, the placement of relevant videos. RV: (19:12) So when you found a hundred, a hundred videos, a list of a hundred videos that you thought were like your perfect audience, did you just reach out to those people? Did you reach out to those people at all? VV: (19:23) Not typically. Actually a lot of them were other Ted talks, but I wanted to be on the same playlists as those videos. So for example, like if I really liked Allan Pease LMPs is a wonderful author about body language and he has a great Ted talk. He also some great stage talks that have millions of views. I didn’t need to reach out to Allen because his videos are living out other people’s playlists, but I did want to get on to people who listed Allen’s video in their playlists. Does that make sense? So how did you, RV: (19:55) How do you know who, which people have Allen pees on their playlist? VV: (20:00) You can see it. So when you watch his video, you can see, it’ll say like, this is recommended for you. And then you can see that it’s actually within someone else’s playlist. RV: (20:09) Interesting. So just on the video itself, which is like a video you’re probably watching, cause you’re interested in it anyways, you would just go, Oh, okay. I see like other this other recommended video lives on, so, and so’s channel. And so that person is featuring this kind of content. And then you, so it was more like you didn’t contact Alan, you contacted the person that had Allen’s video on his channel VV: (20:33) And they never get contacted. Allen gets contacted all the time. Plus Allen doesn’t own his YouTube, his Ted talk. So it’s not even on, he couldn’t even control if he wanted to. So I don’t need to bother Alan with that. He’s a busy guy, but some of the people who created these amazing playlists who love looking for relevant videos on body language or human behavior or psychology, those are my people. And I love reaching out to them. And they’re also thrilled when I reach out to them. So that’s how we’ve grown our YouTube channel quite a bit since from the beginning. RV: (21:04) That is fascinating. What a super awesome tip. Well, and this is kind of what I wanted to get into as well was a little bit about how, how you’ve built such a great business, because it’s like once you, you know, have a bestselling book and you’re speaking at GLS and you have a viral Ted talk, like you’re checking off a lot of the marks of like pretty big time personal brands, which is, which is super exciting. Clearly the Ted talk has been huge. Is that how GLS found you? Do you know, did you ask him? VV: (21:36) I didn’t ask them. I think that they just knew about me from YouTube. I think they found me from YouTube. So I dunno if that was my Ted talk or other YouTube videos that I had. But that’s where they came to me from seeing those videos. RV: (21:49) Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting to me, to this day, the number one cold way that we book high paid speaking engagements is someone will say, I saw your video on YouTube VV: (22:00) A hundred percent, same as in here, RV: (22:03) Which is crazy. Cause you, you, you know, it’s almost like people put YouTube and Twitter in the same category in terms, and it’s like, they’re completely different, like completely different purposes, completely different audiences. Yeah. VV: (22:14) Yeah. And the way I like to think about it, and this is what I, what I try to talk to my students about is Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and even LinkedIn, our social media platforms, YouTube is a search engine. And that’s how you have to think about it. It’s yes, it’s relatively social, but it is a search engine. So you need to think about it just like you think of Google, you just study your keyword, just like you do for Google. You need to think about your content, like little mini blogs. RV: (22:44) Yeah. I mean, and that’s the other thing like literally is that content on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, the older it is the less valuable it is on YouTube and Google, the older it is the more valuable it is. Like it’s, it’s a complete inverse. That is such a, it’s such a key distinction. I, YouTube is something I’m loving you talking about this. Cause I feel like I’ve ignored you tube, like my entire career. And then, you know, we had a few thousand subscribers and then when we exit our last company that was gone. So, you know, like we had, we’re starting all over and YouTube is the one that I’m going, this is the one that we have missed the boat on. This is the one that drives like real big time revenue, big time credibility. And it sounds like you agree with that. VV: (23:36) Yeah. I completely agree with it. And the good news is you got time, you know, it’s still the wild West on YouTube. I think. I actually think it’s less tapped even than online courses. You know, I got into YouTube in 2007. It’s older. I got into my first online course in 2011, 2012. And even now I feel like online courses, a little bit tapped. I mean, there’s just a lot of opportunity there, but RV: (23:59) Launching an online course, VV: (24:01) Launching teaching, hosting. Yeah. Online courses, you know, like some of the boat has sailed, but like it’s, it’s an, it’s an existing ecosystem, right? Like it exists. You can tap into it, but you really got to work. It YouTube, I think is a lot of low hanging fruit. I think you have time, even though it’s an older, it’s an older beast, the way that people, the amount of video that people