Skip to main content

Your Nonverbal Brand

Lesson 23 from: The Power of Body Language

Vanessa Van Edwards

Your Nonverbal Brand

Lesson 23 from: The Power of Body Language

Vanessa Van Edwards

most popular money & life

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

Lesson Info

23. Your Nonverbal Brand

Lesson Info

Your Nonverbal Brand

I'm so excited for this segment, because it's real fun. I mean I love talking about branding and how we put our messaging into our nonverbal brand. So this is a really fun segment. So first I want to talk to you about what is your nonverbal brand saying? Right now, when you think about your brand online, whether you have a business or not, what does it say? What do you think it's saying? In the audience, what do you think about your Facebook? What do people think when they first get to your Facebook page? Max, you wanna start? I have a picture of me smiling. Okay. It's a new headshot that I just took two weeks ago. And what do you want people to think when they first see you? I want people to see that I'm warm and welcoming, and that I'm a delight to be around. Warm, welcoming, delight, I love those three words. Irina, how about you? With your website, when people first get to you, and they see your photography, they see your branding, what do you want them to feel? What is...

your nonverbal brand saying? I want them to want to know more. I want them to want to get connected. I want them to feel that I'm the person they can trust. Okay, so trust, connection, you wanna get them curious. That's interesting when you said you want them to know more, so your trying to hook some kind of curiosity. Meg, how about you? I've been to your blog, we actually have a picture of your blog in a little bit. So what do you want people to feel when they come to your website? Comfortable, secure, confident in themselves. Comfortable, secure, and confident. Okay, I like those three words. Alright, Jamarie, how about you? Well, authenticity, warmth, competence, and strength. Okay, I like those. And that's a very powerful combination. We learned yesterday that warmth and competence are the two characteristics that leaders need to have both of, and that's hard to put in your nonverbal brand, but it is totally doable. So that's great. Sasheed, how about you? So I wrote down three, one is create sort of like a curiosity gap, so they wanna find out more, warmth, and a combination of reliability, and safety. Okay. Because I'm working with B to B companies. Okay so you wanna make sure that they can feel reliable with you. Alright so the reason why I ask these questions, and why I want you at home to start thinking about, what does your nonverbal brand say? Open up your website, open up your IM, open up your Facebook account, and what is the first impression you make online? Or look at the materials that you have. Your business card, your email signature, what are they saying? So I want you to think about that, and then I also want you to think about how you can use body language in your branding, which is what we're gonna talk about in this segment. So number one, I want your message to be intentional. No guesswork, I want you to take back control of what your brand is saying. So there's a couple ways that we're gonna do this. In your materials, in your paid materials, I have a positive trait list. If you wanna flip to that handout, this is in your paid handouts. I have handpicked the positive traits that most brands and companies want to embody, and what we can embody with body language. Now we already heard some great ones, here in the audience, and so you guys already have an idea, a really good idea of what you wanna portray. But I want you to start thinking about what you want your messaging to be, so that when you look at your materials, you know exactly what they're saying. So here are a couple of the most popular ones. We already heard some of them just now. Powerful, charismatic, warm, confident, reliable, which we heard twice, trustworthy, and exciting. One thing I didn't hear in the audience which I was surprised about, was exciting, inspiring! Right, getting people's juices flowing. I heard curiosity, which is great. We wanna get them to be like, I want more out of this. We also want them to be jazzed, right? Like, how can I, oh I'm feeling like I'm thinking differently, I'm feeling differently. One of my goals when I teach with my website is I try to get people excited and inspired. I want them to feel good on my website. So that is another aspect that you can think about with your nonverbal brand. Here are the different things I want you to check off. Here's your little checklist for you. First, start with your social media pictures. Then look at your website, and any videos you have on your website. Videos are a great way to show face-to-face when you can't actually be face-to-face with your visitors. Business cards and email signature. We don't realize how much of an impact our business cards have. Yesterday I shared that I actually came up with a couple different versions of my business card, I passed them out at different events, and I tracked which emails got the most hits. So I actually tested out which business cards worked the best, and I found the more creative, the better. And I have three photos on my business card. I do the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. I have three pictures across the top of my business card because I actually want people to see my face and my hands. It's a sneaky way that I got my trust indicators in my business card, and it makes people laugh. They look at it, and I tell them I examine human behavior, and I want us to use our powers for good and not evil. So if you can think of creative ways to add nonverbal, add body language into those things with pictures, videos, or graphics, and we're gonna