What Questions To Ask Successful Entrepreneurs?

From the start we knew who are the Niche Dominators we wanted to feature in the book. But like everything else in business and in life, sometimes we don’t get everything we want. That’s why it’s always good to have a back up plan.

We couldn’t get a few of them because of various reasons such as schedule conflicts. Fortunately, we anticipated that and wrote down a list of more than 10 (the number we wanted) top entrepreneurs and we are very happy with the featured entrepreneurs we have.

Once we confirmed the entrepreneurs, their availability for us to basically spend time with them and grill them on their success strategies, their willingness to share and answer our questions openly, etc… the next part is to prepare really good questions to ask them.

Since I was given the time to spend hours with them, I wanted to squeeze all the time I have to uncover as much as possible from them. I didn’t want to ask lame questions that lead to boring answers.

I want to find out about their mindset, their thought patterns, their behaviour, how they handle certain scenarios, etc.

I also got a bunch of great questions from fans of “Secrets To Dominate Your Niche” and other entrepreneurs as well. At the end I came up with pages and pages of questions that literally shocked some of the entrepreneurs.

Just to give you an idea of the questions they have to answer:

- How did you start out? How much capital did you start with?
- What critical challenges did you face, how did you overcome them? What strategies did you use?
- How do you differentiate yourself? How do you stay ahead of competitors? How do you deal with copycats?
- How did you build your brands? What strategic choices did you make?
- How did you create a big jump in your sales? What are the critical conditions that support that?
- How did you grow your team? How do you retain them? How do you ensure they won’t become your competitors? How to continue to motivate them?
- What continues to drive you? What’s your ultimate goal/your biggest dream you want to achieve?

And this continues pages after pages… it was intense and admittedly it can be draining for both sides. I even ask “ridiculous questions” like:

“If you’re starting from scratch again, with nothing, no money, no contacts, no business. You only have your experience and accumulated wisdom. How would you do it?”

The question is inspired by stories of successful businesspeople who lost everything and got it all back and more in a short period of time. This will also be very relevant to those who are thinking of starting up their own business.

As you can imagine, I got some very interesting answers. What’s more important, I think, is that I got to see and learn how they think. Personally, I think this is much more important as it shows me how they will react in certain scenarios. And obviously, they are where they are because of the way they think and act. So that is very valuable.

And the great thing is, I captured those things and included them in the upcoming book so you too will get to learn from them.