Your Talent Chefs blogging about insider info and guidance, current castings and bookings (only those made public), tips on improving your booking chances and how to use your Webcomp portfolio as a virtual agent to land more work. Get yourself in the Soup!

3 Seconds To Judgement - Making Your Visual Brand Say The Right Things

Monday June 28, 2010 by Chef

Before I started TalentSoup, I was in the medical device industry, marketing biologic implants (used to repair people...it was a cool job!) which meant lots of time with surgeons in OR's, hospitals and restaurants. As you might guess, this meant I wore a suit 24/7. While they were nice suits, custom made in Hong Kong and Singapore (not as expensive as you'd think) and very high quality, it was a suit. You know, a suit. I prefer business clothing a bit more utilitarian (jeans, cowboy boots, knit shirt...that's my style). Thinking back on all of those "suit hours" I logged, I remembered an educational moment I had early in my career. A mentor friend, who was what I considered a tycoon, told me about the importance of how I looked and how I could control people's assumptions about through my clothing and grooming. That was profound. I'd never heard anyone layout it so simply for me but what he was talking about was my Visual Brand. Given the talent industry is all about the visual story that our talent convey, I think it's important to throw this out there for those of you that are starting to put the formula together - My visual brand + Images + TalentSoup = More Commercial Bookings. Your mom probably told you how important it is to keep your shoes shined and it turns out, she was right. A great book on the subject, and how irreversible judgements are made about you in the first 3 seconds when you meet someone, is here: http://bit.ly/9AOtN3 It's actually called "You've Only Got 3 Seconds" and it profoundly changed my view of, well, my view. BTW, if you buy the Amazon book from that link TalentSoup makes about $0.32. Given how old this book is, I bet its sitting in your local library so go read it for free!