Episode 175: Neuromarketing Through Photography with Roger Dooley

What is your hesitancy about diddling?

Oh, my God.

Kelsey's not into diddling.

I actually am into diddling.

What do you consider diddling? What is a diddle?

I think, you know, taking your time.

I think intentionally taking your time. And I think it's busy work. How would you define the word diddle?

I don't know, like, I don't know when I hear the word diddle. Yeah, like dilly dally, like that kind of. Same family.

I think it's a non prioritization, I think. So how diddle came up?

Diddle your time away.

Our guest was talking about someone he's working with and said they're kind of diddling. And I think. Yeah, exactly. I think they're deprioritizing. Yeah, I don't want to be diddled.

No one wants to be diddled.

Yeah, who wants?

I feel like it sounds.

It sounds almost inappropriate. Your mind is so filthy.

It is borderline inappropriate.

It's the borderline what? I'm not even gonna go. Okay, all right, let's go somewhere else.

Okay. You are listening to the Profit first podcast.

Yeah. The big episode 174 with himself, the. The myth, the diddler. Roger.

Doy.

That's right. Ow. Here we go.

Now we're howling. Grunting.

Yeah. I think our fans will like it though.

You hear Wolfman Jack? You remember him?

No.

All right, you guys got to get back yet. He born in the 70s, clearly.

Welcome everyone to the Profit first podcast. I'm your co host, Christina Bolda.

And I'm Mike McCalowitz, the other co host guy and the author of Profit first and my new book, it's coming out. Listen, we still got some time, but get the pre orders in, my friend. It's called Clockwork. Plus some other books out there. You can just google me or diddle me.

You gotta get like a TikTok sound.

I'm joined in studio by the co host. The co host. The co host, Kelsey Harris.

Hey, everybody.

And you, my friends, you're listening to the Prop first podcast. This is where we explore everything about profitability, include the psychological side. That's my favorite.

As we've been digging, that's my favorite too.

One of my favorite guests.

Yeah, Roger is my favorite guest. And so he's back. He's the only guest ever to be here more than twice. I think this is his third, if not fourth visit with us. And we're going to be exploring every kind of cool perspective of profitability from the mindset, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

Did I kind of diddle. I was kind of diddling at the end there. It's kind of stretching it out, right?

Are we going to use this word.

Like, oh, well, you know, the diddly dealio. You can find us on itunes. Stitcher, tunein radio, Google play, any podcaster pretty much anywhere you hear a podcast and of course, course, profit first. Podcast.com.

That'S right.

That's right.

Here's the deal. Y yeah, we have a shout out hotline that we want you to call and share your profit first success with us. It's real simple. Call 844-876. I got to turn down the music. It's kind of. Kind of diddling in my ear. 876-7221 and leave your shout out. We want to know how profitable are you? Have you read profit first? Are you permanently profitable? We want to know. So call 844-876-7221. Yeah, you can put the podcast on hold and do it right now.

That's okay.

I just got diddled. Could you imagine? I'm gonna call my mom. I should do that on air. Call my mom and say, mom, I just got diddled.

She's like, michael, what's wrong with you?

I know. What would she say?

She diddled me.

I've been diddled. So what were you gonna say, Christina?

I was actually gonna shout out one of our new podcast listeners, Colton assel. She said she's been listening for a few months and loves it and she says thank you for putting this information out there so that we can see the success that we dream of.

Awesome. Thank you, Colton, and congratulations for your success with profit first and thanks for listening to the show.

Yeah.

Bring it. I want to thank our corporate partners, make the show a reality. They are nextiva receipt bank. I think that's it. I don't even know. It's such.

It's such fluctuating funboxy.

I think funbox didn't care.

We're not sure.

I know, I know.

We still love them.

This is awkward. I think I have to have a call with them. And there was total confusion after profit. Obviously you haven't heard about this.

No, I did. I did connect the dots.

So. So there was a question and then we sent them a bill and they said we don't think supposed to be paying this. And now, like, we don't know if you're sponsoring us. This whole diddling with fundbox, that's what's wrong with diddling. They're. They're an extraordinary company. So I Just don't know if the legally we supposed to be talking about them, but we just did.

We just did.

And I love them, so you're welcome.

So maybe we'll thank them later. But nextiva and Receipt Banks is amazing. And I'm actually heading out to Receipt Bank. This will broadcast already. Receipt bank to nextiva this weekend.

Next con, right?

Yeah, yeah, next con. Thousand people expected. And you know who the. The entertainment is?

Who?

You.

Brett Michaels. Do you know who that is?

Yeah, who's that? He's the singer of what's it, Guns N Roses.

Close. Poison.

Poison.

Yeah. That count is basically.

They all blur together.

They all blur together. Yeah. They're all hair bands.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I might. I'm gonna try to get a picture with him and maybe try to play a song. You know, every rose has a thorn like that. Every rose has a thorn. I may try doing it with him.

Yeah, maybe that's why I thought it was Guns N Roses.

Very similar. Patience.

I get it.

Okay. All right.

That's a band too.

Do we have anything else with the.

COVID I don't think right now we're.

Do listener mail later.

Right, right. Oh, I mean, just like what you've been up to and.

Oh, yeah, just do me, do me quick. Do me a quick video. So what. What have you been up to real quick? Let's do that. I'm looking at the wrong. I'm looking at the wrong man.

I don't know.

