18. How to Cut the Filler Words and Embrace the Silence

So, do you um, sometimes stumble on your words and like uh add fillers in when you’re trying to, uh figure out what to say on like video?

That was painful.

Those ums, uhs… likes, sorta, kinda and the sneaky sentence connectors, SO and… and so… filler words are diluting your message.

Chances are you have a New Year’s resolution related to cutting crap from your life, how about giving up something that is muddying your message instead?

Listen up, it’s time to cut those pesky fillers.

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Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:00

You're listening to Finding Your It Factor episode 18. So , uh, do you sometimes stumble , uh , and like use some , uh, words in between the thoughts that you're trying to say? Oh my God, it was just painful to say that and I couldn't even say it correctly. Let's talk filler words folks. Filler words are diluting your message. If they're a problem for you in your videos or live presentations or just in everyday conversations listen up because today or tackling the filler word beast, here we go.

Speaker 2 0:44

Have you ever wondered how some people just seem to have a way with words? They have this spark that lights you up when you're near them? They have the it factor. And while most people think it's something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your super power to grow your business. It's about you bringing your brand to life by becoming a magnetic communicator in person and on camera, showing up with confidence, authenticity, and inspiration. So are you ready to become magnetic? I thought so. I'm Heather Sager and I'd like to welcome you to Finding Your It Factor. Welcome back and Happy New Year!

