The SECRET To Making Anyone Like You | Vanessa Van Edwards

11 Dec 2025 · 10 min

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The Daily Motivation Podcast - Episode Summary

Podcast Title The Daily Motivation

Episode Title The SECRET To Making Anyone Like You | Vanessa Van Edwards

Episode Description In this episode, Vanessa Van Edwards explores the science of likability, emphasizing the importance of body language, nonverbal communication, and effective communication styles. The episode provides listeners with actionable strategies to enhance their likability and develop a charismatic presence.

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Key Themes and Concepts

The Power of Self-Talk

  • Self-Perception: The stories we tell ourselves shape our identity. Positive affirmations can lead to increased confidence.
  • Quote from Roosevelt: "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." This quote served as a turning point for Lewis, emphasizing the importance of emotional intelligence.

Building Competence and Connection

  • Emotional Intelligence: Developing the ability to understand and manage one's emotions and the emotions of others is key to building connections.
  • Caring: Expressing care can be achieved through various methods, enhancing interpersonal relationships.

Nonverbal Communication

  • Nonverbal Bridges: Techniques to create closeness and comfort without invading personal space include physical gestures (e.g., high fives, gentle touches).
  • Intuition: Being aware of the other person's comfort level is crucial when employing nonverbal cues.

Vocal Power and Communication Styles

  • Question Inflection (Up Talk): A common mistake in communication where the speaker's voice rises at the end of statements, causing listeners to doubt their confidence and competence.
  • Research Findings: Studies indicate that vocal inflection significantly affects perceptions of warmth and competence, influencing decisions like malpractice lawsuits among doctors.

Case Study

Jamie Siminoff's Pitch

  • The Importance of First Impressions: Siminoff's pitch on *Shark Tank* serves as an example of how initial impressions can affect outcomes. His failure to establish warmth and confidence led to a missed opportunity.
  • Rehearsal vs. Authenticity: Over-rehearsing can lead to robotic responses, which detract from genuine communication. Authenticity is crucial for making a connection.

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Key Takeaways

  • Mindset Matters: The way we view ourselves and communicate affects how others perceive us.
  • Engagement Techniques: Use nonverbal and vocal cues to build rapport and likability.
  • Authenticity Wins: Genuine responses are more effective than rehearsed answers in establishing trust.

Closing Thoughts

  • Lewis Howes encourages listeners to embrace emotional intelligence and effective communication techniques to enhance their likability and personal connections.

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Call to Action

  • Follow the Podcast: Listeners are encouraged to subscribe to *The Daily Motivation* and the main podcast, *School of Greatness*, for more inspiring content.
  • Newsletter Signup: Join the Greatness newsletter for exclusive insights and updates.

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This episode provides profound insights into the factors that influence likability and the essential skills needed to connect with others, ultimately guiding listeners toward more meaningful relationships and self-improvement.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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

0:11There 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 one thing 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.

0:49Like, 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.

1:23Yes. 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. 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. We want to bond with them.

1:57But 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?

2:32And 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, 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.

2:59So 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.

3:32And they said 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 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.

4:10That 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 then it sold for a billion dollars. Yes. Here is a brilliant guy, right? Jamie Siminoff is brilliant. He had a successful product, right? Ring is a very successful product.

4:49Amazon 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.

5:26Hello, 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 not 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 of reflection. 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.

5:58So 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, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, right, that up top. And then Mark Cuban says, are you here to pitch? And he says, here to pitch? Again, using the question inflection.

6:31I think that what happened was is it gave away his competence. And 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, good sales, whatever it was. But the warmth wasn't there as well, it seems like, right? Like the trustworthy, charisma, warmth, confidence. Yes, he undersignaled every step of the way.

7:04So he undersignaled warmth, he undersignaled competence, and then was trying to dial up competence. And 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 what we've got this. And 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.

7:36So if you have an interview or a presentation, what do you do? You 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 simonoff 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 he literally said that to him okay i have ring on my front door he could not get them to leave him because what would happen was is they would ask him a question he would start to answer it organically and then he would switch into his rehearsed answer.

8:13So 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, 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.

8:43I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following. And thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

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 Podcasts 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.

From the publisher

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Check out the full episode: https://greatness.lnk.to/1231

Vanessa Van Edwards delves into the science of likability, exploring concepts such as body language, nonverbal cues, and communication styles. Listeners are introduced to strategies for enhancing their own likability and developing a genuine and charismatic presence.

Sign up for the Greatness newsletter: http://www.greatness.com/newsletter


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