Architect; Pritzker Prize laureate, 1995
Recorded · The Hyatt Foundation / The Pritzker Architecture Prize · 1995
More than 500 children under the age of 18 lost a parent in the Hanshin Earthquake; 88 of them lost both parents and became orphans.
Business & enterprise
Small-business owners & operators
Operating knowledge that high-growth founder stories omit: first customers, thin margins, delegation, pricing, and community.
12 questions, 210 quoted from what public figures said elsewhere, each with its source. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.
Worth reading
What is one of the best investments you have made — of money, time, or energy?
War correspondent and author; Pulitzer Prize winner, 1989
Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2007
I’m glad now I did it. It took up all my middle years. I started it in 1972, and I published it in 1988, and my middle years all went into it, but I am glad I put them into it.
Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023
Recorded · Speakola · 2007
They win the respect, the deserved trust, of the people they deal with, and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust.
Every question in this questionnaire
- How did you earn your first customers, and what did they teach you that your plan did not? —
- What is one of the best investments you have made — of money, time, or energy? 42
- When did cash become dangerously tight, and what choice helped the business survive? —
- How did you learn what your work should cost, and when have you priced it badly? —
- What part of your job would surprise outsiders because it takes up so much of your time? 41
- What did hiring your first employee require you to stop controlling yourself? —
- Who makes your work possible behind the scenes? 2
- What are you best at that nobody watching would notice? 26
- How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
- Which piece of standard business advice is least useful to a small operator? —
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 30
- What does your business owe the place and people that support it? —
Related questionnaires
Business & enterprise
Founders & CEOs
A practical record of judgment under uncertainty, scaling, people decisions, culture, and responsibility — useful without pretending success has one formula.
Business & enterprise
Investors & capital allocators
Thesis, risk, refusal, management judgment, patience, changed facts, and fiduciary responsibility.
General
The general questionnaire
Twelve questions in FLAPSS wording — taste, daily life, craft, failure, and who formed you. The place to start if you have no idea where to start.