How to Call In Happy Helpers

As I write this the temperature here in Portland is heating up fast. It is skyrocketing toward the upper 90s. With the sweltering heat, my 6-year-old daughter, Sierra, is ready to make a difference and potentially a profit from the baking sun.

Sierra shared with me that she’s ready to open a lemonade stand. She plans on selling lemonade for 50 cents per ice-cold cup and has started brainstorming the best locations around town. She asked me if I would help her with this exciting new venture.

Naturally Asking for Help

Asking for help is something that kids learn to do naturally. It starts from the early age of needing help with basic necessities like drinking and eating. As they grow older they ask you to hand them that ripe pear they can’t quite reach off the counter. The learning continues to strengthen this idea that we all are in community and that others are around to help us fill our needs.

However, somewhere around adolescence, you may remember this, you began having unsavory experiences when making requests, which turns the pleasure sour.

Requests Become Difficulty

From then on, you began learning that if you couldn’t do something on your own, help wouldn’t necessarily come your way so quickly. You were expected to become independent and not to rely on others. You were better off not asking for help, you thought. Asking for help meant that it could cost you later. You learned that people could say, and often did say, “no,” and you reasoned, however misguided, that somehow this was a personal rejection.

I think that most of us over learned this lesson. After several of these experiences, it was just easier to stop making requests.

That is until we began to notice how hard it is to run a successful business, as it is to be in any kind of relationship, without asking others for help.

People Want to Help You

As business owners, it’s easy to forget that being able to contribute gives people a sense of belonging and a sense of connection. Most likely, there are people surrounding you right now that want to help you; they just don’t know how.

Making requests is a skill that you learned as a child; however, you’ve forgotten how helpful this skill is in continuing to grow your business.

Like Sierra’s lemonade stand, your business will benefit greatly by making a few more requests of others a week. If you don’t know where to being, take a look at the keys below.

Keys to Having People Happily Help You:

• Notice when you make requests of others, the feelings or emotions that arise. If there is a tightness or feeling of discomfort, then take some time in Remembrance. Try taking a moment to write down three requests you could make of other people that would help move your business toward profitability. When thinking about each request, notice how you respond physically and emotionally.
  
• Giving others clarity with requests is extremely helpful. Frame your request of others in doable and specific terms. This allows people to know exactly what you need. I was once asked if I could help with a friend’s marketing, although I was happy to be of service, I had no idea how much time was being requested of me and what specific aspects of marketing would be most beneficial. With a few questions, I was able to find out that they wanted an hour of my time to review a sales letter.
• Remember that belonging and connection are basic human needs. By making requests of others, you are gifting people around you with these opportunities. Take a look right now at your to do list and see if there is anything on it that you can delegate to someone else. This will help you receive support and help them be a contribution. It really is a win-win.

What requests could you make of others this week that would help your business move toward more profitability?