Ep 76 Can You Make Cheap Shots if Your Competitors Do March 16 16

So if your competitor does something in a media interview, a speech, or a debate, does that mean you should do the same thing? Respond in kind.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So, folks, here's the context for this question being posed. In late February, in the 2016 presidential campaign, things got heated between Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. Rubio became the consensus establishment candidate going up against Donald Trump. And Donald Trump has consistently mocked and ridiculed Marco Rubio, essentially called him a little boy, called him the little senator, mocked him for sweating too much, said he looked like he just got out of a swimming pool. At one point, Donald Trump took a bottle of water and sort of threw it around at a press conference, mocking how much that Marco Rubio was sweating. Truth be told, Marco Rubio does appear to sweat a little more than other candidates on political debates. So there's an element of truth to that. But certainly the level of mockery, the ridicule, is much greater coming from Trump than any traditional political candidate. And so far, it seems to have done nothing but help Trump. His supporters like it. He gets tremendous media attention, and reporters barely even bother to criticize something like that. There's so many other things they'd rather criticize Trump on. So finally, Marco Rubio decided to strike back. He started mocking, ridiculing, joking about Donald Trump. And at one point, he said, you know, Donald Trump's very well known for having small hands. You know what they say about guys with small hands. And if you're a comedian, that can sometimes work. If you're Donald Trump, that can work. But for Marco Rubio, a sitting United States senator, someone who's seen as a serious politician, someone who's seen as mainstream, a voice of the establishment, it did not go well. Pundit after pundit mocked and ridiculed Rubio, saying this was beneath the dignity of the office of the presidency, that Rubio cheapened himself and that he was essentially making comparisons and mocking the size of. Well, you can figure it out, folks. He wasn't talking about just wearing smaller gloves. So it was clearly intended as a slam, as a fight fire with fire, because Rubio had thus far sort of kept his hands off of attacking. Trump had been much more gentlemanly. And apparently he and his advisors felt like it wasn't working, wasn't winning any primaries, and you can only come in fifth and third and occasional second for so long before people write off your campaign. So they decided, well, if it's good enough for Donald Trump. It'll be good enough for us. Here is the problem, though, folks. What works for one candidate doesn't necessarily work for another. Donald Trump's entire rise to power, to fame, has been on the back of insults. He's always picking a feud with someone in New York. I mean, he's calling Rosie o' Donnell a big fat slob. Ten years ago, before he entered the presidential race, he mocked and ridiculed Arianna Huffington for being ugly on the inside and out. Said no wonder her husband left him for a man. That was the right decision to make. I mean, really vicious, vicious, harsh attacks. He's done it so often, it's become a part of his brand. And it gets to the point where it's noteworthy. If he were to not attack someone viciously in a mean spirited, cheap way, well, Marco Rubio doesn't have any history of that. He has a history of being sort of clean cut and all American and youthful and vigorous and mainstream and appealing and acceptable to everyone. So when he starts making off color jokes that essentially make fun of the size of another candidate's private parts, it just struck people as cheap, as shallow, as inauthentic. Trump. Regardless of what you think of him, no one could say he's being phony for attacking the manhood or womanhood of someone else. I mean, that's just who he is. That's what he's done for the last 40 years in the spotlight before he ran for president. You might not have heard of him as much, although he had a national show in primetime on NBC. But before that, he's been a staple of New York tabloids seemingly forever, certainly since the 1970s. So for him, it's totally consistent with his brand to make cheap shots, to be vicious. There's an old saying, you wallow in the mud with pigs and you just get mud all over yourself. That is essentially what has happened with Marco Rubio. Folks, I'm not being partisan here today. Some of you may love Trump, some of you may hate him. I'm not endorsing Marco Rubio over Donald Trump. I'm simply trying to dissect a particular media situation and a strategy. What has happened, why it happened that way, and why that may in fact be useful to you. So my recommendation is you always have to think about not just did someone else do it, but would this work for you? Is this fitting with people's perceptions of you? Does it fit with your brand? Someone like a Gary Vaynerchuk, a new media guru, extremely popular in social media, curses all the time, uses the F word in speeches where people are paying him $75,000. It works for him. That's who he is. But if you are a straight laced conservative politician of either party, known for your advanced degrees and never ever cursing and all of a sudden you start throwing in ain'ts and F bombs in speeches and interviews, it's going to seem fake, it's going to seem phony, it's going to seem inauthentic. I guess that's the biggest problem Marco Rubio had it looked like he was being desperate, copying Donald Trump. Say what you will about Donald Trump, but when he's attacking someone, mocking someone, using hyperbole, ridiculing someone in a vicious, nasty way, he's clearly being authentic to Donald Trump because that seems to be his number one pastime. Remember, Donald Trump is not someone who's out drinking and partying late at night. He doesn't touch alcohol. He's not someone who appears to have a lot of other hobbies. He likes being in the media. He likes talking, he likes picking fights with people. That is his thing. So when he does, works for him, when Marco Rubio does it, it falls flat and it generates a lot of criticism and in fact doesn't, certainly in the most recent primaries. Forgive me for, for those of you who are watching this in later years or later months, it's dated. But I'm talking to you in March, early March of 2016, when we were still in the middle of the Republican primary contest and Marco Rubio just did this. And then the very next set of elections on Super Tuesday, he did it very, very poorly and is expected to likely leave the race if he fails in the Florida primary in a couple of weeks. So that's the big lesson here, is you, you can't just do something because your competitor at another company did it or your adversary in a political campaign did it. You had to look at it through the lens of how will your supporters and potential supporters, customers, clients perceive it. Is it going to be seen as authentic to who you are or is it going to seem phony, fake, contrived, desperate? And that's why you can't give a one size fits all rule. I mean, that's what's, that's, to me, what's interesting about public speaking, speaking to the media, media strategy, crisis communication strategy, is there aren't that many one size fits all rules. You always have to look at it in terms of context. As we have discussed in other podcasts, even the generic rule that all media Trainers give their clients never lie to the media. Even that doesn't work because Donald Trump is proof that you can lie regularly, routinely and be rewarded by the media. Not that I'm advocating lying, but it is a perfect example of why you cannot simply follow generic rules. You have to look at it deeper and within a particular context.

