Body Language Expert: Stop Using This, It’s Making People Dislike You, So Are These Subtle Mistakes!

his voice, which makes him sound more authoritative and confident. This downward inflection signals certainty and conviction, making it easier for listeners to trust and engage with the speaker.

So, to summarize the five power cues for competence:

1. **The Steeple**: A hand gesture that shows openness and confidence.

2. **Maximize the Distance**: Keep your shoulders relaxed and create space between your earlobes and shoulders to appear more confident.

3. **Eye Contact**: Make eye contact at the end of your sentences to emphasize your points and show engagement.

4. **Lower Lid Flex**: Use this cue to show focus and understanding, which can enhance your connection with others.

5. **Downward Inflection**: Avoid the accidental question inflection and instead use a downward tone at the end of your sentences to convey confidence and authority.

Now, let’s move on to the warmth cues. These are equally important for creating a balanced impression of warmth and competence. Would you like to hear about those next?

His mouth that makes us gives us him more resonance, but it also makes us think, "Oh, he really believes his word," because it's the opposite of the question reflection. If you have a boundary, if you're setting a limit, if you're telling someone something really important about you, say it—don't ask. That is the biggest thing you can do to get people to take you seriously.

Interesting, and don't ask your name. Most often, I hear people ask their own name, and it destroys their vocal charisma. So that would be, "My name is Vanessa Van Edwards." That "my name is Vanessa Van Edwards"—your perceptions of my confidence in those two introductions are radically different. There's a study that looked at this, and they looked at the vocal statements of surgeons. They had surgeons come into their lab and record 10-second voice tone clips. The clips that are most important when they're meeting patients— their name, their specialty, and where they worked—sounded like this: "Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology, and I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital."

They took these clips and they warbled the words so you could hear the volume, the pace, the cadence, but not the actual words being said. So it sounded like this: "I worked very hard on practicing that, by the way. That's amazing because it has testes sound like me." But nothing. They took these clips and they had people rate these surgeons on warmth and competence—the two things that we know are most important for charisma. The doctors who had the lowest ratings of warmth and competence had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. In other words, we don't sue doctors based on their skills; we sue doctors based on our perception of their skills, and that happens within the first few seconds of hearing them.

So if you give the question reflection on your name, on your specialty, on what you do, people begin to doubt you. So the bad doctors sounded like this: "Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology, and I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital." Those doctors got rated as low in both warmth and competence because their brains were going, "Why are they asking? Are they not sure? I'm not sure either." So it's really signaling conviction in who you are, what you're about, and what you do.

Interesting, so practice your name. "My name is Steven." No, that was up—that was a little, "Hi, my name is Steven." That's it. Okay, yeah. Okay, I literally asked that like a question, didn't I? The first one, I was like, "Hello, my name is Steven." I was actually asking; I was trying to ask you if it was a good pronunciation. That's so funny—that was the upward inflection. And didn't it feel different? Totally different. The second one was me. So the first one was like seeking validation, and you use a lot of downward inflection, except when you're asking questions, which we like.

Okay, right. That's why you lean higher in competence is you use already a lot of downward inflection. It's so interesting because as you were speaking, something came to mind which I was reading about in your work, which is you're really good at what you do. You're like very good as a guest on a podcast and just as a professional generally. And as I was thinking this, I was saying to myself, "I'm sure she knows, and I'm sure she can tell from my face that I think she's good." But it's funny because in your work, you say that we actually over-assume people can read us.

Yes, so like when I was thinking, "Oh, she's so good," and in your work, it says that I was doing it. I was assuming you knew how I felt about you, but in your work, you also make the case that I actually—I should say it. Yes, yes. There's an effect where we think that people know how we feel. Specifically, it's called signal amplification bias. There's a name for this study, which is that we think our signals are obvious. That if we like someone or if we're having a good time, we think, "Oh, they for sure know it." They don't.

Oh, the three magic phrases we never finish them. That's why you say, "I was just thinking of you." That's a way of assuring someone, "I do think of you," only if it's true. The second one is, "You're always so..." So if you're with someone and you're impressed by them or they're interesting or they're funny, saying, "You always make me laugh," "You're always so interesting," "You're always so great to interview," "You're always so great at interviews," giving them a label that is a positive label is the best gift you can give someone because it's fighting that signal amplification bias.

And the last one is, "Last time we talked, you mentioned..." Yeah, we are so honored when we get brain space that you remembered and you're going to bring it up, and you specifically bring up something that they lit up with. So they were like, "Ah, it was great, it was exciting, it was wonderful." Those are my three magic phrases, and it's because they are fighting that signal amplification bias. I have no idea if you like this interview. I have no idea if you like my work. I have no idea. And the more that you can broadcast those symbols, those signals, the more people actually like you.

So what advice would you give me then as an interview host of the show? What is—because people come here sometimes, they're nervous. You know, we have people come, and they—some people come in, they're nervous a little bit, and I always try—I always want to make them feel comfortable. But I—you know, as you said, I probably don't rank that high on warmth, so it doesn't come that natural to me. I'm not the kind of person that comes out and is like, "Hi, welcome!" and like, "Hey!" And that would be off-brand for you.

Yeah, and it wouldn't be authentic. No, no, it would be off-brand for you, right? It's too much. Okay, so five warmth cues. So for those of you who are listening, the five power cues I just shared—those are if you think you are really high in warmth but you worry that people don't take you seriously, you're worried that people ignore you, you get interrupted in meetings. I want you to use those five power cues. If that's you, now I'm going to teach you five warmth cues. If you have ever been told you're intimidating, hard to talk to, cold, if you often feel like people are holding back or not opening up to you, I want you to use these five warmth cues. This is dialing up your thermostat.

Okay, these are for you. You too. First, we love a triple nod. Research has found that if we do a slow triple nod, the other person speaks 67% longer. So as an interview, this is a great cue. Watch. So here's my triple nod: "We love it." It's like a non-verbal dot, dot, dot. It's like, "Tell me more, tell me more." Now be careful—don't bobblehead. So you don't want to do it too much, right? That's too high in warmth. And second, you don't want to do it too fast. Too fast of a triple nod is impatience. It means, "Shut up."

Yeah, so if you want someone to wrap a question—yeah, that's exactly right. So here's for everyone watching. Here's good—here's please hurry up. Yeah, that shut the [ __ ] up. I've seen that before, and it works. It's a really nice way of saying, "Please wrap, please end." So I love a warm triple nod. You have to be careful with it. Okay, so that's cue number one. Second, a head tilt. So universally, if we're trying to hear something, we tilt our head up and we expose our ear, right? We're as if we're like, "What was that?" Like dogs do this when they're like, you know, they expose their ear. Humans also do this across cultures because it's a kind of a way that we're like, "Oh, I'm listening."

Research has found that if you deliver bad news with a head tilt, you are more likable. So people take the news better if you deliver bad news with a slight head tilt because it literally makes you look more warm. It literally makes you look like you're listening. Now, I only want you to do this when you're actually listening, but a head tilt is also a way that you can slightly add warmth to your conversation or to your interview or to your date. Not too much. Okay, so we're going to go back to—so we don't want to go too far. That looks weird. A little weird, right? Not too much.

And I also like to teach a head tilt to my highly warm folks who are bobbleheaders. So if anyone—if you're like, "Oh, I do this a lot." Yeah, I'm a bobbleheader. I'm a recovering bobbleheader because I like to—people like me, right? So I'll nod too much. If you are a bobbleheader, you can train yourself to replace it with the head tilt because it's physically impossible to head tilt while you nod. So if you're a bobbleheader, just head tilt. Okay, head tilt. There's something about the head tilt which makes me—it signals they care. Yeah, and they're empathetic.

Yeah, there's some—I don't know what it is about someone's head tilt that—because if someone was firing me and they were doing it like this, I feel like they don't care. There's something brusque, but if they do it like this, it's like you really care about me. That's so crazy—just such a small—that one little thing. You know that you mentioned the book "The Game"? Yes, I know a lot about that world, and there's a funny trick they teach, which I'll teach you. It's not part of my warmth cues, but I'm going to teach it to you because I think it's interesting. Don't let—don't let anyone use this on you, okay? And nobody at home, use this on anyone else. Don't use this on anyone else.

But so there's this thing that NLP people will do or pickup artists will do where they move their hand like this, and it begins—the other person will begin to nod because our—typically when we do this with our hand, the other person starts to nod, which makes you think, "I agree, I agree, I agree." What are you doing? For anyone that can't see, she's like, "We're rolling something forward," and then you're like, "I want to." It's really hard to not nod your head when someone's doing this, which then makes you feel like you agree with them. That's so crazy. It's like you've got like a string on my head. A string on your—it's very weird.

So don't let anyone do that to you, and don't use it. Don't use it on anyone. I don't teach it in my books because it's like I'm worried that you—it's too powerful. It's too powerful. Okay, triple nod, head tilt—one and two. Okay, third, we already talked about this one—an authentic smile, right? A smile that reaches all the way up into your eyes. Highly warm people typically do do that authentic smile more. Now, I don't like a fake smile, so I only want you to do it when you're authentic about that.

That was my authentic—you laughed. This is why I don't smile. This is why people think I'm intimidating because people laugh at my spit. That's good. That was better. That was better. I can tell you're lying, Mrs. Body Language. I can tell you're lying. That was better. That was better than the first one. Better than the first one. That does mean it's good. I'm looking for good. Anyway, number four is—so authentic smiles—number three, authentic smiles—number three. Number four, we love a lean. Oh, we love a lean. When in the proxemic zones, right? We're in those four zones. If someone's leaning into you, it shows they're literally trying to cross into that zone very, very subtly.

