Make your ONLINE MEETINGS, SALES AND TRAINING tighter, more engaging and more effective (and relax, because I’ll be delivering it via my rock solid, ethernet connected 5G router)
Give your REMOTE TEAMS a shared team-building adventure – run a Virtual Newsroom for an hour, and read the news off a teleprompter!
I can help you with both.
Because in TV News, if broadcasts are boring, people tune out.
Choose from my range of online masterclasses or coaching below.
Each session lasts around 50 minutes, but I can make them shorter or longer to suit your timetable.
Book me for one, or ask me to run two or three as a half day – with plenty of coffee breaks!
Or ask me to customise the content to create a bespoke event that tackles your team’s needs head on.
(And if you’re after something that’s one-to-one, click on the COACHING button — number 9 on the list)
An online workshop that gives practical tips on making virtual meetings, training and sales more engaging and efficient — to help you really ‘Hold the Zoom Room’!
What happens: I play video examples from news bulletins that demonstrate the importance of opening headlines, framing on camera, communicating via a microphone to people you can’t see, using interactivity, and ending bang on time … to gain and maintain audience engagement.
Up to 5 Key takeaway “Newsroom Secrets”: open your event with impact/headlines — think carefully about your visual background — rehearse the tech — use people’s names relentlessly to keep things moving — finish on time by ensuring you have something you can drop at the end.
Curious? Watch me in action in my 2 minute ‘REMOTE WORKING’ video below!
This workshop uses a high speed news writing exercise to focus on clarity of language and messaging in communications.
What happens: participants are given a page of densely written, jargon riddled ‘news copy’. Their job is, alone, to turn it into three news stories, of three sentence each, that a member of the public would understand.
Key takeaway “Newsroom Secret”: Ditch the jargon. It’s okay to use short, plain words. If a 14 year old wouldn’t understand what you’ve written, re-write it.
Curious? Watch me in action in my 2 minute ‘COMMS’ Video below!
A workshop that uses real news examples of ‘storytelling’ to improve sales and communications.
What happens: we discuss why ‘storytelling’ is so powerful in business — and I reveal the formula that journalists use to find and tell impactful stories on eye-watering, same-day deadlines. In the room, then and there, I set participants to work on finding the stories in their own business that will win trust with both internal and external audiences — improving both profit margins and working relationships.
Key takeaway “Newsroom Secret”: you don’t need a six month campaign to find and tell a powerful story in business. With a broadcast journalist’s mindset, you can do it in hours –ready for that quick meeting, short-notice presentation or snap social media campaign.
A workshop that uses breaking news to explore the tension between perfection and agility.
What happens: participants are handed a breaking news scenario — and have to work out which key parts of it to report before the deadline, only minutes away.
Key takeaway “Newsroom Secret”: when having to make very fast decisions, it’s more important to get something out, than get something out that is perfect. People don’t miss what you don’t give them, because they don’t know they’re missing it.
Curious? Watch me in action in my 2 minute ‘PRODUCTIVITY’ Video below!
A 45 minute webinar that reveals a broadcaster’s formula for communicating and connecting … down a lens.
What happens: you participate in a webinar that’s pacey, engaging, starts with impact and ends on time. (And how often have you sat through ones that aren’t?) You’ll leave with at least three tools you can use immediately to do the same in your webinars — ensuring that your audiences take the action you want after they’ve clicked ‘Leave’ …
Key Takeaway “Newsroom Secrets”: never start with the boring bits — give people time to reflect and commit — and ditch half the detail on your slides. I’ll show you how.
A workshop that uses story selection dilemmas to explore leadership and courage
What happens: participants are given a list of five news stories — they must choose the ‘running order’. As they do so, breaking news disrupts their conversations as the deadline approaches — but they must still come up with a decision for their audience.
Key takeaway “Newsroom Secret”: taking an unconventional and/or bold decision can be a risk — but it is very likely to demonstrate sound leadership, and very unlikely to be demonstrably wrong. Speaking your mind isn’t a fault — if done respectfully, it’s a strength.
Curious? Watch me in action in my 2 minute ‘LEADERSHIP’ Video below!
A lively and challenging workshop that takes you behind the scenes of a live TV News bulletin to reveal how broadcasters convey information clearly, within a strict timeframe.