I've been so tired because we're moving.

We've been diddling way too much.

I've been diddling so much. And I've been like packing and cleaning and before the show, I say hi to our producer and I put my ear into the microphone to listen back.

Did you see her do that clearly? No, I wish I did.

Not in the right frame of mind.

It was like an old school phone. She's like, hey, Brian, how are you? Starts put banging the thing against her ear. I can't hear you.

I'm just.

I'm cute.

What can I say?

What's going on? Yeah. What have you been up to?

Well, I just had my book club meeting. We meet every month and it's my favorite thing. I just love it so much.

You are such an intellectual. What were you talking about?

Or a nerd.

You are a kind of nerd. What were you.

So the book was Killers of the Flower Moon, which is about the Osage Indians who started in Kansas and then they were moved to Oklahoma. And basically over two dozen were murdered, but nobody Was investigating. Like they. Back then there was no like formal policing. So they just had like the local lawman looking into it, but they weren't really doing anything. Anyways, this whole conspiracy and that, that started the FBI, like officially started kind of the FBI.

Wow.

Yeah.

Fascinating. So is this a story based upon the truth and it's kind of a fictional story, or is it just.

It's pretty much all truth. Like, okay, they called it a novel and I feel like it should have just been a history.

And what do you do in a book group? Does everyone just share opinions or does it instantly go to say, what have you been up to? Like, everyone forgets about.

It's kind of both. So we have like social. 30, like the first 30 minutes is just like catching up and you know.

Is it men and women?

It's just women. Yeah. And then the rest of it is talking about the book and how long.

Is a session go, so to speak.

So last night I left probably around 10, started at 7. So.

Okay, three hours. That's awesome. Is there alcohol involved?

Yes.

There you go.

Kinda like wine club.

It's wine club. So here's the deal. So I haven't. This is my update. I haven't been drinking now for five weeks, literally. I don't miss it. Like.

Yeah, no.

Do you feel better? Like your body?

I kind of do.

Yeah.

But I don't know if it's almost a placebo effect.

Yeah.

Like, do I feel better? Yeah, I never, never felt well. I sleep really well, but I've always slept well.

Yeah.

But I. I don't miss it.

Yeah. That's good.

And I've gone out now to I think four or five functions where people are drinking and like it's almost expected. Right. They get the wine bottle for the table and I'm like, no, I'm just gonna pass up. And I. The first couple times I was like, oh, the social pressure.

Yeah.

But now, like, no phase at all.

Yeah.

And now the last time I was out, I actually noticed people getting buzzed. I'd never noticed before because I was getting buzzed.

Exactly.

Yeah. It's pretty wild.

Yeah, it's pretty funny. Sometimes it's so obnoxious, but most of the time it's funny.

Yeah, no, not obnoxious at all. Just a little bit of slurring and laughing a little bit loud and voices getting raised. But fun. Like everyone. Very fun. But I've never observed that because I've always been participating.

You know what's great about that? As the non drinker, Because I don't drink either. Like you remember everything so then you can remind them. That didn't happen, I think, actually.

Did you remember?

This flip side, though, is like when you have a deep conversation with somebody and like you think it's kind of like a meaningful thing and they don't remember at all.

I know. You know, next time after one of those dinners, I'll go to a couple guys and say, you know, you guys diddled each other. See what they're like, really like. I swear to God. I swear to God. His name is Roger Dooley. He is the Author of Brain 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing. I have books on my shelf here. They're mostly for show now because I do everything on Kindle, but I was for a long time only read hardcover. I stuck with hardcover books. The most marked up book I have, hands down, is Brain Fluence. And I love behavioral psychology. I have like 30 or 40 books there. All of them I think are great. This book, Brainfluence, is phenomenal. Very tactical. You can use these techniques right away. He writes a popular blog called Neuromarketing and is also a columnist at forbes and entrepreneur.com. he is the founder of Dooley Direct. Thank God his last name is Roger Dooley. Could you imagine if his name was like Michalowitz and he owned dually Direct? Wouldn't have worked. But he, you know, he's a marketing consultant and co founded College Confidential, which was a wildly successful college bound website. Couple things you may not know about Roger, he founded College Confidential. Who wrote the script? Did you write that?

That's the funniest thing.

You wouldn't know the unique things, significant.

Things, but you can't repeat it twice. All right, so here's the thing you wouldn't. God, you guys are killing me. Here's the thing you wouldn't know about Roger. He cooks awesome steaks. Oh, yeah, Roger, that was a horrible introduction, but welcome to our show nonetheless. Yeah. So what's the best steak out there?

You know, I like strip steaks and my technique is to use a sous vide cooker to get the internal temperature perfect and then just kiss them on either the grill or a cast iron pan to sear the outside. And you get absolutely perfect results just about from edge to edge.

See, that is someone who knows the steaks.

But, you know, I'm a guy who reads a lot of science, right? So you'd expect that I would have a more scientific way of doing it and like tapping on the outside the way the pros do.

Yeah, that's how I do it. You push. So my, my father in law went to me and he, I go, how do you cook a steak? He's like, here, you push on it, right? And the more firm it is, the more. Well, you did a lot. He did a little, because you push it a little bit. And he goes, the more firm, the more well done it is. I said, how do you know if it's not cooked? He grabs my, my arm and pinched. He goes, that's raw. That's what raw feels like when it's totally like your arm.

Yeah.