And so you'll notice very highly charismatic people who you want to be friends with—they'll be like, "Tell me more, tell me everything," and they lean in really close to you, and that makes you also feel closer. So if you want to be seen as high in warmth, you can do this as a speaker. So you can lean in as you bold an important point. Like when I'm making an important point for you, I lean into it. I'm like, "Listen to this. This is good." But if I'm listening to you and you say something good, I'll be like, "What? Really?"

So you can do it as a speaker and as a listener, and it immediately adds more warmth. It's funny. Okay, this might be a little bit of a tangent, but it just came to mind as you were speaking. There are like the odd person in my life who I've known for many, many years, but whenever I'm around them, it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier. My body is just off, and I just don't know what it is. Like I'm thinking of one particular person—I shan't name where I could be in a room full of people, and I'm relaxed, I'm calm, whatever. And this person, who I've known for many, many years, the minute they arrive in the room, I wouldn't be able to be the same person.

And I don't know what it is. Like I'd suddenly start overthinking my body language, and I'd start thinking, "How's my legs?" and "It's my body," and I'd start covering, blocking a little bit. What is that trying to tell me? Do I need to cut this person out of my life? Is there like words unspoken? What is it? I would say it means do more research. I think that gut feelings are incredibly important because, you know, the best cue-reading machine we have is our subconscious, right? Our subconscious or unconscious is picking up on lots of cues that we can't consciously know. We can't consciously know that we're smelling adrenaline, but we are smelling it.

So I think that's a very important thing to pay attention to. It doesn't mean you should cut them out, but I think it's time to do more research. Are they truly happy for you? Are they truly rooting for you? Are they secretly angry or jealous? Maybe I'm doing it to them. It's possible that you're in a loop with them, right? Like you're expecting that bad thing, and that expectation becomes reality. Like they've studied this—that the Pygmalion effect is real. If you expect not to like someone, you send off more unlikable cues. They feel unliked, and so they don't like you either.

And so it could be that you're in a loop with this person that maybe you make them feel the same way. What do I have to do then when next time I see them? Because I want to dial up, I don't know, some warmth with this person or something or break that cycle. Okay, if I were you, they're important to you. Yeah, they're important to me. Okay, so I would recommend asking questions that will level you up with them to level two. So my guess is you might be stuck in level one with them because you're obviously uncomfortable with them.

Research shows that the more commonalities we have with someone, the more that we understand them, the more compassion we have with them, the more that we like someone. So I wonder if we could level up your relationship with them so you get to know them better, which means you'll like them more. And if you make it through these six or seven questions and you still don't like them, then maybe they're not your person. Okay, okay. Can I give you some questions for them? Please. Okay, please.

So here are my favorite—I call these level one, level two, level three questions in the framework that I'm researching right now. It's not done yet. I have four questions for each level, and I'm working through these questions. But here are the questions that I think are the shortcut to connection, okay? That if you ask these questions with your partner, your friend, colleagues, you're going to level up with them. Okay, first, "Are you working on anything exciting recently?" So stop asking, "What do you do?" Stop asking, "How are you?" Stop asking, "How's it going?" That's why you hate people. If you're asking those questions, of course you're going to hate people. Those are the most boring questions anyone's ever asked.

Can I give you a challenge? A challenge? Here's one challenge from this podcast: stop asking, "What do you do?" for 30 days. I want you to go on a "What do you do?" diet. Asking "What do you do?" is telling the person's brain, "Stay on autopilot." D-I-E. Last night—no, no more. We're on a diet. Okay? Also, asking someone "What do you do?" is asking, "What are you worth?" And if someone's not defined by what they do, it's actually a rude question.

Do you know what? You're so right. It's so funny you say this because yesterday I went to this thing in New York, right? And I was introducing myself to some people, and there was one particular person who I went over to, and we were having a conversation. And halfway through the conversation, I went, "So what do you do?" And do you know what they replied? They went, "This." And I just—I went home thinking about it. Like I was like, "Of course we're [ __ ] at work." Like I bet what I've done there is I've just belittled what we're doing right now as if it couldn't possibly have been what they do right.

And I just—I honestly, I got in bed last night thinking about it. I thought, "Oh God." Like, yes, I do you know what? It was—I think I was so impressed by them that I was a bit awkward, yeah, and then that just came out mid-sentence. "What do you do?" Yeah, God. Okay, so we're going on a diet, everyone. From the next 30 days, we're going on a diet. No more "What do you do?" You're going to replace it with "Working on anything exciting these days?" or "Working on anything exciting recently?" This is permission connection. You ask someone that question, you are giving them permission if they want to tell you about what they do.

Oh, they will. If they are not defined by what they do, they'll tell you something better, and that also gives you really good nuggets for the next time you see them when you can say, "Hey, how was that thing you were working on that was really exciting going?" So start with "Working on anything exciting these days?" "Working on anything exciting right now?" Second, "What's your biggest goal right now?" So if you can, especially as we go into the new year or in the new year, right, being part of the year, I love—I ask this question in December, January, and February. I ask everyone, "What's your biggest goal right now? What's your big goal for 2025?"

When you ask this question, you're going to get one of two responses: one, someone shuts you down, "I don't believe in goals." Not my person. Not my person. I'm a growth-minded person. If someone says that, I'm like, "Cool, peace. We're not going to get along very well because I have a lot of goals." Or they're going to be like, "Oh, let me tell you," and they're going to tell you all about goals. That's also a great thing you can follow up on because then when you see them a month later or a week later or a year later, you can be like, "Hey, how did that go?"

It's a great interview question. It's a great—I was just thinking that I should ask people that in the interview because, yeah, because you're right. Someone that can't articulate some kind of goal is probably not my kind of person. Those kind of people that go—those kind of people don't listen to this podcast anyway. They just leave comments and [ __ ] up, like, "Yeah, exactly." So like it's a very—I call those allergy questions. Interesting. It's a way to see, "Are we going to have an allergic reaction to each other?" It creates an allergy. Like I know there's a type of person—it susses them out really quickly, and that's not my kind of person.

Okay, so "Working on anything exciting?" "What's your goal right now?" And then this is harder. This is a self-narrative question. Do we want to go deeper for a self-narrative question? Of course we want to go that. So if we're getting into self-narrative and you're trying to figure out yourself or someone else's narrative, you want to ask the question—it sounds innocuous, but it's not—"What book, movie, or TV character is most like you and why?" It's kind of a silly, like dinner party question. It sort of sounds casual, but the answer to this question is so incredibly important.

And here's an example: how someone relates to characters, their values or personality, is how they see themselves, and people's answers will shock you. I'll give you one example. I was friends with someone for six years—one of my closest friends. I saw them all the time, weekends. We went on ad together; we went on weekend trips together. I thought I knew her so well. I was like, "I know her." I asked her this question, and I hypothesized—this is all my research for my next book. I was like, "I hypothesize she's a mom of three, super funny, super savvy. I was like, she's going to pick a great, like, TV mom character." You know, that's super savvy and funny.

I asked her. She thinks about it for maybe one second and goes, "Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games." I was like, "The one who's like fighting for her life?" She's like, "Yeah, that's how I feel every day." And we, for the first time in six years, had a conversation about how she feels about her day that was totally different than anything I had ever known—that she feels scared and lonely and that she is fighting for survival. And it was the first time that I truly connected with her. I cannot tell you how many times the answer to this question has changed for people in my life, and I'm like careful which examples to use because I'm worried that they're going to be watching, but it has changed my relationship with people in my life based on how they see themselves—not how I see them, but how they see themselves.

It's really interesting because there's so many people listening right now that are now doing that, and they're discovering maybe for the first time even how they see themselves. Because it's funny because when you said that, obviously I did it in my head, and I was like, "[ __ ]!" Well, now I want to know what it is. You like stereotypically—no, I'll tell you now. I was thinking—it's funny because the first person I thought of was Will Smith because people say I look like him sometimes, right? Like people—you have to correct someone. If someone says who they look like, you say, "No, no, look like value personality."

But then when I thought about TV characters, I actually thought about Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness." And if you think about his journey, he was broke, and he was fighting really hard to get out of that situation, and he got out of that situation. So it goes back to the personality type you described at the beginning where like you're the hero of your own journey, like where you've overcome something. And do you feel you found happiness? Are you at the end of the movie? I'm at the end of the movie. I don't know if you can ever get to the end of the movie. That's the struggle with that question because there's like—I think I found it, but I've always—I don't know.

Like not the end of your movie; it's not the end of your life movie. But like in that example, we could have a long discussion about like what is—have you made it? So the reason why I think I'm hesitating is because I think to myself, if I say I've made it or I'm at the end of the movie, then I'm like—it kind of robs me of the future in a weird way in my head. It's like robbing me of like doing anything else with my future. No, because what I mean—yeah, yes, yes. If you feel like the end of the movie, I'm like, "Oh God." Like, yes, no, that's true. You're never at the end of the movie.

But like if you feel that you've made it, it means you have freedom to pursue things and do work for meaning as opposed to hitting it. Yeah, of course. Yeah, like I used to work in call centers at nighttime selling hotel rooms and car insurance and artificial grass, and now I get to sit here and have conversations with people like you, and like people tune in and stuff. It's like if I don't realize at this moment how much privilege I have, I think I'd be pretty [ __ ] up. So yeah, I do feel like disproportionately unbelievably fortunate in a way that I actually don't think I can understand.

