TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

9 Jul 2017 · 2 min

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1:40

Short live-stream segment (TJ Walker) advising against 'winging' interviews. Walker argues brief preparation (e.g., 3–5 minutes to pick top three message points and sound bites, recorded on one sheet) leads to shorter, more effective interviews versus unprepared, unfocused calls that can waste time. He offers training services (online courses, workshops, private coaching).

Chapters

Isn't it faster to just wing it when it comes to an interview? TJ People tell me, sure, it's nice to brainstorm on messages and sound bites and rehearse, but if it's busy or my boss is busy, there's no time. So we just have to wing it. Here's the flaw with this strategy. Quite often when people say, I don't know, I don't know when I'm going to find time to repair, I'll wing it. They take the call and next thing you know they spend a half an hour on the phone. No strategy, no focus, no messages and it's just disjointed. 50 different messages are coming out of their mouth. What I recommend is don't do the interview right now. Give yourself some time and it may only take three minutes. Brainstorm on message points. Come down to your top three. Brainstorm on sound bites. Come up with your best ones. Have it on a single sheet of paper. Do the interview when you're much better prepared and focused and you have good quotes. The whole interview might be over in five minutes. So if you spend five minutes to prepare and five minutes doing the interview, that's a total of 10 minutes. The so called winging it way might have ended up spending 30 minutes of your time and you get no results. That's why I believe it's always a false savings of time to just wing it. I'm TJ Walker. I help people speak more effectively to the news media and to live audiences. If you'd like some help with this, give me a call or check out our online on demand training courses or our monthly live public workshops here in New York City, or our in person one on one or group private trainings held anywhere around the world.