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

Speaking With TJ Walker Dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders.

Welcome to this weekend edition of Speaking with TJ Walker. If this is your first time listening to the program, this is not really where you want to start. This is very different from our program Monday through Friday. Monday through Friday we have top level guests where we interview them about their communication skills, the role of communication and their success in their lives, in their careers, how they prepare for speeches, media interviews, crisis communication tips. They have things that will help them get over their nervousness, their role models and it's about interesting guests and them sharing their wisdom. The weekend is a little bit different. This is just me and what I do is share with you my commentaries where I analyze newsmakers, what they've done in the past week and I'm repackaging the audio from my short form video clips on YouTube. If you do want analysis of breaking news of newsmakers, then you may want to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube.com mediatraining and you'll get those more or less in real time. And that's also where I answer your questions about public speaking speaking to the media. If you have questions about public speaking speaking to the media crisis communic, send them to me. You can post it on the blog. You can post them on our Facebook page, LinkedIn, wherever you're experiencing this, you can also just write to me on Twitter jwalker or send me an email tjediatrainingworldwide.com Interesting week for a slow August week. There's still a lot going on, presidential politics, a lot of other things. So hope you enjoy the series of segments you're about to hear. If you would like to suggest segments where you would like my analysis of what's going on from a communication standpoint, drop me a note. I'm always looking for more suggestions. Send your questions. And please, if you are a regular listener of the podcast, please take a moment to make sure you're fully subscribed in the podcast app. And the best thing of all would be if you could go to the App Store and download. This is on the Apple site Things. Download the app for speaking with TJ Walker. Then it's right there. You've got your own app. You don't have to forget about it. It will automatically be on your phone. It costs nothing other than about 30 seconds of your time to find the app and download it. I'd also very much appreciate if you could share this on Facebook, other social media sites and pass it on to colleagues of yours, people you work with, friends, family who you think have an interest in communication and impro their own communication. Very much appreciated. Thanks so much. And let's hop in to the segments from this week. Donald Trump in the news for, of all things, poor use of teleprompter. Of course. Donald Trump famously, for the last year and several months, has criticized politicians for using teleprompter. One of the hallmarks of his campaign has been I don't use a teleprompter. I'm honest. I speak from the God, I'm real. There shouldn't be anyone allowed to run for president if they have to rely on a teleprompter. Of course, now he's using a teleprompter. The problem, of course, is he's using it poorly. Now, there's been a lot of criticism across the ideological spectrum. So I'm not really attacking his teleprompter just because of my personal feelings about him as a candidate. When he's reading the teleprompter, he tends to squint. He's looking way too much to one of the panels. Typically, you have two different teleprompters, one on each side. He's spending all of his time looking, looking at one, and he's tripping on words, he's mangling words. He looks as though he is looking at the text for the first time. You can't do that. You have to spend time practicing and rehearsing. He famously does it like that. Here's the big tip I'd have for voters in general. When you hear someone criticizing other politicians for using a teleprompter, chalk that up to pure demagoguery. A long time ago, 36 years ago, there were some Democrats who criticized Rock Ronald Reagan for his reliance on teleprompters and cue cards. And that was baloney. And now you have candidates who proclaim to love Ronald Reagan attacking people of the other party for use of teleprompter. A teleprompter is simply a tool to help people communicate more effectively. Criticizing a candidate for using a teleprompter is like criticizing a candidate for using a computer and not writing everything out in cursive. It's an absolute absurdity. But if you're going to use a teleprompter, at least take a few minutes to use it effectively. Many of you have heard me say this before, but again, the basic tips with teleprompter, you got to practice out loud before you're doing it in front of the real audience, you've got to be familiar with all the words. You have to sometimes speak a little louder, sometimes softer, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, occasionally pause. And you have to move your head so that it doesn't look like you're just going back and forth between the two teleprompters like you're watching a tennis tournament. And you can't just focus on one of the panels exclusively. You have to mix it up. Do that and you'll be successful using the teleprompter. Whether you're Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, or Donald Trump. The singer Frank