For the past few years, I’ve had a secret that I only shared with a few close friends. I wanted to be a keynote speaker. I had been a professional actor for about 12 years before entering into the education field and the desire to get back on stage was tugging at my heartstrings.
This month that dream became a reality. I gave my first keynote speech at the District 13 Toastmasters Spring Conference. I had the incredible honor of speaking alongside Aaron Beverley (the 2019 World Champion of Public Speaking) Paul Artale (an award winning motivational speaker) and Tina Rettler-Pagel (Chief Online Learning Officer at Madison College).
What an incredible experience!
I have been very fortunate to give a number of presentations at various higher education conferences, and always get a few pre-presentation jitters. Which always seems to surprise people. They seem to think that if you’re really good at speaking on stage, whether it’s acting in a show or giving a presentation, that you have no nerves at all. But that’s not true, feeling just a little nervous means that you care. You care about the experience you’re going to provide to the attendees. You care about the information you’re going to share. You care about what unpredictable issues might arise during the session and you want to make sure you can handle them. Being just a little nervous is a good thing. And yes, I was nervous. Very nervous.
I normally give presentations to educators. But here I was, giving a presentation to the Toastmasters, a group of people dedicated to the art of speaking well. And not just a single club, but the whole District! And it was my first keynote. No pressure at all.
But I was overly nervous for no reason. We received very positive feedback on the session. People absolutely loved it. And now I can officially add keynote speaker to the list of services I offer.