Afford Anything - How to Talk About Money with Confidence and Charisma, with Vanessa Van Edwards

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

#383: Behavioral researcher Vanessa Van Edwards, who runs the research lab Science of People, breaks down the psychological secrets behind feeling and looking more confident, competent and charismatic. She explains how to apply these techniques to critical conversations around money, whether you’re negotiating your salary, buying a home or car, or arguing with your spouse about your household spending. Subscribe to get the show notes delivered via email, for free, at https://affordanything.com/shownotes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything, just not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to any limited resource you need to manage. Like your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. Saying yes to something implicitly means turning away other opportunities. And that opens up two questions. First, what matters most?

Second, how do you align your decision-making around? that which matters most. How do you align your actions with your values and your priorities? Answering those two questions is a lifetime practice, and that's what this podcast is here to explore and facilitate. My name is Paula Pan. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and one of the most common questions I get from you, the community,

is how to handle awkward, uncomfortable conversations around money Sometimes you might need to ask your boss for a raise or to go in for a salary negotiation when you're interviewing. Sometimes you might need to convince your spouse or partner to buy a rental property or to get excited about pursuing financial independence or to dig out of credit card debt or pay off your student loans. Sometimes you need to have these conversations with your spouse or partner, with your family, with your kids, your parents, sometimes you'll need to talk about money, and those conversations can be very uncomfortable. And sometimes you'll need to talk about money with friends or in a negotiation, negotiating for a car, asking for a raise.

There are all kinds of money conversations that we have. And most of these are really awkward. So how do we have these conversations better? How do we signal warmth and competence both while having these conversations? And how our nonverbal signals, our body language, our vocal intonation, our hand gestures, how are these contributing to the conversation in ways that we may not even be conscious of? I should say contributing to or detracting from the conversation in ways that we may not be conscious of. And how do we bring these into our consciousness?

To help us tackle these questions, Vanessa Van Edwards joins us in today's episode. Vanessa runs a behavioral research lab called Science of People, where she studies what the most successful communicators do, body language, vocal cues, verbal cues, visual cues, so that the rest of us can have conversations that are less awkward and more effective. The reality is, people who are seen as likable end up making more money, getting more job offers, closing more sales and growing their side hustles or small businesses faster because they're more able to attract clients or customers. On top of that, people who are seen as more likable and competent, both warmth and competence together, have an easier time persuading their spouse or partner or their brother or sister, or their best friend, to open their mind to important values or concepts,

like not spending your entire paycheck, saving for retirement, diversifying your assets, thinking long term. People who exude both warmth and confidence are more persuasive in a way that feels warm and inviting and agreeable. They're better educators, better connectors. And so how do we develop these skills? We know why, but how. Vanessa joins us in this conversation to teach us how to be more deliberate about the cues that we often subconsciously send out. Here she is, Vanessa Van Edwards. Hi, Vanessa.

Hello. How are you? Oh, my goodness. I'm so happy to be here. I cannot wait to dive in. By the way, I was a little nervous about my hello because that was my vocal first impression. It was super important. Exactly.

You know, I was actually thinking in terms of greeting you, am I going to have enough warmth? Am I going to have enough of a sense of welcoming in the way that I make that greeting? It sounded beautiful. I absolutely loved it. And it was beautiful. So the funny thing is, you know, I'm a recovering awkward person. And so when I'm going to think about all these people skills, it's funny because I want to make sure I'm doing it right. And we found that this hello is like the most critical part of your first

impression. How you answer your phone, the first word of your voicemail, the first word of your video call is actually the most important for someone's deciding if you're warm or competent. How do you screw that up? What's an example of a bad hello? Here's the biggest mistake we make on hello. So what we did in our lab is we had people analyze just a quick recording of one of their important phone calls, sales phone call, negotiation call, a call with a partner. We recorded the calls and we looked at their voice vocal data. And we found often the highest word in terms of pitch on the entire call for both men and women was, hello, although we up here. So what happens is we get nervous as we're waiting for someone to answer.

We're waiting for the phone to ring. And so we're taking a deep breath and we're speaking at the very top of our voice, which makes me sound a little bit tense, a little bit anxious and a little bit tight. And so we say, hello, how are you? So we say this hello with all of this vocal tightness. What happens is universally what researchers have found is that we decide how confident someone is, specifically confident, within the first 200 milliseconds of hearing them speak. 200 milliseconds. What's happening is as humans, we're very attuned to people's cues.

The reason for this is because if someone's in anxiety or low confidence, we don't want to catch it. So when we hear someone with a high pitch up here where their vocal cords are tight, and this is for both men and women that when we're anxious, we go higher. Our vocal cords tighten. And sometimes we can also get vocal fry. So we lose that vocal power. So vocal fry sounds like this where we lose a little bit of our vocal power. And it sounds like sizzling bacon in a pan.

Right. We can hear that anxiety. So the biggest thing you can do on a call is not say hello on the in-breath, but say hello on the out-breath. So here's the difference. Ready? Okay. Hello. We don't want to do that one.

Versus, hello. Speak on the out breath. It forces our vocal cords to relax, which then makes the other person feel relaxed, which then creates this beautiful, confident loop. So only hello on the out breath. That's excellent. All right. So we've started off with a great tip right away.

Thank you for that. Before we get into, I know you have so much more advice to share. But before we get into that, let's first establish. why this matters. Well, a lot of people think that when we talk about communication or people skills, they're kind of a nice to have, that it would be to be able to make small talk. It would be nice to be able to have a little bit of chit-chat. What people don't realize is that people skills are actually fundamental for our financial success,

for our career success, that they've even found that specific cues that we use, like one that just blew my mind was that MIT researchers looked at salary negotiations. Now, if most people are preparing for a salary negotiation, what do they? they're prepping. They're verbal. They're thinking about evidence for why they deserve it. They're doing research on companies to see competitive salaries. They bring in a portfolio, right? They're thinking of all the evidence. What they found was that when they looked at actual salary negotiation interviews, these weren't in the lab. These were real salary negotiations from mid-level executives transferring to a new company. They found that when the negotiator, so when the person wanting the raise,

the promotion mirrored just subtly the nonverbal cues of their interviewer. So when they laughed, they laughed. When someone nodded, they nodded. When they leaned, they leaned just subtly mirrored. That person earned 20 to 30 percent more in their final salary. That is a huge number. And so what we don't realize is all these cues are setting us up for financial success and career success. Right. And it stands to reason. that if a salary negotiation goes that well, then your performance at your job and your ability to receive promotions or to get the types of assignments that you want so that you would either make more or enjoy your job more or both, that would largely be impacted by the subtle ways

