Intro: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Posers podcast, the place where we skip the fluff. Say the quiet parts out loud and dig into what really matters. This is where photography, psychology, and business collide. I'm Jody, your host, and I'm bringing you my raw takes, hard wins, and a whole lot of unfiltered honesty about what it takes to build a photography business that actually connects and makes money.
So ladies, grab your headphones and get your tits up and your ears open because we are going to build something really incredible together.
Okay. Hello. Hello, hello. My beautiful posers. You know that all I wanna do is unpack the situation with Amanda Petula and West Wilson. Right? You know this about me. The fact that this news broke while I was in the middle of such a busy week with the masterclass that we did last week. The Mastermind opening.
The [00:01:00] Mastermind that's still running and. I haven't even mentioned it on here yet, but I'm also actively changing the strategy and the structure inside of the studio, and last week was also my son's birthday, and then today is my husband's birthday, and then next week I'm traveling. So honestly, if Amanda and could have just kept it under wraps until my schedule is able to handle it, I would've thought they were a lot more considerate of people, but clearly.
Clearly they are not, because I have thoughts. You know, I have thoughts. I never shut up about my thoughts. Okay. But mainly I saw this post about all of the opportunities that Amanda basically flushed down the toilet by betraying her best friend so publicly, and I'm like, for a man. Like for a man, even worse, for a man who has shown [00:02:00] these like F boy tendencies that he has, he has shown his true colors.
I mean, I had a year after my divorce where I made, where I made a lot of horrible decisions. Okay. So in that regard, I get it to a degree, but. To lose all of that in business over West, I just can't, especially given this subject matter of last week's episode, talking about like a girl's girl versus a woman's woman.
Like, I could spend days here, I could spend days unpacking this with you, but. We have business to attend to. And what we're talking about today is actually far more important because this conversation is all about perception and you know how much I love to understand perception and how it [00:03:00] impacts our businesses.
But this is a whole different topic than I've ever discussed. Before on here, on the podcast or anywhere else, and you can thank my girl Sasha for this conversation happening here because she asked for a breakdown of an old league magnet that I used to have that I have. Since retired, but it got resurfaced during some one-on-one mentoring calls that were happening, and it hit some people with some value.
That is still important today, even though I literally made this lead magnet, this PDF download like years ago, but. This level of perception that we're talking about today is all about how people decide whether or not to trust you upon their first impression with your brand, and ultimately whether or not they are going to book with you.
Now, before we dive into that, I also wanna say that the [00:04:00] doors to this round of the Poser Mastermind are officially open. This round is going to be. Smaller, it's going to be a lot more intimate. And we also start literally within a month. So it's double the amount of time with me than the last year or this last like cohort, uh, which means that we're going to be doing some very intentional work together.
It is a full six months instead of 12 weeks that runs from. Booking your fall season to collecting on your fall season, it is literally going to run during the busiest and the most lucrative time of year. Last year, my fall season brought in a quarter of a million dollars in revenue. And this Mastermind teaches that exact system in full.
So this obviously is not a container for women who are just kind of casually interested in growing their business. It is for women who are ready to build something that [00:05:00] actually. Works women who are ready to not just get bookings in the door, but to really understand how to turn those bookings into a multi six figure business with strategy in place, with psychology, in place, with systems that really create consistency instead of guesswork because.
I mean, really it's like getting inquiries is one thing. Anybody can get inquiries. You can turn on ads and get inquiries if you wanted to, but knowing how to convert them. And then knowing how to position yourself, knowing how to create demand, and then knowing how to monetize it is a completely different ball game.
And part of that honestly starts right here with this episode. So let's talk about something that's very foundational, because before someone ever inquires, before they send you a dm, before they ask you about pricing, they've actually already decided how they feel about you, and that decision is happening.
[00:06:00] Way, way, way faster than you think. There's this psychological concept that I love to study. It is called the Halo Effect and. This is one of the most important things that you'll ever understand about how your clients make decisions. The Halo effect explains how we take one observable trait or one observable idea and use it to make assumptions about everything else, about that person or that brand.
This is a cornerstone in understanding the psychology of luxury branding. So. If something looks refined, then we assume it's high quality, right? Yeah. Duh. That's not mind blowing. Okay. If something feels elevated, we assume that it has value, which is also very easy for us to wrap our heads around, but. If a brand appears to have this idea of like everything she touches turns to gold, this level of [00:07:00] consistency across everything that is built around the brand of a business, then our brains actually assign human.
Characteristics to that brand like, our brains will tell us that the brand itself is trustworthy, which is normally a human characteristic, right? When the halo effect is working. Our brains tell us that the person behind the brand is a good person, and it automatically triggers our client's brains to want to work with us because it's gone beyond.
Visuals in their brain, and now it's a feeling of being safe. Okay? And that's not a conscious decision. This is your brain doing what it's designed to do. It is looking for patterns, it's making shortcuts, and it's deciding quickly. This is why first impressions happen in. Milliseconds, not minutes, not even seconds.
