The Stoic’s Playbook For INSTANT Charisma | Vanessa Van Edwards (PT. 1)
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of the most important people in the world,

to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I think one of the problems with philosophy is it's boring.

Right. You ever had one of those amazing teachers that can just make any subject like endlessly fascinating. They just suck you in and you're just wow. Like, you know, those great teachers like you ever see that TED talk of Sir Ken Robinson was talking about education. You're just like, if every one of my teachers is like this, God knows where I would have ended up. I just think, unfortunately, philosophy is stupid.

boring to a lot of people. And it's made more boring by professors who don't seem to think that the job of philosophy is to be accessible and actionable. Like Socrates was immensely personable and charismatic. That's why young students flocked to him. Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, they weren't just like good thinkers. They commanded an audience. They were compelling.

And so how you do this is tough, right? How you make philosophy interesting is really challenging. And I know this from experience. I've been fighting this sort of uphill battle. Like when I went to my publisher and said, hey, I want to talk about this obscure school of ancient philosophy. Not only were they probably not thinking the book would sell, they certainly weren't thinking there'd be this podcast that has millions of listeners, there'd be this YouTube channel with millions of views.

It was unfathomable to me, but I just knew that it would be a lot of work to make it interesting, but that that was the challenge. To reach the people who you were not normally reaching, who were not already interested. And so philosophy wasn't just about putting the words together in the right order. It was about creating a brand, creating a compelling image and spectacle. Robert Greene talks about this, right? You have to create compelling spectacles. And that's been the work of

that I've done here at Daily Stoic for many years. And someone who's influenced me in that journey, you may have seen her online because she's built this huge platform over the years. I have known her for a very long time. I actually did some marketing work on her first book, Captivate the Science of Succeeding with People, which has been translated into 17 languages and sold like crazy. Her YouTube channel has itself done tens and tens of millions of views online.

And she's got a new book called Q's Master, the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication. I'm talking about Vanessa Van Edwards. Gotten to know her over the years since. She is fantastic. And her work on like how you create compelling messages, how you reach people. Most writers are sort of

And I think certainly philosophy is somewhat insular and introverted. So how do you make it compelling and captivating? There is a science to this. There is work to this. And it's, it's,

It's something I've worked on. And I think whatever it is that you do, whatever you're excited about, the work is not getting you excited. The work is getting other people excited. That's what marketing is. A lot of people look down on marketing. They look down on, you know, sort of charisma or whatever. It's all, this is flash, right? There's a line in David Halberstam's book on Bill Belichick, where it says that Bill Belichick is in the steak business and not the sizzle business. He says, and in fact, it seems like he has contempt for the sizzle.

Well, that's not a thing most of us can get away with.

You have to understand both the sizzle and the steak, especially if you're really proud of the steak, you want people to be interested in the steak. You have to find out the sizzle. You have to find out what draws them in. This is hard work. And I think Vanessa Van Esuers is one of the best people in the world at this. There's a reason, you know, she's talked everywhere from Harvard to South by Southwest, MIT and Stanford. She has this viral TEDx London talk.

There's a reason she's all over the place. And I thought this was a great episode. It's going to be a two-parter. It was fascinating. I think you're really going to like it. I'll just get right into it. All right, so I think we have beef. We do? Yes. You're angry. I notice you use...

the word stoic somewhat pejoratively. Like you use lowercase stoic. Sometimes I do. Yeah. As basically sort of the stereotype of what people think stoic is, which is kind of unfeeling, unemotional, shut off. Yes. Yes.

Okay. Well, first, I apologize to all my capital Stoics. I don't mean it in a mean way. I see my book. I distracted you. Let's talk about something else. No, I'm just joking. I do actually see it. I see it. It's funny because I use the word Stoic because I actually don't mean it negative. I think that people aspire to be Stoic and they misinterpret that as

I have to be in control of my feelings physically and internally. Okay. And so when I say stoic, people often tell me like they say, oh, to be powerful, I need to be stoic. And I say, tell me what that means to you. And they often tell me it means hide my hand, don't show my emotions on my face,

be intimidating and imposing. Like they think of it as a aspect of power or leadership. And actually, the best leaders are not unreadable. They are purposeful. So I do believe that showing emotional cues that are not helpful or not aiding your message, I think that is not being a good leader. But I think it is very powerful to choose your cues purposefully. But that means not going mute. Yes.

