Who is Tom? Oprah, Tofurkey, and How a Free Pizza Changed My Life!

Hmm. Where do I begin? Well, I was born on a farm in Michigan and I was named after a cat from there. Well, I wasn't the best student. I graduated high school with a stellar. I know you're gonna be excited. Get ready to clap. C grade point average. I got rejected from almost every four year institution I applied to that. I ended up going to a community college that was closer to my home than my high school. So to say that I was emotionally in a bad place would be an understatement. But then something happened in the first week of my time at that school that changed my life forever. Enter dramatic music I was walking down the hallway with my backpack on. I walked past an office called Student Activity. There was a guy standing outside. He turned to me and he said, hey, have, have you ever thought about joining the Student Activities Program Board? I said, no, no, no, no, no. I am a car to class kind of student. No, thank you. I don't get involved outside of the classroom. I tried to keep walking on a little bit further, but he yelled out again. He said, no, really, I think you should join. You might be great at it. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Not my thing. Thank you very much though. And I tried to walk on just a little bit further, but then he said the magic words which roped me in. He said, there's going to be free food at the next meeting I'm in. I showed up, I ate the pizza. I liked it. But then something else happened. I found myself surrounded by a group of people that had an energy level that I loved and I wanted more of it. I participated more and they were getting good grades, so my grades went up. In fact, my first semester on campus, I got straight A's. Then the second semester I got all A's. My entire first year all A's. My second year, all A's. And I won this thing called an All USA Academic Award, which is given to only 20 people across the country. I was the first person from that institution to win that award. So they made a big deal out of it. I also won the Illinois Centennial Scholar. I graduated from that school, top of the class, got to give the commencement speech. Went out of my four year institution, my third year all A's. Fourth year all A's. Graduated valedictoria to that school as well and got to give their commencement speech. I actually got to graduate with giving two commencement speeches. I don't think there's many people out there that can say they gave two commencement speeches because before they actually graduated university, another University nearby asked me to come and speak at their graduation. They said they would pay me a stipend of $50. And I was like, you pay people to speak? I am in. That was when I learned that there was this career called professional speaking. Since then I have won seven national speaking titles. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. And a bunch of other speaking awards. And I spoken at over 850 different institutions all around the world for the past 19 years. I've trained over a million leaders on the training that you're going through right now. On a personal note, I live just outside of New York City with my wife and stepdaughter. I was on the COVID of the Tofurky Box. I once was on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Got kicked off of the Oprah Winfrey Show. I love peanut butter so much that I filed to host a a festival in New York City called the New York City Peanut Butter Jam. Genius. That's me. Now that you know me, let's play a little game. We're gonna call this game Two Truths, One Lie. I'm gonna give you three statements and your challenge after you click Complete and Continue will be a quiz to guess which one of these you think is the lie that I'm telling. So here are the three statements. Statement number one, Tom has a tattoo on his forearm of his g. Statement number two, Tom was once on a reality show on NBC's Today show for one month. Statement number three, Tom has traveled to over 43 different countries. Alright, when you click Complete and Continue, you'll go to the next screen to take the quiz and see which of the statements that I just said is the lie. Good luck. See you in the next lesson.