I'm Darian Slayton Fleming and thank you for joining me on get what you need and feel good about it. Do you find it difficult to ask for what you need? Do you frequently feel misunderstood? Do you have a problem or cause that you would like to learn to manage more effectively? What makes it so hard for us to tell each other how we feel? And how do we speak up for ourselves so we get what we need and feel good about it? How do we do this? Respectfully, so that we honor the needs and feelings of others. Together, we'll explore tips, strategies and resources that, when used mindfully and consistently, will improve our results and enrich our relationship. Hello and welcome back. To get what you need and feel good about it this is episode number ten and today I am interviewing Joe Rowan and I met Joe through Toastmasters International and they have an actual affiliate which is called VIP Toastmasters for people who are visually impaired. But you do not have to be visually impaired to join VIP Toastmasters and I am welcoming Joe Rowan to talk about his experience with Toastmasters, but also about how that experience, along with his other life experiences, has benefited him and given him a better quality of life. So welcome Joe. Thank you for joining me.

Thanks Darren. Great to be here with you.

Can you tell us a little bit about you? What matters to you? And then we'll talk about toastmasters. Tell us what you do.

My professional life currently is involved with assessing and help remediating websites. I work for a medium sized company that I should say administers over 95 websites throughout mostly government organizations, 38 states, many counties, municipalities. These websites are all focused on things like unemployment. For instance, if you applied for unemployment in many states, you'd be working through my company's website application. We also do workforce, virtual career centers, all kinds of applications geared towards government function. My niche in the company being blind and being an experienced screen reader user, also being trained technically is to surf through these websites and spot deficiencies where it could be a problem for a person using a button that's hard to push or a list that's hard to pull down. There could be an easy way to fix it, but it's my job mostly to spot it and report it to developers. I'm employed professionally as a website tester. I test websites and sometimes recommend fixes where the websites might not be totally accessible to someone using assistive technology. My company has many websites, over 95 last count scattered all over the United States through government, municipalities, counties and these applications are mostly concerned with government functions, things like unemployment, workforce, virtual career centers, so if you were looking for a job or collecting unemployment, chances are I even counted one of the websites that I help. And my particular niche is valuable to the company because I'm totally blind. I use a screen reader, which is software that makes your computer talk, and it translates what's on the screen to audible speech. This is very robust software. It's not perfect, but I couldn't function without it. And nor could not just blind people, but other people with different disabilities, such as maybe some mobile disabilities. For instance, they might have some limited wrist motion, so they can't use a mouse. And other people with cognitive disabilities, for instance, someone with dyslexia, might have a little easier time reading the screen as long as the speech is going along with their reading. So the screen reader is a very valuable tool. I happen to be an expert at it, and I've been using it for 30 years. And I'm also trained technically in the way websites are designed and put together. So that has been my professional life for the last five or six years. Before that, I was a self employed person in the state of Massachusetts under the auspices of the state agency that helps blind people in Massachusetts called the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. That was my career for 25 years. In those situations, I ran over, maybe, I think there's five different businesses over that 25 years, ranging from cafeteria, snack bar, and even some more standard kiosks that you might run into. We see gift shop with cards, greeting cards, cigarettes, sodas, lottery, things like that. So I did that for the first half of my life, and the second half of my life has been all technical. That's a thumbnail of my life. I grew up in New England, Massachusetts, if you couldn't tell by my accent. But for the last quarter century, I've been on the west coast of Florida and loving the weather.

You also have a life outside of work. Tell us a little bit about that.

I love music. I'm a bit of a musician. I used to be quite a serious musician. I thought maybe when I got out of high school, I might be a professional musician or maybe a music educator. I went to New England Conservatory way back in the day. I played tuba, trombone, and did that for many years despite not finishing the music college. It just wasn't for me. But I still love music, and these days, I actually sing. I sing bass in a barbershop quartet. So music is a big part of my life. And my other hobbies, besides being a professional involved in a technical career, it's a hobby of mine as well. And then becomes Toastmasters, which is one of the biggest interests I have lately, and that's been for the last five years. I've been a member of Toastmasters, had a lot of fun doing it, and I find it valuable.