I think maybe I dreamed of this, but to be here feels suspicious. Suspicious? Yeah, a strange word that came to mind. Yes, it feels suspicious because I don't know. You just think—you just think sometimes you think, "Are you worried?" It's maybe it is worry, but it's also just like surely not. Like it's so interesting because I had the dream of being successful in business, but I didn't have a dream of or ever imagine that my life would be like this where like people know who you are. I never had that dream. Never imagined it being possible. That was other people for sure.

And so also, that's a very accurate—like that's how I think of Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness" a little bit is like you never really see him truly happy in that movie. No, he's always just running. Like that's something that I—that's why I asked, like, did you get it? You know, you've pursued it; you're here. Of course, I'm still chasing off to something. That's what I think I can— I don't know what I'm chasing. I wonder what you're chasing after. I don't know. I actually don't know. But I think that you're interviewing for something. Like when I watch your interviews, which are amazing, I'm like, "He's trying to find the answer to something."

What is it? Always, like with every person, it's a different thing. And actually, most of the answers I'm looking for are my own answers. And my general belief is that if I like authentically go in search of my own answers, which requires some level of like being open and willing to be open, even though there's a lot of people watching, then there'll be lots of other people out there that are struggling with the same things or searching for the same answers as well. Yes, it's interesting. I do ask myself a lot, "What am I like? What's the point? Like what am I?"

But is it not the—this is a bit of a tangent, obviously—is it not the case that we should all be searching forever? Like we should all be in pursuit of something forever? I do love a quest, and I love pursuing, and I think humans are built to pursue things. But I also think—I hope I'm not here yet. I'm getting there—that there's a point in our life where we can stop the grind. Like I think I'm grinding a little bit in my career. I don't know if you feel like that. Like I've made it. I feel like I've made it. I'm luckier than I ever—I can't believe I get paid to do what I do. But I'm still pursuing.

I hope there's a point in my life where I can just be sharing wisdom, where I'm not pursuing anything. It's not a number or a list or it's just like all I'm doing is sharing wisdom and giving out public education. Like I think that I'm hopeful there's a stage of our life where it's just that. It's number five on the one—did lean, which was number four. Number five is actually—I have to pause on lean because I wanted to ask you about something I read in a book about peacocking. Yes, so I read in this pickup artist book that I read when I was 18 and some of the videos that I watched thereafter and some of the other books that I read thereafter and some of the other videos I watched thereafter about this concept of peacocking where you can—if you're like on a date or you're interested in a girl or a guy in a bar, if you lean in too much, you're signaling low value and like over-in.

And ever since I learned that, I've seen it everywhere. And I've seen it in my friends. Me and my friends went to like Mar or somewhere—I can't remember. It was many, many years ago, and there was this beautiful girl there, and we were all pursuing her. Yes, like that, like a labrador. Yeah. And I was saying to my boys, "There's actually a photo of it on my phone. There are me, Dman, and my friend Ash sat there, and we're looking over at some of our other friends, and we're saying they're peacocking. They got no chance." And that's how the story transpired.

And then when this beautiful girl came over to my other friend, he was aware of this peacocking thing. He kept his neck back; he kept his chest back—all these kinds of things. He didn't lean in, even though it was loud and closed. Okay, here's why too much of a lean is a bad thing. It's called a bow, right? If you lean too far over, you get very quickly into bowing or submissive behavior. We don't like people who are submissive to us. We want equals. And so you're absolutely right. What it triggers in the brain if you're leaning too much is literally, "I am subservient to you," and that makes someone who does not want to be in control or in an unequal relationship feel very uneasy.

So that is why too much of a lean—always with these non-verbal cues, too much of a good thing. You lean too much, it's considered a bow. You also don't want to lean the entire time. CU then you look like a hunchback, right? I'm lowering my value by leaning in too much, and it's distracting. Like I want to lean in as a bold or a highlight. If I were to be reading a book and highlight the entire page, the highlight means nothing. If you lean in when someone's like, "What? Really?" and then I lean back, then it's powerful. Every single one of these cues we are using as a bold or an emphasis or a highlight—just enough of a good thing.

Okay, not too much leaning. Just use it as a party trick. Like a—no, no, I mean just use it like as a highlighter. As a highlighter. You're highlighting. Yes, yes, yes. Number five. Okay, five non-verbal bridges. So this is a concept that I learned on the road. So I saw this in action in a lot of our experiments. We did a big, big speed networking experiment in our lab where we had 500 speed networkers try out different conversation starters. We've recorded them, we coded their conversations, and we looked for patterns of good and bad conversations.

And we found there were certain questions that worked better than others, and there were certain questions that did terribly. And one thing we found is that when people rated a conversation on a five scale—like five amazing, best conversation I had, we're going to connect on LinkedIn, I think I like them—the best ones, they used a lot of non-verbal bridges. Non-verbal bridges are when someone is trying to bridge the distance between you. So that could be a lean. Lean is one of them, but it also could be a reach out. We noticed that in the good conversations, people were trying to physically close the distance between them with hand gestures, with leans, with nods, with foot movement, with drinks.

And when they were close enough, they would often do very light touches on the arms, on the shoulder. So have you seen this? Like on a really good date? Have you ever been in a restaurant? Like my husband and I like to play this game where we look and we try to guess if a couple is a very new couple or an old couple, how they're doing. In a very good date, they are looking for as many opportunities to touch as they possibly can. That's a non-verbal bridge. Even if I were to be like, "Oh, let me tell you something," like that slight reach out, tap of the knuckles to the arm—that's a quick saying, "I'm going to reach into your intimate zone, but I'm not going into your intimate zone."

And really good relationships, really warm people are those—they are bridging all the time. They walk by you, they touch your shoulder, they say, "How's it going?" "Hey, I want to—thinking about you." Like they're constantly doing these very small bridges. And that might not be actual physical touch. It could even be the look of a touch. Like one thing that I teach my students who are uncomfortable with touch is you can even touch without touching. That sounds really weird, but like put your arm closer to me so I can demo it for you. So like pretend that we're at dinner. I could be like, "Oh my gosh, really?"

Okay, so you didn't touch me, my hand, but it did the same thing. Yeah, not quite. Oxy did, yeah, but kind of. I get it. Yeah, she's trying to close the intimacy of the distance. So non-verbal bridges—trying to reach out, reach into someone's space very briefly and come back. Trying to lean into someone's face very briefly. This is why giving people things or serving people is such a warm thing. You hand someone a drink. Like you come to my office, I offer you hot chocolate, I offer you tacos. I want to break the social scripts. I want to give you something different.

And I'm looking for reasons to serve you. You give people tacos at your office? Yeah, I'm in Austin, Texas. Strange. You would like it. You would like it if you were hungry. You'd be like, "Give me that taco." Give me that taco. It's what I don't know if that's office food, but each to their own. So hugging and stuff like that, you know, there's this thing that people talk a lot about, which is awkward hugging. And sometimes you hug someone, and you just feel like, "Oh, they didn't like that." I didn't like that. That was bad for both of us.

Yeah, horrible. Can we address the hug issue, please? Okay, you need to signal what kind of greeting you want from the moment someone first sees you. You can stop awkward greetings from happening with simple non-verbal cues. Here's what they are: you want a handshake. "So good to see you." I want you to be doing this from 10 feet away. "So good to see you." I'll come in with it. Yeah, you're literally signaling to someone, "Oh, so good to see you," right? This immediately signals their brain, "Don't try to give me an awkward hug. Don't side hug me. Don't hug me. We're handshaking."

It is a very clear way to be like—it's called blading. So we angle our body a little bit forward, and we put one hand out. You know I'm coming in for a handshake. If you want a hug and you're a hugger, it's "So good to see you." It's so good to see you. Okay, arms out, arms out. And that's also going to prevent the awkward side hug. The worst thing you can do is like this, which is a kind of—but what? But one arm up? People are like, "Do I shake it? Do I side hug? Are we going to hug? Are we going to high five? Are we going to fist bump?"

If you want a fist bump, you're coming in with a fist bump from very hugger because I don't always—it’s context-dependent. I do not like hugging people when I first meet them. I was pitching a TV show about recovering awkward people at a very big network, and I walk into the pitch room. And at that point, I was a hugger, or I was—I thought I should hug because that was one of the things. In LA, people are huggers and cheek kissers a lot. And so I was like, I walk in and say, "Oh, it's so nice to meet you. I'm a hugger."

Oh, yeah, and then Z goes, "I'm not." Oh, just cringe. Oh God, just—I died inside. I died inside. And you know what? That pitch went terribly. Do I have a TV show called "Recovering Awkward Person"? No, I don't. That's because I think I hugged him, and I went forward with it. Too much warmth, not enough competence. And so I will never do that again. So now I never ever say I'm a hugger, and I always offer my hand. Now, if someone says to me, "Oh, but I'm a hugger," and they wave my hand away, no problem, no problem.

That's interesting. If we take that back to the charisma framework of warmth and competence, it is signaling a little bit too much—a lot of warmth. It's a lot of warmth. And I know a lot about a person when they tell me I'm a hugger. What you know? Go high warm, high warmth. Probably a people pleaser, overeager, really want to connect, probably feel lonely a little bit afraid, and I want to make them feel as liked as possible. Gosh, that's a lot just from that one sentence.

I've hugged a lot of people. No, it is also—I, you know, I have amazing students. You know, we have millions of views on our YouTube channel, and they feel like they know me. And so if they want to hug me, I'm totally okay with it because I've been in their bed, I've been in their living room, I've been in their kitchen, TV on their phone. I've shared my stories with them, and I understand why they want to hug me because we feel like friends, and that actually is a compliment. And you like it.

