Dia Bondi: I'm an Adventure Passionista

We're not good at asking for things. We never have been. While we've negotiated multi-million dollar deals during our career, we have a hard time representing ourselves in transactions that impact us directly. So we were intrigued when we heard about Dia Bondi's initiative to help one million women learn how to Ask Like an Auctioneer. For the last 20 years, Dia has been a communications coach working with some of the highest-profile, most extraordinary world leaders, CEOs, philanthropists, visionaries and innovators. She’s helped Rio de Janeiro secure the 2016 Summer Olympics, consulted with countless thought leaders, entrepreneurs across industries and changemakers at the Clinton Global Initiative and the Commonwealth Games Federation, among many others. Several years ago, she also decided to pursue an interest that had intrigued her for some time — being an auctioneer. Through her impact hobby of fundraising auctioneering, Dia helps raise money for women led nonprofits and nonprofits benefiting women and girls. Recently Dia founded Ask Like an Auctioneer. Combining her skills as a communication coach and her talent for auctioneering, her goal is to help one million women and underrepresented folks ask for more and get it. If you want to hear about Dia's journey and learn how to Ask Like an Auctioneer, read more below, listen to Dia’s episode of The Passionistas Project Podcast and visit diabondi.com for more details. Passionistas: What's the one thing you're most passionate about? Dia: This is such a tough question for me when I get any questions about what's your favorite ice cream? What's your favorite color? What's the one thing I'm like, there's so many things and that's been sort of the definition of my career has been being a multi-passionate, I really am. Adventure is one of my core values and that means trying a lot of different things. In my work I think whether I'm helping somebody elevate their impact on stage or helping in a workshop for aspect, can auctioneer a woman craft a powerful ask, the kind that can change everything across the board when I'm really passionate about is sort of getting to the heart of the matter and helping people be honest with the world about what they want. Passionistas: So talk about how that does translate into your work as a communications coach. Dia: I'm a CEO activator and the SHEEO network and I was talking to Vicky Saunders who's the founder of CEO and about what it is that I do. And yes, I help leaders stand on stage and have impact. Helps sometimes help them put together the story, their signature talk or, or to put together their 12 minutes on stage for a crucial communications moment as a leader in their organization. But what I'm really doing is, is asking like who are you and how do you want to show up and what kind of impact do you really want to have? And then how do we strategically tie that to the mission of your organization or your entrepreneurial journey or the, you know, your business that you're running. So it's really a lot about like who are you? And like what? Like if you honestly say who you are on stage and what you're about, of course we're going to be nuanced and we're going to be intentional about the language that we use. But that's really a lot of what I do inside of that work. And then you know how it shows up, that stuff directly translates over to project as like an auctioneer because I'm kind of asking the same question. I'm asking women like, wait a second, what do you really want? And then how do we craft a powerful ask that actually gets you there more quickly? And a lot of folks sometimes think about that as like, Oh you mean negotiations and yeah, sometimes we're talking about negotiation, but negotiation starts with getting really clear about what are you really asking for? And knowing that depends on what do you really want. Listen to Dia’s complete episode here. To learn more about Dia's work as a communications coach and speaker and to find out how to Ask Like an Auctioneer, visit her website.