Speaker 1 1:36

it factor. Are you, I guess I need to come up with a name of what to call you. My it factor nation, it factor rock stars . I don't know a conversation for another day, but it's 2020. Holy cow I am so thrilled that we are here. We made it to another week. Thanks for starting your new year's off on the right foot. So many people are setting resolutions today trying to figure out how to get healthy or start the morning routine or all these things. I'm here to talk about something super specific that can make a big impact in how you show up marketing your brand and let's start a better habit around filler words. So instead of cutting calories or trying to do some crazy diet or exercise program, though, if that's your jam and you want to do it, make that a habit. But today, let's talk about adding in some better habits around how you show up when you speak and get rid of the crap i.e. Filler words. So before we dive into the conversation today, I have to give a shout out to our listener of the week and today's shout out goes to Natalie Nelson, Natalie says, finding your authentic self and dang it , I can't read the rest of that title while it says your authentic self and something else in iPhone it won't let me read it more, but here's what Natalie had to say. She said, I'm so incredibly excited to listen to this podcast weekly. Heather's a fantastic public speaker and an expert on body language and I can't wait to apply her methods to my own career and watch it take off exponentially. Me too , Natalie. And the only bad thing about this podcast ruh roh is the fact that it didn't exist sooner. So instead of waiting impatiently for the next episode, I'd be listening to episode after episode after episode to catch up and binge like I do with other podcasts. All right, way to turn that one around. That one was awesome. Congratulations, Heather. Thank you so much, Natalie. I'm so excited for you to be successful in this sector. Me too . Such a nice note. Natalie was actually the very first review on the podcast when we launched back in September and I'm just so, so grateful that you're here and I'm grateful to all of you. Just a reminder, if you like and find things helpful on the show, the best way that you can express your gratitude is to hop over and leave a review with like actual words. Tell me what you love about the show. Other people, they come across those just like we all do. We all make decisions around what to put in our ear buds based around whether peers are saying, so if you can do me a solid and leave a review, it'll help this show get in the ears of more listeners as we dive into filler words. I wanted to say, Hey, this episode is brought to you by my new freebie. I am super excited to tell you guys all about it. All right , let's just jump right into it. Filler words is one of the most frustrating things to listen to when you're in a presentation. When a presenter is just listing ums and UHS and er and eh, an all and all these sounds that are not their message. Have you ever been in a presentation where you and maybe a colleague were so distracted by those words that you've made it a game where you started counting how many times a presenter said one of those? I'm so embarrassed to admit that I've done that before, but I have it just, it's hard. It's real hard guys, and here's the thing about filler words. We're going to talk about what they are, why we do them, and why your goal shouldn't be to get rid of them. We're going to talk about a different goal I want you to think about today, but when it comes to filler words, I don't want you to think about filler words having to be this big slain beast that you have to get rid of. The reality is I still use filler words that I just do fine. I just don't use them very much. And the goal is for you to be able to find your level of comfort with this thing because once filler words start detracting from your message, that's when you have a problem. And what you're most likely finding is if you are doing podcasts or let's say video shows, maybe you're doing Instagram stories or Facebook lives, you have most likely come to be more aware of you using filler words. Now most people think filler words are UHS and ums, but there are actually some other ones that sneak in there. So let's talk about those first. Some of the filler words you might be familiar with and just note filler words are gonna vary based off culture. I'm mostly talking about today, ones in the U.S. based off of English language. But the most often common filler words I hear, most likely you two are uh, um, like fill it in. Like, like there you go, eh, ER , kinda, sorta. And here's two that you might not be really paying attention to because technically they're words. So, and, and. So and and , and I'll talk about those a little bit more in a moment. But first let's discuss what the heck is a filler word and why do we use them? So a filler word according to the Wonderopolis , now I need to remove that. Say that again. A filler word. Essentially, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's words means less sounds, sometimes words , but usually meaningless sound that we add into silence. It's often used as a transition in our thoughts and we use them because we're uncomfortable with silence. Yeah. That's where they come from. We're uncomfortable with silence. We also struggle. We also struggle with thinking on our feet. So we will use filler words as a way for us to be like a buffer and see it's now as one of those things that I'm super caught up in thinking about. Oh my gosh, I can't use filler words cause I'm teaching you how to use filler words. But it's just an unnatural thing. So let's just, it's fine. Gonna use some filler words because we all do it. So don't try to judge me on the filler words. Just notice that I'm human. I'm going to do it too . You are going to do it too . The goal is just to do it less so. Filler words is we use them when our brain is trying to catch up to our words and we're using it like a delay if you will, a delay on, I have an idea of what I want to say, but I'm not quite sure yet what's going to come out of my mouth er uh mm . Uh, there it is. That's how it works. And the funny part is we use these filler words without even being conscious of them. Oftentimes we use them and it's someone else who points it out to us or all of a sudden we're on camera and we notice for the love of God, we use so many filler words. For me, I started noticing this when I started shooting video and I would run those videos through transcription services and I realized two things. I don't necessarily have as much an issue using words like uh, and ums . I sometimes