759. The Art of Asking for Help & Getting Over Feeling Burdensome

Figure out exactly what the first thing that you need is and what that one question is that doesn't require a follow up question in order for the person to help you.

Welcome to the Earn your Happy Podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion, and I'm a crazy multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself to later becoming a multimillionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had no education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development and learned everything I could about business. I not by choice, but because I realized no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not alone and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing. We're going to give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business, and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so much on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform, I want to feature you. So if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out. And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started.

And we're back with another episode of He Said She Said.

Today it's going to be all about asking for help. Asking for what you need.

Why is it so hard to ask for help?

I don't know. I. This has been a weakness of mine for ages. Like I look at the years, like the decades where I didn't ask for help even though clearly I needed it. And as I say that out loud, I'm realizing one of the reasons why not to get like right into it. But I just realized why let's get into it. It's because I felt like I didn't want to bug other people. It wasn't that I had any shame around needing help, zero shame around like oh, I need help or oh, I could, you know, ask advice here is that I always felt like I was bugging people. I didn't want to bug them or put them out or burden them.

No, that's exactly me. And I think sometimes, you know, there's a difference. There's a difference between knowing how to ask for help and making it not feel burdensome. But no matter how much you know the art of asking, which we'll share a little bit about, you still feel worried that maybe someone is going to like see it and be like, oh, that feels, feels like so much work or if I help them with this one thing, are they going to keep on coming back for more? And I think that that is the part in the art of asking for help of what we need to know is how to ask for help and let the people know that hey, it's going to be like, I'm not going to do this often. You know, this is kind of like a one time ask thing. But you're not going to say all those things. And there's actually an energy that you ask with and a clarity of what you're asking for that's going to give people the idea that you're not going to be a leech. I think being honest, that's kind of what it is, right. You start to maybe when you grew up especially, I don't know if this was like an 80s thing, but it was like, oh, he's such a leech or oh, they always ask for help or oh my gosh, like they won't, you know, they won't leave us alone or whatever that looks like.

Funny, I can't name one person who I've ever thought was asked for help too much. I can't name one person who I ever thought was like, oh, they're such a leech. They're always coming to buy asking for something. Can you. Am I just not thinking of someone?

Yeah, I mean, I can think of people who you've said that about really.

Well, here's the good news then. If you, if you guys are afraid that you're going to ask people for help too much, if they have a brain like mine, they're gonna forget that you asked a lot. Exactly. And they're not even gonna be able to name you. Cause I literally can't name it.

Look at that. Caught live on here. They just totally forget. So the reasons right now that I am feeling. It's funny, I just put out a post yesterday and we were talking about different topics that we should talk about today. And I was like, oh man, asking for help is such a challenging one for people. And it's challenging for me right now. Even though, Chris, I'm literally asking for help sometimes 20 times a day. And you know, people on my post were. Cause I actually ran out of characters on my post. So I didn't get to say what I was asking for help about. But it was when I was even raising money. I obviously had to ask hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of people if they wanted to invest in Light Pink. And then the follow up was insane. But I already knew that, right? Because we were in network marketing in the past and the follow up for me was always like 7 to 8 to 10 times of following up. So I'd kind of known. Wow, this follow up and ask is gonna be crazy. Let me tell you about when you are raising money because you're asking for large sums of money. Even if they say yes and they're excited in the beginning, it's kind of like this, this no man's land of what it takes to get the money into your bank account. Because that part's not easy for them. It's like asking them to go to the bank to do a wire. A lot of their banks won't allow them to do it online, so they actually physically have to go into the bank to go and wire money. Now why is this so challenging for them and for you? Number one, it's challenging for us when we invest in companies is because it takes time to go to the bank out of your busy day and go and transfer money. It's not something you like. Just ha. You have to plan it into your schedule. And sometimes it can be a couple hours. And then the next thing is that, you know, like asking them now makes me feel like more of a burden. Right. I have to keep on asking them to go. Keep on asking them to go and follow up. And that's where it started to feel like I feel bad.

So there's multiple.

Oh my gosh. There's multiple asks within one.

This is where it kind of falls apart. And why we feel like we're a burden is because there's the initial ask, but then there's multiple asks within the initial big overlying ask.

Yes.

In order to actually get the help you need.

Yes. And that's exactly where it falls apart for people. And that's why people have trouble fundraising and that's why people have trouble asking for anything. Because anything that we ask for is not typically just one ask. It's a bit of a follow up or the what now? And it will determine on how you ask and how you know how to ask. It will determine on if you'll be able to follow through with that thing or not.

I'm just now realizing how correct you are. So let's say you ask for something way more simple than you know. Most people aren't raising funds right now.

Right? Exactly.