And then firm is when it's, you know, farmer, here's somebody cook your arm.

Then to demonstrate the difference.

Yeah, touche. Roger, question for you. What's the difference between a strip steak and a flank steak?

Oh, they're different cuts, but I really don't know.

Okay. We order flat.

I don't, I don't usually buy flank steak. Flank steak has a good reputation, but it seems like it's normally sliced thinner and it's not something that I normally cook.

Yeah, we always get flank steak. I love it. Okay, let's get to the heart of the matter. Let's talk about neuromarketing, please. Could you give us the definition of what neuromarketing is?

Well, people have different definitions, Mike, but I like a broad one that says neuromarketing is really any use of our understanding of how the brain works to market better. And that could include sort of very proactive tools to analyze ads or other marketing material like EEG or implicit testing or eye tracking and so on. But also, I find that it's really important to look at the findings of behavior science because often businesses that can't afford to do expensive neuromarketing tests, which typically, I mean, if you're going to do a Super bowl commercial, yeah, you're definitely going to want to run some neuromarketing studies on it. But the average small or medium business, I really can't afford to use those techniques. But what I try and do is use behavioral science to create scientifically proven techniques that anybody can employ without necessarily running their own experiments.

Now you were saying that it's marketing basically with the understanding of how the brain operates. So since the brain is involved with all marketing, any marketing I receive, that means we're always using neuromarketing, but maybe we're just not deliberate about it.

Well, I think the non use of neuromarketing is when you create a marketing piece and you talk about all your products Great features and how wonderful it is and basically make a very logic based approach to marketing that's not really working the way your customer's brain works in general. Your customer's brain is going to respond better to both emotional appeals and also other kinds of appeals that sort of work at the non conscious level. But you know, most of us have products that we're proud of. We put a lot of effort into creating them and we think they're better than anybody else's products. We like to talk about them and their features and you need a little bit of that information, particularly in products where performance is important. But most businesses focus way too much on that logical, rational side and neglect the other part. And you know, I think, Mike, the latest presidential election is a great contrast. We saw Hillary Clinton, for instance, on the topic of immigration do this very sort of logical nine point approach, you know, almost like a white paper of what her immigration policy was. And Trump said, I'm going to build a wall, a big wall. Now, you know, that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, but it was a very visceral sort of image that people could imagine in their own minds. And I'm sure nobody's vision of what this wall would look like was the same as anybody else's. But you know, that was much, that resonated much better than with, you know, nine points and talking about these acronym programs that are going to be extended or modified and so on that just cause people's eyes to glaze over after about, you know, the first point or two.

Yeah, I heard this idea of drawing a picture in people's minds. Like if I say fireplace, Kelsey, Christina, Roger, everyone draws a picture in her mind. We all have a different picture of what it is. Mine is like a stone fireplace in an old country house. Maybe yours is, or maybe it's not, or maybe by me saying that it's influenced you to now see that also. But I heard that, Roger, when someone draws a picture in their mind that while we don't know the picture they're drawing, they will use words to explain it. Like that was an awesome day, for example. I've been told that if I repeat back the word awesome that that picture is being sparked in their mind again. So to watch the descriptives they use to draw pictures in their heads and then kind of spit it back at them. That's just what I've heard on the street, so to speak. Does that have any foundation in Neuro?

You know, I think anytime that you can, anytime that you can use vivid imagery and associate it with something, you have the potential to produce that sort of a connection. And in general, the choice of words is really important. I don't know, I forget if we talked about this in the past, but some words that are what are called textual metaphors can be very impactful. For instance, if you say I had a rough day, or if I had a hard day or difficult day, those would all mean pretty much the same thing. But the word rough actually has another meaning. Even though we're not using it in the sense of, the sense of touch, that word will still light up those parts of the brain associated with touch. So when you use a word like that that has multiple meanings and particularly a sensory implication, that can be more impactful and more memorable than a very similar word that doesn't have that association.

So do we, before we use these words, do we think, do we want to have something that sticks in their mind and then use a word like that, or do we want to use something that's just more passive and fades away, then we use a different word? Is that kind of how we.

Well, if you're marketing, Mike, usually you want people to remember what you're saying. So I think in most cases you want to use the more impactful verbiage. I mean, maybe there are certain things where you are just trying to get something out of the way, legal disclaimer, something of that nature where you don't want to do that. But in general, the more you can get people to remember your message, the more effective your marketing will be.

So I want to talk about photographs today and how they translate to profitability. I do peruse your blog very often and you've done some posts on bikinis and the response from the male mind and the female mind was fascinating. And one of the articles, I remember it was an older article you wrote saying, you know, are. Are women in bikinis bad for your sales? Can you just kind of share, I hope you know the, the articles I'm referring to. Can you kind of share the, the behavioral logic behind that?

Sure. And you know, I think that there's, with just about anything that we talk about, there's never a perfect correct answer that works in every situation. But men's behavior will be influenced by photos of attractive women, particularly, say, in a bikini or some kind of other revealing outfit. They will tend to become more short term oriented. And there have been a lot of tests run on this where scientists will let people let subjects choose between, say $10 today or $20 in 30 days. Now obviously, $20 in 30 days is a much better deal. Yeah, but more people choose the $10 right now or more men do when they've been exposed to that kind of imagery. So that might be able to, say, produce people to place an order on impulse. On the other hand, I think that you really have to be wary of abusing that kind of imagery. You know, I've seen for instance, ads for computers where there's a totally irrelevant in the picture. You know, first of all, that's going to pretty much kill the effectiveness of the ad for female viewers. And even I would say most male viewers will really find it a rather sketchy technique. On the other hand, if you're selling, say a fragrance, that kind of more sexualized imagery could be very effective.

