We’ll toast to that!

It was last year September that Keabetswe Mogodi joined the Egg and Bacon Toastmasters Club and she hasn’t looked back since.
“I would recommend joining toastmasters any day. It is a good platform for improving your communications skills, your leadership skills and to interact with people from different backgrounds and professions. I would say you are never too young or too old for Toastmasters,” said Mogodi.
However, her journey so far to the position of secretary of the club and having scheduled her Competent Communication Manual Three did not come without its challenges. “It was scary. The first speech at Toastmasters is called the icebreaker. The icebreaker is a four to six-minute speech talking about yourself. I was so terrified of doing my ice breaker.
“Every time I came for meetings I would feel so motivated and inspired by the speeches given by the different speakers and I would tell myself that ‘next meeting I am doing my icebreaker’,” Mogodi explained.
“Months went by and I still didn’t gather the courage to write my icebreaker. I thought it would be easy because I will be writing about myself, but I realised it is not as easy as I thought it would be. I kept on postponing. I was scared of standing in front of the audience and telling them about myself. I was just concerned about what people would think of me. Eventually, I did my icebreaker titled Simply KB, and I must admit I felt so relieved and I was happy that I took the first step.”
Once taking that first step, Mogodi was determined to learn as much as she could, become a good speaker and improve her leadership skills. Her current goal is to finish her CC10 and her leadership manual.
She would definitely encourage anyone looking to improve their confidence to join a club and not be scared to take that first step because it is worth it.