use likes though . Those things all come up for me. What I've realized is when I speak, it's all connected with the words and, and so , uh , now you're going to notice it and I just outed myself and that's good because I want you to hear that. Me speaking, coach, communication expert, I still do these things too. So I want you to be comfortable with embracing this idea that you can be awesome at what you do. You can be a rock star and you can be a work in progress. It doesn't mean that you can't be both. And as we think about now, God, I'm doing the whole thing again. I've become like fricking self-conscious around how I'm saying things. But this is what's going to happen to you as you become more aware of this is you're gonna start questioning what's coming out of your mouth and get really freaked out of , can I say words or not say words? Can I trust the words that are coming mouth? If I could have filler words, not filler words, whatever. This is how filler words work. They like seep in like the plague into your language and it's really difficult to get them out. And even when you're experienced and don't say them often you're going to find moments where you're in situations where you are thinking on your feet or you are nervous or uncomfortable and they might creep in, but you might want to do is consider what are those times that make you more nervous than others and what are those scenarios? Maybe it's speaking in public or maybe it's doing video. Maybe it's going live on video. That's the one that freaks you out. Notice between each one of those types live in person on video like prerecorded or lives, which one of those do you find yourself using the most filler words? If you can develop more of an awareness of when filler words pop in more frequently, then you can figure out a plan which is a beautiful thing. I mentioned that filler words often come because we're uncomfortable space in our presentations. We're uncomfortable with silence. We'll dive into that a little bit more. I also mentioned that filler words become a buffer for us thinking and I want to explore that just a little bit further here. I was asking my team, we were doing some research on this because I have my tips and tricks and ways that I approach it. So you know, I've bootstrapped all of my speaking skills in my business. I don't have formal training on speaking. My formal training is being on a stage, actually getting up in front of audiences, figuring out what works, what doesn't work, but I've never taken a formal public speaking class. I think I took a speech class in college. I did some presentation coaching when I was competing at Miss America. Fun fact for another day, but I've never had an actual like speech coach - there I just said like a speech coach. I've never had, I've never had presentation skills training. So I asked my team, Hey, let's do a little bit of research on this and actually talk through what are some mechanics that you can find when it comes to filler words, what's the background behind it? Why are there, there's actually a lot of research on it. So I'm going to geek out for a moment and share with you some of that research because I think once we understand why this is happening and when it's happening, that's the awareness piece I was mentioning. Now we can start doing something about it. So we came across this article on Business Insiders and a link to this article in the show notes, but I want to share with you a few things that came out of that article that I think are super important. For me, information is extremely empowering because it helps me understand that if there's research that backs up what I'm doing slash why I'm doing it, meaning if I'm doing filler, doing filler words, if I'm saying a lot of filler words and I just feel like maybe I suck at communicating or I just feel like, Oh, I get nervous all the time and I don't have to talk to people. If I understand that there's actual research behind it that shows why I do those things, that's powerful because it means that I can actually change it and I in that scenario is you. Meaning that if you find yourself doing these things, good news guys, we can change it. So let's dive in. I want to share with you a few things from that article. The first is, I thought this was interesting and when I first read it up , I didn't agree with it and then I started thinking about it more and I thought, Oh, this is spot on. So they say in the article, those who use more of these so-called filler words and I'm air quoting are probably being more conscious of who they're talking to and what they're saying. They talk about how this research shows that people who use filler words are actually more conscientious. And I thought that was a really interesting thing. I thought, Oh, they're just more nervous. And there's a few things that they talked about that I thought was really interesting. And there was a study done, a professor of applied linguistics and English language at Cardiff University. I had to read that one. His name is Michael Hadford and he said that people use filler words oftentimes to be polite. I had to think about that one for a second. And read further. So he used the example, let's say you're invited to a party. For you to be direct and just say, no, that would not be very polite. So instead we use filler words as a way to buffer sometimes directness or bad news. So the example he uses, and I love this because I could hear someone's language about it, the example he says, you say , um, well, you know, sorry, I can't make it. That seems so much more polite. You're putting that buffer on there that you're thinking about it. You're grappling with the decision and all, you just can't make it versus Nope. That's an example of filler words that I hadn't really thought of before because I've always thought about filler words in the context of presenting in front of a group. But there are aspects of filler words that become dynamic in human language around how we, how do I phrase this, how we interact with other people. So I never thought about filler words being a buffer to bad news. I always thought about it as this spin cycle that happens when we're nervous or we don't quite know what to say or how to phrase things. So this was very powerful for me and understanding that when you think about filler words, this is why we shouldn't be thinking about how do we manage them, how do we manage them in the right moments and replace them with something else? We're going to get to that. Another thing that they talked about in this Business Insider's article is that when we're speaking about something deep or complicated and we're aware that the person