Interesting. So that gets on the topic of photos, and I want to know how our listeners can use photos to drive properly in their business. What about their own photos? For a lot of the folks listening have service based businesses, they have the About Us page, they have themselves and their colleagues there. What can we be doing with that to make it more impactful and ultimately more profitable?

Right. Well, I think, Mike, you have to back up first and say how important first impressions are. You know, I think that in historically you made your first impression when you say you walked into your client's office or you met them at some kind of an event, you shook hands. And the old advice about making a good first impression was to have a firm handshake, look people in the eye, smile and so on. And that's still good advice. But today, I would guess 95% or more of first impressions aren't made in person. They're made over the Internet. It could be from a company page, from a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook profile. And what that means is that the first impression is coming from the photo or photos that are used there. And so there's been over the years a lot of scientific work done on how people perceive photos and faces, and in particular the characteristics of those photos and faces that make people seem, say, more attractive, more intelligent, more trustworthy and so on. And again, there's no single perfect answer. Because sometimes a particular expression, say, may make you more likable, but it may make you seem slightly less competent, for example, or less dominant and powerful. So to some degree you have to average out the impression you're trying to create and use the right technique and then also test some of your different options. But just for example, some of the science that goes into choosing a profile photo, one thing that goes back to the middle ages or earlier is that the left side of your face is generally more attractive. And there's been some.

Really?

Is it?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. You notice the Mona Lisa is shown from the left side and many other portraitists use the left side. The. In fact, as many as almost 80% of female subjects in portraits are shown from the left side. And it's not a total coincidence. When scientists used photos of people and they did this different ways, they showed people's left sides and they also sort of just flipped the pictures optically. They found that there was a bias toward the left side of the face.

And when you say optically, when they flip the octagon, do they take the right side and put on the left and people right?

Yeah, just if it was sort of a characteristic of the view viewpoint or whether something about the left side of your face. And so what is, is the left side of your face? So like it keeps.

Oh, really? So the left was on the right, people started going to the right?

Yeah, so. So yeah, if you don't, if, if your photo shows you from the right side, you want to do it the opposite. You can't just take Photoshop and flip it. And the reason scientists speculate that your left side is more attractive is because in general, at least in most people, it's controlled by the right side of the brain, which is where emotion is. And I think that perhaps the left side of your face shows a little bit more emotion than the right. On the other hand, the right side of your face, since it may have a little bit less emotion, might show more dominance and self control. So for certain kinds of imagery, that might be a good one. Now I just brought up Photoshop and there's some things that you can do to your existing portrait in Photoshop or actually let somebody who knows what they're doing do it, otherwise it might look really weird. And one is, scientists have found that larger people sizes are more attractive. And that's sort of the black size.

Larger people. I was like, really? The plus sizes are coming through, Ned. All right, so large, larger pupils.

Right, right. We're not talking about school kids here. We're talking about the black.

And no way.

The. And there, there's some good science there too, because typically larger pupils are an indication of either emotional arousal or sexual arousal. And people, even though they're not aware of it, in other words, they don't look at the photo and say, wow, her pupils are really huge, or wow, that guy's got beady little pupils. Subconsciously or non Consciously, they process that, and it goes into their opinion of the attractiveness of the person. So. And often, unfortunately, photo studios have very bright lights. And you know what bright lights do? They cause your pupils to contract and get really small. So one thing would be to use sort of low wattage modeling lights so that the actual photo itself has larger pupils or have them carefully modified in Photoshop. And if you're tweaking that, there's another interesting thing about your eye that unfortunately, you can't really control physically. And that's what's called the limbal ring. And that's the sort of little dark border that's next to the whites of your eyes. In other words, the sort of circle, the outermost circle of your eye that had a name, and apparently people find a thicker one more attractive. And again, there's a scientific reason. Yeah, it seems that it's sort of a marker for youth and health. As you get older, that may shrink a little bit.

So I just want to cut out that one little piece. As you get older, it shrinks a little bit.

Do you find that color plays a factor in all of this, too? Like, this is kind of bringing up a memory for me. I have a large theater background and. And most of the time, headshots are posted in black and white. But there's been two separate shows that I've been featured in where they show your headshot in color. And I'm remembering back now. And one of the headshots is I have brown eyes, so I was wearing a blue shirt, and it kind of made my eyes pop. And then the other show, I was wearing, like, a black. It was more of a serious picture, and I got more compliments and more compliments on my performance and my look and everything. On the headshot that I had the softer tone with the blue shirt than I did with the black. Is that. Does that kind of tie into all of this? It kind of sounds like.

Well, that's something that I can't really answer. I have not seen any studies on eye color. Yeah, it's hard. Hard to imagine, isn't it, on a specific eye color? But, you know, they're probably, as you say, there probably some other factors too. For instance, contrast with facial tones, with hair color, with clothing and so on. And so there may be work out there.

But if you can't answer it, because I'm sure there's a lot of things that seem like they may be having influence now is this. Maybe Christina just felt that way. Maybe she was exuding confidence or something. Else that did that or maybe it was the color. Is there ways in the marketing to test that so we can figure out which one's the most profitable option?