Tell us about toastmasters and the VIP Toastmasters that you and I met through and why you joined.

Sure. I'll start at the beginning, which was my original interest in toastmasters in the local town where I live. I was looking for activities, just something to socialize, get out of the house, away from the four walls. Toastmasters was something right down the street from me. I had heard about it, but didn't know much about it. I went down to visit. Everybody was very friendly, welcoming, and I felt at home from the get go. Not only did I have a want to socialize, but I had sort of an ulterior motive. There was a woman I knew who belonged to that local toastmaster club who also happened to be the CEO of an organization called the Lighthouse, which provides services to blind and visually impaired. And I was getting some service from them, but mostly see if I could get a job at the lighthouse. So I figured if I went down and rubbed elbows with the CEO on a non business level, I might network a little, basically. That never did work out, but I gained a nice friend from her. She's still my friend today. Once I attended a few more meetings, I discovered they're a very organized organization. They have an agenda that it's filled with many different sections, and everybody plays a role, or almost everybody plays a role. Many people participate in the meetings. The purpose of Toastmasters is to help you develop soft skills in the areas of public speaking and leadership. It's a participation sport, not just for watching. And you will get to start out small and easy just by maybe telling a joke at the beginning of the meeting. It's something that easy. Eventually, they want you to prepare speeches, short speeches, five to seven minutes on topics of your choice. They do have an educational program where they ask you to accomplish objectives. For instance, presentation skills, gestures, using voice dynamics, entertaining, inspire a crowd, motivate an audience, things like this. This could be objectives of many different projects. And how you fulfill that objective is really up to you. During the meeting, we have some prepared speakers. We also have a portion of the meeting where you get to speak extemporaneously, off the cuff, as it were, where someone might ask you a random question, like, for instance, tell me a time in your life when you had a challenge that you overcame and you were proud of, and you're allowed one to two minutes to give an answer. The idea behind this extemporaneous speaking portion of the meeting is to get you to think on your feet. It also tries to help you speak without stammering, filling sentences with ands, butts, ors, ums, the way you hear many people speak on tv. You become a better speaker for it. You become a better thinker for it. Other functions in the meeting have members evaluate other members who have made speeches. Asking someone to evaluate me as a speaker, that is very helpful to me. It's also very helpful to the evaluator, because what it does is it forces them to listen very closely. How did you tell your story? Was your story organized? How was it presented? Did you have a lot of voice variety? Did you raise your voice? Did you talk fast? Did you speak really quiet or slow? Did you pause occasionally? Sometimes a pause can deliver more of a message than any words will ever do. So these are these little artful points of speaking that we learn in the club. There's also some other roles in the club. For instance, people will count those ums or buts just to make you aware how much you might be filling your speech with unwanted words. There's a role called the grammarian, which will point out if you've made any grammatical mistakes or maybe you used a particularly culpable phrase. We also have someone called a timer. The reason we bother timing speeches in toastmasters is for one reason. If you ever become a speaker at a public function, you want to honor your sponsor's time. The worst thing that can happen at a public function is to have the speaker go on beyond their allotted time and throw off the rest of the occasion. So we think it's very rude to do that and we try to mind our time. We practice this all the time, so that gives you a little sample of some of the things we do in a Toastmasters meeting. I belonged to this club in my local town for two or three years, and then came Covid, and everybody was shut in, shut down, nothing going on. A few Toastmaster clubs started popping up on Zoom. I was introduced to a couple in my local area who were starting a club just for or aimed towards blind and visually impaired specifically. There was a reason for this because the Toastmasters experience, whether it be at the club level or interacting with their website, let's say it's not totally blind friendly. There are challenges that might be a little too niche to go into here. I can draw some details, but I don't think that's important. What I think is important is that this VIP online toastmasters, that's the name of the club, VIP standing for visually impaired person. This club has met the challenges that all blind and visually impaired face when they want to be a toastmaster. We have eliminated all the challenges that you'd have at a club meeting. Some of these challenges might involve you writing things down with a pencil and paper, or they might involve you using a stopwatch. Like I mentioned, the timing roll. These are very difficult to do without maybe the help of a computer. So on your online meetings, you have the computer right in front of you. That's how you access the meeting. And I have actually been instrumental to help from the technical end of things, how to accomplish some of these roles. But the other part of this is that the website is also, again, not very easy to access with assistive technology. So one of the founders of the club is totally sighted and she will take those responsibilities and help us where we needed help with the website. So it's been a wonderful experience for me. I've been a member now for three years and we have about 20 members. We meet every week. I would say there's two or three members that are not visually impaired and they can be helpful and we certainly welcome everybody. Regardless, we only try to emphasize that the club is geared towards helping a blind or visually impaired person who might otherwise have trouble in their local Toastmaster club.

