3 Ways To Keep Yourself Accountable As An Online Coach (i.e. solopreneur)

What is going on, guys? Coming at you with a brand new podcast all about accountability. So this is something that I hear a lot, is like, how do I keep myself accountable? And, um, what I'm going to dive into today is 3 strategies for you, um, that you can potentially use. You know, choose whatever one, you know, suits your fancy kind of thing, but 3 strategies that you can use to keep yourself more accountable to any type of goals that you have. Now, obviously I talk a lot about business, so I'm really mostly like more specifically referring to business goals. Um, but that is what this podcast is all about. So, um, a quick little riff here on why I got inspired, um, to actually record this podcast. Um, it's actually a conversation that I was having, um, with one of my good friends and, you know, I was talking to him about how hard it can be sometimes as a solo entrepreneur to keep yourself accountable. And that's because you don't have, you know, you don't have these external things keeping you accountable. Like, you don't have a team, you know. Um, like, this is the friend I was talking to. He, he runs, um, you know, an e-commerce company, and, uh, you know, he's got a business partner, um, and, and they have team members. And so it's one of those things where, like, when you have a team and you have people relying on you and you have business partners, um, you know, there's a natural accountability there, right? Because you have skin in the game. Like, people are counting on you. Like, you have mouths to feed, right? You have, you know, agreements to uphold with your business partner. Um, but when you are your own boss, uh, you don't have that, right? And I know a lot of you listen to this podcast, um, you know, maybe you are working on transitioning to being full-time your own boss. Uh, maybe right now you are, uh, working for someone else. And if you are working for someone else, or if you've had that experience, um, of working for someone else, and you know that like that accountability, like a lot of times it's, it's from something external. And so when you go out on your own, you have to really change the way that you set things up, change the way that you do things, um, because if you don't have some degree of accountability there, it just, it just allows for a lot of complacency. And you know, overall it's just like it's going to take you a lot longer to hit your goals, or you might not hit your goals at all if you don't find new ways to keep yourself accountable. So, all right, let's dive right into this. Um, like I said, I want to talk about 3 main things. Um, the first thing that I want to talk about, and I'm going to give 2 different stories in my life— and so a lot of this, a lot of this podcast, and really a lot of all the podcasts I'm going to do, are going to be based on my experience and my clients' experiences. So, um, A lot of what I'm gonna talk about in this podcast is the 3 ways that I've used to keep myself accountable in switching from being in that employee mindset to an entrepreneur mindset, you know, running my own online coaching business. And what I hope from these is that at least one, if not all of these strategies are going to apply to you. So the first thing that I wanna talk about is this concept that I don't know if I coined this, but it's just what I call it. I think it's original, but nothing's original these days, so it's probably not. But it's something that I call public accountability. So the first story, um, I will— this is a recent story, so I'll tell this one. Um, but if you guys follow me on Instagram, um, so what, what day am I recording this podcast? It's like December, uh, December 18th. So I just wrapped up last week, um, I don't know if you guys are familiar with 75 Hard, but I just wrapped up phase 2 of 75 Hard. So it's like that, it's like phase 1 of this 30-day Live Hard challenge. Anyways, You know, I forget all the different things that are in here. I'm not gonna, you know, rhyme them all off, but it's basically this 30-day challenge where you— there's like 10 different daily tasks you have to do or something like that, and you have to do them, every single one of them, every day for 30 days. And if you miss one of the habits, you have to start over at square zero, so you have to restart the entire challenge if you miss one. So this is like— it's like a lot to bite off. I mean, you have to do 2 45-minute workouts, one of them has to be outside. You have to follow a diet, no cheat meals. You have to drink a gallon of water. You visualize for 10 minutes a day, you have to take a 5-minute cold shower a day, and there's a couple other odds and ends in there that I am missing. Um, but that's not the point of this. The point of this is I had actually tried, um, this particular phase of Andy Frisella's 75 Hard challenge a number of different times, and I had failed. So this was not my first rodeo with the challenge. Um, but I had really decided, like, I just really wanted to flex my discipline muscle again because I think it's totally a perishable skill— discipline, uh, self-discipline. And so I was like, you know what, I really want to do this challenge, and I think one of the ways that I can help incentivize myself to do this is to put my ass on the line in a very public way. And the cool thing about this challenge is you, like, there's an app that you get to check things off every single day And when you check them off, it says it like allows you to generate, um, it allows you to generate a, an Instagram story, um, that basically shows like day 1 completed, day 2 completed, right? And so what I forced myself to do was publicly commit to doing this thing. And every single day, um, I would post it on my Instagram stories. Now this seems like a really small action to take, but this was actually huge in the degree of accountability that I felt toward the challenge. Now, part of why this is, is because like as humans, we want to, uh, we want to follow through with the commitments that we make and we don't want to look bad, right? And so for me, this was a very small action that I decided to take in the challenge, but by publicly announcing that I was doing this and posting on my stories every single day that I completed that day, what it allowed me to do was it allowed