Well, yeah, and you know, one example like that is not a, a good test because there could be many other extraneous factors that go, go into that. But fortunately in today's digital world, often we can run a B tests very easily. And that's one way to judge the effect of different photos and so on is to, on your website, for instance, swap them out in the form of an a B test and see if one say, generates more leads than the other or phone calls or you know, whatever your KPI is for your website. And if it's low volume, you might have to do it for a while. There's, there's another way you can test this too. And there are some apps out there that let people rate photos for different characteristics. For instance, like likability, competence, attractiveness. Yes. And probably the best known one, there may be others. There's one called Photo Feeler and it's something like, if you remember the old, I don't know if it still exists, but hot or not, basically you see a photo and you can say how competent the person is. You know, you check like a little scale of 1 to 5 or something, how attractive they are, how likable they are and they show this to many, many people. And there's, you can even test it for free and you have to like rate other people's photos. You have to sort of work for your freebie. But you know, you can get easily get say input from 100 of their users on your photo and they will actually tell you. And you can put your title too, which I think is sort of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, if say you're a CEO or if you're a graphic designer, it's good to know, it's good to know that if you're rating the photo because a graphic designer might be rated differently for competence than a CEO would. Where, you know, if CEO, you know, was in a beard and a, you know, heavy metal T shirt or something, it might say, yeah, it doesn't look like a typical CEO to me. But the, it also, but the downside of that is I think can also bias the viewer because if you see that a person is an internal, you're probably going to be inclined to rate them as less competent just because of that title. But anyway, that's one good way to get a quick test. And so I would recommend that, yeah, I Like that. That's okay.

I know you have a good limbal ring. You do? Yeah. You really do.

Thank you.

It's a darker practice to talk about this stuff without illustrations. We're doing this as an audio thing and, you know, we're trying to describe what the heck the limbal ring is. But later on in the show notes, you can put a link to. I've got a post with about 10 or 11 of these things that actually has photos of all of them. So that'll make a little bit easier for people to visualize what we're talking about.

Why don't you just share it right now? And then we'll also put in our notes. But what's the link if you can share it?

I don't know the link off the top of my head. Sorry about that.

You're like, for God's sake, Mike, don't ask me the link. Okay. We will have in our show notes, and you got to go there and click on it. All right, so now I know left side is more attractive. You can go to photo feeler, which does sound creepy. Feeler, like that part, but photo feeler to see what people think. Larger pupils, thicker limbal ring. Are there other things we can do to our photos to make them more appealing?

Well, definitely. Smiling is one.

Approachable. Makes sense.

And it has different effects. If you are smiling in a photo, you're generally rated pretty high for both dominance and affiliation, which would be sort of like friendliness. If you have a neutral expression, you're pretty much in the middle of those two variables. If for some reason the photo looks sad, you have very low dominance. So if you're, say, an executive or something you definitely don't want, or applying for executive positions, you don't want a sad look. And then anger or disgust is interesting. It can actually be high in dominance but low in friendliness. And I think if you. I think of. We brought up our president a little bit earlier. If you think about Donald Trump, he generally often has this sort of somewhat angry look on his face. And that really sort of goes with his personality, which is a dominant personality, but not necessarily the friendliest guy in the world.

Yeah. And when he smiles, it seems so fake. It seems when he tries to smile, it seems like he. There's no. It's. It's inauthentic. What if you do something like that? What if you. You have something that you just. It isn't authentic. Does that compromise even though it is a smile technically?

Well, sure. There. And there's really two Kinds of smiles. There's what's called the social smile, and that is the sort of smile you paste on when you meet somebody that you don't really care about. You're introduced to them, you smile, and that is basically formed with your mouth. A true smile actually involves your entire face so that you get those little wrinkles up by your eyes. And that is what you want in a photo, because people will detect the difference between you just forming your mouth into a smile for the photographer because he said so or she said so, and a true smile where you look happy. So that's. That's one aspect.

The other thing about smiling, evoke that.

Pardon me?

Do you have a tip for how to, like, evoke that as the person being taken a picture of?

How do.

I mean, just being aware of how you form the smile would be one. Or I suppose you could think of something that really makes you smile. But you know, to me, it's. If you just think about it and you're conscious, you can get that more full face smile instead of just the mouth smile.

Are you doing.

You can hear in his voice, right?

Well, yeah, actually. Actually, that's. That's something that some people say is true, that you can detect a smile in the. Just in people's voice, in their expression. So that's. That's worth remembering too. And there's something else too. If you smile, you're generally seen as more trustworthy. So if. If building trust is your goal, say you provide some kind of a service, then at least a moderate smile is important. And then, of course, there's all kinds of smiles. I've seen smiles where people look like they've just heard the funniest joke in their life where their mouth is, you know, open about 3 inches and whatnot. And to me, that generally indicates extroversion and likability. In other words, that person would probably be very likable and extroverted, but that might be. Not be the best candidate for some important assignment. So I'm a little bit suspicious of folks that have these, you know, sort of insanely huge guffaw smiles.

Yeah, the spittle coming out the side of their mouths and that stringy saliva. That's horrible.

I definitely distrust that.

I definitely do. Right, right. What?

Spittle's never good.

It's never good. This middle. What about the age of the photo? I. I see it's. Yeah, it's consistent that people consistently show their favorite photo. Sometimes it's from high school and then.