listening might need time to catch up because the information we're describing is complex, we have a tendency to use filler words and that might be because we're trying to slow down. We're watching their body language to see if they're getting what we're saying. We're questioning if what we're saying is making sense. We'll throw in some filler words there to I don't want to say dumb it down, that's not the right word, but to create this buffer for them to be able to catch up because maybe we're moving a little slower than we normally would and that might inherently create more filler words in our language. So that was another reason that the article said that we use filler words. They also talked about how there are some studies that like FBI investigators do that talks about how sometimes these little filler words can be deceptive. They referenced another blog post on Psychology Today where dr John R Schaefer , he's a professor at Western Illinois university guys. I'm totally doing a lot of like citing today with articles from other people, which makes me feel very studious and very, I don't very fancy, don't expect a lot more of this. Usually I'm a little bit more like from the gut kind of girl. But I thought this was fascinating. So this professor is a retired FBI special agent and he said these little words that we throw in can also be indications of deception. So his buzzwords , his tag words were like, you know, I mean, right? Like those types of things are things that we use to seek confirmation from the listener or convince them. Now, they also talked about how we have to be very careful, right? Because when someone's using filler words, I just said, right, that was not deceptive. Case in point, when someone's using those words, it does not mean that they're being deceptive, but it could mean they're being deceptive. So I thought that was interesting. I had never really thought about that in the context of filler words. What this brings up though is filler words might not be as straightforward or as simple as just eliminating them, which I think is powerful because it means that guys, it's a complex thing. So therefore it's going to be, it's going to be difficult if you're, if you're frustrated or challenged that you're having difficulty removing these words from your vocabulary. Take a deep breath. This is why they're complex. They're ingrained, deeply ingrained into our culture and into our language and how we communicate to one another. So give yourself some grace. It's okay if you use them. Now that we know more about them if you'd like to reduce them, especially in moments where you're trying to position yourself as an expert, especially in moments where you're trying to come across as an authority, especially in moments where you want your message to be clear. Let's work on getting those filler words out of here. So something that I want you to think about is just like with many things, if we just focus on reducing filler words, you're going to think about them more and more and it's just going to be hard to reduce them. I am not a big fan of just trying to ax bad habits. It just doesn't work well. In fact, there's that book, the power of habit. It's an incredible book. Hang on. I have it on the shelf. I love this one. I read this one last year. It's by Charles Duhigg, de Duhigg . I think it's, I dunno do him . D. U. H. I. G. G. it's amazing the power of habit. He talks about so many great things in this, in this book, but one of the things he talks about is when it comes to habits, if you're trying to ax a bad habit, you have to replace it with a new habit. The example I use a lot on this is when it comes to, let's say cutting sweets instead of trying to cut sweets out of your life, which I'm never going to do that. You replace it with something else, meaning or I'm sorry, you add something in. So for me, one of the things that I've prioritized is adding water to my diet. That sounds weird, but you know what I mean? Right. Not to my diet, but just to life, trying to add water, more, drinking more water in my day. A lot of times when I think I'm hungry or find myself munching, I'm actually thirsty. There's so many articles, so many podcasts that talk about that, so I'm sure that's not new information, but this idea of I can focus on being additive. If I can focus on adding stuff to my day, that is a good choice for me. And totally a natural byproduct is I'll eat less candy corn. I don't know why I said that. I don't even like candy corn, but for me it's cookies or all the other candy. Anyways, maybe adding the water to my day will help me make better choices through the rest of my day. How does this relate all back to your filler words? Well , if you keep focusing on trying to reduce filler words, it's not going to be as effective for you. So instead focus on adding strategic pauses to your content. So I want you to think about the power of a pause. This space, this moment that allows your brain, you being my listener right now to catch up to the message that I'm saying, it feels like an eternity to breathe sometimes. It feels like it's taking forever and I'm worried that you're going to stop listening or I'm worried that that you're going to think I don't know what I'm talking about or I've forgotten my words. The power of a pause can create a lot of emotion for a speaker. I bet you've felt that before. I asked on Instagram yesterday, I asked the question, I said, Hey guys, I'm going to be doing a podcast episode around filler words. And more importantly, how do you reduce filler words? What are your biggest challenges? And the number one comment that I got back was, I'm so uncomfortable with silence. I don't know how to use pauses in my presentations that I just word vomited and keep going and I can't stop. And it's like this, this outer body experience that just keeps happening. I just can't turn it off. Filler words. That's how we fill that silence. So my challenge for you is to start getting comfortable with silence. And I want you to think about pausing in two different ways. There's strategic pauses where they're more planned and intentional and you put them right next to maybe a really profound statement or in between your your thoughts or as you're going through a presentation, maybe as you're pivoting parts of the presentation or you're trying to have a dramatic effect. Planned pauses. Strategic pauses requires some forethought. So that's number one, getting comfortable with the pause by planning some out. That might be where you need to start, but on the other side of things, I want you to think about pausing just in normal daily conversation and that pausing, replacing the filler word.

