This is a way overdue post about a public speaking competition I participated back in 2018.

So why am i sharing it now – 8 years later?

Because some achievements should be shared, rather than sit in a trophy case collecting dust, unseen by others. 

Years ago during my freelancing stage, i was a very active member of BNI (Business Networking International). I was so active that I was appointed Secretary Treasurer in the second term of my membership, and President for the following two terms. 

During that time, I learnt a lot about how to network and talk about my business. One of the things which BNI really focused on was the elevator pitch. They trained members to talk about their business in 30 seconds. The belief was that if you can’t capture a potential client’s interest within the first 30 seconds, they’re not going to listen to you even if you were to talk for five minutes.  

To encourage this, as part of the annual conference, BNI decided to have its inaugural BNI 60-second competition. Basically, it was a public speaking competition where we have to talk about our business in 60 seconds. Obviously, we have to be really interesting and captivating within 60 seconds. Costumes and props were allowed, as well as any background actors or prop holders, but the full speech has to be given by the business member.

The hits of 75 entries, I made it into the top 27. If you’re wondering why is a weird number, I believe it was because these were the 27 they felt good enough to be finalists.

I still remember the day of the conference. The main highlight was this competition, where all the finalist took turn going up on stage and talked about your business to thousands of members from all over the country. 

I will admit that my presentation did stand out. I had a simple science demonstration on stage which involved me holding fire in my hands!

Out of 27, I got seventh place. (I even beat a then-famous BNI member, who was not only a corporate trainer, but he was also a BNI trainer at that time, and one off the things he trained people in was public speaking; he got 8th place. Yes, this is a brag).

It is very unfortunate that I don’t have a copy of the video of my presentation. It did exist, but I lost a lot of photos and videos when my external hard disk in which I stored my photos and videos crashed.

Did it get me more business though? No, we didn’t. So while I had a lot of visibility, it didn’t generate more business for me. So I guess one of the things for me to reflect on us, why didn’t getting top 10 translate into more business for me.

At any rate, I was still very proud of the fact that I managed to get top 10 in a public speaking competition. So my takeaway was that I’m pretty good at public speaking, even though I was not very good at business at working!

FYI, I have never attended any training for public speaking. All my public speaking skills were almost completely self-taught.