Now 70s online dating.

Yeah. Well, God. Oh, that's right. You've done online dating and you. So you saw this, right?

Yeah.

So you've kelsey seen the pictures and then met the people in person. Right. And there's a total disconnect when there's. But Roger, like if I don't, if I'm not gonna ever meet the person, can I just use one from when I looked really good back in high school and still had some hair and didn't have my bald patch appearing?

Well, sure. I mean, if you're never gonna meet him, you could use Brad Pitt's picture. I guess, you know, I should just.

Use that like, oh, you know, I kind of look a lot. People think, mistake me for Brad Pitt, my doppelganger. Yeah. So what do I do? I mean, could I just use an amazingly great photo?

No, I think it's probably, it's probably good to use something that is accurate so that there's not a disconnect if people actually meet you in person or they see other photos of you. Because you know, for most people, I mean, for instance, you know, both you and I do speaking gigs and whatnot, you really couldn't get by with a 20 year old photo because there's going to be a lot of other candid photos from events and so on that are going to sort of highlight that disconnect. So I'd say the best policy is to be reasonably accurate. Certainly show your best look, but be accurate.

Okay. I know you have a lot of tips on the photos. I want to keep going. You talk about smile, limbal ring, larger pupils. Anything else you can share with us on making those photos?

Well, let me.

Yeah, we're for people who aren't doing photos. We might be overwhelming them with information. But one last one is when you shouldn't smile. And if you are a guy and you are. You just mentioned dating sites and if you want to appear more attractive to women, then you should not smile. Guys who are smiling in their photos on a site like tinder or match.com or something of that nature were seen as somewhat less attractive than those who had a more neutral expression.

Really?

That's true.

You like that at Christmas?

No, actually I'm laughing because I met my boyfriend of two years online and I actually happen to. He was the person that kind of stood out like in the line and he would just had like a smirk but he wasn't like smiling. And the next photo he was, he had this like goofy smile because he was a bunch of wrestling guys. And I was like, man, this guy's Cheesy.

Yeah.

Like, when he was smirking, I was like, hot.

Interesting. Interesting. So, Roger, what's the neuromarketing? It's more. It's turning to a dating show.

I know.

What's the neuromarketing?

Yeah, I think it's. It's dominance. I think that when you don't look too likable, you seem a little more dominant. That's my guess.

I was out with a friend who we were talking about our dating years back in college, and she is a woman. And she goes, you know, I was attracted. I think this is true for many women to the guys who were a little more risky at that time.

Yeah.

She goes, if. She goes, if you were too nice, forget it.

Yeah.

I'm like, really? The nice guy really loses. And she's like, yeah, I think in.

The short run, but not the long run, that.

And that's what she said. So she goes, I decided to marry the nice guy, and I can't be any happier. But during the dating stage, like, I did not want to date the nice guy. What is up with that?

Yeah, I don't know, but I get it.

Yeah. You probably have to consult a psychologist, but I think it's really the nature of the relationship, because when you're looking for a marriage partner, you're looking for somebody who is stable, who will be a good provider, because you are investing a lot in that person, and you want to be sure that person is around to help you help you raise your kids. And that's. That's one of the fundamental aspects of evolutionary psychology, is that everything that people do is somehow influenced by their desire to successfully pass on their DNA. So women have a much bigger investment in children than men do. They have to raise them for a period of years, because at least baby humans are pretty much unable to do anything for years. So they want to be sure that they have a father who will be there, who will feed them, protect them, and so on. And some would also say that explains male behavior, where they are less invested in kids and hence may seek multiple partners. And now, of course, that's. Society places constraints on that today. But this is going back to the older time when humans were driven more by instinct than by social norms.

Interesting. All right, so I'd love to squeeze as many tips out of you as possible. Can you just give me three more tips? Just the stuff you've seen in general for small business. That's. Who's listening to the show? Small businesses. What are three neuromarketing tips? That's the first three that come to mind, that people can apply their business no. To low cost and start seeing a turnaround in their profitability.

You know, one thing I think that almost all of us have to do some kind of presentation at one point or another. Not necessarily a big speech even, but just go into a critical client meeting or something, try and close that big order that could make or break the quarter of the year. And that is a time of high stress often because, you know, it's a. If, if you blow it, the business is going to do poorly. If you do well, it may do well for years to come. And so I talked to a. An expert in mental preparation. Not too long ago, it was Dan McGinn and he wrote a book called Psyched up. And just a couple of findings from there. I recommend the book for anybody who is into improving performance. And that could be anything for, from a musical performance to an athletic performance to of course, a business performance, which is what we're worried about. And when you get that nervous feeling before you go in the room or before you go on stage, you can't really suppress that. Studies show you can't just sort of will it away. But what you can do is relabel it. In other words, instead of saying, oh man, I'm really afraid and worried about this, what you do is relabel it as excitement because excitement also produces that same kind of arousal. And when you relabel it as excitement, that will, instead of taking away your confidence, it will give you confidence.

Nice. Roger, we only have about one minute left. Can you give me two more tips, like real simple ones?

