Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Kelly Charles-Collins
...was the message effectively communicated even just in that moment? So that people have a changed perspective, their mindset is transformed in some way that they are now going to think differently.

Roberta Ndlela
Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, This is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please log on to iTunes and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Let's get communicating. My guest today will be helping you to package your message with a legal background to boot. She is a corporate trainer, a public speaking mentor, and a retired attorney
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who uses that experience in order to help you get the message across. She also specializes in training in unconscious bias and what they call the bystander effect. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Kelly Charles Collins, Esquire.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Hey, Roberta. So nice to be with you.

Roberta Ndlela
Welcome to the show. I love your enthusiasm. It's great to be with you as well. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Well, everyone, hey, I'm so glad that you're here with us today. I'm Kelly Charles Collins, as Roberta said. I am a retired 24 year trial law attorney. So I started practicing law as a criminal defense attorney and then became an employment law attorney. And then in 2019, I retired from the practice of law and have been a full-time entrepreneur as a keynote speaker, an award-winning TEDx speaker,
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and as Roberta said, a mentor for speakers. So that's really what I focus on now is my own corporate training and keynote speaking. And then also, helping others to get into that space, to be able to have their message landing them with these corporate training contracts and their speaking engagements.

Roberta Ndlela
What got you interested in the legal field in your 20s?

Kelly Charles-Collins
It's funny, because it really was a whim. So I went to law school on a whim. It was not one of those things where I grew up saying, oh, I want to be a lawyer or anything like that. When I was getting my master's degree, I had a conversation with a friend of mine, and he's from high school, and he said that he was gonna go to law school. And at the time I was 21 years old, didn't really know what I was gonna do next in life. And I was like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. I'll go do that. At that time I used to work next door to the courthouse in Providence, Rhode Island, and I would go over there during lunch to just kind of buy time and see what was happening.
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And I really loved the whole pomp and circumstance and, you know, the battle of the wits and everybody just, you know, the judge sitting high and it was just, it was really interesting. So when he said that to me, I was like, I could do that. And I just decided that I would go to law school. I applied to one law school. I took the LSAT and yeah, here I am. This year is going to be my, yeah, 28th year being a licensed attorney.

Roberta Ndlela
That is an illustrious career. It's funny that when you went to the courthouse and you observed all the dynamics, usually when we watch TV, I love courtroom dramas, but I've been told that it's not real life. The court is not as much fun as it looks on TV.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yeah, it's funny, because I don't really watch those shows because it drives me crazy. I'm like, because you can't do that. No, you can't do that. You can't say that. But trials are fun. I loved trying cases.
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it's all the work that you have to do to get to that point, right? So people think that you have a case and then you go to trial. No, there's a lot of work to be done to get to that point, but it's really exhilarating to be in the courtroom being able to deliver your message and really try to get jurors to understand your client's point of view and try to convince them to rule in your client's favor. So it is a fun profession, but it is a lot of work and I was tired.

Roberta Ndlela
I can imagine. So the work you do, which is parallel to preparing your speech and then going to court to deliver your message, which is parallel to presenting the message to your audiences. What would you say are the key elements that went to that preparation, packaging the message or the argument in front of the jury so that you convince them that, Hey, buy what I'm selling.

Kelly Charles-Collins
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Part of it is really understanding what you're trying to convey, right? What is it that you're trying to get them to do for you? So for example, if I'm trying a case, when I go to the jury, what I need the jury to do is to take what I'm saying about my client's case, analyze that against what's happening on the other side, but then rule in my favor. So in order to do that, I need to know the outcome. And then I need to reverse engineer to be able to determine, well, what is the evidence? Who are the witnesses? What are the documents? What is everything that I need? And then how do I need to communicate that to a jury who may not be as sophisticated in what I'm speaking about, right? To be able to put that in terms that they understand, create it in such a way that message gets across to them so that they follow me on the journey. And at the end of the trial, rule in my client's favor. So it's really a process of understanding the whole dynamic and being able to,
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you used this word earlier, package the message in a way. You have to, and so part of it is knowing who am I speaking to, right? So part of a trial is selecting our jury, knowing exactly who's on that jury. We know what their background is, what their age is, what their work situation is. So we kind of understand. Now we don't know that until we get to trial. So we prepare beforehand. But so part of it is that you have to be able to pivot a little bit and be able to shift. So the preparation allows you to do that. It's the same thing if you are doing public speaking. We know generally who might be in the audience, whether you're doing corporate training or you're on a big stage somewhere at a conference, you generally know who's in the audience and you have now prepared your message for that. But when you get there, or if you have a conversation beforehand with stakeholders or get to the conference early and you start to meet people and you learn stuff, you may need to shift
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some of what you're doing. So it's important to be flexible, but also the way that you get to be flexible is that you actually understand the message to begin with and what it is that you're trying to communicate.

