From February through early May, Rory estimates, he delivered that speech over fifty times, wherever he could find a captive audience -- once even performing in front of four people in the back of a Perkins. All the while, he was tweaking and perfecting the speech, recording it and watching it late at night, aware that in a public-speaking contest, one word can mean the difference between a winner and a loser. He also began studying humor, watching videos, getting up on stage and doing standup, knowing that the best speeches were the ones that could make people laugh.
To the surprise of everyone and no one, Rory competed in the Toastmasters district competition on May 13 and won. He was now officially the best speaker in District 26, an area that encompasses Colorado, Wyoming and western Nebraska, home to 2,876 Toastmasters and 152 clubs.
Mark Andresen
Rory Vaden strikes a pose as a Donna Baldwin
model.
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But the regional championship -- for an area encompassing 22,500 members -- was coming close.
"I had done that same speech, 'Mysterious Ways,' for the first four rounds," Rory explains. "Which is fine, they allow that. Now all of a sudden, I had two weeks to get another speech together. It was a daunting task. Everyone was telling me, 'Just be thankful you've made it this far; we're so proud of you,' and all this other crap. But I wasn't finished."
Now he turned to his second speech, "Slam," which also drew from his days with Southwestern and focused on a man in a wheelchair whom Rory had encountered on another door-to-door sales effort. He'd immediately pegged the man as a non-buyer, but as it turned out, the man was a children's author who wound up spending more than $4,000 on books. The speech emphasizes the old don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover adage while showing compassion triumphing over judgment. Over two weeks, Rory delivered "Slam" twenty times, working with his characteristic drive and discipline to mold it. And on June 3, Rory won the regional championship.
There are no super humans with magical powers, for the most part we all have about the same capacity; the difference is Discipline. What you see on TV, in Comedy Clubs, in Movies, in Speech Competitions etc. are the final products of hours and hours (and sometimes years) of Discipline…The reality is that luck had very little to do with it, so get off your "A" and get busy. So in the future I don't wish you the best of luck; I wish you the best of Discipline.
In what little free time he has, Rory enjoys going to comedy clubs, jogging (he slimmed down from 205 to 165 pounds last year), eating out at the Cherry Creek Grill and Mataam Fez, and hanging out in LoDo at Monarck and Lime. "It appears like I'm always driven to a goal," he says, "but it doesn't feel that way, because all of my hobbies turn into my goals."
Since winning the regional competition, Rory has found time to graduate from the University of Denver magna cum laude, with both an undergraduate degree and an MBA in business; compete in the Comedy Works' New Talent Contest (he didn't advance); pick up a few modeling gigs; and start a business, Success Starts Now, with several friends from his book-selling days with Southwestern. A sales-training company based in San Jose, California, that offers one-day sales motivation and technical-training seminars, Success Starts Now has the support and financial backing of Henry Bedford and the Southwestern Company. "It's never been my plan to do something like this," Rory admits. "But right now we're very successful at it, and it fits very well with what is going on in my life."
Success Starts Now's first event is set for August 24 in San Jose. The business plan predicted that the seminar would be profitable at 600 attendees; Rory and his partners would have settled for half that. But over 700 people are already confirmed, and a second event has been scheduled in San Francisco, with a third planned later this year in Nashville. In 2007, Success Starts Now expects to put on between six and twelve seminars.
Two days after that first seminar, Rory will be in D.C. for the World Championship of Public Speaking. He's been performing his contest speech all summer long, in front of all types of audiences. As a Toastmasters finalist, he's found doors opened far wider than they were last fall, when he had to beg to perform in front of high school speech classes. And now he's ready to take on the nine other finalists for his shot at the world title.
"I think that he absolutely does have a chance to win," says Nancy Spurry, his Cherry Creek Toastmasters teammate. "It's like when they talk to a football team before the Super Bowl and they say, 'On any given Sunday, any team can win.' It's about skill, dedication, discipline and a little bit of luck."
But Rory Vaden doesn't believe in luck.
