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Creative Questions To Help Move Your Business Past a Tight Budget
Category: Marketing Strategies
Nobody starts on top. You have to find ways to overcome the one obstacle that every entrepreneur has in the beginning.
The obstacle for many people is getting their business marketed on a tight budget. Being creative can help you get through on a tight budget and by answering some of these creative questions you can learn how to do it.
Questions such as:
1) How could I…
A different question to get started with:
2) Who could help me with I love that one. Who could help me with
How about:
3) Who might exchange for ?
Here’s another one:
4) How can I do this faster, with less effort, cheaper? Could I do this for free?
Try this one:
5) Could I substitute ‘X’ for ‘Y’? What could I substitute to get ‘ABC’ instead of ‘XYZ’? Just think of whatever you wanted to do, how could you substitute for ‘XYZ’?
This next one is a great one because it puts you in the shoes of other people, someone who is thinks completely different than you.
6) How would solve this problem?
A good example: How would my mentor solve this problem? How would my four year-old daughter solve this problem? It’s a great question because it forces you to think from a different perspective.
I can confidently say that these questions, as well as others, have allowed my creativity to grow and have opened all kinds of opportunities up to me. The success of my career can be credited to my creative thinking.
Let me give you a small example about how I used this creative way of questioning.
I decided to become a professional speaker as soon as I was done University. My focus was speaking to college and high school students about the topic of creativity. I focused on creativity because with it I was able to move from a first year failure in University to graduating being named Most Outstanding Male with straight A’s. I changed a lot between how I did things in first year to my last year, and I credit a lot of it to learning something I had become very passionate about, creative thinking.
Being a professional speaker and building a profitable speaking business was two things I didn’t know anything about though.
To try and learn the ropes I joined an organization called CAPS, The Canadian Association for Professional Speakers.
I remember going to one of the local chapter meetings and there was one guy there that was doing very well in his speaking career and I asked him, “What do I need to do to get to your level?” And he said, “Well Stu, it’s very simple. I’m going to give you three things to do. When you’ve done all three, then come back to me and I’ll give you some more.” I said, “Okay.”
“The first thing you need to do is surround yourself with people who are in the same industry as yourself. Join CAPS, it will help your business grow.” I said, “Okay.”
So I shelled out the $200 to join the CAPS organization. It was a squeeze for me. In fact, I specifically remember asking if I could put it on payments, which I did. I joined the CAPS organization.
Then he said, “Number two, you have to get out to the CAPS National Conference.” And I thought, ‘Man, how in the heck am I going to get out there?’ It was on the complete opposite side of Canada. The seminar itself was relatively expensive. Anything for me, at that point, was expensive. I had no money. I had to pay for my flight and all that nonsense.
I needed to find a creative solution. Here’s what I did. I asked myself some creative questions. What I started to do was look at what I had that, perhaps, somebody might need and want.
One thing I that I had at that point was time itself. Because I had just started my speaking business I wasn’t speaking very often, so I knew I had some time I could offer.
It was at this moment I asking myself, “How could I use my time to help someone else?” By answering that question I came up with, ‘Help Stu Be Like You,’ a campaign to help me get to the National Conference.
This is how I used my creative thinking. The largest chapter of CAPS in my province consisted of about 75 people. I went to one of their meetings and asked if I could have 30 seconds in front of them.
This was something that nobody had ever asked for. While up there I said, “How many of you, at one point, started off as a speaker with no experience?” Of course everybody’s hands went up in the air.
The next question I asked was, “Out of all of you who have your hand up, how many of you have been to the CAPS national conference?” About 75% of the room kept their hands up.
I continued, “With experiencing the national conference, how many of you with your hands up belief that it would be beneficial for somebody with zero experience to go to?” Everyone who had been kept their hands up.
My reply was, “Great. Well I am somebody that obviously needs to go to the CAPS national conference because I have zero experience.”
Then I said, “But here’s the problem. I don’t have any money. But what I do have is time. Here’s the exchange I’m willing to make and hope that you are willing to make as well. I’ve created a campaign called Help Stu Be Like You.” And I handed out these little flyers, black and white. Basically what I did was I printed two 8×6 flyers on an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet to save costs, and I just cut it right down the middle and I gave everybody in the audience one.
I continued to explain what my campaign was about, “This is what I am willing to do. I will do everything you as speakers don’t like doing or don’t have the time to do. Whatever it is, licking stamps, calling clients, writing sales letters. If you need me to I will come to your house and cut your lawn. All I’m asking in return for my time is a financial contribution of your choice.”
I could see some of them in the audience were just licking their chops thinking, “Oh my goodness. This is awesome. I’m going to get cheap labor.”
I finished up by saying, “Whatever you don’t like doing I will do, in exchange for an financial contribution of your choice. Everything I make from this campaign will go directly towards getting me out to the CAPS national conference.”
As soon as I finished explaining it, a gentleman at the back of the room stood up, and he said, “Stu, I will pay for your entrance fee to the seminar.” Boom. Just like that. Half of my costs basically taken care of.
Once that gentleman was finished telling me about what he was willing to contribute another gentleman stood up. He said, “Stu, I will take care of getting you out to the seminar.” Bang, Bang. In a matter of minutes 85% of my expenses were taken care of.
My friends, it’s all about being creative.
That one creative solution got me out to that conference. It turned out to be a big story because all kinds of people heard about it there and I even had an article published in the national publication.
By exploring your creativity ideas will come to you when you need them the most!
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