Elton Brown 0:05

Welcome to SpeakUP! with Rita Burke and Elton Brown!

Rita Burke 0:12

Antoinette, it is such a delight to have you on our podcast. We were waiting for a mighty long time to have this conversation with you. And so to our audience, I would like to introduce Antoinette Holder, Antoinette tells us that she's been a Toastmaster for over three years and has completed almost as many paths in our Pathways program. She's done effective coaching, engaging humor, persuasive influence. And in those two years, she has been an area director and is currently Division F director. When she is not busy with Toastmasters, she can be found in her kitchen, baking up a storm with breads, cakes and other delightful goodies that are short to put a smile on your face and encourage you to put another hole in your belt for room! Antoinette. I am happy to hear that because I too, I'm a proverbial baker. I make my bread from scratch. I make muffins. I make cup cakes you get my fingers in that flour. And it is like therapy. Tell us more about your baking. Where did that come from? You're you're wanting to bake and cook and those kinds of things.

Antoinette Holder 1:40

So I wouldn't say that I was the most competent cook in the kitchen. I could probably hold my own feed myself and I decided to go to culinary school. And out of that, it was great experience. I learned about. Different foods around the world, learn how to cook Thai food, Italian from scratch. And then I realized, oh, there's a baking class. Let me take that. And so I was taking culinary arts as well as baking arts at the same time and fell in love with baking. Then I went into cake decorating. Then I went into chocolate work. So when it comes down to being in the kitchen, I feel very comfortable. I find it. The place that most people like to congregate, and it's a bad place if people like to congregate and you don't know what you're doing in there. So you might as well know what you're doing. If people are going to hang out in there,

Rita Burke 2:30

indeed! It's the hurt. It's the family hurts. Isn't?

Antoinette Holder 2:33

It is absolutely Many of them discussion. Many of challenge, many of exciting things occur in the kitchen. Yes, indeed.

Elton Brown 2:45

Antoinette, I love having these kinds of conversations, because we always find out something that we did not know. And so I'm really surprised that you are one of those individuals that actually knows how to bend those pots and pans. So I can really appreciate, uh, that I could appreciate it more. If I was invited over when you've cooked some type of bread or cake that would just be wonderful. I could really enjoy that besides, uh, baking. What other passions do you have? Other passions? I love travel. Travel has always been one of my. Greatest guilty pleasures. I wish I had a bank account that could afford where I'd like to travel to. Um, but I love seeing different places. I think life is just too short to continue to go to the same place. All the time. Life is too short to eat the same meal all the time. Life is just too short. Sometimes you just have to expand your, your repertoire of where you've been and what you've done, you know, often. Well, the thing is, is that when you get to the end of the road, whatever, whenever that is.

Antoinette Holder 4:07

These are the memories they're going to carry you over when your body's not able to keep up with your, with your desires. So I want to be able to say that I cook, that I ate that, or I ate that again, and I ate some more of that. I traveled here and I did this. And so I try to throw in new experiences whenever I get up, I get the best moment to do so. The other thing for me is that I wanted to always be a better speaker. Me joining Toastmasters. I've always been notorious for inserting foot into my mouth. So hence the reasons why I decided to join up for Toastmasters because I was, I needed to become a better speaker think, you know, being able to think on my toes and be able to be articulate. And well-rounded when I speak, be able to converse with anyone and not worried about if we have anything in common. Okay. As long as we're talking, I'm sure there's something that we can find that is going to have some form of commonality between me and somebody else. Be it food travel, be it. Oh my goodness. That person shouldn't be wearing leopard print, whatever it is, let's discuss it. You know,

Elton Brown 5:13

You talked about baking and in, you're talking about public speaking and both of them have a formula or a recipe. For success. So if you were to look at both, what would be the common denominators between the two banking and public speaking, Everything takes time. I would have to say both of them, if the con that would be the common denominator between the both, you can go and look at a box of Duncan Hines, or Betty crocker, or even grab, you know, bag of flour. Yes. I agree if Betty crocker don't do it, but really, and truly, you're not going to become a great baker overnight.

