In my decade of advising Fortune 500 companies as a behavioral researcher, I’ve found that one of the most effective ways to stop a manipulator is one key phrase: “That’s interesting. Tell me more.”

Manipulative people thrive on emotional reactions, confusion and ambiguity. This simple phrase helps neutralize that and change the power balance in the conversation.

With “that’s interesting,” you’re acknowledging what’s been said without validating or challenging the claim. You’re simply signaling: “I heard you, and I’m not rattled.” This removes the emotional hook that many manipulators rely on.

With “tell me more” (or other variations: “What makes you say that?” “What led you to that conclusion?”), you are cutting away any confusion and ambiguity, in favor of curiosity. “Why” questions can feel accusatory and often trigger defensiveness. Stick with the more open-toned “what” statements in order to keep the exchange from escalating further. 

If you find yourself in situations where you are being gaslit, guilt-tripped or coerced, here is how to best use this simple but subtly powerful phrase.

Gaslighting is when someone makes you question your memory or perception of reality.

• They might say: “I never said that. You’re remembering it wrong.”
• You can reply: “That’s interesting. Tell me more about how you remember it.” Then you could follow up with, “That’s not how I remember it.” Or, if applicable, “Let’s ask someone else who was there.”

This works because you’re not having to defend your memory in the moment. You invite the other person to clarify and provide detail. 

Gaslighting loses power when it has to stand on specifics. When someone has to explain their version clearly, inconsistencies often surface, and the psychological pressure shifts off you and back onto the facts.

We’ve all been there. Someone uses obligation or emotion to pressure you to do something you don’t want to do. 

• They might say: “After everything I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?”
• You can reply: “That’s interesting. What makes you say that?” Then follow up with, “I appreciate what you’ve done, and this is still my decision.” Or, “I can care about you but still choose differently.”

This works because the focus shifts from your supposed guilt to their reasoning. When you ask them to articulate their logic and explain themselves, the emotional pressure and leverage often weakens. 

Subtle coercion shows up when a manipulator ties cooperation to your loyalty or care.

• They might say: “If you really cared, you’d agree with me.”
• You can reply: “That’s interesting. What makes you think that?” Then follow up with, “Caring doesn’t always mean we have to agree on everything,” or, “I can care and still see it differently.”

This detaches your values from their request. You’re not arguing about whether you care, you’re asking how they arrived at that conclusion. That creates psychological space and that’s when manipulation loses traction. 

Manipulators rely on emotional reactions. The moment you slow the exchange down and get curious, their leverage weakens. Calm questions protect your clarity and your boundaries, and shift conversations towards facts instead of feelings. 

In difficult conversations, composure is often more powerful than confrontation.

Shadé Zahrai is an award-winning peak performance educator, behavioral researcher, leadership strategist, and author of “Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence, and Fuel Success.” Recognized as one of LinkedIn’s Top 50 Most Impactful People, she supports leaders at some of the world’s biggest brands, including Microsoft, Deloitte, Procter & Gamble, and JPMorgan.

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Zen Stewart knows firsthand that career paths aren’t linear. Hers hasn’t been.

Today, the 34-year-old is an electrician in Raleigh, North Carolina — a construction wireman level four, to be exact. That would’ve surprised her younger self.

“I always liked fashion, design, architecture,” she tells CNBC Make It. “I never for once thought I’d be in the trades.”

After graduating high school, Stewart pursued several fields of study, including interior design, graphic design and business. None felt right.

“I knew in my core that something else was out there for me,” she says.

Stewart cycled through stints deejaying and working in retail, jewelry, sales and telehealth. She was laid off from that last job, scheduling routes for health workers, as new software replaced the need for human workers, she says.

“The idea of becoming an electrician didn’t even hit my mind until I started getting, like, laid off from jobs that I thought were good jobs,” says Stewart, who began researching what careers “aren’t going to be replaced by AI anytime soon.”

She landed on electrical work because “there were many ways to move up and many pathways that paid very well” and because it gave her the chance to work with her hands and still be creative.

