client Success Stories

I found it difficult to communicate my motivation for why I even was led to take this new position. I felt anxious and fearful when I would think about speaking in meetings, because I didn’t want to be exposed or have people think perhaps
I was not qualified to be there.

It was important for me to learn confidence in who I am and who God created me to be from someone who loves and hears directly from the Lord, and that’s definitely who Brenda is.

The fact that Brenda teaches overall confidence in yourself—not just for public speaking—that she is led by the Holy Spirit, and that she enjoys helping women are three things that especially resonated with me.

When considering working with Brenda, I loved that her focus was not just on how to speak publicly, but how to communicate successfully in all situations and relationships.

I also love the joyful, confident and peaceful way that Brenda communicates and how encouraging she is.

I felt that Brenda would foster a professional, encouraging, and Christian-centered coaching experience that would be personalized to me, and with this in mind, I was sold!

Now, I feel more empowered, because I have tools and knowledge to overcome my fears and insecurities with speaking.

Through Brenda’s coaching I realized that establishing and grounding myself in my identity in God every day is a priority.

With Brenda’s guidance, along with the Holy Spirit’s leading, I now have declarations that remind me of God’s original design for me, and who I am—even when I don’t always feel that way.

Months after my time with Brenda, I have continued to practice declaring those truths words over myself, especially when
I feel a struggle with my confidence.

Also early on in our sessions, Brenda helped me identify my “why” regarding my new career.

She helped me clarify my messaging (to myself and others) on what is important about my job, and a clear picture on why
I am doing this job, what I bring to this role, and what God wants to accomplish through my work.

It is amazing how much this “why” alone has contributed to my sense of confidence in speaking about my work.

Since working with Brenda, I have had a lot of wins with public speaking!

For example, Brenda helped me realize that much of my nervousness in public speaking came from not loving my audience and in focusing more on myself than on them. 

With this in mind, I facilitated a community meeting where I was able to focus more on the audience than on myself, making them feel heard and welcome during the discussion time as they gave their input on the project I had just presented.

During the meeting, I moved away from the podium as Brenda suggested and stood closer to seated individuals who were responding to questions that I and my colleague asked them.  It was about their aspirations and goals for the community project we were proposing.

I could tell that during the meeting I was gaining the trust of the community members. 

Even the surly elderly gentleman who sat in front and didn’t say much, hugged and thanked me at the end of the meeting.

What a win!

I also gave a speech at a class in a local university, about my nontraditional career path and as I was preparing my speech
I determined my goal which was to inspire them and during my speech I believe that’s what I did!

During the class I was passionate in delivering my speech and didn’t even have to follow my written notes (that I took hours to write) because I was speaking from the heart.

The students asked great questions.  A couple of them came up to me afterwards thanking me for sharing my journey, saying that it was interesting and inspiring, even asking for my contact information to keep in touch.

This made me feel like I was successful in reaching my goal.

I also taught an adult art class where afterwards one of the students came up and said how much she enjoyed the class and how encouraging I was.

She said to me, “You seem so confident,” and told me how this had resonated with her.   I thought, “Me? Confident?” Somehow while speaking I came across this way and she didn’t even know this was an area I had struggled with!

With those and many more wins under my belt, I am still working on putting what I learned with Brenda into practice, and still have a lot to work on!

However, I have noticed I have so much more awareness of when I speak with “uhms,” use “upspeak” and overexplaining, which I never noticed before.

I believe this new awareness will help me make adjustments on my own as I continue to grow in these areas.

Brenda is amazing!

She has a holistic approach to speaking that is applicable to all areas of life.

She is a personal confidence coach who genuinely cares about the success of her clients and celebrates even their small wins as if they were her own.

There were many times that I shared a “win” with Brenda and she was even more excited and yelling out victoriously
than I was!

Even though Brenda has a curriculum and other clients, I loved that she curated my experience so that it was tailored exactly to what I needed.

Brenda also has a gift of prophetic wisdom and insight and shared many encouraging things she felt God was saying for me, which also helped to guide our time together. I loved working with Brenda, God has truly used her to make a difference in my life!

As I think back over my Standing Ovation Speaker coaching experience, I realize how much this has helped me in not just my professional life but my personal and spiritual life as well.

The way Brenda walked intimately with Holy Spirit and would stop and ask Him questions to guide our sessions made me realize I have divine help in areas that I used to think were insignificant.

This has encouraged and reminded me that I can ask God more open-ended questions and have confidence that I hear Him, He hears me, and He will answer!

Before working with Brenda, I had recently pivoted to a new career, after spending over 20 years working in a different industry.

I had just started an important new public facing job in this completely new field, in a leadership position, no less!

There was a lot to learn in this new role. 
I was facilitating many public meetings, and
I was feeling like a fish out of water.

I was lacking confidence, not just in public speaking, but in everything about
my job.

Marg's Story