This Wednesday we hosted our monthly masterclass, this time on how to give an interview on TV and Radio!
The keynote speakers of the night were Ania Jeffries, one of our members who is a confidence coach, author and radio presenter, and Rafael dos Santos, the founder of HIGH PROFILE CLUB and a TV presentation expert. Rafael’s TEDx Talk, “What it takes to be a migrant entrepreneur,” has gotten over 155,000 views online.
Our bizdev Tanya started the evening off with a brief introduction to HIGH PROFILE CLUB. Tanya announced the publication of our new book, “Owls to Peacocks: 50 Successful Entrepreneurs,” which will be coming out in September. We are all very excited!
Then, Tanya led our crowd in a short networking exercise. Our audience loosened up and met new friends as they were told to find 3 things in common with someone they’d never met before.
Then came our first keynote speaker, Ania Jeffries. Ania spoke at length about first impressions, since you never get a second chance on radio and TV. In fact, she said that her son had an experience where a radio station gave him half an hour to run from his WeWork, show up and present.
Ania also said that it is important to be genuine and really say what you mean. A thousand people can say what the radio stations want to hear, but the radio station chose you to speak your own thoughts! Besides, if you come out of an interview and realise that you didn’t say what you wanted to say but rather what other people wanted to hear, you’ll kick yourself for losing out on your one opportunity to be heard.
Also, Ania stressed the importance of being vulnerable as well. Sometimes, being vulnerable is one way to really connect with your interviewer and even your audience. Personal issues can resonate with a large crowd, sometimes unexpectedly! If you always present a two-dimensional image of yourself, people can find it hard to relate or trust you.
Finally, Ania spoke about how it’s YOUR interview, so you can always find a way to turn it around to what you want. If the interviewer is giving you hard questions or even, rarely, being aggressive or rude, you can always use your positive energy to make the interview into what you want it to be. An easy trick Ania mentioned was flattering the interviewer so they are more inclined to be kind to you. Or, you can flip the question around so you can give the best answer. It’s YOUR interview, so you should be happy with how it comes out!
Rafael led the next keynote presentation by introducing a bit of his previous TV work. Rafael has especially been featured on TV for his work with migrant entrepreneurs. In his presentation, Rafael expressed the importance of verbal clarity and body language to portray yourself in the best and most engaging light on television.
He first led the audience through a short verbal exercise. Rafael asked the audience members to give a one-sentence pitch about themselves, in the format “I am ____, a ____ who does ___.” We all discovered that some people have very vague pitches or don’t have a personal pitch prepared at all! Rafael stressed how important it is to be clear and concise with a TV presenter who does not have a lot of time, as well as for the audience that has a short attention span. For instance, saying that you “help businesses plateau” doesn’t mean much, because it is technical language and the word plateau itself is unimaginable. But saying that you are an “author who as written three books” is very concrete and imaginable, because we have all seen books.
With these tips in mind, select members of our audience were lucky enough to have a live mock interview with Rafael! Our whole crowd gave them feedback, and it was certainly a very educational night for all.
All in all, our masterclass was a very engaging event with lots of audience participation and chances for audience members to practice their public speaking. We heard a lot of interesting stories, from researchers to beauty influencers, and we are excited for everyone to use these skills in real interviews out in the world!
You can sign up for our future events here.
By Christie Yu
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