So, today’s podcast has some, uh, very important information, right? Doesn’t sound too confident does it? Today Dan is airing some dirty laundry. About his actions and his words, and reminding everyone that every single one of us is a work in progress. One of the topics you might have guessed is the use of filler words and phrases in our speech and how it impacts our credibility with others. Dan has some work to do…
First of all, it is our favorite day of the work week and we start with a friendly reminder to make sure you are scheduling time each week to review your company finances. Go over your in-progress jobs, accounts receivables report, accounts payables report, cash flow analysis, etc. It is extremely important to the success of your company, so put it on your schedule like you would any other appointment.
With that being said, Dan then covers a couple of areas that he needs to improve. The first being scheduling. Despite all the talk over the past few weeks and months about using a weekly schedule and focusing on being effective, there is one item for a client that had been hanging out there not getting done. It was important, but it was not urgent. Every week, Dan and Gina would discuss it, and tentatively set up a time to do it, but it would never get done. Something urgent is always right around the corner. So this task kept getting pushed off. Not anymore! The task was scheduled and put on the calendar like any other appointment would be, and now it is done. It’s not that hard. You won’t be perfect at it, but over time you will get better at it. Start doing it today.
Next, we discussed the use of filler words and phrases. This is another area where Dan has a lot of work to do. He even used one of the filler words several times while discussing the subject of not using them! It’s a hard habit to break, but if you work on it you can do it. Eliminating these phrases will increase your confidence and your credibility with your audience (even if your audience is just one person).
Avoid these five filler words or phrases:
1. So.
2. Uh.
3. Right?
4. You know.
5. I mean.
This is not easy. One way to identify if you are using any of these words or phrases is to record yourself speaking. Dan first noticed the use of one of these phrases after recording videos for the website. It was almost impossible to watch the video because there was an “uh” in between every sentence. Now he notices that he uses “so” a lot. Pick up any other filler words he uses too much? Call him out on it!
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