The questions you ask determine your lifestyle…

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I promise you, the headline to this article is absolutely true. And it applies to every single person in this country.

It applies to questions that you ask yourself just as much as it applies to the questions you ask of others. That’s key.

I was reminded of the importance of this topic at the April National Event in Basingstoke by the quality of some of the questions that were handed in on the pink slips at the end of the morning session. Now, to be clear, there were plenty of good questions submitted but there were also an awful lot of ‘shockers’. What I mean by that is questions that were not going to help the person asking them in any meaningful way. Let me give you a couple of examples from that day:

“Can I get a vegetarian lunch?”

Completely the wrong time and place for this question. This is one of only a small number of days each year when you get the chance to ask questions of one of the country’s top entrepreneurs and marketers and you choose to use that opportunity to clarify the lunchtime menu. Bonkers doesn’t come close.

“Any tips for reducing costs on direct mail?”

This question has at its core the completely wrong starting point. No super-successful entrepreneur would ever ask a question like this. Most people focus on cost yet it’s rarely the most important thing. If I’m doing a direct mail campaign, my big question is much more about “What can I do to increase the response rate and effectiveness of this campaign?” That’s a very different starting point and it leads you to a very different place. If all you want to do is reduce the cost of your direct mail then the simple answer is not to send any. It doesn’t cost you anything then.

The average (poor) business owner does think about the cost of a direct mail campaign and that’s why they send stuff out on skinny paper, black and white, mass mailed so everything about it screams “junk, junk, junk” when it lands on the doormat.

Successful direct mail companies, like Donald Russell for instance, who we featured in last month’s Circular, send multiple pieces, printed in full colour, with reply paid envelopes. They even use stamps on the postage. None of these things are the cheapest way to do it but they are the most effective – and that’s what counts.

With this whole “quality of questions” topic top of my mind, I thought it might be helpful if I shared with you 13 questions that all super-successful entrepreneurs ask themselves and others on a regular basis. If you can get into the habit of making questions like these your start point then you’ll be stunned at the dramatic progress that takes place not just in your business but in the rest of your life. In that regard, the next couple of pages could easily be the most valuable ever sent to you by anybody. Let’s see…

1. “How can I use that in my business?”

This ought to be your instinctive, stock response whenever you see anything good. I promise you, it is for me – and it’s been at the heart of much of what we’ve achieved in business over the last 10 years. If you study my businesses and what we do, then it quickly becomes evident that there is very little original or creative thought goes on at Botty Towers. Truth is, we see things that other people are doing, we test them and then seek to deploy them in our own businesses. It’s served us very well and it contrasts markedly with the starting point of many people in business whose initial question or response is more likely to be “That won’t work for me…” (without ever trying or thinking about it), or even worse, “My business is different.” Pfui!

2. “What will make this better?”

Most normal people seem happy or satisfied doing normal things in normal ways. The problem with that is that normal people are not super-successful and that’s why this question is a really good one, and, as with all these examples, it’s one that is asked daily, by highly successful people. It doesn’t matter how tiny the detail is, what you’ll find is that super-successful people are always looking for ways to improve things and their tolerance level for normality is notoriously low. Yours should be as well.

3. “Why hasn’t anyone done this?” 

This can, of course, be a dangerous question. Ignorant, stupid people assume that because no one has done a particular thing before that there will be good reasons for that. That isn’t necessarily the case.

However, this question is worthy of considerable thought, especially if you’re planning on doing something new because there may be some really good reasons why no one has done it before and you can save yourself many hundreds of hours of toil and potentially thousands of pounds of expense all for the sake of a few hours of high quality thinking.

4. “Where next?” 

I think this is the curse of all true entrepreneurs. Our minds never rest. We’re always contemplating the next step. While this does have many disadvantages, they are trumped by the huge benefits of this approach. You see, what made you successful or got you where you are today may not keep you there. As Andrea McNeil wrote in last month’s Circular, it’s easy to get busy and do more of what you’re doing now in the hope (or belief) that this will keep you on the straight and narrow. Too often the opposite is true. I take regular time out of my business, often with a small number of my colleagues involved as well, specifically to ask ourselves this question and I have no doubt at all that that step, on its own, is responsible for a good chunk of our success.

5. “What’s the worst that could happen?” 

