Vanessa Van Edwards, Founder at Science of People | Master Your People Skills, Increase Your Success

Welcome to the success story podcast, I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and practical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. Without further ado, another episode of the success story podcast. Thanks again for joining me today. I am sitting down with Vanessa Van Edwards, who is a behavioral investigator with science of people and author of captivate, the science of succeeding with people. She's also a body language trainer, specializing in science-based people skills. She runs science of people, a human behavior research lab in Portland, Oregon, where she studies charisma, influence, and the power of body language. She has been featured in entrepreneur, Huffington Post. She's written for CNN times Forbes Fast Company. She teaches online courses. She has conducted a set of experiments on TED talks, presented research at South by Southwest. Her lab conducted research on the TV show Shark Tank. She's also the author of Books, Human Light Detection, and Body Language 101, as well as, do I get my allowance before or after I'm grounded? So she's done a ton of stuff, very interesting work. Thank you so much for educating us, joining us, and tell me a little bit about your story. Yeah, absolutely. Oh my goodness. You went deep dive in that bio, too. I was like, did I do that? I don't even remember that. That was wonderful. I'm so honored and happy to be here. My pleasure. It's an incredible career. The work you do is very impressive. How did you get into this? You start from wherever you want to start. High school, before high school, or wherever? Sure. Well, I feel like I should start with a confession, and it's definitely the most important part of my story, which is I'm a recovering awkward person. So I have always been that kind of just right off beat, I always felt like I was missing a memo. That was always the way it is. I think it's still that way, it's some extended film recovery. And that was the kernel of my career. So I actually love to study charismatic people, and also not very charismatic people. And so I'm obsessed with what makes us charismatic, what makes leaders a leader? Are we born that way? Can we learn it? And the good news is I think that we can learn it, and that is my life's mission, is teaching people how to more authentically and naturally be charismatic. And I don't believe you'd have to fake it till you make it to get there. And when did you realize that this was something that you wanted to go into as a profession? Because a lot of people don't feel comfortable growing up, that's very normal, but not not everyone pursues it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so what I always was a personal niche, right? So like in high school and college, I had this horrible thing where I would break out and hide when I got very nervous, which doesn't win you very many friends in high school and college. And so I was studying people's skills to make myself more confident. And I began to create these frameworks or blueprints. I'm not very naturally good at conversation. I'm not naturally good at reading body language. It's the only way that I know how to read people and read conversation is to literally create frameworks and blueprints. And so I would create these little post-it notes, and I would write down little formulas. Like for example, I would observe it a party that when someone raised their eyebrows, they were usually even more intrigued and were about to go deeper. And that was like a little framework that I learned, that that was a really, that was like almost like a non-verbal door opening. And so I was like, okay, eyebrow rays is a non-verbal door opening. And so I would look forward in conversation if I stumbled upon an eyebrow rays, let's say that I was saying, oh, you know, this weekend, I might have started to hang out with my daughter, hang out with my husband, I started a little kitchen garden. Oh, kitchen garden. I was like, oh, okay, that was something, that was something. And so I knew then, okay, that was my door opening. And like, yes, a kitchen garden, I'm trying to teach myself how to grow my own herb. Have you ever garden? And I'd be like, yes, in fact, I'm taking, and so I came up with these little formulas that I was using. And then I started to document them on my website because at that time I was doing a lot of writing. And more and more people were like, hey, can I have that framework? Hey, can I have that blueprint? And how does that conversational hack work that you posted last week? Do you have a video in action? So then I started doing YouTube videos and little did I know that most of us do not understand relationship operating systems. And if you're very engineering minded or if you're very, I like black and white, I like formulas, if you think that way, you want that for people. But actually, I think that you can have relationship operating systems for people. And so that was when I realized that maybe I could create this, I can make this into a career. And who knew it would be as successful as it is. And when did, because you mentioned you were writing a lot and you started to codify some of these systems and these things that you observed in your life and then turned into your career? Is that the inception of science of people? Or is this just like a casual blog that you just started and eventually morphed into science of people? So when did this, like, this science of people actually happen? Yeah. So that was actually, I started