I actually joined the VIP Toastmasters because of this podcast. When I listen to myself in a recording, I don't particularly like my voice. I do struggle by speaking more slowly as I am right now, because I think, I try to think on my feet and so I'm always thinking about what am I going to say? And I think I speak too slowly. One of my goals through toastmasters is learning to be more concise and learning to stay within a time limit. What is difficult for you regarding speaking up and asking for what you need, which is part of what we talk about in this podcast. And people I believe join toastmasters to get better at speaking for different reasons. Public speaking or just being a better communicator are a couple of those regarding speaking up, asking for what you need or doing public speaking.

I'll have to go back to many years before Toastmasters to give you a better picture of who I am. I grew up with six brothers and sisters in a large family like that, if you want anything, you better be able to speak up. I was next to the bottom child, so I had to develop the skills that I could either be faster, louder, bolder, more persuasive to get what I wanted. I only had one person below me on the totem pole, but that wasn't much help. So if I really needed a one or anything, we were a nice family, we're all friends. But you know how it is in any crowd. If you want to stand out from the crowd, or if there's only, let's say, maybe enough supper for two people to have extra helpings, guess who's in the kitchen first in that environment. And by the way, six out of seven of us children in the family are all visually impaired.

Wow.

Yeah, we really had a unique environment. So, yes, maybe it was competitive, but we're also very supportive to each other in that very young, formative years. I learned a little assertiveness. I learned how to be clever, fast, bold, all those things I mentioned later in my life. I had mentioned before that I was a vendor with the RSVA vendors in Massachusetts, where I ran my own business for 25 years. When you work for yourself as a self employed person, there's nobody but you that a, is going to get the work done and b, is going to navigate difficult situations, and it could be almost anything. But no one was going to solve your problems for you. Yes, you were working under the auspices of the state, but they wanted to let you be as independent as they could possibly be. I learned a lot of lessons in life, running my own business for 25 years. I think that was where I got a lot of my assertiveness and self confidence. However, joining Toastmasters has different challenges. Speaking publicly is something that you. Let's put it like this. I like to back up a minute. I'm going to tell you one of the first things I said at a Toastmasters meeting, when they asked me to comment. At the end of the meeting, I stood up and I said, you people amazed me. I said, I have never been afraid to say anything to anybody, but you people say it more eloquently than I ever could, and I was pretty impressed. What I've learned to be able to do is just talk to anybody at any level, whether it be the janitor of a company or the president of a company, and do it effectively. The other thing I've learned in Toastmasters is that when you fulfill these projects that they introduce in their education program, it's called pathways. Many of these projects have team building exercises where you have to maybe conduct an interview with a panel, or you have to have a large project where it's going to take several people to fulfill different facets of the project. So what you learn is how to manage larger projects. You manage how to work within teams. You manage how to persuade and motivate people. These are all leadership skills that translate to every part of your life. Also, learning to speak effectively gives you confidence. Along with those leadership skills that give you confidence, all these things overflow through every part of your life. That's what I enjoy about it. At this point in my toastmaster life, I feel like I'm pretty accomplished. Not that I can't go farther. I will. What I also am there for now is to help people who want to get the same gifts that Toastmaster offers. I'm there as a helping hand. I serve as a mentor to many members. So it's my way of giving back. I think it's a wonderful club. We're like a big family, and it really has boosted my confidence even more than it was before. And certainly I have seen members grow over the months and years that they belong. And I have seen a few people just blossom amazingly.