[00:08:00] Milliseconds, the stat that you've heard before, that you have 0.05 seconds to convince somebody to stay on your website or to stay on your Instagram or to stay into your guides or anything like that if you want their brains to stay. The Halo effect tells us this. It tells us that what our brain is looking for is patterns and Shortcuts, and that we are making these first impressions within literally 0.05 seconds. Okay. And for a lot of us nowadays, that first impression is happening on your Instagram feed, not on your website. It's not after a potential client has been able to like dive into your captions or figure out a little bit about your personal brand or, understand what your origin story is.
It happens the moment that they land on your. Actual grid. This is something that I literally used to talk about all the time, years and years ago [00:09:00] in that very old guide that I mentioned earlier. The way that our brains process visual information directly impacts how we perceive a brand. And that has not changed and that will never change.
And if anything that has become more important in our very, like. Attention heavy kind of world because. When someone lands on your page, they are not analyzing your work piece by piece. They are absorbing the experience as a whole, and their brain is very quickly within those milliseconds, is asking, does this feel clear?
Does this feel consistent? Do I understand what I'm looking at? Because clarity builds trust and confusion disrupts it. So now obviously when your grid is cohesive, there's this sense of calm and there's this sense of intention and there's a sense [00:10:00] of what they they're looking for that has been like thoughtfully created.
And from that, the brain starts assigning meaning The brand will start to say like this brand. Detail oriented. This brand is consistent. But what it does after that is it expands and then it says, this person, not this brand, this person knows what she's doing. This person can be trusted with my money.
This person is worth the investment. That's the halo effect in action. And this is where the idea of like quote unquote, everything you touch turns to gold actually comes from. But there's an actual way that you should be posting in order to design your grid. And I'm going to get into that in just one second because that's the most important part of this.
But it's also important to note here that because once someone has decided. This is high level. [00:11:00] Everything else you do gets filtered through that belief because then your emails feel more elevated to them. Your pricing feels more justified to them. Your communication feels way more intentional. Nothing actually changed about anything or like nothing actually changed about the way that you were maybe emailing or the way that you were pricing yourself, but.
Perception changed and perception drives decisions now. Whenever somebody lands on a grid that feels inconsistent, where like lighting is different, editing is different, the colors don't align, the compositions feel random. There's a lot of like, Text heavy in one area, and then there's not any text in any other area.
There's no visual rhythm that's actually guiding the eye. That visual rhythm is so important. Hold onto this because I'm going to dive into that a bit more, but [00:12:00] when the rhythm is disrupted. The brain has to work harder, so the brain starts scanning and trying to make sense of what it's seeing. It's trying to find a pattern, and whenever it can't, it experiences this like strain, this cognitive strain.
And here's what you need to know about our brains, is that our brains will avoid any kind of unnecessary effort all the time. It will actively. avoid that cognitive strain. So when something feels difficult to process, we immediately wanna jump out. We immediately want to disengage. And this is why cohesion matters, not because it looks good, but because it feels easier.
And whenever something feels easier, the brain says that it wants to stay. And it wants to look around some more. And when it doesn't, that's whenever we will [00:13:00] immediately click out of that feed or we immediately click off of that website. So here's what's important about how you choose which photos to post in what order.
Because in needing to make sure that your brain feels like scanning is easy and calm, this is when like negative space and composition really come into play because. Every single image in your grid is visually dense. If every frame is filled with the photo or with some sort of information, if there's nowhere for the eye to rest, then your viewer becomes overstimulated and overstimulation leads to disengagement, so what I mean by this is.
When you are posting to your feed, you have to make sure that you never stack two images side by side or one on top of the other, in which they are the same composition in the square. Does that make sense? So if you have like a closeup of a [00:14:00] family or like they're all scrunched together and they're all really close and they're taking up the whole entire, composition of that square, of that photo, or you have say like a detailed photo of like a baby's nose, and so then like the whole rest of the square is going to be taken up by the rest of the baby's face, right?
Or a subject that is literally taking up. The whole frame in some other kind of way. Then you can't post the same composition next to it. The next image has to have negative space around it, like the sky or like a pulled back view of a beach or, something that lets the full bleed image next to it, breathe a little bit and allow the viewer's eye to move fluidly across it.
So. Each and every square inside of a top nine grid should never have the same composition next to it or on top of it. It. This isn't just true for closeups. [00:15:00] You should also make sure that you are not posting the same kind of composition of say, like a straight on view of like a family or you're subject in any kind of way in which they take up the same space in the square right next to it.
Those should never go next to each other. You have to rotate the composition in order for your grid to stay calm. And keep the viewer's eye activated, but not overstimulated. This is something that I broke down in that guide by actually showing where the negative space was by erasing everything around the subject.