Someone needs a book publisher and they ask and someone says, oh, I have one, I'll introduce you. And then they don't get introduced because we're all busy. Then this is where the tough part comes. It wasn't the initial ask, it's all the follow up asks. Hey Lori, remember when you said you'd introduce me to the book publisher? Any chance I can get that email? Hey Lori, I don't want to be a pest. I just want to circle back around and see if you still wanted to make that intro. If not, that's totally cool. I totally see all the mini asks within the big ask, you know, and.

Going off of the book publisher thing. This is interesting because I get asked for that a lot and a lot of the people who have asked me for, you know, it's usually a literary agent or they'll be like, hey, what do I. The ask will usually look like this, what do I need to do? I want to publish a book. Well, there's many asks that you're going to need within I want to publish a book. Right. What most people don't know is you need a literary agent. You don't have to have one, but it's going to make, it's. It's like having a real estate agent for your house. It's going to make that process so much better. There's going to be so many things that come up that your literary agent is going to help you with. So the first thing is like, well, you need a literary agent. Then the next thing is, yeah, that's cool that you have a literary agent. But they're not going to help you write the proposal. So then it's kind of like wanting to go back to that person that wrote the book and say, hey, how do I write a proposal? And that's where most people stop. I literally will see most people not come back again or ever write a book because they didn't ask again or they didn't go and ask somebody for help on how to write a proposal for their book.

So you've given plenty of examples of like, why it's tough to ask. And then all the many asks that are within the main ask and that's where it falls apart. But so let's actually talk about some best practices then so the listeners can get better at asking for help. And I see really two pieces to asking for help. And is number one, have you developed your asking muscle, right? Like, are you good at it or not? Do you even have the cojones to do it or not? So number one, have you developed your asking muscle? Number two, do you have people to ask? And this is, it's funny because I didn't know you posted about this yesterday, but last night on our Couples Mastermind, we did an exercise where we went around the circle and we're like, hey, in the next 30 days, here's my one big ask of the mastermind. Here's how the mastermind can support me best. And people were asking for an introduction to a literary agent. People were asking for an introduction to people in a certain area where they're moving. People were asking for like all these different things that they wouldn't have asked if we didn't do the exercise. So that second piece, do you have a structured group of individuals to make your ask of so that it happens, I think is equally important.

You know, what I loved about the call last night too is that if the ask wasn't clear at first, we all asked clarifying questions to get to the exact ask needed in that exact moment for the next step. Most of the asks, because these people are so used to asking, you know, maybe not. It's funny because high level people sometimes are so used to asking in certain areas of their life, like business, but maybe if it's personal. I noticed that some people who were asking for more personal things, maybe they were out of practice because the ask wasn't like very specific and we had to get more specific. But a lot of the asks that were in business were very specific, right? Like, hey, my next step is a literary agent, you know, where is that? Or who has that? I'm trying to think of another one of the asks, but get specific on your asks. So the first step is to figure out exactly, exactly what the first thing that you need is and what that one question is that doesn't require a follow up question in order for the person to help you.

So be clear on your end goal. Be very crystal clear on what you're hoping the ask turns into.

And you know, this is a backup question if you don't actually know what that is. But when you're asking, and I'll give it to you in a second, but when you're asking, people who maybe you don't know very well, or maybe you get that one shot at a dinner with a mentor or at a networking event or whatever it is, is get your elevator pitch of what you are doing. Like, the brevity is everything. Brevity is gonna be how people view you. It's gonna be, you know, being concise, not wasting their time. Like, that is gonna be one of the most important things that you do. Get what you do down. Even if that's just like, here's my idea. I wanna start this women's event, and I want it to be, you know, in this month, and I want it to have these things and provide these results. If you don't know the question on how to get started, you can say, if you were me right now and you weren't started at all, what would be the very first thing that you would do or the advice that you would give me in order to take my first step?

I love that. That's very. You know, last night, I'm thinking of examples where already people were like, hey, I'm writing this book, but I really don't know what I need next. And then we just start pouring out the information on, okay, here's the. You need this and you need that, and you need that. And we're actually really excited to help, and we wouldn't be excited to help if they didn't make the ask.

The other thing that I want to say about why we were excited to help and why we are excited to help some people, unfortunately, this group is very small that we're, like, very excited. And we'll open up every floodgate to. But here's why. And you can be a part of that group of people. For other people, where people are excited to help you is proven execution. So creating a track record of when you ask the question, go and execute as fast as you can. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can totally F it up, but go and execute. And that's what gets people excited, is seeing someone who takes what they gave them and run with it.

This is where the term ask whole comes in. You guys have probably seen the meme it floats all over Instagram where people like, don't be an asshole. Someone who asks for advice and then doesn't take any action afterwards because nobody wants to help that person. And we catch on, right? Like, quickly, if somebody asks us for help and then we see them Take action and move the needle. We are like, oh, vested in this person. They're going to help the world. Let's go, like, help them out some more. When we see somebody ask a question and then take no action on the advice we give, that's an asshole. And we're like, yeah, not going to help that person again.