talk about colors later, so if you wanna stick to all text, that's fine too. So business cards, email signature. Social media profiles, so your entire profile, not just the picture. What's on there, what kind of words are you using, what kind of colors are you using? Now Twitter lets you have a huge Twitter card, so not only do you get your picture, but you get the background, you can use the whole desktop of your Twitter. You have a lot of branding opportunities now on Twitter as well, as three different areas that you can brand. Brochures, PDFs, this is also another thing especially if you are working with physical, you're meeting clients physically, you always want to have props that you can share to get them out of blocking behavior, and to use the law of touch. Remember we talked about one of our body language laws is the law of touch, the importance of having ownership over what you're holding. So having great brochures or PDFs that you can at least send out, has people have that ownership feeling. And you wanna make sure your branding is throughout all of those things. And then lastly, your slide decks. So I've actually been working on tweaking my slide deck, the colors you use, if you're presenting a lot, or if your in business situations, and you're sending slide decks to clients, or you're using slide decks in meetings, so much of our nonverbal brand is conveyed on the colors, the photos, and the use of our slides. Nancy Duarte is an amazing researcher on the power of slide decks. She has a book called Slideology, and she talks about the visual cues in slides, how you can use visual science and visual graphics in slides. She's amazing, she a great great book, and a bunch of YouTube videos. Her TED Talk, she did a TED Talk on presentations, and it's fantastic, so if you're presenting a lot, definitely check that out. Okay, number two, specifically let's talk about social media pictures, 'cause I think it's the biggest one. It is your first impression online. It is the first impression that you make. The easiest way to do your social media pictures is to go through the seven micro expressions, in your free handouts I have that chart, and make sure that your picture falls either into neutral or happiness. You don't wanna show contempt, you don't wanna have a furrowed brow of anger, make sure you don't have a smirk, make sure you don't wanna have that pulled down frown. So you can check, or correlate your pictures with the micro expressions to make sure you're showing exactly what you want. Also we often see the fear expression sometimes in pictures, when someone has their eyes a little bit wide, and their trying to look, I guess sexy, and they'll lift their lids a little bit too high and it makes them actually look afraid. So, looking at your social media pictures. Little ninja tip here, so one of my favorite online tools, it's called Your Best Face. And this is a free tool by OkCupid. Now this is brilliant. What they've done is, OkCupid lets you upload three to five pictures of yourself, and then it has random people vote on their favorite. So you can actually test out your best social media picture. And this is a great way to instantly know if you're like, I don't know, these three are just so awesome, how do I pick? Your Best Face is a free tool that anyone can use, they put up their faces. I'm always surprised, I do it actually very often. I'll put up random body language pictures that I've taken, and ask people what their favorite is, and I'm always surprised to see what people pick. And I think they ask 50 to 100 people, and the most fun part of that, is you get to also vote on other people's pictures. So you get to vote and pick your favorites among people. So it's kind of a fun, easy way to test, if you're not sure how your social media picture looks, this is an easy way to test it. Number three, use body language to help people take action. So on my website, I use cuing pictures. I use my body to direct the action that I want my readers to take. If you're designing landing pages, if you want people to get to your website and subscribe to your newsletter, or contact you, or visit your Facebook page, you can actually use your body to direct them where you want to go. So here's an example, this is, once you sign up to my newsletter, I have a picture that's pointing over here. It says, you can't see it but I'm doing a happy dance right now. Can I ask you for one more thing? Will you follow us on Twitter? And I'm directing them over to that follow us link. The reason I do that is 'cause I'm directing their gaze back to that thing, so that before they click off the page, subconsciously, our brain wants to follow my fingers, because we are cued as humans to watch for behavior. So I have a question for you guys. On your websites, where do you want people to go? What do you want them to do? It's very important in your brand to have an action step. What's your goal, your number one goal? Meg, yeah. Oh, I thought you were gonna talk. No. (laughs) Do you know what you want people to do when they get onto your website? Uh, read all the copy I have that applies to them. So content. Content. You want them to stick in the content. Okay, so for you, you would try to think of cues, or photos, or colors that you can use to draw people into that content. That's your number one goal. Sarah, how about you? Yeah, it would probably be pretty similar to that, actually. Drawing them into the content. Or encouraging them to read more content. Okay, so not only getting into the content, but then also reading more, so once they get to the end of the article, what else can they do? Like for example at the bottom of my website, I have a little arrow that goes down to related articles. Right, 'cause that arrow shows, or I even have, I basically, so Maggie had some takes on my photos, and I was like, okay