EP212 Don’t Be An AskHole | Ken Courtright’s Today’s Growth | Growing Business Today

 

Too many times we encounter people whom you barely know yet they ask for favors. These people are what we call “askholes,” and you certainly don’t want to be them. Laying down the law of reciprocity, Ken shares when the right time is to ask is. Giving a withdrawal-deposit analogy, he talks about the importance of serving first and investing your time and effort to get to know a person before asking for favors.

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Don’t Be An AskHole

This is the podcast where I live life and when I see someone mentoring to someone else and I see the lights go on in the mentee, I write it down, make a note, and I witnessed that. My wife was mentoring people in Martha’s Vineyard. I was listening in and noticed a couple of things that she was saying. I’m going to reframe them in my words, but these are the point she was making to the people she was coaching. This episode is called Don’t Be an Askhole. What does that mean?

You're going to get anywhere in life by serving first. Click To Tweet

How many times have you seen people and you’ll be with them and they will walk up and introduce themselves to maybe a celebrity or someone of influence, an author, a coach, somebody that has a lot more business acumen than they do? Not five minutes after they meet this person, they walk up to them and ask them for a favor. I’ve witnessed a couple of people meet one of the mentors and barely exchanged business cards and one of the people reached out and said, “Could you do me a favor? Could you promote my business on your platform or this or that?” There’s a thing called the law of reciprocity and that is if you ask someone for something, you’re making a withdrawal. You’re physically making a withdrawal in the relationship. The only way to make a withdrawal in the relationship is after you’ve made quantitatively more deposits than the withdrawal you’re asking for.

 

If you walk up to someone and directly ask for a favor and you have not made deposits in this relationship prior, you don’t have the right to ask for anything. You don’t have the right to ask for a withdrawal. There are a lot of people out there, and I know people reading this know people who drive them crazy and drive other people crazy because they’re constantly asking for assistance, asking for help, “Would you promote me? Would you do this? Would you do this for me?”

When you've made enough deposit, you'll know when it's time to ask for something Click To Tweet

You’re going to get nowhere in life by asking. You’re going to get everywhere in life by serving first, making deposits first, and then using the law of reciprocity. When you’ve made enough deposits, you’ll know when it’s time to ask for something. When you ask, not only will you receive, you’ll receive five to ten times more than you ever asked for. I hope this helps. I’ll see you.