What happens: I reveal the structure of a TV News Bulletin that must fit, to the second, within a specific timeframe in the BBC’s news schedules. This leads to discussion about timings, brevity and clarity. Participants are each challenged to deliver a message in 30 seconds precisely. We move on to discuss the skill of ‘leaving things out’, and we look at examples within news. I share ‘before’ and ‘after’ examples of news reports, enabling participants to discover for themselves how leaving things out will usually aid, not blur, understanding. Participants are challenged to write, and deliver, a ‘LIVE’ news bulletin, compiled on the spot on a tight deadline. We discuss how they can apply this time-focussed analysis to their management of meetings.
Key Takeaway: keeping things to time is a skill that can be learnt, and will be appreciated by staff and clients. Knowing which facts and figures to leave out, while ensuring they can be found elsewhere, is a skill deployed by good leaders, as well as all journalists.
What happens: you brief me on the reason you’ve booked me — perhaps sending me examples of interviews that you or your team have already conducted (but it’s no problem if they’ve never done an interview in their life!) I then create a bespoke training session, half or full day, that will be fun as well as effective. This could include all or some of the following:
ROI: your staff will have gained a real understanding of how the broadcast media actually work and think, delivered by a former BBC journalist whose entire career has been at the sharp end of news production, reporting and presenting. Your staff will be able to put that to their advantage, and approach any experience with confidence and ideas, rather than anxiety and trepidation.
A bespoke service that gives you a chance to discuss your own thoughts, build on what you’re already doing well, and work on what you could do even better.
What happens: we meet (face to face or virtually) to discuss a project or presentation that you may be working on. You may then send me examples of a recorded event or slides that you may want to improve upon. Based on what you are already doing, I reveal how a journalist would approach your challenge, for you to try. We meet again for a second meeting a few days later, when we work on your implementation of these ideas together. We may meet again for a third session when you put together the elements that you have been working on, amounting to a confidence building ‘dress rehearsal’ ahead of your own event.
What’s the ROI: you will be able to approach your project or presentation aware of techniques that will reduce your nerves, increase your impact and ultimately make the impression you want to make. You’ll have had the benefit of a tried and tested BBC approach … pure and simple!
What happens: we meet over coffee (or virtually, if you prefer) and have a good chat. You tell me about yourself, your business or service. We spot the jargon together, and figure out how you could translate it into fluent human. When you’re ready (on a separate day, perhaps) I record a relaxed chat with you that will ensure your staff or potential clients and customers warm to the real you in your video messages — rather than a nervous and stilted version of ‘you’ that can be so off-putting in a video.
What’s the ROI: you’ll build your business, and/or build relationships with your staff, by discovering the secrets of communicating quickly and clearly by video message — boosting your confidence recording spontaneous warm video messages in the future.
It’s never been so important that staff are confident working and taking part in meetings remotely.
Meetings are just like news bulletins. They need headlines, they need confident delivery, and they need to start and end on time.
Otherwise your audience will just tune out.
These are skills I’ve developed over more than 30 years as a BBC TV journalist. And they’re skills I can share with you and your teams online.
Get in touch now
That was entertaining, precise and very useful. I particularly liked the way you involved everybody so all felt involved and challenged. I look forward to seeing the top tips in action in our team. Huge thanks, John.
Caroline Underwood MBE, Chief Executive, Philanthropy Company, London – January 2021
Getting together by Zoom or Teams is never going to be as good as getting together in person.
But my 50 minute online workshops will leave your staff feeling valued, energised (and quite possibly entertained.)
They cover the same ground as my face-to-face workshops:
Participants watch video clips from TV news bulletins, played on shared screens. They vote on key decisions, and gather in chatrooms to debate — as the countdown clock ticks down, just as if they were on a newsroom bulletin deadline.
Staff who feel isolated will feel valued. New skills will be developed that could transform performance when normal business life returns.
And you’ll have developed skills that are never needed as much as they are now.
Get in touch nowMy free to download, video illustrated guide that will give you the confidence to record more video messages — whether for your website, your staff or your clients. Because video builds trust — and in the age of the smartphone … ‘we’re all broadcasters now!’
Subscribe to DownloadIf you find these forms a bit annoying, just give me a call on 07850 188620 or 01273 606246 — I always like to chat about how I might be able to help. Or just send an email to john@johnyoungmedia.co.uk — letting me know what you have in mind, and we can take it from there. If you do like the forms, don’t forget to put something in each box marked with a *.