When I'm doing a training with someone or rehearsal, and you've got more than just a half an hour, then here's the next thing I do after I've done that initial interview where there's four separate interviews, and we've isolated what they do well, I then tell them, I say without telling me what you don't like, let's do one more quick interview, you can be standing or seated. Maybe it's only 30 seconds or a minute, just a question or two. But here's the thing, I want you to focus on improving just one thing that you didn't like about your first time on camera. Don't try to fix five or 10 things. If you didn't like the arms and eyes and your hands were frozen and your eyes were darting, don't try to fix everything. Try to focus on one thing and what I tell them is, in my experience, when people focus on one thing and one thing only they succeed every time.

Now it has to be something that is fixable. I can't look at a big screen video of myself and say, Oh, I hate the fact that all my hair fell out and turned gray this time I want it to be full and be. But that's not the sort of thing I can fix like that. It has to be something that the person has power to change. So if they're playing with their ring on their finger the whole time, they can focus just on not fiddling with the ring on their finger. If their eyes are going back and forth between the person and the camera, and it looks like they are nervous and uncomfortable, they can focus just done having steadier.

Icontact. So I said, don't even tell me what you're trying to fix. This is different from how most media trainers work and most consultants because they want to say, Well, here's my prescription for this and to listen to that. And they want to be seen as the really smart person who's got all the answers. I take a different approach and it's highly effective. So What I do is I get the person to say Don't tell me what it is, but I want you just to talk for 30 seconds 60 seconds I may ask you one question might not even ask you a question.

Record them on video a watch it with them. And then I asked them, not Did you improve everything? When I ask is what is the one thing you are trying to do better? And did you make any improvement? Yes or no? Not does it perfect.

There's no other skill in life, math reading any other skill or you went from awful to great in one swing? All I want to know is did you isolate one thing you were trying to improve? And did you make any improvement? Again, in my experience 98 99% of the time when people focus on one specific thing, they do make improvement and that's what I can say. Congratulations. What that means is, you can be essentially your own best media culture.

As media trainer, because I didn't even tell you what to do yet. The sheer fact that you focused on one thing, practice looked at it made improvement you reduce that deficiency, you now have a system in place where you know, you can get ready for any interview. It's just a matter of practicing again and again till you eliminate the things you don't like, and what you're left with the things you do like. So what happens is, this, lets people breathe a sigh of relief. They realize this isn't so wildly complicated or difficult. It also, frankly, makes me look really humble, because I'm telling them they figured it out.

Not me. They don't have to have me there for every single interview micromanaging them. If they learn the process of how to look at their videos, they can make themselves better. Now, you may think well, aren't you talking yourself out of a job? Aren't you making me irrelevant? No.

They are Opposite, your credibility will go way up. When you empower your client, your customer, your colleague, to look their best, they will appreciate you even more, they will listen to you even more, they will value your judgment even more. So that's where we want to get to relatively quickly. If I'm doing a whole day training or a half day training, it may take us about an hour to get to that point after I've demonstrated what to do and what not to do. But it's a crucial, crucial step. It's also something you can do in the backseat of a car on the way to an interview, and really 10 minutes just doing a couple quick practices, getting an isolate one thing they want to improve and do it.

And it really, really helps people. Now you have to be careful. Occasionally someone will pick something that is an abstraction like well, I wanted to be more confident this time, and I didn't succeed. The problem there is They picked something that is inherently abstract and the combination confidence is a function of your voice, your speed, your eye contact, body movement, it's combination of all of those things. You do all of those things the right way you'll come across more confident. So you have to give people explicit instructions on exactly what to focus on.

It can't be something so general and vague and fuzzy it has to be specific of what I doing or not doing with a body part or with my voice do that. And they will be in great shape.