Welcome!

Welcome to Not Another Toast, the blogging home of Not Another Toast, a company offering dynamic, personalized coaching in public speaking, communication, and self-presentation. Not Another Toast harnesses the techniques of performing arts, classical rhetoric, communication psychology, and common sense to help individuals and groups to become effective, powerful, and unforgettable communicators.

I'm Monica Poole. I offer consultation in public speaking, interview skills, elegant writing, speech anxiety management, and self-aware self-presentation. I offer intimate one-on-one coaching as well as workshops for groups of 20 to 100 people. Do you want to improve your elevator pitch for your new company? Want to make your interview memorable--in the good way? Want to make your business presentations, political speeches, or sermons shine? Want to help everyone in your office to have more powerful and sensitive interpersonal communication--oral or written? Want to learn to "schmooze" without being schmaltzy? Send me an email!

While my personal coaching services are generally limited to Boston, MA and surrounding communities, here on this blog I will share tips and tricks for improving your communication and presentation skills that you can apply wherever you are. We'll talk about how to make your life a "perpetual pitch," how to tailor your gestures to help others to perceive you as you want to be perceived, how to manage the emotions in the room (always important, even in speeches not intended to be "emotional"!), how to identify your dialect and embrace or erase it as you choose, how to break down the components of charm and charisma, and how to harness the techniques of the stage for the boardroom, the classroom, and the courtroom. We'll amass a rhetorical toolbox, and we'll learn how to use each tool in it.

First point: I'm saying "we" because I want to create a sense that this blog is collaborative--that you, you there, the reader, (hey, you!) are in this with me, and you are meant to participate and communicate. If I were standing before you, I'd have my arms opened, palms facing outward, my cheeks and eyebrows slightly raised. I might even be smiling. I'd signal: I like you, I want to hear from you, we're having a conversation. So: join in!