An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Make peace with your butterflies.
After five years of regular radio and television appearances, I still get butterflies before each engagement. But I’ve made friends with the butterflies. They are there to help me. I envision them flying around in there, getting all warmed up and ready to go, and then I envision flying out in a beautiful formation.
At some point in our lives, many of us will have to give a talk to a large group of people. What does it take to be a highly effective public speaker? How can you improve your public speaking skills? How can you overcome a fear of speaking in public? What does it take to give a very interesting and engaging public talk? In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker” we are talking to successful and effective public speakers to share insights and stories from their experience. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Calie Herbst.
Calie Herbst is Editor-in-Chief of Milwaukee With Kids, a digital media company based in Milwaukee, WI. She has been featured in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin Public Radio, and appears regularly on local radio and television. She loves writing, walking her dog, Oscar, and waking up before her family for some peace and quiet.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin with my parents and siblings. There’s a thriving Jewish community here, and so as a Jewish family, we felt very comfortable.
I’ve always loved writing. I wrote volumes and volumes of poems as a young kid. I wrote in my journals. I wrote notes to my friends. I wrote in the school newspaper. I was always writing.
As a child, I was outgoing and loved to make friends. But when I got in front of a group of people, I froze.
Even something as small as the teacher calling on me would cause my face to turn bright red, and blotches to break out on my neck. I was incredibly self-conscious.
I can vividly remember crying on the bathroom floor before a piano recital, with hives all over my body from my nerves. My parents were so kind and helped me through it, but the nerves were something I was going to need to make peace with myself.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
Before becoming the Editor-In-Chief of Milwaukee With Kids, I was a full-time high school Spanish teacher. After having my first child, I looked forward to my first summer off when my son and I could spend every day together.
I started to search online for all of the best things to do around Milwaukee with kids, and I quickly ealized there should be a one-stop shop for this. But there wasn’t. So I started a Facebook page to share all of the fun events I was discovering.
It started to gain traction, and about five years later, I finally took the plunge and left my teaching job to do this full time.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
The year 2020, without a doubt.
Marketing budgets dried up, which was how we monetized the business. Families were staying home from events, which was the main content we focused on. In March of 2020, I thought there was a very real possibility that Milwaukee With Kids was over.
People say that it’s the challenges that teach you the most, but we all try to cheat that to some extent, and we still hope that challenges don’t find us.
But it’s true. 2020 was an absolutely pivotal year for us, and it completely changed the trajectory of Milwaukee WIth Kids in a positive way. We were forced to serve our readers with relevant, genuine content that would help get them through an incredibly difficult time with their kids. This strengthened our relationship with our readers exponentially.
And, we were forced to learn about alternative sources of revenue, ones that ended up being much more sustainable and powerful.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I can’t believe I’m sharing this, but when I first started out, before our audience was very big, I was literally charging $25 for an advertisement on the website. I remember having dinner with a very good friend, who is a very successful business owner, and I shared that with her, and she just looked at me like “Calie. Stop. You need to charge more than $25.”
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Yes. I will always be so grateful to Jodi Becker, a producer at a local new radio station here in Milwaukee. She took a chance on me so early on in my career. They were looking to bring in more of a parenting perspective, and she reached out to me to come on the show every month.
I was so nervous before each show, and it felt like climbing a mountain each time. After each segment, she would email me a little note to encourage me and say that I did a good job. I couldn’t believe that she kept asking me back, and I will always be so grateful to her for helping me believe in myself.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging and intimidating. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?
I think when you know that something is for you, you just have to trust it. I’m sure many who are reading this can relate with how scary it was for me to have three children and leave a secure teaching job that offered a decent salary, incredible health insurance benefits, a pension, etc. I had to believe that I could achieve more than what that job was offering me. And then I had to work like a dog to make it happen.
What drives you to get up everyday and give your talks? What is the main empowering message that you aim to share with the world?
Each day I want to connect with parents and encourage them that they are not alone in their parenting journey, and that there is a whole community there to support them.
You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?
In 2022, we’re looking to return to getting our community together in person with events at the Milwaukee Art Museum and community service projects around the city.
I know my kids are getting older and eventually I’ll age out of the role I have here at Milwaukee With Kids. But I plan to stay on in some capacity to help steer the ship.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Every morning, I read an excerpt from “The Parent’s Tae Te Ching” by William Martin. The first lines are “You can speak to your children of life, but your words are not life itself.”
These words set the foundation for the book, which teaches that our children don’t belong to us. They are here to experience life for themselves, and we get to guide them through it.
I see my job as a parent (and human) as being a role model for how to live one’s life. I want to embody that which I hope for my children.
Ok, thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker?” Please share a story or example for each.
- Set your intention before each appearance.
Before your appearance, ask yourself what your intention is for it. Are you hoping to inspire people? To educate them about something? To persuade them? To connect with them? How do you want the listener to feel after they’ve listened to you?
Before my television and radio appearances, I get clear on what the point of it is. Usually my purpose is to inform listeners about fun things going on around town. I want their interest to be piqued, and I want them to feel inspired and empowered to go do something as a family together.
My deeper purpose is to inspire them to get out and take part in the community, thereby strengthening our city.
2. Visualize the person you are trying to reach.
Think about an individual in the audience who you are trying to talk to. Don’t talk to a group of people. Talk to that one individual.
Before my early morning radio gigs, I actually park at a Starbucks that’s close to the highway. I watch the cars going by, and visualize the person in their car, heading on their way to work, coffee in their cup holder, eyes still bleary from sleep. I’m talking to them. Not thousands of them. Just that one person.
3. Make peace with your butterflies.
After five years of regular radio and television appearances, I still get butterflies before each engagement. But I’ve made friends with the butterflies. They are there to help me. I envision them flying around in there, getting all warmed up and ready to go, and then I envision flying out in a beautiful formation.
4. Play the tape.
Always watch the tape or listen to the recording of yourself all the way through. It can be painful sometimes! But it’s important to learn from. Just like an athlete watches a tape after the game, you need to do the same.
Often, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. A slip-up or error that you thought was a huge deal ends up being barely noticeable when you play the tape back.
5. Do it again.
Just like anything else, public speaking is something you must do over and over again to get good at. After about five years of doing it regularly, I feel like this is the year I’ve finally hit my stride.
As you know, many people are terrified of speaking in public. Can you give some of your advice about how to overcome this fear?
Lean into your fear and explore it. Dive deeper and learn more about what you are afraid of.
Be grounded in your higher mission. If you set an intention for your speaking engagement, and try to speak to just one person in the crowd, you can more easily overcome your fear.
You are a person of huge influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
My wish is for moms to embody what they hope for their children. If you want your children to be self-assured people who are following their dreams, then that’s who you must be.
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
I read a prayer from Marianna Williamson’s “A Year of Miracles” every morning, so I’d love to have lunch with her to thank her for her inspiring and grounding words.
Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?
Yes! I’m most active on Instagram @mkewithkids. I’m also on facebook @mkewithkids.
This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
Calie Herbst Of Milwaukee With Kids On 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
