Why The Word ‘Yes’ Is Holding You Back: Dia Bondi (Transcript)

Here is the full text and summary of Dia Bondi’s talk titled “Why The Word ‘Yes’ Is Holding You Back” at TEDxSonomaCounty conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

For years, I co-conspired with my clients to leave money and opportunity on the table, and I didn’t even know I was doing it until I went to auctioneering school.

A few years ago, I went to auctioneering school for fun, for an adventure, for an experiment. It was me and a hundred cowboys in a training room in a run-of-the-mill hotel on the side of the highway somewhere in the Midwest, learning to sell everything from cattle to real estate to art to $5 box slots like you might find at a local garage sale. A hundred dollar bidder, now two, now two, would you give me two, it was something like that.

I turned that little adventure into an impact hobby, and when I got back home, I started doing fundraising auctioneering for women-led nonprofits and nonprofits benefiting women and girls, because it’s kind of my jam. And a few dozen fundraisers later, my two worlds came crashing together: communications and auctioneering.

And I now saw how I had been helping my clients lowball themselves and undermine the power of the asks that they were making in their businesses, in their careers, and in life. Here’s how I saw it.

So my clients come to me when they need to speak powerfully and use their voice to lead at really critical moments. And we have to know where they’re going with their pitch or with their story, so we always start with the question, what do you want? What are you asking for?