When to Ask For Help

Sean: [00:00:00]    All right. Hey there. And welcome to Episode 12 of We Can Do This. This week's episode of the podcast I'm actually going to be bringing you a solo episode. Now this is going to be my second solo episode on the podcast so far. 

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[00:00:18]And as you know, typically every week we have interviews with either someone who is in the social impact space or someone that has some area of expertise when it comes to marketing and branding or some of these other 21st century skills that we've been talking. And on each episode, I get to have these amazing conversations.

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[00:00:35] And honestly, I really try to do more listening than I do talking, right. Because there's a reason we bring these people on the show is because we want to hear their experience, their expertise and what they have to share. But  occasionally on the podcast, I'll be able to have these solo episodes where I can synthesize some of these topics that we're talking about, kind of bring things together and that's exactly what I'm going to be doing this episode

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[00:00:59]Now out of the last episode, there was this one thought that kind of came out– not being afraid to ask for help. And I actually posted that on Twitter this most recent week on my own personal account. And it got a bit of engagement, and I actually had some offline conversations and some DM conversations around that tweet.

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[00:01:17]And it really made me think about what were times in my own life and during the duration of my own business, where I needed to ask for help and what were the reasons that I needed help and what were the ways that I actually sourced help or support or accountability in doing those things. So I'm excited to share some of these individual stories and experiences with you on the episode today. And I hope you can benefit from these experiences I had when I needed to ask for help. So let's jump into today's episode.

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[00:02:04]So in November of 2016 was when I really made the leap and transitioned from my previous full-time job into starting my own business. So at the time of recording this episode, I am coming up on five years of being self-employed as a full-time consultant and business owner. And in preparing for this episode, I looked back at these past five years and looked at three specific moments where I found that I was stuck and needed to ask for help now to really set this up. I am a Enneagram, two wing one for the Enneagram nerds hurts out there. And I'm an ENFP right on the Myers-Briggs. And if you know anything about the Enneagram, the Enneagram 2 is really characterized as someone who is the helper, right. Fulfillment by helping and supporting others, helping them win.

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[00:03:05]And that's kinda where they get their energy from and their motivation from. And the Enneagram two is often known sort of tragically as someone who doesn't ask for help. Right. They tend to give help, but they don't ask for help.

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[00:03:21]And for the Enneagram 2 like myself,   that might be a bit extreme, but I tend to think that as people who are entrepreneurs who are starting businesses, initiative, brands of their own, that they too also tend to shy away from asking for help as well. And there are plenty of reasons why someone would tend to not ask for help, right.

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[00:03:47] There might be this fear that if you ask someone to help you with something that you would do yourself, that they are just not going to do it in the same fashion that you would, or the same quality, or they might just not get it done at all. Asking for help can really be a risk right? Or you may not ask for help out of pride. You may have this fear that asking for help shows some sort of weakness on your own end.  Now there's probably plenty more. But  some of these excuses are really honestly bad reasons not to ask for help.  And not asking for help can really come at a cost. Right? One of the consequences of not asking for help could be burnout, right? You just find yourself doing everything and running yourself into the ground and it's just not healthy.

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[00:04:35]So this was something that I learned over the course of these past few years is even though I tend to not want to ask for help, there was three specific instances where I found that in order to get unstuck asking for help was really something that unlocked that barrier helping me push through to what was whatever was on the other side. 

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[00:04:58]So the first time that I've really found that I was stuck was about a year and a half to starting my own. Right.  At this point I was working from home and my wife and I had a two bedroom apartment and the bedroom that was my office pretty generous to call the bedroom. Um, it was probably a half bedroom, right? It had a closet in it and it was a small little space that fit essentially a desk. Right. And this is where I really got things started. And I had all my meetings from this little bedroom and I did all my first design and website projects from this bedroom.

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[00:05:38] Yeah. And as someone who is in, like I said, ENFP extrovert really gets their energy from being around people. I just really began to get drained by just being alone all day. And in my previous jobs, I really worked in this collaborative way with teams and other departments and things like that. And here I found myself primarily working alone.

