For 15 years, Elisa Hays, CSP served as the Founder and Chief Daydreamer of an award-winning touring entertainment company focused on building kids’ confidence in front of audiences. In her own words she, “served on boards, won awards, and drove big Fords!” After getting stuck on the highway in an ice-storm and safely evacuating two of her staff in the face of oncoming traffic, an 18-wheeler semi-truck going 65 miles-per-hour hit her body…outside of a vehicle. She was propelled 90 feet through the air and ultimately into the position she is in now. As an authority on leadership, resilience, and inclusion Elisa inspires audiences internationally with her empathy-fueled principles for achieving Extraordinary IMPACT.

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Victor Ahipene: Speaking nation. Welcome to another episode of Public Speaking Secrets podcast I’m your host Victor Ahipene, super excited to have you on today. If you’re looking to get into today consulting thoughts, things, then we’ve got precisely for you for that because for the last 15 years Elisa Hays has been a chief daydreamer. She is a keynote speaker, a consultant and author and she speaks to audiences and transforms them on the public side. Leadership, resilience and inclusions. I super excited to have you on today. So welcome to the show.

Elisa Hays: Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Victor Ahipene: If, let me have a bit of a background. How did you get into speaking around? It’s kind of got their own story on, on the turning point. Yeah. Yeah. We don’t all just go, oh, I might be a public speaker where I’d go up. Did it all kind of come about for you?

Elisa Hays: Uh, it was Doug Carver, eighth grade teacher. Actually I, I took a, in middle school I took a beginning public speaking class. I don’t even remember why I was super nervous and super nerdy. Um, I did one speech and then he came up to me afterwards. He said, you know, I would really like for you to transfer to the advanced class and I’d like for you to audition for the play. Will you do that for me? And be in the advanced acting class as well. And so I said, um, okay. And he pretty much set the direction for the rest of my life. I was 13 years old.

Victor Ahipene: And how did that transitioning into the professional realm?

Elisa Hays: Well I, I did public speaking throughout competitively throughout high school and college won trophies all over the country of, which was great. I also did theater and then went on to get a fine arts degree in theater performance. And ultimately as an actor it’s actually really hard to earn a living. So I, I fell into doing some other work in children’s theater actually and ultimately through a whole big long story that we don’t have time for. That led me to doing a one woman show devoted to helping kids build their confidence and self esteem in front of an audience of adults and helping the adults to let loose their imagination and loosen their grip on uh, being stern and stiff and very professionally presented and to actually lighten up and play and use their imagination because that’s how creative things get done.

Victor Ahipene: Nice. And through through that, how, what was your steps to being able to I guess, grow that side of the business? Like I mean for a lot of speakers that I speak to me, they usually get a group one together. You can and you might have a few shoots that you work with and you apply them and maybe they’re friends and all the parents come along and the units that, okay, well that whole same or have been able to put out how do I, my advantage, the tight day to the next level.

Elisa Hays: Aye. I actually ended up starting a company and it started out as just me, like most speaker