Stewart was also drawn to the electrical trade over others because it’s physically more feasible for her as a woman, she says. “I figured I’d be able to handle that.”

When Stewart told her friends and family about wanting to become an electrician, “it was a shock,” she says. “It’s very different from the things I had been doing.”

“They were kind of used to me saying, ‘Oh, I want to be an interior designer. I want to be an architect. I want to be a DJ.’ So they were kind of like, ‘Oh, you know, well, here’s the new thing,’” she says.

Stewart’s mother nevertheless connected her with the electricians from a company who happened to be working on a job at her own workplace, a jewelry store, and the rest is history. “I literally went into their office that same day, filled out my application,” Stewart says. “That next week, I was working.”

In 2025, Stewart made roughly $43,000 from electrical work, in addition to some income from her social media. In the future, she hopes to multiply her income, be debt-free and own a home.

Stewart joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in August 2025, citing benefits like good health insurance, tuition assistance and ease of finding work. She pays roughly $57 monthly in union dues.

Stewart mostly works eight-hour days, sometimes 10, on Monday through Friday, with a rare weekend or night for overtime. She usually begins her days with a 4:30 or 5 a.m. wakeup.

“It was a huge culture shock because I wasn’t used to being up at the crack of dawn,” she says. But “after I got into the rhythm of things, I really enjoyed it.”

One of the biggest challenges is “trying to navigate this male-dominated field as a woman,” she says. “Yes, I feel safe and secure, but a lot of the times, because I’m a woman, I feel like I have to prove myself more.” While Stewart says her coworkers mean well, she sometimes feels she has to remind them, “It’s okay, I’ve got it. Like, I can do it myself.”

Stewart is currently preparing for her exam to become a union apprentice. After a multi-year apprenticeship, electricians can typically get their journeyman’s license, which allows them to work across residential, industrial and commercial settings without the supervision that apprentices are typically subject to.

She wants to learn “how to actually run my own crew” and “be in charge of a whole site.” With a union journeyman’s license, she hopes to travel and work in different states, which she says can be lucrative.

Stewart currently does commercial electric work but eventually wants to segue into industrial electric work, which typically pays better. Later on, she hopes to transition into more of a desk role in the industry, say, in project management.

“I do think about the physical toll of this work,” she says. “I know after a certain age, I’m not going to want to be out in the field.”

Stewart doesn’t believe AI will replace skilled trades workers for “a very long time,” if ever. But she does “see it starting to creep in a little bit,” she says, noting she’s seen bots that can map where a door should go or where a wall should begin. “I definitely believe that AI is going to hold a place in construction,” she says.

On social media, Stewart offers a look into her job.

“I figured if I could shine my light through my perspective of how it is in my day-to-day, that that could get other people interested in the trade,” she says. To those considering it, she adds, “Don’t let lack of experience stop you.

As for her job, she loves that “every day is different” and that she gets to “see things from start to finish,” from a pile of dirt to a completed building, she says. “Then being able to flick on the lights and seeing everything come to life, I think that is so satisfying.”

Stewart hopes to one day build a house from scratch. “I still have that creative spirit,” she says. “That still is very alive and well in my life.”

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For years, bedtime was the most stressful part of my day. No matter how early we started or how carefully I planned, evenings always felt chaotic.

I’ve heard the same story from many of the parents I’ve worked with, and it’s understandable. Bedtime is a major emotional transition that most of us were never taught how to navigate.

But as a conscious-parenting researcher who has studied over 200 kids, I’ve noticed a clear pattern: The happiest, most emotionally well-rounded children have parents who follow a predictable routine that lowers anxiety and strengthens connection. Here’s what they do differently.

Many parents head into bedtime expecting resistance, and children can sense that tension almost immediately.

Parents who experience smoother evenings aren’t attached to how long the routine takes or how perfectly it unfolds. When you soften your grip on the outcome, your child’s nervous system will follow.

Remember, if bedtime takes 90 minutes instead of 30, but your child falls asleep feeling safe and calm, that’s still a win.

