Troy's Times - June 1st, 2007
Hi Friend! (Some ch^racters in th1s newsletter have been altered to keep it from being filtered out as spam) IN THIS ISSUE
“It is not important How we come to the events in our lives, but how we Deal with those events”- Troy
This Month's Featured Article: Why Are You Talking to Me?
“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” William Jennings Bryan
OK, so this question is usually phrased, how did you get into public speaking? Sometimes that is the question pure and simple. However, different people ask the question for different reasons. For some, the underlying question is not just, how did I become a public speaker, but how did I recover from having screwed my life up so horribly. For others, the question is meant more as an accusation. Sort of a “why are you getting paid for having been a blight on society.”
I have answers to all three.
I mentioned earlier that the first scholarship that I received when I was trying to fund my education came from the National Speakers Association. While I was really more of a numbers kind of guy (in fact I received my degrees in accounting and business) the general thought on their part was that I would someday use my history to help others. I can’t say, in all honesty, that I saw that as clearly as they did at first. I had screwed my life up so royally; I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to listen to me talk about it. I wasn’t on the same page as they were, but I was very grateful for the money.
At first, I planned on taking just enough communication classes to keep them interested while I continued to look for additional sources of funding. But, as I continued to correspond with my friend and mentor, Robert Henry, and I saw the effect that I was having on my fellow prisoners, I started to see myself as they had seen me. People were noticing the things that I was doing and the effect of it started to grow far beyond me and my own little cell. Gang members were looking for a future without violence, the prison education counselor was going out of his way for a convict, the educational programming was being expanded, and I even had a guard come up to me one day and tell me, “Evans, I told my son about you last night. He is living in the free world and not doing half of what you are doing with his life. You are a role model.”
Of course I’ve walked you through the steps of my transformation in earlier articles, but in reality, my purpose beyond becoming something better than I had been wasn’t something I planned so much as a calling that was revealed to me. That was how I recovered so well and was able to make the full one-eighty. By the hand of God, Fate, Destiny, whatever you want to call it, I was guided from being the user to being the mechanism. My purpose became greater than me and that is what leads me today.
Of course it’s one thing to have an idea about what you want to do, it’s another thing entirely to go and do it, especially if it is something that you’ve never done before. So how did I actually become a speaker?
Upon my release I met a man from the National Speakers Association who, as I mentioned earlier in the book, took me under his wing and gave me one of my first jobs. He was a speaker and author and he is the one who mentored me in my speaking.
While my primary duties for him were administrative, my real job was to prepare myself for my new career. He helped me start to piece my message together and then made me go out every week to deliver it to whoever I could get to hear it—Kiwanis, Rotary Clubs, anyone who would give me a chance. In the beginning, I think those who had hearing aids that could be turned off liked my speeches the most.
I would videotape myself and bring it back for him to review. Every week, he would take the entire speech apart, piece by piece, telling me all of the things that I was doing wrong—I had the wrong cadence here, you could tell that I lost my train of thought there, I needed to pause a bit more, what was I doing with my hands…
And then, like a father, he would build me back up so that I was prepared to go out and do it all over again. After a year of that, he told me that I was ready to start my career and kicked me out.
Now that I am fortunate enough to be able to share my message with thousands of people each month, I find that there will always be those who are mad at me for making a living off of my story.
All I can say to those people is… I feel blessed each day to be able to be paid for doing something that is so much a part of my heart and what I feel to be my true calling. I have paid my debt to society and rebuilt myself into a successful, upstanding citizen. The slope to my downfall was steep and slippery and I worked very hard to climb my way back out. I’m proud of that and in the end, helping just one other person do the same, would far outweigh any criticism that you could give me.
While those people focus on what they perceive to be the fair or unfair in this world, I in turn have files full of letters and emails from the people whose lives I have touched. For me, the true payment is in the note from the kid who says that I have helped him put down the joints and refocus on education, the parent who says that I helped her break down the barriers that stood between her and her child, or the people who have used my words to make a change in their lives.
