why asking for and recEIving help in your small business might be particulalry hard for some

There comes a time in every small business owners life when you have done all you can do with a project, and you now have to do the hardest thing on earth, ask others for help

Ok let’s go back a few steps.

As a solopreneur running a business by yourself you are 100% the CGO…The Chief Grafting Officer…you pretty much have to do EVERYTHING, until you can afford to pay someone else to do it or use tech to automate it.

But you know in the vein of collaboration, co-creation, and camaraderie…we are all in this together, there will be times when you go out and ask your network to support you.

It might be the purchasing of a new book, it might be inviting someone to a new networking event you are hosting, it could be sharing a survey you are running, or asking for a referral or a recommendation.

And it feels super scary.

It doesn’t even matter if it’s paid help you are after, that also feels weird at times.

• What if the person doesn’t do a good enough job
• What if they judge me
• What if I pay too much or too little
• What if I take advantage of them

Yesterday while on a train into London to attend my first in-person event since the Summer, I looked at my to do list for the launch and so much of it involved talking to friends, peers, family, clients, colleagues to see if they wanted to get involved in the launch somehow…to help create the buzz I’d like.

It felt so unsafe, so scary, like I was physically in danger of getting hurt.

I asked myself “Why do I find asking for help so hard?”

And the answer…are you ready for this????

“Because you WERE the help”

Take a moment to let that land.

Let me explain. 

My great-grandma worked in service, my nan worked in a factory and then was a cleaner, my mum was a secretary, and I started life out as a barmaid, and a playworker.

“WE were the help!!!”

Now I am mindful that this will hit differently for people of colour, and folks with other backgrounds than mine, but I am sharing this from my perspective as a very proud person with working-class roots.

Hard graft is instilled in us from an early age because nobody is coming to save us.

Working class people…literally did the work, the work others didn’t want to do…farmed, worked in the mines, cleaned up other peoples crap, waited on them.

And in your own life?

You didn’t ask for help, you managed, you kept your challenges to yourself, and you made do. You never moaned or complained.

That stuff lives on in my DNA…at least it feels like it does.

There is a lot of shame around needing help. A lot of pride around not needing it.

this is multiplied if you have any additional challenges, being a single parent, having a disability, being neurodiverse for example.

But what if this fear of asking for help is the thing that is holding you back?

What if it shows up in

• Your sales process
• How you build your support team
• How you price and cost things
• Your ability to create partnerships and joint ventures
• Needing to be jack and jill of all trades

How do we clear all of this stuff (without me getting too spiritual and past life regressiony with you all lol)

Here are some ideas

1. Take a moment to acknowledge your heritage and ancestry… be thankful for the lives they led, be grateful that you have more choice.
2. Understand the conditioning and thinking that came as a result of your upbringing
3. Ask yourself if it is continuing to serve you
4. Allow yourself to feel safe asking for help
5. Practice it, with folks you trust, and then get braver
6. Know that a NO is a NO, and its OK to get a No
7. In fact get better at saying NO yourself, if something isn’t a good fit…often we don’t ask for help, because we are always being asked to help others and we feel burdened.

Anyways.

With my new book How Not to be Broke coming out next week, I will be asking for lots of help.

I am also buying in some help, because I can’t do EVERYTHING alone, in fact, I refuse to.

THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS WE MUST RUN PROFITABLE SOLOPRENEUR BUSINESSES…otherwise we will always be in the situation of not being able to pay people properly for the things we can’t or don’t want to do to support our business growth.

Number 1 in the How Not to be Broke manifesto….

“Hope is NOT a strategy”

So I am not hoping folks will help, instead I will be asking, encouraging, and creating mechanisms and structures to encourage that support…and I am also committed to getting my target of 100 small business owners to take part in my How NOT to be Broke Sales Challenge which starts in just over 2 weeks.  

When we suffer in silence, when we don’t give folks the opportunity to support our work, we play small. That serves nobody. When we changemakers on a mission to do things better, to make a change, we must get out there and make the important stuff happen,

Today I am remembering the immense value found within the content of the book…knowing that this book is going to change lives.