Turning to Tea for Table Topics Inspiration
An Honest-To-Goodness Tale
By Steve Johnson, CL
My story begins with bottles of ice cold Honest Tea. I love this product, particularly one of its unique features: the wonderful quotations that are strategically printed underneath the bottle caps. I’m a member of West Creek Toastmasters in Richmond, Virginia, and I’ve incorporated those bottle-cap quotes into various aspects of our club meetings to inspire my fellow members. The quotations served me particularly well during a memorable Table Topics session last year.
As the Topicsmaster that day, I presented each club member with an Honest Tea bottle cap. The challenge: Give a Table Topics speech using that particular phrase as your subject. A couple of examples: “As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more”; “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” I sweetened the proposition by offering a bottle of Honest Tea – sitting on the lectern at the front of the room – to the Table Topics winner.
Five volunteers stepped forward and each of them delivered fantastic impromptu speeches. They were energized by these pithy pieces of wisdom! After the vote was held, two members tied for first place. Since I couldn’t make them share a bottle of tea, a blind drawing allowed for one happy recipient.
But, wait – there’s more to the story. I wrote to the Honest Tea company about the Table Topics success and the educational value of Toastmasters. The company was impressed. I was chosen as its August Consumer of the Month, and its e-newsletter featured a short article saluting West Creek Toastmasters and explaining how I had used the bottle-cap quotations for Table Topics. In addition, I was sent a case of bottled tea to share with my club. I chose mixed organic – to reflect the diversity of our membership.
I then took the idea even further, and as a result Honest Tea became a sponsor of our District 66 Fall Conference, taking out a full-page ad in the conference program – “Honest Tea Supports Toastmasters Everywhere!” – and donating a bottle of tea to each of the 250-plus participants.
My favorite Honest Tea quote? “The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.” In spite of the serious learning we do in Toastmasters to become better speakers and leaders, there is a fair amount of laughter at our club meetings, which helps us to grow and keeps us all entertained. …Honest!
Steve Johnson, CL, is president of the West Creek Toastmasters in Richmond, Virginia. He can be reached at Stephen.C.Johnson@Comcast.net.