If that’s still not enough for you, then know that I am also using my success to touch the lives of kids who have lost their way. Each year, I donate my time and my message to the kids who have found themselves in trouble with the law. Believe it or not, these were the hardest speaking engagements that I’ve been rewarded with so far. It’s not easy to gain access to any correctional facility once you’ve been a convict. It took sorting through miles of red tape for the corrections department just to let me inside the building, but I felt like it was my duty to those kids and to society.
I am still, to this day, trying to create the same inroads with the adult prison system. For good reason, they have rules against letting ex-cons into the prisons to meet with the other prisoners. However, I continue to try to change their mind in this one instance. I can pinpoint the precise day that I first chose the easy path and changed my life forever. Many of those people can as well and live with the regret just as I do. I want to help them see a future beyond that.
Of course, there are those who, like my old warden and the people who stand up in the crowd and tell me that I have no right to be living my life the way that I do, will say that a prisoner’s place will always be in the prisons or the ghettos of our country.
I’ve found from talking to many of them that, as the saying goes, while they point their finger at me, there are three pointing back at themselves. It is my job to take them outside of their comfort level and not everyone likes the picture that they see when they’re there.
If you’re one of those people, let me ask you this, why is it so
important to YOU that I pay for my mistakes for the rest of my life? I
guarantee you that if you really search your soul, it has nothing to do
with me. Read a
letter from a recent client - Click hear to read! I often had a hopeless feeling knowing that all I could offer were words of encouragement and support and the sharing of my own downfall....that was until I became partners with a company called DrugTALK. DrugTALK is a v1rtual life coach dedicated to helping families, parents and young people overcome the threat and dangers of drugs through the privacy of their home. They do this by delivering the insight, tools and activities needed for parents to protect their children by putting vital protection principles into practice, often without parents even realizing it. Their programs and tools are based on decades of research and supported by a dynamic team of communication experts, family intervention specialists, treatment professionals, narcotics intelligence officers, life coaches, parents and---most importantly---teens who have faced the world of drugs first-hand. The CEO of DrugTALK happened to attend one of my speaking engagements
and after talking I skeptically took one of his Drug Reference Guides
and a DVD. Having lived through the hell of drug abuse I had my whole
adult life been conv1nced that nothing short of expensive in-patient treatment
centers could break the hold that drugs have on our young people. After
thoroughly studying what DrugTalk has to offer I was blown away- I can
honestly say that h^d these tools been available to me during my teenage
years that I most likely would have avoided the hell I put myself and
family through.
Featured product for this issue! NEW HARDBACK BOOK -
If you live in or near one of the following cit1es where Troy will be speaking over the next few months, please contact The Ev^ns Groups for details on an opportunity that does not come around often- see Troy present for free!
Sign up for my affiliate program and earn money while you sleep! Click here for details! Commission for booking me - I offer a comm1ssion of 10%-20% ($750.00-$1,500.00) for anyone who refers me for speaking engagements and/or bulk product sales. Please contact The Evans Group for details. Subscriber opinions and impressions of this electronic newsletter: I invite subscribers to write me with their quest1ons as well and I will answer them in the next issue. Also readers, I invite you to send in profiles of yourself and how you have used the inform^tion from my electronic newsletter, products or speech in your personal and/or professional lives. Once a month I will feature one individual for all others to read about!
Note: You are free to reprint any portion of this electronic newsletter as long as the portion remains complete and unaltered, and the “About the Author” section is included. About the Author- Troy Evans is a profess1onal speaker and author who resides in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Pam and his dog Archibald. Troy travels the country delivering keynote presentations, and since his release from prison has taken the corporate and association pl^tforms by storm. Overcoming adversity, adapting to change and pushing yourself to realize your full potential- other speaker’s talk about these issues, Troy has walked them.
|
| |||||||
         | |||||||
