Learn 97% of How to Get Rich in 11 Mins | Ep 1009

I'm going to give you my three favorite questions that I ask when I'm making bets in the business to make the most money. And I have these as almost like my treasured prized possessions because of how useful and how valuable the thinking frames they provide are. And so I'll give you conditions for each using each of these three. So the first is when someone wants me to do something or they want me to approve of an action, I will almost always respond with what problem are you trying to solve. And what's really interesting about that question is that a lot of times people have this emotional discomfort, there's a problem that happens or they just don't feel good, which they determine is a problem. And then as a result, their actions skew all over the place. They're like, hey, I think we should do this employee engagement program. I'm like, okay, what problem are you trying to solve? Well, I just thought it'd be good for the employees. I'm like, well, do we have a retention issue? Do we have an attraction issue? Are we unable to attract talent? Like let me know. That's very important. And like, no, no, we don't have any retention issues or we don't have any attraction issues. And it's like, okay, then why are we doing this? Well, I think it's good. What problem are we trying to solve? And so I would say that I've learned this problem question because there's people, people are erratic. They want to do stuff. And so what is happening is, well, intention people, nothing wrong with that. They will just take action on things that they know how to do when they are confronted with things that they do not know how to do. And so a lot of lack of focus is actually intellectual laziness. So what I mean is, I think most people in their business know on some level what needs to happen. But because they don't know how to solve that thing, they then just find something they can solve because that makes them feel better and more competent, even though it makes no difference. And so like, I would encourage you to think, if I am being distracted, it means I'm being intellectually lazy because I can't stay on this task that I don't know how to accomplish and being competent for an extended period in order to get what I want, right? And so it's a great suss out of the thinking diligence that the person is asking you to do something or about your willing to make or that they are asking you to make or take whether they actually really thought a throw. So number one, someone asked me to do something, what problem are you trying to solve? If I'm asking someone to do something. So I want something now. I ask the question, instead of giving the statement, I'll say, what would it take? And so I almost always wrap my questions with what would it take? Because it assumes success. And what happens is when I used to ask, and this is something I did earlier, my career can we, could we, I would get nose from people and they would do a calculus in their mind of what they thought something was worth without complete context on my business. Like, I have or complete context for the plans that I have long term for the business. And then they would basically make a decision on my behalf by saying no. So I actually, I'm actually working off of incorrect data. Like, this is really important shit. Even though I, like, I'm, you know, just taking a look at the version here, but like really, really important. This is tough. I have a conversation about this, if I asked, what would it take? Someone can then just tell me what it would take. And then I can make the decision of whether I think it's worth it. And so that, the amount of things that have been unlocked in my business of me just saying, like, someone says, no, I'm like, stop, what would it take for us to do it? Obviously, if I had a billion dollars, could I do it? They're like, well, yeah. I'm like, okay, does it take a billion dollars? Like, no, okay, does it take a million dollars? Okay, no. All right, what is it actually to take? We probably need to hire somebody. Okay, well, it's going to make us an extra million dollars a year, and it's, you know, whatever, a hundred grand for this person. Okay, then let's do that. So you just say that we can't do with our existing infrastructure or, more specifically, that the existing structure is prioritized against other things, which I can then say, let's deprioritize those and prioritize this, right? So if someone asks me, let's do this thing, I like to ask, what problem are we solving? If I want something, I ask other people, what would it take? What would it take for us to do this in half the time? What would it take for us to deliver this in 24 hours instead of 30 days? What would it take for us to buy this company? What would it take for us to do this deal? What would it take for you to get started today? What would it take for me to get you to believe that you should shut down one of your businesses and go all in on the other? What would it take for me or what would it take for you to take our content from 10 things a day to 20 things a day? What would it take? It is one of the most powerful questions in entrepreneurship. Now, the third question that I'll give you is related to question number one, which is when people ask me, you know, like, hey, I think we should do this thing. I would say my first follow-ups, whatever their response is, because sometimes people don't know the problem they're trying to solve. Is I just ask, so this is question three, what do you want to have happen? And I'm saying these questions, and I feel like my team will be listening to this and be