Zero-G Creative

Asking for help

Aug 05 2008

As an entrepreneur myself, I know what a lonely world it can be out there for small business owners. Especially for those of us who used to work in corporate. In the corporate world, if you have a problem or get stuck on something you can just go down the hall and ask someone to help you work it out. As business owners, you don’t always have the same luxury. Especially if you work at home and your coworker down the hall is actually a cat.

I had a problem last week and needed some expert advice: one of my web projects was hung up in a technical issue. Our client was having a hard time configuring their server to meet the requirements of our web application and my developers were stumped… I started by pulling out my business card portfolio to see if I had anyone in there who could help, but didn’t find anyone promising. I didn’t know an expert, I thought, so why not ask strangers?

So I went on LinkedIn Answers and asked for a referral to a server admin with expertise in the area we were looking for.

I was overwhelmed by the response. I had people writing in within 10 minutes of posting the request and over a couple of days I’ve gotten about a dozen good responses, including the one that referred me to the expert I’ve hired to come in and fix the problem.

As entrepreneurs we may not work in big offices, but we’re not really alone either.