Speaker 3 23:45

Okay ,

Speaker 1 23:46

let me be clear on this. This is not easy to do because the issue is in a fact that you say filler words. The issue is that you're unaware that you're even saying them in the first place. It's like I said, an outer body experience that you're not quite sure it's happening until you watch yourself back or listen to yourself back and you're kicking yourself going, Holy cow, how many times can I throw in likes and UHS and ums? Why can't I make a period on the end of my sentence? Why is everything connected with and/so goodness me? It's such a challenge. So here's what we need to do is we need to create awareness, number one, that it's happening so that in the moment we can start replacing those filler words with silence. And would you like a tip on how to do that? I for sure. There's a lot of strategies that other people have that are probably way smarter than me on how to do this, but I'm going to tell you, here's two ways that I have successfully implemented on my own and I use with my coaching clients and for years used with my trainers when I was leading a team of trainers across the country. Here are my two tips for you. They're not fancy, but I can tell you they're fricking effective. Also, my watch just went off to tell me that I hit my activity goal for the day. If you heard it, the Bing , that's great. Okay. Number one, the two actions you can take to get rid of your filler words. Are you ready for it? Find a, an accountability buddy that can help you, somebody that you respect and respects you and understands your goals around this. I do not recommend you pick your spouse or partner for this. Maybe this is just me, but I got to keep the business and the personal separate. And when my husband is nitpicking my, if I've asked him, by the way, I've asked him, Hey, will you be my accountability partner or will you come share ideas with me and my business things? If he's pointing things out that I'm doing wrong, like that's not a recipe that's great for our marriage and in this specific situation, you need to pick an accountability partner who is going to be picking out these things. Personally, I would recommend not your spouse, but it could work. It might just be my relationship or that's not a functional thing. So pick an accountability buddy. And what you do is you, when you're talking live to this person, maybe you're practicing a presentation, maybe you're getting ready for an upcoming meeting. Maybe you're just doing your daily update, or I don't know, whatever it is. You're talking to this person every time you say a filler word and tell them in advance what your filler words that you want them to watch for. Every time you say one of those words, they're gonna . Ooh, that was loud. Did I catch ya? Are you with me? Woo . That's where we are today. That startling sound, it's going to startle you in the moment too and let me tell you that sound is fricking annoying when you're trying to get out of thought. So if you are, I dunno , say in a sentence and you uh there it is. You're going to be like, ah . It's going to be like a , like a dog wearing a shock collar a little bit where you're going to twitch and you're going to be annoyed and a little agitated. You're going to lose your thought and then you have to get back on and keep going. That's the point. This is a technique. This is going to sound terrible. This is a technique that I used to use with my trainers because it was the most effective way for them to draw an awareness that they were doing because until I brought it into awareness, they didn't know what was happening. That is step number one. It's the immediate it is happening and it's so good when you can do it real in that moment because that flinch, that annoyance, that aggravation that'll come because you can't get a sentence out without using those words. Oh , it is so empowering. Frustrating, yes, but also empowering because awareness is the biggest gap for you right now. And once you bring it into the light, Oh, you get to start doing something about it because the more and more you do this, over time, you will start to flinch before the word comes out of your mouth. And when that moment comes, what can you do? Pause. Oh my goodness. You can pause and you will catch yourself before the filler word comes. But let me tell you, it is, it has to be a diligent process to get to that point, which means you can't do one of those sessions and then be like, good. Yeah, okay. And then work on it. No, no, no. That's like doing three crunches and saying, ah man, I'm on my way to a six pack, bro. It's not going to happen. So you have to start developing this as a awareness tool that you use over and over and over again and still you start seeing the outcome you want, which is more silence, less filler words. Got it? That's one way you can tackle it. Now, if you don't have someone in your life that you feel comfortable doing this with, or you don't work side by side next to someone every day , cause you're a solopreneur or you work in a di , a digital office, of course you work in a digital office, but a virtual office is the word I'm looking for. Let's say that's you and you're like, Oh , this isn't gonna work for me. Here's option number two, this option number two. This is what I did this year. What I noticed, I made the leap from speaking on stages to now I have a virtual stage. I'm doing Facebook lives, Instagram stories, YouTube. I'm doing this podcast now I'm showing up on a digital stage every day in my business and what I realized was, Holy cow, a digital stage brought up some difficulty for me. It was so real. It was so permanent. It was so pressuresome. In a live audience. I could try