So what have you learned about yourself and how have your skills improved through this experience?

I would say that I wasn't the best team player, and I still would have to call that a weakness in my makeup because I ran my own business for 25 years. I was used to being the boss, and it was pretty easy to just whatever I needed done, I get done. I pay people to be employed, and it was easy being part of a team, cooperating. Even if you are the chairman of the team, you have to gain cooperation in different ways. Nobody's getting paid here. Everybody's volunteering, and you might have to compete with what they want might not be exactly what you want. Yet we're all striving towards a like goal, so getting all people to put their paddles in the water and all paddle in the same direction is a challenge. I think I've gotten a little better at it over the years. If I could say that.

What do you enjoy about Toastmasters?

I can't think of a more unique social environment because toastmasters is nothing if not a great place to meet new friends. How it is so unique is that when people make speeches, whether they be those little two minute speeches I talked about, where that's just answering a question extemporaneously or whether it be a prepared speech, they might not even be speaking anything about themselves, but I learned so much about someone just from how they speak and how they deliver a message. Not to mention there are many personal stories told at meetings. I have been present to see what might be an epiphany for I've seen at least two members publicly admit for the first time that they suffered from extreme mental illness. That is one scary thing. And the fact that toastmasters gave them enough confidence in a safe environment to be able to speak about that, it was quite dramatic from my point of view, and it was very enriching to them. It was transformative to them. You will never meet people in the same way at most other organizations, public organizations, whether it be a local civic club or persons. I belong to a chorus, but all we did in that chorus was sing. We didn't really talk about much. I mean, I could have been standing next to the president. I'd never know it. In Toastmasters, you do get to know your fellow members because we speak about our lives, and even when we don't, we're speaking through our life, and it's great to know people on that level.

In a group like Toastmasters, a fringe benefit is making friends. And you can learn a lot about a person by just listening to how he or she talks, what they talk about, how they talk about themselves. And you can start with that one thing in common, the Toastmasters group. So if you can't think of another conversation topic, you can always talk about that to start. But I, too have learned a lot of things about members in Toastmasters, and it gives you a truer picture of who a person is. Like in the dating environment, it's often awkward to get to know someone, and it's also hard to know, do I even want to get to know this person? And when you're in a Toastmasters meeting, there's less pressure to interview someone, so to speak, because you observe them in real time, being themselves, and you learn a little bit about who they are without that pressure of asking a lot of questions.

I think you magnified my point perfectly. If I could comment on the dating environment. I've also been in that environment lately. My wife passed away four years ago. And what I find is I've done some online dating, and I find that people do almost anything they can to obfuscate their true selves. It takes a lot of detective work, patience, and sometimes enduring bad situations to get through it. Whereas the Toastmasters, it's a totally safe environment. Everybody is supportive. We're all there for the same purpose, as you said, to learn about public speaking, confidence, leadership. Through that experience, we're all very open with each other. We have to be. That's the function of the club.

Why might someone want to join Toastmasters, and how do they go about joining.

