“A perfect opportunity”

MonaVie

Quixtar

Ingnite

The national company

Q:  What do these things all have in common?

A:  Someone has offered me all these “opportunities” in the last calendar year.

For those of you that know me you know that I like to talk.  And with that talking comes a lot of friends.  I know a lot of people from all over the place and I love meeting new ones.  People are FASCINATING!  One of the byproducts of my natural “chatty-cathy doll” syndrome is I am often a target for network marketers (and life insurance companies too).  I have the one resource that network marketers covet and that is friends and I would really like to keep these people as my friends and not make every contact a “sales call”.  But the latest offer got me to thinking about my opportunity and my resources.

Being that I am still searching for full-time work, getting a lot of “no-fee” speaking engagements, and generally not contributing much to the gross national product, I lose sight sometimes of the opportunities that I have.  Lemons and lemonade get old after a while, but it is always a combination that works.

Because of the time that I had after loosing my job I was able to really focus on the speech contest-Lemonade

Because I am flexible with my time I get to get my son off the bus from school-Lemonade

Because I have developed an ability on the platform I am getting invited to do more speaking-Lemonade

These are all opportunities that have presented themselves BECAUSE I don’t have a “normal” job.  Opportunities exist everywhere, everyday.  And a lot of those opportunities are there because of something that does not appear to be positive.  We all have opportunities around us that are not being realized and utilized.

The earth is overflowing with natural resources and so are you.  In my world I have faith, a supportive and loving family, my natural gift of gab, and 1100 Facebook friends. Just like mother nature provides the fuels and food to keep this amazing planet spinning, my resources keep my tank on full and keep me moving forward.  My grandmother used to always tell me to count my blessings and in the world, in this economy we should all take a minute to do so more often than we do.

I am sure that in the next three or four months, someone will offer me another “perfect opportunity”.  I always let the marketer finish their phone call before I politely let them know that I am not interested.  But in the time between here and there I need to take a close look at the “perfect opportunity” that already exists in my own back yard.  I am blessed beyond words, I just have to follow granny’s advise more often to realize it.

Ciao

SK

It’s the journey right?

I want

I need

I deserve

I earned

I won

All solutions and answers based on the efforts that you have put in.  These are the rewards for studying for a test, preparing for a race, or working on an assignment.  As Americans, though, we really want the prize.

When our neighbor gets a new TV, we are happy but secretly jealous.

When your rival wins the game, you respect it but secretly feel like you gave it away

We want the reward and sometimes we forget about the work that it took to even be considered for the reward.

In the last week I have given three speeches.  I have never given that many different speeches ever.  From everything I have read and everything I have heard, this is how it all starts.  But I want the reward; and I wouldn’t mind having it now.  I want someone to “hire” me rather than “invite” me to do a speech.  But then I stop and think about the speeches and see why I have to walk through the valley in order to reach the summit.

Speech 1

I was asked to speak in honor of my high school band director.  He was more than a teacher to me and was really a father figure and a huge influence on my life.  I was honored to be invited and even more honored to be asked to speak.  I had never been asked to do something like this and it was hard.  Talking about someone you really care about challenges your abilities as a speaker to maintain control but still show the emotions you feel.  The first few drafts of the speech were soaked in tears, I just couldn’t deliver it.  I asked some advice from another speaker and he helped me tremendously.  In the end, the speech went off well.  I was a little too loud on my top end volume but it was funny, people enjoyed it, and it honored my friend.

Speech 2

This was a toastmasters club speech.  This is also the first speech I have given in 2009 that wasn’t in preparation for a contest.  I had to dig deep to even find a manual I could work from.  Because I had spent time working on speech 1, I was late in preparing for speech 2.  I found myself stuck between speeches that were too difficult to prepare for and projects I really didn’t want to do (I thought about just delivering speech 1, but I wanted a challenge).  I eventually ended up working from the entertaining speaker manual and doing project 3 “Make them laugh”.  Most of my speeches have elements of humor in them, but when being forced to be funny it is quite a challenge.  I ended up crafting a speech about the church I grew up in and some of the silly things that I saw as a child.  It required me to be very vivid in my descriptions without running through all the details too fast.  It also required me to take some risks of being a little edgy without offending anyone.  The end result was funny.  It really felt good to achieve my task and at the end of the speech I made sure to leave them with something to chew on other than just jokes.

