Transcript

MFM Mini - A Guide to Asking Better Questions

Mm-hmm. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day song On the road less travel never looking back Alright, I sat down to record this and I asked myself What would be

Amazing. What would be awesome if I was going to share it with you? And I decided to pull something out. Of my secret stash. So you know. If you go to someone's house, imagine if you go to some billionaire's house.

You walk to the front door, the gate's open, the butler takes your coat. You walk through You know, somebody walks by with an hors d'oeuvres platter, you grab it, you like the tuna. You keep walking forward and he says, Oh, would you like to see my collection? My collection. You don't know what it's gonna be. Shoes, watches, cars.

He takes you down into the cellar and he shows you the wine collection. He starts talking to you about it. That's what I'm gonna do right now. I'm gonna take you to my collection, but I don't collect wine. I don't collect watches or cars. I collect questions.

And so this podcast is all about Some of the great questions for my question stash. I have been Keeping a uh note you know, a notebook or a notepad of

Great questions because I have this phrase which is Ask a better question, get a better answer. And it's really come true for me in my life. I've been able to connect with people or get to the heart of the issue or find out information that I needed to find out just by asking a slightly different question. It's kind of amazing. Just phrasing things differently will

have a totally different result. So I'm gonna go through rapid fire. I'll try to keep this short. So we'll go through rapid fire. If people are interested, we could always Talk more about this later, but I'm gonna go through quickly of some great questions. So let's start with the lighthearted stuff. Okay. These are slight improvements when you're talking to other people.

So one of the worst questions that's the most common question. It's just Oh hey, how's it going? Hey, how's your day? Right.

And that results in Fine. Good. Right. And that's a uh kind of a dead end question as far as I'm concerned. So I like to frame things a little differently. When I see somebody that I want to talk to, um that you know, we we for a meeting or whatever it is. I'll say something, you know, just a little bit different. It doesn't even matter, like the words don't matter. It's just trying to get to something specific.

that will get beyond the the trap of fine or good. So I might say Uh you got a little pep in your step today. You know, what'd you what'd you have for breakfast? Or. Um You look happy. What were you doing right before this?

Right. So somebody could just pop on a zoom and I'll hit'em with that. You look happy. What were you doing before this? Oh actually I was on a call with blah blah blah or oh I was actually just cooking food Doesn't matter what it is. I got him talking. It was a genuine question. And uh they to start to open up a little bit more instead of just getting stuck in the uh cookie cutter fine and good trap. Okay.

What else? If you want to get to know somebody Instead of saying, Oh, what do you like to do? And then they'll start to think about like hobbies and just sort of say generically, I like to travel, oh I like the movies. Course, everybody likes the movies. Um instead what I'll do is I'll say

I'll say um You know, I I only ever see you at the office. Um, what's an ideal Friday night for you? What do you like to do? Right. Take me through ideal you wake up or take me through ideal Sunday morning. Right. And then people will start to tell me what they actually do in their life. So instead of thinking for

Th thinking about Vague, generic Things that they like. They'll recall something specific that they do as a as a habit. And that'll actually tell you a lot about a person. They like to go hiking every Sunday with their friends or You know, oh I always, you know

Me and my daughter, we have this teeth brush routine, and then we watch the cartoons and I make her pancakes. Whatever it is, you'll get something real out of it. Okay, so those are some. Quick, light hearted ones. Let's go to um

Work related. Okay, so here's some And uh by the way, each one of these I have a long list, but I'm just gonna hop between categories. Okay, so work related. I've said this one before on the pod, but One question many bosses and managers ask is They're asking about a timeline for something. I always did this. I worked with engineers. I don't know how long stuff takes to make.

Uh sometimes I thought things would be really complicated and they're like, Oh, that's one line of code. And other times I thought things would be simple and they're like, That's six months of refactoring code if you want that. And so I used to always ask, you know, when when will we have this done? Right? When will that get done? And people hate getting timelines and there's just a generic like problem with this. Some people

will always sandbag, so they'll always say a long time and try to like deliver faster than that. Some people wanna make you happy so they tell you an optimistic timeline, but it always ends up taking longer. And so these things were so inaccurate. So I heard a better question from uh Dan Clanter. He's this He's the uh chief product officer at Twitch when I was there. And what he would say is

He goes um You know, I know we don't know the exact timeline, but When would you uh what w if if if I said that this was gonna launch in August or September, what month Would you be surprised, Oh man, we didn't launch it by then? So he said.