So many people go mute thinking that that's making them look powerful, but actually it's making them unreadable. Well, and also whether you're showing the emotions or not, to me is secondary to whether you are a slave to them in your actions. So, you know, like somebody says something to you and it lands and it hurts is very different. To me, it's not that significant, right? What's significant to me is what you do after. Yes, completely. And I also think that cues are a cycle. Mm-hmm.

Right. So like when I'm saying something, you just nodded. Yeah. I'm like, great. He agrees. Keep going. Oh, you're doing good. And especially for social overthinkers and recovering awkward people. I'm a recovering awkward person. People who are unreadable and I'll say stoic in the lowercase. They make me very nervous. Yeah. I have a problem. I misinterpret neutral cues as negative.

People with narcissistic mothers actually tend to have this problem. It's been studied. And so what you have to realize, if you are a stoic or unreadable, you don't send enough cues, it's actually punishing. It's very disconcerting because you're like, I'm not sure if you're getting this or not. And worse, I think you're mad at

me. And I do think everyone's mad at me all the time. And I have to like tell myself, like no matter what dinner party I leave, I say my husband, oh, she hates me. And he goes, no, no, no, she didn't say that. And I'm like, okay. And that's why I learned cues. Right.

is because I was misinterpreting neutral or even positive cues as negative. Yeah. And that was causing me to doubt myself, which made me stoic. Yeah, yeah. So what was happening is I would go mute. I would go completely unreadable because I didn't know what cues to send, which then made people awkward, which made me more awkward. And it was this terrible cycle. Right. Most of my students are very, very smart. Yeah.

high achievers, they rely on their book smarts and their ideas. And that's great. You can have the best idea in the world, but if you do not share it with warmth, people will not believe it. And this is actually studied. So Princeton University did research on highly competent people. And they found that when you share something competent without warmth, it leaves people feeling suspicious.

suspicious is the word they use in the research. I was like, yes, this is it. That when someone tells me something and I don't see the warmth with it, I'm suspicious of them or of me. And so I think that we have to learn to be in control of our cues. And that is also stoic in the way of like being in control, I think. Well, it's kind of hyper-rational, right? It's like, you have to understand how this works too. And you have to deploy it deliberately and intentionally. And if you

Can't, there's a deficiency there and a sort of a weakness there, I think. Yes, I also think you can be unreadable and mute when you want to show someone you are not in agreement.

Yeah. Like when I negotiate for a car, I let my nonverbal speak for me. Like I will be super warm, smiling, head tilting, nodding, all the good warm cues until they say something I don't like. And then I go completely mute. Yeah. And usually people will pick up on it and they start negotiating with themselves. Yeah. So you can also use it to your advantage as long as you're in control of it. Yeah. I think that's interesting. Like in sports too, when you watch like a really good coach know how to

use and deploy emotion to bring out emotion or to suppress emotion in other people. Like the coaches oftentimes not as angry as they

because they are trying to send a message to the refs or send a message to the team. They're having to strategically deploy emotion. And if they are totally mute and dispassionate, that's going to be a problem. Right. Unless they use it purposefully. Yes. Right? Like if the coach wants the players to focus on the game, going mute is actually quite helpful. Yeah. Because there's nothing to read there. So no mental energy is going to go there. No cognitive load is going to go there. I also think...

inspiring your players, remember, warmth and competence is contagious. Our emotions are contagious. So if you want to inspire camaraderie, like on a team, you want the players to be reading each other in sync, totally working together, you want to be infecting warmth. But if you want them to be strategic,

think very carefully about the plays and play very subtly and purposefully, you'd want to inspire competence. And so I think that that is also a way that leaders, especially in sports, but even in corporate teams, you are so purposeful if you're like, I'm going to dial up what I think the team needs right now. Like, for example, have you heard of the touchy-feely index? No. Okay. So I think this is, by the way, researchers' excuse to watch sports for academics. Okay. Okay.

So it was a bunch of researchers and they had a hypothesis that basketball teams that touch more play better. Touch each other? Yes. Okay. The theory being that if you touch, you produce oxytocin. Oxytocin does a lot of things in our body, but for our purposes, it is the feeling of belonging, of connection, of comfort. It makes us trust more. It makes us read faces better. It makes us better at being human.

especially teamwork. So they had a hypothesis. If a team touches a lot, their oxytocin levels are higher. They will be better at reading each other's minds and playing in sync. So they watched basketball games and I forget the number exactly, but it was, they found that the team that touched the most were the

were the Mavericks. Okay. Like this is recent? No, no. This was when the Mavericks won. So they found that the Mavericks touched the most, like by a lot. And this was everything from back pats to high fives, to fist bumps, to butt touches, to, you know, all the things. Yeah. And they found there was direct correlation. I don't know causation, direct correlation between the number of times that players touched and winning.