like, yeah, that's those versions a lot. What do you want to have happen? Because it just gets around all of the, like, emotional hollow below, to just what do you want to see? And the reason this is important, you know, like, let's say, let's use a different example. Someone says, hey, I think we should start doing our quarterly's in-person. Okay. Let's say you're a remote company. Someone says, I think we should start doing our quarterly's in-person. I say, okay. I'm going to have that. Well, I mean, I want, you know, the quarterly's in-person, yeah, I'd be like, as a result of these quarterly's in-person, what do you want to have happen? What different outcome will occur as a result of in-person versus remote quarterly's? Well, I think, you know, I think it'll be more fun. Okay. So the argument would be that you think that people will be more engaged in-person versus a line. Okay. No argument there. They're engagement in terms of how much fun they're having has anything to do with their outputs afterwards. Again, I asked these questions not because I, they're loaded or because I disagree with them. I'm curious because I want to hear the other person's thinking. And so when I'm questioning these lines of thinking, I will typically ask three in succession, which is, what does that mean? How do you know that? And so what? So if I say, hey, you want to get, you know, the employees have been more engaged. I'm like, okay, what is engaged to me? What is that? I'm like, oh, well, I just, you know, I think they'll be happier at work. Okay. What is that? Okay. Like, tell me. Like, what does that mean? Like, we're going to, their subjective wellbeing scores are going to go up. Okay. Question two. Do we want to give them a subjective wellbeing test? They're, they're having us before and then we have them right there having us afterwards. And then we see if this made a demonstrable difference. Yeah. Okay. I understand. You want them to be happier and you want this? Okay. Question three. So what? Let's say we do this. Then what happens? Do we think that it'll have to admit, like, it'll diminish once they leave? Maybe. Do we think this is going to have something on work out, but okay, I have this resource that suggests that work out what goes up by X, Y and Z. And so it's like, okay. Now, the final question for me would be like, what else could we do with this time and energy that we yield a higher return to the business? Anyway, Clay, I obviously want my people to be happy. I don't think that these one-off things are actually what make people happy. I think that having an ongoing work environment that rewards high effort and removes people who suck is a much more effective way of getting people to enjoy their work than kind of, you know, cum biopulsion. But I say this as just to equip you, because I see questions like weapons. Like, it shows how sharp your thinking is. On both sides. If someone asks me, these questions are funny, because I've had some people in my team ask me like, well, what do you mean by that? And they're trying to use my weapons at me. And I'm like, bro, I can tell you what I mean, because I thought about it. And so, like, these questions, though they appear difficult, allow you to sus out or determine the quality or depth of someone's thinking around a problem or solution set. And I would say that I use these on a regular basis when making bets in the business where I think we will get high returns. And if I want this to happen, and then I say, what would it take for this to happen? I get a very different set of answers from people that tends to create more divergent thinking processes as in they try to solve for success and reverse engineer it. And when I open up the blue ocean of like, let's say we got unlimited money and unlimited time. What would it take? And then all of a sudden, you go from unlimited time to unlimited money. And then what it actually would take is, you know, well, unlimited is on it, right? Like small percentages in relation to that. And so, anyways, this was top of mind because I had a handful of conversations yesterday that were in relation to this where people would say, I want to do this thing. And it's like, what problem are we trying to solve? What does that mean? How do you know that's going to happen when you do that? and even if we do, so what? Who cares? What is this effect? How does this connect to a business outcome? And what you'll find is a lot of these questions lead to maybe we shouldn't do this. And that's usually the right answer. And so one of my internal jokes that I have is the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world is do nothing. But I have like three doors of action. Do it, you know, do a, do b, and then do nothing. Do nothing so commonly is the correct answer. As in, no, continue to re, you know, continue to allocate resources towards the thing that are getting as high as return. This is a thing that might get us a return but we have this other thing that we know will get us a return. And the return that we get here might be as good, but this one certainly will be. And so we should just do more of that. So right now when you're contemplating, you know, should I do this thing, this, you know, somebody on my team or I'm the one who's suggesting these things, you might have suggested it because you are emotionally uncomfortable with your existing moment and just want something to do rather that the thing that you know is going to work. So anyways, those are a handful of questions that I use like weapons that have helped me make better bets. I hope they help you. 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