The Second Most Powerful Question You Can Ask Yourself About Your Business

Why?

Why are you in business? Why do you offer your customers what you offer? Why do you structure your business the way you do? Why are you successful? Why are you not successful?

I could go on and on with the question. The point is to always be asking yourself why. Why comes before how and after what. It’s the question that gives meaning to your business. You have to know ‘why’ in order to do what you do well.

The other day I was working with a client who has a fairly successful business. She’s making $70k per year as a life coach and enjoying her success. Yet she lives in Southern California and $70K isn’t getting what it might in other parts of the country. So we’re working on increasing her revenue in the next 18 months to $100K.

She definitely knows what she does. And she understands clearly how she does it. But when I asked her why she does what she does she was a bit stuck. Sure, she could tell me she wants to help people or the like. But when I asked her to explain from inside herself why she was in business doing what she was doing, she couldn’t find it.

This isn’t rare. Many small business owners haven’t taken the time to ask ‘why.’ They’re often too busy with what, how and who – what they do, how they do it and who they do it for. These questions are very important to having a successful business. I certainly talk about them all the time.

Yet ‘why’ is the question that gives meaning, that gives life, to your work. Why is the motivating factor that makes us consider our impact in the world. Moreover, it makes us look at ourselves, how we value our work and what we truly think about our business. Why is one of the secret keys to business growth.

My client is now in the process of digging in to ‘why.’ Why is she in business for herself? Why has she chosen to be a life coach? Why does she market to the audience she does? And why do they respond (or not respond) to her offers?

Again, why goes on and on. Asking it can open a pandora’s box. Yet asking it is necessarily if you want to take your business to the next level. So ask youself….why? Find the meaning in your business. I encourage you, however, to dig below the surface and ask why again and again. Don’t settle for what you know – find something out about yourself and your business that you don’t know. You might be surprised.

So if ‘why’ is the second most powerful question in business, what’s the first??? How! How is the most important question because it generates action, which creates movement and change in your business. How creates the growth from why and what.

So let me ask you, how are you going to ask yourself why?