I thought I’d make a list of questions that I like to ask my clients. I don’t necessarily ask every single client every single question – I go by feel and discernment, which is the hardest thing to put into words, and is a big part of what people actually pay me for. It’s largely about noticing what’s happening in/with the client while they are answering. Anyway here are some of the questions, more to come
- Backstory. What’s the backstory of what you’ve done so far? What’s the origin story? Where did it all begin? What stages/phases did you go through to get here?
- Detail the operation. What are you currently doing? What is it exactly that you do for people? (This is a question worth going into a lot of detail about, lots of followups.) What are you looking to do next?
- Aesthetics. What are your aesthetic inspirations? What are your favorite movies, tv shows, video games? What is art to you? What is beautiful, what do you have posters of? What would you have posters or commissions of, if you don’t have any?
- Media mogul. Suppose you were really wealthy, or otherwise you maybe inherited your dream sort of media studio or production house. What would it be? A film studio? Record label? Magazine? If you were guaranteed of succeeding, what kind of media mogul would you be? Followup: what sort of movies, or books, or artists, etc would you be looking to make, showcase? (I have a lot of followup questions about what the whole operation would look and feel like.)
- Bank Heist. What role would you play in a “bank heist”? Feel free to modify the heist so that it’s not a bank, maybe you’re retrieving a stolen diamond from an evil dictator and returning it to a museum or something. Safecracker? Getaway driver? Hacker? Mastermind? Brute? Conman? Fixer? Inside man? Wild card?
- Chillin’. What do you do for fun? What do you do to relax? What do you do when you’re sick and you’re not supposed to be doing any work?
- Clone. If you could hand off your entire operation to a clone of yourself, and trust that they will manage it just as well as you, enthusiastically, what would you like to do next? After taking a vacation, resting, clearing your head – what do you think you’d do next?
- Theme park. You’ve been given a plot of land in a surprisingly accessible location and all the resources you need to build “some kind of theme park”. What would it be like? It doesn’t have to have rides, it can be literally any kind of festival or event you dream up.
- The Expedition. Whatever it is that you’re currently working on, you’re asking for people’s time, money, attention. How can you make them feel good about giving it to you? As an investment? Approach this with confidence. What are you going to attempt to discover?
- Supercollaborator. Who would you be most excited to do some sort of collaboration with? Why exactly?
- Golden ticket. What would be the most incredible thing that could happen to your project/business/operation? Why? How could we make that more likely? What are some intermediate steps we could define?”
to be updated