so we need to take a picture of me pointing in every direction. So we have like meh, huh, huh, huh. (laughs) Right, so no matter where I have something, I can direct people towards it. You can also do this with looking. So you can actually just look in the direction that you want people to go, and people will follow your eye gaze. So this is natural human behavior, that we are coded that we wanna look at someone's body to tell us what to do next. That's why traffic cops, they can, you know. They easily show you where they want you to go. That's because our brains, they get that. It's a very easy thing for us. You can use that to your advantage on your website and in social media as well. Max, how about you? I want the people that I communicate with to take the action items that I put in my emails. Okay, so you can do that in a number of different ways. You can do that in videos, by saying, so below the video, I have five action steps for you to do. I'm gonna verbally explain them, let me know if you have any questions. So you can actually add a video into your email. You can use color in your emails, bolding, bullets, also of course that's an easy nonverbal cue. But emails, videos work really well for that, yeah. That's why people often in their videos say subscribe to my YouTube channel below. Adding that nonverbal into the button below the video is incredibly important. It helps people nonverbally know what you're saying. What's a good way to tell our reader in the subject line that we've included a video in the email, so that they'll actually open up the email. Ah, so like in a cold pitch. Mm-hm. So they're not an existing client. I find that subjects that are more conversational get more opens. I think there's a, Derek Halpern does an amazing blog on social triggers, and he talks a lot about those, how to get people to open once you have the video. And I think that he says that if you can say, like, have something cool for you, or watch this, or I can't believe I sent this to you. He uses a lot of subjects like that, 'cause they're very conversational. And he uses science in the sense that he tries to test all of the subject lines he uses. He does a lot of split testing and things like that, yeah. Who did I not ask about website stuff? Did I get everyone? Oh, Sasheed, yeah. So I make like specific landing pages for different companies, and the goal there is to get them to like put in their name and email, and schedule for a 60-minute call. Okay, so you have a signup form that you want. Mm-hm. You want to get their contact information. So this kind of stuff works great for that. Yeah I realized I just have like a small photo, which is not really doing anything. Not enough, right? Yeah. Exactly. It helps, you know, it's something. Mm-hm. A face is better than no face. But you can use your body to show them exactly what you want, and it's very very unique. Not a lot of people do that on their website. Okay, number four, you can also use eye gaze to help people take action, right? So I have all kinds of crazy pictures of me looking different ways. When we look at eye maps, where people look, how they use their eye gaze, people typically like to get their eye gaze cues from other people's eyes. So we know where to look based on where you're looking. It's very hard if someone's looking over your shoulder, like let's say that you're talking to someone at a networking event, and they look over your shoulder, it's so hard to not turn around and look. That's why overhead gazing during networking events is such a pain in the butt, because they look over and you're like what are they looking at? We cannot help not to look. So you can use that nonverbal rule in your website, by using your eye gaze to direct people. The classic mistake I see on websites and in branding, is they'll have a great picture of a person, looking off into space, like off into the sidebar of the computer, away from all the content! You're literally telling people, hit the forward button, hit the next button, go do something else, go to the bathroom. You're telling them to go look that way. So make sure, even if you have to flip some of your photos, to have them looking exactly where you want them to go, to the content, whatever. So below this picture I often will put sort of fun videos I want them to watch, so they know, keep scrolling down. This is another way for me to say scroll down, nonverbally, 'cause if you have a long sales page, and you wanna keep people scrolling, words don't do it. People get so bored with words, but if you have pictures like this, everyone's like well what's down there? Everyone wants to know what's down there, and so they keep looking, right? Does that make sense? Okay. So, here is a screenshot of Meg's website. I just warned her in this segment that I was doing this. So here's a little screenshot of Meg's website. So tell me about the different sections of your website, tell me how you designed it. Well, someone designed it for me. We collaborated. Perfect, so what did you tell them that you wanted, what was the action behind it? Well, I've been writing for many many years, and I wanted to take all the stuff I'd written, and have it be accessible. My background is in public health, and I felt like I had all this stuff to share, and I wanted people to be able to have it. Love it. Okay, so what I love about this is first of all, great profile picture. First of all there's sun coming in the shot, so we're gonna talk about body language photographers in a little bit, but it almost looks like morning. I don't know, was it morning or was it dusk? Afternoon in the Sierras. Okay so I love that we can actually see the sunlight on Meg's hair. Nonverbally that's a great cue. It signifies like new beginnings, or like fresh starts. Even if it's the end of the day, still you can see that sun. And