Ask

I fucked up. I knew our car warranty had already expired, so I put off getting the air conditioner & heat fixed. It’s been comical this winter. Sometimes, on slightly warmer than freezing days, the heat just didn’t work. The windshield would fog up, and my wife, Lynette, and I would open up the windows driving around shivering so the windshield would clear.

We don’t drive much though, and since like I said, I knew the car warranty had expired, it wasn’t urgent to blow a bunch of money on repairs. But it’s getting warm out and we’d prefer to avoid a 90 degree day with no AC. So Lynette took the car in.

Surprise… The warranty had actually only expired about 7 days before. Fuck.

We could have had this stuff fixed for free months ago. Now? Thousands of dollars of fixes. Guess I’m going to have to eat that mistake right?

Not Lynette. She simply asked, “Since the warranty just expired, and we’ve had these problems for months before the warranty expired, is there anything you can do?”

And guess what? They gave us all the stuff that would have been covered under the warranty free of charge. Thousands of dollars of fixes wiped out because she simply asked to see what was possible.

What’s the worst that could have happened, they say No? Well, they didn’t.

Over and over again I see this play out like this. There’s an opportunity to ask for something and very few people do.

I exponentially grew my audience because I asked for a chance to write on a new blog network that was coming out. I now write for Forbes because I sent a tweet to a follower to see if he might introduce me to someone over there. And now I might get a chance at another magazine because of the same thing. Landed our first deal at my first company because I emailed a founder doing some cool stuff and asked if we could help. I have this job as the CEO of Highrise because I asked Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp, to help me on another project.

I’ve asked for plenty more than that. Just most of it ends up with a no. Or ignored. No response. But the downside is literally: nothing. And the stuff that does work out: awesome.

What’s something you should be asking for today but haven’t?

P.S. It would be awesome to meet you on Twitter. And want a kick in the butt to start asking for things? Start with a Highrise account and give yourself a task to email someone once a day asking for something: a job, a deal, a meeting. Don’t be a jerk about it. Offer to be a helpful human being. But ask.