I do like it. Like when a student says, "Oh my gosh, I love you. I love Captivate," I'm like, "Come here." It feels like a friend. So on the hugging point then as well, is there like—is there a great way to hug someone? I mean, yeah, how is that? Have you been told you're a good hugger? Because then you might not be. I've tried to work on it, so I think I think I am now. Okay, I actually have been told I am. Okay, but it's part of the reason why is because I've learned a lot from doing this podcast, and someone told me, "Don't tap on the back."

Don't tap on the back. And they told me to like—we don't like being tapped on the head; we don't like being tapped on the back. It's a submissive cue, right? It's like you'll notice power players in politics will sometimes demean someone by going, "Hey, bud." Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we—yeah, definitely don't hug. So you're going to want to approach equally. You don't want any kind of asymmetry in your hug, right? So that's why you want to approach someone like this—like no asymmetry. None of this straight on.

So this is hard if you are taller than the person. You typically want to go up. Like you want to avoid like the who's going up, right? So the taller person should always try to go up, and you want to like literally angle up. The lower person is going to angle down, and you're going to try to go torso to torso. Okay? And I like a two-second hug, by the way. There is research on the length of handshakes. I haven't seen research on the length of hugs, but a handshake should be between one and three pumps and one and three or one and three seconds.

So for example, we're saying at one, two, three—that's good. And typically, they found that if we do a three-second shake, it's with a new person. So our first shake was about three seconds because we didn't know each other. But if I were to see you again, like, "Oh, it's so good to see you." Okay, you do—okay, so typically if you already know someone, you're just like doing a quick greeting. It's a one second, and if you don't know someone, it's a three-second. What if I—your face as I got to four seconds, you're like offended. You're like, "Not my person." You like cussed me out of your eyes.

Yeah, it was like horrible. That's how I feel getting my arm back. You also want to make sure that when you're doing a handshake, you're offering thumb up. Thumb up is really important. You'll notice certain political power players will—hear if—yeah, that. So they'll flip you. Oh, Donald Trump. Yes, you—and he like really pulls, and he'll pull you. He'll pull you off. I never shook hands with him, so I don't know, but I've watched many, many a video, and he'll shake your hand, turn you up.

This is a very vulnerable place to be. We don't like it as humans to have these arteries up. So he'll flip, and he'll pull you off there. It doesn't feel good, does it? But what does that signal? Does that signal competence and strength? No, I don't think it's either. I actually think it's a danger cue. Okay, CU. It's purposely—I don't—none of the cues I teach are manipulative in that way. Like that is purposely trying to get someone off balance, like to give them dis-equilibrium.

I like relationships to be equal. That's why I want you to offer thumb up. I want—I also don't want you to open—you know, offer your hand like, you know, up where you're saying, "I'm going to be submissive to you." We don't like that, right? So thumb up. I think—I can't remember where I learned it, but I learned that if you cup, then it's signaling warmth. So I was going to cup earlier on, but I was holding some stuff. I remember thinking I sat there and on cup. Why did I get my cup? Because I was holding your books.

I was holding your books. I was like, "I can't imagine if I tried to cup with your books." I was just thr—so strange. No, so cupping is really warm. It's double the warmth. It's double the oxytocin. It's like a hand hug, so it's super high in warmth. It's also called the politician's handshake. So you only want to do it if you are truly and genuinely trying to show warmth. Otherwise, it can come across as forced.

Okay, I also—speaking of like weird signals, I've heard this about men—that men to men have two different kinds of nods. Tell me if you think this is true. So if you walk down the hallway and you see a man you know, you go, "Hey," nod up. If you see a man you don't know, you go, "Morning," and you nod down. Oh, that's interesting. And supposedly it's because a person you know, you're willing to expose this part of your neck, but if you don't know someone, you want to keep your chin down, but you're still acknowledging them. Is that true?

Well, do you know what's funny is the way that I think about it is if I see a black guy out and about—okay, pretty much anywhere—and they know me, whatever, they'll typically do that up. There's something about—I don't know if I'm just making this up, but there's something about being part of—they—I can see them from across the room, have no idea who they are, and in group, it's like a—I see you, me and you are, and I trust you. It's a way of being like, "I'm willing to expose this. I trust you."

Oh, okay. So interesting. Interesting. So I've noticed that women don't do that. Okay, so that's—oh, yes. KN down is, "I see you, stranger." Okay, morning. So interesting. So, so interesting. I'm a CEO. I do speaking on stage. You speak on stage as well. You're very, very good at it. Is there anything that I should know if I'm a leader in a business or I'm a public speaker that I should be thinking most about when I'm up on stage to signal? I don't know, whatever I want to signal to get whatever I want.

Yes, purposeful movement. A big mistake I see CEOs make on stage is they either don't have purposeful movement, so they pace the stage back and forth, or they're stuck in one point and they don't move from that point, and it makes them look very stiff. I believe you should block your speeches just very subtly. So for example, I always—when I deliver, I start in the middle of the stage. Always, always. So when I'm being introduced, right, your first few seconds on stage is the most important for your entire talk.

So as you're being introduced, you walk on stage, pick a point, and walk purposefully to it. Don't meander on the stage. You're walking right to the middle of the stage or the left of the stage, however you pick, and you're delivering your first opening lines, opening story in that middle point. That's where I like it, and that intention walking on stage is going to make you look so much more confident and not disorganized or ambiguous than if you can—this is for the advanced speaker, and this is you.

I think you want to help your audience with your stage movement. So in my presentations, when I'm sharing science or fact or research, I'm on the left-hand side of the stage. When I'm moving to personal story gifts, anecdotes, or a funny video, I'm on the right side of the stage. That is a way I'm helping my audience organize and categorize my talks. I've also noticed in the audience there are highly warm people and there are highly competent people. I've noticed if I train them that way, I'm doing a 60-minute keynote, they begin to subconsciously recognize it.

My highly competent folks perk right up. I get to the left side of the stage—oh, this is for me. And my highly warm folks are like, "Ha, my turn." And it really helps them know when to pay the most attention. So you should think about—for your talks, you also can do this chronologically. So some of my students are like TED speakers, and they're telling more of a chronological story as opposed to like making points. I will often teach them to start—like we like to—you know, in Western cultures, we read from left to right.

I like them to actually start on the left-hand side of the stage or the audience's left because the beginning of their story starts here, and they share their childhood. There's a picture of their childhood on the slide, and they slowly begin to move over to the middle when the middle part of their journey happens, and they finally get to their arc, their knowledge, their ah—they finally made it over to the far side of the stage, the far right side of the stage.

And in terms of what I'm saying, we talked a little bit about the actual content of what I'm saying because this applies not just to when I'm on stage but also to emails and WhatsApps. And I think most of our communication these days is on a screen. So if I'm trying to be a master of structuring a sentence on a screen to set people up for success, okay, what have I got to be thinking about? What emotion do you want your person to feel when they see your name in their inbox, on stage, in LinkedIn?

That is the emotion that you want to label yourself. So for example, in your talks, like for example, in my talks, I am trying to acknowledge the pain of awkwardness. I don't want people to feel like they are unseen. So when I say, "You're overlooked, you're misunderstood, you're underestimated, you feel awkward and out of control and anxious and overwhelmed. I hear you. You're not alone. I've been there." And then the solution to that feeling, where it gets better, is confidence and presence and memorability, and the mechanism is blueprints and formula and hard skills that helps me gift to the audience a solution emotion.

So for you, I would say, what are the pain points you want your audience to resonate with so they feel heard by you, seen by you, understood by you? What's the goal emotion that you want to give them from your talk, from your podcast, from the email that they're subscribing to? And then what's your mechanism? What's your way that you do that? Imperfection. So imperfection—I was watching a video of yours, I think from 10 years ago, where you were sat with two lovely people talking about charisma.

And one of the things you said earlier in the video is that I think it was like a TV shop or something like that where like a lady made a mistake. She like spilled a milkshake or something, and she did more sales because she spilled a milkshake. Yes, that's it. Explain this to me. Yes, another study by Dr. Richard Wiseman who wanted to know, do you have to be perfect? Which for many years I wanted to be perfect, and then I realized, oh, there is no such thing as perfect, and I don't want to be that way. Very simple.

He had a model selling a blender in a mall, and in one version, she had the perfect pitch. "And now take your strawberries and your bananas and just the button, and here you have perfect smoothies." And the second one, he had the same smoothie, same pitch, same verbal, but she spills the smoothie on the table as she's pouring it. People bought more of the blender when she spilled the smoothie. Now, does this mean I want you to purposely spill your smoothies? No. I did have a piece of kale in my teeth earlier, and I really considered coming in with it just to see what would happen.

I did. I did think about it, but I didn't do it. But I do think there's like stop trying to be perfect. Own your authentic vulnerabilities. Don't purposely spill a smoothie. Don't purposely spill your coffee, by the way. That experiment was repeated with coffee and job interviews, if I remember correctly. They had an audio clip, and hirers were rating job candidates on performance. And in one of the audio clips, they had him spill his coffee.

"Oh, oops, oops, sorry about that. Spill my coffee. Let's get that." And then go back to the interview, and they rated that candidate as a better candidate even though he spilled his coffee. Why? It's called the other shoe effect. We know that every—no one's perfect. We know this. It's impossible. And so when we're interacting with someone, even on a commercial, even interview, we're like, "What's wrong with you? What is your imperfection?" And it kind of distracts us that this research, the other shoe effect, found the longer the interview goes on without something dropped—like without the other shoe to drop—the more the interviewer is like, "H, what's going on here?"

