Dorie Clark

Yeah, so basically what I did was, you know, I might, under other circumstances, have been enough of a sucker to just say, oh, sure, okay, you know, 2,700 people, that'd be a cool thing.

But instead, I actually was just really busy.

It was around the time of my book launch, and I knew I had a ton of stuff to do, and going to Washington was actually pretty inconvenient for me.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so I wrote back to them and I said, you know, I'm so sorry.

This sounds like a great event.

I'd love to do it, but I have a million things to do with the book launch and I just cannot.

Yeah.

So I said, you know, I just can't possibly do this for free.

There's just too much opportunity cost for me.

And so I sent that email and I was like, well, you know, so much for that.

And they wrote back an hour later and said, well, okay, how about $5,000?

And I said, oh, okay.

And I realized that the difference between zero and $5,000 was just being willing to say no.

And that made me feel a lot better.

And in the future,

you know, from, from that point on, I felt a lot more confident asking for 5,000 or 10,000 or more dollars.

So I, I took the five at that point.

I was, I was happy with that.