And I said, this is it. Like, this is something really powerful because it's speaking to that if you initiate the right kinds of cues, you spark something magical that happens internally, but also as a team. Yeah, and also maybe hypothesize that instead of five individuals,

It's five people connected in some physical way, right? You know what I mean? It's a sort of reinforcing the literal bonds between the five discrete individuals. The literal chemical bonds. So like they're reading better, they're interacting more. And then there's a lot that we don't understand. So science doesn't understand about this. It's one of the best times of year here in Texas. Spring is amazing in Austin, but you just sort of know deep down it's about to get really hot here.

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Just like your body needs exercise, your mental health needs to be taken care of too. And I think the better your mental health, the better your physical health and vice versa. You got to work on both. That's what I try to do. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Talkspace makes getting the help you need accessible and affordable. Plus, most insured members have a $0 copay. And I'm all about anything that makes going to therapy easier. I'd

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Keeps it simple and easy. And that's what Talkspace lets you do. As a listener of this podcast, you'll get 80 bucks off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com slash DOIC and enter promo code SPACE80. S-P-A-C-E-80. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com slash DOIC and enter promo code SPACE80. One of my favorite studies is about how our fear is contagious.

I also think there's something to that. I think for a long time I was awkward because I was accidentally sending fear signals and I

And I think that we don't like to be- You can sort of smell it. It's just uncomfortable. This is a bad, and I don't like this anymore. I don't like it. We don't want to be fierce. Like the gross experiment is that they took students and they put half of them on a treadmill and they collected their sweat. Yeah. Put half of them in a plane. They pushed them out the plane to skydive for the first time, collected their sweat. Had unsuspecting people go into an fMRI and smell. Yeah. The sweat and people who smelled the fear sweat, even though they had no idea what they were smelling, caught the fear. Interesting. Their amygdala lit up. Sure.

And so I was like, that is me. I am going into events and I am smelling like fear. And that makes people nervous. And that's why I was having all these awkward interactions. Okay, I can't just be more confident. I can't just turn off my fear, but I can distract my fear.

I can distract it. I can displace it. My entire goal is to displace fear with purpose so that I say, okay, I don't know what to talk about. I'm going to go in with a conversational blueprint so I know exactly what my intentional connection goals are. I know what to say. That's going to displace that overthinking. I'm going to know what to do with my body, my hands, my shoulders, my feet.

I'm going to know how I want to greet, how I want to make eye contact or nod. Those blueprints replace the overthinking so that I'm not afraid. Right. It's my side door to confidence. Yeah, you have a plan. And so your confidence is in the plan rather than in yourself. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough though. One of the things I think the Stokes talk a lot about that I think connects to the idea of emotion is like, how do you deal with difficult people? Right.

Right? Like the famous quote from Mark Surreal is about how the obstacle is the way. He's talking about people who get in our way, like difficult people. And his point was that when he's saying the obstacle is the way, he's saying that difficult people are a chance for us to practice, you know, not just how you deal with difficult people, which is a fact of life, but it's a chance to practice a bunch of forms of sort of emotional control and awareness and creativity. Like, how do you deal with this person who doesn't like you? How do you deal with this person who is

awkward or weird? Or how do you deal with this person who's afraid? How do you deal with this person who is not

behaving or acting in a way that you like. And I imagine that starts with reading what they're doing and trying to understand why. Yes, reading what they're doing. And also being, I think that my approach to difficult people is predicting their difficulty. Like, I don't even want to get to the point where you're difficult with me. I want to understand your narrative and your behavior cues so I can know what's going to trigger you and I can know what's going to detonate you. And so I'm very into understanding, you know, there's difficult people, everyone has difficult people in their life.