Antoinette Holder 6:01

And you're not going to be a great speaker overnight. They're both going to take time. They're going to take some diligence. They're going to take an opportunity for you to sit down and plan out what you need to do and how to do it and what it's going to look like and what the outcome is going to be. And you have to start from beginning to end. For both, you can decide that you want to become a better speaker and you can't just walk into a room and say, I'm going to speak. There are very few people who can do that. And if you can fantastic pat on the back, but very few of us are able to just walk into the room, engage, be captivating, be knowledgeable, be confident. And I think it's the confidence piece that very few of us are able to walk in and say, if it's five people in the room, we might be okay. 10 people, oh, wait. But when you get to bigger numbers and denomination, and depending on the topic, that's when confidence and nerves start to set in and you need to figure out how you're going to get ahead. Same thing with baking. You can have all the ingredients, but if you don't know what to do with them all, you're not going to have a proper product. By the end, you need to figure out how much butter to how much eggs, to how much vanilla, how much salt and yeast and all of those lovely things that go into baking so that you can have whatever a cake. Cupcakes, you know, by the finishing product. So it does take time and you need to give it, you need to pay attention to the process. I mean, many of us would like to, to hop right to the end, but really, and truly the beauty of that process is where you learn so much about yourself and where you want to go.

Rita Burke 7:37

You said so many things that I would like to ask you to outline a little bit more elaborate on, but I want to go back to the fact that. You talked to the beginning about having gone to culinary school, but that's not what you do now for a living, is it?

Antoinette Holder 7:55

No, it's not.

Rita Burke 7:57

Tell us about that switch over and what inspired or motivated that?

Antoinette Holder 8:00

Well, I decided to go to culinary school. because I've always spent time in school. Anytime I've ever had a full-time job, I've always gone to school and I'm not one of those personalities that sits very well. I could sit for a little while. Like if I'm on vacation, I could probably bake on a beach for two days. And then after that I need to be up and moving. Uh, but when it came, came down to culinary, it was more of, I didn't want to be home. Every thing I needed to do something else, like I, no problem finishing a book every week. I have no problem going to the movies, but those weren't things that were going to enrich me. I wanted something to do probably when I retired, you know, do on the side or something that brings joy to people. Now a lot of people weren't very happy with me over the, over the pandemic because. I was notorious for driving through neighborhoods, specifically my friend's neighborhoods. And I would call them and say, Hey, I think Amazon just came to your house. You should go to your door and came your pocket before the porch pirates. Get it. And that only worked once or twice because when they came to the door, they realized there were like several loaves of bread. Um, and so needless to say, a lot of people put on weight during the pandemic, and I may have had a hand to that.

Rita Burke 9:17

You contributed to their downfall.

Antoinette Holder 9:20

Yes I have,

Rita Burke 9:21

Well, I want you to feel terribly guilty about that.

Antoinette Holder 9:26

Oh yes.

Rita Burke 9:27

That is one thing that you've done. And you made the switch over to something else, but you also talked about traveling in a place that you have gone to that still resonates with you. That is still lingering in your heart and your mind in your soul.

Antoinette Holder 9:45

Just one place?

Rita Burke 9:48

Just one place for now. Thank you.

Antoinette Holder 9:51

I would have to say probably the most memorable vacation that I've ever had was Hawaii went to Waikiki or a wahoo and I got up Hawaii is six hours. Six hours behind Eastern. And I woke up every morning and went for these long 5k walks. And they were probably the most inspiring watching the sunrise, looking at the surf, looking at the mountains, looking at the volcanoes and craters. It was probably one of the most enjoyable vacations. I introduced myself to so many different things. I had malasadas, which are Portuguese donuts. I had poke for the first time, which is basically. Uh, marinated, raw fish. And it comes with a whole assortment of sides, had Misouvi for the first time. And Misouvi is basically spam. Um, and, uh, you know, we all joke about spam. You know, if you've ever watched movie 55th, 51st dates, they talked about spam all through that movie. When you finally have spam. It changes your world. And to the point that very few people know that depending on the McDonald's that you go to and what part of the world, the McDonald's will change their menu based on the pallet there. So when I had breakfast in Hawaii, it was spam steamed rice and scrambled eggs. Never thought, never saw that coming. And I went, this is great! So it would have to say Hawaii was probably one of my best trips. I tried so many new things there.

Elton Brown 11:33

I wonder now, uh, from Hawaii, we're going to come back to, uh, Toronto and we're going to talk a little bit about Toastmasters and how has Toastmasters enriched your life this year as a Division Director?

