Entrepreneurs: It’s much better to have the Wrong answer to the Right question than have the Right answer to the wrong one.

The most important thing is not having the right answer, but having the right question. Many entrepreneurs have spent countless hours and ungodly amounts of money trying to find the right answer to the wrong questions. The problem with having the wrong question is that it automatically sends you in the wrong direction and away from you goal. Having the right question, but wrong answer allows you to still move in the right direction while learning what does not work.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you are selling 1,000 pairs of shoes every month, but you still don’t have enough money to cover all your business expenses. What question would you ask? Would it be “How can I sell more Shoes?” Would you then ask “How do I gather more customers?” After that would you start looking for other ways of marketing?

After about six months you find your business further behind. What happened? The problem was not in selling more shoes. Many entrepreneurs first reaction is to sell more. If you would have asked the question “How can I be more profitable?” You might have examined your pricing and discovered after all your expenses you were selling the shoes for less than you paid for them. Therefore, the more you sold, the more in debt you became. This happened because you got into a pricing war with your competition and almost priced yourself out of business. We will discuss pricing strategies in a future post, but for now just remember it’s rarely about price.

It is important to learn how to ask the right questions. Whatever question you ask yourself, your brain will figure out an answer for you. It doesn’t care what the question is. Once you have developed the habit of asking the right question you will find the paths to your goals much shorter.

How do you develop this very valuable habit? It is very simple. Stop focusing on the symptoms and start focusing on the cause. The symptom is that you are in debt. The cause is because your pricing was wrong. Here is something to help you remember. If your tub overflowing would you focus on getting the water up (the symptom) or would you turn off the water (the cause)?

Leave a comment if you have a pain point in your business you would like to be address, need direction on starting your business, or just let me know what you think. Thank you.

Dewong Lucas, Sr.