V M R

              Um, yeah- today’s um, blog is going to, um, be about, you know,.pacers, in speaking.   Certainly blog-worthy, but serious business as well, no?  If I had a pill to permanently eliminate ‘ums’, or ‘uhs,’ and all other unnecessary pacers from your speech, would you take it?  The pill would remove pacers from your speech and replace them with a well-timed and eloquent silence.  Do we have a deal yet?  It’s FDA approved with no negative side-effects.  Would you like to order a supply for your sales-team as well as yourself?  What about your children? How much does it cost, you ask?-Three dollars for a life-time supply, and if you buy today, I’ll throw in vial of magic water extracted from the Fountain of Youth. So, um, do we, uhh.. *clears throat* have a deal? *breaks eye contact abruptly, hands in pockets, weight on heels*.

              My pill-pushing in this scenario is facing an enormous credibility problem.  You’re definitely going to need some compelling testimonials before you believe this is a legitimate product.  And the fact that my speech (among other things) telegraphs a lack of confidence as I ask for the sale is certainly going to hurt my chances, right? But what if I’m not telegraphing a lack of confidence?  What if I just forgot my pill this morning and got nervous at the clutch moment, despite the fact that I believe strongly in my product?  Or, even better, what if I’m just trying to cleverly demonstrate the real-world ROI that purchasing this pill will deliver for you?  What if this is the proven tactic I’ve used to humorously cherry-top the deals I’ve made with countless satisfied customers.  

               Who knows why we ‘um’ and ‘uh’ and ‘ahem’  and stutter and stammer and mumble and mutter.  All we know is we don’t like it when we do.

                I particularly try to avoid letting pacers slip after I’ve said something that I’ve personally found to be insightful, or after I’ve jumped on an opportunity to tactfully work in a fancy word.  I hear others fall into this trap regularly.  “Social Media application for business, has to be inherently co-evolutional if it hopes  to keep-pace with technology’s equally inherent ephemeral  nature, um…”—I call this the ‘Um of Self-Idolization’ a personal congratulatory moment mistakenly  shared publically. Listen for it- you’ll catch it every day =)  –It’s not that I have a problem with myself or others devoting a half-second to self-marveling, but if you’re as much of a maniac as I am, you use the second half-second  to loathe yourself for succumbing to such ego-centric behavior and the third half-second to congratulate yourself, a little more modestly this time, on having the admirable humility and character to self-loathe where appropriate, and by the seventh or eighth half-second, you have re-established the… homeostasis of your discourse, and um,…… you can finally proceed as-planned with your conversation. 

              So we all hate and distrust our own ums and maybe we’re sub-consciously inclined to distrust the ums of others.  But don’t we also…sort of… distrust the smiling salesman in the expensive suit whose speech is velvety-smooth, whose manner seems impervious to all brands of psychological nuance? After all, we’re all just humans in the end, we like to laugh, we clearly enjoy reading blogs about total nonsense, and we can’t deny, at some level, we feel safer in the company of those who can share and empathize with all those pesky complexities we might unduly beat ourselves up over.  And not worrying so much about your ums and uhs is, after all, a proven, all-natural way to control them.

                So…  um, still wanna buy the pill?