A note: My first book will be out soon! Here’s an excerpt from one of the chapters.

What was the first thing you ever had to sell? For me, it was Girl Scout cookies.

I was ten years old, dressed in my distinctly unfashionable Girl Scout vest, skirt, and knee socks, walking along the side of the road listening to the gravel crunch under my sneakers. The sun beat down on our neighborhood, and I could smell the melting tar on the road.

I was in a state of abject terror, my sweaty hands clutching a wrinkled order form.

I didn’t even know the people whose porches I stood on and whose doorbells I was about to ring: how could I possibly ask them to buy something?

It was horrifying.

I was just a kid who lived on their street. What right did I have to show up and offer something for sale?

It turns out that this lesson from my past taught me almost everything I needed to know about how to use the right mindset when asking someone to take action.

At the time, I didn’t realize that people love Girl Scout cookies. They want to buy them. They actually look forward to ordering them.

Back then, I didn’t know any of that. If I had, I might have ended up being one of the top sellers in my troop. Instead, I was lucky if I could fill in the first ten lines of my order form each year.