Why We Don't Ask For Help

Alex Charfen: One of the hardest things for entrepreneurs to do is ask for help. I call it the entrepreneur's dilemma. We need more help than the average person to reach our full potential, but any request for help leaves us helping vulnerable and exposed. Last night I hung out with two of my friends who can't help but ask for help and all of us can learn a tremendous amount from them.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is The Momentum Podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trail blazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off, and don't know why anyone would want to.

We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum, so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure we pay attention to their rules, but only so we can bend them, break them, and then re-write them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we're the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters. Clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Last night was my birthday party and we had about 50 or 60 people here at the house and it was absolutely extraordinary. Some of the most brilliant people in the world were here last night in my home hanging out with us and it was just an incredible event. It was so confirming and reassuring and exciting and you know I as a kid didn't have a lot of birthday parties, because I didn't have a lot of friends, I didn't know a lot of people. I was very awkward and different and now as a 46 year old, I had people from around the world and around Austin come here to spend a birthday with me which was just humbling and inspiring.

The two people who stayed latest and hung out with me and my family afterwords were John Morrow and Shawn Stevenson. I think part of the reason I get along so well with the two of them is I relate to them a ton. See, Shawn is about two and a half feet tall, he was called The Three Foot Chef at one point, and he is in a wheelchair and can't walk but does more than most people I've ever met in my life. And John Morrow is in a chair, and it has a condition where the only part of his entire body he can move is his face. He feels no sensation anywhere in his body except for his face. He runs his entire life through his face.

Now here's what you need to know about these guys, they both run million dollar plus businesses. They influence millions, not hundreds, millions of people around the world. John writes a blog, two or three million people will download it. Shawn does a video, ten or twenty million people will watch it. And both of them have to constantly ask for help every single day of their lives. They literally can do almost nothing without getting help. One of the things that so many entrepreneurs fight is getting help and here's why. We feel like getting help makes us look weak. We feel like getting help makes us look like we can't do anything. We feel like getting help makes us look like we're less than. And so so many of us, and I'm talking to everyone out there, both men and women, have a hard time asking for help.

In fact, recently I was asked, is it different for men and women? And my answer was, I don't really think so. We both struggle with this, both sexes struggle with it like crazy. Maybe for different reasons, or for different opinions, but the fact is that entrepreneurs have an incredibly hard time asking for help. Well here's part of the reason that I love to hang out with Shawn and John. They have no ego about asking for help at all because they've had to do it their entire lives. In fact, both of them joke about it, both of them had incredible wisdom about how to get help, and both of them have been doing it forever. And that's why they can accomplish more than the average person from a wheelchair with limited mobility, with limited ability to move around to do anything.

It's interesting I've shared the story of both of them multiple times, their really close friends of mine. They inspire me like crazy, and one of the times I shared the story of John Morrow, or hanging out with him, I had one of my clients say, "Geeze Alex, John Morrow runs an entire million dollar business, and a team of over 15 people with just his face, just his voice. Why can't I do that?" And that's a good question for all of us to ask. Here's why, because most of us aren't willing to ask for help. Most of us feel bad asking for help. And most of us subconsciously in a less than conscious way turn off the reflex to ask for help before we even do. And I wanna peel back why we do this. I want to release you from the shackles of not getting help because it will hold you back just as much as anything in your entire life.

If you fail to ask for help and you try and do everything yourself, you will hold back the success you can make, you will hold back the family you can have, you will hold back the children you're able to raise. You will hold back the contribution you make to the world. And here's why I think it's so hard for so many of us to ask for help, because all of us have been in situations where we had to ask for help, and it backfired. Every one of us. We've been in situations, in social situations, in school, in clubs, in sports where we asked for help and somebody told us no. We've all been in situations where we've raised our hand and we've been shot down. And for entrepreneurs, we've all been in situations where we've been told to sit down, stop talking, quit making everyone else uncomfortable instead of getting help.

And for all of us there's been times in our lives where we've needed more help than anything else, and we didn't get it, and here's what happens. That creates a pattern in our minds that when we ask for help we are vulnerable and exposed. But I want you to understand something. When you're vulnerable and you ask for help, it makes you feel small and insignificant to the people around you. But everyone sees you as being massive and in control and in charge. Vulnerability actually looks powerful. Vulnerability looks like you're in control. Vulnerability looks like humility. Vulnerability is transparency. Vulnerability is inspirational to people around you. So if you're willing to ask for help, you will blow people away. The reason that Shawn Stevenson and John Morrow can influence millions of people is because they have absolutely no fear of being vulnerable.