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[00:06:06] There was a couple like subcontractors that I worked on these projects with. And of course I'm having dialogue with clients, but I was  primarily I was alone in this work.

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[00:06:19]In one way, I just kind of felt empty working by myself. Now at this point, I'm a year and a half into running this business. And a lot of my clients came through personal referrals or were people that were already within my own network. Right. So I didn't have to do a lot of marketing myself yet.  But  I was getting to that point where I needed to communicate about myself online in a way that would connect with the right people.

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[00:06:43]And specifically, I wanted to be seen as a consultant, as someone who helped people meet business objectives, and that's already what I was doing. But I was very connected to the actual, tangible delivery of these projects. And what I really wanted to do was position myself as someone who can guide people along the way to meet these objectives, but not necessarily be the one to execute everything from a to Z. But this was really where I learned to do it for yourself is just a whole nother game.

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[00:07:16] Right. So I needed to ask for help. So fortunately, I came across this opportunity to join a mastermind group. And if you're not familiar with a mastermind group, it's essentially this concept of collaborating with other people who are in a similar space than you, and actually helping each other grow. And I came across this opportunity to join this group. And it was actually with a friend and colleague of mine at the time, Mike Kim, who Mike was on episode 4 of this podcast. And I join this professional mastermind group and it was with, I think, 10 other business owners at the time. None of them who I had known at this point, right. Only person I knew was Mike and I began to meet with this group of 10 people. Every two weeks. And this was where I really got help in learning to market myself and not just market others. Now, I remember this being a big risk for me, cause I was only about 18 months into running my own business.

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[00:08:23] I remember at this time, this was a significant expense to join this mastermind group.

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[00:08:29]And really it was worth every penny. I was able to ask for help on a regular basis to this group, asking for their feedback, asking for their opinion on things, kind of blindly just receiving feedback on different things that I was doing. And it really took this level of humility that kind of put myself out there and.

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[00:08:49]Ask for people's help and guidance and feedback. Many of whom I have really yet to meet in real life at that point. And looking back, this was really what got me through that season where I was feeling stuck. Where I was feeling kind of lonely and where I had a significant barrier in not being able to position myself in the way that I knew I wanted to.

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[00:09:11]And to this day I'm still in that group. And that group has kind of changed over time. Right. But it's been this constant presence of people that I know, that I trust. And in many ways I've been able to collaborate with, work together on client projects, and even some of the people that you'll hear about later in this episode are people that I met in that very group. 

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[00:09:34]So number two actually was a few years later from this first story. And at this point in the business what the problem was now is I was the glue that was holding everything together. Right. I sent every email, answered every phone call, ran every client meeting, worked on every project. Everything really was being held together by me and. Kind of the story behind the story was in my previous roles I rarely took time off. Right. I didn't take vacation days off. I didn't take sick days. And even when I did it tended to be for work in some other capacity.

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[00:10:13] So I knew that now that I had my own business, I didn't want to carry that in. Right. I want to be able to take time off. I want to be able to travel. I want to be able to go places with my wife and not be tied to my phone or my laptop every day. Right. So one of these goals that I had for 2020 was really to get help and find someone that could support me and assist me in some of these things.

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[00:10:38] So that, for example, if I was to go away for a week or two weeks, that everything wouldn't fall apart. So this was where I needed to ask for help and to make them like my first real kind of hire in my business, I was completely overwhelmed. Didn't really know what to do. Didn't know who to ask, where to find these people and what I actuallly did was I asked my friend Chelsea Brinkley, who I know from mastermind group I just told you about, and I asked her for help. I actually hired her to conduct a hiring process for me. I am the last person that should be running like a multi candidate hiring process. I've never done that before.

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[00:11:21] I've been maybe in some interviews for when we hired team members from my previous job. But I never had to conduct the hiring process. I have no HR experience. And like I said, Enneagram I did not want to be the one to tell specific people that I wasn't hiring them. Like the whole thing. This gives me hives, even thinking about it.

