If you’re a good looking CEO, you just might be leaving oodles of cash on the table for your business. How? By not being more visible in your marketing and selling, that’s how. Here’s how science backs up my point…
Beauty Sells
In his book Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful, Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas, found a whole bunch of research that attractive people earn more money and are more successful. One research said that beautiful men and women earned 5% more than people with below average looks over a lifetime. Another one found that above average looking people who applied for loans were more likely to obtain loans and to pay lower interest rates than below-average looking borrowers. The crazy thing was that this was even true when the two groups of borrowers didn’t differ in their demographic characteristics (age or gender) or credit history! In fact, it turned out that the attractive borrowers were MORE likely to be delinquent on their loans than the less attractive people. Is this sad or what? I guess not if you’re good looking.
Beauty Isn’t In the Eye of the Beholder
Ever heard of the phrase he/she has a face “only a Mother can love?”. Well, believe it or not, your Mom doesn’t determine your attractiveness. There is a scientific definition of beauty and it has to do with symmetry. If your eyes, ears are equidistant to the middle of your face, if your nose and lips are in a specific proportion to the width of your face all determine if you’re ‘beautiful’. There’s even a website that assigns a beauty score for you. Mine as you see in the above picture wasn’t that high but I’ll take anything above a 5/10.
Beautiful CEOs Profit Everyone
Yet another research conducted by two economists at the University of Wisconsin tested the CEO attractiveness vs. stock prices. They rated the CEO on several criteria of attractiveness and measured the stock price movement 5 days after a new sexy CEO appointment announcement. Incredibly, they found that for each point of CEO attractiveness on the ten-point scale, a company gained, on average, a one-per-cent boost to its stock price. That means that an attractive CEO has a wide spread benefit for their employees and shareholders alike.
Leaving Money On The Table
All this research has proven one thing that I have been telling my clients for years (omg I sound like my Mom!): when attractive CEOs refuse to get visible in their marketing and sales, they miss out on loads of opportunities to influence more people and to convince more clients to give them the business. Look at highly visible CEOs like Richard Branson who is constantly in the media and like Canada’s own Christine Magee of Sleep Country fame who stars in every one of their commercials. Then there’s smaller company CEOs like me who do TV appearances, speak at conferences and do webinars to keep visible.
If You’re Not Attractive
Listen, I’ve struggled with body image issues all my life. So if you don’t happen to have a symmetric face or have had an accident which has disfigured you, what do you do? Well, first I say that in today’s modern day and age, if there’s anything you can do to increase your level of fitness, appearance, style and anything on the surface-use it. If you have a physical impediment that doesn’t allow for that, like my friend Dan who was burned in the face as a child and operates a multi-million dollar successful training company-make your Mess your Message (as Suzanne Evans would say). Use your story to your advantage and make it part of your WHY for how you help people in your business.
I believe any visibility is better than none in business. Too few people are willing to step out. Many more CEOs (especially women) would be happy to let their sales teams take the lead. And that’s a shame. But it’s a double shame when you’re beautiful and you’re not visible. Then- well, you’re just leaving money on the table, aren’t you?
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