Author And Thought Leader Wayne Baker Shares How To Unlock Success Through The Simple Act Of Asking (#237)

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life. 

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At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

Imagine you're on a deadline for a big project and feeling overwhelmed, or you're looking for a new job, but you can't seem to get your foot in the door, or perhaps you're facing a personal challenge and just don't know what to do. 

What do these problems have in common? 

They can all be solved simply by reaching out to a colleague, friend, acquaintance, or wider network and making an ask.

Studies show that asking for help makes us [00:02:00] better and less frustrated at our jobs. It helps us find new opportunities and new talent. It unlocks new ideas and solutions and enhances team performance, and it also helps us get the things we need outside the workplace. And yet we rarely give ourselves permission to ask.

 Luckily, the research shows that asking and getting what we need is much easier than we think. 

Wayne Baker shares dozens of tools use at companies like Google, GM and IDEO that individuals, teams and leaders can use to make asking for help a personal and organizational habit, such as smart criteria for making an ask, plug and play routines that make requests a standard component of meetings, mini games that incentivize asking within teams and the Reciprocity Ring, and Givitas tools that allow people to tap into the giving power of a network.

Wayne Baker is a Professor of management and Organizations at the University of Michigan, ROSS School of Business, Faculty Director of the Center for Positive Organizations.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast, and [00:03:00] wow do we have a guest lined up for you today and for all you business owners, CEOs, presidents, founders, entrepreneurs, all of you. I have a rhetorical question and a loaded question, but I'm gonna ask it anyways. Would you like to find an incredibly powerful strategy and a tool that will take your company, your growth, your revenues, your profits, your enterprise value, and the list goes on to the next level?

And of course, you said yes. You're probably saying, Jeffrey, what is it? Hold on to that thought. No spoiler alerts here. We have Wayne, who's on the podcast with us. Wayne, Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. Such a pleasure to have you here. And Wayne, I'm curious, there's always a story behind the story because you're a thought leader with what you've done and the book that you've published and the companies that you've worked with.

That in and of itself is a story behind the story. But what's your story? What got you to where you are today?

Wayne Baker: Thank you Jeffrey, and nice to have this opportunity to chat with you today. Yeah, so the origin story would have to go way back when I was earning my PhD in Sociology of all things. I'm a business [00:04:00] school professor now and a consultant in number of other roles. But as a sociologist, I learned how to analyze things, but I didn't learn how to do anything.

And so I was working at that time as an assistant professor in a business school, and I would teach people how to analyze their social networks. So this was long before the social networks we know of Facebook and LinkedIn. And the social network is just, it's the people we know our connections, our inter connections and so forth.

This the formal and informal network of relationships. I teach my students how to analyze it, but they would always say that's great. I have got these insights, but what do I do? How can I actually use this? And I didn't have a really good answer for that. But then one day I had a conversation with my wife Cheryl, and I was describing this concept of paying it forward or sometimes called by a more academic term of generalized reciprocity means that.

Jeffrey, you helped me. I feel grateful. I pay it forward, and I help a third person, and maybe [00:05:00] it's the fourth person who comes around and helps you. And so I described this principle, this universal principle of paying it forward. And from that we devise an activity called the reciprocity ring which has now been used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Many different languages, different countries. A process by which people can ask for what they need and spend most of the time helping other people. Now, when I would do this and I think this is the main point here, is that when I would run these activities, they were always successful no matter where I was in the world when I was running this and extraordinary things would happen.

But I would start every event the same way with a little lecture about the importance of generosity, of helping people, of being a giver. But what I found was that was never the problem that people were extraordinarily generous and willing to give of their time and resources to other people. But everyone struggled with figuring out what to ask for.

And if you don't ask, people don't know what you need,[00:06:00] and what I found is, so that's why I wrote my latest book. All You Have to Do Is Ask it turns out that that ask is the secret, if you will, to generosity. So most people will help if you ask, but you've gotta ask. And so that's the origin story of coming from a very academic background, but having to make tools that would really help people in the real world.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What a great story. And for our listeners in the show notes, we'll have a link to Wayne's book. All you have to do is ask how to master the most important skills for success, and it'll just be a point and click. It can't get any easier. And so let me ask you, Wayne, and we'll go into some of the details and the methods of the madness and all those other things, but I'm sure some listeners are saying, okay, Wayne, I hear you.

But maybe culturally asking is so hard, or in the business that I'm in, that's just not to be done. Or can asking a question really make that much of a difference, really? Come on. So to those people, what would you say?

Wayne Baker: There's a lot of barriers to asking for what you need. But again, people are not [00:07:00] mind readers, they're not telepathic. They can't help you unless they know what you need. And the only way they know what you need is if you voice your needs, that you make a request for something. And so, one of the very common barriers is that people are reluctant to ask because they don't think anyone is willing or able to help. A bunch of studies have come up with just the opposite. If you ask even strangers, they're willing to help. Another common one is that I don't want to be a burden to anyone. It's gonna put people out if I ask them for something, and yet what we find again is that people are delighted to help if you would actually go and ask them and the list could go on and on, and sometimes it's as simple as, I don't really have a lot of practice at asking and I'm not sure how to do it.

And so one of the things I write about in the book is a couple of different methods, what an individual could do to figure out. What is it that they need? It starts with what your objective is, what your goal is, what resources do you need to help you achieve that goal or objective. Then you have to formulate it [00:08:00] as a, what I would call a smart request.

And then you actually figure out who to ask and when to ask. And sometimes to ask isn't a person, it's a community. One of the great things now with tools like LinkedIn or others is that you could make your ask to a much larger community. So, yeah, a lot of things will get in the way, but I think it's asking is like a muscle that it will atrophy if you don't use it.

But if you use it regularly, it gets stronger.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so for the reciprocity ring, and by the way, for the listeners, again in the show notes, you can visit Wayne's website, giveandtakeinc.com. And I'm wondering though, Wayne, on the reciprocity ring, when you're going through that and offline, you're sharing how across cultures, different cultures this works and it's more or less the same results.

What's some of the science behind it? What's really going on of why the reciprocity ring, the ability to even ask a question and get that help across networks. What's happening there?

Wayne Baker: Archeologists and anthropologists think that we evolved as a species to [00:09:00] engage in reciprocity. So if you think that, way back when, daily survival was the real issue is that maybe on a hunt I was successful and you weren't. But I would share my hunt with you knowing that some point in the future I'm gonna be in that situation and you would reciprocate and that you would share the hunt with me as well.

And so actually archeologists think that society became possible because we evolved in a way to give and get help from one another. And so it's part of our DNA. We are hardwired to do this. Now, a whole bunch of things get in the way. If you think back in school, children in elementary school ask questions all the time, and if you're a parent, young children ask questions.

They ask for things all the time. But eventually, I think the educational system drums it out of them where you don't wanna look stupid in front of your classmates, so you don't wanna ask a question and you know, you feel vulnerable. And so we learn, we unlearn that important thing [00:10:00] of asking for what we need.

And so what we do is to try to reverse that so we can relearn it as adults now. There are things that, for example, that a leader could do. So he could say, if I'm running a team, I could help set, what our practices are, what our routines would be, and help to create norms around asking for and giving help.

And there are teams, in fact, all organizations that have done that, that have discovered that almost anything is possible if you ask. And so you wanna develop that as part of your culture.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And I know as I was reading through the book, what I really appreciated, Wayne, was you had both business examples and personal examples. And I know on the personal side you shared for your anniversary with Cheryl, your wife, the surprise that you thought it's a stretch, but let me see. I'm gonna put the system to the test and put that out there.

Maybe just for fun, can you share that with our listeners of putting the system to the test? It was a very personal ask on something that you want to do to really celebrate the anniversary and what happened.

Wayne Baker: Oh, thank you. It was one of those magic [00:11:00] moments in our lives. So we were coming up on our 10th wedding anniversary and when we got married, we didn't have any money, so Cheryl never got. She never got a wedding ring. Never had an engagement ring. And so what I said is that when we hit our 10th anniversary, hopefully I'll have the resources.

And I did, said I'm gonna surprise her with a ring. And I said, okay, I'm gonna do that. But I made a mistake, which was a couple of months before our anniversary. I said, we've got this big milestone coming up, and I know I secretly had this ring made. She didn't know about it. We had this milestone coming up.