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[00:11:42] Right. So I hired Chelsea Brinkley. She has this awesome service that she uses as part of her own business. And she matches business owners and entrepreneurs with talented qualified people that can support them as virtual assistants or as executive assistants. So I asked for help. So I went through this whole process with Chelsea Brinkley, who, by the way, I really hope you get the chance to meet sometime on this p And her and her team were just incredible. Conducted this interview process had, you know, several dozen people apply and they ran the whole interview process and essentially connected me with the person who they thought would be the best fit for the role.

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[00:12:30]Her name's Linzee Richards, Linzee currently serves as my executive assistant and. Again, this is where I asked someone for help. And I said, Hey, come along, enter this kind of messy business I have and help me get things organized, helped me manage my email and my calendar and my projects. And to this day, Linzee's working with me and she actually assists in producing this podcast. So this podcast wouldn't exist without her, or definitely wouldn't still exist without her and the whole process of beginning to learn, to bring other people in and to delegate specific tasks and things helped me realize that I don't have to be involved in everything. I'm still learning that there's things that I don't need to be doing in order for things to run smoothly. And there's certain things that if I don't do them things will actually be better. 

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[00:13:26]But like I did in setting this up is asking for help is difficult. For me in my personality and how I am wired. So this experience actually opened up a whole new realm of opportunity in knowing that if there was something that needed to happen, I didn't need to be the one to do it. And speaking of burnout, I really think that is something that anyone who is a business owner.

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[00:13:54]That's something that can really be possible for them is hiring someone to really take tasks off your plate that are not required for you to do them. if you listen to the episode with Katrina Kibben we actually talked through this exercise of identifying what are the things that.

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[00:14:11]Are good at, and you should be doing what are things that you're good at and shouldn't be doing. And so on. And if you want to learn more about that, you can go to episode 10 of the podcast with Katrina K ibben. But I really think that is an opportunity for anyone who. Just needs space to do what they're good at to actually hire some support to do that.  And it's a scary decision, but I really learned firsthand that the more you can kind of take off the unnecessary onto your plate, the more you can add things that are the things that only you can do. 

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[00:14:47] And now, lastly, the third time that I really needed to, to ask for help to kind of push past the barrier that I saw was related to this very podcast. I've mentioned in previous episodes is I had the idea for this very podcast 4 years ago, at the time I was recording this.

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[00:15:05] So I was a year into running my business and I really had this desire to start a podcast called We Can Do This. And I had told a friend about this, I'd begin to share about it. And I begun to share about it and  and even hired a designer to design our logo and brand and artwork and all these things, and it was in motion.

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[00:15:30]but then I just got caught up in my own work and the business and never actually launched this idea. And launching this podcast was really kind of a return to the original desire I had for starting my business in general. And so. Probably about six months ago, I was really ready to take this podcast idea seriously. And this might be part of my personality. Maybe you can relate, maybe you can't. But sometimes when I need to kind of put a stake in the ground and declare that I am going to do something, I need to make some sort of commitment that is.

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[00:16:08] Gonna force me to follow through with what I decided. And oftentimes for me, that is simply a purchase. So for example, in the beginning of the year, I tend to buy like a nice planner so that I plan out my year, right? It's kind of this built in accountability system to, Hey, you bought this nice planner, you should use it. And it kind of keeps me along for the ride because I made that purchase.

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[00:16:36]Now about six months ago, when I was seriously ready to prep, and plan, and prepare for this podcast, I joined a course community by Danny now again, Danny is someone that I know from my mastermind group and Danny is a professional podcast producer.

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[00:16:53] He has experience as an audio engineer and he helps people start launch and grow podcasts. And this was a really interesting one for me, because in a lot of ways that typical things that intimidate people that want to start a podcast didn't necessarily intimidate me.

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[00:17:13]I'm a musician and I have experience in pro audio software. So I wasn't afraid on really how to record or edit a podcast. Actually the podcast equipment I'm using right now to record this very episode I've had for years.

