A few of you have mentioned that you struggle with using too many filler words, words like "ummm" and "like" when you interview for podcasts or testimonials.  There are a few techniques to remove them from your speech, but none work overnight.  Habits are hard to break, but it can be done.  Below I talk about several of the techniques, everyone's different, try the ones that work for you.  But be open-minded and persistent, if one doesn't work .. try another.

Everything In Service of the Mission
"The Tim Ferriss Show" is consistently at the top of the iTunes charts and one of the most successful interview podcasts there is. How does Ferriss think about interviewing? He says "I’m always keeping in mind what my listeners can use, which makes my job easy, because I have a very clear mission for my podcast.” Everything he does is in service of that mission.

THE RESEARCH
As part of my research to help you be a better interviewer and stand out from the crowd, I've been studying successful interviewers. How do they think about their craft? In other posts, I'll be talking about tactics, strategies, and methods specific to interviewing for oral histories, testimonials and other interviews with specific goals, but today I want to look at the philosophy of some of the best journalistic and documentary interviewers.

GROUNDBREAKING DOCUMENTARY FILM
One groundbreaker in the documentary film world is Errol Morris. Before there was the podcast Serial there was his best-known film "The Thin Blue Line." It's the true story of the arrest and conviction of Randall Adams for the murder of a Dallas policeman in 1976.  Errol Morris's background is as a private detective, so clearly he had the spirit of curiosity.