Roberta Ndlela
For sure. Another thing we talk about, which I know sometimes well, based on what I've seen on TV, you want the jury to feel emotion. Just like when you speak, you want your audience. That's why storytelling should be part of your speech. You want them to feel emotion. When you used to prepare for presenting in court, was there an emotional element that you also incorporated?

Kelly Charles-Collins
It depends, right? And it depends on the type of case that you're doing. So... when I was a public defender, we're talking about crime and it depends on the type of crime. Right now I'm on the defense, so they're not necessarily as a criminal defendant, they're not that tied to them and they're not really, you know,
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they don't really feel so sorry for them. So sometimes it's about emotion, but also in courts, you have to be mindful of that too. There are certain things that as attorneys, you can't say, you can't do, you can't really draw on things, some things from people, it becomes improper. And so again, it's really about understanding what it is that you're trying to get them to do and what is the best way to be able to do that. Same thing when you're on stage, same thing when I'm doing corporate training. I know what the outcome should be, right? I know what the transformation is that I want them to get. And so when I know what that transformation is and the transformation I've promised to the client who's paid me to be there, then I have to then reverse engineer. Some of it might be getting people in their feelings so that they are more in tune to what's happening, but you also have to be mindful of that. There's a lot of people who talk about things that are traumatic
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and getting people emotional and in their feelings can be very dangerous. If you pull people into a state that you're not qualified to get them out of. Also, sometimes speakers themselves get too emotional. And when they are not able to pull themselves out of the emotion, that's also very dangerous, right? So as a speaker, you have great responsibility. And so when you're talking about emotions, you have to be really, really careful about what you're doing with them and being able to manage those. so that you're not negatively impacting the audience.

Roberta Ndlela
When you mentor those who want to speak, the first thing people always bring out is the fear, just the fear of being in front of people. How do you help them tackle that?

Kelly Charles-Collins
So for me, I think the fear goes away with clarity. It's funny that now I speak in front of anyone and I don't care, but when I was in college, I took a public speaking class, a public speech, I think it was called,
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and I was like, listen, Get somebody else to do it. Don't call on me. I have no desire to speak. I was so afraid. And even when I did my very first trial, my knees were knocking under the table. And luckily my mom worked in the courthouse and I said, can somebody go get my mom? And so she came and she sat in that courtroom with me and that calmed me down. And so what I always tell people, it's funny, I just did a post about this the other day, was thinking about like, you know, when you get on stage or you get ready to do, we often... are nervous and what we do is fill space, right? So we may say stuff like, oh, I'm so glad to be here to calm our nerves. One of the best ways to just calm your nerves is to breathe. Right? Get on the stage and breathe and center yourself and then start speaking, right? Because that silence and that just taking that moment of breath, what it does is to pull people in cause they're like, oh. Right. But if you start speaking and just like saying stuff and it's filler stuff,
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then you've lost them a lot of the fear sometimes comes from people not knowing what they're going to say. So if you're someone who is fearful of public speaking, then you're somebody who absolutely needs to prepare. Like you have to have your talk down pat. You might be somebody who needs to have slides, right. That can really help you and guide you. not with too many words, but enough to give you your roadmap of where you need to go. For like points. Yeah. So that you can keep on track. And here's the thing about speaking that I love is that it's your talk. It's yours. And nobody but you and maybe, you know, like for me, a mentor who helped you create it, nobody knows what you're going to say. So they don't know if you forgot something. They don't know if this piece was supposed to be a mess.

Roberta Ndlela
Or you skipped something or you're messing it up.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Keep going. And here's the thing too, if you mess up,
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just be like, oops, messed that up. I've done that. I have done that. We joke about it, yes. You're human. When you show other people that you're human, they're on your side. They'll just go with you. But if you're up there and you think that this is about you and I'm supposed to be the expert and I'm supposed to be perfect and I can't do anything, then you've put this barrier between you and your audience, and it doesn't work, just be you. Just be you.

