Ep #32: How to Ask Great Questions

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches. How are y’all doing? My coach lovies. What’s going on? You guys having a good day? I am having an amazing day. It’s really beautiful in Louisville and I drove with the top down today to the trainer. That was great. And I’m excited to talk to you guys about how to ask great questions.

This will make you an amazing entrepreneur and a really amazing coach. Are y’all ready? But first, I have to say, one of my clients Kelly posted in our 2K for 2K page from last week’s podcast on entitlement and my attempt to say the word incendious.

She said, “Stacey, on the word incendious, I think what your brain is doing is combining two words. Insidious, a harm that develops gradually and you don’t notice it at all, with incendiary, highly flammable.” She said, “By combining these words, you’ve described a huge problem. You have some entitled shit going on in your brain and you don’t know it’s there but it’s burning down your dream of becoming a coach. In short, I think you invented a word and I thought it was brilliant.”

That made me laugh so much. Kelly, let’s do it. Let’s create this new word. Let’s tell people they have incendious thoughts. I knew when I read it out on the podcast, I was like, something about this doesn’t seem right. What’s so funny on the last podcast, I talked about how this is something I do. I get sayings mixed up, and apparently now I combine words. It’s a thing. Let’s move forward with it.

And also, before we dive into the episode, today I want to shout-out my client Seri. So she also posted in our 2K page. You guys know I love shouting out people who come in and do awesome shit in the 2K group. It’s so fun. I think it shows what is possible. It’s an amazing example of what’s possible and it just super-charges all of our energy when we see stuff like this.

But Seri posted, “I told some of my fellow coaches that this is the best money I have ever spent on my business and that is the truth. It feels like the exact program I so desperately needed. I just joined approximately three weeks ago. Since then, I have brought in $21,500 and I’ve got so much more in the pipeline.” Y’all, that’s insane.

She says, “Joining this program has been the biggest turning point of my entire business. I wasn’t even doing consults in my business before and this has made all the difference in the world. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the work and belief and heart and soul you have put into this program. It’s rocked my entire world. I have so much hope for my business.”

Seri, you are an example of what is possible and I can’t even tell you how amazing that right there is. $21,000 in three weeks, that’s the stuff that changes your brain and your thoughts for what is actually possible in the world. I remember having these moments myself where I produced a large amount of money in my business and it changed what I thought was possible for goal setting from then on out, and I love to get to tell you all on the podcast about this and for my 2K clients to get to see things like this happen because it really does.

The more we do it, the more we challenge how much money can be made in what timeframe, the more that will be the truth for all of the industry. Boom. Yes, let’s do it.

Alright, so let’s make some money. Let’s talk about how to ask great questions because seriously, the quality of the solutions you come up with for your business depend on the quality of the questions you ask. The results of the coaching you receive and do with yourself greatly enhances as the questions that you ask enhance.

And most of you tell me you sit at home and you don’t know what to do or how to motivate yourself and asking great question is going to eliminate all of that. So we’re going to have a short and sweet lesson here on how to ask great questions. So I’m going to dive in and it’s going to be brief.

Number one, the best questions to ask are the ones you ask yourself. You need to answer the questions that you ask yourself any time you ask them. So when you say how do I keep my mind from spinning, you need to answer that for yourself. How do you?

Think about that right now. When you have a question like that, if you’ve ever thought how do I keep my mind from spinning, just ask yourself right now. What’s the answer? Make yourself answer. How do I book more consults? I get that question a lot. What if you knew the answer? Make yourself answer right now. How do you book more consults?

This will grow your self-confidence tremendously to ask yourself the questions before you ask anyone else. You will never grow your own confidence if the answer is always outside of you, and that’s what many of you do. I see it a lot in my 2K program because we do a Live every single week, like a Facebook Live Q&A every week for an hour, and I let people ask me anything.

