Many of us own a business so that we can maximize our flexibility. While a business can offer that, more often we need to be accountable in order to get to the ultimate goals we have for our business and ourselves. In this video I talk about three ways I think entrepreneurs need to be accountable in their business, so that they can get what they want.
Having trouble sticking to the goals you have for your business? I know what that is like. It got a lot better for me once I hired a coach who kept me accountable. If you would like to learn more about what that is like call me at +1 (604) 721-5732 or Contact Me to book a time when we can talk about reaching your goals.
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Are you accountable as an entrepreneur?
Hi everyone, I am Coach David J. Greer. Today I want to talk to you about being an entrepreneur and business owner and being accountable. When I first hired my coach, I thought I was a very accountable person. And what I realized was I actually wasn’t all that accountable. I also realized that I liked to make the rules so that when the rules weren’t working out for me, I would change the rules, which is just another way of not being accountable.
And then of course, as an alcoholic, it was very convenient that I wasn’t always accountable so that I could isolate and have time for drinking and not have that be questioned by anyone. In many ways I was not that accountable as an entrepreneur. And I want to let you know that didn’t work out all that well for me. There are three areas I think that we should look at as entrepreneurs and business owners for accountability.
The first place would be to ourselves. Do we set goals for ourselves and then not take any steps to achieve them? Do we have a business that we want to create in the life that we want to live and then we don’t actually do that? There’s this whole internal, can I do things that I want that will get me where I want to go and truthfully for anyone, but especially for business owners and CEOs, that’s really hard to do. That’s one of the things that I do as a coach is help people like you stay accountable to themselves.
The second place I’d like you to think about accountability is to employees. I remember a high-performing individual I worked with a few years ago as a consultant. He told me about the previous CEO that he’d been working for. When the CEO said something in a new direction, he didn’t pay much attention. If the CEO repeated it later a second time, he started to perk up and pay more attention. If the CEO said it a third time then my friend knew that something was actually going to happen.
Being accountable to our employees, I think means writing things down. It’s very hard to keep track of verbal promises and there’s really no accountability for that. I’m a big proponent of setting clear, crystal clear, quarterly goals with clear finish lines, no more than three, four absolute maximum five per quarter and that those are written down and then that’s what everyone is pulling towards.
Employees watch. You are the biggest loudspeaker for your business, and if you set a set of goals and then everyone is seeing that you’re not doing anything active to make those goals come true, they know that those goals are not really serious.
Finally, the third area of accountability would be to your investors and to your board, if you have those in your business. And again, boards are there to keep you and the company accountable for all of the stakeholders, for the investors, the employees, suppliers.
I recently had an issue I was told about where a CEO had made some very concrete promises and said, “Oh, it’s no problem. That’ll be easy.” And six months later, they still haven’t delivered and are now well past six months late on delivering them. Now the board is stuck with, “Okay, what do we do? Do we have to remove the founder? Is this business not actually viable?” And the next round of investments actually rests on that decision. So it’s kind of a serious… it isn’t kind of, it is a serious issue. It’s all down to an entrepreneur who isn’t able to be accountable.
I know what that’s like. It’s really hard to keep us accountable, us wild and crazy, often distracted, entrepreneurs. I know for me, I’ve had a coach for the last 13, 14 years and having a coach has done wonders for me to actually get what I want in business and in life, because I have someone who holds me accountable.
If you would like someone like that in your life, I would be happy to talk to you about being a coach and how I hold people accountable. Give me a call at the number on the screen, or it will be down below in the description (+1 (604) 721-5732). Reach out by giving me a call or send me an email and let’s book a time where we can talk about what it means for an entrepreneur to be accountable.
