Most professional speakers, short of their first having been an Olympic Gold Medal winning athlete, start their speaking careers cutting their teeth giving free talks without remuneration.
When I was in the sales profession in Silicon Valley selling corporate software to multi-million dollar businesses, I was also aiming at developing the foundation for my eventually being a professional public speaker.
People in the field were recommending that first start speaking for free at the area service clubs.
There was only one problem.
Where I lived, the protocol of the service clubs was to book speakers months upon months in advance and only to book a speaker who came to them exclusively through certain Toastmasters speaker skill development clubs.
With that kind of entry threshold even for giving free talks, that meant I was more than 1 year out from being able to get booked to speak before the community service oriented clubs.
If that was really how it was going to be, I then had a huge obstacle in my way on my path to become a woman professional motivational speaker.
What was I to do?
