Ep 182 Meghan Trainor Refuses Media Training June 30, 2016

Singer Meghan Trainor claims her first media training experience was so awful she quit and never went back.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

This story was all over the tabloid press recently. Meghan Trainor is a huge, huge success as a pop singer. You see her everywhere. Her songs are on every kind of Amazon playlist, Pandora, you name it, radio, movies. She's a big deal right now, and I have to confess, my family members, including myself, we enjoy listening to her music. So it struck me as interesting, sad, odd, and yet totally expected when I heard the following. She recounts when she was a brand new artist and was a part of a label, she was put through a media training class. Here's what she told one tabloid. She told the Evening Standard, quote, they put new artists in these classes and apparently everything about me was wrong. This is what she told the London Evening Standard. Quote, the woman was and she's talking about the media trainer. The woman was like, don't do that, don't say that. And just no. I was like, I got this. So I never went back. She says, I say stupid expletive filled all the time. However, she claims she wants to be herself and tell the truth rather than memorizing answers. That's the part that jumped out of me in this story. She wants to tell the truth rather than memorizing answers. Forgive me for taking umbrage at this when no one else in the world cares, but I do want to take this opportunity to explain or to clear up some severe mis conceptions on what media training is all about. More in a moment.

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So when I hear this, I think I feel the way an Irish person must feel if someone says, oh, I don't want to go to Ireland. I hate drinking green beer and eating Lucky Charms all day long. Well, have you ever been to Ireland? That's not really what it's about. That's kind of a ridiculous media caricature and that's kind of how I feel. I have no doubt that Meghan Trainor was speaking authentically and this happened to her. But it is a shame. The thing that jumps out to me is that she felt like she was being pressured to lie and being pressured to memorize answers. In my humble and being told no and what not to do. And in my humble opinion, having done this for 32 years, these are sort of the three worst things you could do in immediate training session you shouldn't be having people memorize answers. You shouldn't be spending a lot of time telling them no, and you certainly shouldn't tell them they have to be dishonest or lie. Megan and I'm not pitching you as a client, but I am available if you're ever looking for someone completely different from your last trainer. Good media training is simply about helping you come across your very best to come across the image you want and to communicate the message you want and to get the quotes you want in the story. So no, you don't have to lie. Whoever told you that didn't know what in the world they were talking about. You certainly don't have to memorize answers. Now what I do stress and what I think most media trainers do stress is you need to figure out what is most important to you, what messages are most important to you, and be able to come back to them from time to time. Time. It's not essential that you memorize them word for word, but thematically you need to know what's most important to you so you're not just bouncing all over the place all the time. It's not like a hit record where you really need to sing the lyrics pretty much the same way each time or your fans will be disappointed. It's not like that. But you do need to have some sense of what is most important to you to share with the readers, viewers, listeners of that media outlet. Megan that's all. All we're really after. More tips in just a moment.

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The other key revelation from this story about Meghan Trainor is that the trainer basically spent all time the media trainer spent all the time saying don't see this, don't do that, don't say this, don't, don't, don't, don't. In my experience, human beings don't really work react very well to being told what not to do. Whether you want to go as far back as Adam and Eve, don't eat that apple. Whatever your cultural reference point is, human beings do not like to be told what not to do. In fact, it arouses their curiosity and interest in doing that. Even more so. What my approach is, and I'm certainly not unique in this, what my approach is and what I think most good trainers approach is to focus on what someone is doing well, to focus on the positive, to focus on improvement. When you're media training now, there is a funny thing, a funny phenomenon that goes on quite often. When I started training, I'll ask people to. I'll either do brief interviews with them or have them stand up and speak. We'll do three or four like that, quickly watch them. I'll ask people to get ready to critique themselves. I want to know what they liked, what they didn't like. I said, be harsh on yourself, but be fair. Give yourself equal time, pros and cons. But then what I do, and I do this in every training, the first thing I ask them is, I just want to know what you liked about how you came across. How did you move? How did you sound, your voice? Did you seem likable? I just want us to catalog what your strengths are. And a very high percentage of the time people will tell me, dj, I didn't like anything. I thought I was awful. What do you think? Go ahead, rip me apart. So there is this odd phenomenon where people are begging me to rip them apart. Guess what? I don't do it because I'm a big believer in human nature. And it's just human nature to get depressed and psych yourself out of. All you do is overwhelm yourself with a negative. So what I do, and I think any good trainer does, is you start by talking about, what does this person do well, and everybody does something well, typically, either their speaking speed is okay or their volume is okay, or they move their hands. And you do want to move your hands when you're speaking in front of the media or giving a speech. So focus on what they're doing. Well, what happens then is the person relaxes a little. They're like, oh, I'm not a complete failure. I'm not a hopeless case. It relaxes them, makes them realize they don't have to learn everything. They're already doing a number of things well. And now we can focus on a few pinpointed areas for improvement. And that's a technique I've used for years and years and years. And it's just a lot more effective than someone coming in and me doing an interview with them and then saying, okay, here's 72 things you did wrong. Now, I could make the case an intellectual case and an honest case that someone might be doing 72 things wrong. The problem is, even if they agreed with me, even if they respected my opinion intellectually, emotionally, they'd be so overwhelmed that they'd want to go jump out a window. Or in Meghan Trainor's case, just walk out of the training facility and never come back. This can happen to anyone in any field. You could have a piano teacher telling you you must hit every key 10 times until your fingers bleed and make you hate playing the piano, too. I remember in third grade the teacher saying, you must color every single inch of the paper. Nothing can remain white. You've got to have all the sky blue if that's going to be. And it made me not enjoy artwork. And yet, obviously, some people in the world have learned to like artwork and have become great artists. Now, I'm not blaming my third grade teacher on me not becoming the next Picasso. I don't think it was ever a strong interest or talent of mine. But having a teacher like that who wants to focus on the negative, oh, you left a white space here. What was not a good thing? I think it's true in almost any human skill. It's definitely true with the skill of speaking to the media and giving presentations. Now, Meghan Trainor, you've done well for yourself. You're obviously a huge success. You've sold millions of songs. So this isn't going to be the end of your career just because you didn't go through every step of the media training. And you might not ever have to have it. But think of it this way, if you're winning a Grammy Award and you're going out on a stage and being seen by millions, you're going to want to look in a mirror to see how does the rest of the world see you. If you're releasing a new album, you're going to want to hear how it sounds before you make it available for download. It's the same thing with speaking. Whether it's to the media or an awards acceptance speech. Practice it until you like what you see and like what you hear. And if you don't really love it, keep practicing. And if you still don't love it, that's when you should reach out to a media trainer or a presentation coach. They can help you get to the point where not that you're lying or you're memorized, but get you to the point where you like what you hear and what you see of yourself. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me as always. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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