Doreen Birdsell, my good friend and mentor, was on a mission. She wanted to enter the Toastmasters International Speech Contest and needed to have three more speeches under her belt in order to qualify.

Doreen had recently (within the last six months) joined a local Toastmasters club in Connecticut and is currently a snowbird in Sarasota, FL. Most clubs meet only once every two weeks. Did I mention that she had only two weeks to deliver these three talks?

That did not stop Doreen. Toastmasters is an international organization. She discovered that there are six clubs in Sarasota, so she emailed every one of them to get on their rosters. Normally, only members of a particular club get to deliver speeches at club meetings. Doreen requested that they line her up as a guest speaker.

The organization rallied behind her efforts, and one club president even reached out to other clubs a little further afield that Doreen didn’t even know existed. One of the clubs she solicited called her to say they had had a full roster, but someone had dropped out, and would Doreen still be available to speak. She got all her slots arranged and then had to prepare the three talks. No small feat.

Each Toastmasters manual speech (when you join the organization, you receive an educational manual with instructions for delivering everything from an icebreaker–self-introductory talk–to a motivational speech) requires dedicated preparation. Besides having a beginning, middle and end, each talk needs to have a call to action for the listeners. And then there’s rehearsal time. This did not stop Doreen.

From the very first time I met Doreen over 15 years ago, I was mesmerized by her ability to capture a thought and hold her audience’s attention, whether it was just me or a group of listeners at a meeting, and hold that space with her timeless, inspirational message.

In those two weeks, Doreen delivered her three speeches, won ribbons for each of them and went on to compete for a place in the International Speech Contest. She came in second this year, but will surely go on to not only earn her slot next year, but show up bigger and better. I predict (you read it here first!) that she will be a Toastmasters International Champion one day.

If you’d like to hear an example of Doreen’s message and style, click here.