that you don't even realize that you're communicating. What's really hard, and this is the mistake that smart people make, and this is really difficult, is that very, very smart people, they feel. focus on their smarts. They have great ideas. They've done years of training in school. They have great technical skills. But the problem is what the research shows is that high competence without warmth, trust, like ability rapport leaves people feeling suspicious. This comes directly from Dr. Susan Fiske's research at Princeton University, where she looked at highly charismatic people. And she found that there are people who are off the charts in competence. They're very smart,

reliable, dependable, but what happens is they cannot get buy-in. They cannot build trust in their sales. They can't build trust in their negotiations. And so people think, wow, he or she is smart, but I just don't trust them. And so what she found, we have competence without warmth cues. People feel suspicious of our competence. And so what we have to realize is to balance out our smarts with our warmth is the single most important thing we can do to increase people believing us. Right. And that has major impacts on your career, on if you decide to start a side hustle on the business that you start or the side business that you start, and on the conversations that you have with friends and family, including conversations about sensitive topics like money. Yes, exactly.

I talk a lot about confidence. And it's always kind of alluded to me confidence as an awkward person. I have a little bit of social anxiety and I struggle with asserting my boundaries. and a lot, when we talk about money, that's the most assertive thing you can do. And so what often happens to very talented people is when they start talking about money, whether that's at a garage sale or in a job interview or negotiating a status or raising money or talking to their friends or their friends about money is that they feel really confident in their idea but not confident in talking about money. And so my side door to confidence has been control.

If I have a social blueprint, if I know exactly what, What to say, how to say it, what to do with my hands, what's to do with my posture, how to build warmth and competence, the anxiety goes away for me. And research has proven that there are even chemicals in our body that can help reduce our sense of anxiety. So for example, they found that oxytocin, oxytocin is a very complicated chemical in our body, but for our purposes, for social purposes, oxytocin makes us feel connected. It makes us feel bonding. We produce it in three main ways. One is eye contact. Even through a video camera, we produce eye contact. Second, touch, so a handshake, high five hugs. That's why a lot of interactions start with some kind of a touch, cheek kiss or hug or

handshake. And the last one is like shared moments, you know, mutual laughter. Oh, I know that person. That's why we're always looking for similarities. When we have oxytocin coursing through our bloodstream, we actually share more in Prisoner's Dilemma Games. We become more polite and collaborative in prisoner dilemma games. So oxytocin not only helps us be more collaborative and more open, but also, more importantly, it reduces anxiety and increases social cognition. That's a fancy word for saying, when we have oxytocin coursing through our bloodstream, we actually become better people readers.

We become better at reading cues. become better at our hand gestures. What you hinted out earlier was really important is we become better at our jobs. We become better communicators. And so there's this beautiful cycle that the more confident we are in our cues and our communication, the better communicators we become. Perfect. Now, when we talk about communication in this context, there are two facets to communication.

There's a give and take, right? We need to understand how others are. seeing us, but we also need to be able to read the room. You refer to this as encoding and decoding. Can you describe at a conceptual level what exactly are we doing when we're encoding and decoding information and how do we become conscious of the process of doing it better? Yes. Okay, so most of the time when we think about body language, we think about the one side, the decoding, we think about reading people, and that's very important. But the second side is encoding. So decoding are the social signals being sent to you, being able to very quickly speed read and identify what are people around you

thinking and feeling, what's their confidence, what's their competent, what's their warmth. The other side is encoding, which are the social signals you send to others. So making sure that when you show up in a room, you are sending the signals you want, whether that's warmth, whether that's confidence, whether that's competence, you know exactly what you have to do with your body, your face, your voice, and your words to send those signals. What's interesting about it is most people don't realize there's a third aspect and it's a loop. So follow me with me on this. What they found is that this study really changed.

By the way, the study I'm about to share it, it fundamentally changed the way I see people. I was so shocked by it that I read it twice. What they found is that if someone walks into a room and spots or decodes a cue of social rejection. So a cue of social rejection, we're very attuned to see. seeing these. So this could be an eye roll. This could be a, this could even be a dismissive tone of voice on a phone call. Yeah, great idea. All cues of social rejection, we are very aware of those cues. If we spot a cue of social rejection, researchers found the moment we spot that cue, our own field of vision increases. Literally, our pupils dilate immediately to take in more of our

environment. It's as if our body knows, uh-oh, we just spotted something that might not be good for us. Is someone else sending me that cue? What's my escape route? What should I do next? And so we decode a cue, good or bad. Then we internalize it. Something happens in our physiology. Maybe it's eye contact and we produce oxytocin. Great. Maybe it's a cute social connection and our field division increases. Maybe it's a smile and that makes us happy and we smile back. And then we're we encode, right? We send the next signal. So if that's a smile, we smile back. If that's an eye roll, maybe we get a little bit defensive and we share more of our accolades. Maybe someone sends us a lean or a nod, then we lean and nod back. In this way, all of these cues are affecting our

performance. And what research has found, this was a fascinating study that was done across, they studied 58,000 working hours across 11 different companies. And they found that even sitting, within 25 feet of a low performer decreases your own performance by 30%. Wow. Insane. It also works the other way, but not as strongly. So I believe, I forget the positive ones, but if you sit within 25 feet of a high performer, I believe your performance improves by 15%. In other words, the reason why we can walk into a room and feel drained or burnt out, or where there's certain people, which we don't know why they just take away from us or they make us feel great is because we are constantly sending back and forth these cues and they are affecting our literal physiology.

Wow. So let's talk about what some of those cues are. And let's start with body language since we're on that topic a little bit. You know, how do we, when we walk into a room, send or read signals of competence and confidence? Yes. I think that what what's the most important thing is actually sending cues of warmth. And this comes from the research. What's interesting is you just said exactly what my instinct was for a long time, which is I want to be seen as smart. I want to be seen capable.

So I want to show competence and confidence. And competence and confidence are great. But actually as humans, when we're first interacting, there are two basic questions we have to ask about a fellow human. This comes from the research. The first question, and they are chronological, is can I trust you? So who we even think, are you smart? can I rely on you is, are you going to be on my side? Are you going to be an ally? Are you a threat?

So the very first thing we're looking for are warmth cues. Then immediately second is can I rely on you? So what's happening in our video calls, our phone calls, even when someone looks at our LinkedIn profile or our website or our email or our marketing material is we are first looking for warmth cues and second, we're looking for competence cues. So easiest way to think about this is actually verbal to nonverbal. The reason why I say this is because the verbal ones are really obvious. In the book, I talk about the four channels of cues. Verbal, the words we use. That's what we talk about the most. Nonverbal, our body language base gestures. Vocal, how we say our words, our volume, our pitch, our cadence.

