Should you join Toastmasters? #toastmasters

Should you join Toastmasters? That's a question I'm often asked by clients all over the world when I'm doing public speaking seminars and workshops, and the answer is mostly yes. I have mostly very, very positive things to say about Toastmasters. For those of you who aren't familiar with it. It's a nonprofit organization, has different clubs all over the world, hundreds of thousands of people, and there's probably one within 10 minutes of where you live or work. You get together, you speak, and you help each other out. It's a low pressure, non threatening way to practice public speaking, to get feedback from people and to just get more comfortable with speaking. And I've often spoken at Toastmasters organizations all over the world and they've been nothing but fabulous to me. So if you're looking to build your speaking skills and you want to get more facetime in front of people and you don't have an obvious venue, then by all means, join Toastmasters. Couple of Tips if you're going to go to all the trouble of driving or walking or taking a bus to some meeting, it's going to take one, two, three hours out of your evening or day. My one biggest suggestion to you is anytime you speak, give a colleague your cell phone and ask them to record yourself speaking on video so you can review it after the class. Some Toastmasters do that, some don't. I think you destroy about 95% of the effectiveness that you could get from going to a Toastmasters meeting if you're not watching video of how you spoke later. So that's far and away my biggest tip on how to get the most out of Toastmasters. The next big thing is some, not all, but some Toastmasters have fetishized this issue of saying or ah and someone's in the back ringing a bell or counting. And the whole speech can be an exercise in how to avoid ums and ahs. Those of you who've heard me speak out on this before, I'm not a fan of saying extra ums and ahs, but that shouldn't be your focus. Your focus should be on saying something interesting and something memorable and useful to your audience. You do that, they'll forgive ums and ums. If you give a speech and you have not a single a, but everything you say is a generic platitude like live your dreams, have goals, associate with successful people. If everything out of your mouth is some trite cliche, no one's going to care or give you credit for not saying uhs and uhs. My other Biggest criticism of Toastmasters, frankly. And I understand why they do it this way because they have people from every industry, every religious group, non religious group, every political group. They are non political and they have to appeal to everyone. But when you see the speeches that win so many awards and work their way up the championships, to my ear, they just sound so trite and just feel like I've heard it all before, 10,000 times. It's all kind of warmed over Anthony Robbins or Norman Vincent Peale. So just be aware that you can give a speech that your Toastmasters group thinks is wonderful, but you give it in the real world, people are going to think that was horrible. So just be aware of that divide. So overall, on balance, for 95% of people in the world. Sure. Thumbs up. Join Toastmasters now. If you have any limitations on your time, I think a far better use of your time is to just speak out. Do what I'm doing right now. You go to a ToastMasters group, maybe 20 people will hear you. And that's great to talk to people in person. But post a video on Facebook, on YouTube, other places, chances are you'll have more than 20. So speak, you may have 200, you may have 2,000. Get feedback from them. So to me, for people who have busy schedules, I think the, the number one way to speak out and get more speaking time is posting your own videos, creating your own simple talking head videos on YouTube and Facebook Live and Facebook. But certainly a great enhancement to that is Toastmasters. I'm TJ Walker. I want to hear from you. If you have joined Toastmasters, tell me what you've gotten out of it. Tell me how you've benefited. Again, I'm overall very, very positive. But if you disagree with my assessments, let me know in the comments section right here. Please post your comments. Also, if you haven't done so yet, please like our Facebook page. TJ. It's facebook.com tjwalkerinteractive.