are consuming. And the, the bond that you build with people when they watch a video is incredible. And as a speaker and as a, as an influencer, someone who wants to change behavior or change minds, it’s like, you’re getting permission to go into someone’s bedroom, email box, you get to their desk, not as intimate, a YouTube video, you get into their bedrooms, even a podcast, you maybe get to their kitchen or their gym, but a bed is usually YouTube. I don’t mean that in a, in a weird way, but like, it’s so intimate when you’re with someone and you’re sharing a story that they really feel like, wow, I know her. I cannot tell you how many times I’m walking down the street and people are like, I love your YouTube. I feel like you’re my friend. No. And that’s, that’s a very special thing. RV: (25:08) Yeah. I mean, that’s interesting. So Mike, Todd was one of the other speakers with us. Did you get to see his speech and tell us, yeah, I loved it. I thought it was so great. And so AIG and I are watching his sermon series on relationship goals and we either watch it in bed or the living room couch. But to what you’re saying, both of those are that’s where you, that’s very intimate, that’s intimate a space and at different locations. And I’ve never really thought about that. I’ve always thought about the podcast being right in someone’s ear, which is very intimate. But you know, you, you don’t make a date to listen to a podcast, but you will sit down and like, alright. Or have you ever seen the show? The chosen on YouTube? Oh my gosh. It’s incredible. It’s a, it’s a TV series. That’s only available on YouTube and it’s free, but it’s like, we make a date to sit down and watch something on YouTube. VV: (26:02) Yeah. I think that that’s the difference, right? Like when I am listening to my podcasts, I am always doing something else. And even if I wasn’t doing smells, I begin to sweat. I fold clothes. I do laundry. I clean up the toys in the living room. Like I’m always, I’m like, it’s a thing where my hands are free. Not with YouTube. I’m going to watch a video. It’s my ears and my eyes. And there’s not much else I can do. I have to be locked in with you. And so it’s just a much more intimate and fulfilling experience. There’s a reason I haven’t done a podcast yet. I mean, maybe I will one day, but it’s because I also know that I, the biggest, so in our business, our revenue is sort of split between speaking online courses and then a little bit like ad revenue. And we don’t do any paid search. We only have organic search. And I know that the best way for me to sell courses is to get organic YouTube search that turns into an online email subscriber. It then turns into a, a buyer of our video course. And so if I want to sell a video course, the best way for me to do that is being on video. RV: (27:03) Yeah. So let me ask you that. This is so awesome. Okay. So when you say organic YouTube search, most of that is just basically like optimizing your video as a blog post on YouTube. So you’re showing up in search and then in the description, you’re driving people to a lead, a lead capture, which is gonna then nurture like a lead magnet. And then that will nurture them for the course. When you do, when you sell courses, do you do mostly like a video? Do you do mostly like video sales letters, like a video funnel, like yeah. Three videos and then buy on the fourth video or do you more like a one long webinar kind of thing. VV: (27:44) So we’ve tested all of them feels like all of them we’ve tested the three videos to a purchase. We’ve tested a webinar to a 60 minute webinar to a purchase, which so 20 minute webinars, no purchase. We’ve tested a six email written series. We’ve tested, sneak previews, we’ve tested an audio training. The one that doesn’t work very well is three videos. We have too much dripping in the funnel too much, too much loss when we find that when people want it, they want it. So we don’t want to make them wait. So the best thing that we found is either an audio training for 60 minutes right away, or like a webinar for 45 to 60 minutes right away video. RV: (28:23) Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. well, where should people go if they want to connect with you and like learn more, obviously they can get the book captivate, which is awesome. We’ll put, we’ll put a link to your contagious. You are contagious, Ted talk, where else Vanessa, if they want to learn more about all the stuff you do. VV: (28:41) Yeah. If you want to see our funnel and action I recommend going to science of people.com/join. That will be whatever our latest in is. And so you’ll be able to see if he, you go to that, like sometimes it’s our likability training, which is the audio training, which also eventually converts into our big course or you’ll get our one of our webinars. And so that’s a really good way to get kind of acquainted with some of our materials and our free courses. But also if you are interested in sort of the funnel of the backend of how we build rapport and build relationships and teach to sell, you can all see it that way as well. Love it. RV: (29:17) Science of people.com/join. You can go there. We’ll link that up in the show notes, Vanessa, thank you so much. You’ve been so generous and like tactical and just is such, such actionable stuff particularly for personal brands. So we wish you very much the very best VV: (29:34) Gosh, I’m so grateful. Thanks for featuring my story and thanks everyone for listening. [inaudible].