And what I’ve noticed lately is that the quality of the questions has gone down and what I think it is is that sometimes people get on the Q&A and they think – they kind of see me as a guru in making money and so they want to delegate all of their most basic questions to me, thinking I’m more of an expert than they are and that I have all of the answers and that they have no answers compared to my expertise. And this is not useful or helpful to anyone.

The only difference is I’ve trained myself to have the answers. So if you want to train yourself to have the answers that make you feel confident and that you are ready, ready to be a coach, ready to market your services, ready to take on clients, you have to start getting the answers from yourself all the time.

Now, you might be thinking, but I don’t know, I really don’t have the answers, but that is just a thought error. You do know at least something, but all that’s happened is you’ve never made yourself answer and find out what you do actually know. You spend more time thinking about all the things you don’t know, and you never say but what do I know for sure?

And so you have to train your brain to do this. You have to train your brain to answer like you train muscles to be able to lift a certain amount of weight. You have to explore your own solutions. Not just what’s the first answer, but what are multiple answers? If I could come up with five solutions, what are they?

And you really do have them, but you have to believe you have them. You have to ask yourself questions and answer them consistently to prove that to be true, that you do actually have them. The more you ask yourself questions and then answer them, the more you will start to believe that you have the answers. And the more you believe you have the answers, the more self-confident you will become.

If you feel like you don’t have them, the only reason for that is you’ve just never asked yourself for them and then waited for the answer. Great decision-making is created by constant trial and error and evaluation. You have a question, you answer it for yourself, you act on it, you evaluate it, and then you ask yourself what’s next.

When you want the answer to come from someone else, the urge that kind of comes with that, like to ask somebody else the question without you having asked yourself first, it comes, I think, because you’re trying to avoid failure. That is why you’re asking someone else. You think they have the answer, they’re the expert, and then getting it from them before you take action will give you less likely of a chance to not get it wrong.

But aiming for success is what creates failure, or aiming to not fail creates failure and pushes you away from success because you’re focused on getting it right, so you take all this time to kind of figure it out how to get it right instead of just getting started and figuring it out as you go, which gets you there so much faster.

We think it’s like the opposite of what we actually believe to be true in the universe. And it’s also a misconception that you can get it right before you actually get started. There’s never a time where that happens. There’s never a time where that happens.

I see this on Shark Tank all the time. People come in with these amazing products that they think they’ve really mastered and they’re like, well, we haven’t taken it – I don’t know what they call that. There’s an actual term, but they haven’t taken it to market yet. They’re pre-revenue. The sharks don’t want anything to do with that.

They’re like, it doesn’t matter how amazing your program or your product in this case, on the Shark Tank case, it doesn’t matter how amazing your product is if you haven’t sold it and nobody wants it. You’ve got to go out and do that. But people want to make the perfect product before they present it to people because they think it helps eliminate failure.

It’s like trying to be perfect at a sales call without doing one. It’s impossible. I see this happen so many times where coaches want to practice with each other and they want to listen to sales calls and they want to do everything that they can do to not have to practice with a live person on the phone that’s actually thinking about buying from them.

And what leg up I might have had, and what I mean by that is what mindset and experience I might have brought to my coaching business that helped me is that in the pitching industry, when we learned a new product, we could know the product itself and the script to go along with it. Like the hand motions, the script, everything, front and back, but getting that out in front of an audience was always the hardest thing we ever did and I always dreaded it.

But I knew it was the only way, like I knew that I couldn’t just be perfect at the show and start nailing – we called them turns, but nailing the sale at the end of the show and people’s hands flying up, I knew I could never get to that point of what we would call a 20-piece turn or a 30-piece turn, which is where 30 people buy basically, which was considered a really big show.

I could never get to that point of actually selling without practicing in front of a live audience. It literally didn’t matter how many times I practiced that show on my own. I had to get up there and knock out the kinks with a live crowd. I had to. And sometimes 12, 15, 20 times, there were times where it took me three or four store runs, entire store runs, weeks of my income being sacrificed because we were 100% commission, trying to nail a show.