things out and I was confident and I knew that, you know, people aren't gonna remember or even listen to every word I had to say, but they're going to get adjusted, they're going to get the feeling. And it was so good at, I'm very good at the stage by the way, but something about a camera or a microphone freaked me out. I started using filler words and I hadn't used them anywhere near that capacity for years. So I had to do some own work, my own work to figure out how do I, how do I rectify this situation? So here's what I did. This is option number two and it's also effective. I did it. Most likely you're doing digital video today, so whether it's video or you're doing audio, you're most likely doing that in your online business. And if you aren't, you're not doing it because you're afraid. So if that's the case, we need to have a conversation about that, about getting, you're getting over your fear to get on camera. Side notes. I just did an awesome mini training on this called Lights, Camera, Rockstar. I'm going to be opening up the doors for that again here, most likely in January, so keep an eye out for that one. But if you're interested in that, just shoot me an email at hello@heathersager .com it's called Lights, Camera, Rockstar, all about how to get over your fear of the camera. Shoot me an email over there and I'll get you on the list to make sure that you're the first to know when that comes out. That was a side note coming back to it video, you most likely already have video in your business. So here's, here's what I did. I had the commitment that I was going to go live on Facebook a once a week talking about whatever my unique piece of content is. The Amy Porterfield way release a unique piece of content every week. Go to Facebook live, talk about it, email your audience. I was a believer. I started doing it back in, I don't know , February. What I found is I do those Facebook lives, and then I would just cringe because I knew the filler words were coming up. So here's what I did. I went to Facebook. Of course, I went to Facebook, I did a Facebook live. After I finished recording the Facebook live, I went to that video on my Facebook page and I went to edit the video, and then I added captions. Now this was a beautiful thing because when people would come back for the replay, most people watch videos without the sound on. So captions were really important to drive engagement on the video. But I didn't care about that so much. I wasn't as worried about people watching the video as me just developing the habit of getting onto video. So what I did is I added the captions, and for the most part, the captions were mildly accurate. So I went in and I edited the captions. That's a hard word to say. Edit to edited. Why is that a hard word anyways? You know what I'm saying? Right. I went through when I started editing the captions and what I noticed was, Holy cow, every sentence was the longest sentence on planet earth. Everything was connected and there were no periods. That's when I realized that I wasn't taking a breath ever. Holy awareness factor. I also started noticing the UHS and the ums and this and so, Oh my goodness. I would say something and so I would say something else and so I would say something else, which would be the longest run on sentence. That's when I discovered that filler words take shape in more than us ums and likes. You have to ask yourself. The question is, what are your filler words? What are your habits that you're adding in and not embracing pauses and silence? What I did was I went through the captions. I had to do this on videos for weeks where I'd go through and unreached type them out, and just that sheer, by the way, this is not an efficient process. I'm not teaching you how to efficiently write captions. I'm teaching you how do you go in and understand how bad it is? I know that sounds terrible, but the point of me doing that was I wanted to feel the pain and the annoyance and the agitation of me having to correct all those dang filler words. Feel the annoyance of what it would be like to read the world's longest sentence. I had to feel that. I had to feel the negative repercussions of that by having to go through and correct everything, which I know I could use a transcription service. That's far the more far more accurate. Now that's not the point here. Not the point here and don't send me notes. I know what all those are and I do use those to in my business. The point here is if you put yourself in a position to have to stare in the face, your flaws with filler words, you will change it. I promise you that because what happens is in the moment you become so annoyed and agitated for having to fill all those words out. Next time you go to do a video, you're going to be thinking about you having to edit those dang captions and you're going to be little bit more cautious around what comes out of your mouth. Is it as effective as the no. No, it's not. And to my sound engineer max, I'm so sorry about these loud booms that keep coming up, but you know it's for impact. This is how we do it folks. So hopefully he made that a little bit less aggressive for you. You can keep that in Max. They need to know who you are. Say hi to Max guys. Anyways. It's not as effective as the immediate in the moment distraction or pointing out, but it also works and it works because you have to take 100% ownership for yourself. So I think that perspective works pretty well. I actually work , it works very well. It worked really well for me. And you can do it all on your own. So whichever choice you make, whether you're going to get an accountability buddy or you're going to a , I almost said something totally inappropriate and I feel