you see that smile reaches her eyes. So that's a really genuine smiling shot. The problem is, I don't know what to do. I want you to direct me on what my first step is. Uh-huh. Right, so you might wanna try to think about how can you nonverbally add in either a couple of pictures, or a couple easy ways to get people into your content. Alright, that's something to think about. Okay number five, use your trust indicators. Your trust indicators are your hands. So not only can you use your body to orient where you want people to go, so you can actually aim your torso towards what you want people to engage with. So remember the law of engagement. Your torso and your toes point towards what you want. So you can show people what you want them to do, where you want them to engage, by pointing your torso exactly where you want them to go. You can do the same thing with your trust indicators. There's a lot of different ways to do this. Not only is it pointing, so in this, this is a picture that I use when I want people to sit down with me, take a consult with me, take a quiz, when I want them to do something. And I'm literally gesturing them, take a seat with me, right? So that's an easy way. You'll also notice that it's an open palm gesture. So I'm showing I am not threatening, this will be fun for you, I'm not hiding anything, I want this to be a really fun, good experience. You can also use different emblems, or punctuators. So you can use your trust indicators, thumbs up gestures, pointing gestures, you can use unshakable determination. Think of all the different cues that we talked about throughout this course, go back and watch those videos, and highlight the things that you want to portray in your nonverbal brand. And think about ways that you can use that in your photos, or in your website. Sure! The way you had your feet there, I think they call that the Miss Universe stance, don't they. A pageant I think. That's what we were talking Yeah, something like that. about the other day. Are your legs, I mean, you were talking earlier about the crossing of the ankles, et cetera, but does that not-- So crossing is pretty closed, but I wanna make sure that they realize that this is about them. So I cross my legs, I'm also taking a step forward, I don't know if you can kinda see that, but I'm saying this is about you, I'm indicating that this is all about the chair, which is an invitation for you. So that's a really good way of, so, that's a way that I use body language to do a couple different messages at once. If I wanted to be the center of attention, I would be in a picture like this, or like this, right? I would be in my power posing, but this one is actually all about you. I only use this picture when I want people to take action for themselves. So I'm saying, I'm going towards you, this isn't about me staking claim, and I want you to sit down with me. And you can nonverbally say that with just one shot. You can't say that with words, right? It would take paragraphs and paragraphs that no one would ever read, and it would be so boring. But you can say that with one picture. Okay so I love this. So Jamarie, tell me a little bit about how you chose this. This is a snapshot of Jamarie's Twitter profile and Twitter card. Well, I chose it because it's in alignment with my website, and I wanted people to get the idea that we're in conversation, that there's a coaching aspect to it, that they're gonna be learning something from me. So I kind of got that in action. And then I chose the blue just primarily for my brand. I know we're gonna talk about color psychology, but it does inspire trust, confidence, and it's one of my colors. Actually this is what I tell my clients, is if you wear the color of your eyes close to your face, it inspires eye contact, and connection, so my eyes are blue, and blue is that trust, confident color so-- Yeah, perfect! That's what's going on there. Okay, so what do we notice about this picture, 'cause, absolutely engagement, what else about this picture is sort of like, oh yeah I wanna follow this person? What else do you notice? The hand gestures. So, Jamarie used an interesting hand gesture, she used her trust indicator, she's going like this, right, it's kind of like this. Now this is the A-okay gesture. So subtly, your actually saying it's all good. I don't even know if you realized that, I didn't realize that-- but that's why it's such a powerful shot. You also can sometimes, if you're explaining something, right, if you're doing like this, this is like little interesting details. Like we're gonna talk about little specifics. So it's actually a way of being like, we're gonna get into detail, we're gonna work on this. That's actually a nonverbal way of saying that. I don't even know if you realized it, but it was the right picture to choose. She also has her hands showing, which is a great indicator of trust. And I also like that she's slightly leaning forward. Anyone see that? She's set leaning forward shows the law of engagement, that like, I am going to be engaged with you. That's what this photo is showing, without having to say anything. Alright a little ninja tip. So there is an awesome tool, it's called Emotional Spell Check. And you can actually use this in your emails. So Max, you were talking about earlier in emails, how you portray emotion in emails. We portray emotion with the kinds of words that we use. Emotional Spell Check is a real easy way to curve your learning on this. So I highly recommend, copy and paste a couple emails you've sent out, paste them into this free tool, just search Emotional Spell Check, or I have it in the resources section of the free bonus material. And you will actually be able to see the Emotional Spell Check in your emails based on the words that you use. The intensity of the words that you use. That's a little tip for