Debbie Jollie: Learns the power of speech as 'stammering communicator'

You would think that someone with a speech impediment would be reluctant to go into a field in which verbal communication is paramount.

That may apply to the average person, but not to Debbie Jollie. Her need to command her speech has been the driving point behind most of what she does.

“I guess, for those who speech is not an issue, they don’t realise that your speech is everything – talking in a meeting, giving a presentation, being a lecturer. It has been in the forefront of my mind so everything I do, it has been about my stutter.”

Jollie is the owner of a marketing company, Debbie Jollie Coaching, and is a lecturer.

“I call myself the stammering communicator as a kind of oxymoron because I don’t think persons technically think of people who stutter as people who are communicators or marketers in that way.”

She uses the title as a way to defy other people’s expectations of her because, over the years, strangers have told her she who and what she could not be, or do, because of her speech impediment.

“Everybody reacts to things in a different way but to me, those kinds of things were a catalyst. For me, if you tell me I can’t do it, I’m going to show you that I can. When I make up my mind to do something, I’m going to find an avenue to do it.”

Jollie told WMN she has been stuttering since childhood and remembers not being able to “string two words together” at age five. She also recalled being bullied because of it in primary school.

“My parents did not want it to be an issue for me so I remember a lot of times, when I was much younger, that they would try to buffer things, tell me to ignore the people who tease, don’t worry about it, those types of things.”

The bullying lessened considerably when she passed for St Joseph's Convent, St Joseph. She said her parents sent her to one or two speech therapy sessions but it was too expensive to continue so she did not gain much from them. Fortunately, in addition to improving on her own, the school itself did a lot for her.

“Things improved because our English teacher in form one and two would put us in plays and I would have to rehearse, recall, and recite lines. I realised, once I knew what I had to say before I said it, the stutter was not as bad.”

This led to a love for music and theatre. So, in an effort to develop her creative side, she attended voice training, and later on, public speaking training with Toastmasters.

She went on to study marketing at Sital College and pursued a degree in sales and marketing with Lacrosse University.

Jollie reiterated that she loved marketing and the arts and wanted to be able to command her voice. So, she applied to several tertiary schools for teaching and lecturing positions as a way to practise control of her voice.

“It is different for each person but my speech gets worse, is triggered by anxiety and fear. So the idea was, if I have to do marketing and these thinks I like, then I have to face this fear. And at the time lecturing was the only thing I could think of to get in front of an audience on a regular basis.”

She has been a marketing, business development, advertising, and public relations lecturer for almost 15 years. And, she said, it has been “the biggest help” in facing and getting over her fears and improving her control over her stutter.

She has beat that fear through thorough preparation, and informing people about her stutter beforehand. She said letting people know in advance has been enlightening as it allows people to approach her and ask questions about it. She has also been able to clear up the misconception that only people with a mental disability, or deficiency in education or intelligence stutter.

“I will debunk it and that’s what I’ve done my whole career. I shine a light on stuttering.”

While lecturing, she began to work in a sales and marketing environment and has remained in the field.

She said she finds it to be a creative industry, one in which she could express herself and her clients’ needs. “It was also something that was an outlet to be able to manage my speech. So I naturally gravitated towards it because of that. It was something that was training my voice.”

Since 2013, Debbie Jollie Coaching has been helping commercial firms and entrepreneurs develop better sales and marketing strategies to help grow their businesses.

Initially, it was a side business while she worked full time at other firms. But, about two years ago, the stresses and cultural challenges of working for others gave her the push to work for herself exclusively.

She said the sales and customer service training aspect of her business has “dried up” since covid19, because people have less face-to-face interactions. So, at the moment, she does digital marketing, and developing content for local and regional companies.

Jollie said, with her lecturing and work in marketing, her speech impediment has improved so much that it was no longer about overcoming her stutter but perfecting her speech for her work.

She admitted when she was younger she saw her stutter as something she had to overcome and she would get frustrated. She did not want any negative attention, pity, or for people to laugh at her. She wanted to get rid of it.

Now, she said, it is no longer a crisis but a part of her.

“There will be times that I’m stressed out or there are a lot of things going on in my life, and I would find that it’s bubbling back up to the surface. But I know my triggers and I know the reasons. Now it’s more of a triumphant story for me, something I could share with my audience.”