What would you like to do? Or where would you like to be to celebrate? And without a pause, Cheryl said, I would like us to be guests of Emerald Lagasse on Emerald Live, The Food Network Celebrity Chef Show. Now, Emerald's not on as much as it used to be, but in his heyday, he was on every night and we were real fans of the show and we thought it was just great entertainment.

We learned things about cooking. Well, [00:12:00] I had tried to get tickets on that show before and it's easier to get struck by lightning and win the lottery in the same day than it is to get tickets on that show. But I had an opportunity, I was doing one of our orientation programs for our MBA students at the University of Michigan, and we were doing it in a big field.

It was in August. And there's so 550 new incoming MBA students. And I was starting to teach her about these early principles about reciprocity and asking, and I thought, I'm going to. I'm gonna practice what I preach and it was hard to do, right? Because as the professor, I'm supposed to have all the answers, but I said, okay, so I explained the situation, milestone anniversary.

I wanted to had this ring, wanted to give it, you know, we wanted to be on Emerald Live. That was the request for my wife. Well to my amazement, four people came forward. Somebody knew somebody who was dating Emerald's daughter. That's absolutely true. But they broke up and that didn't work out.

Somebody knew somebody who worked [00:13:00] with Emerald's publicist, but the connection that worked out was that there was somebody who was a, there was a MBA student and his wife were good friends with the segment producer for an occasional show that he would do on a Good Morning America, and so, I said, I'll make the request.

No guarantees. Made the request. And then I got this invitation to fly to New York City and to at least be on the filming of a segment he was doing for Good Morning America. No promises about going over to the food network, but we were there. We met Emerald. He was really a really kind, very nice person.

And at the end of that, we got two tickets to go across town to be his VIP guest, and we were actually sitting in the audience right up front filming Emerald Live. It turned out that they were filming Valentine's Day, which I didn't know either. So it was amazing how that all came together. And at the very end, the producer came up to me, took me aside, said You've got to give the ring?

Cuz I [00:14:00] had asked by the email, oh, could I give the ring? Never had a response, which I thought meant no. But and I said, yeah, I got the ring in my pocket. Said, okay, well Emerald's gonna say something. You'll know when it's your cue. Be brief. I say something nice. I said, okay, great. So I'm thinking MBA bullet points.

Right? I had like four points I was gonna make, I was running 'em through my head. And yeah, so I had a chance to again, film me Valentine's Day, got the ring. My wife said it was the first time in her life that she'd been a 100% surprise. Gave her the ring on Emerald Live where she wanted to be for our 10th wedding anniversary.

The crowd erupts, and as we're leaving, people were saying, how did they find you? And I said,

Alls I had to do was ask, right? Is that we actually, you know, we found them right? They didn't find us because I made a request to a group of students, they came forward, one of those connections worked out, and I was able to have this magic moment for our anniversary.

Now the last part I'll say about this, people say that student must have gotten an A from you. That student [00:15:00] never took a class for me, ever. In fact, I've actually forgotten his name. But what I can do is pay it forward by telling this story as an illustration of the real power of asking for what you need in the world and how it will elicit all kinds of responses and resources. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: What a story, and congratulations with that. And it's that little wonder that chapter one in the book, Just Ask and Miracles Happen. That was literally a miracle. It was a long shot. But is demonstrating the reciprocity ring and getting things out there. So Wayne, from the personal side, let's now focus on the business side, and I'll share with you a Deep Wealth of our nine-step roadmap.

Step number two, we call X-Factors, that insanely increase the value or the enterprise value of a business. And culture is an X-Factor because it's so unique. It's like a fingerprint. And when you do it right, when you have a thriving and rich culture that helps the business grow, you keep your customers, you're increasing the enterprise value.

It's just a good news story. I would imagine that the whole reciprocity [00:16:00] ring and the ability to ask for help in a culture and that's embedded in the culture can really move the dial on success. I would love to hear some maybe thoughts or some observations from the trenches. What have you seen in the business world with us?

Wayne Baker: There's two very different approaches to culture change in an organization.

Probably the more traditional one is that, okay, we're gonna have lectures about the values that we aspire to, and we're gonna come up with a nice mission statement and hopefully people are gonna change their attitudes and then we'll change the behaviors.