you. Especially if you're about to send an email that you're not sure might be read the wrong way, Emotional Spell Check always makes it safe. Number six, use color psychology. This is a really fun section on how we choose the colors we wanna wear, and what we see when we see other people, what we learn from someone when they're wearing a certain color. Blue. So, as Jamarie just mentioned, blue is the color of loyalty, stability, and tranquility. And the basis behind color psychology, is what researchers look at is they look at what happens in nature, and then they ask people to judge what they feel when they look at certain colors. That's how we get what these colors mean, for the majority of the population. So the reason why blue is loyalty, stability, and tranquility is because the color of our sky is blue. So when we see a blue sky, it means no rain is coming, and it makes us feel nice, and calm, and good. So this is a great color if you wanna remain nice and easy. Red. Red, this is a very intense color. Passion, aggression, intensity. When you're thinking about color psychology, a fun thing you can do is think about the brands that use these colors. You can know a lot about a brand based on the colors they choose for their products. For example, look at the difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Coca-Cola is red and black. So red is a very aggressive color. The Coca-Cola can is almost exclusively red, whereas Pepsi's a mix of that blue and red. So Coke is saying we're sexy, right? We're into it, we're really in your face. Whereas Pepsi is like, we're really dependable, we're sexy too, but we're really dependable, right? So it's a little bit of a softer branding, and you see that in their commercials. That is a part of their messaging. So it's a funny way to think about branding. Yellow. Happiness, optimism, and youth. So another aspect of color psychology is the frequency of the wavelength of that color. So, colors that are higher up on the spectrum have a higher energy to them. Their wavelength is higher. And so a lot of fast food companies use high-intensity colors, yellow, orange, and red, because it has been found that people eat more off of red plates. They also, it stimulates our metabolism 'cause it's a higher energy color. That's why a lot of upbeat brands use those bright colors. It's 'cause it's a higher wavelength. Green. Healing, success, and hope. That's 'cause it's the color of spring. So it's new birth. Couple interesting things, studies about these colors, so first, they found that workers were more efficient, and made less typos in offices that were painted blue, as opposed to offices that were painted white. Supposedly, because blue makes us feel more calm and more tranquil, we make less mistakes in our work. That was a really fun study, looked at the best color for your office. Another interesting study about green, this is the easiest color on our eyes. So I always have my desktop on my computer as green, because it's the most restful wavelength for our eyes. So it's a very calming color. We like to see it. If you are thinking about having a lower intensity, you wanna give people a break, green is a great color to use. Black. Power, mystery, and very professional. So that's a very strong, serious color. Women who wear all black, it's very professional. You wanna be taken very very seriously. And I have different outfits, we can talk about clothing. But part of your nonverbal messaging is what you wear. How you choose your colors. I actually wanted to mention, Irina, yesterday you wore a lovely pink scarf around your neck. I have this is great, because pink is a modified red, it's mixed with white, which we're gonna learn in a little bit is innocence and purity. So pink is that nice feminine color, and it was great, because she was saying I'm a photographer and I work with women. So having a pink scarf was very congruent with her brand. It clicked for me, I went ah! And I was like okay, I get it. So that was a great way that Irina brought in color so that when she's talking to people it aligns. I work with women, that makes total sense. And it doesn't mean she has to wear pink all the time, but it makes a lot of sense nonverbally. It doesn't mean her whole website has to be pink, but that little splash of pink made a lot of sense. It was very congruent, and that's what we're trying to do here, is match up our moods and our brand messaging with the colors that we choose. Purple. Royalty, spirituality, and luxury. We talked about on day one, how there are certain colors that men love to look at, and there are certain colors that women love to look at. Women love looking at purple, men don't love purple so much. So if you have a brand that you want to be unisex, you might wanna avoid using purple, 'cause typically men don't like looking at it. If you have a brand that you want just for women, that's a easy easy way to nonverbally signify, we're here for women. Right? We're here for you. Brown. Stability, nature, reliability. There's a really funny little study that says that all women hate men in brown suits. Women do not looking at the color brown. So be careful if you're wearing an all brown suit, men, women don't like it so much. It's their least favorite color suit. Orange. Energy, fun, and warmth. If you can get workout clothes, this is the color you wanna wear. Orange is a very, is increases your metabolism, makes you have more energy, so it's a very fun, high color. When you see it, you want to take action. So if you have an action-oriented website, or something you want people to do, orange is a great color to encourage people to do that. White. Purity, cleanliness, and innocence. So, people often ask me well how about light blue? Or how about pink, right? Just take the color and then modify it down a little bit when you add white. It just