Ocean has a new album out and it has soared to number one on the Billboard charts with more than a quarter of a million sales albums and more than 65 million downloads. What's the significance of this? This is apparently the first time someone has done this without any major label, major distributor, major media company of sorts. He simply made his album, he released it right into itunes, and it started selling. Now, if I were a major media record executive and I hadn't already pulled what remaining hairs are out of my head out, I would really be panicking because this truly shows the almost utter irrelevance to traditional gatekeepers. Now, Frank Ocean was already well known, already respected, already had a huge fan base, and they were wanting more of his music. He hadn't put out a new album in four years. Now he had a record label, Def Jam, but he was only obligated to give them a video. He gave them a video, wasn't even for sale, and then released the audio on his own. Why is this significant to those of us who are not musicians? To me, it really symbolizes what's going on in so many sectors of the media world these days. You have people nobody has ever heard of, and they start a podcast and next thing you know, they have tens of millions of downloads. The people over at the Art of Charm, Jordan Harbinger is one of those. Now, he's been at it for a decade, but somebody not famous like Tim Ferriss, not already a New Yorker, big time best seller like Malcolm Gladwell. Those two also have wildly successful podcasts. But the Art of Charm podcast, which I do recommend, if you're looking for a great example of someone who does a podcast quite well, and it covers issues like influence, persuasion, speaking, goal setting, to me, that's just a fascinating example of how the gatekeepers are not relevant. If you can create content that people like love, you can reach people and you can reach masses, too. Now, unfortunately, I don't have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of viewers on my YouTube channel or my itunes feed yet. But I can't blame big labels or TV networks these days if you're not building an audience. And it doesn't have to be an audience of millions, if you don't build an audience, an audience you care about, quite often it's just a function of a little more time and a little more work and a lot more quality. Is the issue political correctness or common decency? That's the issue with Governor Ron LePage, the flamboyant, some would say, eccentric governor of Maine. Now if you haven't heard of this guy, he is known for making wildly controversial statements. Sort of Donald Trump asked, without the hairstyle or model wife. He may have gone too far this time. I want to share with you some statements he made just in the last week that many, many people, including his fellow Republicans, perceived as wildly racist. Not a little bit racist or racist friendly, but just wildly racist. Here are some of the things he said. Black people come up the highway and kill Mainers. If I am a racist for trying to get black people and Hispanic people and white people and Asian people who come up I95 with heroin, that will kill Mainers, then I plead guilty. But then he says a bad guy is a bad guy. I don't care what color he is. When you go to war, you don't know the enemy. The enemy dresses in red, you dress in blue. You shoot at red. Don't shoot can you been in uniform. You shoot the enemy. You try to. Here's where it gets interesting. You try to identify the enemy and the enemy. Right now the overwhelming majority of people coming in are people of color or people of Hispanic origin. I can't help that he essentially seems to be saying that black and brown people are enemies and that white people are the victims. Now the interesting thing about this guy is every time he holds a press conference or takes questions to apologize or sort of clean up for one mass, he says something even worse. Apparently some legislator had said something he didn't like and the governor then left a vehement, nasty, vile voicemail message that called the guy all sorts of something or other suckers. You can fill in the dots, all sorts of obscenities, homophobic slurs. And that just made matters worse. Now this has gone on really for the entire tenure that he has been in office and he was recently re elected. Now it appears it's not just Democrats and liberals and the media who are upset. Members of his own party have finally had enough. Governor LePage was quite contrite. Excuse me, it's Paul LePage. I may have said Ron LePage. Forgive me if I did. He's now making hints, making suggestions that he may even have to resign. And he has talked about how it's one thing to sort of be against certain people and be seen as politically correct and flamboyant, but it's another to have your own party after you and apparently members of his own party have had enough. Is Paul LePage going to resign? I don't have any inside information on that as of August 30th at 2:30pm when I'm recording this, but certainly his days of wielding any power seem to be diminishing given the fact that he is considered anathema to every Democrat in this state and increasingly every Republican is looking for excuses to get out of the room once he enters. It does go to show you everyone likes to talk about how they're not politically correct, but if you just say obnoxious, vile, racist, disgusting things all the time, it can eventually catch up with you and you have no support left whatsoever. Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman, in the news yet again. This isn't the first time or the second time, it's now the third time. Him in the news, all the major tabloids here in New York for sexting, texting, sexual messages, pictures with a scantily clad young woman, not his wife. Now, I am loath to even bring up this guy's name or mention it, but I do have to toss out one thing, and that is if any of you are developers out there, app developers, I would pay good money on a monthly basis if you could create some app that I could put on my phone, on my desktop computers to block me from ever seeing a story about Anthony Weiner. To me, he's just so irrelevant, so stupid. I feel like I lose about 10 IQ points even reading his name. You may have some other politician or issue or Kardashian or something like that where you'd like a block, but increasingly there is so much nonsense, pop culture, flotsam and jetsam floating around that there's a need to be able to put a block on stuff. If any of you know of an app that will do this, please let me know. I'm quite serious. I would put forth a challenge to any of you if you could prove to me how my life could possibly be worse if I never, ever, ever, ever saw another news story about Anthony Weiner. Now that's my pet peeve. You May have a story on your own. I mean, not that long ago, I was feeling mad about Ebola stories even published by the New York Times because it was obvious to me they were being so demagogic and just pandering to hysteria. Now, a couple other things. This may ruffle some feathers and upset you. I do think there is a massive, massive media attempt to be, on the one hand, other hand, false equality going on. People are talking about Trump and all of his outrageous things and ridiculous texts and campaign managers with abuse charges of women and Anthony Weiner as if they were the same and sort of balanced it out. Well, there's Trump and Banyan on the Republican side and there's Anthony Weiner on the Democratic side. Well, hold on, folks. Anthony Weiner was shamed out of Congress. He was basically run out of Congress on a rail after his first texting incident of texting a young woman pictures of himself in his underwear with certain bulges. He wasn't given a promotion to the Senate or a governor's mansion or the mayor's mansion or the presidency. He was demoted, that is kicked out on the street. He tried to rehabilitate himself, ran for mayor. Voters said, no, we're disgusted by you. We don't want any more of you. And every time he tries to resurface, he humiliates himself. And one party says, okay, if you do wildly disrespectful, stupid, idiotic, moronic things, texting, we're not going to reward you. Another party has said the opposite. So, folks, it's time to quit with a false equivalency. It's also time for me and everyone else to stop talking about Anthony Weiner. Colin Kaepernick, the professional football player, caused a stir recently by refusing to stand up for the national anthem. What lessons are we to learn? So I'm going to leave it to others to judge the patriotism and all that. I want to look at this through the lens of media communication, news hooks, how to capture attention. He was hoping to capture attention to the fact that he does not think that the United States of America treats African Americans and minorities fairly. He does not want to celebrate a country that he thinks discriminates and does not treat all people equally. Here's the thing that fascinated me. He refused to stand several other games. No one noticed till the third or fourth game. So the lesson here is, again, I'm not asking you to refuse to stand for the national anthem, but the lesson here is, if you do believe in something that is strongly out of favor, that is against conventional wisdom, that is against popular will. The fact that people don't notice and instantly and cry and whine and attack you doesn't mean that it won't ultimately provide a strong media hook. It just took a while for people to notice. Once that happened, the flood of interviews came in and Colin could in fact opine to his heart's content on what he believes is injustice in America. So is this going to help his cause? I'm not sure. Is it going to help his career? His endorsement deals? Well, he's already said he anticipated losing all of his endorsements. There is something admirable about someone willing to stand up for a cause knowing it is going to hurt his or her own pocketbook. And that is exactly what Colin did. Before you jump all over me saying I am praising anti Americanism, again, separate issue. I am going to leave it to others to make judgments about whether one should stand or not stand. I love America. I love my country. But it's always kind of struck me as an odd thing to kind of force people to stand whether they want to or not, and whether you're to the point where you're instantly seen as suspicious and suspect if you don't go along with group behavior. But that's just me. What do you think? I'd love to hear from you. Please post your comments right here on YouTube or my Facebook page at facebook.com tjwalker or on Twitter jwalker. President Barack Obama will be guest editing Wired magazine. Now, you see this from time to time where some celebrity in a different field is asked to edit a magazine. Bono is editing Time magazine, things like that. I have to confess I always thought that as a bit of a gimmick, it sort of demeans