The Magic of Speaking for Entrepreneurs

Being an entrepreneur sounds glamorous—you spot an opportunity and develop it into a business, whether that’s a product or service, then watch it grow into a financial success.

However, it takes a lot of long hours and serious work to become successful. You need to thoroughly understand everything about your product or service and have a grasp of the operations side, including the risks.

You also need communication skills. In fact, you need very strong communication skills that allow you to confidently pitch investors, give sales presentations, and maybe even speak at conferences and exhibits. You also need leadership skills, particularly as your business starts to scale. Being able to communicate and lead effectively gives you a sense of confidence that will carry over into all aspects of your business.

When I first started my own business, The Focus Bee, back in 2018, I quickly realized that communication was one of the key pillars of business: for sales, confidence building, innovative thinking, and so much more. Within the first six months of starting my own company, I signed up for Toastmasters to practice both communication and public speaking.

If you’re creating a new business, Toastmasters is one of the best investments you can make to develop the communication skills, leadership experience, and confidence you need to tackle any challenge.

Hone Your Speaking Skills

Being an entrepreneur often involves wearing many different hats—you might be the founder, but chances are you’ll also be acting as a salesperson, a marketing expert, a tech specialist, and/or a finance manager.

Whatever your title, you are the voice and face of your brand, and you need to be able to speak and present, both informally and formally, to groups of all sizes, from stakeholders and investors, to potential clients and customers, and to someone at a networking event.

Luckily, the best way to learn to speak clearly and persuasively comes with practice. The more often you practice communicating your ideas, the clearer your communication becomes.

That’s where Toastmasters comes in.

Your club offers an ideal opportunity to perfect your elevator speech, your sales pitch, or a presentation to investors.

Ask club members for specific feedback: Did the elevator speech make sense? Did the sales pitch have the right information and an effective persuasive tone? Was the data in your presentation clear and easy to understand?

You gain direct insights by asking club members these types of specific questions. This immediate feedback trains you to express your ideas in a concise way.

Melinda Muganzo, DTM, of Loma Linda, California, is a member of Entrepreneur Toastmasters, an online club. The club does a round-robin style evaluation, so members can provide meaningful feedback for four minutes after each speaker.

For her, the feedback has been invaluable. “With this feature, the entrepreneur receives diverse ideas to help facilitate their personal growth,” she says.

Gain Leadership Skills

If you consider yourself an entrepreneur, then you’re a leader. You are in charge of products, services, and ideas; you’re introducing something new to the world. You need to be able to lead from any area of your new venture.

If leadership makes you uncomfortable, use your Toastmasters club to grow those skills. Club officer and club meeting roles both offer opportunities to lead a group of people, learn how to manage time and stress, and be proactive.

Club officer positions are the most effective way to really gain experience. If the financial end of the business is intimidating, try the Club Treasurer role. If you need to boost your PR and marketing skills, go for the Vice President Public Relations. In fact, any role on the Club Executive Committee offers opportunities to strengthen skills in areas like team building, project management, and conflict resolution.

Even meeting roles offer a short-term way to gain skills—the Toastmaster of the Day organizes the meeting and plans the agenda, both the evaluator and Ah-Counter roles strengthen active listening skills, and the grammarian and speaker of the day help you polish your word choices. And when you take on a club meeting role, you also have the opportunity to practice speaking.

Build Your Confidence

While it’s easy to feel a sense of confidence and invincibility when you’re in the planning stages of your new business, that confidence can wane when you’re faced with a barrage of questions or problems from investors or clients.

Luckily, confidence can also be built through practice. Think about what makes you the most nervous or where you feel the weakest in your new position. Then focus your energy on gaining confidence and experience in that area. Toastmasters offers the perfect opportunity to hold yourself accountable. Sign up regularly for club speeches, absorb the feedback from evaluations, and watch yourself become better at crafting clear messages.

You will also build your confidence by speaking vulnerably about your core ideas, your hopes and plans, and your concerns.

Your club is a place to try something new and see how it lands. That could mean trying to insert humor into your sales pitch or experimenting with a slide show presentation. You’ll quickly learn what works and what doesn’t work. Even if you decide not to use what you’ve practiced, the knowledge and insight you gain builds the inner confidence needed to take more bold actions.

“For entrepreneurs, having a safe and supportive space to practice public speaking, test their business value proposition, and strengthen leadership skills is essential,” says Daniela Ignatova, a former member of the hybrid club Pitch Craft for Entrepreneurs Toastmasters in Luxembourg.

When I was starting out, I knew I needed to boost my confidence, so I decided to push myself in a different way. I used my Toastmasters club to boost my confidence. At one club meeting, I started my speech by singing a song a cappella in front of the whole group. Singing in public was totally out of my comfort zone, but Toastmasters supported me in trying something new and building my confidence.

Toastmasters: Entrepreneurship Incubator

Most entrepreneurs join Toastmasters to improve their speaking style, develop leadership skills, network, or grow professionally.

Randy Powell, DTM, of Temecula, California, and a member of Entrepreneur Toastmasters club puts it this way: “It’s been my experience over the past 10 years or more that people’s reasons [for joining Toastmasters] vary, but there tends to be a few universal reasons: master fear, language or dialect improvement, recommended by their companies, desire to be part of something larger, [improve] English as a second language, desire to speak publicly, and some want to become paid speakers.”

When I first started my business, I happened to stumble upon Toastmasters. Learning the skills I needed for my business while simultaneously learning public speaking was transformational in my journey—I gained confidence, was able to better express myself, and understood how to constantly raise the bar on my own speaking.

In the following years, I took my speaking to the next level and became a professional speaker. Now speaking is one of the main aspects of my business. A couple of years after being part of Toastmasters, I launched my speaking business, in addition to my coaching practice. I continue to improve and work on my speaking, and enjoy both the speaking and coaching aspects of my business.

And there’s no arguing that other entrepreneurs who belong to Toastmasters have seen the benefits.

Ignatova, the former member in Luxembourg, says, “At [Pitch Craft for Entrepreneurs Toastmasters], we have seen truly remarkable journeys. One of our newest members was part of the winning team at an international start-up event [Nexus Luxembourg Pitches: Women in Finance & Technology Program], whose pitch won among 140-plus others.”

Whether you’re in the boardroom or at a networking event, having communication and leadership skills, along with a healthy dose of confidence, gives you the edge you need to take your business to the next level.

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