In November I interviewed our District Director for District 17, Tim Blackburn.

Coming from the humble beginnings, of a farmer’s son, Tim was taught hard work, perseverance, and community spirit from a very early age, and this has allowed him to follow his passions.

Tim has taken the lessons learnt through Toastmasters and applies them through his communities and through his business endeavours.

Tim is the managing director for Blackburn Accounting since 2013 and is currently a Director for 3 Commercial Companies. Tim was appointed to the Executive Board for ASeTTs from 2014 to 2020 a Not-for-Profit organisation providing services to Refugees in Western Australia.  In 2014 he was the state president for CPA Australia.

An accomplished speaker, Tim is the founding member for CPA Toastmasters, Victoria Park Toastmasters, WA Speakers Bureau, One Country One World Toastmasters & Perth Rainbow Toastmasters Club.

How long have you been a member of Toastmasters and what prompted you to join?

I have been a member of Toastmasters for 18 years.  I remember my manager at my workplace at the time suggested as part of my improvement that I try Toastmasters and she told me that she had found Toastmasters a really good place for her to improve her communication. Taking on the feedback I looked up the closest Toastmasters club which was in West Perth. I went along to their breakfast meeting, and as soon as I got there I just loved the energy in the room. I liked how confident the speakers were. I joined straight away even though I am not a morning person, I thought that was going to be a challenge! But seeing the results that the club was achieving; I could see myself getting some benefit by joining Toastmasters.

What are the current roles that you hold with Toastmasters?

My current responsibility is District Director for District 17.  It has been a long development happening, I have been envisioning taking on this role for a long time now and it has been fantastic.  It has given me a chance to motivate and really help provide a space to have other Toastmasters develop and grow.  It is a good chance for me to provide feedback and give insight into the skills that I have developed and impart them to others that are looking to develop their skills in leadership and communication.

What has been a highlight since joining Toastmasters?

I think the biggest highlight for me was when I set up my first home club which was at CPA (Certified Practicing Accountants) Australia.  I remember when I was a member of St Georges Toastmasters thinking a club like this would be so good for accountants, to help them speak more with confidence and speak up. One thing I found with accountants is they can be quite conservative, can be a little bit reserved and not give their full energy and attention that they can provide.  I thought why not start a Toastmasters club? I knocked on the door of the general manager’s office at CPA Australia and I said that it would be great to have Toastmasters here. He said, “No Tim, I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

I was a bit downtrodden about that. I went back to my home club and spoke to the president at the time and said that I thought I had a good idea, but the general manager didn’t agree with me.  He recommended that I develop my skills more in this club and take on an officer role, so I could understand the functionalities of the club.  I took on the role of Vice President of Public Relations and then took on the role of President and I started to learn about being an effective communicator. I looked back on my time as a CPA and asked myself what I did that was not effective and what I needed to change if I were to approach them again to establish a club? And by taking on that kind of exercise I realised two things.  One, I needed to work out who made the decisions at the organisation and whether I was engaging the right people.

The second one was to build a team around me to help me to run this kind of initiative.  I pulled a team of four other accountants together and I also set up a meeting with the decision makers at CPA Australia. Once we had that meeting they loved the concept of establishing a club, and once I had that buy-in I was able to establish a Toastmasters club at CPA Australia.  That is one thing I am proud of.

What has been your main challenge?

One of the challenges I had was with my late wife. My late wife got sick, and I had to take care of her while she was really unwell.  When you are caring for someone who is unwell and falling backwards in health it can be challenging. All your energy saps away and you are full time working, developing your skills in Toastmasters and in the background, you’ve got this huge amount of responsibilities and pressure, taking care of someone that you love so deeply. You have no idea what is happening with the deterioration of their health and that got really challenging particularly because a lot of it was to do with mental health and dealing with someone who is going through a huge amount of depression, a huge amount of different personality disorders. It was challenging to stay focused on my development and my career and everything else around me, to maintain that balance. Unfortunately, she succumbed to her ill health. I still remember it, it was the day of an area final, and I was in the contest. I was getting ready, and I had to go check on my wife, at the time she was sleeping.  She passed away sadly on that day. That was so heartbreaking.

From the challenges though you certainly learn a lot.  Nursing someone through ill health I learned I had to really be strong because that person was really vulnerable.  And when you are having to deal with the strength you often have to park your emotions to the side and you are like their strength and they have to rely on you to make decisions to keep them moving in a positive direction, to be that ray of hope when there is a lot of darkness around you. I remember the day of Tammy’s passing and that I felt a huge amount of energy shifting from her into me. I think it's from so much love and compassion I had been providing for her and that she is passing that on to me to carry on for her. I felt that even though her passing is sad and I cried so much as I’ve never cried before, that it opened up my emotions to be vulnerable, to be emotional, to be strong to stand up and speak up. I feel like my heart really grew from that experience if you want to create an analogy.

