A few years after arriving in Istanbul, I found myself saying, “You know, what this place needs is a Toastmasters club.”

(for those of you not familiar with Toastmasters, it’s basically a place where people practice their public speaking skills)

So I started one up. Some others had made some efforts to start one before, but those efforts had never taken off, and I said to myself, “This time we’re going to do it.”

In the early days, things were pretty tight. In fact, for about six months while the club was growing, I would pay the hotel for the meeting room using new member dues I had collected 10 minutes earlier.

You heard that right: At the beginning of the meeting, we didn’t have enough money to pay the hotel for the meeting room we were using at that very moment. During the meeting, I would cross my fingers and hope someone joined that night, so I could use their money to pay the hotel.

(Yes, Istanbul Toastmasters, like so many self-funded activities, started out as a Ponzi scheme.)

I never told anyone in the club just how close we were to disaster, because, well, I’m a Capricorn, and eating tons of stress is just how we roll. Besides, a few years later, we were the largest Toastmasters club in the world (seriously, no joke), and the Treasurer had more money than she knew what to do with. But at the beginning, we were pretty much living hand to mouth.

It’s been years since I’ve been involved in Toastmasters now, but I’m sure glad we gutted it out through those early days, because later when people like Bertay Fişekçi, this week’s podcast guest, came along, Istanbul Toastmasters was there for them.

Note: In this episode, my audio track has a bunch of problems, but Bertay’s and Alper’s are fine. Thank you Riverside, we won’t be using you for a while.