When would you be surprised if we didn't have this done? And that was just that created kind of like the first it got people's guard down. They weren't being asked for an estimate. um in in the traditional way. The second thing is that they would take that and they would start to um Kind of like Like

When you would be surprised by it not being out? means that's sort of like the bottom bar. Like it's definitely gonna be out by then. Um and then he would you know follow up and say Okay, great. And uh you know, so best case scenario, what are you thinking? Right.

And he would get a more accurate time range. Using that rather than just saying when is this gonna be done? So better question, you got a better answer. Uh some other questions I like to ask in the work context. Sometimes I'll listen to people explain something and it's a really big heavy plan and I'll just say, Man

All that sounds really hard. What would be easy? And this question annoys people because they're like, Oh, if it was easy, I would have told you. But in reality, when you ask them And you ask them what would be easy, they actually do come up with an answer that's pretty good. Uh similarly, uh if somebody says a big plan, like a long like we're gonna do this and then this and then this. I'll say um Oh okay, like

That sounds like a huge plan. Like what You know, my brain I'm not as smart as you, so like Imagine we were all like that. Imagine we all had half the IQ we have today. What would be the dumb simple plan we would do To make some progress.

And I'm trying to get them to think outside the box, think differently, because people get stuck in one track thinking and they have blinders on to all the other possibilities. So I'm trying to just break that pattern and get them to see some other possibilities. Uh some other ones I will ask. Um You know, if I'm leading if I'm if I'm manage somebody and they manage people, I'll say uh Hey, you don't have to tell me this answer.

But it's a good question to ask yourself. Uh what's a what's a conver what's a conversation you've been avoiding? Mm. We're all avoiding some conversations, whether it's personal or professional. Another one will be

I'll wake up in the morning and I'll think about work and I'll say Who needs my help today? Oftentimes there's people in the company that are struggling, either personally or professionally. And we kinda put off dealing with it because we don't have to. The fire's not burning yet. The house is not burning down. But you kinda wanna address it when it's a little spark before the house burns down. So

Who needs my help today? Okay, let's go to self talk, right? The most important Um dialogue, you know, happens in our head. And so you know, here's some of the ones that I ask myself on a daily basis. So the this one's work related.

I'll say um If I could only work two hours today, but I still wanted today to be a huge success, what would I do in those two hours? This is a way of cutting through all the BS, all the busy work, the small things that Or easy to just eat up our time and just say, Okay, if I really could only work for two hours today, what would be what would I work on for those two hours?

Um Another one, you know, I would say I I I've asked this question out loud before. What would Sulli do? I have a friend Sully who I think is just amazing at business. He just has a knack for Just finding the the the the fastest path solution for just being like kind of a PhD in common sense.

And so I just step back. I say what would Psole do? Or similarly, if I'm talking to somebody else, I'll say, um Sounds like you're stuck and you don't know what to do. Um, but you've always given me great advice. So what would you advise yourself in this situation? If you were giving advice to yourself, what would you say? If you if you weren't you

Or I'll ask them. Yeah, I know you don't know the answer, but if you did know if you did know the answer, what would you say? People that that really fucks people's uh fucks people's minds. They don't know what to do with that one. But it it is actually pretty useful as a way to again. Shake their pattern, get them to think differently.

Um Questions I will ask uh Ask myself, let's go back to this. Um, what are my anti-goals? I can often think about what I want, but sometimes it's very useful to think about what I don't want. I learned this from Andrew Wilkinson. He he used to Talk about anti goals, meaning

Instead of thinking about what's the perfect life and how do I want to make my life better, he thinks about what's misery, what do I hate. And let me just avoid misery, right? Invert. And just instead of thinking about what's the dream. Think about Yeah, what's instead of thinking about heaven, think about hell.

And uh and then just make sure you avoid that. And you end up doing pretty well then. Um A question I asked myself, another one I like here. I like this one. Am I playing a stupid game?

Naval has this phrase Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, right? If you're at a carnival, And you go up to you know little water squirt gun game where you gotta squirt the water in the little hole and if if you could do it the best out of everybody, you know, you win the giant stuffed animal and then There you are.

Forty minutes later, you've put eighty five dollars into this game and you win and you win the six dollar stuffed animal that you could have had to begin with. And um It's just a reminder, there are many examples of this. I've done this many, many times. I've worked on dumb startups. Worked on dumb ideas, right? I played a stupid game. And if you play a stupid game, you're gonna win a stupid prize. So I try to stop and ask myself.

