376: Learning To Ask For Help

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about learning to ask for help in business.

Many founders are not used to asking for help and this can be a disadvantage for themselves and their businesses. It’s common to see founders who are great at helping others solve their problems to be horrible at asking for help when they need it.

In this episode, Steli and Hiten share their thoughts on why it’s important to ask for help when you need it, why you should figure out how to ask somebody for something, tips for figuring out how to ask for help and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About the topic of today’s episode

00:33 Why this topic was chosen.

02:22 How Many founders are not used to asking for help and this can be a disadvantage for themselves and their businesses.

04:00 Why you should figure out how to ask somebody for something.

04:27 A major reason why some people are terrible at asking for help.

04:50 How Steli is working on his ability to ask for help.

05:29 One moment in time that made Steli more aware of his struggles with asking for help.

06:44 Another moment in time that made Steli more aware of his struggles with asking for help.

10:25 Tips for figuring out how to ask for help.

11:33 How to reach out to Steli and Hiten if you need help.

3 Key Points:

Many founders are not used to asking for help and this can be a disadvantage for themselves and their businesses.

I needed such a good reason to reach out that I was actually helping them when I asked for help.

Figure out how to ask somebody for something.

[0:00:00]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. And this is Hiten Shah . And today in this sort of chat, we want to talk about learning to ask for help, asking people for help. And here's why I wanted to talk to you about this. Just recently at a conference, I was talking to a founder and when she was describing to me what she was going through, some of her challenges and problems, I think after 30 or 40 minutes of talking, eventually we arrived at this point where it was clear that one of her biggest challenges is that she just doesn't ask enough for help. She has this huge network of people that could help her; help her find customers and clients, help her find people to hire, help her with good advice, but she's not tapping into that network because she's the type of person ... And I think that that's something that applies to a lot of founders, that has been so accustomed to being asked for help and being the person that's just offering solutions, that her solution muscle is awesome and her advice muscle is awesome, but her asking for help and asking for advice muscle is terribly weak. She just always cooks her own little soup and when she's challenged by something or when she has a problem, she just tries to figure it out on her own versus tapping into the amazing ecosystem and network that she has developed and the good will she's developed by helping so many people. And she was like, "Yeah, I'm just not comfortable asking people for help. I never realized that." And I tapped into that, giving her some advice and talking to her about how important it is to ask for help as a founder and entrepreneur. I thought that would be useful and valuable to other people to hear us talk about this. First of all, right off the bat, let me ask you: Would you agree with a problem statement that I'm making that many founders are not used to asking for help, that that is a disadvantage for themselves and their businesses.

[0:02:01]

Hiten Shah: Yeah, I think that ... I want to say I used to have this problem, but I'm actually going to say I still have this problem. It's similar to what you described because for me, there are clearly enough people I've helped and it's disproportionate in terms of the amount of times I ask for hel...