Owning my own business has taught me so many life lessons, and there can be a teachable moment within every encounter – a new client, collaborator, friend, family member, etc… Even when you least expect it.
This story happened a long time ago actually, last December. I was giving a Christmas gift to my nephew, who is a toddler. It was a dinosaur themed lego set – the Duplo ones with really big pieces for young kids.
Anyhow, he unwrapped the gift, and then opened the box to play with the legos. The lego pieces came in these sealed little plastic baggies. And he outstretched his little arm, held out the bag to me, said “Help pleez!”
At the time, he didn’t have a big vocabulary, but he knew how to ask for help. And that was the lesson I needed to learn.
Up until that point, I was trying to do everything in my business on my own. My own marketing – videos, social media, blog. Finding speaking opportunities and personal styling clients, doing sales calls, managing the administrative stuff and finances, while trying to juggle promotion for my book as well. There was just so much going on.
After that moment my nephew asked for help, his words kept ringing in my head. The words are so simple. Yet as adults, it is so hard for us to ask for help.
It wasn’t an overnight thing, but I started to ask more people for help. I started collaborating more. I was open to accepting help instead of being stubborn and trying to do it all on my own.
And probably the biggest step was to ask for support, in those tough times of my business, to say that I needed help.
Somehow, we’re conditioned to think we need to figure it all out on our own. But we don’t. We don’t even have to hold it together all the time. It’s a humbling realization, and it requires putting our egos aside. It’s okay that we need each other. And it’s okay to ask for help.
To my dear nephew, thank you for reminding me of this important lesson. And yes, I’d be happy to open that bag of legos for you.
If you enjoyed this post, you can check out other articles of my business journey here.
Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash