The SECRET To Making Anyone Like You | Vanessa Van Edwards EP 310

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:51There are hidden opportunities waiting for you in your texts, in your emails, in your profiles, if you choose to take them. And all it takes is a couple of word swaps. Even reading the word win makes the other person think more like a winner. What a gift to give. That's cool. The quote that I heard in high school from Roosevelt is, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Saved my life, literally. That's warmth and competence right there. Because I didn't feel competent my entire school life, right? In school, I was at the bottom of my class. I just graded poorly, which confirmed, like, I'm not smart enough.

1:29I feel like I'll never be able to be as intelligent as my classmates or anyone in the world. So why would anyone like me or trust me because I didn't feel competent? Then when I heard that quote, I go, I have a chance. Like, I can build competence in another area of life. I can be emotionally intelligent and I can show people how much I care. By doing that, that's been pretty much my whole life. Everyone who's listening, I hope what this shows you is that caring about someone, there's multiple ways to do that. Yes, it's emotionally intelligent, but it's also honoring someone's cues or gifting them the right cues.

2:03Yes. When you make someone feel more like a winner, what a gift you just gave them. Huge gift. You're putting confidence into them. You're speaking joy, confidence into that person. Yes, you're literally gifting them the chemical dopamine so that they themselves have more motivation. Yes. And don't we all need more motivation? Absolutely, yeah. So this is called a nonverbal bridge. It's kind of an advanced technique. A nonverbal bridge is a way that we cross into someone's intimate space, but safely. So what happens is when we're with someone, we want to connect with them. We want more oxytocin.

2:36We want to bond with them. But sometimes it can be hard to break that boundary. A nonverbal bridge is a way that we can create oxytocin with permission. So that could be handing someone something. That could be giving a high five. That could be touching their elbow. And that is exactly what successful pitchers did. They would have a reason or an excuse to, hey, Lauren, let me guide you up here. Hey, Kevin, let me zip on this suit for you. Hey, you want to try this amazing cinnamon roll? And when they did that, they created these small little bridges. So what I would think about is, like, how can you create bridges to people where you're engaging them even physically, right?

3:11And it's harder on video, but in person, that was a thing that we found in the tank. How do you do it in a way that the person feels comfortable if you touch them on the elbow? Because someone may not feel comfortable. So you have to be really intuitive to, you know, is this person going to be receptive to me? Are they already interested enough where I can get closer? Yes. Are they leaning in? Are they giving eye contact? Are they nodding? Oh, I forgot another one that was really important. So vocal power. So we hear confidence. We hear competence. And the biggest way that we do this is with inflection.

3:39So the biggest mistake that we make is the question inflection. So the question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentences. It's also called up talk. So if I were to... Don't do up talk. Don't do up talk. We're going to talk about why. So when we use the question inflection, it cues the other person's brain to know, ah, we're being asked a question. The problem is that when we accidentally use the question inflection, it makes people question you, right? Are they really trustworthy? Right. So what happened is in this study where they looked at doctors, what they did is they asked doctors to record 10-second voice tone clips.

4:12And they said, like, their name, their specialty, where they worked. So it sounded like, hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I work in oncology. I specialize in children's medicine. Something like that. They took the clips and they warbled the words so you couldn't understand the actual words being said. Then they asked people to rate these clips on warmth and competence. Again, this research has been repeated over and over again. Imagine this for a second. You're asked to listen to a clip of gobbledygook. Yes, to see if they're competent. Are they smart? Do you like them? Yeah. And people do it. What they found is the doctors who had the lowest warmth and competence ratings had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits.

4:49That implies that we don't just sue doctors based on their skills. We sue doctors based on our perception of their skills. And that happens in the first few seconds of hearing them. So your communication is everything. Everything. It's not just the words you're using. Are they warm? Are they competent? It's even how you're saying the words. I analyzed Jamie Siminoff's pitch. Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring. That didn't get any money. and it sold for a billion dollars. Thank you, yes. Here is a brilliant guy, right? Jamie Siminoff is brilliant. He had a successful product, right? Ring is a very successful product.

5:29Amazon acquired it for over a billion with a B dollars. Yet, he goes into the pitch in the Shark Tank and he pitches and he doesn't get a deal. Why? That pitch plagued me. Because I was like, here is a smart guy with a great idea, but his cues were the problem. I think he lost the deal in the first 10 seconds of them hearing him. And the reason is he made the choice to close the doors to the tank. So in his pitch, he doesn't walk down the hallway. You don't see that long first impression. You don't get public to social to personal. He closed the doors. And what he did is he went, he knocked on the door of the shark tank.

6:06Hello, who's there? They're like, hello. And he goes, it's Jamie. So he asked his own name. And when you're a shark and you're trying to make a very quick first impression of someone without seeing them and you hear the question inflection supposed to be used on a statement, you immediately begin to question, I don't know. And that is also because we know that liars are more likely to use the question inflection. If you've ever played Two Truths and a Lie, you ever played that game? Yeah. Okay. So Two Truths and a Lie, here's a little tip for everyone. If you ever play that game, people almost always ask the lie.

6:38So they'll be like, oh, yeah, Two Truths and a Lie. I have a goldfish. I am a vegetarian and I love dogs they almost always go up on their lie and that's because when we're lying we don't know if you believe us so subconsciously we give it away so Jamie starts his pitch and he doesn't have a first impression he doesn't do any greeting in the hallway he misses that whole walk up the very first words out of his mouth doesn't even matter what he says is that up top and then Mark Cuban says are you here to pitch? and he says here to pitch? again using the question inflection I think that what happened was is it gave away his competence.

7:14And then the doors open, right? And he explains this idea of ring, it's a doorbell. The problem is, is his first impression was very low in competence. And so he had a lot of trouble having the Sharks take him seriously. He was a very competent individual building his business, right? He was very smart, intelligent, knew the technology, how to build product, teams, all these things, get sales, whatever it was. But the warmth wasn't there as well, it seems like, right? Like the trustworthy, charisma, warmth, confidence side. Yes, he undersignaled every step of the way. So he undersignaled warmth, he undersignaled competence, and then was trying to dial up competence.

7:49And you hear in the rest of the pitch, he's... He's trying to build it back up. He's like, but we've done this, and look where we've got this technology. And this money, and then this. And so he cannot get it back. He could not get it back. And so I think I watched that pitch, and I break it down in the book, of what happened to this brilliant guy who had one bad day. You know he scripted those answers. He prepared for that pitch. And he had really good verbal answers. There was even a couple times where I think this thing happens for people who over-rehearse. So if you have an interview or a presentation, what do you do?

8:19You rehearse it, right? You practice the perfect answer. That can get in your way, though, because if you practice the perfect answer, this is exactly what happened to Siminoff. And very highly intelligent people do this. He would hear a question from a shark, usually a challenging question, because they were, like, really pushing him on the deal. and they didn't believe him. No one believed him. They all thought, oh no, it's too crowded of a market. It will never work. They literally said that to him. Okay, I have a ring on my front door. He could not even believe him because what would happen was is they would ask him a question.

8:47He would start to answer it organically and then he would switch into his rehearsed answer. Oh man. So you would hear, oh yeah, yeah, we do have market track. Our market traction has been wonderful. In fact, in the last five years, we've done X numbers and you would be like, who is this robot? Yeah, just say what's on your heart. Yeah, yeah, just say it. organically. Right. And so I think you can be the smartest person in the world. You can have the best ideas, but if you don't share them right, you're not helping people help you.

9:26Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

10:16Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

10:28Thank you.