Peter Michaels

Copywriting to communicate and convince

  • Home
  • About
    • Media
  • Quiz Funnel Copywriting
  • Deep Dive Surveys – Xray Your Market
  • Copywriting For Startups
  • Work With Me
    • Optimize Your Sales Copy
  • Blog

390 Questions Every DAY?

April 19, 2018 by Peter Michaels Leave a Comment

I’m currently re-reading this great book by a guy named Warren Berger, called A More Beautiful Question.

In the book, Berger examines the importance of questions in life and business.

And apparently, a recent study showed that the average 4-year-old British girl asks her mum 390 questions a day (boys aren’t far behind)…

390 questions every DAY?!?

 

Well done, Mums! (as if we needed another reason to celebrate ya)

But what’s most interesting to me about this mindboggling stat is that, as Berger puts it:

“…chances are, for the rest of her life, that four-year-old girl will never again ask questions as instinctively, as imaginatively, or as freely as she does at that shining moment.

Unless she is exceptional, that age is her questioning peak.”

Which got me thinking:

Those 4-year-old girls would make great entrepreneurs, wouldn’t they?

 

All those questions… all that unbounded curiosity…

All that craving to LEARN about the world, to KNOW MORE, to find out WHAT HAPPENS IF…

That desire to take one answer and turn it into another question…

(Ok, that can drive parents crazy but you get the point.)

Questions are what drive our businesses…

 

Not all questions have an answer – some have more than one, and some just lead to more questions…

But in your business (as in life), you NEED to ask the right questions to help you move forward.

According to the back-cover blurb for Berger’s book, questions are:

“One of the most powerful forces for igniting change… (and) can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities.”

And in my experience, questions are what help you communicate your true unique value to the people who want what you have.

Whenever I work with a client – and also when I’m someone else’s client – our work begins with a number of important questions.

The “Who, why, how, what and what else?” of things.

Figuring out which questions to ask, and where to look for the answers is a key part of what I do.

I like to think of this calibrated questioning process as ‘the work before the work’…

 

And if you’re not asking difficult questions of your biz, you’re selling yourself short.

Even experts who’ve seemingly mastered their practice over decades still need to ask questions, to keep things fresh and challenge assumptions.

The best writers and consultants I’ve paid for their expertise – people like Kevin Rogers, Jason Leister, Joanna Wiebe and Ryan Levesque – have helped me ask new, challenging and important questions of my business…

Every time I get an outsider’s opinion on things I come away inspired, focused and bursting with ideas.

It’s exciting when you feel that way, like being hit with an electric charge…

 

But it can be challenging and uncomfortable to ask yourself difficult questions.

Think of the leaders in business, sports, art and music that you admire…

It’s likely many of them became successful by questioning commonly held beliefs and coming up with (or inspiring) new answers.

Here’s one way you can do that which just might help you get clear on what’s important in your biz…

‘Vuja De’

Influential US comedian George Carlin used to talk about what he called ‘vuja de’.

It’s a kind of opposite to the familiar concept of déjà vu, but instead it occurs while experiencing something for the umpteenth time, but having “the strange feeling that somehow, none of this has ever happened before.”

Carlin was an outsider’s comic – someone who saw the world through his own unique lens, a little differently to everyone else.

(Many entrepreneurs are outsiders in this way too. And writers.

Having your own unique viewpoint can be a real advantage to creativity, if not always sociability!)

‘Vuja de’ is how Carlin described the process of coming up with some of his most humorous stand up observations.

But this perspective isn’t limited just to comic juxtapositions…

It can be used as a way of exploring new ways to market your products & services, and even as a way of developing new ones.

You’ve likely experienced the sensation yourself, of looking at something you see every day as if through suddenly-fresh eyes and thinking:

“Hang on, why is that like that?”

Or you notice a small detail or inconsistency with the potential to make a big impact if tweaked, and you think:

“Hmm, that’s weird. Now, what if…?”

You can use vuja de to explore alternative viewpoints…

 

…and by “not travelling through life on automatic pilot” as business author and Stanford professor Bob Sutton puts it.

When you become aware of vuja de, you start to see the world differently on a regular basis…

Kinda like being an alien popping down for a visit and not taking anything for granted, you start ignoring assumptions and following a different sort of logic that doesn’t rely on the same preconceptions…

It can open up new solutions to old problems, and even solutions to problems you didn’t even know existed.

Marketers and entrepreneurs can use it shake up your thinking and apply it to your messaging:

Think about how you might express a new-found vuja de-inspired discovery…

And what you would call it if you had to name your discovery, like naming a new planet…

About why it occurred to you in the first place…

And who it might affect (for better and worse).

If you’re struggling to express what’s truly unique about your offer…

 

Try throwing on your vuja de vision goggles (these don’t actually exist – yet!) for a day or two, and start looking a little differently at the problems your audience experiences, or at your product itself…

Are there assumptions or ‘received wisdom’ in your industry that you can skewer to illustrate how unfair or hypocritical something is?

Maybe there are some unusual terms or phrases that need to be examined, which can frame your service in a new light when they’re upended?

Look for the things everyone else seems to be ignoring…

…maybe that’s where you’ll find some unmet needs and new messaging opportunities.

Next week I’ll be opening up spots on a new service I’ve put together where asking questions – sometimes difficult, sometimes looking at things with ‘vuja de’ in mind – plays a key role.

If you’re a solopreneur (like a consultant or course owner), run a small business or work in digital marketing, keep an eye out for my next email with the details.