numbs the effect of the intensity of that color when it's in its purest form. White and black, I wanna do a really, share an interesting study about hockey players. So, hockey players in Canada, during this study, I don't know if it's still the same, but during this study, when teams were at home, they wore, I think it was black jerseys, and when they traveled, they'd change into white jerseys, during this study. And what they wanted to know was, do they get more penalties based on the color jersey that they wear. And they found that when the teams were in the black jerseys, they had a high increase in the amount of penalties they got, because they were perceived as more aggressive, and more violent, and more powerful than when they were in the white jerseys. And there's been a couple backup studies that show well maybe the players actually felt more powerful and aggressive. So we don't know exactly which one is the chicken or the egg, but those colors affect how other people perceive us, and how we act. That combination of colors. Gray. Gray is the most neutral color. I wear gray when I want the content to speak for itself, or when I'm trying to not be the center of attention. So it's actually not a bad color to avoid. People are always like oh I would never, gray? Why would you ever wanna be practical, quiet, or neutral? It can be quite a powerful color if you wear it in the right situation. So I do wear gray. When I'm teaching a very serious seminar, I will wear it so we can focus all on the content. Or if I'm doing a very interactive workshop, and I want them to be the focus, I wear gray so that I kind of can just be a facilitator. They're doing the hard work, I want them to focus on it. So you can use gray in a very powerful way. So, I wanna talk briefly about what colors you use in your website, and why you were drawn to them. So, Meg we just saw your website, and it was red, white, and blue. Right. Yes, so how did you choose those colors? Those are the colors that Obama used in his first presidential campaign, and I loved it, and it was 2008. So I want you to think about it, and I'm not saying they're bad or good, but I want you to think about your brand, that was Obama's brand, right? And you admire Obama, I want you to make sure that those align with what you want. Oh, they do, I mean I use red a lot. I used a lot as an accent. Yes. And I like that color blue. And I don't know if you can see it on the big screen, but it's got a background of a child looking up at stars. Oh, I didn't even see it, yeah. So that sort of, the idea of it, if it shows up, is that there's a child who's looking up in the sky, and sort of a feeling of growth and optimism. I love it, and the looking up gesture, so a child looking up towards the sky, what a great way to nonverbally showcase looking up, being optimistic, being positive. That shows without saying, that you have an idealistic branding, that you work with people on a positive level. You're aspirational, you have an aspirational brand, it's a very easy way of saying it, same with stars. Also before I ask you more about questions, one thing that I do, is I wear, I don't know if people notice it, I wear a different color band on my wrist. I do this to remind myself of my goal for the day. So today, my goal was to keep it positive. When we do lie detection, it can get very very serious, so I wore yellow to kind of remind myself to keep it optimistic, keep it positive, and have fun with it. Alright I wanna remind myself this is my last day. I wanted to have as much fun as I possibly could. Yesterday I wore green, 'cause I wanted to show that we could be hopeful and successful, and the first day I wore blue. Blue I wanted to be taken seriously, credible, and I wanted you to feel calm, and I wanted myself to feel calm. It was a reminder for myself, stay nice and calm, take a lot of deep breaths. I actually brought, for you guys, if you want them, I brought a whole bag of different colors, and you can pull out the string that you want, that you want to remind yourself of today, and you can make yourself one. Brian, would you mind passing those out for me? And you can just pick out whatever color you want. I also encourage my Science of People community members to wear these. If you want one, you can tweet me @vvanedwards, send me the power of color, and I will send you for free in the mail, a string color of your choice. Just mention the color in the tweet. I love that, 'cause I think it reminds us of why we're here. What we're here for, it reminds me to keep it positive, or stay loyal, or stay calm. Sarah, how about you? What colors have you picked for your brand? Yeah, so right now the WordPress theme that I have is black and white. Uh-huh. So, I'm trying to communicate ambition, quick-wittedness, a little bit of edge, and so having the content there, and having it be very stark and minimalist is a huge deal for me. Great, I love that! So that's a very purposeful way of not using color, but using black and white. My website is black, white, and yellow. So I don't know if people notice that's my logoing, because black and white, I wanna keep it really about the content, but I have a little pop of yellow because I'm very, I want people to feel happy and positive when they use our science. I focus on making people feel good. So I love that you stuck with black and white. That's great. Max, how about you? So the main color for Open Sesame is orange. Uh-huh. And the reputation that E-learning and corporate training has, is that it's boring, it's rigid, and E-learning's not fun. You think gray. Yeah, exactly. So I think we're trying to break the mold of that, and say hey, E-learning is accessible, it's fun and it's actually, you know, it can be energetic, and you can actually learn something from it, and apply what you're learning to your job. Right, so