Don’t Be Too Quick To Judge

I was running a busking out seminar in a couple of days ago (and another couple yesterday, and one in Cairns today, but that’s another story).

There are two ways to get paid to speak. One is to get paid for your time, a traditional keynote. The second is to charge a nominal amount (or nothing even) for the actual speech, but then have something to sell “from the platform”. In Thought Leaders we call the second busking out, for obvious reasons.

So I was running this busking out seminar, and this woman came in late. Everyone else was writing lots of notes, and she sat there with her arms crossed. At the end I asked everyone to write down three actions they were going to commit to, one of which they would do in the next week. Everyone else was flipping through their notes and writing actions. She just put her notebook back in her bag.

I ask people to share one of their actions at the end of the exercise, and rather than waiting for volunteers, I usually just pick a few people out. I purposefully didn’t choose her. After I’d picked out a few people I asked if anyone else had anything burning they wanted to share.

She put up her hand and said that she had looked at our website, checked out what people were saying about the system we were selling and her action for the next seven days was to buy the system (an investment of over $10k) and come on board as a licensee. The first time ever that I’ve had someone say they are going to buy before I’ve done any of the sell.

And just goes to show, don’t be too quick to judge. Perhaps she just had her arms crossed because she was cold.

Love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Have you ever had someone be too quick to judge you? Or have you judged too quickly? You can leave your comments below.