And lastly, the one we often forget, imagery. Our fonts we use, the colors we wear, the props in our background. So warmth verbal cues are really important in the start of an interaction. This is why we start most interactions by saying, oh, so happy to see you. or pleasure is talking to you. It's so good to see you. Those are all warmth verbal cues. So what I always say is in the first few seconds of an interaction, I want you to say one warm word and use one warm nonverbal. So it could be so happy to see everyone. Happy Monday team. Oh, it's great to see you. So that's a warm verbal cue. Warm verbal is or anything that makes someone feel the warm and fuzzies.

And then some kind of warm nonverbal. Here are your choices. And you only have to pick One, obviously a smile. We love a smile. They're contagious. The reason why I say you don't have to is because nothing's worse than a fake smile. Or isn't someone coming on a video call and doing this. Hi, it's so happy to see you. So if you're not truly happy to see someone, I would actually rather you skip it.

Another option for you, a smile doesn't feel natural to you, is any kind of a visible palm. So like a wave, a greeting hello. And then that can go into a handshake, a high five, a cheek kiss. So some kind of a touch if you're in person. So wave, a high five, handshake touch. You can also just make eye contact. Remember, eye contact produces oxytocin. So walking, seeing someone across the room, making eye contact, those are all ways of saying,

you can trust me. And it's like a checkbox in someone's mind. Right, right. What about body language? So in terms of positioning, should a person be standing such that they are, fully, I want to say full frontal, but that's not, you said it. You said it. Yeah. Fronting is the name of the cue. You got it. That was it. I want you to be full frontal. I mean by that. So this is a real cue. You're right in this. There's 96 cues in the book. And one of them, one of my favorites is fronting. And this is angling our toes, our torso and our top. It's an easy way to remember, our three T's towards the person we're speaking with. And the research has found that when we are aligned with someone, like literally our toes are on the same page. Like right now, even though we're on video, I'm trying to square with you. I want my shoulders to be on the same line as you. You're just. You're on the same line as you. You're

you. I don't want my head to be the same one with you. I might look over to my notes for a second, but then I always turn right back to you. That is a non-rubal sign of respect. And a big mistake that can happen is in board meetings or even with our partners, we will be angled away on our phone. Right. Hey, how are you? And we like look over our shoulder at them. We don't angle our body towards them. What that does is in our minds is it creates a disconnect. And so one of the best things you can do is when you see someone is literally full front with them. So same page toes, torso, and shoulder. It's a very subtle way of saying, I respect you so much that I literally want to get on the same parallel lines as you. And in a Zoom call, as you just said, in a Zoom or a video,

a Skype call, any type of call, you can still mimic that even remotely. Yes, 100% yes. And in fact, I think one of the reasons we get so drained on video is because we're using, body language that would never work in person. So one of the most important things you can do to make your video calls better is do what you would do in person. So in person, Paul, if you and I were together, we would be angled towards each other. We would be leaning in across the table or across a cup of coffee. Great. It's a mistake in someone. I've seen people have their cameras off to the side of their body and they type and they occasionally glance over. If we did that in person, it would be incredibly rude and that can be more draining. Another aspect of body language is called

proxemics, which is the space between people. In person, we're very aware of this. Like, in person, we would never close talk. I would never walk all the way up to your face and speak to you, you know, a foot away. Right. The same thing can happen or we mistakenly on video ruin space with we get too close to our camera. And that can literally come across as too invasive. And so what I want everyone to make sure of is when you're at your next year at your computer, measure the distance between your nose and your camera and make sure that's at least 18 inches away. Wow. I know that sounds crazy, but 18 inches is a very important measurement in interpersonal behavior because 18 inches away is about the distance of your arm, which is how far we like to be when we can both handshake someone.

And so if you are closer than 18 inches, you are accidentally being a digital close talker signaling alarm bells. If you are way farther than 18 inches away, if you're like three to four feet away, people will have physically a hard time connecting with you because they're like, come closer. And so that's a very small but very important measurement. And I can see how especially on laptops, you might accidentally get a little too close to the camera. Because we're punching over. The funny thing is so here's the other mistake that he will make. I mentioned hello at the very beginning. What people will often do on a video call is they'll, hello, can you see me?

Can you hear me? And they get really close to their camera. And so their first impression is anxious and close talking. Hmm. Right. Which is another reason people get drained on video calls because in real life, no one would ever say, can you see me? Can you hear me?

Especially not 18 inches from your face. Right. Exactly. Yes. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, But they're not just fast and efficient. They're also powered by the latest in payments technology built to evolve with your business.

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Sale ends December 7th. Now, you also talk about body language that is open, so you don't want to be closed off, blocked off in any way crossing your arms or shielding yourself. And this can be difficult, particularly let's say two people are having, a conversation about money. Maybe you're in a negotiation, a salary negotiation, right? Or maybe you're talking to your financial advisor and you have to, quote unquote, confess something that really brings up a lot of negative feelings. Often people self-soothe by crossing their arms, by playing with their hair. There are all of these self-soothing behaviors that can reduce your own feelings of

anxiety, how do you square that with the need to be open and, you know, not visibly self-soothing? Okay. This is the perfect opportunity to bring back decoding and encoding. Okay. So first, let's talk about decoding. So if you're with someone and they're chatting and they're using gestures and they're leaning in, they're very open. And all of a sudden, you get to a part of your pitch or your presentation or your meeting

and they suddenly cross their arms and lean back. Or suddenly they block. I've actually seen people do this. They pull a book up to their chest and they clutch the book. Teenagers do this. If you're a parent and you're interrogating your teenager, they'll grab a pillow or a book or a clipboard. I've also seen this in hospitals when someone has bad news to deliver.

They'll pull something to their chest and they're holding in front of their chest in a blocking behavior. That is great information for you as a decode. You can then say, hmm, something I just said or did. or something they said or did makes them a little bit nervous, makes them feel like they have to self-soothe or protect or block. That's valuable information for us. So now you have a choice. You can immediately address it. Are we good? Any questions here? I just want to check in. Did that slide make sense? So I know I just brought up some new information. How does that feel? Any questions on

that? So that is called dynamic selling. So when I talk to my sales students or even pitching, the worst thing you can do in pitches or in sales or presentations is have an agenda and go right through it and ignore all the cues being sent to you. If someone goes into blocking behavior, their brain is literally closing, right? If you are your presentation, and it could be even just a confusion, maybe even not something they disagree with, they just don't understand something. If you place that blocking cue, it will be incredibly hard for them to listen to whatever you're about to say next.

