Episode 117: What Are You Struggling With? A Key Question for Small Business Owners
In this quick tip episode, Fiona shares how asking questions helped her career as a journalist and working in marketing and brand roles, and how it has also helped her in preparing content and helping her clients. Listen to the full episode and find out why asking what is someone struggling with right now is considered a key question for audience understanding, content ideas and reviewing offers / products.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Asking questions
‘What are you struggling with right now?’
Conclusion
Links/Resources Mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to Episode 117 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Before we get into today's quick tip episode, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians on the land which I'm recording this here podcast, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and I acknowledge their leaders emerging past present. And I also acknowledge that sovereignty has never been seated. And we all have a role to play in ensuring that we can heal past wounds and we can move forward all together.
So today, you are listening to a quick tip episode. And if you're new around here, thank you so much for tuning in and allowing me to spend a little time with you. If you are new, make sure you hit subscribe, so you get these quick tip episodes as well as my longer coaching and small business interview episodes as soon as they come out. And if you're looking for more business help and say you like text format, you can always find at the show notes, which is a full transcript of all of our episodes over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast. Alright, enough, let's get into today's quick tip episode.
So I am someone who often asks questions, I started my career as a journalist, and that is all about asking questions, diving into all sorts of things. I remember even one of my earliest memories was at the supermarket with my mom. And I would have been maybe like four or five, probably five, because I know I must have been about four. So I hadn't started school yet. And I remember asking the woman at the checkout, if she liked her job, and I remember my mum be like “Fiona!”
But I'd always be doing that. I'd always be asking people questions. And it's something that sometimes got me into trouble. Because say, like, my husband will be like, “Fiona, did you really need to ask that?” And I'm like, “Well, everyone's thinking it, let's just get it out on the table.” And other times, it has been just an amazing thing that's led to brilliant, beautiful conversations with complete strangers on the tube. So I'm all about asking questions. And today, I thought I'd give you a tool that you can use, I guess it's a tactic as well, when you are looking at either creating new content, whether you're changing up your offers, all sorts of things, even just if you want to understand your audience more, maybe you're thinking about bringing out a new product, or you're thinking about collaborating on something, or you know, adding advertising in or something else, and you want to kind of get your audience's perspective on it.
There is one question that I have found through the last six years in this business and plenty of time before that, as a journalist and working in marketing and brand roles. There is one question that I think really drills down and asks people to get super clear. And that is, what are you struggling with right now?
So, you might think, well, that's fine for a service-based business, but I run a product business, and it actually works just as well for product-based businesses. So say, for instance, you sell products for newborns, newborn children, newborn babies, the person buying that predominantly is going to be the parents or the guardians, or people close in with that person - so good friends, family, godparents, that sort of thing.
You might think I'd like to bring out this new product, or I'm, you know, in addition to products, I'm actually going to offer an online course, but you really want to get clear on is this going to work and you still develop any things through that question. So you might put out the question, What are you struggling with right now? And it might be “I'm struggling with anxiety around giving birth.”, or “I'm struggling with the idea that my daughter who's about to have a child doesn't have her life together” or “I am struggling with the financial stuff. that's involved with me taking maternity leave or paternity leave”, or “I'm struggling with that we're doing surrogacy and will I bond with the child as well?”
There's so many interesting bits of feedback and information that can be gleaned from that one question.
So whenever I do a consult call, I will ask people that exact question, what are you struggling with right now. It's even a question on our Calendly. Calendly is a booking tool that we use. So whenever people book in a call with us, we always ask that question. And even when they go through to, you know, actually talking to me, I'll ask it again, because they might have booked in three months ago, and maybe what they're struggling with has changed. So that's where you get the right now. And what you can do is really then drill down on, okay, people are struggling with this, or 10, people got back to me. Eight said this. Therefore, that's going to be the basis or answering that struggle. Showing solutions is going to be the basis of my next email newsletter, or it's going to be the basis of this course that I'm building, or it's going to be the basis of the content that myself and the collaborator are putting out.
So if you are looking at kind of new content, new collections, new products, anything at all, really, it pays to ask that question, what are you struggling with right now. And as well for yourself, as a small business owner, sometimes we can feel a bit of a rut, or we can feel like, oh, gosh, everyone else is ahead of us. Or we can sort of lose a bit of that love. And I say that it started the podcast because I see it all the time lost love.
It's my job as a business coach to try and get people more engaged in loving their business again. And if you're in that position, where you're just feeling like a bit with stuff, ask yourself, What am I struggling with right now. And it could be “I'm struggling because I haven't slept.” It could be “I'm struggling because I feel like I get no time to do X, Y or Z.” It could be “I'm struggling because I thought I'd be further along.” And then you kind of question those things and ask again and work through them. And even journaling about it. Things like that can really help.
So that is it for today's quick tip episode, thinking about the question, What are you struggling with right now, either for yourself, or to ask it in order to get validation on things that you're about to bring out, or to get information that you can turn into content that's really valuable and useful for your audience.
If you want a transcript of this episode, it is over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/117. And if you want to work with me in some capacity, and you want to do that in 2021, please make sure that you get in touch because like I said we are booking up for the last quarter of the year, you can get in touch hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com you can send a DM over at @mydailybusinesscoach on Instagram.
But yes, make sure you're subscribed to our email as well because some really exciting things are coming out soon. And those on our Sunday email list will always be the very first to know and the first to get in. And sometimes we'll have early bird specials and things like that so often they're the first to get those savings as well. And you can find where to get on to the email list over at my daily business coach.com forward slash subscribe. That is it for today's episode. I'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
