Hey Greenblasters!

Have you ever gone to a really good play, or a concert, and met the performer afterward?

If you’re like most people, you may have found yourself, embarrassingly, a little awkward or tongue-tied.

This is probably because of the Halo Effect.

What’s the Halo Effect, Will, you weirdo?

Jeez, you guys. I’ll explain.

The Halo Effect is:

(When) people’s opinion of something in one domain influences their opinion of it in other domains.

Here are some examples of the Halo Effect in action:

• good looking people are considered smarter

• creators with a lot of followers are seen as trustworthy

And, as you’ll know anecdotally:

Good public speakers are assumed to be good at other things too, like:

• coaching

• consulting,

• or any other task you might want to be hired for.

This psychological bias - while damaging and unfair, like all biases - is really important to understand, not just to avoid it ourselves, BUT:

To use it to your advantage, where possible (and not sleazy) to do so.

And the fastest, most ethical, & most impactful way to create a positive Halo Effect for yourself is:

Get onstage as soon and as much as possible.

How it works

Imagine you’re at a conference, trying to meet potential clients.

On day 1: you go around networking and connecting with people on LinkedIn (nobody still uses business cards do they?)

On day 2: you speak on stage for 90 minutes, and then chat with everyone in the audience after.

Which day do you think you’d get more WARM LEADS from? More eager people, ready to learn about your services?

Obviously, the answer is day 2. And I know it’s true, because it happens to me all the time:

I go to a conference, no one gives a shit who I am.

Then, they see me onstage, and it’s big smiles and “let’s connect!”

That’s the Halo Effect in action.

I’m not mad about this. It makes perfect sense. Even though it SHOULDN’T be, it is, and all we can do as humans is understand our brains’ and act accordingly.

The scientists who research and educate about bias do very important work, but they’re fighting against millennia of human psychological evolution.

So the best thing to you can do is:

• do your homework

• be damn good at what you do

• AND get your ass onstage

Because if YOU aren’t taking advantage of the Halo Effect, some snake-oil salesman is, and the audience would rather have your actual expertise than the 50-step AlphaMale Optimization® course he’s selling which is pure bullshit.

So, do yourself a favour and start speaking onstage

If you wanna know how, start here and here.

Use the Halo Effect for good.

Until next week, Greenblast… out 🚀