And the more they'll try to ask questions to try to find it. You are better off in an interview or on a date dropping your shoe, so sharing whatever that vulnerability or imperfection is closer to the start of the interview or the date because it helps the other person, A, get to know you better, but also not be so worried that they're not seeing your true imperfection. Captivate, when I first wrote it, my intro was really, really boring. And my publisher, I love her, Nikki, my editor, wrote back and she's like, "Vanessa, your intro doesn't sound like you. It sounds like you're trying to be something you're not."

And she was right. I was trying to sound like an academic researcher. I'm not an academic researcher. I'm a behavior researcher. I'm a pop scientist. I'm a recovering awkward person. She's like, "Start with that." So the opening line of "Captivate" is, "Hi, I'm Vanessa. I'm a recovering awkward person." That is why that book hit the bestseller list. I dropped the shoe. Yes, I teach charisma. Yes, I teach body language. I am still in recovery. I am still constantly worried that people hate me. I have a small and wonderful group of friends, but otherwise, people make me still nervous.

I know how to deal with it. I know how to make convers—but I want you to know there's still awkwardness here no matter how many of these you learn. You're probably still going to face awkwardness and overwhelm, but at least it will be a little bit easier. So I think it's really important that we plan to share our imperfections and not try to hide it.

Rebranding is a big thing now because we have social media. We have LinkedIn. It's a big part of what gets you a job and gets you opportunities and gets you speaking appointments and book deals, etc. So everybody is—well, most people are playing the game of personal branding to some degree. Yeah, so as you were saying about being perfect and showing imperfections, again, it feels like there's a—there's like a—is gradient the right word? Like a spectrum? That's a nice word for sure.

You can go too far with imperfection. Oh, yeah. Me and my friends call this deficiency promotion. What? And then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got ideas promotion, which is like when you're all about like, "Look how smart I am, and these are my ideas." And deficiency promotion is, "Look how traumatized, broken, sick, ill I am," and you build a whole brand around that. Yeah, and you can like—you know, so you're probably still going to get speaking appointments either side because, you know, they're going to want people to speak about this stuff, but also this stuff.

But I think you have to be quite intentional about how you show up on this spectrum. Well, first of all, what's true, right? Like the very first question is like don't purposely spill the smoothie. But you know what's interesting is when you build a brand, it becomes self-reinforcing. So I see people on both sides of the spectrum. Maybe they started in the middle, and then they got likes and followers that are like, "Get go further! Like what else is wrong with you? That's why we love you. You're so Bren toally."

Totally. I think that there are people who are locked into being broken and being messy, and people don't want to see them triumph. However, I think it is important to show people if you are very broken and in a bad point, in a bad stage in your life, like show it and then show them how you're a hero out of it. That can inspire other heroes. I agree, but is there such a thing as spending too long in either camp? Do you know what I mean? Because we like a little bit of, "Oh, you had a bad day? Great." But you have a bad life is different.

Strokes for different folks. I think there are people who would stay all over there forever. Yeah, but if you're there for 10 years where you're just every day, you're showing up like, "Another [ __ ] day for me for 10 years," I think they would still get likes. I think they would, of course, they would. Content, I mean, it would be miserable for you as a person, but if that's your brand, that's your brand. I guess I guess you said that the most important thing, which is like who are you? Yeah, like if that's the truth, if you're having a decade of [ __ ] up, then be honest. You got a decade of [ __ ] up.

It's interesting with social media that I think social media started in a place where it was, you know, the margarita on the beach, and that was in such high supply that something else became in greater supply, which was being a bit more honest and stretch marks on the beach. Yeah, exactly. Stretch marks on the beach. That's exactly what happened. And those are people who have gone viral from those kind of posts. I would—I do want to say something about personal branding. I think about it a little bit differently.

So in the very last section of cues, I talk about visual. We have to remember that the cues in our brand—the colors we wear, what's behind you in your background, the props you're holding in your picture, what's back behind you in your videos—they are triggering neural networks. So for example, they've researched this. If I say free associate to fire, you might say red, engine, dog, and you might start to associate different words. There are really common neural networks.

So what you want to think about is what neural networks are you triggering in your personal brand? So for example, I like you to create strong neural networks. All my single students—my students who are dating—I say your profile picture should be triggering all kinds of neural networks that you like. So if you love skiing, you should be on a slope holding skis because for some people, that will trigger a fierce fear neural network, right? Like I'm not a skier. I see skis, I'm like cold, scared, alone, right? Like knees hurting.

That's what I think when I see skis. I would not be a good partner for them, but someone else is going to be like adventure, family, fun, vacations—that's your person. Every picture on your profile should be creating allergies and attractors. It should be activating neural networks for your person. You want them to have similar neural networks to you. My husband and I, I think if you were to show us both pictures of the same things, we would have very similar neural networks for different vacations, different props, different foods, different activities.

And that's because we have similar ways of thinking. We are very different, but we activate the same similar neural networks for pain and pleasure. Okay, I had a conversation with a really good friend of mine about this. Okay, they are looking for a partner, okay? And they are approaching their 40s, and they were asking me about their Instagram. And the first thing I noticed about their Instagram is I would say 80% of pictures they're holding a cocktail or a drink of alcohol.

Now, as I looked at the Instagram, I go, "Oh, party girl." I don't think like, "Settle down and let's have a family." Absolutely. Does she want to have a family? Yes. Okay, wrong pictures. Okay, she is activating the wrong neural networks for men. She's dating men. Yeah, she's dating the wrong—men are going to look at that and be like, "Party girl, fun out, not the mother of my children." So those are creating allergies for the ideal man.

So what does she need to change? She needs—okay, so what kind of husband and father does she want? Does she want an outdoor lover? A good one that can—she said to me, "I want a good one that can help me with some of these overheads, overheads, bills." She doesn't want him to pay all the bills; she just wants some help with the [ __ ] bills. Okay, so a hard worker. She earns a lot of money. Okay, so that's pictures of her, you know, working hard at a conference.

What kind of way does she spend her weekends? She's hiking, or she's biking, or she's running across the Brooklyn Bridge, or she's running a marathon, or she loves dogs, or she loves cats, or she's eating big waffles and pancakes. Like she should be taking pictures of what she wants to do with her partner so that they look at that and they're like, "I want to join her for that." And you also want to create allergies. You don't want to appeal to everyone because you're going to go on bad dates.

The other thing I know about this person is something you said earlier—it's just their body language. As I think about it, it's just so—it's like trying to take up less space is any way I can describe it. Contracted. Exactly like that, right? So when we talk about distance between like so ear, ear, ear, L, and shoulder distance—number one. Second distance is important between your arm and your torso. In a good conversation, we have distance that's fluctuating a lot. Like right, I'm talking, my arms are going out, you're seeing distance between my torso and my arm.

People who are very anxious, yeah, like in—like just like a pencil or like a penguin. I call it penguin, where they like don't ever release their arms from their torso, and they're very contracted. They have very minimal hand gestures, and they'll often clutch something to their chest. Now, if I were to give the entire interview like this, you would think, "Oh man, she is nervous," or she's, you know, afraid or she's anxious because I don't have that space. The moment I release that space, it makes me look more confident.

So that's the other distance you can play with. Hand gestures really help with that. Hand gestures help with space, with vocal variety, with comprehension. That's why I like them so much. So if I'm trying to get her a husband, I'd like to—we've been friends for a long time, almost a decade, and I have sat in the passenger seat of her life and tried to be a supportive friend in any way. But if I tried to give her advice in terms of cues and body language and sentences on how to get a partner, where do we start?

Okay, so one, let's get her some pictures that are going to attract the right person and create allergies for the wrong person. Okay, two, her main profile pictures should be showing warm and competent body language. Yeah, authentic smile, maybe a head tilt, maybe you have a hand gesture. Maybe that's too much warmth. I want to see a lot of space between your earlobe and your shoulder. Make sure it's a symmetrical smile. Make sure we're not contempt. Make sure we're not accidentally fear smiling, right?

So the profile picture is number one most important. Yes, okay. You're laughing. It's a lot. Okay, oh, we—it's going to be hard. We've got to find her husband. We haven't got much time yet. Okay, we got to find her husband. The interpersonal body language is really hard as a friend to correct on someone. May I ask you, does she use vocal fry? What's that? Does she ever talk like this, where it's kind of like a frying pan, where she's not using her full voice?

Typically, people who use contracted small body language often have that kind of a vocal power, and so they go into a pattern like this, and then, "Oh, like I mean I just like watered the plants this weekend." And like also the inton—the end of this sentence goes up, right? So that's the first thing I would actually try to help her with is making sure that she does not accidentally use vocal fry. It's usually an accident. Here's the fastest way to get vocal fry rid of vocal fry. If you are using it, you hear yourself using it, or someone else is using it, just speak louder.

Vocal fry happens from a lack of breath. What actually is happening is you're speaking, and your vocal cords are rattling. It's a terrible noise, but that's—it's my vocal cords rattling together. And the moment that I speak louder, it goes away. It goes away. So oftentimes when we're lacking confidence or we have tight body, we have less breath, and we create vocal fry. So just ask her to speak up a little bit. Okay, it's hard to get someone to stand more broadly because if they're uncomfortable with it, they don't like it.

So what I would recommend is she should do activity dates. When you're at dinner with someone or at brunch or at coffee at a bar, you're like this, "So what do you do?" and you're like shriveled, and you're like clutching your drink, and you're in your patterns. You're in those patterns. Go on hikes. Go play pickleball. Go learn pickleball. Go play ping pong. Like do something physical because then it's much easier to be broad.

Interesting. Okay, that makes a lot of sense, actually. Yeah, because you're going to—if it's in a context you're super familiar with, the old patterns are going to be triggered in you. Yes, and I've tried to get people to stand more broadly just by telling them, and it can—it helps. The awareness helps, but it's much easier when you're actually in a context that helps you be that way. I read a study from your work that said in a study to see how men and women look at body language differently, they put people in an MRI machine and had them try and read body language from just pictures alone.

