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The Power of Surprise

Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Master Your People Skills

Vanessa Van Edwards

The Power of Surprise

Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Master Your People Skills

Vanessa Van Edwards

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Lesson Info

7. The Power of Surprise

Next Lesson: How to Be Memorable

Lesson Info

The Power of Surprise

So the reason why surprises so important this brings me to my three different goals for today is that I want to inspire you to surprise today. So today is all about getting those creative juices flowing. I also want to spark ideas for you and your business. I want to get some new inspiration, breathe some new life into the way that you deal with clients and you deal with pitches. And lastly, I want to get you out of the box right. Today is all about inspiration. We're solidly on our path to connection. We're in the deposit phase. We're learning how to make emotional deposits and other people emotional bank accounts, and we're learning how to receive those deposits. We've already talked about our hook, how to make a first impression. In those first few seconds, we learned the power of intention, how to trigger dopamine, the power of stories, how they captivate our audience, how to spark our confidence and make that contagious. We also talked about curiosity, the art of listening and how...

to be nonverbally attuned. And today were finishing up deposits with the art of surprise. So I learned the artist surprise from my grandma. This is my grandma on. She's really good at surprising people, and I learned the artist surprise from her. She's awesome to wear sunglasses inside, and she takes her wine with two Splenda's into ice cubes, and she's great, and she is the most memorable and likable person I know. She's the one who taught me the likability spectrum that surprise. Engaging people's brains in new and inspiring ways makes you more likable. And if you look at the likability scale, you have extremely likeable on one end. That's my grandma. She's extremely likeable on the sort of likable end you have people like Carrot Top or David Hasselhoff, who are not super likeable, but they're only sort of likable, and I want you weigh on the high end of the spectrum, and this is our people. Skill number 11. So we have learned that we're going to learn different people skills, and these are the essential skills that you need to be successful with. People surprise and delight people, and they won't be able to forget you. So this is law number 12. It's having an experimental mindset. So with people when you're trying new things. Sometimes you're gonna try things that are gonna work. Sometimes we're gonna try things that aren't gonna work. And that is OK. That's where our best ideas and our best learning happens. So I want to tell you a couple of experiments that I've run that have worked and not worked so well. So, for example, when you could, by the way, the key learning is feedback and practice. I want you to use his experimental mindset with sales people while waiting in line while with patient friends. Every time you practice something, it becomes more solid. That's called a low pressure practice for even talking about more and more. So this is about having an experimental mindset. Aristotle said. What we learned to Dio we learn by doing in this course. We're talking a lot about a lot of theoretical things. The only way that we can truly embrace it is by trying it is by doing it and getting feedback, inciting, Yes, this works for me or no, I need to tweak it just a little bit. So I did a business card experiment with the experimental mindset where I printed up three different versions of my business cards, and I passed them out with different emails and I tracked which one's got the best responses after conferences and this one, the middle one is the one that worked. The best is the card that I use right now in addition to my lollipops. So this is another way that if you're thinking about trying new business card or trying a new marketing material, you can set up small tests for yourself. There are great printing services where you can put up 100 cards for $5. So I encouraged to try a card that makes you super uncomfortable just to see what would happen when you pass out. So we've talked about hooking and capturing attention. Let's talk about interaction and keeping attention, which is part of surprise as well. So one way you can surprise people is by anticipating their needs. So I went to Ted X Portland's as an attendee, and I knew that it was going to be an audience full of my ideal customers. People who go to Ted, they love learning the usually love watching videos on their usually very creative inspirational thinkers. Right? So I was like, This is a room full of my ideal audience. So I thought to myself, What's away with a knee that they're gonna have that day? So what I did is I made a bunch of got a bunch of packets of gum for the cent store, and I put a little title tag on it. That says, Did you know chewing gum? Boost your brain power? Have one on us. We also put dark chocolate. You got little dark chocolates and I put a little paper on the that said, You're here early. We are, too. Here's a chocolate just for you. And I stood outside during breaks. I passed out those lollipops. I passed out. Those chocolate people were like, Oh, yeah, so needed a piece of dark chocolate. I so need this chewing gum Right now. My breath is terrible. So here's a picture of we also tied into lollipops. We said, uh, here's a lollipop just for you. It's totally worth getting out of bed because we're here for Ted, right on. People tweeted these. They instagram these. They talked about them because I was able to anticipate their needs that day. So I love this quote by Patricia Patricia Frappe. She says It's not your customers job to remember you. It's your obligation to make sure they don't have the chance to forget you and surprises the way that you do that. That's what makes your product your service, your events memorable. So I also want to think about how you can delight and surprise people with your product. With your service, Can you design surprise into your offerings? Is there a way like today, where I had a whole segment on surprise with Surprise party? Is there a way that you can surprise people with your offerings with your product? Here's a picture of a hotel in Chile where they didn't just have lawn chairs in the