#593： All You Have to Do Is Ask
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Summary
Are you feeling overwhelmed at work, trying to find a job, but can t seem to get your foot in the door? You ve been knocking your head against a problem over and over again but haven t made any headway on it? My guest today says you can solve most of those issues by simply asking for help.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast are you feeling
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overwhelmed at work trying to find a job but can't seem to get your foot in the door you've
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been knocking your head against a problem over and over again but haven't made any headway on it
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my guest today says you can solve most of those issues by simply asking for help his name is
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wayne baker he's a sociologist consultant and the author of the book all you have to do is ask how
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to master the most important skill for success we begin our conversation discussing what the
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research says are the benefits of asking for help and why people are nevertheless so reluctant to do
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it wayne then provides insights on how to overcome those obstacles and asking for help the best way
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to formulate an ask so it actually gets a response how to handle rejection we then turn to wayne's
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research on how organizations can benefit from creating a culture of help seeking and what you
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can do within the organization you belong to to foster such a culture after the show's over check
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at our show notes at awim.is slash ask all right wayne baker welcome to the show thank you brett glad
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to be here got a new book out all you have to do is ask how to master the most important skill for
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success so what got you thinking and writing about the benefits of asking for help in your career in
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life well i have an origin story that goes back 21 years when cheryl baker and i created the
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reciprocity ring activity it's a group or team level activity in which people can ask for and give help
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to one another and back then when we started using this activity i thought that getting people to give
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to help that that was going to be the problem and so i'd always start out with a little lecture on
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generosity and the importance of giving and helping but i soon discovered that that was rarely if ever
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the problem what i discovered is that the main barrier to generosity is not that people are unwilling
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or unable to help but that most people don't ask for what they need and people are really quite
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reluctant to do that so i had the shift and i had to focus on well what are the reasons why it's hard
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to ask what is the benefit of asking and then what kind of tools can one use to ask and what got you
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started with the whole reciprocity ring like what was it in your what were you looking at that you
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thought that was needed well i'm a sociologist by training and i teach in a business school
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and my specialty is social networks in particular network analysis and i would teach my mba students
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how to analyze their networks how to interpret them to think about the strengths and the weaknesses
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but i didn't really have a lot to tell them about what to do in fact i remember a pivotal
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conversation i had with cheryl when she said you know you teach your students how to analyze their
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networks what do you tell them to do and i said well i have a couple stories and some anecdotes
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and basically i'm waiting for the bell to ring and run out of time because i don't have a lot
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and that started a conversation about social capital you think about human capital is that's what you know
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your skills your experiences your knowledge social capital is your network informal informal personal
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and professional and i said well you know teach people how to analyze their networks but that's
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only half of social capital the other is this principle that we call generalized reciprocity
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what that means is you know i help you to help me that's direct reciprocity and that's great we
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would want that to happen but generalized reciprocity is bigger than that it's like you help me i feel
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grateful and i pay it forward and i help a third person who helps a fourth person and then
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eventually it all comes back around to us again and so the reciprocity ring creates that form of
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generalized reciprocity people get to make a request in fact that that's the ticket of admission
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they have to make a request but they spend most of their time helping other people and what they
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discover is that the people they help are not the people that they receive help from it's that more
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indirect or generalized form of reciprocity well before we get into the benefits of asking for help
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you talk about what i thought the surprising thing from your your reciprocity ring is that more people
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were willing to give as opposed to receive so like what what are what keeps people from asking for help
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whether it's in their career or just life in general well there's a lot of things that get in the way a lot of
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obstacles or barriers a common one is that people are concerned or they fear that they'll appear to be
