Speakers’ Lounge equips aspiring entrepreneurs with public speaking skills

The Speakers’ Lounge has trained aspiring entrepreneurs and youths in Lagos in the act of public speaking.

The inaugural edition of the Speakers’ Lounge, a platform created to train and support speakers, aspiring speakers and business owners within and outside the country was held in Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria recently.

The event would also be held in other cities across the country, such as Abuja, Ibadan and Port Harcourt.

The project is being packaged by Primacy Hub, Ibadan, in partnership with The Plectrum Hub in Lagos. The programme aims to build trainees to be able to connect with any audience, monetize and sharpen their speaking skills, and be able to keep financial records.

Some of the facilitators of the programme include notable public speakers and entrepreneurs such as Niyi Adesanya, Olufunke Temenu, Kunle Akomolafe, Toyin Akinlade and Tunji Babajide.

Chief Executive Officer of Plectrum Hub, Toyin Akinlade, said one vital skill for any entrepreneur to have and develop if success was to be guaranteed, was public speaking skill.

“Today, we are having a programme that we’ve titled ‘Speakers’ Lounge’. It’s basically a public speaking master class for aspiring, and even already established speakers. Warren Buffet said if there should be any important skill that any entrepreneur should have, it should be public speaking skill. It is not just enough for you to have an idea, you should be able to communicate effectively what your idea is all about, and you should be able to sell it. That is what spells the difference most times between successful people and the unsuccessful ones.

“So, we’re using the opportunity of this programme to train speakers, aspiring speakers and even business owners, because more often than not – we get to hear of business owners who go for business presentations and sometimes – apart from their technical competence; what might ensure that they get the job sometimes would be how effectively they communicate the idea that they have. So, that’s basically what Speakers’ Lounge is all about and we’re doing it in collaboration with Primacy Edge Hub, which is our partner hub in Ibadan,” she said.

According to her, it was crucial to avail startups of opportunities of events like this, “to further educate them on how well they can function in fullness of their potential, because entrepreneurship.”

Olufunke Temenu, one of the facilitators believed Speakers’ Lounge is a vision from God, which is set to go places, by growing to connect public speakers across the length and breadth of the nation.

“Earlier in the year, I had the thought of meeting with training facilities all over the country, partnering with them so that we could do some sort of collaboration and to be able to refer our clients to each other.

“So, if you have a client that is going to Abuja; you have a client that is going to Lagos, you could say, ok, send that client to Abuja or send him to Lagos, as the case may be. So, I met with Mrs. Akinlade, who happens to be the CEO of Plectrum Hub, and then we had a collaboration. But I didn’t know what God had in mind when we started that collaboration because eventually, we had to come up with ‘Speakers’ Lounge’. We thought ok, how do we support people who come in for training? How do we support people who have been using our facilities? So, we just started with that and we have that all over the country today.

“So, we put Speakers Lounge together so that we could be able to help people who have issues with speaking, basically. People who would come to you and ask how much training facility would cost. So many people would come to you and you discover that they can only do it once or twice and they disappear. So we are like, how do we support them.

“Speakers Lounge is out to promote them, to encourage them, to empower them and to make sure that we network them. You know, make them see that we’re all here…we have the same feeling of uniformity. We understand what you’re going through, we can help you to make sure that any kind of programme that you’re holding, we’d ensure that, one, the place is filled up; two, we have the facility for you to use; three, we can make sure that everything you need works together, everything is available. So, we go all out to ensure that whatever they’re going to need, we have it available,” she said.

Temenu added that Speakers’ Lounge is basically a support system. “Speakers Lounge is a vision on its own. It’s borne out of the passion of what we see of these people going through stuff, of not being able to get well settled, that was why we brought about Speakers Lounge.”