Well, yeah, sure. I think one is to have a pre performance routine, like always do the same thing before you go into the big meetings or before you go on stage. And that will get you really psyched for that. And then something else that is a little bit controversial. But you probably have heard about power posing. Amy Cuddy at Harvard talked about the wonder woman pose, where you stand in the sort of confident pose with your hand on your hips. And it's been shown to increase testosterone levels and confidence levels. Now there's been some questions about the research and its replication, but to me that is, it certainly won't hurt to try doing that. And that can be part of the pre performance routine that you go through.

Roger, this has been phenomenal.

Thank you.

Nothing short of what I expected from you. Where can our listeners learn about more from you? For neuromarketing and also your book Brainfluence.

The best place to start would be rogerdoule.com and I've got links to my various blogs there, my neuromarketing blog and my books and my social profiles on Twitter, which is where I'm most active. I am rogerdoule.

And if everyone visits your site, Roger Dooley, they gotta make sure they see the picture of you. It's like the most massive pupils. Limbal ring is bigger than his head. It's unbelievable. Roger, as always, it's a joy having you. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me.

Well, thank you, Mike.

It's been fun.

Bye. Bye.

All right, we'll see you. Bye. Bye. Oh, wow. I don't know. It always feels like that was a little rude.

Yeah, that was bad. It always feels like 30 seconds whenever Roger's on. Like, there's so much that I want.

I know.

Seriously, so fast.

I want him on next episode. I just want him back again. It just sits there. It's like, oh, my God. There's so much going on in our heads.

It's crazy to think how much goes on subconsciously. Like, the pupil thing, I would have never. My logical brain would never pick up on that.

That's the point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's weird. I can't look at you guys now. Cause like, oh, my God. Don't look at the pimple. What does that mean? Like, we don't look at the limbal ring. Oh, my God. Like, I can't look at anything.

Pretty sure you shouldn't be concerned. I'm not putting a hex on you.

No, no. But it's just weird because now you start diagnosing it.

Yeah.

Like, it's like with. When you look at. When men look at women, you cannot look below the neck. Like, you gotta stay locked in. Right. But now I'm like, where I can't look at your eyes. Don't look at the nose. Like, wait, I look at the top of your ear, past you, I'm gonna.

Be able to look the whole time.

Would that be funny? The next time talking to someone, you're like, you just look. You look to the side. You never look at. Make eye contact. Okay, so here's what we're do. We're going to recap what we learned, which we kind of started to dig in there. And then we do some listener mail. Right?

Yeah.

Okay. But first, I want to thank our corporate partners. Who the F knows who our corporate partners are?

We have two, certainly.

For sure, it's nextiva, right? We know that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Nextiva is a voice over mail. Voiceover ip. Voiceover mail. It's a voiceover mail. Could you imagine? You've got mail. See, that's a voiceover male or voiceover female. You've got mail. So nextiva is a voice over IP phone system. They are at a budget price that you'd expect, but the service is the level of a high end phone system. Extraordinary company. And I hope you went to nexcon this year. If you didn't go sign up for next year's event. And then Receipt bank is for sure corporate partner.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And so Receipt bank is a scanning system for your receipts. It's that simple. But it ties into QuickBooks and stuff. We Karen Della Ripa, she's our accountant and bookkeeper for Profit First Professionals come in and we had to go through, I don't know, 700 transactions, about 15 minutes. It's like everything was sunk up to a receipt. So anytime we did questions like, oh, here's the receipt. Receipt Bank.

Thank you.

Thank you. And then we think we have another corporate partner. So we'll say it's fun to box, but we don't know. We don't know if our corporate. We love them. Yeah, they're extraordinary. They were at profitcon. Yeah, they were probably the most popular booth. Yeah, and Joanna Knox was there. What they do is if you have an invoice due to you, but you haven't been able to collect it, they will release the funds to you in its entirety on the spot. So it's great for short term cash flow needs. So if you have money due to you, just call Fundbox and they'll give you the money. Maybe they'll break some legs, you know? No, I'm kidding. All right, now let's talk about what we learned today.

So what'd you learn today?

Who wants to go first? Anyone gain?

I learned a whole lot.

Oh, you're up first.

I learned a whole lot about eyeballs. Yeah, I mean, but I never knew. You know what, though? I've always loved the limble ring.

Really? You didn't know why?

No. And I also didn't know that it had a name. I love when eyes have that kind of, like darker ring around them.

Now I'm looking, I didn't even notice the limbal. I didn't even know it existed.

But it surprises me that the, like, you know, subconsciously you associate it with youth and health. That surprises me.

It does. So our limbal ring thins out, presumably as we get older.

Yeah. That was your little snapshot of what I wish I could Just save that little spot. It shrinks as you get older.

I did want to cut that. It was that so funny. I'm ask Brian, our producer later, to cut that little piece out. So the next time we have a guest on and just keep on clicking that button. It shrinks when you get older. The limbo ring. What did you learn?

To stay true to yourself and to your image. Especially. Especially when it comes to pictures. To stay current. Like, don't. And that comes into accepting who you are as a person and looks and being true to who you are inside. But don't be afraid to show your age. Don't be afraid to show what you look like. Just as. As long as you're staying true to yourself and putting that image out there. I think you'll always get positivity from your. Your clients and whatnot because you're being real.

Yeah, I agree. You know what I think is cool? That photo feelers. Even though it sounds creepy.

Yeah.

I like the idea of getting sort of a. An opinion about your photo that's neutral. Yeah, I think we should.

All right. You want to try? We'll do one of mine. You guys want to do it too, for your own photos?

