For almost twenty years I have worked jobs that required me to talk to a lot of people every day. Now it's about 100, but two decades ago it was around 1000. If you talk to that many people, you tend to notice the speech crutches everyone uses.
And they start to annoy the fuck out of you.
And then you start to notice it whenever you do it, yourself.
And, if you're anything like me, you do something about it. I managed to get 99% of the ums and ahs and uhs out of my speech. If you're in sales, I highly recommend you do so, as well. Confidence is what sells stuff, and confident people don't typically use crutches like these.
I also have a very good phone voice, as I've said before. That also helps sell stuff, but in this day and age, when nearly every company on the goddam planet uses AI to answer inbound calls, these two things combined have led to me getting a particular question at least once every other day or two.
"Uh . . . are you a human or AI?" Or something similar.
Pro tip: if you can hear breathing on the other line? It's a human. They haven't thought to program chatbots to make a breathing sound yet.
Do you know what I found myself doing recently? PUTTING THE UHS AND AHS BACK INTO MY SPEECH. That's what I've come to. I fucking hate living in the future.
Because the crutches are already out of control, which is why it's painful to watch that recent video I did for my book promotion. If you want to win a Hawthorne Village Nightmare on Elm Street house, check this out. And then count how many fucking uhs I make.
I'd actually prefer if you didn't listen to it, but there's a prize at stake. You should absolutely listen to that video. So far, comparing entries I've received and the number of views that video has, there is a very good chance that if you enter, you might actually get the Freddy house. If you want your shot, act fast. The contest ends on Halloween. Good luck!
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