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I'm often asked TJ what's the best way to train someone? What's the best way to prepare someone? How do you get them to do homework? I want to share with you my insight and frankly, some relatively recent developments in what I believe are best practices in this arena.

Inside Doe the Craft of Media and Presentation Training.

So the biggest change in my practice, by the way, for those of you who are new listeners, I have been doing media training and presentation training since 1984. Not always full time. I did it freelance and on the side for many years, but I've been doing it full time exclusively for the last 15 years. I've trained thousands of people and training techniques change over the years. Certainly the one staple since I started in 1984 was you've got to practice on video. That part hasn't changed, but how you do it has changed in part because of technological developments. The single biggest difference in my practice now and the training experience revolves around the fact that everyone has a cell phone these days, which means everyone, and I say everyone. My clients do, and for the most part they all have smartphones that capture video. Does that mean I'm doing a day long training session on my cell phone? No, it does not mean that. I do not recommend that. Here's why it's significant. Let's say I'm doing a day of public speaking training with a CEO or a handful of top executives. Part of what I do now in every training is I talk to the clients a couple weeks in advance and I tell them if you want to get the most out of the training, you've got to do one thing for me, one bit of homework. I need you to create a speech, a presentation, say it out loud, recorded on video, watch it, figure out what you like, what you don't like, and then just keep redoing it. And then email me the video a couple days before the training and email your in house training person, PR person. But you know the speech can be three minutes long. So if you do it once, look at it, make a couple changes, redo it once. That only takes 12 minutes. 3 minutes to do it, 3 minutes to watch it, 3 minutes to do another one, 3 minutes to watch it and email it. So I'm only asking you to do at minimum 12 minutes worth of homework. Will you pledge to me you're willing to do that? Because if you don't do that, you're going to destroy about 90% of the effective of what you're going to get out of our day of training together. So when I pitch it that way, people feel like they can't say no. So I get them to commit to doing the homework. So here's what happens. People practice on video, they look at it, they realize this is awful, I can't stand it. And that motivates them to redo it and to redo it again and again. A couple of other things happen. They get used to hearing the sound of their own voice. Most people hate the sound of their own voice. They get used to looking at their face on video. Most people, at least the clients that I deal with, looked a lot better 10 years ago or 15 years ago. Whenever they were in college or high school, they were perhaps thinner. So it takes a while to just get used to seeing yourself on video. The other thing is, if there are obvious things you're doing that you weren't aware of before, if you see yourself fidgeting with your ring finger the whole time you're speaking, or your head bobbing up and down constantly, you don't need me or any other high priced media trainer or public speaking coach to point it out and tell you don't have your head bob up and down like one of those plastic storks at the checkout of a grocery store or a gas station, it looks ridiculous. You don't need me to tell you that. You can figure it out yourself. So what happens as a practical matter with my clients now is they start this process thinking, okay, it's only 12 minutes. And they'll spend several hours, sometimes several hours over the course of several days or evenings. And what happens is they get to the point where they feel much more comfortable with it, much better. They've already improved a lot. They send me the video. So when we start the day of training and they walk into the room, their first reaction is quite, oh, tj, I've already learned so much. They hated the fact, then they hated me for asking them to do the video. But after the fact, they really appreciate it because they see the growth or process. So if any of you are working with people in house or clients. My recommendation, get them to do videos in advance. Now here's what's going to happen. They will say, oh yeah, I've got a video of myself speaking in a conference from three months ago. I'll send you that. Say, complete, utter waste of time. Don't send it to me. It's not about me seeing you on video. I need you to actually see yourself. Figure out what you like, what you don't like, keep redoing it until you like it. Send to me if you want to get the most out of our day of training. If you want to get 10% out of the training and destroy 90% of the effectiveness, 90% of your return on investment, you don't have to do it. So again, I'm putting pressure on them. It's very hard for anyone who's spending a lot of money to just admit publicly that they want to destroy 90% of the value they could get out of something or destroy 90% of their return on investment. So again, I have to put pressure, pressure on them because people may be videotaped all the time with their speeches, but, but they don't watch it, therefore it doesn't help them. Or they do watch it, but they don't try to improve it right away. So no growth comes. So that's my number one piece of advice for any of you who are in this situation of training another individual, rehearsing, practicing, get them to practice at least a few times on video, just with their cell phone. And that way the time you have together will be so much more productive. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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