science of people with the intention of trying to make this into a business. And so I officially started science of people in 2011, but I've been writing and casually blogging since 2006, 2007. So it took about five or six years of doubly and a couple of journalism things. I was doing a lot of youth coaching at the time. So I was actually teaching some of my principles to teenagers and teenagers on the spectrum. Because I realized that this framework, the way that we read faces, the way that I teach body language is actually extremely helpful. And so that was actually the kernel where I realized how helpful, how game changing some of these frameworks could be. And was this, and just let me understand, it's just like something that you had to go to school to practice, is this a degree program, or is this something that's just evolved over time and you're just really good at it? There is no degree for body language, sadly, because if there was, man, I would have loved to have taken it. The closest thing to what I do is maybe a combination of psychology and sociology. Well, I took both of those in college, I went to Emory University. I never actually majored in them. And so everything I learned since then is this weird combination of neuroscience, behavioral economics, psychology, sociology, and sort of a mix of the two and a little bit of body language as well. So there is no degree program yet, hopefully there will be one, but is this weird intersection of all of those disciplines? And I guess that's, so that begs the question, how did you start, how did you start science and people? How did you think? Like, this is a viable business idea. How did you commercialize your brand to the point where now I guess you're writing books? You had other products, I guess would be courses. You have like your whole social going on, you have people's school, so how did that start as like, you know, entrepreneur, and go, go. So funny, a funny story is that my parents are both lawyers and so when I was in college, my mom, I was, I think I was home for the summer or home for a break and she said, I signed you up for a financial class, I'm like, great, I'm so excited to do that on my break. She said, I am a lawyer and I'm paid by my hours and I don't want you to have to do that. I am constantly counting my hours, it was really hard for her as a working mom. She's like, I want to show you another way. She said, when I was going to college, I didn't know of another way. I thought you could be a doctor, a lawyer accountant, everything was hourly and to a certain extent. So she dropped me off at the, I think it was the LA Convention Center, I grew up in Los Angeles and was a millionaire mine seminar by T-Hard Ecker. Have you ever heard of him? Yeah, yeah. So it was a millionaire mine seminar, it was like a weekend seminar and this seminar completely blew my mind because he introduced me to the concept of passive income. So at the time, I believe I was 18 or 19, so it's very young and he explained that there is other way of earning income that's not just based on your hours, that books on products and courses and or very powerful active income, which is like speaking or training or teaching. And so from that age, I knew that I wanted to create a career with passive income stream. And so in from 2006 to 2011, I was trying all those ways. I hadn't found one that works, so I was doing a lot of active income, youth coaching. I had a youth workbook that I was on, which was a passive income stream, I had my first book which was published by Penguin at the time and that's the one that you mentioned during my last four or after I'm grounded, very long titles, don't recommend that. By the way, the writing books shorter titles are better. And so I had these very small little revenue streams, I could see how it was working. They were very slowly paying the bills that still most of my income at that time was coaching and consulting, which was very active. Once I figured out, you know what, there's something broader here, more than just the niche of working with youth and parents. I think these frameworks could be used by engineers, a company. I think that C-suite would love these. I think that coders and graphic designers would love to have people skills in their back pocket. And at the time, I believe it was 2011-2012, I just started the website, Udemy, which was a new online learning platform, was just starting at the time it was all for engineers. It was almost all technical classes, a couple of accounting things on there. And so I thought, that's my ideal person, right? Someone who's super engineering minded. And so I said, I'm going to upload a body language course to Udemy as a Pasadinconstream and just see what happens. So I filmed in my living room, I had no professional lights, I literally had all the lamps in my house. I had a $28 microphone that I had bought from Amazon that I like weave through my shirt and like pinned on my little blouse. And for three hours, I just taught the body language frameworks that I had been using. And I was like, okay, my goal was 30 sales. Like if I can get 30 sales, it was $49 course, it will just be major gain changeers, 30 sales. So I go to sleep and it takes, at the time, it took about 24 to 40 hours then to approve your course. So I go to sleep, I wake up the next morning and my inbox was filled with thousands of sales. Thousands. Seriously? The first time you uploaded a course? Yes. Yes. Very first time I uploaded a course. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I was ranked silver and unfortunately the entire thing was sold on my phone. Yes. About flavor. That was a first time I let I think there's something here. And so I'm, I I'm after. I'm rethinking what I'm doing for a living now, am I, the wheels I've turned I mean? All right. Yeah, it, it was it was like madness. And so in a wild it would like to wild less, I spent six months, I completely changed everything that I was doing. I filmed four more courses. and every course got a little bit better. By the last course, it actually was with a little small crew. And from them, I put them on the platform. They were telling like crazy, very quickly, requests started coming in for me to speak at companies. And the reason why it worked, I think, is because this was a platform where my people already were. There was already engineers and coders and accountants on their learning online. This was the only soft skills course. I think there might even one or two others. And so people were like, ah, something new. And what I heard was my students kept telling me, you're my lunchtime course. They would watch these other very serious courses during the day, but I was their break, their lunch, their dinner break, and they would buy every single course that I put out. And so that's when I realized, OK, I can be the soft skills balanced to the hard skills. And I can teach soft skills like hard skills. And that was in 2011 and 2011. I think 2012 was when I finally cracked the Udemy game. Yeah. Very impressive. Congratulations. Seriously, that's the incredible success. And you got the content, timing, platform, and it just took off. That's really, really impressive. I had no idea. Seriously, this is how you built your own brand, your entire company. The reason I was asking about education was sort of alluding to why I was also, so I'm just blown away by the fact that you put this on you to mean it took off. And my point is, or my question is, is there anything else like this out there that teaches people for $50? I'm assuming it's great content, because 300,000 plus people have, I haven't taken the course. I said, I'm going to go check it after we finish this call. But it's so old, it's so old, it's so old. If you want to take a course, take my newer one. It's so little and so old. Oh, gosh. But the point is, during 1,000 people can't be wrong. Let's be honest, that's some social proof that the course is pretty damn good. So is no one else teaching this stuff? Or are there just the people that charged the Tony Robbins $5,000 for $10,000 at the competition? Right, okay. So I think it was critical. It was definitely good timing, right? So it was very good timing that this was before the Wild West of online courses, right? Like, 2012, people were like online, what? Like people kind of knew what it was, it was very new. And so the timing was really good. The other thing was, there are a few other, at the time, there were a few other people teaching soft skilled or body language, but they were doing it in a very traditional way. It was very traditional. So they would be hired by a company, they would come and they would do a two day sales workshop. And that was it. You couldn't access them otherwise. You couldn't even hire them as a coach. Maybe you could hire them as a dating coach, but no one had thought, in fact, I had other people tell me, you can't teach body language online. You can't teach body language in a video. And so that was actually hard. It was hard to move the content into video format. But I think that being willing to try readers and students were like, yes, I don't wanna attend. People also don't wanna attend a two day workshop where they have to role play with their colleagues. My person, so I think it's also really important to know your person. My ideal student is a super high achiever above average intelligence, usually very technically minded recovering awkward person. They do not want to do a role playing workshop. They do not want to have to go to an HR webinar on, here's how you smile at someone. They wanna learn on their own time. And so that means, this is one of the reasons why I almost exclusively teach on video, is that they wanna speed me up 2.5 speed because that's how fast they learn. Cool, I'm not offended, great, do it. If they are like, no, I wanna actually pause the video and absorb it, we have a lot of our students who say, I learn in chunks, I can only do 15, 20 minutes of time. Cool, you can consume my content however you want. And so I think it was also critically important to know that my ideal student didn't like the way that a lot of my competitors were teaching. And I want to sort of unpack what you teach a little bit more before we go into that because there's entrepreneurial lessons and then there's very tactical lessons that you teach over that I kinda wanna tease out and run through some of those and understand some of those. But before I migrate off like your career path, was there anything else like notable in your career path that you think would be good to chat about or was this kind of the summary of where you've been? Yeah, I think that was the first part. And the second part was, I try to go to where my students are. So I try very hard to go to other platforms or other podcasts where my students are. So from you to me, I went to Creative Life. So my next group that I wanted to meet with a different audience was a highly creative audience, artists, photographers, who are super creative but hate-selling. So that was my next group. So I hit my engineers and my amazing computer geeks and you to me, and then I wanted to hit my creative. And so