I know lots of entrepreneurs who have consciously chosen not to do something because of an irrational fear. If they’d worked things through and objectively answered this question, they would have enjoyed significantly higher levels of success in their business. Most of the time the real answer to this question is not all that scary – it’s just that most people never get to the real answer because they never ask the question.

6. “Can we do this faster?”

Today, more than ever before, speed really matters. Momentum is arguably one of the most powerful forces in business and it is most often generated by people doing things and moving their business at speed. I am impatient. I do ask unreasonable things of my staff and my suppliers, but once again, this is a characteristic that you’ll find in many other super-successful business owners and it would be wrong to dismiss it. Doing things faster and getting there quicker leads to greater success. And, of course, if you operate by the timescales of normal people then you’ll become a normal person, and as we’ve already proven, normal people are not enjoying super success.

7. “Where would I find?”

Lack of initiative in others is something I find hugely frustrating. After every national event, I guarantee I get half a dozen emails from members asking me where they can find more information on something that I’ve spoken about the day before. In pretty much every single case, all I do is Google the name or the topic that they are asking about and send them the Google results page. I mean, honestly! Yet another characteristic of all super-successful entrepreneurs is their ability to get what they need and that means being able to use our inquisitive brains, ask the right questions and get the right answers. It is easier to do this in 2013 than at any other time in history and if you’re able to tap into the initiative that lies deep within your soul then all sorts of amazing things can happen. This question can unlock it all.

8. “Is this sustainable?” 

This question has a slightly different angle / slant to it and I’ll confess that it hasn’t always been top of my agenda (many of the things we’ve done in business over the last 10 years haven’t, in truth, been sustainable… as we’ve found out!). I’m now much more knowledgeable than I was when I started out and I’m no longer interested in building things that will be here this year and gone in a year or two’s time. I want to build things that will last. It’s much more effective to devote my energies, and that of my team, to something that is genuinely sustainable but you have to go deep into the business model and the market and have an understanding of what you’re providing to honestly answer the question.

9. “Who can help me?” 

The reality is that there are very few, if any, things that you want to do in your business that somebody somewhere hasn’t done before and in many instances you’ll be able to secure their help. Since dining at The Fat Duck last month, I’ve studied Heston Blumenthal’s career and story. I hadn’t realised, for instance, that he has no formal training and all the amazing things he does in his restaurant have been developed in conjunction with others – most of them scientists, not chefs. In short, he got help from the right people and some of the letters he wrote are shown, in full, in his book. I’ve never been too proud or blinkered to ask for help and you shouldn’t be either.

10. “Who could do this for me?” 

You will all have heard my adage, I’m sure, that “if you haven’t got an assistant, then you are one.” And the reality is that many entrepreneurs and business owners spend far too much time each week doing things that others could do for them. I’d wager a hefty sum that a significant part of your workload could be delegated to someone else and that doing so would free up massive chunks of your time, which you could use really effectively to develop and grow your business. Now that’s a smart question to ask.

11. “Is that really true?” 

I am frequently amazed at the willingness of people to accept what someone says as gospel – just because they said it. I’m much more discerning and you should be too. Ask the right follow-up  questions, seek evidence and F-A-C-T-S especially if you’re going to make decisions involving your money and your time and your reputation. It’s a big one, this.

12. “What’s the message?” 

Again, a question that precious few business owners ever ask themselves but those that do are, generally, those enjoying the most success. That’s not a coincidence. Before you sit down and craft any piece of marketing, whether it’s a Google Ad Word, a leaflet or flyer or next week’s email to your database, just understand, before you hit the keyboard or pick up the pencil, what you want the person receiving the message to hear, understand and do as a result. Armed with these three pillars, you’ve got a chance of crafting something useful that will help you move forward. Without it, you’re flailing around in the dark like every other business out there, and as you already know, most other businesses are not super-successful.

13. “What would XXX do?”

When I ask this question, it’s typically Donald Trump in place of the XXX. But for that to be the case, I had to study Mr Trump in great detail. I’ve read nine separate books about him, in addition to all the books that he’s ever written. I have also watched several TV programmes and heard him speak live on a couple of occasions. In short, I have equipped myself to answer this question knowledgeably from an objective, factual perspective. Unless you understand the person that you insert in place of the Xs, then there’s a risk to this, but when you do, this can be a really great question that gets you out of your own mindset and into somebody else’s and it has often liberated my thinking and been responsible for some of the big leaps forward that we’ve made. I hope it is for you too.