Hard to do that rarely works. The other way of thinking about culture change is I'm not gonna preach about values and beliefs and all that stuff. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask you for new behaviors. And when people behave in a different way, then their experience becomes the evidence that they need to update.

Their attitudes and their beliefs. And so what I've done throughout my career is focus on the practices. So reciprocity ring is a very [00:17:00] effective one. That's one of the ones I guarantee it. It always works. A Givitas is the app version of it. But as a leader, and it could be of a small team or an entire organization, you'd say, okay, I wanna do a 45 day experiment, and that 45 day experiment is going to be.

Maybe engaging in this reciprocity ring every week. Once a week. And here's the ground rules. Will you just engage in that experiment with me? And if people do it for that 45 days, what happens is that they go, oh, I get it. I finally get it. Now, I see the importance of asking skeptical before, and I see how generous people have become.

And so they update their attitudes and their beliefs and the culture changes as a result. So I call it the behavior first principle is that you always, you wanna change what people think. You gotta change first, what they do.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And from startups to some of the titans of business, I know that you've been working with just the large names that are out there. [00:18:00] What have you seen across the different cultures business-wise? And since the book has come out, has there been any change in terms of some of the performance or some of the results that you've been getting?

Wayne Baker: So the book came out in the beginning of 2020 and we all know what happened in 2020. And so we had the shift, so I didn't write in 2020 about all the ways this could be done remotely or virtually, but I had the practices, I had the behaviors that I would advocate. And so what I learned over that year and the next year was how do you actually do these if we're doing them through Zoom or something else like Zoom?

What I discovered was that, the practices work just as well, that sometimes the groups can be much bigger. And it also gave people a way to connect on a human basis. And so one of the things that I learned was that when we were all in that world learning zoom and everything was that if we're gonna do something like the reciprocity ring, we're not gonna be together physically, we're not gonna be using the posters, all that kind of stuff.

But we still have the [00:19:00] recipe, if you will, is that I found it was always important to start with something personal, that people would make a request for something that they needed in their personal lives, for their families, for their communities, for a charity, whatever it might be. And let's not focus on the business stuff or career stuff right now.

And that really, really opened people up and help people to connect in a human way at a time when we were. The world was full of great uncertainty. And then you could get to the business stuff and the career stuff and you had more of a foundation of trust. And so, I had that principle in mind a long time ago, but it really, that's a change that I've seen over time.

And so I have always encouraged business leaders to encourage people to share things about their personal lives, to make requests related to something about their personal lives, to maybe you have to do it in a small group, in a small form, where people feel safer at first before doing it in a larger group.

But that human connection becomes a foundation for, what might be the business [00:20:00] issue that you wanna deal with.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Wayne, if I'm a listener now and I'm saying, okay, you know what I really like what I'm hearing. I have an opportunity to have my team get to know each other, both at a personal level as well as at a professional level. We can really change the culture in a way that works, not forcing it in a way that's expensive and it takes time and it doesn't work.

And yes I want to go down that path. What would you recommend? Where do We start and how do we start doing that?

Wayne Baker: And so there's two ways I would recommend. One would be to go to the website for the book, which is allyouhavetodoisask.com. I direct you there because there are a lot of free resources cause I wanted to give back to the larger community. So one thing that I have in the book is an assessment that asks you a number of questions about your giving style and your asking style.

And so we've created an online or digital version of it that is free. So I would recommend something to go in and maybe even a couple of people in the organization to go in and take [00:21:00] that assessment. That'll take more than five or six minutes to do. If you enter your email address you'll get a customized report to see how you compare to the first 2000 or so people who took that assessment. There's a roadmap there for the, all you have to do is ask Journey that's free too. I recommend people to download that and freely share it, to start a conversation about it. The second thing I'd recommend is to go to the website for Givitas the digital version of the reciprocity ring, which is giveandtakeinc.com, and to join one of our free communities.

There's a whole bunch of communities they are having to do with one of the ones that, in fact, when I was writing my, book, I would post a request to it. I'm looking for a fresh story about X or something, and I would get connected to an HR director for one of the Aboriginal corporations in Alaska.

And that's a true story. I've learned amazing things from people responding to me that from the requests that I would make and people might say, oh look, that's great. They did that cuz they wanted to be in your book. [00:22:00] So a lot of people wanted to help, but they said, I don't wanna be in the book cuz I don't wanna have to get my boss's approval for this, right?

I just wanna help you out. But if you go there's a free Givitas community for many different kinds of groups. There's ones for entrepreneurs, for women leaders, on and on. Join one of those and take a test drive, and see.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What I love about the Givitas communities, and again for the listeners, it'll be in the show notes as a point and click. There's a Givitas for Leaders, for Women at work, if you're an HR leader or a young professional. But then Wayne, you've taken some of the personalities out there who are just world class or subject matter experts and whether it's Daniel Pink or Adam Grant or just other people that are there, you have their Givitas community as well.

So it's just a nice blend of business, personal, everything in between that we can get ourselves exposed to. And so with all that said, then where we are, so we're, I'd like to say, Wayne, that we're really out of the pandemic. We're post pandemic, looking back where we've been and now looking [00:23:00] forward where we're going to.

And it seems that remote work in office, out of office, it seems to be changing by the day as , the pendulum swinging back and forth. But regardless of where we land on that, can you speak with our listeners in terms of that value of just having that comfort level, that openness, that people, whether it's remote or in the office or something in between, that they have that comfort level of, Hey, I can ask this question.

I'm not gonna be shamed for asking the question and in fact, I'll be encouraged to ask the question. It'll be a good thing to do.

Wayne Baker: I would encourage people to start small and to start in a safe space. Now that could be your community. It could be your neighborhood, it could be your friendship group at work, or it could be, you know, the small Givitas community that's set up for one of the employee resource groups for an example.

And I would encourage people to, you know, use some of the tools from the book, you know, how do you come up with a what's the request? The well-structured request. The well formulated request. So it's gonna help to get a response to learn that and to [00:24:00] actually apply that. One of the things that we did see is that when everyone went remote, the social fabric disintegrated.

And that a lot of connections were lost, particularly those weak connections, which we know that weak connections are actually very important because that's how information is passed and so forth. You know, you hear about these little opportunities from someone you've just met and ends up to lead somewhere big.

 I was looking at some statistics recently about back to the office work from home, and they're shifting back and forth as to which one's winning. I always encourage people to be flexible and to not be authoritarian about it because what we also learned is that people were really productive when they were working at home. They didn't have commute time. They could better handle childcare or whatever it might be. But they did become a little disconnected. And so I always encourage people to be flexible with your workforce and to provide the tools that they need to build, rebuild, and strengthen their social fabric. So could be, for example, having [00:25:00] everyone come back to the office and engaging these activities on asking for giving and getting help. That would be one. It would be providing tools like Givitas or others that would enable them to practice that when they're working from home.

I think it's incumbent upon the leaders to provide the tools and the incentives for using them to build, rebuild, and strengthen the social fabric.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Wayne, as you're talking about this, I suspect some listeners are saying, hey, this sounds really positive. That said, though, in every situation, there's always unintended consequences where things happen. And what I'm thinking about is not everyone, most people I find are really good and they respect the system, the rules.

It's a give and take, and I want to be a taker as much as I want to be a giver. On the flip side though, every now and again, I suspect you've come across this where someone really doesn't want to give as much as they want to take. And some could say that's really abusing the system. So how can you protect from a very small, I suspect, minority group of people that are [00:26:00] really all about taking as opposed to giving and trying to take a system like this with all the benefits and really use it for their personal gain or advantage.

Wayne Baker: Fortunately, there's not a lot of people like that, but there are people like that. A friend of mine who's now retired, used to work for IBM Consulting, and when I described what I called the selfish taker, that type, he'd say, oh, we called them sponges. You know, because they just absorbed everything and never gave a drop back to anyone else.

What we find over time is that people stop helping those people because they see that they're taking and they're never giving back. Sometimes coaching will help that person that would be a giving person that benefited the doubt. And sometimes it means helping the person find another position someplace else, right?

If they're not gonna contribute in a positive way to the culture. Another way of thinking about it's a little bit more longer term is to really evaluate the kinds of people you recruit into your organization and to, you wanna recruit people who are going to be givers. They're gonna [00:27:00] be helpers but they're gonna ask for what they need as well, what they call those giver requesters.

You want people to generously help other people. Don't keep track about whether it comes back to you from that person or not. But if you've helped a community of people, they're already willing and able to help you when you have a request. So voice or request as well. So I would think about how do you screen to get the right people to come in for that kind of culture?

What tools do you provide for them to help them learn and reinforce those behaviors? Provide coaching for those people who are still struggling with it and sometimes a graceful Exit for those who are just not gonna get it, not gonna help, and would be better off someplace else.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Wayne, as you're talking about that, and I'll bounce this by you, what's running through my mind is perhaps that free assessment that you have online. Having the opportunity for people in the organization to go through that and see where do people land? What are the results? You know, hopefully they'll share the results with the team leader and the leadership, but trying to get a temperature read, okay, here's my team today.

And knowing what we know now, I liked what you said when we're [00:28:00] hiring for new people, why don't we build that into some of the questions that we're asking. Are they a give or a taker equal, somewhere in between just to get all of that going. Thoughts about that?

Wayne Baker: Using that assessment would be a great way of doing it. It's a great way of starting the conversation about the topic. If you think about it as a screening, as a screening tool, you could use that in a related way you can also ask different questions in the interview process.

For example, if somebody keeps talking, you know, you talk about some major accomplishments that you've been a part of. We always know that those are collective, it's not just one person. But if the person is using I language rather than we language. That's a clue, right? That the person is okay.

Alright. That's a clue. We want people who are gonna use we and us language rather than I language. That's a kind of a verbal cue that you can look for. Another is we really asked people, tell me an example when you were stuck at work and you really needed, you were really stuck, what did you do? And if somebody says I just put my head down and I worked at it and worked at it and worked at it until I [00:29:00] got it done. Okay, that's great.

But I Would like somebody who would say, I put my head down. I worked and worked, and at some point I said, you know, I'm gonna be a lot better off if I start asking others for help with this.

And if I start asking, you know, so in their behaviors, do you see that they have asked for help in the past? Do they give generously to other people in the past? And so it's tweaking some of those questions that we ask in interviews to gather, what, are they gonna be one of those giver requesters or not?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Some terrific advice, sir. And wait, let me ask you this because I suspect that what we can master on the personal side will eventually go over onto the business side. And at Deep Wealth we are big believers whoever said that business isn't personal either, was never part of a business or never owned a business, never ran a business.

Business is so personal. What's going on, on the personal side absolutely does have an impact on the business side. So for someone that wants to take an action item and out of every episode, we always encourage the listeners, hey, before you go to your next meeting, or phone call or email, take one thing, one [00:30:00] strategy that you've heard in the episode right now.

And apply it to your life. And so let's make this easy. So someone who's saying, Wayne, I really like this idea of giving and taking and I'm a terrific giver. I'm a terrible receiver. What could someone do in their personal life? Just low stakes, relatively easy to do, to begin to really embrace this practice of both giving and receiving.

They've never really formalized or done this before, but they wanna start doing that now. Any strategy that you could recommend?

Wayne Baker: One thing that I've given advice on before and I know will work is that before you start your workday, and maybe you're still at home or maybe you're on your commute or maybe having your first cup of coffee, is to pause and reflect on the day that's before you and say, okay, what am I trying to accomplish today?

And what kind of resources do I need that would help me to accomplish that? Do I need advice? Do I need feedback on a report? Do I have a question to ask? Whatever it might be, what resources would I need? And then when I am at work, I'm gonna look for an opportunity to make that [00:31:00] request.

For whatever it is. But I know in my mind why I'm making the request because it's to help me achieve that goal or that objective. I've got a clear idea of what it is that I wanna ask for. And then the perfect excuse is to say, hey, I was just listening to Jeffrey's podcast, and they had somebody on who was talking about the importance of asking for what you need.

 I know this sounds like a crazy idea. But I thought, why not try it out today? And so, you know, if you all don't mind, here's what I was thinking about this morning and here's something I could use some help with. Or here's some advice I could use. Right? And people will go, wow.

And then, and they say is there someone else? Is there something else you'd like to ask? Right. Or somebody else would like to give some help on? And so it's basically using what they heard in the podcast as the reason for bringing the subject up. So that makes it less personal or less it's not as threatening, or I don't feel as vulnerable because they say, I heard these crazy ideas and I thought maybe it wouldn't work for us.