So in dynamic selling, dynamic pitching, we pause. we're like, hmm, they just blocked. So either we address it right then and there, or we know we have more evidence coming or more support coming, and we log it for the future for, I never check in on this person and make sure that they're okay. Sudden blocking by someone else is great information, and you can try to unblock them by addressing it if you wish,

or you can just keep it in your brain for future. Second is encoding, and encoding is simply this. If you want to show that you are open and wanting to bond and wanting to connect and confident, you want to stay as open as possible. But you can also use this to subtly show you don't like something. So my favorite skills in a negotiation is to use non-verbal cues to negotiate for you. So very simply, I talk about this in the book about negotiating for a car. If you're negotiating for a car and you don't like an offer or a price, you can cross

your arms, purse your lips, which is press your lips together, and shake your head no. And that will subtly signal something you just said, I don't like. And most people who intuitively pick up, uh-oh, that can often get the negotiator to be like, you know, you know, I can break that into different installments or I don't have to throw up that window pricing. Right. We can also encode openness. We want openness, but also encode closed when we want to be closed. Right. And sometimes in a negotiation, sending nonverbal cues and letting those do the talking for you, that spares you from saying too much because what we all know about negotiation is sometimes silence is the best negotiator. Exactly right. So here are a couple of cues if you want.

So I find silence hard. I know shocking. I'm a talker. So I find silence really hard. But negotiation is critical and I'm negotiating all the time because oftentimes I'm talking to clients and I'm negotiating my rates. So what I have is a couple of nonverbal cues. I'll share with you right now that you can use in addition to silence. It helps give your brain something to do, which makes silence easier. So one, is crossing your arms. Two, is shaking your head no, like as if you're thinking and that doesn't sound good. Nope, that does not sound good. Three, lip pursing. So pressing your lips together into a firm line, it's a signal of withholding or not wanting to share something. So another good one, by the way, to decode. Like if you see someone who suddenly lip purses, like, I don't know. I don't know.

about that. And also distancing. So scooting back, stepping back, leaning back, sitting in your chair back, those are like, oh, let me think about this. I don't really like it. Like literally when we smell something bad, we try to get away from it. It's the same thing for a bad offer in negotiation. Right. What do you do when you're having a sensitive conversation with somebody about, let's say, an investment that went awry? Or you think that that they're your spouse or partner. and you think that they spend too much money, but you're afraid to bring this up to them. You might start decoding those same signals where they lean away from you, they cross their arms or pull a book in front of them.

You know, they block their body. So you're decoding that signaling from them. How do you then get to them? How do you open them back up? Right. Okay. So, well, first, I think that when I first started this research, I started this research 17 years ago because I couldn't read these signals.

So it all started because I have this as an awkward person. I'm a social overthinker. So I tend to overthink every cue that's sent to me. I also have this thing that I know about myself. And if anyone has this who's listening, it's really important to know this about yourself. I tend to misinterpret neutral cues as negative. Oftentimes I would leave meetings or even dinners out or parties. And I turn to my husband and say, I think she's mad at me.

he'd be like, what are you talking about? I'd be like, no, I think she's really mad at me. And he'd be like, I swear she's not mad at you. I would interpret them neutral as negative. So one, if that's you, I want you to make sure that you're reading the right cues because you be thinking you're seeing negative cues, but actually they're just processing cues, you know, they're neutral or they're thinking cues. So I started off this research for myself being like, what is actually positive and what is

negative. And so in my research, I created two different sheets in the same spreadsheet. One was positive cues and one was negative cues. And I began to look at the research and add positive to negative. And then about three years into the research, I realized, oh, there isn't just two buckets. It's not just positive and negative. There's actually cues that means specific things. So for example, one of the cues for shame is when we like to touch our forehead with our fingers, it can be either side. So if you just lightly touch the top of your forehead with your fingers, you'll notice that you see this on prank shows when someone is like, surprise, people will often cover their forehead. Oh, I can't believe it because they're embarrassed or ashamed. That's not positive or negative. It's a very

specific cue. In fact, someone could be embarrassed by a surprise party, right? And that isn't a negative thing. And so a lot of these cues about how you address them, you have to address the specific emotion that's happening. So if it's negative, my goal is for you to try to get them to positives. That could be affirming, asking questions, showing your own positive numberable encoding cues that you hope are going to catch on, specifically addressing questions of negativity. Does that make sense? Are you good with that? Can I check it with anything? But if there's specific cues like shame, that's a very different line of questioning, right? If you're talking to someone about money, and this is the most often time I see this cue is when you're talking about money, people are embarrassed. People are

embarrassed for some reason, talk about money. You can say, if I saw shame, that's very different than a sudden arm cross. A sudden arm cross means closed. Something's closed. It makes them uncomfortable. I might say, does that make sense? Have any questions or go into more evidence? But if someone shows shame, I might pause and say, listen, empathy. I know this is really uncomfortable and hard to talk about. I totally get it. It's a very uncomfortable situation. And what I want you to know is I am on your side. You can tell me anything. I'm not going to judge you.

I am here to help you. That is a very different response than just being closed. It's actually a specific response to shame. And that is the most beautiful way we can respond to shame because you're basically saying, I see you, I hear you, I accept you. Right. And when it comes to these kinds of conversations, these sensitive money conversations, that's the message that so many people need to hear,

both verbally and nonverbally. Exactly. And so this is all about trying to understand, and I think it's a gift if you can listen to someone with your ears, with your eyes, right? Like if you're watching their cues and you're listening to their words, you get so much more information. Right. You've also talked in the speech that you delivered at FinCon, you talked about how we also speak with our hands. So I remember one thing that you said that stood out is that when we speak, We speak twice, once with our mouth, and then again with our hands.

How do hand gestures play a role in what we're discussing? Because hand gestures are part of body language, but they're a different subset. Yes. What's great about hand gestures is they are both warm and competent. So I briefly touch on this earlier that the two most important traits for charismatic people are being warm and trustworthy and likable, but also competent, powerful, and impressive. and that when we're with someone, we like to be around people who are both trusting and powerful, both admirable and respected. Okay. So if we want both warmth and competence, there are very few, very few nonverbal cues that are both. And gestures are one of them. Here's why. First, they're warm. Remember how at the very beginning I said a palm raise, a wave, an open palm gesture is immediately warmth. And that comes from a very ancient part of our brain that when we were approached by a stranger cave,

man back in caveman days, we wanted to see their hand to see if they were carrying a rock or a spear, right? Someone was carrying a weapon, we did not feel safe. If someone approached us literally hands up, and that's what we say to people, right, get your hands up. The reason is because our hand are our deadliest weapons. And we want to see, are they carrying weapons? So this is a super primitive part of our lizard brain that's always looking for hands to see, are you concealing something, are you holding something? And also, what's your intention? Are you going to shake my hand? Are you going to greet me? That's our favorite. Are you going to acknowledge me? Are you going to beckon me over? Those are all of our favorite warmth gestures. So first, warm gestures are beckoning, our touch, our greeting, are open. We love those. Second, and the second thing we look for is competence. Really competent people, people who know their stuff. They speak to you on two different tracks. They know their content so well. They can speak to you with their words, as you mentioned, and they can also speak with their hands.