Am I playing a stupid game? An example of a stupid game is trying to win an argument on Twitter or uh convince somebody to you know change their mind. Um when it doesn't really matter. Convince people I'm right. Um

that that sort of thing is a is an example of a stupid game uh that you can play. Um Another question to ask. Is this the beginning or is this the end? This is great for relationships. You get in a breakup, breakups are tough.

Is this the beginning or the end? Feels like the end. But it's also the beginning. And you gotta ask yourself. If I treat this like the end, then yeah, I'm gonna feel a certain type of way, right? I'm gonna feel the way you feel at the end.

But if I view this as the beginning, I'm gonna feel very differently. So I gotta ask myself, is this the beginning or the end? They happen at the same time. Um similar one that's a little bit kind of like self helpy in that vein is Is that the thing or am I the thing? That's just a reminder of Where is the power when a situation is overwhelming you?

You're saying, Oh man, I'm making that the thing. No no no. I'm the thing. So you make it about yourself. So it's if somebody else is acting

In some way that you find stupid. Are you making that are you making them the thing or are you the thing? It's about taking back control and being able to own. parts that you control and it control your own experience that way. Um, another one for work that I like is

If I wasn't already doing this Would I do this? This goes back to my phrase, inertia is a bitch. When you're a lot of times the things that we are doing, we're only doing because we were already doing them. And so it's worth having an honest question. If I wasn't already doing this, would I be doing this? If I wasn't already in this job, would I be in this would I apply for this job. If I wasn't dating this person, would I ask them out on a date?

Uh right. So so you wanna avoid doing things that you wouldn't do. If you weren't already doing that. And I'll leave you with a couple more that I think are are fun. Um, I like to ask this for myself and for others, which is like what's something you're happy to overspend on? Right.

We all have things that were really cost conscious about, or really frugal, we penny pinch. No, we have other things that we're willing to splurge on. So what am I happy to overspend on, right? I always pick this for me, this was books. I I will always buy a book instantaneously, whether I plan to read it or not.

Whether I have money or not, I will always buy a book'cause that's sort of a potential knowledge, a potential life change that I could have. For ten bucks. And um Socks. Socks is another one. I hate fussing with having Misma socks or not enough socks.

So I will overspend on socks. I will buy a hundred of my favorite pair of socks. And then when they're those are done, I'll just buy a hundred more. I'm happy to overspend. It just gives me joy. And so similarly, it's a way to get to know somebody else. It's a good way to get to know yourself and to get to know somebody else. What are they willing to stupidly overspend on, uh, even though they know it's maybe not the The best, most logical solution.

Okay. Uh, those were some rapid fire questions from my question stash. I don't know if this is entertaining to you. I don't know if that was helpful to you, but uh I will publish that on my my newsletter if you uh if you subscribe, you'll get the written version of that because those are probably Hard to remember.

So uh go to go to SeanPuri dot com. Pop your email in there and I'll put it in uh I'll put it into the welcome sequence where I Put up just a a list, a little question bank of some of my favorite questions. I don't give you all of them. These are precious. I've been hunting these for a long time.

But I will give you, you know, whatever, twenty, twenty five of these that I really like Ask a better question, get a better answer. All right. That's all from me. Hope you enjoy this mini episode. Let me know what you think. Tweet at me. Or email me. I'm Sean at SeanPurry.com. Hey, my first million listeners. This is Steph again from trends.co. Now, most of you probably know trends as the idea newsletter because that's what we do. We send you business ideas weekly and then we show you how to capitalize on them.

But anyone that's run a business before knows that ideas only get you so far. In fact, if you've ever heard of Derek Server's framework, Ideas are worth almost nothing and execution is everything. Great execution can take a brilliant idea from being worth$20 to$20 million. That's exactly why we're investing in making trends a product for not just idea generators, but operators. And we've built a new feature called trends deals. Trans subscribers now get exclusive deals that make it easier and cheaper for them to run their businesses. We launched this month and already have around a hundred deals in the pocket. So let me share a few highlights. We've got a deal of the month from Send Eats, which is actually a trend success story. They raise our series A at a$17 million evaluation and they do e-commerce fulfillment, so they're basically e-com as a service. They're offering trends members free storage fees for life, which means thousands of dollars a month saved. We also have one of Sean's very own unicorns deal, D E E L. They have a deal of the month coming up, but for now, they're letting trans subscribers manage contractors for three months free and then twenty percent off and twenty percent off full time employee hires.

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I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like my days off On the roadless travel, never looking back