the hard work of going into being a great editor. Editors, great ones, work 60, 80 hours a week. Many of them they have learned their craft decades after decades of hard work. And to say someone, no matter how talented in another field, instantly has the same skill, I think demeans the process of editing. It always strikes me as a bit of a gimmick. Is this something that Obama's enemies are going to use to attack him? I doubt it. There's too many other things going on. It's a side trivial issue. Being president is a pretty time consuming job. It would be one thing if President Obama were going to guest host a talk radio or TV segment for a half an hour or an hour. That would be plausible. But guest editing an entire magazine? I have no doubt that the President has good taste when it comes to some aspects of technology, modern communication, music, other things, and asking his opinions. If a music magazine wanted him to list what's on his podcast, that is interesting and in fact he's done that. His playlist. Excuse me, his playlist for music, that's interesting. But editing a whole magazine, all they're really doing is asking him for ideas of what he thinks might be interesting or it's something kicked down to the staff level. I think it's a bit of a gimmick. I don't applaud media organizations doing that. But hey, here we are talking about Wired magazine. It's a great publicity hook for the media outlet. It's a nice publicity hook for the politician or the celebrity. I don't think readers, viewers, listeners, media consumers are really receiving any benefit from it. Katherine Ann Australia writes in with the following TJ I have a brief radio interview tomorrow that they will also film and may televise later, depending on content. So I'll be with headphones but won't have a presenter to look at. Reviewing what is online, what most people seem to do is look downwards towards the mic slightly. Is that the best thing to do? Is that what you recommend? Any other suggestions? Much appreciated. Kathryn, you're right, you do see a lot of people sort of staring down at a microphone, but it looks weird. Don't do that. I do not recommend that. What happens is that if people are being interviewed on Skype typically, or some service like that, it's not that they're looking at their microphone, it's that they are looking down at the screen. So the camera is on top of their computer. They're now looking at the center of the computer. So it looks odd, it looks distant. My recommendation is if you're going to be around a video camera for any interview and there is no reporter present, just look at the camera. You can't go wrong. Right now it looks as though I'm looking at you, I'm talking to you. And it would have a very different effect if you saw me staring over here the whole time. I might be saying the same content, but by staring off in space, it looks weir distancing. It's disorienting. So my recommendation, if they are, and I'm assuming this is a Skype interview, although I guess it's possible a radio network could send a technician with a video camera, strikes me as unlikely. Either way, if there's a camera present, just look at it as if you were talking to one human being. If you occasionally want to glance down for A second. That's fine. In the beginning of this segment, you saw me reading because I wanted to read your letter and get it exactly right. But if you're simply answering questions, look at the camera, you'll come across more believable, more likable, more genuine. Another problem with looking down at the mic or the screen is people will assume you're reading, that you're not being sincere, that you don't really know this. Couple of other tips to make it go even smoother. If it is a radio interview or a podcast interview being captured through Skype, you mentioned you'd have headphones on. And the reason of course for that is if you're just using outside speakers for the computer and the built in microphone, it's going to be echoey. There's feedback. So the next step up, and it's not a big step up, just use earbuds and a headset and a microphone. It will sound better. But it does look kind of weird to have these dangly things falling down the earbuds. So that's not what I recommend, but it's better than nothing one step up, especially if you are a professional communicator. What I recommend and what I use is an earpiece. This is an earpiece just like what professional broadcasters use. Where it goes in my ear, it then loops around, you see this little curly thing like a telephone, old fashioned telephone line. It loops behind my ear. I then clip it on the back of my shirt or jacket, it goes behind me. So now for the video camera, it's a clean, neat appearance. Of course I have a clip on LAV mic right here. Now this thing, you may be thinking, well TJ, I'm not a professional broadcaster. This cost $8.95 from Amazon. So if you think you're going to be doing interviews on a regular basis using video through Skype, video, Google hangouts, I do recommend you get the earpiece. That way you don't have to have your speakers on and you don't have to have this ridiculous looking big headset earphones or the earbuds down. It's a cleaner, neater appearance will make you come across more professional. Good luck with the interviews, Kathryn, and thanks for the question.

Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ Walker, where the communication skills and practices of world class leaders are dissected.

Sam.