Before You Book the Call: Questions That Get Builders Real Answers
A one-hour call with an experienced builder can be valuable, but most of that value is lost when the conversation starts with a vague question like "what should I do with my business?" The people who get the most from a session tend to arrive with a specific situation, a clear constraint, and a short list of decisions they are stuck on. This article walks through how to prepare, what to write down beforehand, and how to judge whether a call actually moved your thinking forward. It applies to any advisory conversation, whether you are speaking with Todd Michael through the Book a Call page or with someone else entirely.
Start With the Decision, Not the Topic
Topics are broad: ecommerce, automation, content, pricing, AI. Decisions are narrow: whether to move a product line onto a new storefront, whether to hire a contractor for a repetitive task, whether to delay a launch by two weeks. Advice is much more useful when it is attached to a decision you have to make on a known date.
Before you schedule anything, write one sentence that begins with "I need to decide whether..." If you cannot finish that sentence, the problem is probably not ready for a call yet. Spend a few days on it first. Talk to a colleague, review your numbers, or write a page of notes about what is happening. A call is a poor place to discover what your actual question is.
Prepare a Short Situation Brief
A useful brief fits on one page and answers five things: what you do, who buys from you or uses it, what you have already tried, what constraints you operate under, and what a good outcome would look like in ninety days. Keep the brief factual. Replace "sales are bad" with "we sold 40 units last month, down from 65, and most returns cite sizing." Concrete numbers let the other person ask sharper follow-up questions.
Include what you are not willing to change. Time limits, team size, budget ceilings, and existing contracts all shape which advice is realistic. Stating them up front saves both of you from spending the hour on options you cannot use.
A Checklist for the Day Before
Use this checklist to test your readiness. First, have you written your decision sentence? Second, is your situation brief under one page with at least three numbers in it? Third, have you listed the options you are already considering, including the option of doing nothing? Fourth, do you know which of your constraints are hard and which are preferences? Fifth, have you named one thing you would be embarrassed to be wrong about, so you can ask about it directly?
Sixth, have you prepared two or three questions you want answered, ordered by importance? Seventh, do you have a plan for what you will do with the answers within a week? If you cannot answer yes to most of these, spend more time preparing. An hour of your preparation often produces more clarity than the call itself, and the call then becomes a stress test rather than a brainstorm.
Questions Worth Asking During the Call
Good questions reveal how the advisor reasons. Ask what they would need to see before changing their recommendation. Ask which assumption in your situation seems weakest to them. Ask what they have seen other builders do in a similar position, and what happened, without requiring specific names or results they cannot verify. Ask them to restate your decision in their own words; if the restatement differs from yours, that gap is worth examining.
Be cautious with any advisor who promises certain outcomes, guarantees growth, or offers a single answer to a complicated question without asking about your context. Also be cautious with yourself: when you hear advice you like, ask whether you like it because it is correct or because it confirms what you already wanted to do.
Judging the Call Afterward
Within a day, write down three things: the decision you now face, the one piece of advice you will test, and the question you still cannot answer. The first keeps the call tied to action. The second gives you a concrete experiment. The third tells you what to research or ask next. If you cannot fill in all three, the call may have been interesting but not useful, and that is worth knowing before you book another.
Finally, schedule a small review date. Check whether the tested advice changed a number you were tracking. That review, not the enthusiasm you feel right after the call, is the real measure of whether the hour was well spent.