Speech 3

I have been asked to participate in a speakers group to promote the school district that my son is in and the district that I grew up in.  Yet again another great honor.  We will get to be out in the community and give highlights of our childhood and let people know about the good things that are going on in the community.  For this week, the districts PR director wanted to see what we were going to say.  I really didn’t prepare much for this at all.  I had made some notes and thought about some stories I wanted to share, but I had gone through it only a couple of times a few weeks prior.  My fellow speakers were very prepared and had typewritten and well organized presentations.  I had a story about my son saying the “F” word and playing off that one incident.  One thing I have found over the last three years is that all my speeches have a lot of emotion.  This was no different.  In an audience of three I could see the tears developing and the smiles immediately after.  I again walked the edge with some of my content, but I’m learning that is my style.  I have to challenge your thinking and maybe even make you worry about where I’m going before I give you the reward.  It was also good to be able to speak to people that had never heard me speak and still be able to connect with them.

So of course I hope that I have an email in my inbox right now asking me to come speak at someone’s conference and asking what my fee is.  But I didn’t join toastmasters and I don’t like speaking just because one day I may make a living at it.  I like that process of putting together a speech.  I like practicing it in my living room in front of my dogs.  I like the fact that my son comes around the corner to see what I’m talking about.  I like looking into people’s eyes and knowing that they understand.  It is all those things and more.  At some point I’ll get paid (or at least I hope so) but that won’t add or subtract from the joy that I feel in doing the one thing that I do best.

Journey-1

vs

Destination-0

SK

So now what?

One of the best things about having a blog is that it is an permanent reminder of you.  I haven’t had the burn inside to write anything lately, so I have laid low and its been good for me.  But tomorrow my son goes back to school and I am back to being a productive citizen (I hope).

The summer was a blast.  I got the wild ride of being in the speech contest.  We took our summer trip to Wisconsin.  Seaver and I were able to really bond and spend an amazing time together just being father and son.  And I have crafted an idea.

As many of you know, I love to talk.  And as some of you know, I love University of Georgia athletics.  In a previous post, I talked about finding passion and doing something about it.  A lot of big talk but not enough action.  But action is an interesting thing.  Occasionally it starts moving without you knowing it.  It starts putting people and situations in your life to prepare you to do something.  Action is sometimes not your own action, but the actions of others on your behalf and their interest in your life.  So what does talking, UGA, and action have to do with each other?

College athletics is over a $5 billion industry.  The University of Georgia alone has a 70+ billion dollar budget.  When colleges are on national television they see an immediate increase in applications and inquiries from prospective students.  Yet over and over when the number one advertising vehicle for these schools get in front of microphones you get this

How many times have you seen an interview with a college athlete and wondered”how in the world did he or she get into school?  Or how many times have you caught the English language being destroyed by a young man following a victory?  I don’t expect the players and coaches to have MLK’s eloquence, but a higher level of communcation skills is needed.

So the what in the now what is still being crafted.  The end product will look like student-athletes being more competent and confident when being interviewed, coaches and administrators being better prepared and more polished, and fans of these schools proud that not only does our team play well, but they represent my school well.

We will see what happens next, but the funny thing is that I wasn’t even taking action and action was already taking place.

SK

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Only one team gets the glory involved with winning a championship.  Everyone else leaves with a little disappointment.  Saturday I got to taste defeat.  And I am OK with it.

The contest was fun.  I got to meet so many amazing people that love toastmasters as much as I do.  The conference portion of the weekend was great.  I heard great speakers and went to some great workshops.  But the reason I went was to compete.  I had made peace with myself on the ride up and decided that success would not be measured by a trophy but instead by “how it felt”.

1.  The speech was good.

One of the most useful skills I have acquired in this process is the ability to take input and feedback, sift through it all, and apply my own style and substance to it.  This last two weeks I have had evaluations from some very experienced toastmasters, speakers, and writers.  I obviously couldn’t do everything they suggested but I found things that I felt made the speech better and put them to work.  At the end of the day, I loved the finished product.  It was 100% me.

