How the Media Pros Rehearse Their Interviews

Did you just do the homework assignment I asked.

I don’t see it.

I’m going to wait a moment for you OK.

I can’t really see whether you did this or not but I do want to stress it’s critically important.

Now I want to give you more techniques for doing this rehearsal in a way that will really benefit you.

What most people do if they even get the courage to record themselves watch themselves is they instantly fixate on something they don’t like Oh my God I said twice I’m an idiot.

Horrible.

The lesson here is I should never do any interviews I should never make any video for YouTube or Facebook.

That’s the lesson.

Thanks T.J.

I learned a lot.

No that’s not the lesson.

You’ve got to learn how to really look at yourself objectively and it’s hard to do but you had to figure out what works what doesn’t work what you like what you’re not like and what can you fix.

The key is not that you’re perfect looking.

The key is that you come across the best you can you’re not distracting.

You’re not doing anything that makes you look scared stiff nervous or uncomfortable.

Here’s the real key.

It’s not enough to record yourself on video and look at it and write down what you like and don’t like the real magic is if you then do it again and you focus on doing just one thing better.

If you notice that you froze your hands try to unfreeze your hands.

If you notice that your eyes are darting back and forth.

Just focus on having steady eye contact.

Focus on one thing at a time and keep doing it again and again and again and so over time you’ve eliminated the things you don’t like.

Now the key is you have to focus on things that are fixable I can look at a video of myself and say wow I wish I had the same hair I did when I was 21.

Wow I wish I were 20 pounds lighter but there’s nothing I can do about that today.

So we’re not going to focus on those things.

I want you to focus on the things you actually have control over how your voice sounds.

Are you sounding monotone and flat and Russian speaking too quickly if you think you’re speaking too quickly then do it again and consciously focus on just speaking slower if you focus just on that you will succeed.

Now this is something I do in every single private workshop I do whether it’s with a large group or one on one and invariably when people focus on one thing they make improvement and it fills them with confidence because if you can eliminate one floor with one take it’s simply a matter of time till you’ve eliminated all your flaws.

Now where people get into trouble is if they try to fix five things at once your brain can’t focus on don’t lick your lips don’t have your eyes floating around move your hands but don’t go back and forth on your feet that’s too much for your brain it overwhelms it.

So my advice focus on just one thing and keep doing it as many takes as you need until you like how you look.

This is standard homework for all of my private training clients and sometimes they do it one two three times sometimes ten times sometimes 20.

Recently I had a high tech CEO someone who manages 10000 employees around the world.

I asked him how many times did you practice on videos that T.J.

did at one hundred and thirty times before I felt comfortable enough sending it to you.

But then when he came in for the training his first words were Wow.

I’ve already learned so much.

And it was eight thirty in the morning and we hadn’t started yet.

He got used to practicing on video and seeing how he looked and making small changes so I would highly recommend it.

I would beg you to do this right now before watching the next video for me.

So again it’s not enough to practice on video once look at it.

You have to practice again.

Make small changes.

Keep doing it again and again until you think you come across the best you can at your current skill level.

Then when I ask you to do and this is the first time I’ve really asked you to do much in this course I want you to upload the video to YouTube or any other video file sharing service that you like and then put the link in the question and answer section right here.

I’m going to give you my feedback doesn’t cost you anything extra I don’t know why you wouldn’t dig me up on this and your fellow students will critique it too and I would urge you to spend a little time in the Q and A section here and critique your fellow students videos because it’s much easier to critique someone else than yourself.

For most people typically we only see our own flaws to get good at this.

You have to go beyond that.

You don’t want to ignore the flaws but you want to focus on what’s working well so you can do more of it.

Again and again.

So if you really want a big breakthrough in this cause I’m begging you hit pause.

Don’t just have the auto play.

Go to the next video practice on video recorded again and again till you’re convinced you’re coming across the best you can and don’t even worry about your message or sound bites or answers to quit don’t worry about any of that.

Right now we’re just focused on the basic grammar of video of how to look your best.

Because as we talked about earlier if you look scared or uncomfortable no one’s going to focus on the message we don’t even have the luxury of worrying about message yet.

We have to focus on really making sure you come across your very best and there’s nothing distracting.

So please go ahead.

Record as many times as possible.

Don’t just record it once and throw it.

Sometimes people do that.

They record it once.

They don’t even look at it.

They asked me to critique it and I can see they looked scared stiff like they’re reading their hands are frozen.

They’re clearly reading a script.

It’s awful.

Guess what.

You don’t need me to point out the obvious things you’ve been looking at people on the media your whole life.

You already know what doesn’t work.

So use your knowledge base to get rid of this stuff you don’t like and use me and your fellow students right here to help you polish it critique it to take you from B plus to a plus to the highest level possible.

Please do that now.

I’ll be looking for it.