Oh, my gosh. There's Nothing worse than DMs too, that are copy and pasted with like 10,000 questions and you can tell they're copy and pasted and then you give them some advice and they don't either respond back or they're like, essentially write a message back that that's not what they're looking for. They don't know how to do it. Or they just then go into the next series of explaining why they can't do that. Or 20 more questions like, oh my gosh, you'll. That is where if you are wondering why you're getting ghosted and you have done this, you will never get a response if you ask like that.

Yep, that's so true. You know what's funny is a lot of times I'll defer people in my DMs to email my team because they're the ones that have to take care of sorting through all the different requests and then they'll get them to me. And so I'll send someone like, oh yeah, email blanket, blank, blank, blank. And they never send the email and I never hear from that person again. Right there I knew that that person was not an action taker. Maybe they're excited about an idea, maybe they wanted some advice in a moment, but they're not an action taker. If one simple thing like, great, send an email to my team and they're going to send you this and this. If it stops there, then you're definitely not going to go anywhere with the rest of what you're asking for help on.

Brevity, brevity. It's funny, I've been in rooms or at Masterminds when we're on breaks and we've all had to check our phones or whatever, and I've literally seen people be like, same response that Chris and I have had when we open up DMs or emails where it's like, oh, whoa. Like you don't even. It's just like a tidal wave of words and it's an energy that just feels so needy and almost scary and overwhelming to people who are already really busy. So what that says when we see just paragraphs or pages of Emails or in the DMs. This is really huge, you guys. This is important because immediately we will, like, shut that down and not open up that relationship. Because those are the relationships that feel like, oh, this person is going to be an asshole. They're never going to. To stop. And so that's the difference is it carries an actual energy. And it's very obvious if it looks more than a small paragraph. And I know some of you are like, but how do I explain my backstory? We don't need it. We don't need a backstory to want to help you if you're like, we just need an action. Someone who looks like they are concise and an action taker. Yeah. And the punchline of what are you doing and why? You know, not even why. Not even. You don't even have to say why. What are you doing? And what would be super helpful. And with that one question, and then from there, if you're like, wow, thank you so much. You know, this is what. What I did with that question. Here's what happened very briefly. My next question is, if you don't mind, what would this look like? Or do you know someone? Or where would you refer me? And, you know, those are questions that most people will answer. Here's a question that I think is really important that we should touch on, Chris, is when do you ask somebody for a connection? This is interesting because sometimes we'll have people who maybe have not achieved what they, you know, some of their goals or gone to, like, the next level. Maybe they're very new and they'll ask for a connection to someone that they have seen us with who is, like, crazy high level. Maybe they're 10, 20, 30 years into their journey. They've had, like, a ton of success. And some people will ask us for connections too soon.

It's a great question. I don't have an answer to that question. I just know 99 out of 100 times, I will not make that connection. I protect my circle of influence with the strongest of boundaries you could ever imagine, because we've worked so hard to build that circle of influence, number one. And number two, we know what it's like to be connected out of the blue, and we don't like it. Matter of fact, while we're on the subject of connecting and asking for help, the worst thing you can do, the worst thing you can ever do is connect somebody. Make an introduction in DMs or email without first asking permission to make that introduction. Nothing like, rubs me the wrong way. Worse than someone just blindly making an intro. Hey, this is Chris. Here's this email. I thought you guys would get along great and wanted to connect you for this reason. Always ask first.

That's huge. And I can tell you why we protect those is because those people's time is so incredibly important to them and valuable and they don't have a lot of it. And you know, I, I think that you have to realize that I'm not. People are not going to connect people unless I can give a pitch of why the value you're bringing is going to be equal to the value that they will be exchanging to you. And a lot of the people who now are at levels, you know, where they are, you know, they've done the thing like so many people want access to them. You can't imagine the amount of people who want access to people who are successful because even if they did a shout out or an email or whatever, that looks like it could help propel this person's career. But the thing is, the more that high level people do that, the more watered down their brand or their, you know, email or their Instagram or whatever that looks like gets. And that's where the value is, is that they will only share people or things that will add massive to other people. So it's really thinking about how can you get your value up in order to one day potentially be connected to that person? Meaning can you exchange a large audience for this person? What does that look like?

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Play the long game, right? You don't get to just waltz in and get a giant shout out from somebody. Play the long game, create that relationship, go to their events, maybe, you know, buy their books, like, get. You have to build those relationships. Someone's not just going to magically come along, plug you right in, and you're going to get some magic windfall.

Yeah, there are many people, Chris and I still don't. We want to connect with, and we still don't necessarily have what we feel is an equal value exchange for them. So we're waiting on those.

