Vanessa Van Edwards credits every major career opportunity to relationships, not skills. She says high-achieving students often miss this, believing hard work alone drives advancement. Collaborations, editorial offers, and project invitations came through people reaching out to her.
Having the right social interactions actually give you opportunity for growth. I've had a very weird career, but every inflection point in my entire career has come from a relationship. Not a skill, not a course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Every single inflection point was somebody reached out and said, "I have an idea," or, "Do you wanna work with this thing on something?" Or an editor coming backstage and saying, "I wanna publish your book." All of those things happened because of a relationship. Yeah. And as a competent science lover, that drives me crazy. I would rather just sit sit at home and work harder. And I think that that's what makes me so sad, is all of our students are very smart, very hardworking, and they're hoping they can do it without the socializing. Yeah, yeah. But I think it's incredibly hard to be able to have not meh if you don't do