I like to know their self-narrative. I wanna know what is the story you're telling yourself about yourself that makes you so difficult for me? - Yeah. - Right? - Sure. - That is, I think, the stoic perspective of like, this person is challenging me in some way. Something about their narrative does not jive with mine. - Yeah. - And so I have a couple of questions that I often use with my difficult people and this has fundamentally changed my relationships with them. They're much less difficult for me now because I realized, ah, this is why they're like this. So for example, one study is about luck

And you try to figure out how lucky someone is because that actually tells you a lot about how they see themselves. So like Richard Wiseman did this famous study with newspapers. He handed people a newspaper. He asked them how lucky they thought they were. People who think they're very lucky did very well in the following challenge. He asked them to open the newspaper and count the number of images in the newspaper. On the second page of the newspaper, it said, stop counting. There are 43 images in the newspaper.

Almost all the lucky people saw the advertisement, stopped counting, and handed back the newspaper. The unlucky people missed it, and they kept counting, and they got more wrong answers, and it took them double the amount of time. Meaning, if you are lucky, you literally see more opportunities.

You literally are looking for more opportunities. Unlucky people miss more. Okay. And they are creating their own bad luck. Sure. And so I believe self-narratives are self-creating. If you have a story that you tell yourself about yourself and you keep telling that story, it will keep happening to you. Yeah. Which I think is also very stoic. Yes. This is difficult people. Okay. Difficult people have a story they're telling themselves about themselves and it keeps repeating over and over again. So high conflict people. Right. For example.

They really challenge me because I don't like conflict. Yeah, yeah. And they're looking for it. They not only look for it, they create it. Yeah. And so if I know that someone is a high conflict person-

I can then figure out, okay, what is the story they're telling themselves? Usually, and there's one person in my life, I ask them, do you think you're lucky? Yeah. Very casual question, by the way. It's like real easy to sneak in there. Sure. Are you lucky? And he's, oh, no, no. I'm so unlucky. I zig, everyone zags. Okay. Yeah. That was so helpful for me to know because the difficulty, I realized all the fights we were having had to do with the fact that he felt like he was zigging and everyone was zagging and he was mad. Yeah. Yeah.

So my approach to him then was when I could see the zagging simmering, I was like, hey, listen, you're with us. Yeah. You're with us. I know you think you're zigging, but actually you're over here with us zagging over here. And we are on the same page. We are on the same team. You are with us. You are not apart from us. Right. That I could see him literally...

Preempting the disagreement or the disconnection before it happens and reinforcing that it in fact does not exist. And stopping the self-narrative of unluck and doubt or bad luck and doubt so that he didn't hate himself because that's what was happening really. Right.

is he hated that he was constantly zigging and he always felt wrong. And so he would make himself wrong by doing it more. And so I think that that's, when I think about difficult people, I actually want to know what is my narrative? What is their narrative? I have my own narratives, right? And I know the ones that don't go well with me and I'm allergic to those people. So even when like I'm hiring people,

Or looking at potential friendships. There are certain kinds of people I am allergic to. I do not get along well with them. And so what are the questions you ask about difficult people to understand them? Do you like astrology? What does that say? I'm a hard no on that. I'm a very science-based person. Okay. So I'll be like, oh, what's your sign? Yeah. And if someone's like, what? I'm like, yeah, we're going to be friends.

We're going to get along really well. If someone's like, well, the moon, the third moon of Saturn is a Taurus. Prepare for some nonsense. And look, people who love astrology and Enneagram, good on them. I just know that we're probably not going to go deep. Right. And so I'm then at that point going to keep it a little bit more cash, more funsies.

We're probably not going to like go to a ranch for the weekend, you know? So that's like a really simple, casual one. The other one I ask right away. So like, what was your biggest goal for 2025? What was your biggest goal this year? I'm very goal oriented. And I've found that when people tell me I don't believe in goals, which there are people who don't. Cool.

they're going to be annoyed with me because I'm going to be talking a lot about goals. Yes, sure. So you're looking for sources of sort of worldview conflict early on, and then you can kind of know what to say or not say. Not that you're hiding yourself. You're just, I think, I remember I was going to do like a very difficult interview a couple of years ago and someone gave me some really advice. They were like, here's what this person perceives as a threat. And so they were like, just,

don't go over there and it'll be very not contentious. But if you, she was saying that what happens is people sort of accidentally stumble into this and then they can't get out of it because now that person's triggered and then you're triggered. And so it's not that it's like weak or you're somehow like, if there was a serious conflict that, you know, serious disagreement that needed to be had, I would have it. But the

purpose of this interview was to go well and for me to say what I needed to say. Was it astrology? No, but it was like, hey, so just don't get yourself bogged down in this thing that you don't care about because you made a flippant remark three minutes in and now the whole thing is lost. That's it. And also as a low confrontational person, I want to avoid that. I also like

I think there are two kinds of people, dream killers and dream builders. Yeah. Okay. I'm a dream builder. I'm a puppy. Like I have golden retriever energy. Like that is, I like to root people on. And if they're talking about astrology, I don't feel super authentic because I don't want to be like, yeah. Yeah.

