Alex Malone Blog #10 “How Asking Questions Can Open Doors of Opportunity.

Alex Malone Speaks
Aug 24, 2017 · 5 min read
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What’s Up World!

Welcome to another blog post. As always, I sincerely appreciate you investing the time to read this blog. My goal is that you will find something valuable and simple that you can use in your daily life.

I am constantly pushing myself to learn something new everyday, and I want to share those things with you.

Questions

What I am learning is that life is filled with questions, and the questions that we ask have the ability to open doors of opportunity in our life. Ever since I can remember I’ve always been very curious about how things work. Whether it be how a car was made, who produced my favorite song, or how my favorite food was made.

Maybe that is how you are as well, but one thing that has become increasingly clear to me as I grow in this thing we call adulthood is that if we don’t ask we will never know. How many of us have been bombarded by a small child with a marathon of questions asking why, how, what, where, and countless other questions.

“The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.” — David Whyte

Why is that? I believe that as kids we are trying to make sense of the world we are in and through those questions we learn how or how not to do things. My 3 yr old son asks me everyday, without fail how something works, or the infamous “Why?” over and over.

It can be annoying until I step back and realize that is the only way we move forward in life. How do we progress if we don’t ask questions?

How do we become better, and realize our God-given potential if we aren’t curious?

I am seeing that it is impossible to move forward, to grow without asking questions. However, it’s deeper than just asking questions at random, it’s having a goal for the questions that we ask, making sure our questions have purpose.

Now, I want to share how asking questions can open doors, and more importantly how asking purposeful questions have opened doors for me personally, and my hope is that you would be able to use the same strategy in your life.

What Do You Want?

What do you want? I’ve learned so much by watching Gary Vaynerchuk, and in one of his VLOG Series “Daily Vee” he asked a great question and it was “What do you want to happen in your life?” That’s such a good question because it challenges us to think and really assess what we want out of this gift of life that we have. Now more than ever we have to know what we want, and we have to know how to ask for it.

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I’m seeing that boldness, and confidence is the first step to asking questions that can open doors of opportunity. In my profession, where my team and I are constantly asking to conduct interviews with high profile people, we have to be bold and have the audacity to believe that we can secure this interview. I worked in sales for the last 6 years, from Cars, Insurance, and B2B sales. One thing remains constant in those industries and anywhere else is that we have to get out of our comfort zone and ask. “You have not because you ask not.”This is so true!

“The key to wisdom is this — constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.”– Peter Abelard

The Ask

The are many different ways to ask for something, but the key is to just ask? In the car business I saw many salesmen do a great job in everything except for asking the client if this is the car they want to buy? We are afraid of the word no, because as kids our parents constantly told us no, and the word “No” became associated with pain and rejection. We have to get rid of that! We have to ask for what we want, even if we get a no.

Asking Opens Doors

For instance, a while back our team was invited to cover an ESPN and ESPNW Women’s Summit Event, when we got there our contact from ESPN told us that we have access to interview any of the speakers of the event that we wanted, all we had to do is ask. Needless to say we weren’t the only media outlet there, and I am sure that they were offered the same access to interviews.

The difference though was that we actually asked and were the only media outlet to interview almost every guest speaker and panelist there. It was humbling, and we worked hard because we knew that this was an honor to even be there. These are world class Athletes, Olympic Gold Medalists, Broadcasters, CEOs. etc, an opportunity like this only happens once in a lifetime.

“We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell. -James Stephens”

So every time there was a break in the event or a time where a speaker that we wanted to interview got off stage, we asked our contact if we could interview them with this one simple question “Would it be possible to interview this person?”

There is nothing magic about that question, or we have asked “Would it be ridiculous to think that we can interview this person.” It doesn’t matter how you ask, just have the boldness to ask. The worst they can say is no.

Ask for that job promotion, ask that girl out, ask for that client’s business, ask for what you want. What is something that you wanted to ask, but haven’t because you were too afraid of rejection.

To get anything in this life we have to ask, and we only have one life so we need to ask BIG! It is a crucial part to our success in life. It has the chance to open doors that you would have never thought could be opened.

So, let’s begin asking for what we want and not stopping until we get it. Let’s be bold and have the audacity to move in the direction of what we want. Starting Now!

Until Next Time. I’m Out.✌🏾

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed it, hit the 👏🏾button below I really appreciate you!

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Alex Malone Speaks

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Husband and Father. Driven by purpose. One Life. A guy who is passionate about people.

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