Don't Say Um

How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life

De: Michael Chad Hoeppner

Narrado por: Michael Chad Hoeppner

Communicate with confidence and improve your presentation skills with this essential guide–because delivery matters.

Michael Chad Hoeppner has coached presidential candidates, prominent CEOs, and Ivy League deans on their communication skills. Now, he shares his wide‑ranging knowledge in Don't Say Um.

Hoeppner has created an entirely new approach to communication training, providing physical exercises to quickly improve speaking. With simple-to-master exercises, Don’t Say Um is an essential tool for improving your speech.

Don't Say Um challenges our preconceived notions of good speaking techniques and offers powerful tools to become master communicators.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2025 Michael Chad Hoeppner (P)2025 Hachette Go

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Incorporating Michael Chad Hoeppner's techniques into my personal and professional life is the single best investment I've made in myself since grad school. Don't Say Um will make you a better speaker, improve your relationships, and give you confidence to take on the world.”—Cassandra Freeman, actor

“Michael Chad Hoeppner has helped me and my team master the art of presentation. His easy-to-understand framework and creative exercises make public speaking feel like second nature. This remarkable and addictively readable book makes his methodologies available not just to companies like mine but to readers anywhere at any time!”—CEO, Movable Ink, Vivek Sharma

Good practices

Good things you can try right away to get better at communicating. If you struggle even a bit during any presentations etc. please try this book.

Speaking is a physical skill that matters!

This was a fantastic book that opened my eyes to importance of practicing speaking.

The author delivered excellent content and practical skills for success. There is something for anyone looking to improve their public speaking skills.

Good coaching on how to speak more confidently

I didn't do the many exercises presented in this book, even though the author makes it clear that doing the exercises is required if you want to improve your speaking. Fair enough, but there are a LOT of exercises. For me, knowing the techniques is still helpful. As far as the title of the book, it is more of a hook than a specific focus of the book. Some of the keys to know using filler words is to practice speaking what we want to say (not just reading it), and slowing down. Public speaking makes most of us nervous, and we need to channel that energy into passion, movement, focus, and not into anxiety. Bottom line is that the more comfortable we are with what we want to say and how we intend to say it, the less likely we are to use filler words. Use your hands, move around if it makes sense in your situation/environment, modulate your voice, make it conversational - all basic coaching points on improving public speaking, and all contribute to making us more comfortable (less anxiety) when we speak and therefore less likely to use filler words as our minds search for the next word to say.

If you actually do the exercises this would probably be a very effective book in improving your public speaking. If not, it is still good information which, if remembered, will still improve your ability to effectively communicate.

9 hours of talk on effectively communicating?

I was skeptical that this book would hold my interest, however this author narrator made the topic light, fun and engaging. Go figure: I even loved his homework assignments which played more like games and quizzes than actually working towards self improvement. I will make this mandatory listening for my sons as they enter the workforce, even if I’ll recommend breaking it into chunks (because yes, nine hours in one listen was a bit much).

Some good content, with caveats... and a few annoyances

This book was a bit of a challenge for me. Much of the content is quite good; however, I'm not really the right audience for it, and some aspects of the author's approach came off as very annoying to me. for reference, I have a decent bit of public speaking experience,

The good: This book does a good job of providing a set of tools and exercises to help a novice speaker improve their speaking delivery. It provides techniques to help address a number of common concerns or issues that speakers have, as well as some general practices for better delivery.

The caveats: This book is really targeting an audience with limited experience and no training in public speaking. If you struggle with presentations at work, or have always been very uncomfortable speaking in public, you'll likely get benefit from this book. If you are already fairly comfortable or proficient with public speaking, or you've had any prior training or read other books on speaking, you're unlikely to find anything new. Additionally, the focus of this book is entirely and only on delivery; it explicitly excludes anything related to content.

The annoying: The author spends the entire first chapter, and numerous additional sections, selling you on himself, this book, and his techniques. He spends a lot of time telling you about how much he's going to help you and how effective his techniques are, when that time could be much better spent actually being helpful. I've seen this behavior before from people who sell their services as a living. They don't seem to know how to turn off the salesmanship, even when it veers into obnoxiousness. The frequency with which he basically name drops famous clients without actually revealing their name. really feels like annoying bragging. The author also pretends that the techniques in this book are some sort of a magic secret, when the vast majority of them are basic, well-known activities. I found nothing in this book that isn't covered in other courses and books. Lastly, while delivery is very important in public speaking, and there's nothing wrong with the author focusing on that, the author also repeatedly downplays content and suggests that content barely matters and delivery is the most important thing. This leads to some ridiculous comments at the end about AI potentially providing all content and everybody just being a delivery vehicle, making delivery even more important.

As I feared, the text of this review is coming off harsher than I was hoping for. There really is some good content here, and I would even recommend it to friends or co-workers who have little experience with public and are looking for a little help improving their delivery. I would very rarely suggest just this book, however. I would always bundle its recommendation with something like "Strunk and White" for proofreading and clarity, and "Thank You for Arguing", to help with content.

This is a great advance in personal communications.

Lots of very practical advice given here, with exercises that the author makes you do before going on.

And doing those short exercises is very revealing.

In addition, the author has additional content (PDF and even a free downloadable app that listens and transcribes your practice) that allows you to see very quickly the specific improvements you can make to reduce the use of filler words.

It’s amazing how these exercises improve your speech so quickly.

Very strong content here on vastly improving your communications/delivery.

Best book I’ve ever read on public speaking and communication.

Dispels many myths about public speaking and provides practical and proven techniques to improve your communications. Highly recommend.