I literally took it like into, Canva. And you can erase the background of the image, but I don't want to have like transparent background because I wanna be able to see it more clearly. So I actually colored it in with just like white marker, right? So whenever you can see it that way you can see where the negative space is [00:16:00] actually like happening on the feed, so you know that you're not overstimulating your viewers' brains.
Okay? So. Whenever you think about your grid, you're not just placing any old images next to each other. You are actually designing an experience. You are guiding the viewer's eye. You are deciding what they see first, what they see next, how long they're gonna stay. And I've always said that curating your Instagram feed is very similar to staging a house if a home.
That you're wanting to buy, you go into it and that home is cluttered and it's overly personalized it becomes visually overwhelming. It becomes really difficult for someone to imagine themselves living there. But whenever it's clean and it's intentional and it's cohesive, then something shifts and they can start to see themselves living there.
And that is where. Emotional connection happens, and your grid should do the exact same [00:17:00] thing. It should allow your client to step into that experience. Now, I wanna address something that comes up often with this conversation, with the idea that curation kind of removes authenticity, but. I don't believe that.
I believe that curation creates clarity. It's not about like hiding who you are. It's about making sure that you're presenting your work in a way that allows you and your work to be fully understood. You're not removing the authenticity, you are removing the noise, and whenever your visual messaging is clear.
Your audience doesn't have to guess. They know what to do. They know what to expect. They know how it feels, and that level of clarity really builds confidence and trust on that very first impression. This is why luxury brands operate the way that they do. They are not casual [00:18:00] about presentation. They are intentional.
They understand that perception is everything, and that consistency builds that perception over time. Every single touch point within a luxury brand matters because one inconsistency can disrupt the entire experience. So whenever you start looking at your grid through this lens, then your decisions.
Change. You stop asking like, oh, do I like this image, or do I like this client? Or do I wanna make sure that I'm posting something from this shoot so that I am making sure that this client feels good? You're gonna start asking, does this actually belong here? Because your grid is not, or should not be a collection of your favorite images.
It is a system, and that system is either reinforcing your brand or it's diluting it. So I want you to take a step back and I want you to look at your work through the [00:19:00] lens of your client. And if someone landed on your page and saw nine images, would they immediately understand your artistic voice?
Would they feel consistency with your lighting, your editing, your mood, your composition? Would it feel calm and intentional? Or does it feel really scattered and unclear? Because that answer really matters. The halo effect is literally already happening. Whenever people jump onto your feed, those first impressions are being formed and decisions are already being made.
The only question is, is are you guiding that process or are you leaving it up to chance and. Whenever you begin to take control of that, whenever you begin to understand how powerful perception really is, that's when your brand can shift. That's whenever your work feels elevated, that's when in the eyes of your client, everything you touch begins to feel like gold.
So [00:20:00] here's what I want you to take from this, the way that people perceive you. Is not random and not just you. The way that people perceive your brand is not random. It is shaped literally within milliseconds by what they see. And once that perception is formed, everything else either becomes easier. Or harder because of that perception.
And I actually saved this little Diddy for the end here because it really drives this point home. And you guys know that I'm not going to be,
you guys know that I am going to be a little bit diabolical and I'm gonna bring a serial killer into the mix to land my plane here because. Ted Bundy was a walking, breathing example of the halo effect, and I know that I sound really unhinged per usual, but stay with me. He was [00:21:00] considered attractive and polished and well-spoken, and because of that, women trusted him almost immediately again because he was attractive.
The women he captured, trusted him. Their brain told them that because he was hot, he was good, because he looked nice. He was nice, and because of this, they naturally trusted him. The brain saw something that looked right and it filled in the rest of the story incorrectly. No, I don't, I don't want that to happen.
I want your, potential client's brains to fill in correctly, but. If perception alone can create that level of trust, then your grid has the power to do the same thing in your favor. And if Ted Bundy could capitalize on the halo effect, then I feel very confident that you a human with [00:22:00] actual integrity and business can do so too.
Okay, so on that note, the doors of the Mastermind are officially open. We start in one month, and because this is a smaller group, we are being incredibly intentional about who comes into the room. So if you are ready, if you feel that pool, if you want some more serial killer lessons weaved into your business chats, then I want you to book a one-on-one call with me or with Ella who is on my team.
We will walk through with you to figure out where you are, where you wanna go, and whether or not this is the right fit for you. The link for that is in your show notes and if you've been waiting for the right time, this is it. Alright, that is all for now until my next rant about something completely untethered and unmanageable.
bye for now, friends,
Outro: Okay, so that is a wrap on this episode of the [00:23:00] Posers Podcast. If you loved it, please subscribe, rate, and review because honestly, algorithms are needier than all of our ex-boyfriends combined. And ladies, I need all the help I can get. If you've got thoughts, questions, love letters, even hate mail, please send them my way.
I actually read every single one of them. So until next time, stapled, stay messy and don't let the bullshit win. Tits up. Ears open and go build something. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
