EntreLeadership - The Power of Asking for Help

Starting point is 00:00:03 Hey guys, Daniel Tarty here. I know a lot of you listening to this podcast are not necessarily in a leadership role today, but you hope to be. You're hungry to grow and learn and figure out how at some point you can have more responsibility to carry the water. Well, I'll tell you my own story. I've been with Ramsey Solutions for about 16 years, and I started here, not in a leadership role, but a really entry-level sales position. I had done sales before. I enjoyed sales, but kind of always aspired to the leadership thing.

Starting point is 00:00:39 But I didn't have a lot of background in that. I was really young. I actually had dropped out of school, and everything that I've learned about leadership really has been the result of mentors and coaches and other people who were leading giving me advice along the way. In fact, I don't think I'd be in leadership had I not early on developed the habit of asking, for help. I want to talk about the power of asking for help. If you want to learn something, you can learn anything you want to learn. And I believe in books and I believe in online courses and all that kind of stuff is really good. But if you really want to learn, you've got to find people who are great at the thing you want to be great at and get their time and get on their radar and ask them to push into you to make you a better leader. That's how this works. If I can look at anything as a habit that I can point to and go,

Starting point is 00:01:37 if I could reduce it all down to this is the advice I would give to any young aspiring leader, it would be the habit of every day, every week, asking for help, asking for, hey, can I get lunch with you and interview you and ask you some questions? And then going back and actually putting that stuff into practice. Not just one time, not just one mentor, but anybody you can find. And let me tell you, everybody can teach you something, even if they're not formally in a leadership role, or even if you wouldn't adopt every aspect of their life isn't what you aspire to. You can learn something from everybody. And so if you're teachable and you're hungry and you apply this habit, you're going to transform.

Starting point is 00:02:18 You're going to become a better team member. You're going to become better leader. Here's why this is so powerful. When you ask for help, it communicates that you're hungry. It also shows that you want to grow. And in my experience, it's so rare for people to actually say, hey, can I get time with you and go to lunch and learn? It's so rare that you're going to stand out among your peers. So when an opportunity comes up, you're going to be a little bit more top of mind with the decision makers who are thinking about who can help us with this project.

Starting point is 00:02:50 Who's somebody that we can hand this ball to that maybe they'll run with it and prove that they got what it takes? And that's the stuff that shows everybody. hey, I think I have this leadership potential thing. And it gives you a playing field to actually run on. So here's the thing that I've got to give you a little bit of like from my side of the seat today, you know, because I'm fortunate that I've been leading for a while and now people are asking me on a regular basis, can I go to lunch? Can I pick your mind? It's never this profound thing. And I don't have all the answers. But I do get asked a lot. And there's very few people that do what I'm about to tell you that I think is really the secret sauce. Plenty of people who ask, plenty of people say, can we go to lunch and visit? And I'm always happy to do that. But the number of people that afterwards actually follow through on what we talked about, it's actually pretty rare. And as somebody who wants to know that my time is spent doing things that are fruitful and really adding value, the ticket to continuing to get time with somebody and, you know, somebody that you want them to be a mentor of yours, if you just take them to lunch and ask questions and then don't ever talk to them again or don't let them know that you appreciate the value of what they gave you.

Starting point is 00:03:59 you, odds are they're probably not going to continue to mentor you. But if you want to continue to get their time, it's really simple. All you got to do afterwards is send them a thank you and let them know how much you valued what you guys talked about. The second thing is, go freaking apply what you learned. Go put it into practice. Whatever they told you to do, go do it. And then here's the key. Two to three months later, and this is super rare. I've had this happen a few times and it just lit me up when I got these notes, but send a note saying, here's what I've been doing over the last two to three months. We had lunch the other day. Here's what you told me.

Starting point is 00:04:34 Here's what I went back and did. Here's the value it created in my life. I get a note like that from somebody. They're going to get lunch anytime they want. They're going to get on my schedule. They're going to be on the list of people that get around the gatekeeper because I know that they're actually going to follow through and they're hungry enough to go do what we talked about.

Starting point is 00:04:52 So if you want to get ahead in your career, if you want to level up and become a leader and take on more responsibility, communicate you're hungry, show people you want to grow, show them you'll do whatever it takes, meet them wherever they're at on their schedule. You meet them at their favorite restaurant. You meet them at six in the morning, if that's what's convenient for them. You sacrifice whatever it takes to go out and get in front of them and do it in a way that's convenient for them, and then follow through. Let them know that you actually are applying the stuff that this mentor, this coach, or whoever it is, the advice they gave you. Because they're giving out advice all the time and a lot of people aren't listening to them. And if you'll listen to them,

Starting point is 00:05:28 you'll show them that you're listening to them, you're going to get more of their time. More of the time is going to mean more conversations where you get the tools that you need to grow. You do that work, grow those muscles, you're going to become a leader. You know, it was Charlie Tremendous Jones who said, you are an average of the five people you hang around the most. Are you hanging around leaders? Are you saying you want to be a leader? You better be hanging around leaders. You're saying you want to be a leader, but then you're hanging around a bunch of followers. It's okay if they're your buddies. But if they're the ones influencing you, you're never going to get where you want to go. Find the people who are doing what you want to do, figure out how to get

Starting point is 00:06:09 in front of them, and figure out how to express massive gratitude for their time, massive gratitude. And they will continue to give you more of that time. Because odds are, they're like me, That's how they became a leader. And they want to pay it for it. So do that stuff and you'll get where you want to go. And you'll get to influence the things that you want to influence. Promise you this is how it works. So until next time, keep learning and keep leading.

EntreLeadership - The Power of Asking for Help

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