Now we're making progress. But we're not quite there yet. Now it's time to put everything together. So what I do at this stage of the training, the rehearsal the practice, is I try to see if the person has assimilated every single thing we've worked on during the time together. So this time I do a television interview, meaning they can't be staring at notes anymore. Typically, I'll do it standing but it could be seated.
And I asked them to try to really do everything we learned how to look comfortable, confident, relaxed, answer questions, have a clear message, deliver the message, bridge back to the message again and again, and have sound bytes throughout. And what I tell them is, if you look comfortable, confident, have a message and hit all three message points every single time if you do that, you get an F minus you fail. What you have to do is have at least one soundbite for each message point at some point in the interview, preferably a soundbite and everything Answer, ideally a sound bite for every message in every answer. So that's the test, I'll typically do this one is a little shorter, because it's harder for the memory to get lots and lots of sound bites. And I want to leave them with a sense of real success of doing this well.
So I'll typically make this three or four minute interview. And we'll do the interview, review it, critique it. Ideally, you're really stressing the positives, you're really focusing on what they did well, you're showing that they have mastered the skills, you're building their confidence, but it's not just some sort of rah rah speech. It's not just Oh, aren't you wonderful, for no reason. you're pointing out highly, highly specific things they're doing well, that will serve them well for the real interview they're going to do later today or tomorrow or next week. So it's a very uplifting time.
This is pretty much near the end occasionally. You've got to do it again. And a couple more times with someone, but for many people, even in a group setting, if you follow this process I've outlined for you throughout this section of the course, they can master this or at least do most of the things really well in the first take for this one. So it's great for building confidence, but if you don't have them at the point where they're great yet, keep doing this do a succession of short ones. You may only do 92nd ones but make sure they can answer questions look good bridge to message points and sprinkle sound bites throughout.