Creative Life was where they were all watching online content. And so I cold-pitched Creative Life. I was not invited to speak there. I had to bang on their door and I cold-pitched them in the most creative way I could think of. I sent them an email to their support inbox that said, I want to make you money. And then I outlined all the ways that I thought my course could make the money. And it got forwarded internally. I didn't know this until later. It got forwarded internally and bounced from department's department's department until it finally hit the right content producer who was willing to take a risk on me. And they brought me in, San Francisco. So this was a very different way of filming. They bring you into San Francisco, you film your course. And we took a risk. We did my first course with a three day course. And it was one of their top selling courses across their entire platform. And so I've done four more courses for them. That is a different audience than my view to be audience. And so I think that one of the major things that I've tried to do over the last 15 years is go to my people. Know who my people are, one. Who are my people? And then try to meet them with their ads. It's all very smart entrepreneurial lessons to be quite honest. And it's just incredible that I'm not sure if it comes naturally to you or it's through trial and error. I'm sure like any entrepreneur, there's a lot of trial and error and a lot of times where it hasn't gone so well. Everything you're saying is right on point with how that product market fit finding your ideal customer profile, bringing that product to that customer, meeting them where they're all at. That's all like, this is like sales 101. And it works. And it works and you nailed it. And I guess, so just to tee up in your career. So you've done you to me courses. You've done creative live courses. You have three books now. Is that correct? Yeah, so two self-published books, one failure and one success. Okay. And I'm very honest with those kinds of things that we don't talk enough about our failures. So one failed self-published book, one great self-published book. And then two traditionally published books, one failed traditionally published book, one successful traditionally published book. And now I'm working on my third traditionally published book. So yeah, so it was you to me to creative live. And then I finally created my own platform. So at that point, my audience was big enough and I had been working very, very hard to get people over to my platform. So even though I posted a course in you to me, I had lots of incentives for people to come over to science people and sign up with me. So by that point, I had a couple thousand people who were just with me and I thought, okay, now I want to create some of my own courses because then you don't have to give up a share. You're in complete control of the content. And that's when I began working on my first self-published book. And then that got me a traditionally published book deal. Very impressive. Congratulations. That's a very fun, interesting career path. I've never really spoken to someone who's sorry. It's been a ride. It's been crazy. And like I never would have been able to predict this as a path. And by the way, all throughout that, I've been doing corporate speaking. So I've been doing corporate speaking since the very beginning. My first corporate event was in 2008. So that just has been my feed just grows every year. I had a great mentor once tell me, I said, am I charging the right amount? You know, speaking events, you're kind of making it upright. And he says, you're charging the right amount. If you get no 50% of the time, like in other words, that's too expensive. And so every time I get more than a 50%, less than a few percent knows, I raise my rate. That's smart. That's smart. Very smart. So let's, so do you want to speak about lessons from captivate or do you want to speak about lessons that are your new book? It's whatever what you think is more relevant. What do you like talking about? Yeah, yeah, let's talk about captivate. So I, here's the one study that really kind of, I was like, oh, there is a book here. So I don't know about you. Scott, were you popular in high school? I was like middle, middle of the pack. I wasn't like the most popular, but I still played some sports that has some clout in high school. So it was good, but I wasn't like the, the one where I didn't have all the parties, right? Like the person at the parties and the person who was like the best on like five different teams, I got the varsity, like sports stuff. I wasn't that, I was, I was getting the rest. Okay, okay, cool. You're right, your average, okay, got it. Middle, middle of the range. So I was not popular and I was painfully not popular. And so this study intrigued me more than any study I've read in the past couple of years, so much so that I didn't even want to write a book about it. This is a study done by Van Sloan. And what he wanted to know is why are popular kids popular? So he went to a couple of high schools and he, this is a couple thousand kids. And he gave them all very, very long questionnaires trying to figure out what variable are the popular kids and not popular kids. First, he tried to figure out who is popular kids. Who are the kids that people say that they knew the most when they liked the most? The second thing that he tried to figure out is, okay, okay, here are the popular kids. What is different about them? And so he looked at all of the obvious variables. So what do you think, you actually mentioned