Roberta Ndlela
And like you said, you can use that as an opportunity to show that you're human and connect with them. And also let go of the fear of judgment. Because a lot of times the fear comes from, oh, what if I mess up? Oh, what if they laugh at me? Oh, what if I go viral for messing up? That very fear is the reason why. If you just go with the flow, you realize that, you know what, it was all in your head.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yep. Yeah. Cause people are not expecting perfection, right? No, no, they're not. So I have a client who, when she gets excited,
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like she starts to get red. And so she was talking to me about that. She's like, Oh my gosh, Kelly, people are going to be looking at me. I said, you know what, just talk about it. Listen, y'all might see me get a little red. If you see that, just know I'm getting excited. You need to lean in, right? So just put it in whatever it is that you have that is a fear or that you think is like, some people do have like outward manifestations, right? On their body of the fear. Just play it up, right? And just say, listen, when y'all see that, that means you need to lean in. That means you need to get on in here, get your pen out, start writing down stuff because I'm getting excited. And so you make it part of the whole thing and then people aren't worried about it. So now they're also might be looking for that so that they can be really engaged. So you can use it as a positive thing. Turn what you perceive to be a negative into a total positive.

Roberta Ndlela
And you know, when you address the elephant in the room up front,
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it takes away its power over you. You just say, you know what? Just know that this is the story I turned red. already you feel relaxed just after mentioning it. It takes away this hold it had on you before.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yeah. I would say though, don't do it like right at the beginning. Don't do it as the thing that you step on stage and say, hey, I'm gonna, you know, if you see me clicking my pen or don't do it right then, because that takes away from the power of your message. Just in the moment, as you're speaking somewhere after you have created the connection with the audience. and establish that you have credibility on this stage so that they should be listening to you, then just throw it in like as a side note, right? As you, by the way, you know, if you see such and such and then keep going with your message.

Roberta Ndlela
And then when preparing your message, first of all, we mentioned earlier that you should be prepared. Some people mistake that for memorizing your speech, which I discourage. What are your thoughts?
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Kelly Charles-Collins
Absolutely agree. Do not memorize. Right. Again, it goes back to what we were saying earlier, Roberta, about like, listen, nobody knows your talk. So if you mess up a piece of it, just keep on going. When I work with my clients, what I do is I have what we call our signature talk, black print. So it's a four phase process for how we teach our clients how to create their talk. And because we're creating your talk, from you, right, from your inside based on your why. Like we do deep work to figure out like, why do you wanna talk about this thing? Why is it important? Why should anybody care? And when we do that and help you to prepare it that way, you will not have to memorize it because it is you. It is what you know, it is your talk. And you'll be able to move fluidly through it, right? So if we develop a 60 minute talk and somebody says, hey, Kelly, I need you to come and do this. but I only have 15 minutes,
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right? Which is what happened to me in Women's History Month. So I have a new keynote. It's generally around 40, 45 minutes. I did it for one organization. And then I had another organization was like, Kelly, we'd love you to do it, but for 15 minutes. It was easy, right? Took out a couple of slides because I know the talk. And so when you build it, you don't have to memorize it, right? Because it is just a flow of information. based around the objective and where it is that you want people to go. Right. So we're always working on transforming. We're always working on shifting, right. So transforming the audience, shifting their perspectives and creating intrigue. And so we build that into the talk. And so my speakers can do their talk without notes. They could do it without a PowerPoint. They could do it at any moment and they could do it as short or as long as they need to. And so part of the preparation. is preparing something that you know, as opposed to preparing something
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that you read or that you Googled or that you heard somebody say, and now you're trying to take it on as your own because now you have to memorize it, right? Because you don't know the information. So now you have to memorize it when it's your own, you don't have to memorize it.

Roberta Ndlela
And the danger of taking something that you didn't prepare, what if somebody just asks a question about it?

Kelly Charles-Collins
Absolutely. You know, there could be a follow up question. Oh, that sounds interesting, Kelly. What about this part of that? Like, wait, let me go ask the person that I got the information. Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I always tell people that the clients that I work with are experts, true experts, right? Meaning that either by professional experience or personal experience, they know this topic like inside and out. And there should be almost no question that you can be asked that you don't know the answer to. Now that doesn't mean that you know everything, right? None of us knows everything about our topic. What you should be able to do, however,
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is point somebody in the direction to get the answer, right? Or be able to guide them in some way around that if you don't know, right? So you should have resources, whether it's a book or a video or a person, but you should never really be so stumped because like I tell my clients all the time, Your talk should not be Googleable, right? And now I also say it shouldn't be chat GPTable either.

Roberta Ndlela
Chat GPTable. Right?

