Okay, now ideally, you've gotten your client, customer colleague to the point where they look more comfortable on camera can answer questions, they have a clear, focused, easy to understand message. And they've demonstrated that not only can they answer questions that but they can bridge back to their three messages each time. So we're making a lot of progress. But here's the point where I like to tell people, there's good news and there's bad news. Because the good news is you can do all of these things all day long. Never get the quotes you want.

Never really end up with success. All your quotes still might be awful, or at best, just irrelevant. We haven't focused on what's really important. The quotes the sound bites for the journalist to get into the final story. Here's where I talked to them about sound bites. So you've already seen in the sound bites section, the theory, the structure, the 10 elements, how I go about teaching That you'll have to adapt that quickly, easily and as fast as possible for the colleagues you're working with.

One great technique is to simply take old articles or old stories in any format where the person you're working with has been quoted. And typically, you'll be able to say, Well, here's the quote you did last month with the journal and you can see, here's where you used emotion and it was quoted, or here's the cliche, and it was quoted, pointed out exactly to them so they can see in their own eyes, because with most people, I find they have no idea why they were quoted. They erroneously believe it's simply random luck, or it's just the bias of the reporter. They have no sense that it's because the actual sentence structure of how they put their ideas out. So the more you can personalize this than if it's one on one, that's the easiest of all, you just show that person, their own quotes because that's what resonates now.

If you're working with someone who has not been quoted in a while or ever, the next best thing is to show them articles or radio or print transcripts, if you can get them of other people within your organization who've been quoted to show them, okay, here was a cliche, here was an absolute, here was an analogy. And this way, it's totally familiar to them as far as the subject matter, the media outlet. If it's nobody in your organization that you can pull from, then find other people within your industry, isolate their quotes. Now, you've got to work with your colleague on coming up with sound bites. What I like to do is to see what people can do on their own. It's a challenge for them.

It's a different thought process. It's not how your typical MBA or a person with a law degree or medical degree is used to sitting around thinking, brainstorming The sound bites, it's a different thought process. And what I have found is some people are remarkably good at it. And some people are horrible at it, and it has no correlation with their IQ or their intelligence. It's just how their brain works. And when I stress to them is, it doesn't really matter if they're good at it or not.

All that matters, is they respect the structure, they respect the process, and they follow the process. So you can if you want, give them all the sound bites. Now the reason I like to see if they can come up with them first is it stimulates a different part of their brain. Sometimes they come up with the great ones. And if it's one they came up with, and they like it, it's going to be so much easier for it to come out of their mouth during the sample interview. But if they're not good at that, even if they've tried to do it and fail, they'll have a better sense of why you're giving them a soundbite because initially It may sound gimmicky or cheesy or clunky.

But the sheer act of them trying to think of sound bites on their own will open their eyes to what you're trying to do when you do give them sound bites, my advice is have them come up with at least a handful, ideally half a dozen sound bites for each message point. So if you have three message points, half a dozen for each one, that's six times three, that's 18 sound bites. And quite often, if I see someone is struggling, they may become up with two or three, I'll quickly give them three more. And that way they've got it what I want to do is have them ideally on a sheet of paper, but if people are more comfortable working from an iPad or phone, that's fine too, but they need to have written down in one spot. three big messages 10 words or less big bold, underneath each message half a dozen In sound bites, ideally, it fits on a single page of paper or a single screen on a computer.

That's the next step. I find with everything to do in media training, media relations, and PR, this is the missing step. Now, if you're a PR person or a trainer, it's probably obvious to you what a soundbite is. It's not obvious to your colleagues, clients customers. And that's why this step is so critical. If you in my opinion, ever let a colleague customer client, go in front of the media without sound bites written down and planned and practiced and rehearsed.

In my professional opinion, you're guilty of malpractice. You're setting up your colleague for complete utter failure. Message points alone are worthless if you don't have a sound bites prepared, as well. So whatever you do, don't run out of time and skip this step. You cut something Else out. Keep this step for any sort of edited interview.

Yeah, it's just a live public affairs TV show or radio program, the sound bites aren't as important. Although, if you're dealing with a political figure and they say something wildly inflammatory, it can still be pulled out and put into other people's story. So don't skip this part. This is the most important part. So please practice with your colleagues brainstorm. And give them freedom.

Let them know Okay, let's come up with stupid stuff. Crazy stuff. Let's not question it. Let's not put our legal hat on. Let's not worry if it's politically correct. Let's just brainstorm as many as possible.

Because then if we have a dozen for each one, we can scratch off some is stupid or silly or not politically correct or legally not quite right. It's easy to scratch things off once you have them on paper. The hard part is to be in the middle of an interview and strategically thinking here's my message. Now let me come up with The sound that's really really hard and you need to stress to them that they shouldn't be thinking of sound bites in the middle of the interview. The thinking needs to be done now, so make sure they have it. Make sure they're comfortable with it, make sure they can read them.