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incompetent or weak ignorant can't do their job not educated whatever you know they fear that they'll be
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perceived to be simply incompetent but here the research can be really helpful for updating that
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what we've learned through research is that as long as you make a thoughtful request people are more
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likely to think that you're competent and less likely to think that you're incompetent it's how you make the
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request why you're making the request that's what really matters a thoughtful request will increase
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perceptions of your competence so that's one another common barrier is that we don't ask because we
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assume that no one can help us and the research here is helpful as well there have been a number of
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interesting studies that have shown that in fact even strangers are very likely to help in fact most
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people want to help and most people will help if they can the problem is getting people to ask
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and some another you know sort of block that keeps people from asking for help is like some people
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sometimes people don't feel like they earn the privilege to ask for help like you they feel
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like they got to do something first before they can like there's a score they have to meet before they
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can ask yeah that's another common barrier what i always prescribe is is this okay well then go out
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and give help people earn the privilege of asking it's important to do both in fact i think that the best
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place to be as an individual as a team or an organization is what i call the giver requester
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that's where you freely and generously help other people you don't keep track who helps you it's not
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about tit for tat exchange and you ask for help when you need it as long as you're doing both that's the
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best place to be both individually as a team and even as an entire organization and one that you talk
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about too that keeps people it's like psychological but you highlight research we just mentioned
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research that that's not true is that people feel like if they ask like they're imposing on other
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people like that they don't want to impose they don't want to be a burden it feels uncomfortable to
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say that they need something from somebody that's right in fact that it's important to realize is that
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most people do want to help you know it feels good to help it creates kind of a warm glow it creates
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positive emotions in us to help other people i actually think that as humans we are hardwired
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to give and get help from one another so we talked about what keeps us from asking for help but what
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are the benefits from help seeing what happens when we get over those blocks and start asking for help
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well oftentimes you can be much more productive efficient and creative by asking for input and resources
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from other people and the research is very clear that you will perform at a higher level if you're
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both asking for and giving help so that's one if you look at at the team level we see the same thing
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is that teams are much more effective much more creative perform at a higher level if people can freely ask
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for and give help to one another inside the team and they develop good external networks where they can ask
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for help from resources outside the team and are there any examples antidotes from your research and just from
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your experience with working with people where they hit a problem and this they thought there was no solution
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to this but they never thought to ask for help and then when they finally did it was like the thing that
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just instantaneously solved the problem well it's interesting i just got an email from someone who had
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finished reading my book right before they had to go in to have a meeting with a client who was a president of a very very large
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company and they had to make a request about implementing a company-wide program and because
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they used the method in the book and they thought to the criteria for making an effective request
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they were able to have the meeting make the request to get it responded to affirmatively and they're not
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working out all the next steps but i bet that person before they read the book thought you know
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i don't know if i should really ask for this but they were empowered to do so and they also learned
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how to make a thoughtful request that part's really important as well and besides just furthering your goals
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and advancing your career goals or your life goals like asking for help can also just alleviate a lot of stress
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i mean one thing you hear over and over again people at work are feeling burnt out they're feeling overstretched
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stressed out and oftentimes they just ask for help that could help with that
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absolutely you know the most common type we see is what i call the overly generous giver
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that's a person who freely helps other people but doesn't ask for what they need