2.  The competition was great.

There were so many great speeches on Saturday.  I knew coming into the event that the talent level would be high.  My fellow speakers did not disappoint.  I was falling down laughing as well as feeling emotions in my heart as they crafted stories about job loss, achieving your dreams, and impacting peoples lives.  It was artistic and funny and dramatic.

3.  The audience liked it.

At the end of the day, the speech was not for the judges it was for the crowd.  I could see in the faces of the people as they laughed and nodded that they “got it”.  I know that I didn’t do some “winning” tactics and techniques but that was OK because I stopped trying to win a week earlier and focused on telling a great story and making it connect with an audience.

4.  It wasn’t my time.

I don’t know if I will ever do a contest again.  It was mentally exhausting working on this speech.  I learned so much during this time and my future has been changed because of it.  But it just wasn’t my time to take that next step.  This clears the next 7 weeks of my life to DO my life and to take what I have learned and apply it in other areas.

5.  I did pretty good.

Even in loosing this contest, I’m in the top 1% of 1% of 1% in a club for people who speak.  I know that if I could have gone 8th instead of 1st or if Seaver’s voice recording would have played it could have changed the outcome, but the right person won and I would still be walking away with my head held high.

So contest season is over, now what?   I have my coaching hat on again for football.  I have some opportunities that are starting to present themselves to me.  I have a level of confidence that I did not have last January.  I have my faith, family, health, and friends.

End chapter one

Chapter two:  The best is yet to come!

SK

What do you love?

Let’s assume the obvious.   We all love:

Family

Friends

Puppies

Vacation

Babies

and

Big Macs

Now that we have pulled back the obvious list, what’s left?

What really gets inside your heart and moves you to action?

What makes you smile?

For me, one of the things I really love is being a youth coach.  And when my son started playing sports I had no desire to coach.  I wanted to be involved.  I wanted to be at every practice but I never wanted to be the guy.  It started with helping with baseball.

I grew up playing baseball and Seaver seemed to have some natural ability in the sport and t-ball is like cat herding, you need a lot of hands to keep them under control.  Somewhere in the middle of that season, I fell in love with those kids.  I loved watching them get better, I loved being there when they did something new,  and I just loved being a big kid with them.  It was awesome.

As fun as baseball was, is, and will continue to be; for me it pails in comparison to football.

Last summer Seaver mentioned that he wanted to play football and I was concerned.  I thought he was too little and too young.  We knew he had an opportunity to play football with some of his friends and decided to give it a shot.  The first few weeks was very difficult.  But about a week before the first game, it started to get fun.  And the more fun it got for him, the more involved I became.  I never really was a formal “coach” last season, but I was at almost every practice, was on the sidelines, and got to know all those kids and watch them grow and get better.

This year I was much more involved with baseball and I have the pleasure of being the head coach for our football team this year.  And it is far from an easy task.  One parent sent me an email recently thanking me for my involvement and dedication to the kids.  As I was reading it all I could think about was, “What else would I be doing?”.  Most of my great male role models growing up were my coaches.  I am lucky that all my kids have fathers involved in their lives but I learned first hand last year how influential a coach can be on a  young child and I take that responsibility seriously.

As much as I want to win, that is not what is important.  I get the privilege of teaching these young men a great game and watching them grow up before my eyes.  They learn respect, teamwork, discipline, and how to deal with adversity.  Football teaches so many life lessons for both them and me.

Find something you love.  Coaching, needlepoint, serving the homeless, landscaping, or surfing.

Find something that lights your fire and that you can’t wait for the next time you can do it

Find something that you can tell your friends and family about and it lights you up every time you talk about it.

Find something you love and pour your heart into it.

And don’t forget when you find that something, you also need to pour that same kind of love into the list of things that we all love.

Ciao

SK

Moving on

I am now in all out speech preparation.  I have a speech, I have places to give the speech, and I have my eyes and ears 0pen for ways to make the speech better.  This is the fun part of the process.

After I won the last contest, I decompressed for a week and then I laid out a schedule to get ready for the next speech.