Kelly Charles-Collins
And here's another caveat. Nothing we're talking about is new under the sun, right? We're talking about leadership, we're talking about communication, we're talking about finance, we're talking about relationships, we're talking about diversity, equity, inclusion. The information is the information. What makes it unique is your unique take on it, your point of view, right? What we call, and Speaker Moguls, we call it the unfactor, right? What is your unfactor? And how do you communicate this message to people and how do you get them to
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buy into what it is that you're trying to get them to do and also to transform their lives in some way? So it's really about understanding who you are. and what it is that you're speaking about, and then the rest of it will flow naturally. A lot of that fear comes from lack of clarity, right? Uncertainty.

Roberta Ndlela
Right. That part of making the topic your story, owning that and your perspective, because like you said, we've all heard it before. Sometimes we say, take your story, your personal story, and package the message, which then people come to us and say, But Kelly, my life is not interesting enough. I don't have a story.

Kelly Charles-Collins
So part of it too though, Roberta, and I'm glad that you brought that up around the story. Part of it is that people tell people like, oh, just tell your story. The story is not the thing, right? The message. So it's, you have to develop a message. So with our clients, we develop a message.
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Inside of that message, we leverage different stories. Right. And we all think, you know, my life is not that interesting. We also think, well, my life wasn't that traumatic. We often think that as speakers, we have to have had trauma, like this traumatic life. And that is not true either. Right. There's lots of people like me. I don't have a lot of trauma in my life. A lot of my stories are not traumatic. Right. But there are things, there's always something, there's a lesson within the stories that you can share. And when we talk about stories, I always tell my clients that they have to be relevant, riveting and relatable because not every story is the right story. There are people who've been telling a story, telling their story for a long time, right? And people are like, oh my gosh, that's so good. But the story that I tell you Roberta as a friend is not necessarily the story that a corporate buyer wants to hear when they said, okay, I need you to come and train my clients. That's not the story.

Roberta Ndlela
Or your TEDx talk.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Right, right.
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You know, I did a TEDx and my TEDx, you know, I took my TEDx, I turned it into a training, but again, when I thought about what I was going to do for my TEDx, I thought about it strategically. What can I do with this going forward? Right. And so I use that to say, okay, great. I know this is something that I could turn into something that corporate clients will pay for. So again, it's really being strategic around everything that you're doing and understanding that. your divorce, you're losing your job, you know, your whatever.

Roberta Ndlela
Yeah, there should be more to that in transforming people, like you said, rather than just, this is what I've been through, end of story.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yeah, so the message becomes the broader message, right? What it is that you're trying to get across. And then the way that you really amplify the message, clarify the message, explain the message. is through the stories, right?
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And that's how you take people on the journey. It becomes part of the support for the message.

Roberta Ndlela
Right. When you do corporate training, a lot of the time companies say we've spent money training, but then we go back to our old ways. How do you make sure that your corporate clients are transformed enough to do things in a new way?

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yeah. So I think part of it comes from the way that you train and the way that you put the program together. Now, a lot of people, and I don't do this as much in my speaking, but a lot of people will follow on. So I do have a client actually that I've been with now for three years since the whole George Floyd murder, where we're continuously doing training, we're continuously doing listening sessions, we're continuously following up. Some clients, we don't do that. Some clients, it's just. we provide them the training and then maybe the next year they'll say, hey, Kelly, can you come on and do additional training? Like I have a client who just reached out to me, can you come and do this additional training?
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So speakers have different business models. If your business model is to be trainer slash consultant maybe, then what one of the things that you need to do is if you do your training, have some type of follow on, right that you can do. And it doesn't have to be long-term. It could be short-term. Some people, what they'll do is they'll do an assessment beforehand, do their training, do an assessment afterwards. So that's a way to gather data, right? Some people will do the training and then perhaps there'll be some coaching, right, or a debrief afterwards. So sometimes I do that, like I'll do a debrief with my clients to see what's going on, right? To see what's happening. Other times we'll take the feedback that we get and provide that to the client to say, hey, this is what came up in the organization. Here's what I think you need to do going forward. If it's something that I can do, right? If it's in my wheelhouse to do it, I'll do it.
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If not, I have strategic partners who I refer them to. So there's different ways to work with the organization to figure out, did it work? Did what I present to you work? And we often find that in people giving us testimonials afterwards and understanding was the message effectively communicated even just in that moment, so that people have a changed perspective, right? Or their mindset is transformed in some way that they are now going to think differently.