one of them. He said sport. Thank you. Outgoing, perhaps, so personality. Okay. Trying to think, it depends, I think it depends on the dynamic of the school. It could be a school, for example, I was in an IB program. So people that were extremely smart in some classes were, were, you know, yeah. So it's sport. So athleticism, sports, extrovert, outgoing, intelligence, GPA, IQ, or FAT scores. And then another one that people often get to track this, or just like the most handsome students, the prettiest students in the market. So none of those four predicted, which are the students in the most popular across multiple high schools. The one predictor across all the schools that accurately predicted, which kid was most popular, was that students listed the longest number of people that they also liked. In other words, when he asked all the students, who do you like at your school in your grade? The popular kid had the longest list of people that they liked. And when he had served them in the wild and their hallways, he noticed that the least popular kid didn't acknowledge anyone. And this could be, by the way, lots of years and years of bullying or years and years of training. They walked down the hallways in their own tunnel. Their arms crossed with their chest with their notebooks in front of them, not saying hi, not smiling. The most popular kids, and this is a facet about going that you mentioned, but actually the most popular kids weren't necessarily extroverted. Some of them were introverted. They typically said, hey, Ralph. Hi, Joy. David. Sarah, they were the first breeders. So when they walked down the hallway, they didn't have a problem acknowledging and saying hello to someone first in their classes in their hallways. This was such a relief to me because it made me realize that we are in control of how likable we are. And for some reason, especially as adults, we withhold our liking at the self-protection mechanism that we're afraid to be the first likers. We don't want to say to a colleague, hey, it's been so great working with you. We should hang out in the weekend because we're terrified. They're going to be like, no thing, the weird stuff. So what we do is we play it cool. I call this professional ambivalent, and it's the killer of any kind of rapport building in the workplace. Professional ambivalent is like this. Yeah, hey, Karen, yeah. Yeah, good weekend, yeah, pretty good. Yep, yep, cool. No one engages too deeply. No one gets overly excited. Heaven forbid you get overly excited. No one invites first. And I also, this is because people are just trying to play a safe. And so my entire goal with captivate is that you are in control with your charisma. You're in control of your likability. And so that means, inauthentically, going and liking is one of the people you can. But it does set you up for a very different mindset, which is, this is totally different in the way that I operate in the first 15 to 20 years of my life, which is, how can I like more people? Not how can I be more likable? And so once I discovered that, and I started going to conferences and networking events and podcasts, with the only question my mind was, how can I like this person? How can I like this person? Which was the opposite of what I've been asking myself for 20 years, which was, how can I be more likable? How can I get them to like me? How can I get them to like me? And that was a game changer of my interactions. And so captivate every chapter and a layer upon layer of how to be more likable through liking others. That's, that is a game. I'm just, you know, as you, when I do these podcasts, I think about like sometimes the lessons I'm learning might fly them to my own life. And that's, that's, that's huge. That's, that's a huge, huge, huge mental shift. It's, it's a game changer, and especially for all my, all my, my high achieving listener, all my high achieving listeners, I just wanna say this two now, which is, you are so worthy. You are so worthy of also being liked, not just respected, but also being liked. And a lot of my high achieving folks, they feel like all they've searched for their entire career was respect. Really great test scores, great GPA, great transcript, great university, great job, great titles. And those are all really impressive and they get a lot of respect. But they've become the point in their career where they realize they have a lot of respect, but not a lot of rapport. And so what I wanna say to you is you can have both. You can absolutely be both respected and liked, and that actually can get you ahead faster than just respect alone. And let me ask you, let me ask you this, because there's so many lessons, of course, the whole book on it, that's, it's silly to try and go into all them on, on this podcast. I told you, we're gonna run at the time, because I have questions, and we're gonna only have like 10 minutes left, but that's good. You'll have to do another one or you'll have to read the book or whatever, but anyway. So say the secret, the key is to reframe your mind so that you are trying to like others, which in turn will increase that end goal of being more liked. If you've lived your whole life in apprehension of saying hi first, it could be very difficult to take that first step, right? It's not like somebody is comfortable saying, it could be for some people they're comfortable saying, hi, they just don't. But say somebody literally has like this gripping panic attack when they're walking in the hall and they see their CEO, or they see maybe less intimidating figure, whatever, they see up here, they see anybody. How do you get over that? That first step, say hi first. Okay, so thanks hi first is actually a little bit of intermediate, I would say it's intermediate, right? Like that's from cold to warm, right? You're walking down a hallway, hey, right? But that's the intermediate, before we even get there, I'm actually going to give you an easier one. I want to teach you a couple of my favorite phrases for warmth. So these are like things that you can just drop into a conversation, which is a little bit less scary than the cold open, and they sound like this. So if you're already talking to someone, you're already in rapport, you're having a good conversation, you're having a good video call. Here's a great phrase, if you genuinely feel it, never use these phrases if you don't anyone, we feel it. One, it's always so great talking to you. That's one where you're already warm, you just had a laughing moment, you've just agreed about something, and you're in your body and in your mind, you were thinking, yeah, it's good. The way that really likeable people do this is they immediately share that. They don't withhold it, they don't pretend to be ambivalent. So you have a laughing moment, you have an agreement moment, you go, ah, yes, I always love working with you. You're always on the same page. It's a really nice way to put a stamp on the momentum. It's like, we just had a good moment, let's like double down and let's highlight it. So it's always so great talking to you. And then the other thing that people, every human being wants, I don't know if you've ever read Dale Carnegie, he had it when friends influence people, but when I said, he's on my, yeah. Oh, he's had a shot, he's on my, he's on myself, it's on my family. Let me see, oh my good friend Dale. Yeah, one of my favorite sale books, yeah. Okay, so what just a little behind the scenes is, one of my editor from Penguin Random House approached me and I write a book. I said, I want to write a book like how do one friends influence people with science? And so captivated was actually pitched to my publisher as how do one and friends influence people with science? That was one of the, that was one of the titles we were bouncing around. So captivated was taking everything in that book and seeing, is there any science here? So one of the phrases that Dale Carnegie uses, so brilliantly is to be interesting, be interested. And it's famous phrase. Okay, so how do we do that in a very practical setting, right, a professional environment that's, like how do you rock that? Here's how, very specifically here is my little hack for this for all my professional listening. Anytime someone says something interesting or you're having an interesting discussion or you're having an interesting conversation, highlight the lack of ambivalence by saying, man, that's so interesting, you're so interesting. That was so interesting. I only have the most interesting conversations with you. When you just say that, you're actually giving someone the greatest gift, which is telling them they're interesting. No one likes to have more. And it goes back to that original phrase of to be interesting, be interested. And so I use the word interesting as freely as I possibly can to anyone who's peaked my interest. I literally do it out like, you know, how Oprah gives out cars. It's like, you're interesting, you're interesting, you're interesting, if I feel it, right? I never do that if I don't actually feel it. But actually, you'd be surprised when you're looking for the opportunity to say that, how many more times you hear it. It's amazing that just looking for it makes you want to see it more and then you do see it more. That's my secret way of getting you out of ambivalence, too. I love it. No, that's, listen, I don't have much to add on because I just think that it's just very, it's so common sense when you start to understand and you start to say it. But I just find that these small little tricks and hacks for this interpersonal communication it seems to escape us all the time. And you run into these very awkward situations. You don't know exactly how to act or you're having a great conversation and all of a sudden it goes stale. And as you're teaching me this, as you're saying this, as you're saying, you know, you should say you're interested. Just, you know, reinforce that moment. Just say you enjoyed the conversation. It's so simple. Like it's not a complicated thing to understand. But if you think back to the last conversation you had, how impactful would it be if somebody had said that to you, right? And just think about the feelings and the emotion you'd be getting if one of your peers said that to you. And it's like, it gives me like chills a little bit. Like it's silly to say, but like it gives you a good feeling. It's like a really good feeling. It actually gives you dopamine. So the reason that I have these capsules behind me, yeah, so that's, so when we, when they talk about interactions a lot of times with my classes and my courses, I talk about the chemical reasons behind why things work so we can do them more perfectly. And so exactly what you said is like, oh, it gives me chills. That's actually the feeling of dopamine. So dopamine very simplified. It's very complicated, little molecule, but it gives us pleasure. It makes us feel excited. It actually makes us feel motivated. It makes us, it drives us to want to do things. So when someone says, ah, it's so fun talking to you. It's always such a pleasure speaking with you. No way, that's so interesting. When I say those phrases to you, your body's like, ah, reward, reward, reward. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. And your body produces this chemical, which makes you feel like, yeah, I got this. As the problem when I do all these corporate workshops with professional ambivalence is that it makes us feel slower. It makes us less motivated. It makes us burn out. It's why we hit career plate toes and career rut. I just did a training on how to be burnout. And they're not things that you would think of. And a lot of them come from a lack of dopamine in our relationship. And so the more that we can do these tiny things, it's like giving someone just a hit of the chemical they need to feel driven. Mm-hmm. Very good. Very good. OK, I have a couple of rapid fire professional. Yeah, ready. Before we go, OK, so go get captivated. Because I'm not every book that gets talked about on this show, I actually am interested in. But this sounds really, really exciting. What's the next book? What's it about? Can you talk about what you're doing or is it still? I can't talk about it yet, but it's going to be my hope is it will make you see things you've never seen before. All right, I'm excited. I'm excited. Rapid fire, rapid fire questions. Let me see what would I like. Oh, where do you go to learn and stay on top of things that are happening in your world, in entrepreneurship, in behavioral psychology, science, whatnot? Cypost, PSY, P-O-S-T. I freaking love their new research of how I keep up with all the latest research. And do you have any particular books outside of our friend Dale that you would recommend besides your own that you should go check out, excuse me? If you like these topics, anything by Daniel Goldman is just amazing. If you're more on the entrepreneurial business mind, a lot of how sometimes I teach how these psychological principles work in advertising and marketing in my often and my funnels, I use all these principles in my funnels. I use them all in my lead magnets in my often's and my website optimization. Then I love Eric Rees, Blaine Startup. I love Made To Stick. I love anything by the Heath Brothers. I believe Dan Heath just came out with his own book, Upstream. Yeah, I love them. Good, very good. Those are all very, very good books. So I'm going to put together a couple of links in the description along with your books as well. People check them out. Just link to captivate, just link to captivate. The other ones are, they didn't work. They didn't work. Only captivate, really work. All right, just captivate, just captivate. What are you curious about in the world of social and human interaction? What are you researching right now? All right, so this will give you a hint about my book. I'm really fascinated with it. I didn't need to do that. No, it's good, it's good. I like it. I'm really fascinated with things hiding in plain sight. So things that we've seen a million times before, classic news events, speeches, everything from all of these jobs, speeches to the OJ Simpson trial to Bill Clinton's testimony. We've seen them, but what haven't we seen? I like those things. Very interesting, very interesting. A lesson you would tell your younger self. If I could tell myself at the start of college, something they would be to have more fun to go meet more people. I was very awkward in college, so I didn't join a sorority. I didn't join clubs. I triple major it and stayed at home. So I don't know if I would have believed me, but I would have said, don't triple major your crazy. That's really silly. Go join a club. Go play some badminton. I thought I'm not athletic at all, so badminton is like the peak sport I could possibly play. Go join dance. Go have some drinks with friends. It's OK. You're not going to get in trouble. You'll have way more fun with that than a triple major. That's good advice. That's good. A triple major. That's not an easy college career. Why did I do that? I have no idea. Double major was a lot for me, so good on you. I don't know. I could do one more during that. I did in five years. That's nothing to be proud of, but whatever. That's tough. Have a little more fun, which I guess is advice for everyone, right? And what does success mean for you? To me, success means feeling like you're actualizing your potential. So you feel like, you know what? Today, I gave it my all, and that your goals are as high as they should be. You're not leaving anything else on the table. Very good. And lastly, most important, where can people find you online? Oh, yes. So everything is at scienceofpeople.com. My YouTube channel is probably the most exciting place to be. We release video every week. I'm Vanessa Van Edwards on YouTube. And then, Cassidy, I also read my own audio book, which was a very fun experience. I did different voices, things like that. So this is a place you can find me. And I'd love to hear from you. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of the Success Story podcast. You can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available, including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, I Heart Radio, and many others. You can also watch this podcast on YouTube. If you haven't already, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Please leave us a rating on iTunes. It takes about 30 seconds, as it allows other people to find our podcast, and lets our amazing guests reach even more people with their message. And remember, any rating is fine, as long as it contains five stars. I'm Scott Clary from the Success Story podcast, signing off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah