Start Asking for What You Want

Hi ,

Have you heard of the Xerox machine study?

Don’t worry, I hadn’t either…

Ellen Langer set out to examine how people responded to requests for a favour to skip the line for a busy copy machine. She tested three questions and their compliance:

1. “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine?”: 60% compliance.

2. “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”: 93% compliance.

3. “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”: 94% compliance.

Ever wondered the formula for 0% compliance?

Not asking at all - just like every other person waiting in line.

Now, I’m not saying you should spend all day going around skipping lines and pissing people off. But what I am saying is ask. 

I mean, the benefits are endless aren’t they?

What could you possibly ask that would result in a net loss? At the very least you become comfortable being told “no”.

And, believe me, that is a skill worth having in the slogfest that is entrepreneurship.

Noah Kagan coins this “rejection therapy” - a business superpower.

I have learned first-hand that this is a superpower invisible to others but omnipotent to oneself.

Within a fortnight of commiting to developing my “ask muscle” I had secured a date with the girl I fancied for years, met a financial advisor openly offering advice, and orchestrated a collab with an inspirational entrepreneur in Thailand who would’ve been otherwise oblivious to my existence.

I think this quote from Kagan sums it up better than I could:

Don’t be most people.

Yours,

Will

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