So when we analyze TED Talks, I was curious what makes a really viral TED Talk. So back in this couple years ago in our lab, we analyzed thousands of hours of TED Talks looking for patterns. And we looked at everything. We had no idea what we're going to find. So we looked at body positioning. We looked at color of clothes. We looked at gender. We looked at glasses.

We looked at smiling. We actually counted the number of seconds smiling. And the biggest difference between the most viewed TED Talks and the least viewed TED Talks was, gestures. The most popular TED Talkers used an average of 465 gestures in 18 minutes, whereas the least popular Ted Talkers use an average of 272 gestures in 18 minutes, meaning that when we have a really competent person, they're like, I have a big idea, and they hold their idea like it's a beach ball big, or if they have a small idea, they hold their fingers up small as if they're holding a penny. And our brains go, ah, this is congruent. They're, they're.

words and their hands are the same, they must be telling me the truth, and they really know their stuff. And so gestures add competence when we can say to someone, I have three ideas I want to share with you and we hold up three. Like, oh, there's three. I can see those three right there. And so I share it because I think if you're going to share ideas, starting off with warmth, greeting your audience, saying hello, those first. But second is, how can you know your content so well that you can actually underline or emphasize ideas with your hands. And another way that people underline or emphasize ideas is with vocal intonation. Can you talk about that?

Particularly given that we're on a podcast, we're in audio, how do people signal warmth and competence through vocal intonation? Vocal power is my favorites. This was, you know, a huge section in the book is our vocal power. It was funny when I was reading the audiobook, I was working so hard on my vocal power because I wanted to make sure I was hitting all the points because I was vocal power is actually one of the fastest ways we signal our, our confidence and our competence. So this is the fastest way that we can signal competence, which is we use a downward inflection.

What can often happen is when we're nervous, we use the question inflection, also known as uptalk. Up talk is when we go up at the end of our sentences. So everything we say sounds like a question, even though it's actually a statement. Right. I can hear it. Yeah, you can hear it. So what happens is when we're nervous, we ask, do you, we're asking with our vocal intonation, do you believe me? Do you accept me?

Do you like me? And so what can happen is we're giving away our vocal power by adding the question inflection. And what's critically important is this happens most often. Whenever I listen in on sales calls, I do lots of sales trainings, is people often ask their numbers. They ask their prices. They ask their timelines. When you do this, you're basically telling someone, I don't really believe this number and you should negotiate with me. So I hear a nail training, it'll be like, yes, we'd love to have your business. We'd love to work with you.

We think you'd be a perfect partner for us. And the cost of the service is $5,000. Right, right. I'm not sure about this number. You should be unsure of it too. And you will get more negotiation, more pushback, more hesitancy. And so saying instead of asking is critically important for anything that, matters to you. The other really important reason for this is because liars often use the question inflection. Lliers do not believe what they're saying. And so they will ask it as if to say, do you believe this? So we did another big research experiment in our lab where we had people play two truths and a lie with us. It's like one of my favorite games. You know, you say two truths about

yourself and a lie and you try to have the person guess. So we had hundreds of people submit two truths and a lie. And then we coded them for differences. The single biggest difference we found is that most people ask their lie. So see if you can guess, Paula, which is a lie. Are you ready? Okay, I'm ready. I'm going to give you two statements that are true. One's a lie. And you're going to guess which one is which. Okay. Okay. I grew up in Los Angeles. I love dogs. I'm a vegetarian. It's the year a vegetarian. I'm not a vegetarian. That's right. That's right. So that's exactly what we heard is that people often ask, and that's something that liars do because they don't believe it. So when we hear, the question and function accidentally used on a price, people are likely to think you are lying.

Even if you're doing it just because it makes you nervous, they're actually less likely to believe you and more likely to give pushback. What is so unfortunate about the question inflection is that oftentimes the people who are doing it are speaking very honestly. They're simply nervous. And that nervousness causes them to and their sentences like this. Yes, with that higher inflection. Yes, exactly right. That's one of the reasons I wrote the book is I think my own anxiety and awkwardness was not just coming across as anxiety.

It was actually coming across as people can't believe me. And so I wrote it for people who they are just a little nervous, they're just a little anxious, and I want you to know what cues are giving away your confidence so you can change them. This most often also happened at the start of a meeting. I hear the question inflection at most at the very beginning. That's where we're most nervous. So people will say, thanks everyone for joining. Happy to have you. We're going to wait a few minutes

while people log in and then we'll get started. Right. Because we want to please. We want to be liked. We're a little bit nervous. We're also kind of softly asking for permission. I'm a recovering people pleaser as well. And so I often find that my people pleasers, we default to asking because we really want to please. And so it comes from maybe a good place, but it gives away all of our competition. And I notice in the example that you just gave, as you were imitating a person who was starting a meeting, you also used filler words, which is another way that people signal their nervousness. Yes. So this is a concept called conversational scarcity. What's really interesting is that when we look at conversational patterns, very competent people, they don't use filler words. They pause. So they don't have conversational scarcity. They're very competent. They're very confident. They have faith in their abilities. And so instead of filling with a like or an um or a so or you know or speaking too quickly,

they have abundance. And so they think I have all the time in the world. I'm going to take my time, make sure I'm saying exactly what I want to say. And then pause sometimes mid-sentence, sometimes at the end of a sentence. And that makes it so they don't add fillers. So people with conversational scarcity, they either speed up their sense. speech because they're so scared there isn't enough time where they're going to be interrupted, or they add fillers to say, I'm still talking, I'm still talking. Research is super clear on this.

