CmMM Day 20; The Ask

Story Time

How early into a new network relationship should you ask for something?

Say you’ve scheduled a meeting with a potential mentor. You want to get some very specific advice, or even a job offer from this mentor.

Or maybe you’ve found a new publication to put your writing on. You just need to ask them if they’ll publish your work. When do you ask?

You don’t.

Today I found that the easiest and simplest way to get what you want from people is to not ask for anything.

I was at the bank today doing a couple things, and when we were done with my stuff I asked the advisor how long they had been working with the bank and some other general questions. She was a bit cautious of why I was asking so I explained that I was fresh out of business courses and wanted to start applying my skills to a relevant job. We talked for maybe 5 minutes and I left with some good information and advice.

No where in this conversation did I ask for a job, a connection, or anything. I just asked about her perspective on the job.

Four hours later I got a call from her. There was an opening if I was interested. Just bring in a resume and ask to see So&So.

“I wanted to give you an opportunity to get what you want in life.”

Unfortunately I can’t follow up on the opportunity but I learned a valuable lesson that I hope I can apply in the future.

The Lesson

Now, I am not a good story teller (yet) and I don’t think I did a good job of showing the lesson in that story.

The way things played out was incredibly interesting to me.

First off, my appearance today wasn’t exactly work at a bank kind of guy. I have long hair, an old toque and a bulky jacket.

Second, the advisor was pretty uninterested in me for most of the meeting. I was just another person to sign up. She rushed through things and didn’t explain much.

So how does someone like me get such a positive response from someone I’d never spoken to? I was nice. I gave compliments (seriously those guys go through computer menus insanely fast.) And most importantly I asked about her experience.

“How long have you worked here?”

“Have you done it before”

“What’s the most important things to know”

Five minutes total of those questions and a thank you could have possibly gotten me a job.

There’s a deeper lesson than just being nice though.

I made her feel good. I was coming to her for advice that she could give based on her experience in life. She was important.

“I wanted to give you an opportunity to get what you want in life.”

I could have asked specifically if they were hiring, and how I could get a job. Would it have worked as well? Probably not. I definitely suggested it was something I wanted, but she came up with the idea to call me.

I know I personally would feel powerful if I could give someone an opportunity like that.

Rambling about Knowledge

Changing gears a bit, I’m very relieved to see events like this happening in my life. Majority of the concepts I applied today I learned from How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I’ve been doing so much reading lately that I was starting to wonder if I was overloading myself. In fact, that was a trend I started to see in my readings (particularly 4 hour work week).

There is a point when reading vast information stops being useful and just becomes another form of mass consumption. I’ve always had a very hard time recalling information I know. I still know it, I just can’t recall it. It’s there, waiting to be used, but it’s being really patient. It doesn’t just come up when I want it to.

Today I saw opportunities to apply it and it decided to show up. Something I want to start focusing on is how I can work on recalling that information better.

It makes school pretty difficult when I can write out an entire income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow with no problems, but can’t recall the steps enough to give someone else instruction on how to do it.

I can take a mental walk through my workplace and see everything in my mind, but as soon as I start putting names to things to describe them I lose it.

Now I’m wondering if I need to worry at all about that. Should I work on strengthening my memory recollection? Or should I double down on my strength of visualizing things. I’ve never really thought about having a strong visual memory because when I try to describe things they’re gone.

How well does anyone really know themselves?

I know the more I ask questions about myself the more I realize I don’t know. The awesome thing is that most of the time I get to create the answers. Other times I discover the answer and use it to improve myself more.

I’m finding there’s a delicate balance of spending time with myself and spending time with others though. I think if I was doing this work 3 months ago without employment (ie forced interaction with humans) I would be going insane.

The most interesting thing is that I’ve been a very quiet, reserved, keep to myself kind of person. I don’t talk about myself much. I’m always listening to others.

This last month I’ve been incredibly open with some of my friends, and even strangers. Just putting my own story out there, especially in this format, is such a unique experience. Maybe only one person reads this, but maybe they relate to it, or are inspired by it, or learn from it, or just enjoy it.

I think I’m falling in love with the process.

Which for me is dangerous. I know a lot of successful people say you must enjoy the process to be successful. Am I falling in love with the process because of that knowledge? Or am I actually just loving it.

Where does the doubt I’m expressing come from?

Is it fear of the unknown? Not wanting to share my life with people? I know doubt doesn’t come from love. And I’ve read we only have two kinds of decisions in life, those out of love and those out of fear.

Am I loving the process because of fear of failure? I don’t think so, and so I’ll keep exploring my mind or; Conquering my Monkey Mind.