Antoinette Holder 11:54

I found that with being the Division Director and Toastmasters through the entire journey of the three years, it's really taught me what it is to be a leader, what it is to step up to the challenge and to deal with a challenging situation and try to persevere also with Toastmasters. I learned what I'm made of in the sense where. I could advocate for myself. I think often enough when you're in the corporate world, one of the hardest things to do is being able to articulate what you're worth to articulate, articulate what it is that you were capable of doing and what you would like to do, and the reasons why you should, I have been given one promotion. It also changed jobs in the last year because of my. Don't quit attitude and being able to sit down and literally plan out what it is that I've been doing and how I need to prove, I guess, represent myself. I know that I could not have done it with Toastmasters in the, without Toastmasters in the time that I've done it. I needed Toastmasters to teach me what it was to speak in a room and not let anybody else see you sweat. We all know that we've been there. We've done speeches. We've stood in front of rooms. We've spoken in front of people that we've never met before. But the point is, is still being able to deliver your message across clearly and articulately. No one needs to know that you were sweating or you need to get another deodorant because it's starting to leak through your shirt. But the fact of the matter is, is that no one needs to know. You are nervous or you are lacking the confidence. You need to be able to represent yourself all the time. Even when you feel like no, one's watching you,

Elton Brown 13:53

You are such a determined individual and these attributes you have truly rubs off on others, specifically your area directors, how have they been affected by your leadership?

Antoinette Holder 14:12

My area directors, they are eclectic and they're witty. They're fun. And they're energetic. They, I feel what they may be getting away from me is my ability to resource. Being around with Toastmasters the last three years, I have met so many people, uh, even now with contests coming up, that I know that I can reach out to this person, that person who may or may not be in my Division and a lot of it is because I simply have networked and hoping that they teach them or show them the ability to get to know someone it's okay to reach out cold call, figure out how you can get someone where to find all the resources on our district, 60 sites, you know, what is it? Do easy speak. What is the sign up for speech? What is it to get a speaker or are you going to workshops? I think even being area directors, even though they've been executives, they may not be fully knowledgeable of where all the resources are and becoming an area director they've become the information that. All their clubs are going to go to them. And when ends up happening, they come to me and go, Antoinette, where do I find this? And I'm like, well, here you go. District 60, go under resources. Or the events calendar. If you need to know when the next cot is or Hey workshops. But now they know they can pretty much spin around in district 60 and be able to help all of their clubs because now they know where to find the information. And I think that's the difference between being an Area Director and a division director is we are showing them that all the resources are at their fingers. It usually takes the first three to four months of taking on an area director's role to even have an understanding of what it is that you need to do. What is your, what is the expectation and where to find it? I know that being an area director for the first three months I had had didn't have a clue cath going to my Eric, my division director, Renee, and she was fantastic. She was like, yeah, you go into the division, go to the district 60 sites. Uh, and I wish I could, you know, get royalties on that every time. So the district 60. Um, but unfortunately I can't do that. But I would have to say that's one of the things that I hope that I've bestowed on my Area Directors about what it is to be resourceful and being able to network, you know, even now that we're in the middle of contests for the area, they are actually having conversations, getting to know people, seeing how they can get their contests. Um, all the roles filled in, this is a true test of, you know, how far are they network? How, who can they speak to, you know, and getting to know their clubs and getting to see all the speakers. Cause often enough, we, when we make our visits, we don't get to see all the speakers, but of course we're going to see the best of the best that have been voted in by their peers to come and attend the Area Contest. And then of course, I get the lucky job of actually holding the Division Contest and getting to see the best of the.

Rita Burke 17:23

Thank you so very much. Antoinette, it seems to me as if you are totally immersed in your role as a Division Director, not only are you immersed, but you seem to be savoring and enjoying it a great deal, much like you enjoy what you spoke about earlier being in the kitchen and creating, creating really exciting dishes. So I certainly appreciate your joining us to see. I've enjoyed it immensely. And you've been very articulate and eloquent in describing what you do and what you have done. So on behalf of us, both, I want to see a sincere, thank you. Antoinette.

Antoinette Holder 18:12

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Elton Brown 18:17

Thank you for listening to SpeakUP! to discover upcoming podcasts, please go to www dot Toastmasters 60, six zero.com under news and events. Look for the District 60 newsletter to locate the schedule.