The more verbal fillers we use, the lower our competences rated by other people. Right. Now, if a person pauses mid-sentence, it's clear that the sentence isn't over, and so it creates some intrigue, some drama, people continue to listen. But if a person pauses at end of a sentence, but their thought isn't complete, oftentimes they get interrupted. How do you solve for that? Okay. So let's talk about there's actually an art, a science and an art to pausing. So first, a really good pause is only a quarter to a half a second. So just to get really specific is these are short. They're just enough to take a quick deep breath, a quick breath. And by the way, that also helps keep our voice nice and low. So what can happen in conversational

scarcity is no one pauses and so you run out of breath at the end of your sentence. And so the other way that we go up and do our pitch is we run out of breath. So it sounds like this. I really want to welcome everyone today and I want to share a couple different things. So be sure you stay on the call because by the end of the call, we're going to answer a couple of questions and we're going to make sure that we get to everyone's questions at the very end of the call. Right. So you'll get people who will just end at the highest end of their pitch because I ran out of breath. So when you use a pause, you actually want to use it to take breath, which will keep your pitch nice and low. Yay. So it's only a quarter to a half a second, super fast. Oh, it's fast in the sense. It's just enough for us to take a breath,

but it's not quite enough for someone to think we're done. Right. It's a little pause. And second, you can use a mid-sentence pause, which as you mentioned creates intrigue. So I can have it as a reveal. So I can say one of the biggest mistakes smart people make is they focus too much on they're smarts, right? So I just use the mid-sentence pause to create just a moment of, guess what I'm about to say? Intrigue. Yeah, intrigue. So it's a mid-sentence pause. An end-sentence pause should only be used if you're asking a question that you want to let people sink, you want to let it sink in. It could be a rhetorical question, could be a really powerful big idea. So that could be something like research has found that we decided how confident someone is within 200 milliseconds of hearing them.

200 milliseconds. That pause in there was like, that is a huge number. And I don't want to sink in. And so it invites maybe a, like a vocalization like you're doing, which is fantastic. The only issue is an end sentence pause can cause someone to interrupt you. So how do we prevent this? One is you can use it when you're obviously asking a rhetorical question or about to explain something. Right.

So if I say a big statement like I just said, you're probably waiting for me to explain it further. that's great. Or you can use a nonverbal gesture to show you're not done. And what I mean by this is you can use these three things to cue that you're not done or also to get someone to stop interrupting you. The first is you can hold up your hand like a bookmark. So you'll see really good speakers will do this. They'll pause, but they'll get the other sentence and they'll say 200 milliseconds of hearing someone speak. And they hold up their hand as if to say, I'm on the thought, I'm on the thought. And then they keep going. So it's really good TED speakers will literally hold their hand up mid thought and then they complete it. Right.

Hand up, palm out. Hand up, palm out, right? Like just hold, hold. And we're completing the idea. Okay, so you can you hold your hand and do that. By the way, you can also do that when someone else is speaking and you want to interrupt them. It's if you're saying, my turn. Excuse me?

My turn. Right. Almost like you're raising your hand in class a little bit. Exactly. But like nice and low, right? Like I'll start nice and low, by the way, the longer someone talks, I'll get closer. closer to their face. The second thing that you can do is you can keep your mouth open.

So we also recognize that when someone's mouth is open, they are literally mid-thot. So you can say 200 milliseconds of hearing someone speak. Like, and I hold the mouth open like, wow. That is indicating I'm taking it a breath and I'm about to keep talking. So you can hold your mouth open. You can also do this when you want someone else to stop talking. So if someone else is talking and you want to show them, I want to say something you can open your mouth like a fish.

Up. It's literally, I'm trying to get a word in. So that is a way that we can also have a pause but have someone not interrupt us. And by the way, most people are pretty good at waiting a second or two to make sure we're done. You only really need to use those with interruptors. You know those people? Like those people. Right.

That's who I use that with. I'm very other, most people I don't need to. Nice. Now you mentioned one thing that I've been doing throughout. this conversation, which is I've been acknowledging what you say as you talk without interrupting you through vocal intonation, things like, mm-hmm. Oh, yes. Yes. I love them. Are you doing it on purpose for me? Because I love them. Oh, thank you. I do it for all of my guests. And it's a way of I wanted to be. It's something that I consciously do that I started doing about a year or two after I began

podcasting and it is just a way of signaling to the guest that I'm engaged in what they're saying. Okay, so this is really important for introverts. So I think, just to back up for a second, I think a lot of the communication books and courses that are out there are written by extroverts. And the problem is extroverts are naturally good with people. And so they teach you to basically pretend to be an extrovert to be liked. I do not think you have to pretend to be outgoing or fake being an extrovert to be liked. I think if you're an introvert or an amboverver, you can find super strengths, super social strengths in those areas. This is something that introverts can really use. Introverts typically use less words in an average conversation. They're not as comfortable

vocalizing, whereas extroverts love to vocalize, right? Extroverts want to share everything over and over again, whereas introverts aren't as comfortable with that. So introverts can participate in a conversation by using vocalizations instead of words. So this is a way that introverts can show warmth can show engagement without having to constantly be responding. So vocalizations, they're my favorites. So there's sound vocalizations. And I also talk about in the book word vocalizations. So sound vocalizations are polyer. So that they're then, hmm, oh, ooh, uh-huh, mm-hmm. And those all are different, right? So like, ah is awe. But like, ooh, interesting. Ooh, is intrigue. Mm-hmm. Is I'm listening. Right? So all of those are different things. And you can use them like those emotional intonations. And there's also words, right? Single words. Wow. What? Interesting. No way. Really? Right. So we could add one word vocalizations that say everything. And so for introverts, that's a really great one for replacing words with still a lot of warmth.

We'll come back to the show in just a second. But first, loudly or softly should a person, be speaking. And do people often speak louder or softer than they realize? Like, when you hear yourself talk, are you louder inside of your own head than you are to the outside world or vice versa? I was so happy to find research on this question. So when I was thinking about the vocal section of the book, I was thinking about pitch and volume and pace and cadence. And so volume was the one, I was like, is there actually research on this? And there is. So very competent people use dynamic volume. And what I mean by that is volume, you have to think of it like nonverbal or rather vocal bolding. For example, when we're speaking at a normal pace, I'm explaining something.

I'm going to be at my base volume. My base volume is a little bit louder than normal, but not super loud. If a confident person is speaking and they're super passionate, oh my gosh, they love this. This is the most important part. They will dynamically increase their volume for a little bit, as if to say, bold, And that's a way that very competent people are almost adding cliff notes for us. Like, this is a good one. Listen up.

They'll also go the other way. So not only do they go up to bold, they'll go quiet like a parentheses or an italics. So a constant speaker, we saw this with our TED speakers, as they'll say, I'd love to talk to you about a story. And this story means the world to me high volume. But listen, do not tell my mom, I told you. Right. So they actually use their volume dynamically. And that's the best way is there's actually no one right way to speak. It's using your volume to increase or enhance your message. Does a lower volume always have the effect of diminishing the thing that you say at a lower volume, making it parenthetical? Or could it do the opposite? Makes it more important. Oh, yeah. I mean, as I said, there's no one rule with volume, which kind of makes it fun. Right. So in the right context,

It could be diminishing something, right? I could say, like, oh, don't worry about that piece of it. Don't worry about that piece of it. That's really easy. It's really small. But I could also say, and this is the most important part. Right? So it doesn't have to be one way the other, which is why it's so cool when a speaker can do it dynamically, why we're like captivated by them.