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and they often experience burnout they might go so far as actually compromising their ability to follow
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through on their commitments and my prescription there is well balance it you want to put boundaries
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around your generosity so you don't burn out you don't overextend your resources and you need to ask for help
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and when people do that they find that work becomes less stressful as a result
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so you've developed this idea to try to figure out where you are in this asking receiving continuum
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so the way what you're saying here it's not it's like giving and receiving are part of a continuum
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it's part of a cycle it shouldn't just be seen as either or it's something that's going on all the time
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right yep that's right you know it's giving and receiving is a cycle you can't have giving without
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receiving and you can't have receiving without giving and nothing happens until a request is made
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the request is the driver or the catalyst of that process and you lay out in the chapter called the
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law of giving and receiving that you can break down askers and givers into like four categories and you
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mentioned one the overly generous giver these are people who just give freely all the time and i think
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adam grant he did in his book give and take he talks about those people like the most generous
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people are often the most successful but they're also the most unsuccessful in their career and i
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think that the reason they're unsuccessful is because they overextend themselves they overextend
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themselves and they don't ask for what they need and it's okay you don't want to be an overly generous
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giver like what are the other types of givers and givers and takers well the opposite of the overly
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generous giver is the selfish taker so that's the person who has no problem asking and makes
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requests all the time but they're not helpful they don't give they don't reciprocate and what the
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research shows is that over time their performance declines because people see what they're doing
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and they're much less likely to respond to them i had a friend who used to work at ibm consulting and
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when i explained this these categories or these types to him he said oh yeah the selfish taker we
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called them a sponge you know they just sucked in everything and they never gave a drop back
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so that's two the overly generous giver and the opposite the selfish taker
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a third type is what i call the lone wolf or the isolate now in some ways that's the most tragic
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position to be in because you've just hit your head down focusing on your work you don't give
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you don't ask and it's tragic because that person is just disconnected from you know the ongoing
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activity and network around them the best place to be is the giver requester that's the fourth type
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and in our assessments we found that about maybe 15 of people are giver requesters most people fall
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in the category of the overly generous giver followed by the lone wolf and we do see some selfish takers
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every now and then but often not in the extreme and i guess to shift your way shift from the overly
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generous giver to a giver requester like you have to get over those like those social or psychological
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blocks in your head that that tells you it's not okay to ask but just remind yourself about the
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research that no it's okay for you to ask it actually makes you look competent and people are
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ready and willing to help you yes and i think you can go even further and say it's a requirement to ask
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is that you know without asking all the resources all the answers are just sitting out there so you
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imagine an organization where people don't ask for what they need just think of all the resources that
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are wasted that are unused that are just sitting out there dormant the only way they get activated is
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when people make a request no and you can see that in your personal life too right like there's a
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oftentimes a lot of problems interpersonally no one ever actually says hey can you stop doing that or hey
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this because they're afraid but once the once they do the other person says like well i didn't know
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that was an issue i'm glad you brought that up thank you for doing that yep that's right i think a team
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leader or an organizational leader has a responsibility there to recognize and even reward
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people who will stand up and ask for what they need oftentimes the systems are geared towards
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rewarding those who help and that's important you want to do that but i think you need to reward the
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other side as well those who ask and we'll talk a little bit more about how you can incentivize for
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that but let's say someone's overcome those psychological and social barriers for asking for help
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so they're going to make the ask though but how can people mess up asking for help is there like a
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wrong way and right way to do this a wrong way would be to rush to a request and assume that you know
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who to ask i think preparation is really the key to make a thoughtful request so it begins with the goal
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what is it that you're trying to accomplish what are you trying to achieve and then once you have that
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you say okay well what's the resource that i need that will help me to achieve or at least make
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progress on achieving that goal and to think widely and broadly so it could be advice information
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ideas opportunities a a brainstorming session a referral a connection financial resources
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political sponsorship the list goes on and on but once you've got the goal what you're trying to
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accomplish and you think about what's the resource that i need then the next step is to make what i
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call a smart request and a smart request the five criteria for smart request but these are different
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from smart goals so the first the s is specific you want to ask for something very specific and that has
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to do with the way in which the human memory works is that people are more likely to remember who they
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know and what they know when they hear a specific request than a general one oftentimes people think
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it's just the opposite in fact the most general request i ever heard was from an executive from
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the netherlands who said my request is for information that was it and so i said well can
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you elaborate he said no it's confidential can't say anything more well yeah so he got no help right
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how could anyone help with that request he actually was quite generous he helped other people but he
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didn't get any help himself so the m and this is different from the m for smart goals which is measurable
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and measurability is nice but here m is meaningful it's the why of the request why will this request
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help you to be better able to get your job done at work how does it help your boss meet his or her
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goals how does it align with the organization's objectives that's very important often left out but
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it's important to explain the why the meaningful part of the request the a is for action you're asking
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for something to be done the r is strategically realistic now i always encourage people to make
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stretch requests to make big requests but it has to be within the realm of possibility and the t is time
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a deadline much more likely to get a response if you actually have a deadline for it we're gonna take a
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quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show no i thought this i thought
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the activity you have this you kind of lay out sort of a worksheet for people to go through to figure
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out what exactly they need to ask for help for i think that's a big problem people have is like okay
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they don't even know what what they need help with and so they do what that business guy said and just
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says i need information which is you can't do anything with that and then after you figure out what you
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want the smart thing is really helpful in my experience whenever people have requested you know help
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for me whenever they get very specific i'm like i can do that whenever they come to me with like a vague
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issue i find myself having to spend more time trying to help them figure out what their problem is
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and then i just don't have the time for that i'm sorry i don't have time for this that's right that's
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right okay so let's say someone's made their their smart request they got that all laid out i mean i think
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a lot of times people too worry about is how like the tactics of it how do you make the ask so that
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it's effective so i'm talking about like timing on when you should make the ask make the request
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things like that what does the research say about that well i think figuring out who to ask is the
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last part of the process and there are different ways of thinking about it so one is you know maybe
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you know that you have to go to your boss and it's it's that clear and if that's the case then you
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would want to be sensitive to the form of communication the boss wants you know some people prefer email
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some like a text some like a face-to-face meeting i remember i used to work at a consulting firm and
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my boss was always too busy to meet but i discovered that the best time to make a request it was when he
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was leaving work and going down in the elevator and i would watch for him to get into the elevator and i
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would jump in at the same time and for the few minutes we had going down to the first floor i had his
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undivided attention so that's what worked for him i had to adapt to his particular style
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it's important to realize you know what is the person working are they under a really strict
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deadline are they you know working all kinds of late hours maybe you need to wait on the timing of
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your request so it's the form of communication is the timing you need to be sensitive to that
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but you know that's kind of the category what i call the usual suspects you know your boss a co-worker