I was trying to nail this one product, which ended up becoming my favorite product, and a new style of show. Like a completely different style of show than I’d ever done. I spent five years doing one style of show and I went and worked for a different company and I was the best. The best. They headhunted me because everyone had told them I’m the best. Stacey’s the best. You’ve got to get her on board if you want to make money. You’ve got to get Stacey.

And so they spent all this money flying me to Chicago and training me and then I came back home and I just crashed and burned. I mean, it was bad. They ended up having to send another trainer for a second round of training because I could not in my brain figure it out. And I spent weeks not making money because I couldn’t figure it out.

But what I see so many coaches want to do is like, they don’t want to crash and burn 12 times in front of real potential clients, but that is what has to happen because until you bring real people into the situation, you don’t actually have a real situation to simulate. So for me, what’s made me so successful is I’ve always had that ability to go out there and practice with live audiences, live people.

Like, we practice in real time, we learn as we go. So I didn’t try to perfect my masterminds by never doing them. I would just do a mastermind and I would say what worked, what didn’t work, what am I going to do differently next time? I would just grow that program as I offered it, which is what I’ve done with 2K too. I constantly evaluate and go back in and re-film modules and tweak and make things better and offer new workbooks and new worksheets and just all these new assets to help people as I see what they need more and more of. But I don’t want to perfect 2K and just not even get it out there.

So the most successful entrepreneurs run headfirst towards failure and I think – I spent a lot of time on this. You might be like, how does this have anything to do with asking questions, but here’s the rub. I think the first failures that you should be gathering is the testing of your own mind. Your own ingenuity, what you have right now. Your own knowledge without having learned anything else. Like, let’s just see what you’ve got in there under that hood.

And what is amazing as a byproduct of this is it also teaches you that you don’t need to learn anything else. You don’t need to be further along, you don’t need to have more expertise than you already do in this moment to go out and create money today, which brings me to my next point, which is great questions are specific.

Someone asked me on our live Q&A recently, how do I create the kind of intention you create in your business? And someone else asked me something about how I got started, from where you were then to where you are now. How did you become a millionaire basically. And I told them it’s impossible to tell them that in a few sentences, let alone even an hour, unless I give them a vague answer back like belief, which really is the answer, by the way.

One belief at a time. But it’s vague. So it leaves the person who asked the question feeling like they didn’t get a good answer, but if you’ve ever asked a question and felt like you didn’t get a good answer, it’s because you didn’t ask a good question. When you ask a non-specific, vague question, you leave the person you’re asking with having to give you a really vague, non-specific answer.

Whenever I get questions – this happens a lot. I’ll be on a live Q&A and I’ll get questions that I’m like, I can’t find the answer for it and then it hits me, I’m like, oh, I don’t have an answer for this because it’s not a good question. It’s a question that is just so vague and so broad that there’s no way for me to give a specific answer.

So don’t ask how do I get clients on a Q&A where I’m intended to be able to answer a question in 30 seconds or less, or 60 seconds, even a couple minutes. Don’t ask how do I get clients. That’s such a vague question. I see so many people ask that. Ask instead, how do I get one client today? That’s specific. What’s the first thing I do to make 2K today? Not just how do I make 2K today? What’s the first thing I do to make 2K today?

And if you say I don’t know, say but if I did know, what would my answer be? And also by the way, here’s a little brain hack I use. Start referring to it as your answer instead of the answer. What do I think my answer is? What would my answer be? What do I think the answer is is one of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself. What do I think my answer is?

So good. Another vague question I get a lot from those of you who have listened to the belief plan podcast is what should be in my belief plan? That is vague. I have no idea what your goal is, what you believe, and what you don’t believe, so I have no idea how to answer that for you because there is no one size fits all for belief.

But what if you ask yourself instead – and asked yourself, not me – what if you asked yourself instead, what do I need to believe today to make 2K? To sign one client? Maybe you need to believe that there’s someone out there that you aren’t even aware of that is thinking about working with you. Maybe you need to believe today in this moment that it’s possible. Maybe that’s all that you need.

Just believing it was possible will be the thing that drives you into action. Maybe you need to believe that there are people out there that just want a regular life coach. They don’t have a specific problem they want to solve, they just feel kind of directionless in life. Maybe you’re that person that’s spinning about your niche and you’re completely undecided, and maybe you just need to believe that there’s someone out there who doesn’t even give a shit if you have one.

They just know something needs to change but they don’t even know what. Maybe for you, believing you can make money without deciding a niche. Maybe believing that you already know what your niche is. Whatever it is, what’s it for you? It’s going to be different for everybody.

One of my clients the other day asked if they needed to get all the way through all of 2K before making an offer. She was so afraid that she might miss something. So in her fear of missing something, she is missing a huge something. The whole point of the program, which is getting out there and making offers right now, regardless of what you got going on.

But do you see how different it is to ask what do you need to believe today in this moment to go make money, versus how do I get clients? And maybe you need to ask yourself – this is really good – what you don’t believe that is keeping you from making money. That’s a really good one. I just thought of that one. What don’t you believe?

Or what do I believe now that is keeping me from making money? So what do I need to believe today? What don’t I believe that’s keeping me from money? And what do I believe that’s keeping me from money? Great questions to ask yourself today, in this moment. Don’t ask yourself what do I believe as a human in life after 40 years of being alive. Your whole philosophy of life.

Just say what do I believe right now in this moment that’s holding me back, what do I need to believe in this moment right now to go out and make money, which brings me to my last point. Great questions come from curiosity and desire for exploration and knowing. They’re rooted in desiring awareness.

So I also get a lot of questions from my clients about how I know what questions to ask my clients and I really don’t know. I don’t have some long list that I’m always pulling from. I’m just being open and curious. I ask myself a lot of open and curious questions and I do the same for my clients. So I’m just practiced with myself that it’s almost effortless at this point with my clients.

I’ve just practiced asking myself so many questions. But it wasn’t always like that. I remember being frozen on a call with a client, trying to think what to ask them next and I remember not know what to ask myself and what to do to keep busy in my business and be working when I didn’t have clients, and asking myself questions every single day and answering them is what developed this ability for me to ask really good questions now with all of my clients.

When you think about the three stages of belief, when you’re in impossibility, it’s when you ask the worst questions, at least for me. I know for sure in my own coaching, I ask the worst questions when I’m in impossibility, so I also will sometimes – before I ask my coach a question, I’ll look at okay, where am I at in my belief?

First, get there in my brain where I can at least get into possibility, and once I’m there, I’ll reframe my question from being in that new place, answer it for myself, and then present the answer to my coach to get feedback. So let’s just summarize.

Great questions come from asking yourself first, from confidence that you have the answer, they’re specific, and they come from curiosity. Now, I want to bring up this last point before we jump off here. I had a client ask this during our 2K for 2K Q&A this week. She said, “I pause asking questions because I think I should know the answer or I should ask myself first, and then I feel paralyzed, which is a common feeling for me, so I don’t ask myself to answer the question or anyone else. Right now, I’m thinking it would be helpful to allow myself to ask the question without judging what I should or shouldn’t know. What are your thoughts?”

And here’s what I told her. You absolutely should ask any question without judging what you should or shouldn’t know, but the first person to ask every question to is still always yourself. What my client is wanting to do is move past the shame of having a question by asking questions, but she can do that with herself just as easily as she could do it with a coach and it will make asking other people questions even easier if she’s asked them of herself first.

Because if you won’t even ask yourself the question, you won’t take the time to do it for you, you’re asking someone else to give the time to your answer that you aren’t even willing to give. And you’re asking someone else to have the patience to answer that question when you won’t have the patience with yourself first.

You’re never wrong for asking a question. This isn’t like, you shouldn’t ask questions unless they’re great questions. It’s just if you ask yourself great questions, you’ll get better answers. If you ask your coach great questions, you’ll get better answers. Your overall coaching will be better. And you don’t grow if you’re always asking someone else because you don’t learn to use your own brain. You become dependent on somebody else’s.