Stalling, clinging, tantrums and irritability at bedtime can be signs of separation anxiety. Parents who understand this slow down the final moments of the evening. They offer physical closeness or quiet presence before saying goodnight.

Even 10 to 20 minutes of intentional connection can make a difference. From there, you can set clear but warm boundaries: “I’m here with you now. After two books and a cuddle, it’s time to turn the lights out.”

Many bedtime battles are simply about pressure. When children feel they’re expected to “fall asleep” on command, their nervous systems shift into alert mode, making rest harder.

Parents with the easiest nights stop making sleep the goal. They focus on creating calm conditions. This makes it more likely for our bodies to settle naturally.

To a child, bedtime can feel like an abrupt ending. You can ease this transition by emphasizing what comes next: “We’ll finish this in the morning,” or, “We’ll snuggle again when the sun comes up.”

This helps children experience bedtime as a pause, not a loss, reducing anxiety and resistance.

Some parents also create this bridge by ending the night with a simple point of connection. They might ask, for example, “What are you most excited for tomorrow?”

Safety is the signal that tells a child’s nervous system it can finally stop bracing and start resting. Without it, even the tiredest body stays alert.

You can reinforce safety by saying things like: 

• “Today was hard. Tonight was hard. And I’m still here.”
• “You didn’t have to be perfect today. You just had to be you.”
• “I’m here. You can rest.” 

Finally, and this might be the most important one: Emotionally attuned parents regulate themselves. Evenings are when you are most depleted and therefore most likely to react from stress rather than intention.

So pause before engaging. Take a few deep breaths. Ask yourself whether you’re carrying stress from the day into the moment. Settle yourself first, then support your child.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting and the creator of the BOUND and FOUNDATIONS journals, now offered together as her Emotional Safety Bundle. She is widely recognized for her expertise in children’s emotional well-being and for redefining what it means to raise emotionally healthy kids. Find her on Instagram.

Want to give your kids the ultimate advantage? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course, How to Raise Financially Smart Kids. Learn how to build healthy financial habits today to set your children up for greater success in the future.

Like many people, Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett followed a parent’s career path: His father owned a stock brokerage firm before later embarking on a political career.

Needless to say, the younger Buffett stuck with investing and did quite well. When he stepped down as CEO at the end of last year, Berkshire Hathaway was worth more than $1 trillion. But crucially, Buffett said, he didn’t receive any parental pressure to follow that path.

“He said that — which was very important — he had no feeling that I should follow in his footsteps. Period,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in “Warren Buffett: A Life and Legacy.”

On the contrary, Buffett recalled his dad paraphrasing a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”: “The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

In other words, you have to find your own calling. It’s advice Buffett said he passed down to the next generation of his family.

“I told my own kids … look for the job you’d take if you didn’t need a job,” Buffet said. “And that’s basically what my dad was telling me.”

Buffett has frequently said that he latched onto his lifelong fascination with making money at an early age.

“I found the answer when I was five,” said Buffett, who spent his youth selling gum and delivering newspapers, among other enterprises. He bought his first stock at age 11. “And it was just interesting to me — way more interesting to me than it was to my dad.”

For people who need to graduate from kindergarten before finding their raison d’etre, finding the kind of job you’d do without a paycheck may require some trial and error — along with taking some jobs just to survive, Buffett said.   

“Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search,” he wrote in his 2021 letter to shareholders. “Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be ‘working.’”

One good bet, Buffett has said, is to gravitate toward high-quality people you love to work with.

“Who you associate with is just enormously important,” he said at the annual meeting of Berkshire shareholders in May. “Don’t expect that you’ll make every decision right on that, but you are going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people that you work with, that you admire, that become your friends.”

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Hannah Florman’s job allows her to be part of some of the “happiest moments” of people’s lives, she tells CNBC Make It — and it’s “very different” from her previous career as a corporate lawyer.

Florman, a jewelry designer who specializes in engagement rings, is the owner and founder of Hannah Florman Fine Jewelry, a custom jewelry company based in Boston. The company brought in seven figures in sales in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Becoming a jewelry designer wasn’t always part of her plan, says Florman, 36, who is also a mother of two.

