Stories of First Time Speakers at the International Builders Show 2025

Part 1 - Naomi Wright’s Story – “Sink or Swim”

His Palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy …

His nervous boy, on the surface he looks calm and ready, to drop but he keeps on forgetting what he wrote down, the whole crowd goes loud, he opens his mouth, but the words won’t come out!

He’s choking how? Everybody’s Joking now, The clocks run out, times up, over, blow, Snap back to reality oh there goes gravity….

Lose Yourself – Eminem

Research shows that fear of public speaking, also known as “Glossophobia” is one of our top three fears in life.  Fear of heights and snakes are the other two, in case you were wondering… You're welcome. Eminem summed it up perfectly in his classic 2002 song, Lose Yourself. I missed the part about Mom’s spaghetti, but I believe you get the point.

With that in mind, I thought it would be cool if you, my loyal readers could live vicariously through three managers who happen to be part of our Management  Mastermind Group (MMG) and spoke at the biggest stage in the New Home Sales and Marketing world, the International Builders Show, this year, in Las Vegas.  

I remember how I felt the first time I spoke at the Builders show. It was way back in 2004, I hadn’t slept well, I was trying to call my fiancé Svitlana on the phone for encouragement, and felt nauseous, and dizzy. I had the honor of speaking with the late great Melinda Brody, and we were reviewing short excerpts from video shops, sharing funny stories and then turning this into what we should be doing for the best practices. Melinda was always very encouraging, and I can still picture the room, which seemed extremely beige with gold accents everywhere. At first, being on the stage was a blur, so I got down off the stage and strolled the plush carpet on the front row, and thankfully people were both laughing and taking lots of notes, my favorite combination of responses to show engagement and genuine interest. 

The program was well received, and at the end the crowd carried me around the room on their shoulders, chanting my name, “Roooland”, “Roooland”! Ok clearly that last part didn’t happen, but I did have a considerable queue of people waiting to chat with me and a few of whom also wanted to hire me to go train their teams, which was both a huge compliment and also very satisfying. I can still remember the exhilaration of walking around the builders' show, feeling proud of myself that all of my hard work and preparation were so well received. Since then, I have spoken many times with a who’s who of industry legends and am always very grateful for the opportunity afforded me by NAHB to do what I love so much.

I also have put together a multitude of programs at IBS, with either owners or managers who we work with. Attendees always love hearing directly from their peers who are actively involved in the current market, their message is always insightful, fresh and relevant. As a coach, I take such pride in their success and genuine pleasure watching them develop their talents and spread their wings.

This year IBS had a wonderful program with three excellent managers, Cassie Smith, Director of Sales and Design for Chesapeake Homes, Director of Marketing and Online Sales Brittany Horner of Mitchell Homes, and Naomi Wright Marketing Manager for Stevens Fine Homes. Our theme was collaboration within our companies to improve the customer experience. In part 2 of this blog, we will hear from all three managers. In this Part 1 blog, I thought I would share just Naomi’s story.  Naomi had never spoken before at IBS, and as fate would have it ended up speaking twice in one day at the largest new home sales educational forum in the world.  I love how personal Naomi's blog feels, and my hope is that this will inspire you to overcome your own fears and start speaking publicly so that you can educate and inspire others. Here is Naomi’s story..

Sink or Swim, an IBS newbie’s story

I’ve been in the homebuilding industry for over a decade, yet I’ve never attended the International Builders Show (IBS) until I was asked to present on a panel about REALTOR ® relationships for IBS 2025.  We spent months preparing, brainstorming, isolating the most relevant points to discuss, and planning the perfect order in which to present them.  We thought of creative ways to engage the audience and rehearsed our “off-the-cuff” jokes in advance.  I could not have been more prepared.

And then life happened.  My coworker had been preparing to speak with Roland on the topic of Cross Training & Collaboration but was unable to make the trip in the final weeks leading up to IBS.  She was distressed about needing to cancel and asked me if I would take her place, I immediately agreed.  Anything to help out my teammate, and I would already be there, what’s another speech? Only later did it occur to me that it would mean condensing months of preparation into just a little over a week!  Now I was committed to two speaking engagements in one day on the biggest stage in the building industry.  One of which I felt completely unprepared for!  Yikes!