From that challenge, I didn’t realise it at the time, but upon reflection, you just become a stronger person and much more committed to moving forward.

What benefits does Toastmasters have for you?

I guess I have been doing Toastmasters for 18 years, so I just live and breathe the culture and one thing I love about Toastmasters is the opportunity of giving and learning. When you give and learn a lot of opportunities open up so I find that every time you take on a challenge, every time there is an opportunity for you to take on it develops a skill that you want to get better at, and it also opens up opportunities that may not have been presented before. I like the example that when I set up my Toastmasters club at CPA Australia I was then invited to sit on the council of CPA Australia and in order to sit on the council you need to have been voted in by 11,000 members, so I took on the opportunity, I got voted in and once I got onto the council they voted me in to be the state president. So, I guess it’s all about taking the opportunities and the skillsets you learn and putting them into practice in the community and the people around you in the environment that you are in.

What does the year ahead hold for you and your Toastmasters journey?

I am always quite adventurous so coming out of Covid and being in a District Director role I am really looking at really engaging clubs and encouraging them to reach out to their community that they are part of and really be known in those communities. Communities are a big passion of mine and in every community, I am involved with I am just so passionate about making a difference and I really want to impart that knowledge for the clubs to make a stand - who are their communities? Who are they engaged with? Are you engaging with them? What are the conversations you are having that make the communities know you are there and present and what a great difference Toastmasters makes? If I can accomplish that in the next twelve months that would be wonderful.

What do you like to do outside of Toastmasters?

One of the things I really love to do is cooking.  I learned it very young. My mum gave us money each time we cooked a cake and so when we were young, we loved cooking cakes because we would get $1 pocket money.  She set a foundation of cooking that we really loved.  I learned how to cook all the traditional English meals like the lamb roast and the steaks, and it really wasn’t until probably about 10 years ago I started studying Ayurveda which is an Indian medicine and I really fell in love with cooking curries. I love Indian curry in particular getting the different spices and really bringing out the flavour.

I use those flavours now and impart them in the cooking I do, and it really brings out great flavours and brings a different level of enjoyment with food. Though I love food I have to be careful how much I eat. It is a bit of a balance!

I enjoy bringing people over and entertaining with food and I would like to do that more if I get a chance.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

What I love about Toastmasters is that you can take as much out of it as you want and I also love is that its self-paced so you can go at a pace that you are comfortable with. At the start when I was first writing speeches it took days to write my first speech and now I can get a speech done in twenty minutes or less.  It’s also transferable. When I write reports for a business it used to take me days and now I can write reports in half an hour. What Toastmasters trains you is clarity of thought, really working on purpose and what you are passionate about.

One thing that really turned my skills around in Toastmasters is talking about your passions, what are your passions? And I don’t think we talk about that enough and sometimes we are conscious about what other people are thinking about our passions rather than us living our passions and doing things we want to do.  If you were uninhibited by other people’s thoughts about you, what would that be?

And I want to encourage members to explore that, open those petals, and see what’s going to blossom from exploring who you are. What life lessons have you had? What life lessons and developments have you had from those experiences and let people know about it, tell them about those experiences. Explore those emotions about how it felt to be caring for someone who is going through struggles to happy moments, sad moments, explore those emotions that we have bottled up for so long and get them expressed.

Because we love hearing people’s stories about times you’ve struggled, times you have had to deal with challenges, how you overcame an obstacle. We are human beings, and we love being connected and I love really working on that vulnerability side. Telling people that I am just the same as you but what I am doing is following my passions, and I want you to explore what you are passionate about.

Toastmasters really helped me to be clear on my purpose and they encourage you when you do a speech.

What is the purpose? What are the three things you would say that would make a difference, that they’ll take away from, thinking they’ve learned from the experience?

I would just like to close with that, to say follow your heart, follow your passions and go at the pace that you feel comfortable. For you.

Katrina Whittred

Leaders Focus Author/Coordinator
Black Swan Newsletter
District 17, Toastmasters International

Author's Bio

Since joining the City of Perth Toastmasters in 2014, I have been actively involved with Toastmasters.  Each month I will be interviewing a leader in District 17 for the Black Swan.  Watch this space, we have quite the line-up!