First two weeks:  Brainstorm speech ideas

Second two weeks: Settle on an idea and start putting it together

Third two weeks:  Give it, give it, give and learn

Final week: Tweak but don’t over analyze

Day before contest:  View the room/audience and make mental notes

Contest day:  Enjoy it, because it may be the only time I get to do it

That’s the road map I cooked up in my head after my last victory.  What I really didn’t calculate into the process was how difficult it would be to write another really good speech.   I knew I would have to create another speech if I won, but I figured I would just be able to tighten up an old one and make it work.  I was totally wrong.

There is no how-to book or manual on competing in a toastmasters contest.  There are a lot of opinions on blogs and websites from past participants but really no blow by blow account of how someone did it.  So I had to take bits and pieces from many different sources.  One of the most amazing things I have learned in the process is how gracious TM members are.  I have reached out to former world champions, busy professional speakers, and high ranking club officers and almost always gotten some sort of response.  These are super busy people that don’t know me from a hole in the wall, but take time out of their day to give me advice, criticism, and hope.

I have said several times that “I don’t know enough to know what I don’t know” in this process.  I have seen so many contest speeches and early on in the process I caught myself trying to copy ones that I thought were great.   And I could probably have put together a pretty good speech that was “somebody elses”, but its just not me.  At the end of the day I want to go into the contest with a speech that I am in love with.  That was the key to the first one, I loved it; it took on a life of itself; and rather than giving a speech the speech was a part of me.

The new speech is titled “Move On”.  It grew out of another speech which was me trying to make a winner rather than me trying to tell a story.  That’s what I am good at.  I tell stories with sweeping changes in emotion, volume, and position.  I move people, I don’t motivate.  My appeal is more to the heart than it is to the brain.  And that’s what I am going with.  In my mind its a winner and that’s really all that I care about.  If the judges like it, great but I am not going to put this together with the only way to measure success is with a victory.  I won the first time I delivered it at my club and new that I had found something that reflected me.  I won when I see how it lands on peoples hearts and makes them think.  The trophy would be great but the story is my reward in this process.

SK

P.S.  I really do want to win though

What are you going to do with your life?

If there is a harder question to answer, I don’t know what it is.  I have friends that have always known they wanted to be doctors, lawyers, and movie makers; and I often envy them.  How much easier is it to find your way, when you have a clear destination in mind?  It must feel great to only have to go to college, do well, get into medical school, do well, do a million hours of residency, and then be a doctor.  And it has to be somewhat settling when you discover that’s your path when you are 13 or 14 years old.  

But what about the rest of us?

What happens when you take a job and then another job and another?  

And then you look around and you are 30 or 40 or 50 and still just doing a job.  

And there is honor in all work.  It is so impressive the types of things that people do to support their families.  But at 50 should you really be trying to figure out what you want to be when you are grown up?

This is the part where I am supposed to tell some great story about how I was lost and now have this amazing career and everything is perfect professionally.  And maybe one day I will, but that’s just not the case.  

I am you.  

I am the hard working customer service agent that wants to be a writer.

I am the law enforcement officer that really would love to own a restaurant.

I am the sales person that really doesn’t know what she wants to do, but is sure that selling cellphones or copiers is not it.

I am the person that stayed at their job for 25 years and then they closed the doors and I have to start over. 

I am every one of those wild dreams you had when you were 12 but never thought they could come true.  

It is a lot easier to have dreams than to chase them.  And my point is not that everyone pick up today, forget your responsibilities, and become a trail guide; but I do think its important to take a look inside and see if you can answer the question.  And to test yourself even further, look back in your life and see if you are where you were supposed to be.  

We are all DOING something with our lives.  And most people are trying to do well.  We work hard, spend time with family, search for inner peace, and generally try to be good people.  A lot of these actions are passive.  You just do them because you always have.  They are very important to you and your existence but they are not DO’s.  

Do is an action word.  

Life is about action.

So what are you doing?  Who are you doing it with?  What would you like to be doing?  Where are you doing it?  Does doing it make you proud and happy?  Do you want to be doing something else?  

There are so many amazing people in this world with talent that is only limited by their own minds.  Before you limit yourself to doing the job that you have always done, isn’t it worth looking at what you could DO if you simply decided to try and DO it.  

 

SK

It’s a big deal

I am loving this ride I’m on in this contest.  Regardless of the outcome it has been a life changer and even if I do compete again, it may never  be able to top this experience.  I have been able to have contact with people I have admired from afar, received compliments from people I don’t know, and have grown in so many unexpected ways.  