We're like, wow, like they're using their volume, all kinds of places. And so you'll notice, like, really good podcasters like yourself, they might have a low volume to explain something really important and they change it when they're going into an exciting story. And so there's no one way. What you want to think about is what's your default? And then when do you want to change it for emphasis? So if you're a low volume speaker, for example, one of our students in people school, he speaks a much lower volume. And it actually makes the entire room lean into him. Like he's a very, he's just by default, very low volume. And it has a certain kind of powerful effect. He's an introvert. And we talked about it in the room where he's an introvert. And so he's And so when he speaks, it's really important. People are like, hush. And like, they lean into him the whole room. People like put down their pens so they can hear everything he's saying. And that really works for him because he knows he's now aware of the effect that he's having. So you want to think about what's your default. And then how do you want to change or what impact is it having? Like Gary V is a high volume person. I don't think he does it on purpose. But he knows he's screaming at people. And that works for his brand. Like that works for him. So I think there's not one right.

way with volume, which is so nice. Gordon Ramsey is the same way. Yes. So we've covered a lot of things. We've talked about body language, both in person and on camera for remote meetings. We've talked about hand gestures, which are a subset of, but different from body language. We've discussed vocal, inflection, tone, intonation. We've talked about all of these ways that we send cues to other people and receive cues from others. Are there any final? Are there any final ideas that you want to leave this audience with, particularly when it comes to navigating conversations around money, whether that's a salary negotiation or a difficult conversation with a spouse or partner. Yeah. I think that if you're talking about money and this could be

either side, asking for money, giving money, talking to other people about their money issues, it's really important to understand what I call the danger zone cues. So danger zone cues are not necessarily negative in themselves, but they're kind of red flags. They're like, something's happening here, something's going on. And so we talked about a couple of them already, which is the lip purse. So when we press our lips together into a firm line, it tends to be a gesture of withholding or keep it together or don't see more. So I always like to be on the lookout for those danger zones. Those are danger zone cues. If someone does a sudden lip purse, we were like, what was that? I also mentioned blocking, right, sudden crossing or closing.

I mentioned distancing. Someone suddenly taking a step back, scooting back, leaning back, even turning away. We do that instinctively when we want to get away from something. We mentioned shame as a danger zone cue of there's something embarrassing happening here. I want to mention one more, which is really important, which is contempt. So contempt is one of the universal micro-expressions. Facial expressions are almost their own unique subset of science. And what Dr. Paul Ekman discovered is that there are some universal facial expressions that we do across

genders and cultures and languages where contempt is a one-sided mouth raise. So like a smirk, we raise at one side of our mouth. It kind of means like scorn or better than or I don't really like this. It's sort of like a dismissive gesture. The problem is people often think it means half happiness, like a smirk or even boredom. But actually it's quite a negative cue or it's on it's way to negative. It means someone just heard something that they're like, I don't know about that. And so if you see contempt, that one-headed mouth raised, that's an opportunity for you to decode it. Do you want to address it? Are we good? Does that make sense? Any questions about this? Or go into more evidence? Like maybe you lost them, give another story, give more proof, give more rapport, or just log it in the bank.

Because if we dismiss contempt too often, it grows into disrespect. That if we dismiss that kind of, I don't know about, this. I don't like this. I'm better than this. Kind of scorn. If we miss it too often, it grows into a kind of disrespect where someone doesn't want to engage anymore. And so I would be very aware. You can see it on video. You can see it in person looking for it and then also not encoding it. Please look at your profile pictures. We didn't even talk about virtual impressions like the cues hidden in your LinkedIn profile picture or your website or your marketing materials. Please go look at your LinkedIn profile and make sure you are not accidentally showing content. I see so many pictures where someone has a one-sided mouth raise and they wonder why they can't close.

They wonder why people aren't responding to their cold messages. So just make sure it's either neutral or a full smile, but not a half smile. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this knowledge and research with us. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about your research, your findings, your ideas? Yes. Oh, my goodness.

It's such an honor. Q's is available wherever books are sold. I also read the audiobook if you want to check that out. You also can watch some of my cues breakdowns on my YouTube channel, so Vanessa Van Edwards or Scienceofpeople.com, where I analyze the Rock's body language and Britney Spears body language and all the cues I couldn't quite put in the book, but I could put on YouTube. So you're welcome to go check those out. And I'm just, I'm so grateful. Thank you so much for sharing my work. Thank you, Vanessa. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Number one, talking about money is awkward.

Whether you're at a garage sale or in a salary negotiation, whether low stakes or high stakes, whether you're discussing spending with a spouse or you're negotiating the price of a car or a house. Regardless of the subject matter, the specific subject matter, any conversation about money is inherently awkward because money is a physical representation of your values, your priorities, your ability, your ability. and your limitations. And so how do you abate the awkwardness and increase the sense of connectedness so that you can have a more positive outcome?

Research shows that specific tactics, such as eye contact, some form of touch like a handshake, and the establishment of shared moments, those tactics do more than merely make us feel better. Those tactics also make us more effective. effective at turning negotiations and other potentially adversarial moments into collaborations. When we talk about money, that's the most assertive thing you can do. And so what often happens to very talented people is when they start talking about money,

whether that's at a garage sale or in a job interview or negotiating a statusal or raising money or talking to their friends or their friends about money, is that they feel really confident in their idea but not confident in talking about money. And so my side door to confidence has been control. If I have a social blueprint, if I know exactly what to say, how to say it, what to do with my hands, what's to do with my posture, how to build warmth and competence, the anxiety goes away for me. And research has proven that there are even chemicals in our body that can help reduce our sense of anxiety. So for example, they found that oxytocin, oxytocin is a very complicated chemical in our body, But for our purposes, for social purposes, oxytocin makes us feel connected.

It makes us feel bonding. We produce it in three main ways. One is eye contact. Even through a video camera, we produce eye contact. Second is touch, so a handshake, high five hugs. That's why a lot of interactions start with some kind of a touch, cheek kiss or hug or handshake. And the last one is like shared moments, you know, mutual laughter. Oh, I know that person.

