Sometimes the most life-changing words are not spoken from a stage. They are spoken quietly, person to person, when someone looks at you and sees something you cannot yet see in yourself.
That is the story at the center of this episode of Speak Arizona. It is a conversation about mentorship, about speaking from the heart, and about what happens when someone believes in you before you are ready to believe in yourself.
Don Dousette and Matthew Malan sat down with host Rupesh Parbhoo to talk about the relationship that helped Matthew go from not showing up to his first Toastmasters speech to competing at the division level. (You may remember Matt from his own episode on going from a childhood stutter to the contest stage.) But this story goes deeper than public speaking. It is about how one person's presence, patience, and belief can unlock something that was always there.
A Familiar Fear
Don's story starts in the third grade. He was called to the front of the room to give an oral book report, and when he got there, his brain froze. He could not remember a single thing he wanted to say. His classmates laughed. And from that moment, he carried a belief that something was wrong with him.
"For a good part of my life, I didn't speak very much," Don said.
That belief followed him for decades. Then in 2010, he was asked to be the best man at a friend's wedding. He did not trust himself to speak from memory, so he wrote his speech out and planned to read it. The reception was outdoors. The wind blew his notes apart. He had to stop and start over three times.
"I was so embarrassed. I was humiliated. And I made a commitment to myself. I said I was never going to let that happen again."
Three weeks later, he joined Unity Speakers Toastmasters Club.
A Fire in the Belly
Matthew's path to Toastmasters was different in the details but familiar in the feeling. A lifelong stutterer who went mute for two years, Matthew tried Toastmasters and left. Then came back and left again. He did that five times before he finally stayed.
When Don first met Matthew at Maverick Toastmasters, he noticed two things. Matthew had a presence about him. And he could not look at the audience.
"He just had a fire in his belly unlike anyone I have ever encountered before," Don said. "He was just willing to do whatever it took to get where he wanted to go, and that just really impressed me. I just couldn't not take part in it."
But Matthew would stand at the front of the room and stare at the floor. No matter how much the club encouraged him to look up, his eyes stayed down. So one night, Don walked into the meeting with a gift. A neck brace.
"Just as kind of a moral support to encourage him. Like, look up. We need to be able to have that eye contact if we're going to connect with you the way that we should."
Matthew never wore it. But he kept it.
Believing in Someone Else's Belief
Don knows what it feels like to be coached by someone who sees your potential before you do. His own mentor, David Hodish, spent years encouraging him to enter speech competitions. Don could not imagine it. He had no confidence. But David was relentless.
"He had a belief in me that I didn't yet have in myself. And I could believe in that belief."
Don borrows a line from Les Brown to describe what that felt like. "Sometimes you have to believe in someone else's belief in you until your own belief kicks in."
David's persistence paid off. Don entered a club contest and won. Then won at the area level. Then the division. He made it all the way to the district stage in 2013, competing against eight of the best speakers in Arizona. He did not win, but what he gained was far more valuable than a trophy.
"The real value in taking part in a speech competition is the confidence and the competence that I was able to attain as a result of doing the speech again and again and again."
Years later, Don wanted to pass that same gift forward. When he saw what Matthew was capable of, he started encouraging him the same way David had encouraged him. Enter the contest. Get on the stage. Push past the fear.
"My mentor gave me a gift, and I want to be able to give that gift to Matthew. And I hope that Matthew gives that gift to others."
From Theater to Truth
Before Don's mentorship reshaped his approach, Matthew described his early speeches as theater. Big voices. Dancing on the stage. Dramatic energy. None of it was real.
"Don taught me how to be me and be real, which is hard to be on stage because you have all these strangers watching you speak for the first time."
Don's coaching was specific. They would work on a single line over and over. Rewrite a section. Pause longer. Let people feel it. For Don, speaking is not a performance. It is something closer to art.
"Speaking is like this canvas and you can paint all these words from how you speak to people," Matthew said. "It takes a lot of practice and time to get to that point of painting this picture of how to serve people."
And that shift, from performing to serving, was at the heart of Don's message.
"When you speak from your head, people hear you. When you speak from your heart, they hear you and they feel you. And there's a different level of connection, and it's a much deeper connection."
The Moment Everything Changed
For a long time, Matthew's motivation was the trophy. First place. The win. He knew in his head that speaking was supposed to be about service, but emotionally it had not landed yet.
Then he met a stranger.
Matthew was leaving an area contest when a woman he had never met stopped him, hugged him, and looked up at him with tears streaming down her face. She told him about her son, a teenager who also had a stutter, who had been bullied, and who had taken his own life. She told Matthew that his speech had helped her get through it.
"At the moment I didn't really know how to even say anything back to her, because what do you say to that?"
But that encounter changed everything. The audience was no longer a blur of faces he was performing for. They were real people with real pain and real stories.
"These are all real human beings with real lives, real stories, and we have no idea what they've really gone through. It was that moment like, oh, this is a real person. My story helped her in some way by providing that service to her."
The Gift That Keeps Multiplying
When Matthew competed at the district level, he was asked about the people who had helped him along the way. He did not just mention Don. He told him he loved him. On camera.
Don was genuinely surprised.
"I didn't realize that I had had that impact," he said. "We never know the impact we can have on somebody."
And the ripple effect is already in motion. Don recently began mentoring a new speaker at Maverick Toastmasters, bringing the same patience and belief that David Hodish once gave him, that he gave to Matthew, and that Matthew is now beginning to give to others.
"One of the greatest gifts that you can give someone is to believe in them and help them to see their own greatness."
Keep Going
Matthew's advice for anyone still in that painful place where speaking feels impossible is simple.
"You have to keep on trying, because you have no idea what's possible. Just keep on trying that one more time, and at some point it'll click."
He knows what it feels like to not breathe before a speech. To bomb in front of a room full of people. To send a long, vulnerable email to a club full of strangers after not showing up to his first scheduled speech. He has been in every version of that fear.
But he kept showing up. And someone was there to meet him when he did.
Don's advice is just as clear. Get involved. Find a mentor. And if you see potential in someone who cannot see it in themselves, do not stay quiet.
"Allow them to achieve their potential because you believed in them."
About Don Dousette and Matt Malan
Don Dousette joined Unity Speakers Toastmasters in 2010 after a humbling moment as a best man taught him he never wanted to feel unprepared on his feet again. Encouraged by his own mentor, David Hodish, he competed his way from the club stage all the way to the district contest in 2013. Today he mentors emerging speakers at Maverick Toastmasters, paying forward the belief that was once given to him.
Matt Malan is a member of Dobson Ranch Toastmasters and a Toastmasters International Speech Contest competitor. A lifelong stutterer who once went two years without speaking, he went from missing his very first scheduled speech to competing at the division level — proof of what becomes possible when you keep showing up.
Connect with Matt:
- LinkedIn: Matt Malan
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