3 Expert-Backed Strategies for Blowing People Away With Your First Impression Nothing is more important than a good first impression. The first five seconds are everything.

If you've ever watched Shark Tank, you know how important it is to make a good first impression. The idea of the show is that entrepreneurs have the chance to pitch their products to a panel of highly successful, highly choosy possible investors. Off-camera, contestants have around 45 minutes to make their pitches, which are edited down to around 11 minutes for the show itself.

But no matter how impressive the product, how well-researched the business plan or knowledgeable the entrepreneur is about the market, the truth is that nothing matters to the sharks (as the investors are called) more than the first few moments after the contestant appears in front of them.

"Whether or not a person likes you is going to be decided within the first five or six seconds of your meeting them," says Barbara Corcoran, real estate mogul and one of the show's longtime judges. "It's not fair, but assumptions are made within seconds about our intelligence, sophistication and abilities."