I’m always getting asked questions about Toastmasters. Whether it’s someone attending one of my classes or watching me give a speech, when they hear that I help people with their public speaking skills, the topic of Toastmasters often comes up. While I recommend Toastmasters and the most common question I’m asked is which club to join, I was recently asked an interesting question: how should I dress when visiting a club?

Every club is different so it really does depend on the club. Community clubs meeting at night or on the weekends might be casual while corporate clubs might require more formal dress. So here are some tips:  Read more... (663 words, 1 image, estimated 2:39 mins reading time)

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So you’re doing some training or a workshop and you’ve got your PowerPoint presentation perfected. Now the big question: do you print out the slides and give them to your audience? I’m often asked this in my speaking classes and by clients and my answer is typical: it depends. Sometimes it makes sense to provide them to the audience prior to the presentation while other times it’s better to not. Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Pros:  Read more... (478 words, 1 image, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

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Life is too short and we never know when the final chapter of our lives will come to a close. Some of us are fortunate to have some advanced warning that our days are numbered while others depart completely unexpected. If you find yourself in the first group, there is a silver lining to that cloud.

There’s a song by Tim McGraw called “Live Like You Were Dying.” It’s about a guy with a friend who finds out his days are numbered and chooses to use it as an opportunity to really live. Rather than sulk and spend his remaining days depressed, the man in this song pushes life to its limit. As the chorus begins “I went sky diving. I went Rocky Mountain climbing. I spent 2.7 seconds, on a bull named Fu Man Chu.” Most of us would never consider doing such activities out of fear of getting hurt, getting permanently disabled or even dying. Of course, when you’ve been given only weeks or months to live, these consequences seem like less of a concern.  Read more... (511 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

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