Hello, I'm Frank, living in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province for 10 years now.
I used to be an English teacher for 8 years before I knew Toastmasters. Because of bilingual and making speeches, I joined Yiwu No.1 Toastmasters club Apr 1st, 2016 officially.
As an English teacher, my advantages of English speaking and confidence on stage, helped me a lot in almost every speech and taking meeting roles. I remembered my ice break 4-6 mins, I recited two articles about how to learn English. Of course I'd made up some words and sentences to make them sound like a complete paragraph. I wrote the opening of the speech by myself, the connection part, and ending. Fluent English, standard pronunciation, relax on stage, good eye contact with audiences, natural body language as in my English classes, and, I'm looking good. My Individual Evaluator had said, this is the best ice break speech I've never seen before. I've got my first best speaker certificate award at that time.
Then, I loved to attend Toastmasters meetings. Although there're not too many members in our club, usually 5-8 members could attend the meeting regularly, it was a very good opportunity for me to practise more. For example, nobody wanted to be Individual Evaluators, so I have to take the roles, filling up the empty inorder to let the meeting continue. Sometimes, I even needed to evaluate myself. This practised my critical thinking ability a lot, I could tell the good parts and bad parts of any speech easily. In one meeting, there're 5 speeches, two members made one speech each and I made 3 continuously. About the Individual Evaluation part, one member evaluated the first speech, then I'd made the other four, three of them to myself. Our members and guests were shocked at that time, they started to call me " Big God". Gradually, I could tell my progress in Toastmasters and big differences between them and me. It's true, there's no natural talent, but deliberate practice. Because only practice can makes perfect.
I started to think, how can I help them, my club members to make progress in Toastmasters day by day. I grew fast. In speech, I won the club level, won the area level, won the division level, competed in district level. In leadership, I used to be the club VPE, Secretary, President, President reappointed, Pathways Guide, Area Director, etc. During the Area Director training, I knew there's a district level training, TTT, Train the Trainers. Immediately I let my Division Director Lilian know that I wanted to attend it and signed up my name overjoyed. Two days training started.
Jeff, well experienced trainer, brought me in to a new field, which overturned lots of my own experiences and skills. Five ways to engage your audiences, Pyramid presentation, PPT rules, and SCARF your story, etc. My notes and minds were never stop during those two days. I even took my notebook with me day and night, checked it as soon as I have time. For the home work, three times training in three months, I'd finished them in three weeks. Trainees in my training all said them realized something different in me, but they didn't know what it is! Thanks Jeff! Thanks Toastmasters!
After that, I began to organize or be invited trainings in Toastmasters' club level, area level, division level and district level. I'd been invited by Area H4, District 88 too, to offer a sharing and workshop there, my hometown Toastmasters. I went back home for new year vacation, nothing else to do then I searched Toastmasters club information online, found the contact person, joined the meeting. I didn't know that there were three clubs in my hometown (now there are four) and one of the president was my middle schoolfellow. Other than our relations, my performance in the meeting was highly appreciated. At that time, NMO was few day later, then they invited me to give two topic sharing in NMO. I still remembered the topics, How to give feedbacks, and How to be a good Mentor. After my sharing, I've got two mentees on the spot.
Toastmasters is an international non-profit organization. In Toastmasters, no matter sharing, keynote speech, training, from me are all for free. When I was invited to some place I need to travel, the local clubs would like to cover my travel fees very much, sometimes my staying in hotel for the night, too. I felt really grateful about that.
Two years ago, HANA, a member from our Yiwu No.1 club, said to me, Frank, you can try to be a trainer in the future. And now, I really am.
Beyond Toastmasters, I offered my trainings to a listed company which focused on reading books online and offline in Yiwu, about leadership and making speech. Within two years, our traingings helped hundreds of bosses, managers, workers and entrepreneurs, etc, to gain the leadership skills and communication skills. I was also invited by a training company, to teach them how to organize a training, that's exactly I was trained in Toastmasters, TTT.
By the end of 2018, I attended a competition which was held in Shanghai, named "Chinese good lecturer competition". Firstly, I just wanted to open up my eyes, to see what is the best lecturer could be in national or world level. Because the competition was involved three part of China, Suzhou area, Shanghai area, and Taipei area(Taiwan). All competitors were so great with senior experiences and powerful aura. They were all professional lecturers in their own fields. Some of them are even celebrities. On the semifinal, I came in the thirteen. But after I restudied my TTT notes again, carefully planned my participating session, keep those skills which Jeff had told us in mind. Finally, I won the champion in the final competition. It's a moment.
Looking back on the things I've done
I was trying to be someone
I've played my part, and keep complain in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart!