Whenever you need help, it’s good to ask for it, as many times people are more than willing to help people that they know — whether it’s helping them out with some type of trade skill, for example, as long as it’s reasonable, or at the same time, some people are actually willing to loan others, let’s just say, money, especially when it comes to a venture.
But at the same time, when you ask for help too early or too often, you could actually use up, let’s just say, all of your favors, per se. And it got me to think, because there was one individual who always asked for favors, who constantly got people to do things for free, potentially. And at first, people don’t mind, but when you ask over and over again, people just assume that he’s using them, and so they stop offering him any help.
And because of that, he has to go through and find new people every time in his life that are willing to essentially do things for free, and that’s not the way to go.
And what got me to think is, recently, he had a situation where he actually genuinely needed help because of a personal situation. It wasn’t even related to business or anything like that, but he just burned all his bridges and used up all of his, I guess you could say, favors, so that no one decided to actually help him, because they can’t really tell the difference on whether or not he genuinely needs it or if he’s just trying to get things for free. And that’s something to think about, where while it’s true you shouldn’t just stay silent when there are people around you that can help, you have to consider others too, and whether or not you are asking too much, too often, and too early.
Because if you think about it, you need to reward people as well, in a way. They need to see some type of progress in terms of what they’re offering you for free. For example, if you’re constantly asking them for free labor, I think it’s kinda reasonable to expect that you would at least succeed in some way where you won’t need to ask for help anymore, or at the same time, you would actually compensate them in the future, just like a regular business. And if you don’t do that, you’re basically setting yourself up to burn your bridges in these cases when you actually need it.
So, it’s one of those things. Do you save asking the people in your network until you truly need it, like in this situation, just in case something like that happens, or do you just keep finding new people to potentially get free resources from? Because in general, you need to think of others too.