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family friends i think it's important to realize that you can tap a much broader swath of your network
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so one method that i advocate is called the two-step or the two-degree method which is that
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you know i may not know who the expert is but i know who to ask who knows who the expert is
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so a colleague of mine who runs a an innovatrium for innovators and entrepreneurs and he said that
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he keeps track of this he said he used that two-step method 180 times in one year
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and had really remarkable success in doing that and he said you know we could figure out
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who to ask to get to the person we want so that's another way to think about it a third is to think
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about your dormant connections so a dormant connection is a relationship that you had in the
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past but your lives have gone in different directions the many times we'd be very reluctant
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to try to reactivate a dormant connection when we need to make a request but here again the research
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could be really helpful it says that most of your dormant connections are delighted
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to hear from you and they like that the connection has been been reactivated and they're willing to
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help and because their lives have gone in different directions that means what they know and who they
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know is really different from what you know and who you know so they could be even more valuable
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sources of help and then finally you could crowdsource you could think about a group that you
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could broadcast or request to you know sometimes you could do that on linkedin or facebook maybe there's a
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company intranet there's all sorts of messaging apps many different platforms that you could use to
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broadcast a request to a group and take advantage of that six degrees of separation that's right
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that's right i've really found that you know i've so we developed a platform that's called givitas
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givitas is a combination of giving and civitas for community and it's a digital platform and it's based
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on the principles in the book and we have some very large communities thousands of people many of whom
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are strangers and i just see day after day people make requests for some really difficult things and
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they get help from all over in fact i use givitas when i was writing my book and i needed say a fresh
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example you know a different way of thinking about something i would post a request in some of these
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givitas communities and i connected with so many wonderful people all around the country that i
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would not have ever connected with and got amazing help from them in fact i tried to acknowledge all
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those people in the acknowledgments for the book and the first line of my acknowledgments is that
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i asked a lot of people for help with this book and i have to say it's a lot better because of the
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generosity of other people well you gave an example of you know crowdsourcing help one of your personal
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life where you got you and your wife tickets to the emerald show the cook show a long time ago you
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just said hey can anyone help me out here and they they helped out yeah that was absolutely amazing
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that was a number of years ago we were coming up on a milestone anniversary and i had occasion to use
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some of these ask and giving activities with all of our incoming mba students so you can imagine about
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450 students and we have this orientation program and we put up these big tents for the students and the
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faculty will come in on jubotrons so you're being broadcast to all these different groups of students
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and i made that request because my wife and i were really big fans of emerald lagasi we always wanted to
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be on a show emerald live that's virtually impossible we had tried to get tickets for years we never able
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to get on and so i made that request but you know it was because it was a smart request it wasn't
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one of those oh wouldn't it be nice to be on those requests don't get much help because they're not
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really serious you know they knew what a milestone anniversary was like they were either married
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themselves or they remember their parents important anniversaries you know and i made it i said this is
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a gift that my wife would really like and i'd like to surprise her with this and so i used the spark
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criteria and i think that's the reason why i got so much help and i have to say even now thinking
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about it i was still amazed i had six people came forward somebody knew somebody who was dating emerald's
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daughter that's true it's also true that that one didn't work out because they broke up but there
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was a connection that did work out and we were in new york city for a recording that turned out to be
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valentine's day so i didn't know that before we were on the show which couldn't have been more perfect
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for an anniversary and i'm sure these people felt good that they were able to help you and they
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wouldn't have been able to feel good helping you unless you asked that's right they wouldn't have
