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Small Business Coach quality questions The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life By Stan Tyler “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” Mark Twain Before you start reading, what if you chose to read this article knowing that you will walk away with an idea that will make the rest of your life much simpler and ten times more productive? What if you walked into every conversation with your spouse and business partners knowing that the magic of your relationship translates into 2 + 2 = 50 results? Both of the questions start from an expectation and an eagerness to see what is possible from what is around you all the time. What if you walked through your life with a “what’s possible” pair of glasses? How different would your life be? In a great conversation I had with a young lady on a flight recently, I found a great curiosity, creativity and a willingness to take an idea and run with it. She was completing her undergraduate degree and was about to begin her Masters program in the diplomatic services field. One of her degree requirements was to have a third language. She was also confronted with the high costs of the program and was using her creativity to find an inventive solution. Her question was “how can I pick up my third language and make money toward my tuition requirements.” Her answer came from securing a job as a Nanny for a family in Great questions have a major impact on our lives and our businesses. What if she had phrased her question: how do I pay for my tuition and language costs when I can’t afford it? The outcome would likely have left her with a chunk of debt as she started her career or even worse, she might have stopped her career dreams. There is no limit to the power of a great question. For example, Rotary International asked a question in 1985 that basically said, what if we, as an organization, decided to do everything we can to eradicate Polio? Since that time over one million Rotarians have donated over $600 million toward that end. Through their efforts, together with the partnership of a number of partner organizations and governments, the number of polio cases has declined by over 99 percent. Early in Southwest Airlines life they had been operating on the revenue generated by four planes but they ran out of operating capital and had to sell one of the planes. They were faced with the challenge; how do we generate the same amount of revenue but with one less plane? From that question they asked; what if we could reduce the amount of time between flights from one hour to 20 minutes? This question gave them one of their early competitive edges. Dr. John Demartini suggests the following - What if you answered the following seven questions as you start each day? 1. What is it I would absolutely love to do in my life? 2. How do I get handsomely paid to do it? Keep asking that question—creative ideas will come. 3. What are the seven highest priority action steps I can do today to make that happen? 4. What obstacles might I run into and how do I solve them in advance? So you’ve got your contingencies in place. 5. How do I accomplish these action steps more effectively and efficiently? 6. What worked today and what didn’t work? (So you get feedback) 7. Regardless of what happened to me, how did it serve me?
What great questions are you going to act on today? -What habit can I replace today that would free up five hours a week? -What are you putting off doing out of fear? -What dream can I act on this week that I have let languish? Several of the questions above are from Timothy Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Work Week.
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