orange is the color of, it's a workout color, so you're saying we don't want you to feel like you're passively sitting and watching. Orange, we want you to actually approach this with a much higher energy mentality than most courses would have. Got it. Irina, how about you, what colors do you use on your website? I didn't get to look at your website. Well I'm still working on that. Ah, okay. But I'm leaning towards white and black. Uh-huh. Uh, don't really see how I will pop the color, which is not the photos-- Well I think that actually, if you have a photo based website, you can use the black and white to highlight the photos that are there, that you don't wanna take anything else away from those photos. So if you have really powerful images, that's your showing not telling, right? So maybe keeping it black and white helps people showcase and focus on the photos, just like Sarah's black and white focuses on the content. That's what you want people to do is focus on the content. Sasheed, how about you? So I have like a WordPress theme which is black and white, but I'll talk about the landing pages actually. So on that it's gray, orange, and a white background. Okay. And that's just 'cause the theme I picked was like that. Okay, so this is my challenge for you today. Don't ever go with the default. That's my challenge. You have so much power in the colors that you use, why not be purposeful with them? So hopefully you can go back and kinda think, what colors do you want to portray? You know, maybe it is gray and orange, I don't know, but what would you-- The two I picked right now are blue and black. Love it, alright, cool. And you can actually tie those together on your hand. I love it. Jamarie? So I am very intentional with the colors that are on my site, and so I use blue and magenta. So the blue is again, going back to that trustworthiness, and then the magenta is speaking the that female audience. And then I also used the orange, it's kind of an orange-ish yellow, for the button to sign up for my newsletter. Great, so that's a nonverbal way of saying, first of all the blue says I'm stable and calm, adding the pink says, but I'm for women, right? So very clearly, your audience knows, ah! This is for me. Without even thinking about it, okay this is for women. This is my kinda website. And men go, maybe not, this is not my brand, I'm on the wrong page, or I should give this to my wife. And then the yellow-orange is a way to call to action. It's a different way to say, a high-energy, high-intensity color, and what you're gonna click through and find is also very positive and higher energy and inspiring. Awesome. Sure! You said that purple is the color of luxury, but also purple is the female color. It's the color that females prefer to see. Okay, what would be the color of luxury that males would prefer to see? The other color of luxury is gold. Gold and black, that combination, you'll see like nightclubs a lot of times have gold, black, and silver? Jewelry, right? Like precious stones, precious metals are gold and silver, so a lot of nightclubs who don't wanna be too feminine will do black, silver, and gold. That's what they use. Yeah, good question. So what I wanna ask you are what are your next steps? So we did this little section on your nonverbal brand. When you get home today, and I want you back home to think about, so what do you want to change? Are there pictures you wanna add? Are there colors you wanna change? What is one next step that you wanna do after today, to change something about your branding? Yeah that's a really hard question, but is there anything that you wanna go home and examine? Yeah? I wanna be more deliberate in photo shoots about like you said, being sure that you are taking pictures where you're looking every which way, or you're sort of guiding people to do one thing or another. Yeah, you know what I should do, now that you just said that is I should make a list of my shot list. Totally. For people, so what I will do in the next few days, I'm gonna put on my website, all the shots I get when I do photo shoots. That's not only gesturing in different ways, but it's also open palm gestures, and different eye gazing things, and what's another thing that I always do? For, oh, standing and sitting poses that you can do as well, and how that changes. So I will put up a shot list on my website in the next few days, if you're looking at I need some new pictures, I need to get some new stuff, where do I even start? I will give you my shot list, no problem. Other next steps you wanna do? Yeah? So, big takeaway from when you showed the screenshot of my video, was to make the frame of the camera have my hands in the shot, so that I can use my hands to A, express, to disarm, to build that instant rapport with them. Easy, it's such an easy thing to do, yes, pushing that camera back, 'cause your video is perfect. I just wanna see more of you. Okay. (laughs) Meg, yeah! I'm gonna try the video idea, I mean I'll make the video, I'll see how I feel about it. And then Sasheed gave me some very good ideas, including putting a button so that people could be notified if I do a new post, so I would have their emails. I don't collect any information on my website. Meg. (audience laughs) Come on, we gotta get you one, okay. Squarespace tells me how many visitors I get a day, I just don't know who they are. Okay yes, that is a big action step, so getting a place for people to sign up, and then driving them to that place nonverbally, whether that's through color, or through image, or through placement on the website. I love it, okay, good. What other, um. Yes! Very specifically, Valerie is asking does the shade of the color matter, like royal blue versus sky blue for example? What you wanna do is look at the mixing, so this dress for example, is a nice combination of blue and