Florman graduated from Tulane University in 2011 with a degree in political science, and then earned her J.D. from Northeastern Law School in Boston in 2015. She began working at a corporate law firm upon graduation, but quickly found that she didn’t enjoy the “high-intensity, high-pressure” aspects of the job, she says.

“I think a lot of successful lawyers enjoy that stress — it gets them energized and keeps them going. For me, it sort of did the opposite,” she recalls.

Florman decided to transition to working part-time at her law firm shortly after she married her husband in 2016, she says, in order to “explore other options.”

Florman was inspired to start her jewelry company after identifying a gap in the local market for custom fine jewelry. She was looking to reset some family heirloom pieces, but struggled to find a jeweler that she connected with.

“What I wanted didn’t really exist in Boston,” she says, so she decided to try designing jewelry herself.

Florman left her law firm for good later in 2016 and spent six months studying at the Gemological Institute of America. She officially launched her eponymous jewelry business in September 2017, specializing in custom engagement rings and fine jewelry.

Her husband and father-in-law both work in the high-end watch business, and their jewelry connections helped Florman quickly build relationships with vendors and diamond dealers, she says.

Still, it took a few tries to figure out her workflow. Florman realized early on that physically making the jewelry wasn’t her strong suit, so she found a local workshop to craft her pieces.

That was her first major business lesson: “Find what you’re really good at and your strengths, and focus on those and outsource the others.”

Florman worked solo for the first few years before hiring her first full-time employee in 2022. Today, she has three permanent employees — a workshop liaison/manager, a social media manager and another jewelry designer — and operates her jewelry showroom out of a brownstone on Newbury Street in Boston.

Most of Florman’s early customers were friends or friends of friends, she says. She estimates that for the first three or four years, her clientele found her business mostly by word-of-mouth.

“I think the moment as a business owner where it feels like something shifted is when you start to get clients who you don’t know how they found you,” she says.

Building strong relationships with clients is the backbone of her business model, according to Florman.

She always starts the custom jewelry process with an introductory phone call. “It’s more time consuming for us,” she says, “but it really allows us to get to know the client.”

During the design meeting, Florman presents the client with several design sketches to choose from or modify. For engagement rings, which Florman says make up approximately 50% of their yearly jewelry commissions, she also sources five or six diamonds from a diamond vendor to show the client.

Once the client is happy with the design, Florman sends it to her rendering team to turn the sketch into a 3D digital model. Finally, the jewelry workshop crafts the piece based on the model. The entire process typically takes around 6 to 8 weeks, Florman says.

Florman requires a minimum budget of $7,500 for custom fine jewelry pieces, and $15,000 for custom bridal jewelry. “We do like to just set the expectations for our clients in order to get the quality that we like to produce,” she says.

When she started her business, Florman says that her personal goal was to be able to pay herself the same salary she made in her law job within five years. She’s since reached that goal, she says, helping her “feel like I made the right decision financially.” (Florman declined to share further details about her salary.)

Custom jewelry will always be the “bread and butter of the business,” Florman says, but she’s also exploring the ready-to-wear market.

Florman recently launched a ready-to-wear fine jewelry collection on her site, and she plans to release an engagement ring collection made with lab-grown diamonds in a few months. She designed these collections, she says, “to make our jewelry more accessible to people that are either not in Boston, or are intimidated by getting in touch and working through that custom process with us.”

Still, Florman says she will always “crave those personal interactions” with clients, “so whatever we do in the future will be around making sure that that continues and grows.”

Another major priority for Florman is balancing her growing business with her family life. Finding a career with a better work-life balance was a key reason she stepped away from law, says Florman, who recalled how her colleagues often missed their children’s sports games or doctors’ appointments due to work.

That’s not to say that running a company isn’t a major time commitment — as a business owner, “you’re never fully off, even if your employees are amazing,” Florman says — but she’s able to be present for her two sons’ important moments.

From Florman’s perspective, it’s meaningful for her children “to see their mom building something and being passionate about something,” she says. She wants them to know she’s “doing something that she finds really important.”

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