like I have to say it now. I almost said whether you're going to get an accountability buddy and do the clap. Not, not what I'm trying to say here with this thing. Uh , I just, I don't know guys, I'm, it's, it's very late in the evening of me recording this podcast and evidently I've gone off the rails, but accountability buddy, where they're going to hold you accountable in the moment. Or you hold yourself accountable by watching your own videos and doing your own transcripts. By the way, if you don't do Facebook lives, you can still do this. You can use a transcription service. I highly recommend using Temi, T E M I temi.com I don't record , recommend them from an accuracy perspective. They're not so great. I recommend them because they're only 10 cents a minute. And if the goal is to just get a transcription out, it's super quick. It's back in your inbox. You can click the link and actually listen to yourself. And edit the transcription in real time. That's a great way to go about it too. If you're trying to get a transcription that's more accurate and you're using it for video transcripts for like YouTube or something else, there's other things you can use, but for the purpose of getting your own stuff together, I recommend just use what's embedded in Facebook. By the way, YouTube has one two and embedded transcription editor or use temi.com. That was a very, very side note, very techie there for a second. Hey, I wanted to jump in a little side note on this real quick. If you're curious about how to actually do what I'm talking about with Facebook videos and transcriptions, I actually just created a tutorial on this for my private student group, but I'd love to share this tutorial with you, so if you would like to get your hands on it, text in the word it factor all one word I, T. F. a. C. T. O. R. it factor. I believe you can do that into three three, seven, seven seven it factor texts to two three, three, seven, seven, seven. Right now. That's just for my U.S. Listeners. I'm so sorry Canada . But if you text that in, I will get you a link to that. Um , to that tutorial. I would love to share that with you if you're one of my Canadian or global subscribers and you would like to get your hands on that link, just shoot me an email at hello@heathersager .com and I'll set you up there too. But the fact the reality is , is you have the tools you right in front of you to be able to make a difference, but this on now and now you have the reasons why it's happening. So now it just comes down to a choice. Are you going to choose to do something about it or are you just going to keep fumbling and trying to catch it in the moment, but still finding frustration, I think worth a little bit of pain and discomfort for you to have to stare at these filler words in the, in the face so that you start developing that awareness real time in the moment and replace it with a pause. My friend. That is how you attack filler words. There's not an easy shortcut. It's just like having to do the crunches. If you want to get lean, you have to do the work to cut the crap and filler words are crap and they're diluting your message. Stop diluting your message, but also stop striving for perfection. It's okay for you to have some filler words. It's okay for you to stumble and be inperfect in your language and I hope that I am a living example of that. My goal is these podcasts, my videos, how I show up online. It is not perfect and I bet someday when I have a freaking huge audience that was sarcastic, I am sure I'm going to have a lot of haters and pointing out how I suck at some of these things and you know what I say, bring it on. Because if I can't go before you and show you that it's okay to make mistakes, that it's okay to be a rock star , but also a work in progress. I mean what hope, what hope do you have if for those who are just starting. So while I've just started an online business, I'm fumbling my way through it. I've been speaking for a long time guys and this stuff is still hard. So give yourself some fricking grace and stop trying to be so perfect and just start taking action. That's what today is all about. And my friend, if you want some help with that, you have to download, go get that free video series that I was talking about at the beginning of this episode. It's going to help you tackle your vocal skills and all those other things like these filler words when it comes to the camera. So I'll see you over there, Heather, sacred.com and at guys, thank you so much for listening. We made it to another week and I can't wait to connect with you again. But for now please take a screenshot of today's episode and tell me what are you committed to doing moving forward to cut the crap on your filler words. Tag me on Instagram at theheathersager. I'll see you next time.

Speaker 2 40:59

Guys. Thanks so much for listening to Finding Your It Factor and Hey, if you have a talk coming up, you have to check out my free resource. It's called Nail Your Next Talk: 10 must ask questions before taking the stage so you can show up as an authority and turn that talk into future business. These are the questions that I use myself to prepare for my life talks, and they're going to help you ask the right questions of the person who booked you for the event. So the meeting planner or the client, and it's going to help you serve your audience to the best way possible. It's going to you anticipate potential tech or AV snags. Turn the Q and A time into a strategic place for content and make this speaking opportunity, a lead generator for your business. So go get it now. What are you waiting for? It's over at heathersager .com forward slash 10 questions

Speaker 4 42:05

[inaudible] .