What happened? What did they find out? So I believe women activated 14 to 16 areas of their brain activated while trying to read those body language pictures, and men, I believe it was half of that. In other words, when women were looking at pictures of body language, lots of connections were happening. They were making predictions. They were thinking about personality. They were thinking about emotions. They were looking at their clothes. They were looking at their facial structure. Women were taking a much broader picture of the body language, whereas men were, I think, much more cue-focused.

Ah, broad shoulders, feet apart, hands visible. Neither of these are right or wrong, actually. In fact, men can sometimes be easier to teach. Like my students are 50 men and women, but sometimes men can—they can focus in on the cue that I'm trying to teach them. They can understand it. They can comprehend it. Got it. It's decoded. Women tend to create a whole narrative. So I play a game sometimes with my students where I say, "Okay, tell me about someone. He has a mohawk."

And men will often say—I don't let them hear the women first. Men will often be like, "He has a mohawk. He's a man. He's not bald." Women will be like, "Okay, he's a bad boy, and he probably has earrings, and I bet you he drives a motorcycle, and I bet he'd be really fun on a date, but probably a drinker." And they will just go. Interesting. So this is good and bad, right? Like that also can hinder women. And by the way, I'm making a big generalization on this. This is not the—the generalization part we have to make sure we're careful on.

Women tend to globalize a cue. Like they'll see a cue and be like, "Oh, that means he's bad," or "That means he's dangerous. I'm never—he's toxic. Never going to talk to him." Yeah, whereas men will sometimes, you know, "Oh, it's probably a bad day, or I'll give her or him a second chance." So we just have to be a little bit aware of our own interpretations, our own lenses.

Is there anything else that I should say to my friend in order to help them? Because sometimes I wonder, you know, there's tips, tricks, tactics. They can lean; they can do this, whatever. But is there something deeper that is easier? And you know why I say this? That book "The Game," I went off to university. I lasted for one lecture, but while I was there, I met this guy called Joe—my friend. I won't say his second name because it will identify him. But I met my friend Joe, and I said to Joe, "Listen, my friend, I said this book 'The Game' really useful. Taught me a lot about like, you know, interpersonal dynamics. You should read it."

Gave the book to him. He read it. We went out to the club that day. He [ __ ] it up. Like he went out there, he started negging people, insulting people, whatever. And I just thought, "God, you know, you just can't teach it." That's what I thought. I thought there's so many—and actually when I reflect on the people in my life, this guy called Dan—I'll say his name—Dan Capon. Dan Capon in school was always just so, so good with the opposite sex. He was just always—he's one of those people. He's charismatic. He was funny. He's like that cocky funny.

Yeah, yeah, just a natural. No one taught him that. Yeah, and so I look at my friend Joe, I look at my friend Dan, and I go, "It doesn't matter if you read the book." Because I'm not saying your book—your book's amazing. Everyone needs to go read your books. No, they really do. It's a great book. But I'm saying, is there something deeper within us? Like for my friend that has the shriveled posture, is it just like tactics and tips?

I think anyone can learn it. Okay, I really truly believe that. I have seen the most awkward, uncomfortable people totally shut down, slowly transform, or completely transform. And remember, they don't—who is your uncharismatic friend? What was the fake first name you used? He's not uncharismatic. He just—I just gave him the book, and he just like—who is Joe? Joe doesn't need to have a complete transformation to find his soulmate. Joe does not need to have a complete transformation to have friends. You're his friend.

So even if he has a couple of tactics, like stop asking, "What do you do?" It's boring. Like start making eye contact, especially at the end of sentences for 60-70% of the time. Oh, people suddenly feel listened to. Hey, ask better questions to your friends. You'll get to know them better. Those tactics will get him friendships, hopefully a girlfriend, hopefully a job. So I think that everyone can make small or big changes. I don't think there's anyone who's unteachable.

Do you think there's a relationship between these tactics and tips and your actual confidence? I.E., does it become like a self-reinforcing? Yes, so much so. Like that is the only way I found confidence. The only way that I was able to conquer my awkwardness and actually begin to go out and try to make friends and be less lonely—I mean, I was so lonely—was that I was like, "Okay, I have a goal. I'm going to ask someone, 'What have you been doing that's been exciting recently?'"

I'm going to ask that question. That gave me just enough confidence to get out the door and to get to that party. And then when I got a good answer, someone's like, "Oh, yeah, you know, I am working on something exciting." I was like, "Oh!" And then they felt excited. I felt excited. And so like that one tool gave me enough confidence to go out. So these tools give you confidence to try something new and to break your pattern. If you feel stuck—and this is for anyone—if you feel stuck, then you have to try something different.

If you keep doing the same thing, you're going to keep getting the same thing. So that means you have to ask different kinds of questions. You have to use different kinds of body language cues. And if you're willing to try just something different, something will change for you. Are these cues, this body language, more important for one gender typically than the other? Not that I've seen. Not the research has not found that. Good for both.

And what's—in terms of attraction, what do you think the most important thing is? Is it competence? Is it strong? Is it—okay, so this is not—this is research. So I believe it was Monica Moore who did this research. She found that the people who got approached the most at clubs—the people who got approached the most—were just had the biggest signal of availability. So they weren't the most attractive men and women. She did this for both men and women. They were not the most attractive men and women in fact.

The most attractive women in the room, if they had closed body language, closed-off body language, they were not approached. They did not get dates. They did not get out their number. It was the men and women who signaled, "I'm available." How do you signal one available? Okay, so this is really important for dating in the sense of wanting to be approached. Dating one-to-one is a little bit different, right? You don't need to signal this if you're one-to-one, but if you're in a big room or you're speed networking, one is open body, no blocking.

I never want anything in front of your torso. I don't want this. I don't want arms crossed. I don't want a cup in front of you. I don't want you clutching your computer or your iPad or your phone. I want you to make sure that your torso is open and angled out towards the room. I like croissant feet. You know, parallel feet are like what we're doing right now. In a dating situation, I want you to have croissant feet, which is your feet are angled toward the biggest part of the room saying, "I'm open. Come and approach me."

Okay, that signals to both men and women, "Oh, maybe that person is literally physically open to someone coming in and breaking this conversation." It also means small darting glances to everyone around the room. Everyone. Everyone you want to approach you. Oh, everyone you want to approach you. Yeah. How many times do someone got to do a glance to get someone to come over? So Monica Moore actually studied this. I believe it took eight glances to get someone to approach.

Don't quote me on that. It was way higher than I thought. Like I was like two, maybe three. I think it was something insane like eight. Could you imagine being in a bar and looking at someone eight times? That's how many times it took to get that person to come over. And these are quick glances, not like, you know, cat-like. It's a side glance. It's a side glance and a smile. It's a flip of the hair and a look over, right? Those are the kind of glances that we're talking about.

And there—it takes eight sometimes. So croissant feet, open body, quick short glances. I would also try one of my secret tricks for daters is generally gesturing in their direction. So like, let's see, like there's a hot guy right over there that I can see. I've been married for 18 years, just to be okay. Yeah. If you want—you okay? Drop something. You called him hot. You called him hot. He's freaking out.

Okay, so there's a hot guy right over there that I want to see, and I'm talking to you. I might make some quick glances over, but I also might like when I'm gesturing, I'm sort of gesturing towards them. So I'm on their line of gesturing. So like if I'm gesturing out, I'm making a gesture for them to literally come over. Like I'm like gesturing, and then I'm like, "I want them to like literally come over." I'm sort of gesturing, but I'm talking, but I'm open gesturing.

Ah, interesting. It works. If they are attracted to you at all, they will come over. If they don't come over, they're probably not attracted. Do you try someone else? What about men? How do men signal in this? Oh, sorry, same, same. So like a man can—the same thing. Now, women are less likely to approach men in a crowded environment. Culturally, that's not as accepted. So it's going to be harder for a man to get a woman to come over, but it does work very well for men to warm a woman up that she is about to be approached with those things—quick glances, open gestures, croissant feet towards her.

That way, when you do approach, she knows that your attention has been on her, and look at her responses to your gestures and your glances. If she meets your glance, great. If she turns away from you, turns her feet away from you, she's not probably very receptive to your approach. So it's a good way to kind of test the waters before you actually approach. It's difficult in this day and age, isn't it, to know if you can roll up

Level shifts in our interpersonal skills, our friendships, etc. What are you saying? AirPods are killing friendship? AirPods are going to ruin our interpersonal interactions.

Here's the difference I've seen: the biggest difference in the last 18 years. Eighteen years ago, you could maybe wear a Walkman around campus, or around the city, or on a subway, but really your ears were open. What would happen is you’d get on the subway, or you’d walk across campus, or you’d walk down the hallway, and someone would be like, “Hey Stephen, how’s it going?” “You know, pretty good, crazy week.” “Oh really? What are you working on?” It was so much easier to have those tiny micro moments of connection.

That Van Sloan study was done before AirPods, and I wonder if you were to redo it now, what would happen? The one where he found the most likable kids had the longest list of people they liked. In the study, the most likable kids, when he observed them, were walking down the hallway, saying hello, chatting next to someone for five seconds at a locker, saying “after class” and sort of talking, sitting at a lunch table, leaning over someone, asking about that. So much micro connection—very small conversations. Our friendships don’t often happen in these big deep conversations; they happen in these micro moments. AirPods destroy it.

