The Quality of Your Life Comes Down To The Quality of Your Questions.

Excerpt from the Book: Entrepreneur X Factor (2nd Edition 2020) available on Amazon from 10 July 2020:

We have probably said this at every seminar we have run over the past seven years, and that’s well over 500:

The quality of your life comes down to the quality of your questions.

You never need to know the answer to anything providing you know the question to get the answer and know the right person to ask.

Most people don’t ask questions at all, or have no idea where to begin asking questions. We can trace this ineptitude back to the school system we all learnt under. For reasons we have written about in many books, questions were simply not encouraged. In fact in many cases they were frowned upon. In fact it was the reverse. Teachers asked you the questions and told you to say ‘I don’t know’, the three words that suffocate imagination and creativity and have held so many people back in their lives. You were also trained always to look at how something worked and this too is totally ‘wrong’.

Of course knowing how things work is important, but we don’t know how a refrigerator works and it doesn’t stop us using it and getting huge value from it. We have been taught to ask how, and how is a heavy, disarming question. The question all little children ask is ‘why’ – ‘Why, Mummy, why?’

Why is the first question in the constructive cycle from the 5000-year-old book – the I-Ching. It is also the question that represents the element of water. Next is the wood question – what; then the fire question – who; the earth question – when; and finally the metal question – how. Have you ever noticed that when someone has a bright idea and someone else asks ‘how’, it seems to chop down the creativity like a big axe?

Change the questions = change the answers = change the results. Here is an example of what we call a low vibration question;

“I’m a plumber. How can I make more money?”

To answer this there is a whole lot of guessing that has to be done and this gives low-quality answers, so good input is more luck than probability and the most likely outcome is a poor result or no result. Let’s just shift the question to a level-two question.

“I’m a plumber. What three specific actions could I take this week to make more money?”

Ok, here are some answers. They still may be a little off-key, but they are much better answers and will come much easier to the person who is being asked.

1. You could increase all your prices by 10%. If your profit is 40% you just increased it by 25% by doing this.
2. You could ring ten new prospective builders to see if you can do their plumbing and offer them a deal
3. You could speak to your suppliers and try and renegotiate the terms of supply to get better discounts

Can you see how much better an answer that is? Finally, you will get the best answers by framing a great question. Framing is context that gives people valid information (without going into a story or a diatribe of information).

“I’m a plumber. I specialise in large-scale commercial projects. What would be three actions I could take this week to make more money?”

Now the answer becomes very targeted.

1. Renegotiate with sub contractors, suppliers and any service that charges you money – even your accountant.
2. Do a course in negotiation of contracts. This business is about negotiation and most plumbers will need better skills in this.
3. You will be on a contract rate, so you need to put in greater efficiencies, such as taking less time to do things, better workflows and systems to ensure materials are on site and your people are not standing around with you paying them.

What more can we say. Work on your questions and you will be more successful and create greater ‘X’ factor. Here was one question we gave a friend who was applying for a senior role in a new company.

“What do I need to prove to you today that will make you cancel every other candidate and tell me the job is mine?”

He got the job.