So let’s also briefly talk about the impact of answering your own questions within a coaching relationship. Because you might be thinking right now, but then why do I need a coach? And here is my answer from my own experience of coaching clients and getting coached by my coach. There’s two types of coaching you can get.

Someone who tells you what to do or someone who helps you learn how to do it. One makes you dependent and one makes you independent. So I can tell you the answer or I can hear your question, your answer, and then coach you on your decision-making process. There’s so much deeper transformation available there.

And finally, I do have to mention this. If you do ask a question of someone else, only ask it if you are truly willing to implement what they say, the answer that they give you. You have to be open and curious to ask the question but you also need to be open and curious to receive the answer.

But you also need to be open and curious to receive the answer. This about this; if you could only ask questions that you then had to take the answer given and implement, what will change about who you ask and when you ask? So good.

My coach always says not to be an ask-hole, where you ask someone’s opinion and then you don’t take it. I see that a lot. Like, I will answer someone’s question and then they will reply, “Thanks, I’ll take that into consideration.” And I know that they’ve completely missed the coaching or the mentorship, advice that I gave them. They missed the whole point.

I ask my mentor, Brooke things and sometimes, for a split second after her response, I regret having asked because I know that I have committed to implement. And what she responds is, almost always 100% of the time growth for me, AKA very hard, AKA opens a huge can of worms for me that I wasn’t prepared to deal with or think about in that moment.

Like, sometimes I ask about one thing and she takes me to an answer that wasn’t even on my radar and changes everything. And you know what, a lot of people ask me how I grow so quickly, and the answer is I stop whatever I’d doing to listen, to really be willing to invest the time to really think about what she’s offering me.

Like, if I disagree or I’m confused or I don’t understand, or if it seems off base, I take the time to truly understand what she is saying and I get myself to a place where I could see that she could be right – by the way, she always is – and then I go do something about it.

Now, I do want to clarify, I don’t think she’s always right because she’s some idolized guru in my head. It’s because of the amount of perspective she has. So if someone has a large amount of perspective and you have a small amount of perspective and they give you an answer from their large amount of perspective, it’s not going to make sense to your small amount of perspective.

Like when my people join 200K, we move into more of like a mentorship relationship. And I always tell them to remember, the reason they might not understand is because of the amount of perspective they have versus what I have. Perspective makes everything clearer and more simple.

So if you ask someone with great perspective, they might have an answer that you just didn’t expect or you don’t understand because they might see something that you don’t that is obvious to them and completely not obvious to you. You might even be so unaware that you completely disagree, but then you learn nothing about yourself or the situation.

I always say, you can be right, or you can be rich. There’s so much growth in figuring out how what your coach is seeing could actually be true about you, versus saying it isn’t. And sometimes that doesn’t happen in one moment, or even one hour or even one week. Like, there have been things I’ve been coached on that took me weeks of exploring inside of myself to really deeply get it or see what she was saying. And that’s okay.

Without the coaching myself those two weeks to figure out the answer, those two weeks might have been 20 years.  Without the coaching, I might not ever see it. You might not ever see it. So you have to be willing, show up in curiosity, believe you have the answers, ask them of yourself first so you see, like, where is the baseline that I’m starting here, this is the knowledge I have, present it to your coach and then get coached on your decision-making process and be open to receiving the answer you get for your question.

When you ask yourself a question and you’re not really willing to know the answer, sometimes we do that, rhetorically or whatever, then we get nothing. So you have to be willing to ask the question of yourself first from curiosity, believe you have the answer, present it to someone else, see what they think. And if you ask them, take what they say to heart and then go out and implement it. After you do that, evaluate and keep going. That is how you ask really great questions.

Alright, I’ll see you next week.

Hey, if you’re loving listening to the podcast, all through the month of August, we’re doing a course called Making Money with the Model. It’s five weeks of applying the model to the math of making money. Just go to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k to be a part of making money with the model. We’ll see you inside.