This contest is a big deal.  And making it this far is a really big deal.  To put it in perspective:

106 countries

Over 12,000 clubs

Nearly 250,000 members

Every club is required to participate in the International speech contest.  So starting with 250,000 there are now only going to be 80 people left in the entire world competing at this level.  I have a one in seven chance of making it to the finals.  

But really what does this mean for me, my family, and the people around me?  My big personal take away is that I am more talented than I thought I was on the platform.  My big family take away is that I am so lucky to have the amazing situation that I have with a wonderful and supportive spouse and an inspirational son.  My big people take away is that there are so many people around me that not only care about me but investing in me, and that is humbling.  

This process is a big deal.  But just like most things in life it all the other things that happen because of it that make it wonderful.  

 

SK

Coming of age

In preparation for the upcoming Region 8 Toastmasters speech contest I went back through my basic manual and reviewed all the speeches I did on the way through.  I originally looked there for speech ideas but found myself getting so much more insight into my maturation as a speaker.  From the earliest speeches in my manual I could see the beginnings of a future competitor.  

I had comments like:

Smooth delivery-Good pacing-Natural humor-Nice body language

I had no idea what I was doing, but apparently some critical pieces to my speaking puzzle came naturally to me.

There are a lot of people in this world that have natural skills and abilities in one area or another.  The playgrounds are littered with people that had college or professional basketball talent come natural but something never quite worked out.  

As a toastmaster most of us strive to improve our skills as a communicator.  The words of evaluation are meant to help expedite that improvement.  I see many toastmasters that don’t do anything with the evaluation information.  They hear it, read it, and then repeat the same mistakes in their next speech.  From my earliest days in the club, I made a point of addressing the areas for improvement on the very next speech.  My speech preparation may not have been top level, but I made a point of working on what I was instructed to work on.  

That was the beginning of the process.  Now as I work through crafting contest speeches, I am delivering them to different clubs and different groups and getting evaluations and feedback from so many sources.  Now obviously I cannot take every comment and make a change to my speech but I am mindful of the things that I hear repeatedly.  These are things I need to adjust.  My district speech was good but I heard from several sources that my ending needed work.  I eventually got an ending I liked at 2:15 am the day of the contest.  

There is no substitution for stage time.  That is where you truly improve your craft as a speaker.  A close second to stage time is evaluation.  The only way we can truly get better is if we listen to the people that are trying to help us get better. 

 

SK

I’m lost, where is the payoff?

I have been a fan of ABC’s Lost since it started.  I was sucked into the stories of the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 and their perils on the island.  The stories were complex and the characters were deep.  There was also an element of supernatural and fantasy that made it just weird enough so that there was always something I just couldn’t figure out.  Unlike most really good tv shows that end up getting canceled because of poor ratings, the creators of LOST decided to plan an ending to their program and next season will be the last.  This seasons finally was last night and the two hour extravaganza revolved around two separate groups trying to save the island and save the people.  And as I watch it finish I was left to wonder, as I have after many episodes, “Where is my payoff?”.

Do your speeches have a payoff?

Do your meetings have a payoff?

Do your stories have a payoff?

Happily ever after isn’t the only possible payoff at the end of a presentation.  In some cases we need an action statement.  In some cases we want to know what happened to the principals in the story.  Sometimes we need to know that everything didn’t work out for the best.  But we always need SOMETHING at the end to show for the time that we have invested in your work.  

Basic speech structure is:  opening, body, conclusion.  The opening is the set up for your story with provides the conflict and the conclusion wraps it up and gives you a payoff.  Take a look at the presentation that you are working on or the speech you just practiced and think if there is something in it for the people in the audience.  The whole idea of professional speaking revolves around sharing something with an audience that gives value to the members of the audience.  That value is the payoff.  

Hopefully next season will be 30 episodes of non stop payoff and resolution of issues (I still want to know about Locke working at the box factory and what kind of powers Walt has), but somehow I don’t think that will be the case.  Instead maybe I will just make sure that the speech I am working on isn’t just a well crafted roller coaster ride, but that in the end it not only provides value to the audience but they get a payoff.

 

SK