Roberta Ndlela
I find it interesting that companies approach you to come and train them on these tough conversations. Because if you're on the outside looking in, sometimes you wonder, huh, they're having training on tough conversations. I wonder if the executives with the ones who said, hey, go do this. So they actually do come to you and say, please help us navigate this.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yeah, they do. Corporations are interesting.
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Sometimes they come to you out of necessity, right? So if you look at when George Floyd was murdered and all of us as DEI practitioners were extremely busy, right? I was busier than I could imagine. because there was necessity in that moment. They didn't have a choice in that moment, right? They had to do something, either by internal pressure or external pressure, they had to do the work. Sometimes, regardless of what's going on in the world, you have someone in that organization who is just really committed to this work, right? Really committed to the humanity of people and ensuring that... their organization is a place where people feel that they're included and that they belong and that they're valued, right? And so it is a top-down kind of thing. Sometimes it is within what I call the streets, right? I always tell people, tell my clients that in organizations, there's the streets. Y'all think that it's like, you know,
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who has manager title and supervisor title and VP title? No, there's the streets. And in the streets, the streets have informal leaders. And those are the people that they listen to. And so sometimes the groundswell from the streets that causes the internal pressure to have them do these things. And sometimes they wanna do it and sometimes they don't. But yes, they do pay and they pay well for you to come in and do these types of trainings. Like you have to have the chops, right? You have to have the goods to be able to do that. So you coming in and saying, I wanna talk about like the trauma that I had for my divorce, no. They want to save time, they want to save money, they want to keep employees. So you have to have something that's going to help them do that.

Roberta Ndlela
Yes, because they don't operate in a vacuum. And since we emphasize leadership and soft skills so much, just remember the humanity of your employees, of your team. Whatever happens in the streets,
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as you say, does affect them, some of that they bring to work. So these need to be addressed. On your TED Talk, you talked about... unconscious bias, you're a specialist in that and what you call the bystander impact. How can we overcome unconscious bias, which I think all of us, if you're a human and you've had some experience, you have some unconscious bias or something, whatever it is.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yeah. So my TEDx was actually on the bystander effect, which is the phenomenon that when something's happening out in the world, that the more people there are around, the less likely you are as an individual to... interfere and to act, to intervene, because we think, oh, this person's going to do it, that person's going to do it. Unconscious bias is, as you say, we all have it. They are our prejudices, they're our preferences. It comes from what we've heard, read, seen, right, and experienced in life. And so what unconscious biases are, are these stereotypes.
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They're stereotypes that we have about people. They're stereotypes that we have about groups of people. And so we use those to categorize people. The issue is, even though we all have it, even though it is outside of our awareness, those biases have a negative and sometimes detrimental impact on individuals or groups of people. And so with unconscious bias, it's never anything that you're gonna get rid of. As long as you're living, breathing, you will have biases, right? We get so much information, we see so many things, we experience so many things. And so with biases, what I focus on is making sure that you're aware of what your biases are, that you understand the impact on your decision-making, on how you show up in the world, on how you interact with other people. So the impact of that, and also to get you to a place where you're willing to accept that you have this and that you're willing to change.
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So I give you the skills and the tools. to be able to disrupt it. So I talk about disruption of biases as opposed to eliminating or creating a bias-free environment. We can never do that, right? That's an impossible task. And so it's really about disrupting it and seeing what are those particular things that there's a pattern of behavior that you can reflect on to see. Oh, when I see this, when I encounter this, when I meet this type of person, when I see this person here or whatever it is, now I realize that I'm always pulling in that information, making a particular judgment and then acting upon that in a certain way and realizing that those actions could be detrimental. I mean, it's not always bad right biases can be favorable, but also those favorable biases. can also have a negative impact on another group because you're favoring that group to the detriment of another group.
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So it's complicated and it's not, it's really life. And it's really just understanding what moves you, right? What makes you tick and what causes you to do the things that you do every day.

Roberta Ndlela
So it sounds like if you're a leader and have a team, you are constantly checking your unconscious biases?