Experience has taught me that sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to ask and answer the most important questions that help you get noticed, communicate your true value, break through barriers and drive growth.

That’s what I’m helping people do these days. If you’re interested in that, tune in next week to find out how you can get involved.

(I promise there’ll be less than 390 questions in a day to be answered.)

Meantime: what’s the one question that’s produced the most surprising results in your biz?

I’d love to hear it. Hit me up in the comments and let me know.


Subscribe to receive weekly articles like this and download your FREE bonus guide: The Connect & Convert ‘Snapshot Copy’ Formula




Filed Under: Copywriting, Marketing, Musings

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 57
  • Next Page »

Latest blog posts

  • 390 Questions Every DAY? April 19, 2018
  • SO Frustrating! April 12, 2018
  • Reading The Room April 5, 2018
  • Why They Can’t Hear You March 28, 2018
  • About ‘True Happiness’ (Not What You Think…) March 20, 2018
  • Learn More About Your Audience While Building Your List And Making Sales March 1, 2018

Client testimonials

Peter has been helping us improve the message across our site and we’re very impressed with his ability to create compelling copy for our target audience.

The results? 4.4% conversions for our StoreFront registration page… 4.4% conversions for a demo of our enterprise level service… And astonishingly, conversion rates DOUBLED for one lead-gen landing page.”

Christoffer Nilsson, CEO LocalizeDirect
www.localizedirect.com

Pete did a great job of reorganizing my disorganized mess of a landing page… The Conversion Optimization Report I got was very thorough, clear and easy to implement – exactly the instructions I needed, fantastic!

Pete helped me get new consultations without having to be on someone’s podcast first… Now, people come directly to the landing page and book a free consultation, and then I can convert them into clients.”

Chris Kelly, Nourish Balance Thrive
www.nourishbalancethrive.com

We needed help making our pages more engaging and conversion-friendly. Pete was great – he had a lot of insight on copy & page layout and helped increase our click-throughs and decrease bounce rate.

Pete is a pleasure to work with: I was impressed by his prompt responses and professionalism. He made sure to thoroughly understand our company and objectives beforehand, and kept the tone of his copy consistent with our brand style (really important to us). I highly recommend working with Pete!“

Esther Lee, Marketing Director Vital Plan, Inc.
www.vitalplan.com

Pete looked at my FB Ads and Landing Page and made what I thought were “small tweaks”. Stuff I never would have picked up on. I launched the new funnel – my landing page now has been converting at a SOLID 69% over the past two months. You heard that right… conversions over doubled!

I’ve saved more than the price of admission from this massively improved conversion rate. A great investment. And Pete is a great guy to work with. A total Pro. He delivers great quality on time.”

Ryan Powell
www.mortgagemarketinginsider.com

I’ve hired his talent within the self-improvement niche and sold tens of thousands of $ of info products…

Peter has the heart, he really does care about whether your information sells. I absolutely recommend that you jump onto his services while you can!”

Simon Stanley
Digital marketer & consultant

Pete delivered awesome copy for our website, newsletters and flyers. He was always responsive, professional with a deep insight for the do’s and don’ts of web copy, and very helpful with suggestions. I am looking forward to working with him again.”

Jan Winkelmann, CEO ArtEngine
www.artengine.io

Pete did a great job with our initial launch… for some affiliates it was converting at up to 4%. For internal traffic we received EPCs well over $10, meaning we converted close to 20% from our list. I like Pete’s style of writing and would recommend him.”

Chad Hamzeh
Traffic BlackBook

Peter was super helpful and responsive. His emails have a conversational quality to them that make people feel like you’re reaching out to them personally and get them highly engaged as a result.”

Avery Houser, Teespring
www.teespring.com

If you need direct response copy and don’t have 5 figures to invest in it, you should definitely contact Peter. Because he’s (at least for the time being) wildly underpriced when you consider just how good he is.”

Vin Montello
Copywriter & consultant

Pete was SO friendly and helpful from the very beginning. He provided me with tons of helpful resources and ideas for how to get the best results from my project…

Pete taught me A LOT about the importance of surveying my list and how that could affect the success of my copy and conversions. He also taught me about The Ask Method® and how it might be a great sales funnel to implement in my business in the future. No pressure, just information, which I really appreciated.

From the Deep Dive Survey itself, I got a lot of great lines to use in my copy which were very helpful in creating my sales page and email sequence. Pete was great about teaching me all about the process and made sure I knew exactly how to repeat the process on my own should I ever want to.

Pete also wrote me copy for 2 Facebook ads and landing pages and his landing page copy is converting almost 2x better than mine was. I went from a 25% conversion rate to a 45% conversion rate on the lead magnet I am using.

I’d definitely recommend Pete for anyone looking to increase knowledge of their target audience and increase conversions.”

Sarah Schewitz, Psy.D.
Couples Learn

“Who the hell is Peter Michaels?”

I'm a CopyHackers-certified conversion writer and consultant. I'm based in London, UK and I love helping startups, entrepreneurs and marketers like you sell more stuff online. Click to find out how I can help you...

Feeling social? Get in touch

  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Twitter

What’s hot on the blog

  • 390 Questions Every DAY?
  • SO Frustrating!
  • Reading The Room
  • Home
  • About
  • Quiz Funnel Copywriting
  • Deep Dive Surveys – Xray Your Market
  • Copywriting For Startups
  • Work With Me
  • Blog

Copyright © 2018 · Enterprise Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in