Asking the Right Questions (12/13/20)
Hey Friends,
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Let’s get to our study for this week!
Asking the Right Questions
Link: The 36 Questions That Lead to Love
A few years ago the New York Times published this article with great questions to ask the people closest to you in your life. The title says “questions that lead to love,” but there isn’t anything overly romantic about any of them. They’re just questions that create intimacy, either as a spouse, a friend, or someone looking to start a relationship.
Life is really all about asking the right questions. There are few things we immediately understand without asking questions. Kids ask questions incessantly as they grow, and as adults, we have to learn to ask targeted questions as a way to learn and create relationships.
This NYT list of questions may not have many that work for business purposes, but it’s full of questions that can lead to better conversation in your personal life. A few of my favorites from the list:
Would you like to be famous? In what way?
Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you’re going to say?
What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
Tell me your life story in four minutes with as much detail as possible.
None of these questions are groundbreaking, but each one of them individually could lead to an entire night of conversation.
There’s an entire level of conversation that looks like this:
It’s pong conversation. It goes back and forth and is built on a certain amount of one-upsmanship, and it sounds like this:
Person A: “I went to Greece last year and ate brunch every day, laid on the beach, and partied all night in Mykonos.”
Person B: “That sounds soooooo amazing. I went to Spain last year and ate pinchos and hiked the Camino de Santiago and tasted all the wine!
A: Oh wow! I’ve never been to Spain, but I have been to Portugal, and in Portugal I…
You get the idea here. It’s back and forth. We take what the other has said and instead of interpreting and asking more questions, we contextualize to our own life experience and share whatever we can think of that’s most similar.
We’re all guilty of this because this is low-intimacy conversation. Not all of our conversations can have a level of intimacy above cordial formalities and a basic sharing of life experiences.
But we should strive for more.
Asking questions to others and sharing more intimately when asked of you creates a better bond. Next time you’re in a pong conversation turn it into something greater by asking good questions.
Take what they give you, do some processing, add something fancy, and throw it back at them for more. Like this:
I’ll leave this topic by sharing my favorite question that I sometimes ask my clients at dinner:
Tell me a story from your life that sounds like it’s completely made up, but is 100% true.
Dendrology
Link: The Economics of Christmas Trees
The holiday season is upon us and all we have to do this year is decorate our homes. For those of us distancing and keeping to our homes this year, decorations are as cheery as things get for some.
The backbone of the holiday decoration economy is the Christmas tree. A tradition dating back to the late 1500s, people have been lighting up evergreens around this time of year for centuries.
Today, the economy of Christmas trees is different. For the first time ever the annual sale of fake trees is on par with the number of real trees sold. Let’s take a look:
I’m SHOCKED that the number of real Christmas trees sold annually is exactly the same as it was in 2004. I genuinely assumed that real tree sales would have been plummeting year-over-year throughout the last few decades.
The result of the rising tide in fake trees over the years has, however, created a situation where fake trees make up a significant portion of trees displayed in homes. About 81% of trees that are up and decorated in American households are artificial, or around 96 million total.
Real trees take an astounding 8-10 years to get to market from the time they’re planted to the time they’re mature enough for sale. This makes Christmas tree farming a difficult business to get into as people have to invest in planting, herbicides, fertilizers, and the time to get these trees to market.
In contrast, manufacturers in China can make 1,500 artificial trees in about 2 days.
It’s tough to see how anything is keeping the market for real trees afloat other than good old fashioned nostalgia. Nothing beats the feel, smell, and experience of having a real tree in your home.
For me, this is year two of having an artificial tree, and the feeling of pulling the already lit tree out of the closet and having it decorated in about 20 minutes is pretty darn close to better than the real thing.
Opportunities
Andrew Carnegie didn’t wasn’t born into the wealth and industry we think of when we hear his name. He was raised in a cottage in central Scotland and moved to America at the age of 12. He would go on to become one of the wealthiest Americans in history.
His big opportunity came at the age of 14, just two years after moving to Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh, he was given the chance to be a telegraph messenger, and here are his thoughts on seizing opportunity:
"The interview was successful. I took care to explain that I did not know Pittsburgh, that perhaps I would not do, would not be strong enough; but all I wanted was a trial. He asked me how soon I could come, and I said that I could stay now if wanted. And, looking back over the circumstance, I think that answer might well be pondered by young people. It is a great mistake not to seize the opportunity. The position was offered to me; something might occur, some other boy might be sent for. Having got myself in, I proposed to stay there if I could...
And that is how, in 1850, I got my first real start in life. From the dark cellar [of my previous job] running a steam-engine at two dollars a week, begrimed with coal dirt, without a trace of elevating influences in life, I was lifted into a paradise, yes, heaven, as it seemed to me, with newspapers, pens, pencils, and sunshine about me. There was scarcely a minute in which I could not learn something or find out how much there was to learn or how little I knew. I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and that I was bound to climb."
It was through this role with the Ohio Telegraph Company that he made the connections to earn promotions. It was through those promotions that he learned skills and earned money. And it was with those skills and money that he launched the Carnegie Steel Company which eventually became the United States Steel Company, the first company ever to reach a market cap of $1 billion.
At the risk of sounding like the oldest guy ever, it’s true that younger generations appear to be disinterested in seizing opportunity. But opportunity looks different for each generation. If you’re young, you don’t want to chase something that on the tail end of a trend and dying out, you want to be involved in what’s next.
Those opportunities often need to be created, not seized. My advice to our youth today is this: seize the opportunities that present themselves to you, pursue what you’re interested in, and apply the things you learn to create new opportunities that didn’t exist before.
Quote of the Week
“There is little success where there is little laughter” -Andrew Carnegie
That’s all this week, thanks for attending!
-Ryan Mulholland