Buffett Was Right: Communication Skills Have the Highest ROI

01 /The Concept

Gleam is an app for sharpening social skills – in just 5 minutes a day. "Social skills" is used in the broadest possible sense here: casual conversation, flirting, storytelling, and negotiation, both personal and professional.

The app has three core components. The lessons come first: bite-sized single-screen sessions on specific topics. For example, if you want to get someone talking, you should avoid closed questions that invite a yes or no – ask open ones instead. Don't fish for facts; fish for feelings, reasons, and stories. "Do you like your job?" becomes "What part of your work gives you the most satisfaction? What's the biggest challenge you're dealing with right now? How has that changed lately?"

Then come exercises. Importantly, you practice by speaking aloud – simulating a real conversation in a given scenario – and the app's AI gives you structured feedback.

Sample scenario: "You're at an art gallery and notice someone studying a painting. You're curious about them. What would you say to start a conversation?"

Rounding it out are scenario-based situations: common real-life contexts where you need to navigate socially. You spot someone interesting at the gym – how do you create a reason to keep talking? You see an intriguing person standing alone at a party – how do you open without it feeling forced, in a way that leaves the door open afterward?

Coming soon: a fourth component – daily social quests. The app will issue specific challenges based on whatever skill the user is working on.

The creators describe Gleam as "Duolingo for social skills" – and they mean it literally. They're importing Duolingo's most effective retention mechanics, including streak tracking. It sounds trivial, but Duolingo users are surprisingly proud of their streaks.

Gleam just launched, announcing the release on Product Hunt.

02 /Why It Matters

Social skills are a genuine competitive advantage – in life and in business. Warren Buffett put it plainly: "If you can't communicate your ideas to people, you're burying your potential."

And most people misunderstand what makes someone socially magnetic. As Gleam's Twitter feed puts it: "Most people try to be interesting. Real magnetism comes from being genuinely interested in others."

Reading about Gleam, the immediate association is Dale Carnegie's old classic, *How to Win Friends and Influence People*.

Published in 1936, it has sold over 30 million copies – and it's still selling, at more than 250,000 copies a year.

As it turns out, Gleam's creator made the same connection. One commenter suggested the app would be powerful if it incorporated Carnegie's principles, and the founder confirmed that the book was indeed a core inspiration.

The insight, though, was that Carnegie's advice is hard to absorb without actually practicing it – which is exactly what Gleam provides. Consider it the AI-era interactive edition of Carnegie's bestseller.

If the original book sold 30 million copies, a version that delivers the same principles through active practice could reasonably aim for similar reach.

This pattern – taking a classic self-help bestseller and rebuilding it as an AI app – is showing up repeatedly.

Back in April, there was a review of Why My Wife Yelling At Me ([covered here](/review/sdelaj-cifrovoj-bestseller)), an app that helps husbands decode why their wife is reacting so strongly to something – or predict how she might react to something the husband is considering. The natural reference point was *Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus*, first published in 1992, which has sold more than 15 million copies.

The core thesis: men and women are essentially speaking different emotional languages. The same sentence can mean completely different things depending on who says it and how. The Why My Wife Yelling At Me app is, in effect, an AI-powered translator between those languages.

Similarly, Shelpful ([covered here](/review/privychka-jeto-eshhjo-i-vyruchka)) raised $3 million at the end of 2023 for an AI habit-building coach – a clear nod to *Atomic Habits*, published in 2018 and also past 15 million copies. The advantage of the app over the book is, again, the practice layer.

03 /Opportunities

There's a surprisingly repeatable playbook visible here for building popular AI apps. Start with a proven bestseller on personal development – one that has already sold millions of copies and validated the demand for its core idea.

Then build an app where AI guides users through practicing those same principles "in 5 minutes a day" – layered with retention mechanics and gamification borrowed from other successful apps. The goal: millions of users. Why not?

The playbook is clear – and the library of untapped bestsellers is enormous. The app layer of a 30-million-copy book is still mostly unbuilt.