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known that i had that need unless i asked i mean we're not mind readers we're not telepathic
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and so the only way someone can help you is if you ask so i think another thing that keeps people from
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asking is the fear of rejection so let's say they do all this stuff they get the smart request they
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think about the purpose the meaning behind it and they make the ask and then it's no like how do you
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handle rejection it does happen from time to time in fact recently someone made a request of me
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on linkedin and i had to say no but i explained why and gave some feedback as to why i said no
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so hopefully it was a it was a learning opportunity and i think that's the best way to take a no
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you know a no is information a no is not a rejection of you it's information about your request you know
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perhaps if you follow up with okay well why you might learn that the person actually would like to help
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but it's bad timing or they're having a bad day or they're just not the right person to ask you might
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get some information that will help you to refine the request so that when you ask it again of someone
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else it'll be a better more thoughtful request and it's important to realize that a request is never a
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demand requesting is a privilege and that you're making a request that it might be rejected and not to
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be deterred by that rejection learn from the rejection right so the rest of the book so you
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talk about setting the smart requests thinking about how you're asking being not only but also
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thinking about not just asking but also you know being a asker giver so you're giving as well but in
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the rest of the book you talk about how businesses or organizations can create a culture of help
00:24:16.060
seeking and we mentioned some things earlier but let's still dig deeper into that what happens to an
00:24:22.120
organization when they develop a culture of help seeking i'm sure in your work you've gone into
00:24:26.700
organizations where there was none of that they're probably all lone wolves but then they started
00:24:30.720
implementing some of the things that you have researched about what happens to those organizations
00:24:34.380
but what happens is that the teams and the organization itself become much more efficient more
00:24:40.360
creative profitability increases performance increases i'll give you an example so one of the many
00:24:47.080
tools i write about is called the daily stand-up the daily stand-up is very common in it and software
00:24:53.700
development firms and i think it has widespread application and it's very simple everyone stands
00:24:58.940
in a circle at the same time say 10 a.m every morning stands in a circle and every person has to
00:25:04.520
address three things here's what i worked on yesterday here's what i'm working on today and here's the
00:25:09.780
help that i need and then it goes to the next person and so the help is given after the stand-up is
00:25:15.140
done but you can imagine doing that it becomes psychologically safer when you know that everyone's
00:25:21.140
in the same boat everyone's going to make a request it's a lot easier when you know that everyone is
00:25:25.640
going to make a request and it's not just you in fact it becomes a norm it makes it routine
00:25:30.940
expected to make requests in fact not doing so is letting the group down i recently spoke with the
00:25:37.300
leadership staff at the wharton school and they said that after reading about the daily stand-up that
00:25:42.180
they had started that practice themselves but they added a fourth item which i think was just
00:25:48.100
brilliant which was what have i learned and it could be something you learned about work something
00:25:53.040
you learn listening to the radio on the way to work whatever it might be and because they want to be a
00:25:57.740
learning organization i thought that was a brilliant extension of that idea they were adapting it
00:26:01.860
to their particular needs and and their situation but that's just one of many but you can imagine people
00:26:07.860
are doing that is that it really starts to connect the need with the resources so it becomes much more
00:26:14.340
efficient that you get the answer you get the resources that you need so let's say you've got
00:26:18.680
a big organization and it's divided into silos that just seems to be part of human nature but here there
00:26:24.840
are tools that can help as well some are low-tech some are high-tech so a low-tech is one that i learned
00:26:30.160
from a senior director at one of the large automakers who was in charge of two different divisions
00:26:36.000
one was racing and the other was advanced engineering so if you think about that racing
00:26:41.740
they're trying to fix the car week to week to get it back into the next race so very short time
00:26:46.740
horizon extreme pressure the other group advanced engineering you know they're thinking of technologies
00:26:52.620
that may not see the light of day for five or ten years so very very different time horizons
00:26:57.240
but he said you know i think these two groups could learn from one another and so he created
00:27:04.020
something called a cross collaboration workshop and i talk about this in the book where he got the
00:27:08.980
engineers from both groups to get together it was like for two or three hours let the engineers set
00:27:14.880
the agenda what they wanted to talk about but they started sharing here's what we're working on here are
00:27:20.160
the problems we're running into and you know the advanced engineer engineer group got a little bit
00:27:24.940
faster more efficient because they learned some techniques from the racing group and the racing group got some
00:27:30.420
new ideas to think about how they can make that race car a little bit faster so that's low tech a high
00:27:36.180
tech would be to use any of the digital platforms that are available i already mentioned give it to us
00:27:41.860
as one which we've seen just naturally breaks down the silos because you're broadcasting your request
00:27:47.300
to people in many silos sometimes all around the world and you know you never know where the help is going
00:27:53.340
to be but it is out there somewhere but you have to ask and so you know part of this creating a norm
00:27:59.660
of asking you'd mentioned referenced earlier that some organizations actually incentivize help seeking
00:28:05.240