green, so you can take those two learnings, and kinda combine them, so what blue meant, and what green meant, it's aqua. If you add white to it, so a shade of the color, it just lessens the power of the color. (speaking faintly) Wants to know, is it the same answer if you were to wear two separate colors, like multicolored outfits? Sure, so multi-colored outfits are great. Obviously most of us do wear multicolored outifits. First we should know that jeans, in our culture especially we almost don't even see the blue anymore. It's like, it's almost like a uniform for a lot of people. So yes, it does count as blue, but we almost don't even notice, it's almost a neutral. And yes, you can powerfully combine colors to say exactly what you want. So if you have like for example, I love to wear red, but I don't usually like to wear all red, so I don't know if you notice in a lot of my pictures I had a red belt, a single red belt on, because I didn't wanna wear a full red dress, but I wanted to combine it with black, which is professional. I also love yellow, so I have a pair of yellow heels. Right, 'cause all yellow is a little too much, so if I pair the yellow with the black, for me I'm still professional, but I'm also optimistic, and I'm showing my messaging of being really hopeful. Good question. Redhead is asking what color would represent confidence? Confidence, so, the most confident colors, blue is of loyalty, which is close to confidence, and calm. And then the high energy colors can be confidence producing. So orange, red, and yellow. The cooler colors are not as much, so like black, and gray, not as much confidence producing, but black is still a power. So, slightly variations of confidence. Hard question, but yes, I hope that helps a little bit. Other next steps, who have I not gotten yet? Yeah, Max? I'm gonna implement action items to my people that I'm communicating with in my email, so I'm gonna insert videos. Awe, yes, I love it. And I'm gonna have my subject lines be more casual and less stiff. Okay, good, I like it. More casual. Videos, I cannot wait to hear the response that you get from videos. It will very much differentiate your pitch, absolutely. Who'd I miss, Irina, did we get your next action step? No, no, I'm a be doing the profile folders, which I was going to do anyway, but now I'm expressing the ideas how to use my profile, my photos as the calls to actions, and the ideas how to implement videos in newsletters. Okay, I love it. Putting videos in newsletters, so one thing that I do for my newsletters, is I always put a screenshot of the video in my newsletter with the play button, because that play button, we are cued to want to hit play, and then people go to my website to watch the video. So even just having that screenshot of the video in the email, so it doesn't have to be in the email, is a great way to get people to click on it. Because that play button is a nonverbal message of watch me, as opposed to watch this video, link. That's not enough. They wanna see that play button, yeah. I wanted to ask about how much you control and curate the images that are available of you online. People can tag now, like, people are taking photos of you, you know, like how do you stay on top of that, and how much energy do you spend doing that? I put very little energy into it. I try to untag if there's anything that's really bad, but on Google Images, there's all kinds of crazy images of me, and like, as I'm in the process of speaking that someone took offstage. I think it also depends on your brand. Like I have a very visual brand, so people take pictures of me just for example. But for you, yours is more content specific, so you might wanna be a little bit more careful. There's a lot of reputation defender services you can get that will use Google Images, and they'll scan for your face to make sure that you know exactly where your picture is. So if you wanna be more careful about where your picture is, you can definitely put more energy into it.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Baseline Coding System Chart
Lying Red Flags
Positive Trait List
The Nonverbal Elevator Pitch
Laws of Body Language Answer Key
The Nonverbal Sales Pitch
Trivia Answer Key
Citation List
Elevator PItch Clinic
Laws of Body Language Worksheet
Self Diagnosis Chart
Syllabus
Body Language - Trivia
The Microexpression Chart
30 Day Action Plan.pdf
Action Steps and Homework
Resources

Ratings and Reviews

R. P. Getz
 

I loved this course! I've learned so much and Vanessa did a terrific job making it easy and fun. I loved learning that by paying more attention to body language, I'm becoming a better listener (and picking up on stuff I never caught before). ;) I recommend the class highly to anyone and everyone as all can benefit from being more aware of others and yourself!! My hard earned education $$ well spent here. :) Cheers to Vanessa Van Edwards and Creative Live!

Andrew
 

This was an absolutely fantastic course, it would be a huge understatement to say this course was worth the money. Vanessa provided tremendously accessible, highly actionable training useful for both social and professional environments. I couldn't recommend this course highly enough, and am heading now to purchase her next one! Thanks so much Vanessa and Creative Live, this is the course I've been hoping to find for years.

susan kinnel
 

I just found myself applauding in my bedroom as this program was wrapped up, Vanessa is fabulous! This was money well spent, loved every moment of it! I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the information, and soon felt blown away by how many micro expressions I could spot during the clips she showed. I was so impressed with how easy it was to pick this info up due to Vanessa's enthusiastic delivery. YAY vanessa!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES