The first time Michael J. Pope got up to give a speech, at Toastmasters, the room held maybe ten or twelve people, and he was terrified and shaking. He wanted any excuse not to get up there, grabbed his notes, opened with his name, and says those four minutes felt like four hours. He is now an international speaker and a Maxwell Leadership certified speaker, trainer and coach, and is moving from a corporate career into running his own business full time.
What changed was not that the fear went away. Michael talks about the mentor who walked him through learning to communicate, and about deciding that the discomfort of standing up was smaller than the cost of staying seated. It is an honest conversation about the distance between knowing you have something to say and being willing to say it out loud.