I see this especially with younger folks because they always have their AirPods in when they’re commuting, when they’re walking, when they’re jogging, when they’re at the gym. I don’t know about you, but when I was single for five seconds, when I was 17, the gym was like the place. At the gym, no one really was listening to anything. At least I can remember, like the rare person would have their Walkman in, but everyone was AirPod-free. There were a lot of micro moments of connection happening. It was so much easier to talk to people. Now, if someone’s working out with their AirPods, they’re insane. I’m like, what are they doing? They should go home. It’s weird. It’s weird. Or they’re with a friend working out together, and that’s intimidating.

So I’m worried about this because we need weak ties. Weak ties are, in the research, these very casual connections of someone you see at the gym once a week, and you kind of know them. “Oh yeah, you know Stephen, nice to see you.” You recognize their face. If you were to see them at a restaurant later in the week, you’d be like, “Hey, don’t you go to that gym?” “Oh yeah, yeah, we do.” “So what are you doing this weekend?” Those weak ties are incredibly important for our happiness. That’s how we build big friends. That’s how we can find a soulmate. That’s how we can make good business contacts.

I’m seeing less and less of that because of AirPods and because of hybrid work. We’re just not in the office that much, so we’re having less of those little micro moments in a hallway. The five minutes before a meeting starts is really critical to your career success. How you talk to your boss, the small talk you make, are you asking boring questions? It’s telling your colleagues and your boss a lot about who you are. It’s proven that likable people make more money, likable people get more promotions, and likable people have more friends and more friends at work.

When we have fewer moments to show how likable we are, it’s really hard to get those things. At my company, Flight Studio, which is part of my bigger company, Flight Group, we’re constantly looking for ways to build deeper connections with our audiences, whether that’s a new show, a product, or a project. It’s why I launched the conversation cards. I’ve relied on Shopify before, who’s a sponsor of today’s podcast, and I’ll be using them again for the next big launch, which we’ll hear about soon. I use them because of how easy it is to set up an online store that reaches all of you, no matter where you are in the world.

With Shopify, the usual pain points of launching products online disappear completely. No matter the size of your business, Shopify has everything you need to make your business go to the next level and better with your customers all over the world. To say thank you to all of you for listening to my show, we’re giving you a trial for just $1 a month. You can sign up by going to shopify.com/Bartlet. That’s shopify.com/Bartlet, or find the link in the description below.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably going to want to listen to this. It’s a message from one of our sponsors on this podcast, which is LinkedIn. If you’ve listened to me on this podcast for a while now, you’ll know that I’ve been on a bit of an evolution as a business owner and entrepreneur. One of those evolutions that has become clearer and clearer as I’ve matured is that the single most important thing in building a business, in building a company, is hiring. The definition of the word company is actually a group of people, and that is the first responsibility and job that any entrepreneur has and should focus on. But surprisingly, most don’t.

About 80% of my team have been hired from LinkedIn, and I think there are very few platforms, if any, in the world that could give you that diversity of candidates with that much information and data on their profiles. It usually costs money, but for the entrepreneurs that are listening to me, I’ve got you a free job ad post for your company on LinkedIn. Just go to linkedin.com/doac to post your free job ad today. That’s linkedin.com/doac. Terms and conditions apply.

What about lying? This is one of the things people are most interested in: how to spot a liar. It’s funny because, like the rest of our conversation, one could infer that it’s about how to be a liar. I’m joking. No, but it is about how to show up in a certain way to get success in a certain context, whether it’s dating or work or whatever. But then we want to figure out if someone’s playing us. Is it possible to spot a liar? Most people can only spot a lie with 54% accuracy. They’ve actually studied that the average person is very bad at it. You’re better off tossing a coin.

We are very bad at spotting liars, and this is important to know about yourself. We should not overestimate our ability to spot lies. We are usually not good at it, so it is very important to give someone the benefit of the doubt because you don’t know. It’s very hard to spot. It is possible; there are certain statistical cues to deceit. There are cues that, over and over again, research finds liars typically do, but not always. There’s no Pinocchio’s nose; there’s no one cue that means someone is lying. But there are a couple of cues that come up over and over again.

One we already talked about is the question inflection. It’s very suspicious if someone is speaking and all of a sudden they ask a question if they’re not actually asking a question. If all of a sudden you hear the question inflection used on a statement, or a number, or a boundary, or a timeline, that’s when I’m like, let’s double-click on that for a second and talk about that budget. So you mentioned the number was 500,000. Where does that number come from? Let’s talk about more, and I want to hear if I’m going to hear it again. Interesting.

So that’s a double-click for me. That’s like, let’s make sure that I heard that right. Let’s make sure that you feel confident about it. Where does that come from? So that’s just a little red flag that says dive deeper. Nothing is a sign of lying; it’s just a sign that you should dig deeper.

A volume drop is another vocal cue of deception. When we’re anxious or nervous, we will lose volume and we lose breath. So if you hear someone who’s speaking, I hear this a lot in sales calls. Someone will—I always know what part of a sales presentation makes my entrepreneurs the most nervous because they lose volume during that part of their presentation. So it sounds like this: “So let’s move on to our team. So our founding partners are, um, me, myself, uh, Joe, Jimmy, and we all met at NYU, and we’re going to now talk about…” I’m obviously making it obvious for you, but if you’re listening for it, you’ll hear where someone is like—they literally lost fuel; they literally lost breath.

So a sudden drop in volume is a very interesting cue to double-click. Like, what just happened there? How do you feel about your co-founder? How long have you known each other? Anything we should know about that? How’s the relationship? How do you fight? How do you communicate? That’s where I would aim most of my investor questions if I was hearing that volume drop in that specific area.

Now, that’s vocal. Non-verbal, what you’re looking for is incongruencies where the verbal does not match the body. The biggest and most obvious one is when someone says yes but shakes their head no, or says no but shakes their head yes. So I might say to my daughter, “Did you clean your room?” “Um, yeah, I did.” She’s shaking her head no.

In Western culture, there’s a cultural exception to this one: India, Bulgaria, and Pakistan. They nod a little bit differently, the research actually shows that. But in countries outside of India, Bulgaria, and Pakistan, when we agree with someone, say yes or tell the truth, we typically agree with ourselves and shake our heads yes. When we don’t agree or don’t like something, we often shake our heads no. We can sometimes also do this in disbelief, like, “Wow, I cannot believe that just happened.”

So I’m always looking for incongruent nods. This happens a lot if you ask someone, “Do you like the new girl?” “Yeah, you know, she’s, um, great, right?” You see that 100% of the time, and people don’t realize they’re doing it, but they’re shaking their head no. They do not like that person.

You’ll also see this with mismatched facial expressions, and the biggest one for liars, the research finds, is disgust. Disgust is an expression that people make without even realizing it, and this is across cultures. When we don’t like something or we smell something bad, we crinkle our nose up, and we flash the upper whites of our teeth, and we go, “Ugh.”

Liars typically feel dirty when they lie, so oftentimes they’ll show disgust with themselves for lying. So you’ll ask someone, “So what do you think of the proposal?” “Yeah, um, it’s really good.” And they might even sniff. “Really?” “Yeah.” What’s a sniff? It’s a disgust activator. When we are disgusted, our nasal cavities want to close because we want to take in less of it.

Even though it’s not about food, it’s about a preference. Liars will often show a little bit of disgust when they are lying because they are a little bit disgusted with themselves. You’ll see this activation here. By the way, no one does that naturally. This is very unnatural to hold my face, but we do it when we feel disgusted.

It’s the nasal cavities; when we nasal dilate, our nasal wings dilate. That’s what it’s called. These nasal wings dilate, and we begin to scrunch them up. It’s like we don’t like what we’re seeing, smelling, or hearing. So what I will do is I will share a proposal with someone. I will talk about something, and I watch for any disgust.

I’ll say, “You know, here’s the plan for 2025. Here’s what we’re going to do.” If I see a reaction, I know that that team member or that person is not that into it, and that’s why I double-click. “Any questions? How do you feel, Stephen? Do you like this idea?” “Yeah, I love it.” “Yeah, no, horrible, horrible.” You look like you’re about to throw up.

By the way, I heard you say that the most toxic relationships are the ambivalent relationships. The word ambivalent means—what does it mean? Okay, so ambivalent is actually not toxic. Toxic is like we know it’s bad; we don’t want it; we’re creating boundaries around it. Ambivalent means we’re not sure. Ambivalent relationships are the relationships in your life that are the most damaging. They’re the relationships where you wonder, “Does she like me? Do I like her? Gosh, I wish she would cancel this dinner we have. Am I tired after that? I’m dreading it. Do I have to go? Gosh, I wish I was home.”

Those are ambivalent relationships where you’re not sure, and they are so energetically draining. Because a toxic person, you know they’re toxic. You’re like, “I don’t like that person. They’re not serving me. I’m not going out to dinner. I’m going home. No thanks. Not going to text you. Not going to tell you I’m thinking about you.”

Whereas an ambivalent person, you’re like, “I should check in with that person. I really should go to the dinner. Oh, it’s been five months since I’ve gone to dinner with them. Oh man, do I even know what they’re up to these days? Do I even care? And then most importantly, do they like me? Do they support me?”

That’s why I asked about that friend that you were unsure about. I was like, “Are they jealous? Do they have a problem with you?” Because you might be picking up on that they are ambivalent towards you, and you’re picking up on that.

There’s a research study that was done with police officers, and they wanted to know what makes for a thriving workplace. So they asked police officers to rank the people in their precinct, and they found that the police officers who had the most ambivalent ties were more unhappy in their job, had less work-life balance, and had more workplace stress than the people who had toxic relationships.

