Communication expert Vanessa Van Edwards studied nearly 500 pitches to map the exact moment founders lose investor attention—and how to fix it before slide one.
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Vanessa Van Edwards walked into a PTA meeting at her daughter’s school and saw the problem in one glance. Every parent in the room was staring at a phone.
“Now my conversation is competing with their feed,” she told me.
“How’s the weather?” loses to Instagram every time. To win, her opener has to beat the feed today and give the other person a reason to stay off the phone next time, too.
Van Edwards founded Science of People, teaches at Harvard, and wrote Captivate and Cues, an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller. More than 75 million people have watched her on YouTube and in her TEDxLondon talk. Her new book, Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count, came out from Portfolio on October 6. Vanessa told me that she researched the book for almost 20 years and kept holding the manuscript back. Then AI arrived, and she rushed to publish. We talk to our technology more than we talk to each other, she argues, and we have become “conversationally flabby.”
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She calls conversation skills career insurance in the age of AI. Master conversationalists get remembered faster, she told me. When an idea, an opportunity, or an invitation comes up, their names come to mind first.
I’ve spent my career at Goodbrain building brands for founders, celebrities, and companies through content. On Behind the Brand, I’ve sat across from hundreds of people at the top of their game to pull out lessons you put to work in your own business. Van Edwards has been on the show before, and this time I wanted to push her.
Better conversation sounds intuitive, I told her. Of course we should talk better and listen more. The advice sounds generic. What are we doing wrong?