10 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask

You give me anybody in the world and if we can ask them one right question, everything can change for them. “You are one question away from changing your life”. Francis Bacon once said, “A prudent question is one half of wisdom”, meaning the right question to ask without the answer is half the wisdom. Napoleon once said “The words how and why cannot be used too often” meaning, you ought to always ask why and how. You taught me any great leader, coach,  parents, interviewer, etc, will ask questions. Today I’m going to have you ask yourself the 10 questions every entrepreneur must ask.

10 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask.

1. What is your vision on where you want to be and who do you want to be in that vision?
   

   If you work closely with me, you will hear me talk about two different types of people that are the most dangerous people you’ll face in business.

   1. The first one is people who are lazy but ambitious. These are people that are very ambitious, they want the power, they want the fame, they want to get to the top, they want control, but they’re not willing to do the work, so in order for them to get to the top, they do buy backstabbing, manipulation games, all that other stuff.

   2. The second most dangerous are people who are clear on what they want. These guys are clear on their vision and they’re clear on who they want to be. What ends up happening when you’re clear on your vision, you end up attracting the best talent and maintaining the best talent.

2. Who is your ideal customer?
   

   Everybody is the wrong answer. I have many CEOs and entrepreneurs that will sit right here and I’ll ask them, who’s your ideal customer? And they’ll say, everybody.  We’re holistic. You know we’re a hybrid. We want everybody. It’s just not how business works. I interviewed Chip Wilson, the founder of Lulu Lemon, who is worth $3.900,000,000. I asked them, who’s your ideal customer? He said, a 32-year-old female who’s career oriented, making six figures isn’t married, has a cat, but it’s thinking about getting married. That’s my ideal customer. No wonder he built a $12,000,000,000 business. So for you, who is your ideal customer? 

3. How big do you want to scale your business?
   

   This is slightly different than your vision of who you want to be, but how you want to be in your industry. This is about how big you want to scale your business. The sooner you know your vision, everybody around you knows what you’re doing, which means you know the level of sacrifice. You know the level of details. You know the level of teammates you need. All of these things have to tie to the vision that you have. The sooner you know that the sooner you’ll be able to get the team around you to help you scale your business.

4. Do you know what formula drives numbers in your business?
   

   The more you know the formulas that you teach everybody else, the more you end up increasing your profit margin.  The less you know your formulas and the less you teach it to other people, the less you end up making. For example, if I advertise here with this commercial and I say this, it produces the highest results. If I make this many calls and I have these many salespeople who sell these three products, this is the biggest profit margin that I have. If we lead with this product and we have this product as a secondary and we sell during this time, it produces this much. Just yesterday I took eight hours where I went through all the formulas from all 12 of my vice presidents all around the country. I took everybody’s formula and I saw how much money was left on the table for each individual and then I gave them the formula. If you do this behavior times this behavior divided by this minus this, you would have made an additional $2,000,000 last year and that number was given to them. You end up increasing your profit margin, but the less you know your formulas and the less you teach it to other people, you end up leaving millions, if not billions of dollars on the table. 

5. What are your weaknesses?
   

   This one is kind of tough for the people that are the type of cocky, confident, maybe semi-arrogant. That can be good for business, but this makes it tough for you to accept this question.  I guarantee you there’s a lot of areas that you have weaknesses in. The reason why I wanted to know what my weaknesses were ASAP, which was operations, hr, payroll systems because I could then immediately hire people that were strong in those areas. My weaknesses were no longer being highlighted. It’s important to know what your weaknesses are so that you can find a way to fill the holes and stop dropping the ball.

6. Where is time being wasted?
   

   Put your time in areas that gives you the biggest return, not areas that don’t. Example: Area A you spend 13 hours and make $10, but area B you spend 6 hours and make $40. You should be spending more time in area B for a higher return on time.  

7. Are you working in your business or on your business?
   

   Working in your business – You’re the one selling, You’re taking orders, You’re customer service, You’re placing orders. You’re doing all the work within the business yourself. When you’re in it, it’s growing linear, not exponential.

   Working on the business – You’re finding what systems, protocols, procedures can you put in place to automate something that runs with or without you. What new systems can you add to your departments?