In other words, the police officers who said, “All 10 of those people are toxic,” were happier at work. And the police officers who said, “I don’t know if I like that person, and that person, I don’t know if that person likes me. I don’t know if I want to go out to lunch with that person again. I kind of would rather be alone,” because it is so mentally draining to have ambivalent relationships.

So it’s really important, if you’re making that list of people—going back to the very beginning, you know the people you’re really close to, not very close with, kind of close with, really close with—if you’re not sure, put them at the bottom. In the next 30 days, try to ask them the questions that we shared: “Working on anything exciting? What’s your biggest goal right now?” and see if you like their answers. It’s important to either move them up or move them out. Don’t let them be ambivalent.

One of the things that is highly searched on Google—I was looking at Google to figure out what the most searched questions are—there are some tools that I use to figure out what people want to know, and one of them was just, “How do I start a conversation?” So what my next book is about. I’m happy to hear that.

One is don’t overthink your opener. Starting a conversation is like, “Hey, I’m Vanessa.” Literally, your opener can just be that. My sister, my youngest sister, said the best advice I ever gave her was, “You just told me to say hello to people.” That is it. Your opener is just, “Hey, I’m Vanessa. Hey, nice to meet you.”

So don’t overthink the opener because that opener—your body is actually doing a lot of things: your brain and body are like competence, warmth, facial expression, voice tone. If you’re like, “What’s your biggest goal in life?” it’s way too much.

So one is your opener should actually be basic so the other person’s brain gives them a chance to feel safe. “Okay, friend, we’re friends. Hey, how are you doing?” Right? I held up my hand.

So don’t overthink your opener. “Hey, nice to meet you. Hey, I’m Vanessa.” Your first question is where things get more interesting.

Okay, so if you don’t know their name, you want to say, “Oh, what’s your name?” Great, I’m Vanessa. Then you have a choice, and I like to take the better route. You can say, “So what do you do?” But I really don’t like that path; it’s autopilot.

So what I like to do instead is ask a version of the excitement question: “Do anything fun and exciting this past weekend?” if it’s a Monday. So Mondays, I always ask, “Did you do anything fun this past weekend?” Fridays, I always ask, “Have any exciting plans coming up this weekend?” And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I don’t talk to anyone.

What is the most important thing we haven’t talked about that we should have talked about? For the person side at home, the typical question, the most prolific question that you get—there’s one story that I love that I try to keep front of mind, which is about Harry S. Truman, former U.S. president. Most people don’t know about him that he was actually severely introverted.

When most people think about U.S. presidents, they do not think about introverts. In fact, most presidents have to be kind of a booming extrovert personality, and he was very introverted. He did something very interesting at the Democratic National Convention back in, I believe, 1944. He knew he was not a good public speaker, which also is very rare for a U.S. president to become president without being a good public speaker.

He knew he could not cut it on stage with the very charismatic people, and he was not the preferred candidate. So he was like, “I’m not going to compete on stage. I’m not going to try to outspeak them. I’m not going to try to go work the floor and shake hands. It’s not my way. What I am going to do is try to find a way to do what I’m best at, which is one-on-one conversations where I can win people over with an argument.”

So at the Democratic National Convention, it was really hot in Chicago in the middle of summer. He rented the one air-conditioned room in the basement of the convention center, and one by one, his team would invite person by person down into that air-conditioned room. He would tell them his story; he would tell them his points.

Vote by vote, as the votes were being tallied, he would win over every single person that went to that room. One, it was air-conditioned, so they wanted to stay there as long as possible. Two, he would hear, “What are your concerns? Why do you not want to vote for me?” And he would explain to them why they should vote for him.

Vote by vote, he ended up winning the National Convention without having to speak on stage barely at all. I share this because stop competing on stages where you can’t be your best. Start creating rooms where you can think about what your social strengths are. You have one. What is it? Is it storytelling? Is it being funny? Is it listening? Is it being empathetic? Is it being a decoder? Is it being persuasive? What is your social strength?

Create spaces and rooms where you can exercise that strength because no one wants you to pretend to be an extrovert or pretend to be something that you’re good at that you’re not. It’s much better to do what you’re actually good at and attract the right people. Your social strength might not be in person, and that’s okay. There are some people who are great at texting. There are some people who are great at sending voice notes. There are some people who make their friends by broadcasting and then picking out a couple of people.

That’s how you met your girlfriend. You broadcasted; she resonated with something that you said, and you gave her the way to find you. She did, and then you met. So maybe it’s broadcasting. I think we have to think outside the box. It’s not only in person; there are so many ways you can have social strengths.

I’ve heard it all now. Yeah, I get it. I believe it. I’m into it. What is step one? I’m going to buy your books. There are two of them here, so I’m going to buy both of these books. Both of them will be linked below. What else can I do to start on my journey of becoming you? You were a recovering awkward person. Before, now you’re not. Yes, what’s step one?

Okay, step number one is begin to break autopilot. Make a commitment for the next 30 days you are not going to trigger autopilot in your conversation. No more “What do you do?” No more “How are you?” No more “Where are you from?” No more “Okay?” Right? Ask better questions. “Okay, what’s your biggest goal?” “We can—anything exciting?”

You’re disgusting me. No, I’m thinking. I was telling you, you look good. Okay, so that’s challenge number one. Challenge number two: find out where you fall in the warmth and competence scale. Are you highly warm? Do you need to dial up competence to be taken more seriously? Are you highly confident? Do you need to dial up warmth to be seen as more likable and friendly and trustworthy?

Do that email audit. So take the quiz, then do the email audit. And then, if you can, here’s the bonus challenge: send the Charisma quiz to someone who knows you well—someone at work, maybe a partner. Ask them to take it as you and screenshot their results. Sometimes how we perceive our warmth and competence is not how others perceive our warmth and competence.

So if you take it and you say, “I’m perfect. I’m a five out of five,” but they take it and they see you as really high on the warmth scale, that is going to be critical feedback for you.

We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they’re going to be leaving it for. The question that’s been left for you—I always love these—when in your life did you try to outrun your pain, and what was the consequence? When in your life did you turn and face your pain, and what was the consequence?

There was a really weird moment in my career where everything was taking off. I had a lot of years of hard struggle. Being a writer, I had a published book—a traditionally published book—that completely failed in 2011. We won’t name it. I put it out there, thought my world would change, and it did terribly. I got terrible reviews; it didn’t sell. I was literally told, “You’ll never write a book again,” and I was just devastated.

Devastated. My husband was like, “You got to keep writing. You’re a writer; you got to keep writing.” So I went back to it. I started Science of People. That was officially when I started the actual website, Science of People. I kept writing, and then it started taking off. I had videos that went viral; we started having millions of visitors on the website, and I wanted to prove myself very badly. I wanted to erase that painful memory.

When I got approached to write Captivate, I was like, “No, I can’t write books. I’m a YouTuber and a blogger, but I can’t write books.” She was like, “This will be a different kind of book. This will be a book about really what you want to say to people, not the book you think you should write.” I was like, “No, I cannot do it. It’s too painful. I will not survive if that fails. I will not survive if that fails.”

It took Nikki months of telling me, “This will be different. This will be a different kind of book. You can write the real book that you really want to write.” So I said yes. I started writing it, and that was when I think I—I don’t know how to end the question—but decided it would be worth the pain. If that failed, it would be worth the pain of at least saying that I tried. That was a very hard choice. Thank goodness it did not fail. It did really well, and I’m eternally grateful for that.

When anyone buys a copy, I’m like, “One click further from that failure. Horrible failure.”

Vanessa, thank you. Thank you so much. What you write about and what you educate people on is a subject that’s probably more important now than ever. I say that because of the sort of macro climate of society where we’re more lonely than ever. We’re struggling with connection. It’s not coming naturally to us as it once probably did, or at least more natural than it does now.

It’s crazy. I’ve only been a podcaster, really, I think, for about four years. I think I started in 2017, but really it’s been four years since I’ve been uploading. It’s crazy just in that time alone how many more of the questions I’m getting are about all the things you write about. They’re about how to make a friend and how to show up in a certain way and all these kinds of things.

So the work you’re doing is so unbelievably important. There’s so much more that needs to be done as well, but the contribution you’ve had to the 400,000 people that you’ve taught and the millions of people that have bought these books and consumed your videos and everything is a really, really important one. Thank you.

It’s so funny because even me, like people see me on camera and stuff, but I learned so much from your work. Thank you so much. So many things as well that I think a lot about. Things you can take or leave. You’ve got to say, “Who do I want to be? Who am I, you know, truly?” to then apply these things because there’s no point. I just have no interest in building a facade or anything.

But there are things about me which I didn’t even know I was doing, you know? Yeah. And like, what kind of friend do I want to be? What kind of partner do I want to be? What kind of way do I want to be in conversation? Like, you get to choose.

Thank you, Vanessa. Thanks for having me.

When it comes to food, I trust my gut, and I trust Zoe, a business I’m an investor in and today’s sponsor of this podcast. All the nutritionists I’ve spoken to have highlighted just how misleading information is out there when it comes to food. Take healthy halos—the claims you see on packaging that say things like low sugar and nothing artificial are often a sign of foods to avoid. Have you ever noticed a health claim on fresh fruit? You probably get my point.

Understandably, there’s loads of distrust out there. Who should you turn to for accurate information? I use Zoe, which is backed by one of the world’s largest microbiome databases and most scientifically advanced at-home gut health tests. Zoe gives you proven science whenever you need it. As a Zoe member, you’ll get an at-home test kit and personalized nutrition program to help you make smarter food choices that support your gut.

To sign up, visit zoe.com and use my code STEPHEN10 for 10% off your membership. That’s zoe.com, code STEPHEN10. Trust your gut. Trust Zoe.