Let me give you a few reasons why you might want to join in your employment. You may have to speak at meetings. If you're in a civic club, you may have to participate in fundraises or help organize some of the civic club activities. If you're a student, you may have to pass some communication courses as part of your curriculum. Or if you're just anybody, you might want to meet some new friends. How do you join? It's really easy, but it's because you won't have to join to get the experience. We invite visitors every week. Joining is there is a small fee that every organization has dues. Ours cost $60 for six months. It's not terrible, but not everybody has $60. We understand, so we welcome visitors. We want you to be sure before you plunk down your $60 that this experience will be for you. We meet every Sunday afternoon at 03:30 p.m. Eastern time. That's gmt -5 hours. The meetings last about an hour and 15 minutes, maybe as many as an hour and 30 minutes. Once you visit the club, you may be asked a few simple questions, like to introduce yourself and you will be asked at the end of the meeting, maybe for your opinion. Other than that, you don't have to speak at all. If you wish, you can participate in that little portion of the meeting where we have extemporaneous questions. We call that table topics, by the way, where someone can ask you a simple question and you answer it. We welcome everybody every week with only the last Sunday of each month we reserve just for members. We have an educational program that we can tell you all about because it's terrific. We have some pro speakers that we have a video portion, a video lesson given the fourth Sunday of each month, which will give you plenty of fine points on being a much better speaker every other week. Spare a few holidays in the year, maybe the Christmas holiday weekend, Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Otherwise we're there every Sunday. You can contact us very easily by going to viponlinetosmasters.com. I know that's a long title. Maybe Darian will put it in the notes for us. That'd be great.

That's right. So do check your show notes because there will be a fuller version of Joe's bio and it'll provide the websites that you'll need to investigate and or join toastmasters. They are in the process of recruiting more members for the new year of Toastmasters. You're always welcome to drop in as a guest, check the show notes for that information Joe, do you have any parting words for our listeners? What other benefits you might get out of Toastmasters besides learning how to speak more eloquently?

Sure, I think my quote might not relate closely to Toastmasters, but it does relate to life and having confidence. A quote goes like this, if you think you can or think you can't, you are right. That is Henry Ford. And if you take apart that quote a little bit, what it tells you is your mind is your only barrier to true success, true confidence. My other favorite quote is by Gandhi. Gandhi said, be the change you want to see. That helps me focus on my little corner of the universe rather than worry about everybody else. Just be the way you want things to be. I find that to be the most effective way to live. It helps me live true to myself, and Toastmasters gives me the strength and confidence to do these things. My last quote is another Gandhi quote. It's a little longer and it's a little more involved, but it starts with your beliefs. Whatever you believe will become your thoughts. Whatever you think will become your words. Whatever you say will translate to action. Your actions over your life will become your habits. Your habits will create your character. And your character is what will make your destiny. Gandhi put it more succinctly when he said, beliefs become thoughts, become words, become acts, become habits, become character, become destiny. I think I have that right. But that is a real path to where you begin and end with success.

I would encourage you all to explore Toastmasters International, even the vip online Toastmasters. It has a lot of benefits, including meeting new friends and gaining confidence and becoming better speakers. And this podcast is about speaking up for ourselves and so we can feel good about it and get what we need. So thank you for joining me. Joe and I look forward to bringing you another episode of get what you need and feel good about it in February.

Thank you, Darren. Can I offer you some bonus content?

Yes, please.

With respect to that Gandhi quote, I was honored this past year to be the third place winner of the Toastmasters International Video speech Contest. The title of my speech was thoughts become things. I think it would relate nicely if someone cared to explore the Gandhi quote and take a look at the speech. They'll get a little clearer idea of who I am, how I live, and some of my beliefs.

That's awesome. Thank you so much, Joe. And check the show notes and we'll see you back here next.

Hope not hate Hope will surely triumph in the end hope not hate when.

Each stranger is a new thank you for joining me today on get what you need and feel good about it. Remember, when you speak up for yourself assertively, you will get what you need and feel good about it. You will also be showing respect for yourself and for the other people in your life who are important to you. Until next time, try thinking about it like Stephanie Lahart says it. Say what you mean. Mean what you say, but don't say it. Mean. The only way to do this is with hope, not hate. Close.