That's why we're always looking for similarities. When we have oxytocin coursing through our bloodstream, we actually share more in Prisoner's Dilemma Games. We become more polite and collaborative in Prisoner Dilemma Games. And so the first key takeaway is that using these specific tactics, eye contact, touch, shared moments to increase a sense of connectedness can improve our ability to communicate about money, whether that's in a salary negotiation, or having a tough conversation with a family member. And that is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two. We often behave on Zoom calls in ways that we would never behave

if that person were in the room with us. And this is a bit of an aha for anyone who is experiencing Zoom fatigue. If we use eye contact and body language to establish a rapport on Zoom in the same way that we would if that person were in the room with us, not only are our meetings likely to be more effective, but we ourselves are also likely to feel more energized or at a minimum less drained. I think one of the reasons we get so drained on video is because we're using body language that would never work in person. So one of the most important you can do to make your video calls better is do what you would do in person. So in person,

if you and I were sitting together, we would be angled towards each other. We would be leaning in across the table or across a cup of coffee. Great. It's a mistake from someone. I've seen people have their cameras off to the side of their body, and they type and they occasionally glance over. If we did that in person, it would be incredibly rude, and that can be more draining.

And so that's the second key takeaway. Treat your Zoom meetings as though the person is in the room with you, and the experience will likely be better for both of you. Finally, key takeaway number three, there is a primitive part of our brains that wants to see the other person's hands. At a deep subconscious level, by seeing someone else's hands, we know that they're not carrying a weapon, a rock or a spear. That's a vestige of our early days.

And over time, societies around the world developed greetings that involve using hand gestures to communicate that you're not carrying anything dangerous. When we shake hands with one another, we establish that our hands are free and open. Or when we press our palms together for the namaste gesture, our hands are visible and palms pressed together. You know we're not carrying anything. And so the primitive part of our reptilian brains

feels soothed when we can see someone else's hands. And beyond just that initial greeting, we speak with our hands. We communicate with our hands. When we talk, we talk twice, once with our mouths and once with our hands. And so the more that we can use our hands in conversation, and this relates to Zoom calls as well, bring your hands up into view of the camera. Let the people on your remote calls see your hands. Because that is how you can encode and they can decode a sense of trust and safety. So this is a super primitive part of our lizard brain that's always looking for hands to see, are you concealing something? Are you holding something? And also, what's your intention? Are you going to shake my hand? Are you going to greet me?

That's our favorite. Are you going to acknowledge me? Are you going to beckon me over? Those are all of our favorite warmth gestures. So first, warm gestures are beckoning, our touch, our greeting, our open. We love those. Second, and the very second thing we look for is competence. Really competent people, people who know their stuff, they speak to you on two different tracks. They know their content so well, they can speak to you with their words, as you mentioned, and they can also speak with their hands. So when we analyze TED talks, I was curious, what makes a really viral TED talk? So back in this couple years ago in our lab, we analyzed thousands of hours of TED talks looking for patterns. And we looked at everything. We had no idea what we're going to find. So we looked at

body positioning. We looked at color of clothes. We looked at gender. We looked at glasses. We looked at smiling. We actually counted the number of seconds smiling. And the biggest difference between the most viewed TED Talks and the least viewed TED Talks was gestures. The most popular TED Talkers used an average of 465 gestures in 18 minutes. Whereas the least popular TED Talkers use an average of 272 gestures in 18 minutes. I learned this initially when I watched Vanessa give a speech. She talked about the same topic in a talk that I watched her give. And after she gave that speech, I very consciously began using more hand gestures in all of my Zoom calls, in all of my Instagram videos.

I'm so intentional about it that for a while, every Zoom call, I looked like I was trying to land an airplane way over the top. but I found that she's right. Not only have I noticed more rapport on my calls when I bring my hands into the conversation, but also I myself am more engaged because I myself am speaking twice. I'm speaking with my mouth and I'm speaking with my hands. In fact, right now as I record this, even though this is audio only, none of you can see me. There's no video being captured. I am gesticulating wildly with not just my hands, with my full arms.

And that energy that I'm generating from that, you can hear it through my voice. You can't see me. But even as I record audio, I'm throwing my entire body into it. Voice actors do this as well, by the way. If you watch a voice actor record, even though only audio is being captured, their full bodies are completely engrossed in the voiceover. And all of that channels through in their vocal intonation, in their emotion. All of that gets communicated whether you can see it or not.

But most of you, I'm assuming most of you are not typically in positions where only your audio is being captured. Most of you, I'm assuming, are in situations where you're on remote calls. You're on Zoom, you're on Skype, you're on FaceTime. And there, people can see your hands. People can see your full body. So throw that into conversation. And that can help increase that sense of connectedness, which then can make any conversation,

whether it's with a workplace colleague or a family member who lives in another state, that can make that go more smoothly and it can enhance your sense of connectedness. And so that is the third key takeaway. Thank you for being part of this community and listening to this episode. I want to take this moment to remind you that we have a course on rental property investing. It's called Your First Rental Property.

And this year, 2022, we are only releasing this course once. Normally, we open our doors for enrollment twice a year. Normally, we have a spring semester and a fall semester. This year, 2022, we are changing that up. We are only offering this course once this year. We will be opening our doors for enrollment later this month, later in June. If you want all the details, all the information, go to afford anything.com slash VIP list. That's afford anything.com slash VIP list.

In fact, if you want to see a more detailed web page with a bunch of information on it, plus watch interviews with many of our alumni. You can find all of that by going to afford anything.com slash enroll. And while you're there, you can sign up for the VIP list as well. So afford anything.com slash enroll. That takes you to a page that has a bunch of info, a bunch of videos, a bunch of interviews. So go check that out. Or if you want a lot of that information delivered straight to your inbox,

Sign up for the VIP list. You can do it at afford anything.com slash enroll, or you can do it at afford anything.com slash VIP list. Go to one of those two. Check it out. We'll give you tons and tons of free information about rental property investing. So whether or not this is the right time for you to enroll in the course, you'll still learn a ton about real estate investing, particularly in the 2022 market with inflation, with the risk of recession. We're creating a lot of special material. just for our VIP list members, and it's free to join the VIP list. So afford anything.com slash enroll. That takes you to a page where you can sign up for the VIP list and learn a bunch about the course, or just go to afford anything.com slash VIP list. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast.

I am so thrilled that you are part of this community. Thank you so much for being here, for experiencing this with us. And please share this episode with a friend or a family member if you, you got something out of it. Make sure that you're following this podcast in whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Open up that app. Hit the follow button. And by the way, you can find me on Instagram at Paula P-A-U-L-A, P-A-A-P-A-N-T. Thank you again for being part of the Afford- Anything community. Best of luck, break a leg with whatever project you are working on right now. And I will catch you in the next episode.