Four years ago, I found myself at one of those major crossroads of life (not my favorite location), and after much cogitation, I decided it was time to seriously strike out on a path of doing what I’ve always wanted to do with my life, which is to be an author and a speaker.
Having made this momentous decision, well, I had "Real Men Don’t Rehearse" in draft form that, with three months of editing, I could send to a printer. But how in the world does one become a speaker?
As I often preach to anybody who wants to do anything performance-related at a professional level, the last thing you want to do is go join an organization and/or take a bunch of classes. That puts you smack dab in the middle of your nearest competitors, and is therefore the last place you will ever find a gig. And the more lessons you take, the more you start to look just like your competition. (I learned early on in my music career that if you want to be noticed, you must emphasize your individual/ unique attributes. Of course, this approach puts a major onus upon one to do the scutwork of learning the craft and scaring up a gig. But you eventually have to do that anyway so why wait.)
So, having eschewed the standard route, I wondered where I, a total newbie, could find a place to just get up on a soapbox and start talking to people?
I called up this guy I know who is a real glad-handing fund-raiser type. He knows everybody, so I asked him if he had any idea of where I could go to speak to a crowd, for free of course, to learn the craft a little bit. He said, "hang on a second," and he put me on hold for 90 seconds. When he came back on the line, he said, "you’re speaking to the Woburn Rotary Club tomorrow at 12 noon."
And that, my friends, is how my speaking career began.
So the next day, not really knowing just exactly what a Rotary club was (other than having seen the signs at the city limits), I was introduced to the wonderful world of Rotary.
Since that first day, I have had the privilege of being the guest speaker at approximately 40 or 50 different Rotary Clubs in eastern Massachusetts. This not only gave me a tremendous opportunity to polish my craft as a speaker, I also got hired for numerous paying speaking gigs, because the members at the meetings would recommend me to event managers. But beyond all that, I had the marvelous experience of occasionally living in the world of Rotary.
I am not really qualified to give an intelligent summation of all the wonderful things that Rotary clubs do. But for those of you who don’t know, Rotary works on both a local and an international level. There are Rotary clubs just about everywhere. One year, Rotary was tremendously concerned with the eradication of polio. Another year, the organization was devoted to improving water resources worldwide. On a local level, Rotary Clubs support all sorts of good works. Somewhere in your town, there is a playground or park or some other nice thing that was paid for by your local Rotary Club.
I will never forget one Rotary meeting I was at, waiting for my time to speak, and the president of the club was discussing how they had spent an unexpected amount of money on tsunami relief. He then started to talk about the annual scholarship that the Rotary gave to a local high school student. I was prepared to hear this guy say that they wouldn’t be able to give the scholarship that year because of all the money going to tsunami relief, but instead he said "well, we’ll just have to figure out a way to fund both of these." These folks are just tremendously friendly, community minded, and generous, to a point that never ceases to amaze me.
One of the best things I have taken from Rotary is part of their "four-way test." One of the four questions of this test is, "is it fair for all concerned?" I have found this to be a more useful reference point in all of my business dealings and contract negotiations than any amount of legal advice.
Oh, and by the way, whenever I’m a guest speaker at a Rotary meeting, I get a free meal :-). (Hey, some habits learned in the music biz, like a fascination with free food, die hard.)
After my most recent Rotary club appearance (in Newton, MA), Jeff Tucker, the Rotarian in charge of scheduling speakers, who is also a banking executive, took it entirely upon himself to send a blanket e-mail to his entire contact list recommending me as a speaker. That kind of promotion cannot be bought for love nor money. I was speechless. But I am not surprised, it’s what all these Rotarians are about. What great folks. For any of you Rotarians reading this, thanks again! I owe you all a happy dollar . . .
© Justin Locke
