Latest / Your Mic / Your Umms Are Fine. Your Panic Loops Aren’t.

Transcript

Your Umms Are Fine. Your Panic Loops Aren’t. · Your Mic

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  If AI had its way, every single arm would be vaporized, deleted, and every, you know, thrown into
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  the sun. And yeah, some of those need to go, but not every single one of them. That's a hill I'm
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  willing to die on. Not all arms are created equal. And if you rip them all out, you don't get a
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  sharper episode. You get a robotic one. Welcome back to your mic. My name is Freddie Cruz,
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  founder of Speak Podcasting. If you want to chat pods, if you're thinking about launching a show,
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  let's get started. Freddie, with a Y at SpeakPodcasting.com that is S-P-E-K-E podcasting.com.
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  And I like to break filler words into three species. Number one, there's the anchor. This is the
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  short, clean arm right before somebody gives a thoughtful answer. It's not frantic. It's not tangled
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  up with five other words. It's a tiny speed bump that says, hold up. I'm about to say something
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  that matters. Cutting that arm can make the sentence feel chopped like you skipped the first frame
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  of a video, especially if there's a breath that gets halfway deleted. Then there's number two,
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  the tangle. This is the um well. So yeah, what I mean was last week I was at dot, dot, dot situation.
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  It's glued to other words in a way that you couldn't edit it out even if you wanted to. It shows up
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  when the speaker launches before they're ready and tries to build the sentence in mid air. Most of
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  the time you want to separate that mess. Find where the real sentence starts and drop the tangle bit.
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  And then there's number three. We call it the panic loop. I know you know this one, especially
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  if you've been on the guest side of a podcast and you kind of get caught off guard. This is what
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  that one sounds like. Um well. So yeah, that's the guest spiraling out of control. If fallen
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  out of the conversation and into their own head, leaving that in is tortured to everybody,
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  your listeners and the guest, especially the guest. This is where you play surgeon and protect
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  everybody involved. When you're editing, ask yourself this is the um an anchor, a tangle or
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  panic loop. You'll make better choices than delete all of them.
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  Here's the trap. A lot of tools will happily strip every filler word for you. One click,
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  nice clean timeline, and then you have play and wonder why everybody sounds like a glitchy robot.
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  Filler words are part of how humans talk. My favorite writer in the whole wide world, Chuck
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  Polynick, he's the guy who wrote Fight Club. He likes to write the way humans talk and talking at
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  a very what some people would call an unnatural cadence, taking the awkward pause where there might
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  not otherwise be an awkward pause. That's just how we communicate. This kind of conversation carries
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  rhythm. It buys us a half second to think and it can even signal vulnerability or even honesty.
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  Imagine your guest says this. I've never actually told anyone this before that tiny um is doing
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  emotional work. They're bracing themselves. You can hear the courage and if you slice that off,
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  the line becomes I've never actually told anyone this before. Almost immediately right after you
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  asked the question with like no seconds of pause, no nothing. It's like question right into,
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  I've never told anyone this before and that's still fine. Sure, go ahead. It sounds nice and
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  trimmed and polished, but you shaved off a layer of humanity. Now take a different line.
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  I guess like we try to okay that was painful to do and that's not rhythm. That's somebody drowning
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  during your podcast without water. Your listener does not need to sit through the entire
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  drowning scene in real time. That's how you say goodbye to your listenership. So here's what you
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  can do instead. Stop asking, can I remove this um? Start asking what happens to the feeling of this
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  moment if I remove it? If the moment gets tighter and cleaner, cut it. If the moment gets cold and
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  weird, like an emotional, robotic even, put it back. Now the best edit and this is for any level
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  of editor. You could be a solo entrepreneur who edits your podcast at midnight. You could be
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  a freelancer who's just getting started. The best edit is the one you never have to make. So
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  let's talk about how to reduce the number of ums in the first place without turning you or your
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  clients into a robot. Rule number one, if it's you, no caffeine two hours before recording.
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  I love coffee as much as you do, probably more. But when your mouth is set to 2x speed and your
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  brain is still buffering, you, my friend, are going to arm your way through the entire interview.
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  Your vocal cords do not need a red bull or coffee or anything caffeinated. And if you're a freelance
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  editor, you're running a production agency and you and your client have never had this conversation,
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  highly recommend, highly recommend. You let them know, hey, um, make sure you lay off the caffeine
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  about 2 hours before you're recording on XYZ podcast. Rule number two, protect your mental bandwidth.
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  No notifications at least an hour before you record. And I know that's impossible, especially if
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  you are a C-suite level exec, if you're a busy entrepreneur, you're a founder, you're owning a
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  business, you're doing business owner things. None of it. You don't check your email real quick,
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  no jumping out of a slack war and straight into your intro. No, no, no, five minutes, 10 minutes
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  before your Riverside remote interview. It's not enough. It just isn't. Your brain needs quiet
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  to line up your thoughts. If your head is full of push alerts and other people's emergencies,
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  your mouth is going to leak filler words trying to keep up. So do this. Give yourself an outline
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  instead of a script. Just pull the points of where you're going. Trying to read a word for word
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  script you barely glanced at is a guaranteed panic loop. Trust me. And here's one more. Practice
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  the first 30 seconds out loud with the red light off. No recording. Do it once casually,
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  like you're telling a friend what the episode is about. Get the marbles out of your mouth before
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  you hit record. Look, this is not mystical. It's not Yoda on a mountain talking to Luke Skywalker.
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  These are simple habits that protect your bandwidth and make you sound like the sharpest version
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  of yourself. Because the sharpest version of yourself is who your future clients need to hear.
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  Man take away here from this rant is that you're not trying to create a flawless reading. You're
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  trying to present the most honest, engaging version of the conversation, whether it's you
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  want to sell a episode, whether it's you and a guest or you and two guests. Listen, some
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  ums deserve to die. Some deserve parole in your job as the host who may or may not be editing
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  your episodes. Your job as the editor, the producer who's working for the agency and editing
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  client shows your job is to know the difference. So here's your homework. All right. Grab a recent
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  episode and find one minute of audio that's full of filler. This is going to be hard because
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  this involves you listening to yourself. And if you're anything like me, you hate listening to
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  yourself, but you got to eat your piece. So what you're going to do is you're going to grab that
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  one minute of audio that's full of filler and make two versions. Version one is where you delete
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  every single filler word, every like, every you know, every um, every uh, every uh, every uh,
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  and go scorched earth. Version two, you use the framework. The anchor ums stay. The tangle and panic
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  loops that sound completely sloppy. Those get cleaned up with care. Then listen with fresh
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  ears and ask yourself which version sounds more human and which one you would rather listen to.
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  Look, bad audio happens to good hosts. It happens to great hosts, but bad editing. Well,
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  that part is optional. And your mic is here so you never ever ever have to learn the hard way.
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  Oh, and by the way, my company speak podcasting. We produce iconic shows that turn into media
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  assets for brands, whether you are a busy entrepreneur like a doctor or a lawyer or if you're
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  running a nonprofit that impacts the entire world. We can do all the heavy lifting for you,
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  so all you have to do is show up on the mic and or in front of the camera. And we take care of
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  the rest. Get a conversation started right now by sending me an email directly. Freddie with a
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  Y that's Freddie at speak podcasting.com. That is S-P-E-K-E podcasting.com. Thank you so much for listening.