Having a new little one in the world definitely put a spotlight on the importance of asking for help before you need it in the Gonzales household. Beyond the implications as new parents, Rachel and Avram talk about our mindset about asking for help in general. Why is it so hard to ask for help, and how can you shift your mindset about it?

 

SHOW NOTES

2:58 Rachel compares our social environment for raising kids to decades past and other countries

4:36 Rachel had advisors in her life for Lincoln’s birth and motherhood, but what does that look like for businesses?

6:50 Avram admits how it feels when we ask for help after waiting for too long

8:10 Rachel shares a story about how isolating instead of asking for help sent the couple into a spiral

10:16 An added benefit of asking for help? Closeness!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Below, you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Hey. Welcome back to another Babies and Business Podcast. This is your host, Avram Gonzales, joined by the fabulous, wonderful, and beautiful Rachel Gonzales. Today’s episode is Asking for Help Before You Need It. And, oh man. Topic that’s close to my heart. I can say I’ve been stretched in more ways with a new baby in the house, and literally zero experience with children.

Than I ever would’ve thought I could be stretched before, and on many occasions have waited way too long to ask for help, leaving me depleted, overwhelmed, and just generally frustrated.

Rachel Gonzales: And I think that’s the plight of dads is that dads feel like they’re a supporting character with a baby. That, I’m not saying that you are a supporting character, but, or that it’s a bad thing, but sometimes you feel like maybe you can’t ask for what you need because, well, mom is staying up, mom is nursing, mom doesn’t have sleep. All these reasons that you may not ask.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. Mom does so much for baby.

I think you’re right. It’s hard to ask when you’re the dude and maybe you’re struggling a little bit. That’s not the specific topic today. It’s not about me. This is about you, the listener, and sharing some of the things that we’ve been through as parents and business owners that we think might be helpful for you too.

So in today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about some of the mindsets around why we don’t ask. I think there’s gonna be some light bulb moments for you as a listener, especially if maybe you’ve had a hard time doing that. We’re gonna share. With you some personal experience and things that we’ve done to be more proactive in our lives so that we maybe don’t get pushed too far before we ask, or we have the support in place before we need it.

It’s that old dig the well before you’re thirsty. Thank you Harvey McKay. And we’re gonna wrap things up at the end. Well, what’s some other nuggets that you’re gonna discover as we move here along? So I think first, where were we gonna start, honey?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. So when we prepared or when we were preparing for the arrival of our baby, I assembled a team.

I had a midwife, a doula. , other advisors that there was a lady that came over to my house multiple times and just visited with me, talked about things that I could expect some different ladies that were just visiting with me on the phone and, that’s the advisors that I assembled.

But also babies are raised by a community and it’s always been that way. And in the past it babies. Would come into the world and then the mother of, like the mother of the mother, would come in and help watch that baby and the aunts and the grandma so that mom could get some sleep and heal quicker and get back on her feet quicker.

And just right now, that’s kind of not what happens. Here we are in America and one household families. We don’t have grandmas and grandpas that live with us or our parents. Some countries have that still. They have that support system in place. But for us some of the mindsets that can make it difficult to ask for help is we feel like we need to do it ourselves.

We are independent and we, maybe if we ask for help, we might be seen as weak, or maybe if we we’re afraid that we might be seen as a bad son or daughter if we need that help and we can’t make it happen. I heard the sad story from one of my sisters-in-law, that, she was approaching her mom and saying how much she’s struggling with children.

She has four children, and she was, she’s just really struggling and she was expressing that struggle to her mom, and her mom came back with, so was having children, not what you thought it would be, and I thought, oh my God, what lack of compassion. And I’m not judging those individuals, but when we could be supportive, sometimes we say things that are pretty hurtful and damaging.

And so we’re just gonna talk about that mindset. So as in our family and preparing for our baby, I had those advisors. Help me to get prepared, but as a business, what are those kinds of advisors that we have that advise us in our business?

Avram Gonzales: I mean, it’s those professionals that you should be paying a lot of money to, right?

Yeah. Because you really get what you pay for. It’s your cpa, it’s your bookkeeper. You gotta have a lawyer in your back pocket. You never know. Yeah. We have coaches. Yeah, we have mentors that we’ve turned to over the years. Those are all people that are a very important part of our team, that’s sort of like our guardian angels, that they’re there for anything and you can turn to them for help.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, exactly. So, we have those people that support us in these different roles that we have. We’re parents and we have those people that supported us in bringing our baby into this world. And now we have in our business we have these different people that support us as well.

And in times. What happens, whether it’s in business or it’s as parents that sometimes we wait until it’s too late.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

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Rachel Gonzales: To ask and I mean, maybe there’s never a too late, but maybe we should have asked a lot sooner, and that could have helped us a lot more if we would’ve just had the courage or maybe had the awareness.

Avram Gonzales: That’s a big one. Yeah, that’s a big one. I mean, think about a great business example of that let’s say you just were totally head in the sand and didn’t realize that you needed to pay taxes, and then you’re scrambling to get a bookkeeper to get your books together and then still scrambling yet more to have to find a CPA to put that stuff together.

That’s a very stressful environment that could be totally avoided by having that team in place.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely.

Avram Gonzales: And you had mentioned like waiting too long to ask, and I think that’s a big thing that I personally struggled with. I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast here is I got stretched too and beyond my limit, right?