That's the key term right there.

Yeah, we're waiting. We're not sitting here like, why aren't, why aren't they paying attention to us? Oh my God, I can't believe they're not answering our question. We're very Aware that we don't have that value exchange yet for them.

So this is the second part of how to ask for what you need. The first part, I think we deconstructed quite a bit of the different ways to make the appropriate ask. Now, who to ask is the second part. If you remember back to how I kind of opened this thing up and what Lori's referring to is, you guys are swinging for the stars. How do I ask Jay Shetty for this? How do I ask Rachel Hollis for whoever it might be? But the whole point is, start with your own group of individuals. There's power within your own group of individuals. There is. You should be forming a group. If you can't afford to get into a mastermind, then you should be forming your own mastermind with a group of individuals that you meet with once a month. And you go around the horn and you ask for what you need. If you did nothing more than that, if you just met once a month and said, last month my goal was this, and I did or did not hit it because of this, and this month my big ask is blank. That would have so much value. So can you invest in ones that are already done for you and ran really well? Yes. If you can't afford to do that, form your own. You need a regular circle of influence to be able to make your asks within on a regular basis. Laurie, you used to do this with Danette and Lindsey for ages. You guys would meet every two weeks. You wrote your whole damn book around it. I mean, for years, I watch you guys meet every two weeks early in the morning and go around the circle and ask for what you needed.

Yeah. And, you know, it's crazy because I did write a book on it, and I even wrote a book on how to ask for these people. So a lot of you are going to be like, where do I find those people, guys? You find them on the Internet. Like, you find them on Instagram. You go to pages that you like and you search people in the comments and you look for someone that resonates with you. And you know what I mean when I say that. Like a picture where you're like, oh, they look like they're into the same thing as me, or, oh, they're doing the same business as me, or they're kind of, you know, into mindset or they want to do events or, wow, she, you know, she's in the same area as me. And you're going to be like, yeah, but how do I ask? You literally go in their DMs and say a very specific ask if you want someone to meet with once a month. You say, hey, I know this might seem crazy, but I am looking for, you know, an accountability group. I'm putting together three to four women who are all, you know, all want to hold each other accountable and meet once a month for one hour. We will never go over this time. It will never, you know, go into another appointment that you have. We're going to make sure that we all have boundaries and that this is respectful and it adds value for everyone. You know, we would split this 20 minutes for each person. We'd go around and say where we're at and then ask a question for, you know, what you need. One question. Does this sound like something that you would want to do? Guess how many times you're going to have to DM that. Maybe 50 or more. And, you know, I had to do this 50 plus times in order to get different groups or different things that I wanted. And then guess what, it falls apart. So I've had so many people who are like, yeah, I tried that, but nobody showed up. Totally. That happened as well. Your job as someone who wants to succeed is to keep on trying and putting that group together. And quite honestly, this is the honesty that you need to hear about entrepreneurship. If you can't work hard and know that this is going to fall apart over and over until one time it sticks. If you can't do that, you're not going to be able to put your business together because that's how business works as well. So, yes, it's tough love. Like, you got to keep asking it. Just the, the way that it works is you do it until it works.

Yep.

And there's no other. It's going to fall apart more times than you can possibly imagine. I thought Light Pink was going to be launched last year, Chris. Last year. And it's a year later of continuing to put things together. And I just want to say that was an expectation I literally pulled out of my ass. I didn't go and ask people how long it actually takes to build businesses. And I'm actually quite glad that there was some. There was some blind bliss in there of what that looks like. I'm reading the Messy middle right now. And he's like, majority of entrepreneurs are just so blind in the beginning and it's the only thing that gets them started. Because if I would have asked, I would have found out that some people, it takes two to three years, sometimes more to even and get your product out to the public.

I love it. Well guys, listen, we've told, we taught you how to ask and then we've taught you to build that circle that you can make a regular ask within. And if you master those two things, I promise your journey's going to get better. Collaboration is the shortcut. Your frustrations are going to become less. It's literally a muscle that you need to fine tune and build like everything else in life. But it's a muscle that is worth building and fine tuning.

You guys, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, we love to see your takeaways and give us a shout out, let us know if you're going to use this.

And I wrapped up one of my very intimate one on one coaching clients after two years moving the needle. I love what we've created together which means I now have an opening for one very special entrepreneur out there that wants that one on one attention. Someone who's already passed that quarter million dollars a year mark or more and has those seven figure dreams but needs the seven figure plan someone to help them along. So if you want to apply for that, you can apply at Chrisharder Me coaching. Again if you want one on one coaching for the one spot that I have available, it's Chrisharder me coaching. Fill out the application and we'll get in touch to see if it's a good fit.

Are you guys, we will talk to you next week. Bye Bye.

Sam.