Entrepreneurs should be Toastmasters

Have you heard about Toastmasters? You're not sure whether or not you should plug in as an entrepreneur? Stick around, I'm going to give you guys a little insight as to why entrepreneurs should be Toastmasters. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dan Willis of millennialmotivator.ca, here to help you learn how to create, engage, and inspire your clients for success. If you're new to the channel, go ahead and click that subscribe button down there and the little bell, and you'll get notifications every time I go live Monday through Saturday. I put out a video every day on business, small business, online entrepreneur, digital marketing, e-commerce. We're here to help you guys grow. Let's go! Today we're talking about Toastmasters and entrepreneurs and how the two mix and mold and go together. So most of you, I am going to assume, at some point have heard about Toastmasters, just generally out there. Oh yeah, people go to Toastmasters and they're part of the club. I want to take a look at what is Toastmasters, what it can do for you, what you can do for Toastmasters, and how as an entrepreneur that can all come together to really boost you in your business. All right, so without further ado, let's get down to it and figure out why entrepreneurs should be Toastmasters. So first and foremost, full disclaimer, I am a Toastmaster. I'm not an Distinguished Toastmaster who's been at it for years. In fact, my first official meeting was last night. Not too bad for my first meeting. Was able to compete in the international speech contest, grabbed second place. What a shame, I lost to the president of the club. Not much you can do on your first night out. But what I learned was this: Toastmasters is a place where professionals gather, and most of the people that are in Toastmasters are professionals, whether they are Whether they are entrepreneurs or they work in a business environment, that varies a little bit. But the club that I am a part of is a bilingual club, a French-English club, and all it is is you show up, you plug into Toastmasters. They've got a huge online curriculum with tons of different pathways that you can take. So if you want to become a more confident public speaker, great, there's a pathway for you. If you want to become a more efficient leader, great, there's a pathway for you. There's tons of these different pathways that you can take, and really Toastmasters is built to help people get this official backing behind them that confirms and affirms them in their skills and their strengths as to where they want to go professionally or personally, but mostly professionally I see the application of this. So Toastmasters is a club. They meet in all kinds of cities all over the world. Depending on where you are, I know I'm very close to Quebec, and so there's a lot of French-English going on there. If you're somewhere else in the world, Europe, Middle East, there are probably clubs around you that are in your native languages. They're beautiful for that. There's an app for that. There's all kinds of great stuff that they've got. But Toastmasters is a club to help you learn the skills that you need to succeed both professionally and personally. That's the, that's the plug. That's the gimmick. I'll put a link down below to Toastmasters. You can check out a little bit more what I'm talking about there. You will need to reach out to to a club to get a full feel for it. Most clubs allow you to show up as a guest to get a feel for how it goes and what the meeting is like and how people talk and what the speeches look like. So it's very inclusive as far as that goes. And then actually becoming a member is actually quite cost-effective. It's not a very expensive membership. It's something like $90 for 6 months. It's a very, very small financial commitment to be a part of Toastmasters. So that's what it is. Now let's talk about why that's important for you as an entrepreneur. I know as an entrepreneur you are constantly looking to improve your game. If you're not, you're stalling. All entrepreneurs need to be out there sharpening themselves in one way or another. Now, whether that is you are a confident public speaker, but you don't quite have a team and you're not sure how to lead a team, and so leadership is kind of the direction you want to head in, or perhaps you feel like you're a powerful leader, but you just don't know how to communicate effectively to either your team or your clients. This is built for you. It comes from people that have been doing this for 70 years or so. The platforms that have been built, the lessons that have been built, the structure around it has been built to give you the confidence and the skills to be able to grow and show professionally that you have confidence in the ability to speak or to lead or to guide or to create projects, to create presentations, all kinds of useful assets for entrepreneurs. Now, I have yet to meet an entrepreneur that says, I am a perfect public speaker, leader, presenter, and strategist. There's no such thing as perfect. If you think you're perfect, you need to give your head a— give it a nice shake there, because the reality is you have never reached perfection. The people that are a part of this club and have been a part of it for years and years and years, even decades for some of these folks, they have dedicated the time to a craft to learn, to grow, and evolve. Now, they constantly find ways to improve, and why this is so crucial and so valued for an entrepreneur is oftentimes we are out in the business world and the only feedback that we get on our presentation, our leadership, is whether or not the client buys or not. If a client doesn't buy, he's not gonna give you feedback of, I didn't buy because you didn't do this, this, or this. Most of the time, it'll just be a no. Maybe they'll throw an excuse your way. It won't be the real reason. You won't know for sure. In Toastmasters, the beautiful thing is you give your talk, you give your speech, you give your presentation, And the group of professionals that's gathered there, not only will they give you an evaluation, so, you know, we'll give you a ranking on how that speech was, we'll make sure it's within the time, they'll actually give you feedback on how you talk. So they'll give you tips as to, you say uh a lot, or you stutter, or you keep playing with your sleeves. You guys will notice a few of these things that are within this video just now. But they'll help each of you guys figure this out. They'll help you go, okay, how can I improve in my personal presentation and how I engage with the audience? Am I looking at the room? Am I gaining the confidence of the room? Am I engaging or am I boring? Are my dynamics good? Is my pacing good? Are my hand gestures too much? Are they too little? Am I— it will just boost your confidence as you're out there speaking because you'll learn to improve on the little things that are here and there and here and there that you may not notice on the fly, but these people that are watching you are gonna give you that feedback in a safe environment. So it's a great way to grow, it's a great way to sharpen yourself, especially if you're in the sales or marketing game, it's crucial. You gotta be there. So, is it going to be a comfortable place for everybody? Some of the reality has to be no. It is speaking in front of people, and I know for some people that terrifies you. But I will say this, it may not be comfortable, but it's necessary. If you are somebody who is afraid to speak, is afraid to lead a team, is afraid to create or craft a strategy, it is that much more important you become a part of this Toastmasters. The Toastmasters are able to help you in a safe place among a group of people that you become familiar with. It will help you learn how to improve yourself and overcome those fears in order to find success. Furthermore, it will provide you networking opportunities like you wouldn't believe. There are so many professionals doing so many amazing things that you can network with and start to build an expansive knowledge of who people are, where they are, what they're doing, and let people know who you are and what you're doing as well. So again, guys, the power of networking, overcoming your fears, learning how to craft and hone your skills— it's so crucial, it's so vital to any entrepreneur out there, and Toastmasters is built to help you do it. So I'm not getting paid, I'm not getting sponsored to push this. What I am getting is the satisfaction of knowing that Toastmasters as a club that has been crafted over decades is going to help entrepreneurs continue to grow their skills and their expertise in presenting, leading, and speaking. Okay, so you have to get in, you have to plug in. I'm gonna put the link down in the comments, the description down, down here, right down here. It'll be in there. Click it. Go check it out. See if it's for you. Find a local club. Show up as a guest. Give it a try. See if it feels right. See if it doesn't feel right. Try another club. Find a way to plug in. You will thank me in 6 months. Question of the day: Are you a Toastmaster? And what's your favorite part? If you're not a Toastmaster, are you willing to give it a shot? Let me know in the comments down below. Share this out to anybody that you think needs some help with their public speaking or their leadership. And I will catch you guys tomorrow with another video. Later!