And when I did ask for help and the times that I’ve been come too overwhelmed and then felt like I waited too long to ask for help. Every single time that I did, I wished I’d asked sooner. And it was really all this like mental junk that was in the way about whether I should or shouldn’t.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: Whether I was being too much or whether I was maybe making an ask that was unfair of you, my partner again, cuz mom’s doing so much the work where is my spot?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: Every time I asked for help, a couple different things happened, though. People were super excited to help. I remember the first time asking my mom for help and it was like one of the greatest things that I guess I could have done. Cause I think that’s just what Mom wanted to do. Right.

It was such a gift being asked. Another thing that happens as a result of actually asking is you find out that, well, almost always, you get better answers than you would’ve had just yourself. Like you’ve already tried to go through all of it mentally. And you arrived at this place where you’re overwhelmed and frustrated. You asked for that help. You already exhausted all the things that didn’t work right. Probably overthought them too. Right? And then that outside insight would be incredibly helpful.

Rachel Gonzales: And sometimes it’s just the change of perspective. It is that they have that It’s like, you know what, Abram, maybe it’s I understand that it’s a big thing for you but it’s really not that big for me. Sure. It’s not that much to bear. I remember the first time when with having Lincoln in our life that you it was a day that I was especially tired and you wanted to give me a nap, and it ended up that I didn’t get a nap. And you were so frustrated by that and it ended up in being that we were frustrated with both, with each other. Sure. And you walked away for a moment cuz you needed some time to think, and then when you came back I had just been, the whole time I had just been thinking, you know what I hope that everything is okay and I’m just trying to feel into your energy and what I found was that in no other area of our life do we actually do things separately and we were functioning that day in a separate capacity, like, I’m doing this, you’re doing that, and instead of having that conversation you might have had the perspective of, I need to do this all myself so that Rachel can get a nap. And that just, it was a lot to put on you. And when it came to a head and we actually had that conversation, it changed everything.

And we were able to see, it actually It strengthened our bond. It did with each other. Yep. So when we are able to be vulnerable with each other, show how maybe raw we are and how it’s not actually working for us. Sometimes we just need to ask for help even though we feel like we don’t deserve it,

Avram Gonzales: Sure.

Rachel Gonzales: And in those moments, sometimes we do feel like we don’t deserve it and, or maybe we don’t know how to.

Avram Gonzales: Well, and then when you, at least when you ask and you put those words out there, you’re certainly not alone anymore. Exactly. and that’s kind of a big deal. Exactly. Especially when you’re raising a child.

Rachel Gonzales: Exactly. In business, there are times when we go through situations in business where we may have shame around something. Maybe we are behind on back taxes. Like, like you mentioned that we didn’t prepare ahead of time or whatever situation might be. We might be facing when we have that courage to ask somebody to help us.

Like you said, we’re not burying it alone, but we’re also getting that other advisor that can help us with that other side to whatever it is that we are facing. So personal or business. Find somebody to help you so that you’re not alone in it

Avram Gonzales: And it really is that opportunity to bond. We think about that in our relationships interpersonally pretty frequently. But I think we forget in business that we have team members and customers that we have like stronger relationships with, where you spend enough time with somebody, expectations are gonna be missed on one side or the other. Right. It’s just going to happen and it’s pretty inevitable.

I think in our society we have too many like throwaway relationships, one thing goes wrong, we just toss it away, but we’re lucky to have and should continue to foster those relationships where people give each other a chance and when people are given a chance, they do rise to the occasion and everybody becomes stronger and more understanding as a result of it.

Some of our best client relationships are with folks that either they messed up and we gave them a great chance to make it right, and they did, or we did and they did the same thing for us, or both has happened in our relationship and we just have a really tight relationship now as a result of it?

Better than when we started. Better than if that stuff hadn’t have happened.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely. And these things come up when these come about. When we ask for the things that we need, right? Something isn’t working for us and we ask for a change, something is working for us, and we make that clear so that people know, let’s keep doing this.

Either way, it helps us. It actually can fill us up more. As business owners, as partners in marriage or in business, whatever form we find ourselves in that we’re needing help. And this is, we find ourselves asking for help from family right now. But there are different forms of help that we can ask.

In business it’s the professionals that we hire and that we pay. But the thing that it comes down to for me is anytime that we ask for help, we are very rarely met with anything other than I am so sorry that you were struggling. I wish you would’ve asked for help sooner. And yes, of course, we would help you.

People wanna help. People want to create and have that community with each other.

Avram Gonzales: And it’s always an opportunity. Yeah. You just have to ask. Yeah. That concludes today’s episode on asking for Help Before You Need It. Again, this is the Babies and Business Podcast. We really enjoy the time that we get to spend with you each and every week recording these podcasts and hearing your feedback.

We’d love to connect with you on social media. Shoot the shiz with you a little bit. If you got questions and things like that, you can certainly connect with us there or shoot us an email at hello@babiesandbiz.com. One last thing before you go. We would super appreciate your subscription on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever it is that you’re listening because it means the world to us and lets other listeners know that this podcast exists. So if you found value today, please share it out. Let us know that you did. We’d love to hear your feedback. And with that being said, we’re out. Bye for now.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.