Gemini. Oh, yeah. Or you're already bull... You're just like, you're bullshitting. I will do anything to avoid inauthenticity because it makes me feel so uncomfortable. Yeah. And so I want to avoid fake enabling of things I don't like. So one, I'm trying to protect myself, but also them. I don't want them to feel that inauthenticity from me. And then also, there are times where I want a dream killer. I want that energy. Sure, you need truth or reality. Yeah. If I'm working on a book and I'm

And I'm like, I need you to shoot down this idea and ask me the hardest questions you can possibly ask me. Like, it's super helpful for me to hear, like, you got beef with me about Stoke. I'm like, you know, you're right. Like, that is true. Like, that is a true thing. And like, I'm going to like...

try to reorient how I use that word because I don't, that's not how I mean it. So like I would, now I should use more, I think, unreadable. Well, actually it's funny. I had the same conversation with Stacey Abrams one time because when she very narrowly lost that first election in Georgia, she was like, hey, I'm not going to be stoic about this. And what she did was she went out and formed this voting rights, voter activization organization that ended up changing the course of the 2020 election and then the 2020 election.

one-ish election, the Senate, the special Senate election. And I was trying to say like, that was a definition of stoic, which is you took a crushing loss and channeled that energy into something positive. You're just, yeah, exactly. You're just using what it's unfortunate that what stoic means in English is unfeeling and unemotional and sort of unattached. And that's really not what it is. I think like we have a bunch of stories about Mark Surilis crying. The stoics wrote

beautiful poetry and wrote plays. Quite feeling, quite feeling. Clearly, I think the idea is to not be mastered by these emotions, but to in fact, master them yourself. That's it. They have this idea of being in command of yourself.

first before you have the right to be in command or in leadership of other people. And I think that's the idea. So it's not that you have no emotions. It's that you have to understand those emotions and decide which ones you deploy, which ones you act on, which ones you process, and which one you try to do work on.

And in that way, my books are stoic, right? In that way, like that is my mission is like you are in control of your emotions and how that comes across to others. In fact, you're more in control than you ever realized. Yes. And if you command yourself first, that then helps you command a room. And so really they should be stoic books. That's what I've just decided. Sure. And so like that was a really helpful piece of feedback. And so when I'm researching or writing books, I will...

want the dream killers that I disagree with. Sure. But I know who they are. Yeah. And I know when to go to them. You've invited them in. It's not a random person on social media who's shitting on you. Right. Or when I'm not ready. Like, for example, there are, for me, when I'm writing, there are like ideation phases. There is research phase and there is honing and then there is like editing and wrestling with the words. And I cannot have a dream killer and ideation.

And I will not go on walks with them. I do walk and talks. I will not go on walk and talks with them because I know- You're too vulnerable at that point. Yeah, I agree. And their narrative is confrontational. Their self-narrative is, I'm going to make people better with really tough ideas and questions. Like that is, I'm thinking of a very specific person. And that's their way of showing love. So I wait to walk with them until I'm in like the research honing outlining phase. And then I'm like, hey, like, what do you

think about and then they are the best resource. I think also one of the things you have to figure out as a creator is like when it's too late to get feedback. So it's like, I don't need your feedback, like from the world, right? Like it's already done. So what you think of it is irrelevant because it's done. You know what I mean? Like this is why reviews don't matter that much. Like I want feedback when I can do something about it. And then when it's done, that's either going to puff me up, which isn't helpful, or it's going to make me feel shitty, which isn't helpful. Mm-hmm.

You know, you're telling me, you know, how the weather should have been yesterday. You know, it doesn't do anything. Do you read your reviews? I try not to. I try not to. I mean, every time I do, I think, why did I do that? I, like, cannot read my reviews. Yeah. I really shouldn't. You shouldn't either. We shouldn't. It's not helpful. It's not helpful. And it's too late. There is one thing I do that's not really a review, but...

I was very interested with my first book, the sections that were most highlighted. Oh, sure. That was very illuminating. That's just sort of, that's data versus maybe what you would call feedback. Yeah, I guess. That's not like, there's a writing rule I like, which is that when people tell you that something's wrong, they're almost always right. And when people tell you how to fix it, they're almost always wrong.