what does that look like yeah if you want people to do something you want to recognize it and you want
00:28:10.840
to reward it so it could be informal or formal so an informal might be the team leader or the boss
00:28:18.200
the ceo will acknowledge people who made a request it could be as simple as you know thank you for
00:28:24.220
asking that was really important and you're going to get a resource you're going to get some help
00:28:29.520
here and we'll we'll learn from that you know what it's basically do is saying is that asking is
00:28:35.200
important to do and we're going to recognize that informally you could also recognize it formally by
00:28:40.740
making a part of someone's performance feedback and evaluation oftentimes helping is a part of it
00:28:46.900
but the other should be included as well which is the asking part people who are making requests
00:28:52.920
because that's we know that both of those are really important you know and there's a there's a
00:28:57.560
variety of ways you can do it but it's like thinking about it both formally and informally
00:29:01.360
one of the worst things a leader can do would be to criticize someone who made a request
00:29:06.680
unfortunately i've seen that a couple of times where there are teams and organizations using these
00:29:12.080
tools making great strides and then for some reason a leader says oh you know you shouldn't
00:29:17.760
have made that request you should have figured that out on your own and even if that were true
00:29:23.180
you wouldn't want to say that because it will just stifle the whole activity and that happens from time
00:29:28.940
to time so the leader plays a really important role in being willing to acknowledge and recognize and
00:29:34.100
even reward the people who request yeah you have an example from your own personal experience of
00:29:39.620
of a leader disincentivizing someone asking i guess there was a professor you had a question
00:29:44.360
about statistics you went to this guy professor and he's really condescending towards like well
00:29:48.940
anyone should know this and here's his book and you basically stopped going to him and then you
00:29:53.160
found another professor that was actually more helpful yeah that's right that was early on in my
00:29:57.820
career when i was an assistant professor and you know and every now and then i would run into a
00:30:03.640
data analysis problem that i didn't know how to solve maybe it was some you know new statistical
00:30:08.960
routine or procedure that i didn't really know and i know a fair amount about of statistics but i'm not
00:30:14.480
a world-class expert and so maybe naively i looked up the expert on a particular type of analysis and i
00:30:22.560
approached that person and it was just what you described the person was very condescending
00:30:27.040
now he looked at me and said you know i thought everyone learned that in graduate school so he's dissing my
00:30:31.700
my graduate education and he said well here's the answer and what happened is that i got the answer
00:30:37.080
but i was so de-energized that i really couldn't work on the project for for a couple of days i was
00:30:43.080
really deflated by the whole experience but you know maybe i thought okay maybe maybe he was just
00:30:48.820
having a bad day so the next time i had a question i went to him again it was the same thing in this
00:30:54.660
time he actually pulled a big statistics book off of his bookshelf toss it to me and he said well
00:30:58.980
you know everyone knows it's in this book so you'll find it it's in there after that i said okay i'm not
00:31:05.280
going to that person again and you know but there are a lot of experts at the university and so i just
00:31:09.780
found someone else and his approach no matter what i said was just the opposite was so positive he said
00:31:17.380
well that's a very interesting question and here's why and it wasn't interesting to him but it wasn't
00:31:23.400
he said he approached it that way said here's why that's an interesting question and here's how we can
00:31:27.740
solve it and so i went back to this person a couple of times and it was always the same we actually
00:31:33.720
developed a relationship at one point i proposed a collaboration research collaboration and we ended
00:31:39.160
up co-authoring an academic publication in you know one of the top journals and it all can be traced
00:31:45.120
back to me being willing to ask and someone being receptive to the asking it all goes back to the law
00:31:51.900
of giving and receiving exactly well let's say we've been talking about what you know organizations
00:31:56.920
can do let's say you're a freelancer or you're a small business owner and you work by yourself and
00:32:01.300
you're not embedded in an organization like that how can you use these ideas to help with your
00:32:06.040
business well i think it's very important for the freelancer or someone in the gig economy to join
00:32:13.000
groups and they could be digital groups or they could be face-to-face groups so i know here at ann arbor
00:32:18.920
there's a meetup every month of people who are interested in positive organizations and that's an ideal place
00:32:24.960
to go because it's people from you know all different companies all different industries many small
00:32:30.740
business owners are entrepreneurs and working alone and here they have a community of like-minded
00:32:35.360
people and they feel safe to ask for and to give help to one another so you can look for a maybe it's
00:32:43.040
your local incubator maybe if there's a university nearby sometimes there are these groups that you can
00:32:49.020
join i would say that i have a three-part mantra that says join give ask you know find a group and
00:32:54.800
join it find an opportunity to give them to help and then make a request when you need it now
00:32:59.480
that's true for a face-to-face community like the meetup group i just described also true for a
00:33:04.280
digital community and these days there is a digital community for anything and you just have to find
00:33:10.780
your group maybe it's a linkedin group or or something else and to become a member of that
00:33:16.060
really really expands your network well wayne this has been a great conversation where can people go to
00:33:20.680
learn more about the book in your work well i've enjoyed this conversation brett thank you you can learn
00:33:25.400
more about the book by going to the book website and it's the booktitle.com so all you have to do is
00:33:31.220
ask.com and ask well wayne baker thanks for your time it's been a pleasure oh thank you brett i've
00:33:36.440
enjoyed it my guest today was wayne baker he's the author of the book all you have to do is ask it's
00:33:40.780
available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more information about the book at
00:33:44.720
his website all you have to do is ask also check out our show notes at aom.is slash ask where you find
00:33:50.300
links to resources when we delve deeper into the topic well that wraps up another edition of the
00:34:01.220
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00:34:05.420
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00:34:35.260
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