Let's give it a shot.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific suggestion. And you know what? It's an [00:32:00] experiment. Try it out. We're not expecting perfection. At least do something and to keep this real, to keep it personal. Wayne, I was reading an article and the article grabbed me because it said Steve Jobs, he shared a secret for success and it was, don't be afraid to ask for help.

And the article talked about how Steve. Before he started Apple, he originally reached out. He called HP, the founder of hp and said, Hey I'm building some parts here you might be able to help me with it. Can you help? And he got a yes, why don't you come on over to the house and we'll get that going.

And then your book was referenced in there. You know, Here's a great book that talks about that principle. And I say, you know what? I don't know Wayne, he doesn't know me, but I'm gonna send a cold email right out of the blue. Hey, Wayne, can you help me? I have this podcast, would love to have you on.

And here we are a short while later today having the podcast so it really does work. And for the listeners, follow Wayne's advice. Definitely get the book, check out all the resources that we'll have in the show notes. But try it. You don't know un unless you try. And so Wayne, that's some excellent advice to share.

Let me ask you this [00:33:00] before we go into wrap up mode, and I have the privilege and the honor to ask a question. I ask all the guests on the Deep Wealth Podcast. Wayne, are there any questions or topics that I haven't asked that you'd like to mention or share with the listeners?

Wayne Baker: I think we've covered a lot of it. I would love for people to tryout Givitas to join one of those communities. So I would reiterate that invitation and to take that experimental mindset and to think about and let's give it a try for a period of time.

See what happens. We'll learn, we'll keep doing it. If it works. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else. You know, and I would love to hear back from people who have tried some of the stuff that we've talked about today, and they could contact me and tell me, How it worked or how it did it work, and we'll all learned together.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What a terrific offer. And again, in the show notes, we'll have all that for you and we'll circle back to that in just a moment. Wayne, why don't we do this? As much as I'd like to continue to go down this path of hearing your experience and the strategies, we'll need to start to wrap some things up.

And here's the question for you. I'll set this up. It's a fun question. When you think of the [00:34:00] movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. So Wayne, the fun part is tomorrow morning you look outside your window. Not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in so you can go to any point in your life.

So you hop into the DeLorean car and you're now gonna go back to a younger Wayne. Wayne as a teenager, a young child, whatever point in time it would be. What would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or, Hey Wayne, do this, but don't do that. What would that sound like?

Wayne Baker: Wow, that's, I've never thought about. What a great question. And I would love to have that DeLorean that's for sure. Yeah.

Jeffrey Feldberg: You and me both. Yeah.

Wayne Baker: I think I would go back in time to my wife and I have been married, it would be 33 years this year. We have one child who's 21. Right. So we're older parents, and if I would go back in time, I would say to myself, you know what, maybe he should have started a little bit earlier.

One child is great. Like I said, we got just the one we wanted. [00:35:00] Didn't want more than one, but maybe start a little bit earlier.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, so some terrific advice out there for all the parents or the parents to be, maybe you're on the sidelines, you got it straight from Wayne, who's been down this path now, and congratulations on a 21 year old. That's absolutely terrific. Wayne, I'm right there with you. I have two daughters, and if I could wave my magic wand I would have two to three times that, but it is what it is.

But for the listeners, some food for thought. Wayne, we will wrap this up and let me ask you this. I know in the show notes we'll have a link to the book and really encourage all the listeners to get the book. All You Have To Do Is Ask how to master the most important skill for success. We'll have a link to give it to us.

We'll have a link to your website with the assessment so we can see what kind of giver receiver we are, where we land on all that. If someone does wanna reach you online though, where would be the best place for them to reach you?

Wayne Baker: They could reach me through LinkedIn or could just send me an email directly.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, terrific. And again, for our listeners, we'll have all that in the show notes for you. It'll be a point and click. It doesn't get any easier. Well, Wayne, it's official. This is a wrap. Thank [00:36:00] you so much for your time, your insights, your wisdom, and as we say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe.

Thank you so much.

Wayne Baker: Thank you Jeffrey. It's been a bit a pleasure. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his [00:37:00] or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a [00:38:00] lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

 If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this [00:39:00] episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel. Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show. And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always please stay healthy and safe.