99% of you need to ask better questions

For context, I’m the CEO of multi-million dollar company that specializes in helping early-stage startups grow. I’ve been in the startup growth space my entire career, and have been running this company for around 10 years.

To be very clear, I’m not selling anything here. As you’ll see in my comment history, I do not disclose my company on Reddit. I’m here literally just to help new entrepreneurs.

Just establishing a bit of credibility here. Ok so now to the point: 99% of you need to learn how to ask better questions.

Here is how pretty much every post on this subreddit goes.

“I’m the founder of a company. What’s the best way for me to acquire more customers?”

“My co-founder and I aren’t getting along. What should I do?”

“I just started a new business. Should I quit my job?”

And that’s about it. No context is provided.

What happens when you ask complex questions and provide little to no context? The people who actually know the answers/could help you choose not to. Instead, you’re left with all of the people who (sorry) don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

For all of you new entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs, think about it this way. Imagine one of your employees came to you and said, “hey boss, I’m having a hard time attracting more customers. What should I do?”

You’d probably be annoyed right? How is anyone supposed to answer that question? And most importantly, you'd probably start questioning if this is really the right employee for your company.

Now what if, instead, they came to you and said, “hey boss, our marketing efforts are struggling. We’ve tested X, Y, and Z to date. Here’s the data for each one. Here are the reasons I think they’re falling short. And here’s my game plan to solve this problem. But as you can see, a couple of these ideas are pretty big investments. I wanted to get your perspective before proceeding. Would you think about this any differently?”

How would you react to that? You’d probably feel like you have a pretty amazing employee. They’ve taken initiative, run into a wall, already identified solutions/next steps, but they’re coming to you for advice and making it as easy as possible for you to help. And you'd think that this is someone worth really investing in.

This is the mentality many of you need to adopt if you actually expect to get quality advice (and not just on Reddit, btw).

Hopefully the takeaway is obvious. But just to be safe: how much care you put into your questions is a signal. And it's a signal that successful people use to determine whether or not it's worth their time to help.

Complex questions, situations, etc. do not have short, easy answers. For them to help, it's going to take a substantial amount of their time. If you post a half baked question, it will signal to them that you're not serious about solving the problem. If you can't be bothered to provide enough information to get help, why would they believe you're serious enough to implement their advice?

That's all. Take the time to ask better questions and I promise you'll see a significant improvement in the help people are willing to provide (while also leveling up the quality of this subreddit to boot).