Kelly Charles-Collins
You should be. And the team should be too. Just as a person, you should be, right? So think about this. When you meet someone for the first time, what is it about that person that causes you to make a decision about whether you should talk to them or not, whether you should hire them or not, whether you're gonna sit this close to them, whether you're gonna look them in their eye and smile, or you're gonna turn away from them. What is it? What are those particular things, right? One of the examples that we always use is like on the airplane. If you get onto an airplane Southwest, where, you know, if you get C, you got the middle seat, right? When you're going down the aisle and you're looking
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and there's a million middle seats for you to sit in and you're going down the aisle, what are you looking at to determine which of those middle seats? Cause the middle seat is the middle seat, right? Well, not really. This middle seat I'll sit in because the person sitting here is either smiling, they don't have headphones, there's no kid there, they're not overweight. they look clean, whatever it is. Those are our biases. Judgment. Yeah, right. But those are our biases, right? And those same biases, that immediate thing that we create story, that we create about people when we meet them, those are rooted in your biases. And those same things, they flow over into your daily life, they flow over into how you make decisions at work, who you communicate with, who you give that information to, right? That you found out about. who you invite to lunch, who you allow to have client communications, all the things, right? So that's a way to figure out what those are and that's why it's so important. So each one of us has to be doing that.
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But in particular, leaders really need to understand their biases and how they're using those to make decisions because they have a greater impact.

Roberta Ndlela
What would your last words be for leaders when it comes to having tough conversations with their team? in addition to the fact that work has to be done, business results have to be achieved.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yeah, two things I would tell them to focus on. Obviously I do a whole training on this, but two things that I would tell them to focus on. One, why are you gonna have this conversation? What is the purpose of having this conversation? Why with this person? Why now? Then the objective, what do you hope to get out of it? What do you want them to get out of it? What do you want to get out of it? I call those the bookends. So your intention and your objective, because if you know those two things, it will help you to direct the tone and tenor of the conversation. And even as you're having the conversation, it'll help you to see, oh, wait, this isn't going the way that I intended. This isn't
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going to get me the outcome that I expected. And so you can kind of manage and navigate inside of the conversation. Always have an end goal and establish the why.

Roberta Ndlela
Is there anything I haven't asked you that you were hoping to share with our audience for today's episode?

Kelly Charles-Collins
I would just say that everyone is a speaker in some way. A lot of times people think, well, I'm not a speaker. We're all speakers. We speak every single day. It's just that some people want to leverage speaking in a different way. So, you know, want to leverage speaking like I do as a corporate trainer or as a keynote speaker, but you also have executives and leaders. We've been talking about leaders in organizations who internally you have to do presentations, you have to communicate with your audience. So I want you to start thinking about yourself as a speaker and the responsibility that you have to develop your message and develop an effective message based on how you want, what it is that you're trying to get people to do
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based on that message.

Roberta Ndlela
And also if you feel like, I know I'm just an employee doing my job. Is it necessary or should you say if your boss says, please come and present what the two of you have been doing, come and present it to the team and you say, okay, get Kelly to do it.

Kelly Charles-Collins
So what happens in those situations though, right? I said, you know, at college, I was like, get somebody else to do it. But in workspaces or just, you could be in a community group or whatever, being able to use your voice is one of the most powerful things. Yes, I know you might be afraid. But when you get those opportunities, right, to present, do it. Because when other opportunities come up, then you're the person that they'll look to, even if you did it scared. So I always tell people, just do it scared, because it's better than not doing it at all. And yes, you may trip over your words, or it may not be as perfect as you wanted it to be, but try not to give up those opportunities.
[00:35:00]
You know, in the moment, if it's in the moment and you have to speak, listen, just go for it. But if you have a moment to really sit down and think about it and prepare, then do that and make sure that you have notes. Don't read from them, don't memorize, but just give yourself an outline and a roadmap to get you from point A to point B.

Roberta Ndlela
Words of wisdom from Kelly Charles-Collins, Esquire, the corporate trainer, public speaking mentor, and retired attorney. Kelly, this has been a wonderful conversation that I've enjoyed so much. Thank you for being here today.

Kelly Charles-Collins
Thank you so much for having me, Roberta, and thanks everyone for listening.

Roberta Ndlela
My pleasure. And before you go, do you have any goodies for us on your website and if you can share your social media handles with us?

Kelly Charles-Collins
Yes, absolutely. So if you wanna know, so one of the things people always ask me about is how do I get on stage? So I've created a speaker playbook about what I call it OPP, getting on other people's platforms.
[00:36:00]
So you can go to OPPSpeakerPlaybook.com and you can get the free download. So OPPSpeakerPlaybook.com and you can follow me on LinkedIn and Facebook at Kelly Charles Collins. LinkedIn and Facebook OPPSpeakerPlaybook.

Roberta Ndlela
And is that your website too?

Kelly Charles-Collins
No, my website is kellycharlescollins.com.

Roberta Ndlela
KellyCharlesCollins.com. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Kelly Charles-Collins
You're welcome.

Roberta Ndlela
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