Oh, gosh. So like something highlighting, like either highlighting or not highlighting, this is just objective. It worked for me. It didn't work for me. That kind of information is helpful when someone's like, well, you know what you really should have done is. And it's like, if you knew what I really should have done, you probably wouldn't be a random person in the audience. You know, you would be one of my peers and I would have already talked to you and elicited your feedback.

I also think there's something to, do you know you're giving advice or are you just being you? Yeah. Right? Like, I think there's something to, if you ask someone, do you have advice for me? They will almost always make up advice for you. Yes. Sometimes you are soliciting or you are predetermining whether you're getting feedback or what kind of feedback you're getting by the question. Like if you send it to somebody, do you have any notes? They're not going to say no notes because that is a note, which is implying that somehow perfect, which it's not.

And, you know, it'd be better if like I've learned you go, hey, is there anything you think I should cut? Or what do you really like? If it's just general notes, they'll give you a bunch of stuff and chances are they're not actually qualified to just give you a bunch of stuff. I just made that mistake too. I just asked someone for notes and they gave me too many notes. Yeah. I mean, not really, but I should have asked like, what is the most intriguing part of this section? What's funny when I did that highland exercise is I'm a little verbose. I don't know if you noticed. And, um...

Every single highlight that had like over 3,000 highlights were the shortest sentences. Yes. I was like, what? Yeah. But my long, beautiful sentences with commas are so great. No. And so when I wrote cues, I forced myself to write in really short sentences that were like really direct. Sure. And my mom read my second book and she's like, it doesn't sound like you. No.

And I was like, it's because I'm writing in short sentences. But it worked. Like Q's was a much bigger hit and Captivate was big, but this was like, it hit better. I think it's because it was shorter. Well, I think what happened there is you took data and then you deduced a conclusion from that data as opposed to a singular person who again, may or may not be qualified to

not looking at data and just giving you advice from their very specific opinion. Yes. And I think that you could do the same thing with interpersonal skills, right? Like I think it's very helpful to think about what is the first impression you make

In one word. Yeah. So when you meet someone for the first time, what word do you think pops into their head? Are you asking me? Oh, no, no, I won't. I mean, it's very personal. Yeah, yeah. You're like, don't, please don't ask. What's the, yeah, what answer am I making up? I wouldn't, because it's very personal, actually. And so theoretically, if someone meets you, what's the word that pops in their head? And by the way, I've asked people this on questionnaires, and it's often shy, awkward, quiet. It's a lot of those kinds of words. Yeah.

And then I think I ask people, what's your ideal first impression word? Sure. So what do you want people to think of? What do you want an aspiring projector to be? What's the gap? Yeah. Why? What is missing from this word to this word? By the way, I've asked thousands of people that question. I think twice someone had the same word. What everyone's aspiring for is different? Like no one felt that their first impression was ideal. That they're nailing it. No one thinks they're nailing it. No one felt they're nailing it. Yeah, of course. And that was like...

Like it sort of made me feel better because I think we all sometimes feel like we're making a neutral or negative impression. Although some people did pick very positive. Yeah. First words. And so I thought that was interesting because we all feel like we're struggling. Yeah. The insecurity is there for everyone. For everyone. And so I also think like if you're a little bit more purposeful with your ideal first impression and you nail it 10% of the time, that's a major win. Yeah. That's better than most. Better than most. Yeah. Yeah.

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Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash SparkCashPlus. Terms apply. But also, I think the idea of the Stoics have this idea of if you don't know what port you're sailing towards, no wind is favorable. If you're just going around going like, I don't think people see me. I don't think people understand me. I don't think I make a good first impression, which again, I think most of us feel, but you don't know the first impression you're trying to make. How can you get from where you are, which you're not happy with, to where you want to be if you haven't

actually taken the time to articulate it. And that's something you also learn with writing, where sometimes you'll get feedback and the person thinks it's negative.

But actually, if you know exactly what you're trying to do, they may have just paid you a compliment, which is like, you just described exactly what I'm trying to be. If you're not, if you're trying to be relatable and someone says, you know, they felt very ordinary or something, maybe that's great. That's what you were going for. Or if you're trying not to be relatable and someone says they're not relatable, that's not an insult. You did it. It's funny. I'm not experimenting. The ideal words, no one.

picked relatable, which is funny because that's a great, that is a great thing to aspire to. You know what a lot of people picked? And this really put me down like a little research rabbit hole, impressive. And I was like, impressive. Okay. So the point of this research, the reason I did it is I was looking for what is content I can create that will be helpful for people to change their first impression. That was the goal of this research. I also wanted to see, you know, if people were different. Okay. Majority of people picked impressive. Yeah. Okay. And I thought, what a terrible first impression word. Yeah.

