Dear Fellow Toastmaster!

For the first meeting of the month, we braved the wind to hear the powerful stories and be reminded to lead with our strengths, not our weaknesses,

🙋‍♀️ Sign up for roles on our next meeting on Feb 12 🙋‍♀️

🙋 Please reflect your meeting RSVP 🙋‍♀️

 📣 📆 What’s up

Never want to miss out on GGTM social events, workshops and meetings? Click the button to subscribe to our club’s Google Calendar.

• GGTM will be holding our International and Humorous Speech Contests on Feb 12th, in lieu of a regular meeting. Please join us to help our contestants advance to the Area contests! See below for the rulebook: https://ccdn.toastmasters.org/medias/files/department-documents/speech-contests-documents/1171speechcontestrulebook2024-2025/1171-speech-contest-rulebook.pdf

  If you would like to compete in either contest:

  • International Speech Contest: You must have completed L2 in Pathways OR be a Distinguished Toastmaster

  • Humorous Speech Contest: There are no entry requirements

  • Please send an email to [email protected] and CC [email protected] and [email protected] letting us know that you intend to compete

  Roles we need to fill:

  • 1x Toastmaster

  • 5x judges

  • 1x Tiebreaker judge

  • 2x Timer

  • 2x Ballot counter

  • Please sign up on the Feb 5th agenda and send an email to [email protected] and CC [email protected] and [email protected] letting us know that you would like to fill a role!

 📚️🏫 Toastmastering Together

Let’s get better by learning from each other and sharing resources. Bookmark these for your reference as you go through your GGTM journey!

• Golden Gate Toastmaster Resources (bit.ly/GGTM-resources)

• Toastmaster Meeting Roles One-Pager (bit.ly/GGTM-roles)

• Onboarding Checklist (bit.ly/GGTM-onboarding)

 🦅💼🗣️🎧Feb5th Club Meeting Highlights

We had a faultless meeting confidently steered by our Toastmaster for the evening - Gene. He challenged us to commit to the bit (the theme of the evening - don’t admit your faults) - to make the mistakes and carry on.

Thank you to the 13 guests who joined us this past Wednesday, many of whom braved the Table Topic stage for the first time, bolstered (WOTD) by the confidence and support of the club.

Thank you to everyone who helped run the meeting as functionaries Lisa, Sheila, Ashwani, Karishma, Helen, and Nik.

During our meeting we:

• 💼Peter leant into the theme and shared some examples of when not to own up to your mistakes in the workplace. As well as how to turn mistakes into strengths in his 2-minute special.

• 🎧Sheila shared her Spotify Playlist speech 2.0. Starting with a musical intro, taking us on a journey of her personal and professional highlights of 2024, her speech ended with a heartwarming message about family. 

• 🐦Mike N shared his moving and vulnerable speech of the ‘year of the phoenix’ (🏆Best Speech🏆). He took us on an emotional journey through his struggles in 2024 and how he used presence, action and faith to escape his ‘own personal hell’. 

• 🗣️Mia told us how she Faced her Demon of public speaking back in 2003 and decided to run. Since then, she has been fighting back and with every step the demon has weakened. She encouraged us to do the same. To stand up, speak up and watch our demons disappear.

• Katie led Table Topics with half of the questions aligned to the meeting theme and half to the Big Game (she’s an Eagles fan!🦅🦅).

• We learned that our guest Brandon’s favorite Super Bowl was the year Janet Jackson performed! But he would like to see John Meyer perform at a halftime show. (🏆Best Table Topic🏆)

• Tavisan (🏆Best Evaluator🏆) commended Sheila’s speech and appreciated the sequence and flow. He poetically likened songs and music to bookmarks of life reminding us of the good and the bad.

  • Thank you for our other Evaluators this week, Peter (evaluating Mike) and Alex W (evaluating Mia).

Send your member profile to [email protected] so we can feature you next. Share your adventures that we can highlight as well!

🫵🗣️ Your turn

We would like to hear YOUR stories, information and feedback to make this newsletter, our club and our Toastmastering better. Share it with us!