beach. They actually added bathtubs, their launchers on the beach. You know how many tweets and instagrams they get of those bath house on the beach? A ton of people talking about their product just by adding an element of surprise into their offering. All right, so we're on the last section. We talked about hooking with surprise to capture attention, interaction. Surprise to keep attention. Now the last segment is attraction to direct attention with surprise. So this all comes down to something that's called banking. You know, banking. Is anyone hurt of its first? Also fantastic word. And I love using fantastic words. Bonking is a biking term that people use. When they hit a sudden wall of lack of energy, they hit a wall. But if you say so, am I. So is really I swear. People watching you can google it. So, um, Bunkie is when you hit a wall. You don't google it. Maybe, Uh oh, goodness. I just got myself in trouble, okay? You hit a wall, you have a sudden loss of energy. It's fatigue or boredom, right? It's when you suddenly feel like, Oh, I'm at the end of my rope. That is what bonking is. So with surprise, we can anti bunk, right? Weaken spot bonking. So I want to teach you how to spot bonking nonverbally. And we didn't get to teach us in my not in my body power body language. Course Some excited to teach it to you right now. So here the three different kinds off boredom or bonking body language. This is what we do when our attention has dropped. When we feel like we're bored were disengaged. This is what I want you to watch out for when you're with clients. When you're speaking in front of a group, what you need to do to anti box. So first is the lean back arm cross. So, J k, would you demonstrate this for me? So this is lean back, cross your arms. Yeah, that's a bonking behavior right there. Thank you. Decay, If you say so that when you get to do the 2nd 1 to you're a great model. Okay, 2nd 1 is next. Scratch head holds a scratch your neck. Oh, all right. So that is a self soothing behaviour. Which means that someone is feeling either anxious or they're tired. They're trying toe wake themselves up. The 3rd 1 is the I search body turn, which happens when we're in networking. We've all seen this where all of a sudden you kind of lost someone, and they're like, Yeah, it's been a great talking to you and they turn away and they start overhead gazing. That is what's called a That's lack of fronting. It's also a distancing behavior means they have literally disengaged with you when they stop fronting These are the three bonking body language behaviors. I want us to stop to stop boredom in its tracks. And here's how we anti bunk ready anti bonking happens with what's called a conversational Kenyatta conversational pinata is something that you say that brings either dopamine or conversation or spurs spurs excitement or surprise. And luckily, we've already learned how to do this with conversation worthy topics I have in your resource is for you. 10 of my favorite conversation were the books, websites and videos. These are things that you can talk about that spur fascinating conversation on local. We've already learned a lot of these with our killer conversation starters, triggering dopamine and the Law of Edition. Now let's say that you don't like reading books. That's okay. I have one book to recommend, which is how to talk about books you haven't read. So you don't like books. I also have a book for you. The second thing that you can do is offer mind Gaz ums. It is a mind orgasm. Get that pleasure juices flowing again. Stories are a great way to inspire mind, Gaz ums, triggering dopamine, being curious and playing. We don't play enough, especially as adults and playing is all about surprise engaging people in ways they've never thought of before. Albert Einstein said that play is the highest form of research. So here's how you can play first with words. You can play with people with words by asking, Would you rather questions these come up all the time? Naturally in conversation? If you're with someone and you can see that bonking behavior, you could think about going into a would you? Rather? And this could be a little bit easier than maybe starting a story. Another way that you can play with words is by using imagination so asking about people's ideals. This is another killer conversations her that I like to use. So when trigger words come up, you can ask about ideals. What's your ideal vacation? What's your ideal date? What's your ideal Sunday? Any kind of ideal? You can use the trigger words if you can't think of a story. It's also a great way to round up. Your story could always use ideals as a way to round up your story on a way to play again. This is anti bonking behavior. Nancy Duarte is an amazing researcher who talks about how to engage her audiences. And she talks about a star moment that moment, that's your flair that you remember. And she says that in her research she finds that the element of a surprise in an engaged in a public speaking event that's the moment that people remember most. That's your star moment. So if you're thinking about presenting your teaching a course, if you're interacting in a conversation, your surprise is your flare. You can surprise people just once, an interaction that's typically what people remember as your star moment. I have a ton of surprise ideas in your workbook for you that you can work through on every area of your business or your social life on where and how you want to surprise. Our challenge for today is I want you to think of three different ways that you can surprise people. This could be socially. It could be romantically. It could be professionally, and then I want you to implement one right now. That could be with a conversation starter that could be playing the ideal, or would you rather game that could be posting a surprise tweet that could be planting an Easter egg on your website. I want you to try one, and I want you to see what the feedback is on. What changes? Remember that in this lesson, I have a lot of extra credit prompts in your workbook so things that I haven't taught on the flies are in your workbook Produce an extra learning.

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Ratings and Reviews

Michelle
 

I enjoyed this Fast Class version and am interested in taking the longer course. Vanessa provided a lot of handouts, which I greatly appreciate and found helpful. I feel more informed and empowered as I make a career change.

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