Right? Like, not to say you're wrong. Or that's a hard thing to nail. Yes. And also like, do you really? Like, I think of impressive people that I've met. I don't really like them, to be honest with you. Yeah. They're very impressive, but I don't want to open up to them. I don't want to be friends with them. I don't want to hang out with them at dinner. And I also don't trust them always. Also.

Also, it's an extremely hard target to hit. Like how many impressive people have you met in your life? Like how many? So you just picked the hardest thing to do instead of something much more attainable and realistic that by the way, once you did, you could build on, you know? And also I think if you were to be really relatable, you do become impressive. I think impressive is a symptom. You cannot be impressive.

I think it is a symptom of something else. And I was at a party in Austin with like very important people that people would know, you

They literally made us sign an NDA before we walked in. And it was like a circle, a share circle where you had to introduce yourself, which is like my least favorite thing in the world. And I was like, great. I'm just sweating. Yeah. They took my shoes or else I would have left. And that's why I also don't like to go out at night. So we're in a circle and I'm not joking you. The first person is like, I'm a billionaire. The second person was like, I cure cancer.

The third person was like, I help children with all the needs. And then it was like me. And I was like, huh. Right. Like so impressive. Those people were so impressive. But I'll tell you what, I did not want to go talk to them afterwards. But super impressive. It got to me. And so I was like, I don't even play in this arena. So I said, my name is Vanessa. I'm a recovering awkward person. And I help recovering awkward people communicate. Everyone laughed. There was like a...

And then afterwards, everyone came up and talked to me, except the billionaire. Sure. Okay. He didn't. But everyone else was like, relatable. And all the impressive people I watched, I watched the room for the two hours afterwards, and people didn't want to connect with them. People didn't want to talk to them. They looked more awkward actually being like, I guess I get another glass of wine. Whereas my awkward people who came up to me, and by the way, afterwards, everyone in the circle was like,

I'm also a recovering awkward person and I started a company. And so I was like, this is it. Impressive, we have to stop. I'm going to say, don't try to be impressive. It will make you the opposite. And I've failed at that for a long time. So I share that with complete humility. Yeah. Well, look, I think a lot of times we try to be the noun instead of

The verb, right? So it's like, you want to be an impressive person. Like it's mostly about doing impressive things. And then often what is sort of the most impressive about someone like that is that they are relatable. So you have someone who's done incredible things and then they seem normal and approachable and it hasn't changed them. Very rarely do I meet a person who

comes off as impressive and has done a bunch of impressive things. There's usually a disconnect, but it's when you meet someone, you go, whoa, I didn't know you were that person or that's incredible. You want to be a little bit underestimated rather than starting with an overestimation. Yes, like I would always rather be underestimated than try to blow it out of the water. And so for those of you thinking about your words, I don't wanna be too prescriptive, but I would encourage you that with your ideal word, warmth,

Trump's almost everything else. So a lot of the words that were like smart, intelligent, impressive, well-read. Brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah. Confidence. Change maker. You know, I had a couple of those. Oh, thought leader. Right. I had a couple of those words and I knew some of these people, not all of them, but I, we got their Instagram handles. So I was able to like go sneaky peek. And I was like, wow, like,

if they just went for more warmth, they actually would probably be seen as these other things. - Yeah, approachable, accessible, kind, decent. - Yes, likable, likeability is a superpower.

And I wish we talked more about it. I think we talk a lot about being smart and being impressive and being funny and like, but actually just being likable is the most powerful thing you can do. And it's being likable is not about doing anything in particular except one thing, which is, and they researched this, Dr. Van Sloan researched what makes popular kids popular.

He studied thousands of high school students across a variety of high schools. It wasn't attractiveness or GPA or humor or extroversion or athleticism. There were popular kids who were that. The one thing was the most popular kids across all the schools and all the grades had the longest list of people they liked. They were assertively and aggressively liking as many people as they possibly could.

Because people like to be liked. Yes. And the intention was constant warmth. When he observed these students in the hallway, they weren't walking down over their books, looking down. They were going, hey, Ryan. Sure. Hey, Sarah. Like micro moments of warmth. And so that was a game changer for me in that all I have to do at these parties, if I have to go, all I have to do at these events is just how can I like this person more? What

What questions could I ask that will have something in common? What could I do to aggressively like this person? If the benefit is that I'm also likable, cool. But my entire goal at events is...

how can I like more people? Yeah. And that is so much less pressure, right? Than like, I'm going to be funny and I'm going to be warm and I'm going to be relatable. Just like more people. Yeah. It changes your questions too. Be interested, be curious, be open. Yes. I think it was a philosopher who, it wasn't actually Dale Carnegie who started that idea. It was a, I'd have to look up the, it was actually, it was a philosopher before him who said that in order to be interesting, you must be interested in others. Yeah. Interested is half.

I think. Interested is like, prove it. Sure. And I don't like that, actually. So I'm going to say one up, you know, Dale Carnegie and say, actually, to be likable is to be of extreme liking. Yeah.

And that your questions are searching for mutual moments of me too. Yeah. If I'm going and being like, how can I like Ryan? Yeah. I'm not going to ask you the questions you hate. I'm not going to ask you, how'd you get started as a writer? I'm not right. Cause you hate that question, right? Of course. Of course. So do I. I'm not going to ask you like, what's your favorite book? Like, I'm not going to ask you those questions because that's not going to help me like you.

I'm going to ask you questions where I'm searching for moments of likeability that we might have in common. And that totally changes my energy, but also my questions. Right. These are like, you have kids, you know, where do you live? What do you like about parenting? What do you like about Austin? You know, oh, what do you think of the differences between Bastrop and Austin? Like, those are the questions that I'm thinking about. For the things that make you fundamentally human, as opposed to the things that make you whatever the specialist you are. Yes. And also a specialist and...

expert. Yeah. I think everyone is an expert in some domain. Yeah. But there are, I think, like two kinds of VIPs. Like, I don't know if you find this, but there are two kinds of VIPs. One VIP loves to entertain. They like to tell the stories, share their opinion, be the life of the party, have everyone laugh at their jokes. Yeah. That's one kind of VIP. If I meet that kind of VIP, I'm asking lots of questions. The other kind of VIP wants to be entertained. Oh,

Okay. They do not want to be asked questions. They do not want to be telling the stories. They want to laugh at your jokes and be intrigued by what you're saying. That is when you're answering your own questions and you're sharing really interesting stories and you're sharing really interesting facts. I think you are the latter. Sorry, the second one. Yeah, that's probably introverted versus extroverted is probably...

splits that distinction as well. And people who talk about their work for a living. So like there are extroverts who talk about their work for a living. So when they get offline, the last thing they want to do is talk about anything. They're extroverted, but they're like tired. And so I try really quickly to respect what kind of VIP I'm talking to and see, do they want to be entertained or do they want to be an entertainer? Yeah. I'm just thinking about like when I'm backstage about to give a talk, do I want to be

doing more talking or, you know, do I want to just have a few human moments with a person I'll probably never see ever again in my life? Do you talk backstage? Cause I do.

Are you like a quiet contemplator? I'd rather be listening to music and just sort of pacing. I realize I need the oxytocin. So I will like go find the AV team. And I'm like, so how was breakfast? Tell me all about it. Like, I think I know. And I'm actually not extroverted. Yeah. But I realize I get so in my head that I want the oxytocin. So I will like talk to my Uber driver. I want their life story. Tell me a joke. Tell me about your quinceanera. Sounds like you're an extrovert.

No, I'm an ambivert. Right. Right. And what's that? So introverts get their energy from being alone. Extroverts get their energy from being with others. Ambiverts can get energy from the right people at the right times that need lots of recharge time. So I cannot be alone all the time. No, I do crave people, the right kind of people. Like this is my favorite. Yeah.

Invite me to a happy hour. No, thank you. Yeah. Like, no, thank you. Cannot do it. It's too loud. I can't have deep conversations. We can't talk about a book. And so I know that if it's an interview situation or a learning situation, I love it. It gives me energy. But anything else I don't love. On stage, it's very one-sided, right? I'm giving a keynote and I need the oxytocin to not feel like a robot. Huh.

You just need to kind of be juiced. Yeah, but be amongst the people. So you're not up there, you know, as this sort of figure pedestal thing. You want to feel real and accessible and just sort of get in that sort of loose zone. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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