So if you've done what I've asked you so far, you should have about 15 message points, a handful of what you'd like to see in the story, a handful that answer the concerns of the reporters and a handful that deal specifically with the issues of interest to the readers. Now, ideally, there's some overlap, but you still may have a dozen or so message points. There's few guarantees in life. But here's a guarantee, I'll give you all your money back for this course. If you go into a media interview, and you try to push and promote a dozen different message points, you're not going to be successful, you're going to fail miserably. Because chances are, you'll get one, two, maybe three messages in a story.

You try to pick a dozen. You're just throwing out everything and the reporter is going to have the power to decide or the editor is going to have the power to decide I want you to have that power. Not because you bribed the reporter or even told them you better give me a final decision. Let me see the quotes before the story goes to print now. Believe me, that doesn't work at all that just makes you enemies. It all comes down to you deciding before the interview starts right now before this interview in the next couple of hours.

So here's what I want you to do. I want you to get those 15 message points. And I want you to put together something like this a Venn diagram. And it's just a crude diagram. But I have this a y for you. These are all your message points and M for the media.

That's what the reporter might find interesting. Here's the N A for the audience, all those points for the audience. what you've got to do is find that sweet spot, what is a message right there in the middle of the sweet spot that satisfies your needs, the reporters needs as well as the audience needs and you've got to come up with Just three. Now, this is the fundamental backbone of an interview. If you don't do this, you're smiling, right? And knowing all the answers of the questions won't help you accomplish your ultimate goal getting the message you want.

So you don't have a lot of time because there's interviews coming up in the next couple of hours. You've got to make some quick decisions, but they need to be rational, and you need to be able to justify it. So again, for example, if I have my own chemical company and there's an explosion, and workers are missing, I might have is one of my messages. At the TJ oil company safety is our number one priority. So that's clearly a message I want. Where would we put this on this Venn diagram?

That's a message I want, but there's no reporter in the world who's going to find that an interesting message when there's a fire and explosion and missing people. No reader viewer listener in that town who's worried about are they at risk? Should they flee? Should they evacuate? cares about me saying safety is my number one concern? It sounds like boilerplate.

It sounds like generic stuff. Sounds like corporate spin. So that's a perfect example of a message that you would throw away, because it's not in that sweet spot of that Venn diagram. So that's your goal right now. You've got to write down three and I mean, literally just three message points. 10 words or less, not three themes with 14 little note Roman numerals and a this and sub B, there's no three message points.

10 Seconds, should take you to say each 110 words or less, something you can say in about 30 seconds or less. That's your homework right now.