   Example: $3,000,000 technology for a department is going to be automated, making the 15-minute process only 2 minutes. That is saving the company 13 minutes at a time.

8. What are your blind spots that you currently have right now?
   

   Blind spots are: You’re running out of money because you’re not doing the math, Departments are growing fast, but you don’t have enough support to sustain, You know there’s a certain personality you need that you don’t currently have.

   Solution: You sit with your core three to five people and ask what are some blind spots we have currently? The big thinkers, don’t think they have blind spots. Those people are typically the ones that have the most blind spots.

9. What are your conversion ratios?
   

   In every area of your business, you have to look at your conversion ratio.  For example, what percentage of actually clicks on your sponsored link leads to buying a product. If you own a gym, what percentage of walk-ins ended up buying a membership and which membership do they buy? The more areas you have conversion ratios and percentages, the more areas you can improve and all of a sudden your profits go from 18 percent to 42 percent. It’s that astronomical if you actually study your conversion ratios.

10. Who are the next three leaders you’re building?
    

    Leadership development in any department helps you exponentially grow in every single company. There are new leaders being built and born because the system is built in a way to develop new leaders. Every time I have my executive meetings, whether it’s a new business prospect, client retention, marketing, sales – every conversation I have is for the next three leaders I’m building. You know why? Because a leadership development in any department helps you grow exponentially. The more leaders, the more you scale, so the question you gotta ask yourself, grab a paper and pen, who are the next three leaders? And if you don’t know the answer to that question, that’s a very big problem. You have to immediately have the next three people you’re building so your business keeps growing.

Go back and go through every single one of the questions and I want you to answer two things. Number one, whatever questions you got, send me a tweet @patrickbetdavid, that’s my handle. The second thing, if you have deeper questions, this is exactly what we’re going to be doing at the vault for three days. Click on the link to register.

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Don’t forget about The Vault!

The Vault is a 3 day conference with Patrick Bet-David that will be held in Dallas, TX aimed to help Entrepreneurs, CEO’s and Executives get clear on what they need to do to reach their individual capacity. At this event, you’ll learn how to:

RECREATE YOURSELF
You are where you are based on the way you view money, success, relationships and yourself. In order to recreate yourself, you will need a set of tools, strategies and mindsets to help you take that quantum leap to the next level.

IDENTIFY YOUR NEXT 3 MOVES
Your next 3 moves may be different than someone else’s. At The Vault, we will identify your BEST next 3 moves in both your personal and business life.

SCALE IN GOOD OR BAD TIMES
Many know how to win during good economic times but only a few know how to win during a recession or an economic collapse. The Forbes 400 is made up of leaders who knew how to anticipate, adapt and adjust swiftly to capitalize during bad times.

MESSAGE FROM PATRICK BET-DAVID

Dear Entrepreneur,

Over the years, many of you have asked me why I create content and openly share my strategies with you. The answer is quite simple yet emotional. Simple because I believe the strategies I share can get anyone results living in any country. Emotional because I know how close I was to giving up and just being average and ordinary. How close I was to just throwing in the towel. How close I was to believing my critics that I wasn’t good enough to compete in the market place. I never thought I would wake up one day running a financial firm with nearly 10,000 agents with Oscar De La Hoya as one of my investors. I never thought I’d create a brand called “Valuetainment” that inspires millions of Entrepreneurs around the world. I never thought I would get to a point of having billionaires, politicians, influencers and celebrities on speed dial. But something changed.

I got CLEAR on what I wanted and who I wanted to be.

I got CLEAR on a problem solving strategy that helped me in the war room, board room and the bedroom.

I got CLEAR on effective strategies and hacks that helped me grow during good times and bad times.

I got CLEAR on the type of a leader I want to be and the type of a team I want to build.

This is why “The Vault” is an event you must attend in 2019. I truly believe Valuetainment will be known as the brand that inspired the next generation of great leaders, minds, innovators and Entrepreneurs around the world. I will also be unveiling the vision of Valuetainment at the conference. We are in search for leaders around the world and I can’t wait to meet many of you face to face in Dallas.

Much love,

Patrick Bet-David (Tweet: @patrickbetdavid)