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[00:17:29] Right. I didn't have to make. Big purchases for microphones or interfaces or anything like that. These were all things I've had all along. So I really wasn't looking for help necessarily on how to make a podcast, but one, I. . Needed to make some sort of commitment, right. I needed to make some sort of financial investment that I knew I had to follow through with. And secondly, I was a bit unsure about some aspects related to the podcast on like a strategy level, like who is my desired audience and What did they look like and what are they looking to learn? And what are they looking to do? These were things that were pretty fuzzy and Danny's program was truly like, really helpful in helping me answer those questions, as well as meet other people who were in the process of launching their own podcasts. 

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[00:18:21]And lastly, it really held me accountable to this idea of starting the podcast, Danny, and these other individuals in the program. Knew the name of my podcast. They knew that I was working on starting this podcast and we all roughly had these dates of when we said we wanted to launch our podcasts. So not only to Danny know when I wanted to launch, but friends of mine, other colleagues, and these other dozen people in the program knew that I was ready to launch.

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[00:18:50]So I was, I was just a hundred percent committed and it was really this. Purchase of this program that gave me sort of the accountability that I needed as well as the help that I really needed to make the podcast the reality.

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[00:19:05]Now, those are three ways that looking back, I really had to ask for help in order to overcome some significant barriers that I was experiencing in my business. And think what's interesting about this is many times when we say like, we're asking for help. I think we're asking for a favor. And there's nothing wrong with asking someone who is close to you, that you have some trust and rapport built up and mutual kind of respect for, to ask for favors, right? There's, there's nothing wrong with that. But specifically in this like professional setting, a lot of times asking for help, really. Requires some sort of investment of your own time or money or resources. Right? So in these three instances for me, I asked for help from other professionals and it required the financial investment, right?

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[00:19:59] So the first one I needed to ask for help in really understanding how to market myself in the way that I wanted to. And. To do that. I, I joined the mastermind, which required a, a monthly financial investment. And that was well worth every dollar and continues to be well worth every dollar that I pay to be in that mastermind group.

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[00:20:20] Right. And in the second one, I needed support. I needed assistance. I needed to delegate work to someone. So. To do that. I, you know, like I said, I, I hired Chelsea Brinkley and her team to help me conduct this process. And then they had to actually hire someone right. As an assistant. And then lastly, I purchased the program.

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[00:20:45] Right. And that was not a small investment, but it wasn't a big investment. Right. It was well worth it to really put the stake in the ground, get the help I needed and make a commitment to launching something. And like I said, each one of these things really represented a hurdle that I was able to overcome simply by asking for help. Depending where you're at in your own career or business. You might be thinking of ways right now that you need help. Right. He might need help just getting started. And that might require reaching out to someone, just for feedback.

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[00:21:22] Right. Just sharing that with them, what you're working on and getting some level of input and feedback from that. Or maybe you're like me in that second instance, and you're just feeling kind of burnt out and you really need someone to come along side you and take some of that workload off of your shoulders.

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[00:21:44]And if that's you, I would really encourage you to really toss that idea around and even reach out to someone like me or someone else that you know, that could connect you with the right people or at least the right avenues in helping you find that person.

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[00:22:00]And maybe like in that third instance for you, there's a skill that you need to just grow in, right? Maybe that is project management or maybe that is sales, or maybe that's marketing.

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[00:22:12] Right. And there are things that, you know, that you can do yourself, but you just don't have the skill set required to do it. There's plenty of ways that you can ask for help and get guidance, get someone to teach you or train you to do that thing. Or potentially hire someone to take that responsibility off your shoulders.

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[00:22:30]Now, this could be applicable to a lot of us in different ways. And really one of the core concepts of We Can Do This is this idea that we can't do this alone. So really I encourage you if you need help right now, you need support, do what you need to do to to get that and you can look back just like I am right now and be grateful for the times where you reached out for help.

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[00:22:56] And you're able to see that helped you overcome a problem that you were experiencing. So again, thanks for listening this episode again, my second solo episode of this podcast, if you like hearing these solo episodes, definitely let me know. On social media you can connect with me @seanpritzkau on Twitter or Instagram and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @wecandothisco or you can even leave a review on iTunes and let us know what you think of this episode. So we have a few really great guests coming up on these next few episodes so definitely subscribe if you haven't subscribed yet so that you can get notified of new episodes on the podcast. And thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.

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