8 Business Questions to Ask Yourself

These are 8 thought-provoking questions to ask yourself, your partners, or employees [Watch Video](=) → = Each of these are designed as thought-provoking questions that will help your business get more clear on what you offer and how to grow. ​ ​Here's the 8 questions I go over in the video: - If you didn’t own the company, would you buy your product? How much would you pay? - What outcome do you want in 2 years from this business? - In 3 months what could be the biggest change you make to your business that would get more (or better) customers. - What specific pain point are you solving? Is there a demand for that solution? - You only have 1 hour a week to grow your business….what would you do during that hour for most impact? - Is there a process you do right now that could be automated? - What’s a weird way a customer uses your product? - Which social network brings you the most customers? ​ Let's break down each one a bit more: ​ 1.) If you didn’t own the company, would YOU buy your product? How much would you pay? How could you make your product or service a complete no-brainer? - Really think if you would buy your own product/service. - Would you specifically buy it from YOU, or are other alternatives better? - What would tip your offering into "no-brainer" territory? ​ ​ 2.) What outcome do you want in 2 years from this business? This is an important question and time frame. One year might be too little to get big results, and 10 years might be too far out to predict. - In 2 years where do you want your income level to be from this business? - In 2 years what other side benefits do you want? Larger social accounts? More friends in the industry? - In 2 years what size could this realistically grow to? ​ ​ 3.) In 3 months what could be the biggest change you make to your business that would get more (or better) customers. This question is good because it gives you enough time to implement almost any change. - In 3 months what if you had a proper podcast outreach program going that gets you in front of other audiences? - What if you build out a way to publish consistent content on your most effective social platform? - Can you start regularly participating (or planning meetups) in the places where your ideal customer hangs out? ​ 4.) What specific pain point are you solving? Is there a demand for that solution? Sometimes businesses can flounder for a long time if they are not solving a specific problem. - Is your company actually solving a real pain point, or just something that would be "nice to have?" - Is there actual demand for this solution? - Are there other companies selling similar stuff? That's usually a good sign. If no one is selling something similar, it could be there's no demand. - You can sell high quality sweaters for squirrels, but there might not be enough demand to make it a full time business. - There might be thousands of insurance agents out there already selling insurance, but that indicates there's lots of demand. 5.) You only have 1 hour a week to grow your business….what would you do during that hour for most impact? I bet you know the answer to this already. - I've found that reaching out to new audiences for video or podcast collaborations to be a great source of quickly driving new business. - Some of the activities you do probably have more bang-for-the-buck than others, can you double down on those? - Is there a system you can put in place to make sure these high-value activities happen every week? ​ 6.) Is there a process you do right now that could be automated? Humans are good at critical thinking and making decisions. Computers are good at doing exact commands at certain times. Maybe there's some tech you can put in place to replace a process you manually do? - If you have trouble scheduling posts, perhaps getting software to auto-schedule for you would be a great fit. - I used so spend so much time just scheduling meetings with people, but then implemented Calendly and bypassed all that frustration. - I bet there's 1-3 process you do right now that can be nearly 100% automated with cheap or free software tools out there. - When I ran HouseOfRave I would manually copy-and-paste orders from my website to the fulfilment warehouse. This took me 1-2 hours a day. There were all sorts of weird issues that would happen needing my attention, so I thought it was impossible to outsource to a computer. I found a cheap plugin that did the exact thing, and it went from an hour a day to 1 minute. ​ 7.) Which social network brings you the most customers? Instead of trying to half-ass all the social networks, what if you were to spend all your time dominating one? - Different platforms appeal to different industries. Find yours. - Pinterest is great for visual stuff, food, fashion etc. - Twitter is great for investing, tech, humor etc. - Instagram is great for health, fashion etc. - ​[Figure out the social platform you like best](, have a natural advantage at, and can create "Cascading Content" from. ​ 8.) What’s a weird way a customer uses your product? Sometimes these weird edge cases become your biggest sellers of products, and can help you branch out into different industries. Here's three examples from my first eCommerce company that sold rave equipment and light up and glow things: - A plumbing company bought 50+ packages of "finger lights" used by ravers. I called them up to ask why and they said, "Our plumbers have to climb under sinks and cabinets and sometimes can't see, so they put these finger lights on their finger to light things up." - I used to think 16 year old ravers were my target audience, but they rarely could afford more than $20 on an order. However 35 year old moms buying light up stuff for their child's birthday would routinely spend $200 to $300 per order. So I started catering more to this crowd. - I would get $1,000+ orders from wedding planners and party planners, so I started advertising to that group of people. I never thought running a RAVE COMPANY would morph into a party planner company. - In Copywriting Course I sold a course, and would do a monthly Office Hours to help people re-write their copy. This feature was more popular than the courses, so we created an entire [community]() just to re-write people's copy. ​ ​ ​ P.S. [Get 85+ more of these questions on this post!](=)​ ​ P.P.S. Did you have any other good thought-provoking questions like this? Respond to this email with them! I read every single email :) ​ ​ [Unsubscribe]( | [Update your profile]( | 801 W 5th St. , Austin, TX 78703