“And eventually she said to me, "You said um a lot in there, were you aware of it?" And with this, I braved a huge sigh of relief if that was all I had done wrong who really cared. And I kind of made this brush off gesture with my hand. I said, "Yeah, I know, it's a verbal tech. It's no big deal, really." And then she said to me, "I know this great speech coach. I bet Google would pay for it. Would you like an introduction?" And once again, I made this brush off gesture with my hand. I said, "Oh, I'm busy. I don't have time for a speech coach. Didn't you hear about all these new customers?" And then she said to me, "I can tell when you do that thing with your hand, then I'm going to have to be a lot more direct with you. When you say um every third word, it makes you sound stupid." Now she's got my full attention. And some people might say it was mean of her to say I sounded stupid, but in fact, it was the kindest thing that she could have done for me at that moment in my career because she knew me well enough to know that if she didn't use just those words with me, and by the way, this is a really important point, she never would've used those words with other people on her team who were perhaps a better listener than I was. But she knew me well enough. She cared personally enough to know that if she didn't use those words with me, I never would've gone to visit the speech coach and I wouldn't have learned that she was not exaggerating. And this was news to me because I had raised millions of dollars for two different startups giving presentations. I thought I was pretty good at it. And it really got me to thinking sort of why had no one told me. It was almost like I suddenly realized I'd been marching through my whole career with a giant hunk of spinach in between my teeth and nobody had had the common courtesy to tell me it was there.”