So now you've got a message, that's great. But as I mentioned, you can't just hand your message to a reporter or say it once and say, Oh, that's it, I gotta go. You're going to have to answer questions in interview. Now, answering questions is deceivingly difficult because it seems easy. You've been answering questions your whole life. Why is this any different?

Well, the difference is there's no context. If an investor and employee a colleague, a boss asks you a question, you can answer it, you can answer a fully you can reference what you said two minutes ago, you can look at the person and see are they paying attention. You have control over all of these contextual issues. If you're talking to a reporter, the reporter can interview you for an hour and pull just the last six words out of what you said and leave the other 5000 words on the floor. So that's what makes it different. That's what makes It difficult because not only can you be quoted out of context, you have to be quoted out of context, the reporter has to pull some your words out of the context of a whole interview.

To put it in the final story. Unless it's a whole transcription or it's a live interview, most of the interviews you do will not be live. And that's why you've got to constantly think about how does your answer stand not the whole context of your interview, but sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase. Now, you'll get through this fine, but you've got to keep a few basic principles in mind. For starters, you have to be simple. You cannot give complex answers.

If you find yourself giving a complex answer, stop. And just realize that's going to be better off for a speech, white paper. Email the reporter a book if you want to. Don't give long, complicated answers. If you've done a good job of coming up with an excellent message, you should be able to bridge back to your message on a regular basis in every single answer. Now, I don't want you to sound like a canned phony baloney politicians.

I'm glad you asked June. But what's really important here is my three messages. Now. You can't ignore questions, and just go back to your message points, but you need to answer your questions briefly. But then don't stop. Try to bridge back to at least one of your messages in every single answer, not necessarily in the same order.

Not the same word for word, way of expressing it, but at some conceptual level. hit one of your message points in every answer, and you'll be fine. Now, the hard part for a lot of people is if a reporter asked a tough question with tough work The natural human nature thing to do is to repeat the words. So TJ, don't you feel guilty and ashamed about teaching people how to spin and lie with your media training? Sure, I can understand why some people might think immediate trainers should feel guilty about teaching people to lie and spin. But that would be a horrible way for me to answer it.

No, it's the truth. It's a truthful, polite way of answering. But then the reporter could quote me as saying, oh, even TJ Walker concedes, you know, I can understand why people feel we should be guilty. Don't repeat negatives. Are you a crook? Mr. President?

No, I'm not a crook. A president is not a crook. Don't repeat negatives. Answer the question, but on your own terms. And the hard part is you have to be a little less linear. You have to go right to your point that's relevant.

So if someone and this has happened to me many times, if I'm in a foreign country, political reporters might come up to me and say, literally teach a Don't you feel guilty and ashamed about teaching people how to lie and spin and obfuscate? Now, I don't teach people to lie, but I don't want to say, I don't teach people to lie. So how do I answer that? I don't feel guilty about my profession. But I don't want to say, I don't feel guilty about my profession, because that could have me quoted, as if I had something to feel guilty about. I also don't want to dodge the question.

So instead, I simply answer the question by saying, I feel great to be in a profession where I teach people how to communicate effectively. I'm answering the first part of the question, I'm simply rewriting the question to TJ, how do you feel about being in your profession so this is the hard part. I'm not dodging the question, but I'm not answering it completely, literally. And that is what will help you stay out of trouble. Another thing that will really help you don't be afraid to say, I don't know. There's nothing wrong with saying I don't know.

Because if you guess and you guess incorrectly, you have lied in the eyes of the reporter. So don't do that. Keep these tips in mind plus the idea of constantly bridging back to your messages. Don't repeat the negatives. Don't be afraid to say I don't know. And you will be fine.

Here's your homework assignment. I want you to find a friend, a colleague to ask you questions. Or if you have to interview yourself, and hold yourself in front of a video camera or just audio, record yourself, answering questions and then listen to it.