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Your limb of the ring just grew a little bit. So my takeaway was the smile. I think that's great. It was interesting. Like, smiles aren't always helpful. Like if you have that big smile where your mouth is wide open. That's not necessarily a good thing. Depends.

That's what I look like all the time, though.

You don't smile like that in your photos.

At least spittle's not coming.

Yeah, I'm a spittler. I've seen pictures of me, like when I'm talking, like, Jesus, is there. Did someone put cotton in my mouth? This is unbelievable. It's like a cobweb. Like I open my mouth. I think there's like a tarantula in there.

I don't know if you noticed that. I've never noticed that.

This picture's from when I go speaking. Look, where am I speaking? Where's my next speech?

Do you know Praxity well, tonight you're doing.

Yeah, Tonight I'm doing one. But Praxity is a big 1000 people. They will have close up photos. Look at me talking. You'll just see like this cobweb in my face. It's disgusting.

We should put that in the show notes too. We'll find all of that.

The cobweb, the praxity cowboy.

And then we could put our results of our photo feelers.

But you know what, though? Roger shared a good tip, too. I know I'm taking up a lot of time, so something that I've learned. I have resting bitch face. And that's been pointed out to me like, I grew up with resting bitch face. And I. I realized in my adult life, like, a couple years ago, I. When I would try to force a smile, I did. I used to look fake, and they'd be like, what is this bitch's problem? But now, like, it's just the way I express myself. But now I've kind of realized, okay, when I'm in a setting where I need to be friendly, I will. I'll close my eyes for a second and I'll think about, like you asked Roger, what a trigger would be like. I'll think about something that makes me really happy, and then it just naturally, like, changes my facial expression.

That is interesting.

Yeah, that's what my mom always says, so I hope that helps if anybody else out there has resting bitch face.

My mom always says that when we take pictures because I'm very not photogenic and I make the worst face. Always. She's like, just think of something happy. But it doesn't work. I think I'm too, like, conscious about what my face looks like.

Well, whenever a mom says think of.

Something, it makes you happy, it makes me pissed.

Yeah.

I'm like, that's the worst thing I've ever done. Shut up, mama. What makes me happy? All right. I heard we got some listener mail. We do pattern baldness. I'm sorry. So funny. I did that to my wife. I. I was. I said, do you remember that jingle from who did the aol? Right? You've got mail.

Yeah.

So I did the you've got mail pattern baldness, and a booger came out. She's laughing so hard. Oh, my God. No, she never would booger.

Okay.

I'm just trying to give it. I'm trying to make it visual for our listeners.

You're trying to take away from the cobwebs of your mouth.

I'm trying.

Let's shift over to our listener mail. This comes in from Ryan Moore. He said, we pumpkin planned our business last year and it's going extremely well so far. Now, we are about to implement profit first. But I have a question. What do we do with our current bank balance? Do we allocate that according to our day 1 caps? The problem I see with this is that we end up with a ton of money in our opex which may lead us to believe we are flush and can spend all of that. We have enough to fill our vault to where we want it already. So I'm just concerned about the rest of the balance. Do you just move it to profit? Any best practices or ideas are much appreciated.

Wow, great question, Ryan. And for folks listening in some terms you may not be familiar with what's CAPS stands for current allocation percentages. Opx, that's operating expenses. Here's the deal. If you implement profit first, Ryan, or anyone listening, when you first implement profit first, I know you've been running your business, however you've been running in the past up to this point. So any of that past money, I want to open another account. Just called the holding account. It's so you're allowed to wind down the old way of doing your business practice and move over to the new one. So I think don't take all your money and just divide up to the different accounts instead. Just put it in a separate account for now and wind it down. As you need that money, you use that money. But any deposit going forward, starting today, you follow the profit first system and allocate to the different account. And a vault account, in case you don't know, that's the ultimate savings account for the absolute dark emergencies that can happen in business when panic ensues. We want to have that emergency cash fund. That's the vault account is. So if you can fund that right out of the gate, that's awesome too. Hope that answers the question. All right, we gotta start rocking and rolling there, Christina.

Okay, so leave us a comment, leave us a rating on itunes, Stitcher, Google Play, any podcast catcher that you use, and of course, Profit first podcast. Oh, my God. Podcast.com.

You'Re riching. You're resting. Bitch face. You're raging. Bitch face got in the way. You know, our listeners are probably raging right now. Raging. To go to profitfirstprofessionals.com. that's right, profitfirstprofessionals.com. you know, we have 188 smiling thick, timble, timber ring, whatever it is.

Timberwolf. Those Timberwolves are really great.

We have one Timberwolf as a client. They have large people. They smile, listen. They will help you move your business forward. They'll drive profitability. Why? They've been certified by our organization. Our team here has worked with every single one of our members, taught them the Profit first methodology, ensured that they implemented it fully in their business. They're running it and living it it and they're set up to serve you. So here's what we got to do. Go to profit first. Professionals.com Step one. Step two. I didn't do that one that well.

Great.

It was. Okay. Go to Prof. Yeah. Go to proffers. Professionals.com Step one. Step two. That's good. That's step two. Click on the find button and. And then fill out the form. And then step three, we will connect with you. We'll make an introduction for you. These are all independently operated businesses, have achieved profit first certification and are here to help you. So check them out by going to profitfirstprofessionals.com. it's that simple. All right. I think we'll get my pupils expanded.

And he has to get diddled.

Sam.