John was talking last night about dating, about how weird situations come up when he's dating and how it's uncomfortable. It was amazing to hear how he was willing to be vulnerable and share with us and tell us how his life is. And yesterday my daughters and Cadey and I went and saw Shawn speak, and he spoke for The Health Coach Institute, and he did a one hour keynote that blew everyone away. You wanna talk about vulnerability, he then had a table brought out on the stage and had Peter, who was here with him, put him up onto a table and Shawn did a workout for everyone in the room. He's like, hey I wanna show you my workout 'cause if anyone in this room thinks they can't workout, I want you to see how I do it. And then he proceeded to like flip himself upside down and kick his legs up into the air, and then curl three pound, do lateral raises with three pound weights and do pushups with little pushup extenders. And it was amazing to watch him workout.

You know what so many people tell me about working out? Oh I'm embarrassed to go to the gym, oh I feel weird going to the gym, I feel odd working out in front of other people. Here's a guy whose less than three feet tall, confined to a wheelchair, sitting on a table in front of a thousand people at a conference working out. There is absolutely no excuse. If you wanna check it out, go look on my Facebook page, I actually live streamed that whole thing on my personal Facebook page because Shawn's such an incredible inspiration to me and to everyone around him.

And, here's the lesson that you, me and everyone else can learn from Shawn and John. The more you ask for help, the more significant you become. The more you ask for help, the more influence you will have. The more you ask for help, the more people around you will respect you and want to hear you. The more you ask for help, the more people will want to listen to you and understand what you are saying. John recently, john flies around the world and now is gonna be flying more around the world in order to speak and go share his message. He hasn't done it a lot to date because he's completely immobilized, he can't lift his back, it's hard for him to go through security. And in order to get on a plane, it is a complete ordeal. He has to have four firefighters come and help him on to a plane which is dangerous for him, dangerous for the firefighters, dangerous for everybody.

He has been doing a ton of research, and you wanna talk about asking for help, he actually went out and found a person who has a product called The Eagle. It raises, it's a crane, a miniature crane that fits in the isle of a plane that actually raises up a paraplegic and can wheel them down the isle and then place them in a chair. Well, The Eagle is used in Australia, but hasn't been used here in the U.S. Well rather than just say oh man I wish it was here in the U.S, JOhn's actually been negotiating with company that created The Eagle, and now he's going to be the only private citizen in the world who own one 'cause he reached out to the company and told them he needed one. And then he used one here in the U.S, documented the entire process, and their sending it to the FAA to get it approved so that John can own one.

See, that's what John has to do to take a trip across the country. He has to get specialized equiptment, specialized help, and everyone has to know that it's going on. In fact, when he did travel across the country, it was at the executive level of the airline he traveled on everyone knew what was going on. Then there's us, entrepreneurs who are able bodied, but afraid to ask for help. And we hold back the contribution we can make, we hold back the difference we can make in the world, we hold back our ability to create the outcomes that we've always known we wanted. We hold back the ability, the drive, the determination to answer that voice in the back of our minds that has always said you're here for more. You are here to be more, to do more, to achieve more and to make more happen in this world.

And I believe with 100% certainty that the difference between you achieving everything you want in the world, and you being frustrated, is your ability to ask for help. Learn from my two friends, Shawn Stevenson and John Morrow, who ask for help because they have to, but now they ask for help because their making a massive difference in the world. And most people would call them disabled, I would call them specially abled because every disability or challenge or issue you have creates a ability and a strength and a certainty that you should have as well. So it doesn't matter what your struggling with or what you need help with or what your challenge is, declare it to the world and go out and get the help you need.

When I finally started sharing with people that I was dyslexic and digraphic and had trouble with calendars and had a really difficult time keeping things organized, my team knew exactly how to help me. My entire business and my entire life changed. Stop trying to be perfect, ask for help, go out and make your greatest contribution.

If you're ready to not only ask for help, but build a team around exactly what you want to achieve, and help them grow in a transformational way, let us help you. We help world changing entrepreneurs build teams, create systems and structure around building multi-national, multi-million dollar companies that create massive contributions. If you have an opportunity that you're ready to finally build an infrastructure and team around, go to billionairecode.com forward slash apply. You may wanna just check out our funnel if you sell any type of high ticket product, because it's working like crazy. You may wanna fill out the application. Connect with a member of my team and understand how we can help you. Billionaire code dot com forward slash apply. If you're ready to create a strategic direction so your team knows where you're going, communicate with them in a way that they understand exactly what's going on and start building the infrastructure people and process around you so that you can make a massive contribution, it's easy. Billionaire code dot com forward slash apply.