me to basically have my entire Instagram audience, or at least feel like my entire Instagram audience, like anyone who's regularly watching my stories, was keeping me accountable. So publicly my ass was on the line. And I think this was the only attempt of this phase that I actually, you know, shared publicly every single time. And I did complete 30 days. There was actually a small mishap in there. I had people on my Instagram stories vote as to whether that day was going to count or not, and they said that it did. But anyways, regard— that was like— that wasn't me not being— anyways, it doesn't really matter. It wasn't really necessarily me purposefully not doing something. It's actually something that just sort of slipped my mind, and so I tried to— anyways, it doesn't matter. The story about it doesn't matter. Um, but anyways, long story short, with the exception of that one mishap, um, it was extremely successful. So that's one— that's one example. Um, and One more example that I just want to give you, um, like especially, you know, maybe if you're a person who wants to launch your one-on-one coaching or you want to launch a masterclass or a group coaching program or something like that, um, another story that I want to give you is like how you can actually use things or promotions in your business. Um, like let's just use launching for an example, or like let's use like launching and running a masterclass because this is the example that happened in my life. Um, you guys, you can, you can use stuff like that to keep you accountable. So like, for context, I remember in— oh God, it was like, I think back to like September, I think, of 2020 when I was very— I was launching my very first ever group program. At the time it was called IG for Business, now it's called IG for Coaches, and it's a part of my group program, the Full-Time Fast Track. But it's the same program, it's just back then it was like named differently. Anyways, this was the first time I was ever running a masterclass, and I was running the masterclass to promote my group program that I wanted to launch in September so I could get case studies so I could use them for running paid advertising. Anyways, what I noticed about doing that is I had never created a masterclass before. Like, I'd never created a masterclass, I had never run a group coaching program, and I didn't even have— honestly, I didn't even have the, the modules for the program built. So This created so much like public accountability for me in so many ways. But one of the ways was like, in terms of creating the masterclass, like I set a date and I was promoting it and I didn't have it done yet, right? And there were times like, you know, a week or two out from that masterclass where I was like, oh my God, like I don't have this ready yet. Like, I don't know if it's going to be done. I was like, I was on struggle street putting together that masterclass. Like if you've ever put together your first masterclass, it's like It's a whole learning curve, and especially to make it really good. Like, I'm really hard on myself, and I'm like, I know how good this could be, so I wanted it to be really good. Um, but anyways, what, what's setting that deadline allowed me to do is it allowed me to like, oh God, just have so much public accountability and really force myself to just like get the freaking thing done. Because what would have happened if I didn't get the thing done and I was promoting it? Like, I basically— I started promoting it. Long story short, what I'm saying is I started promoting it before I get it built. And, and that forced me to just get it built, because what would have happened if I would have set the date and been promoting it and I didn't have a masterclass? I would have looked like an idiot, right? So it's like, it's that same thing where it's like, you, you want— like, humans just naturally want to look good in the eyes of others. And so if you can find a way to commit before you're ready, like commit yourself to the launch or the group program or the whatever masterclass before you're ready, and put your ass on the line in a way that's like very public where you're gonna look stupid, um, if you don't do it, then that can be like a very effective way to hold yourself accountable. And the same thing was even true, like, once I ran that masterclass and then I had 20 people that signed up for my program, I was like, shit, I better create this program. Because at the time, I just— so I just sold the program with an outline. I was like, yeah, this is the program, this is what it's going to be, is what we're going to talk about. But I didn't have the program built. And so what that allowed me to do was when 20 people paid me $500 and I had like 10 grand in my, you know, my hand from these people that were like, yeah, I'm signing up for your course. Like, you best believe I got to creating that course real quick. And within the span of 6 weeks, you know, people— like, I just basically, like, the week before week 1, I created week 1. Before week 2, I created week 2. And, you know, by the end of it, I had, you know, in the span of 2 months, I had created a masterclass, I had promoted it, I had sold the program, and I had the whole program built, like, probably in the span of like 2 and a half months. And so my point with this is, this is one of the ways that you can keep yourself publicly accountable, um, which is super, super helpful, um, because it just— it's— it is— there's just less accountability when you're working for yourself. So this is one of the ways that you can use either your customers or even your audience to keep you accountable so that you get shiz done. Okay, so anyways, I hope those two stories were helpful, but that is, uh, Method number 1 that I've used. The second way that I would say— and let me actually go back a second, um, that the reason that method works, and I kind of said this before, but the reason that method works again is because like people just don't want to look stupid, right? So I didn't want to look— I didn't want to look stupid failing 75 Hard. I didn't want to look stupid when, you know, one person signed up for my masterclass and there was like— it was a ghost town. I didn't want to look stupid if I was presenting a program, um, and, you know, like, if I sold this program and it sucked and I had to like refund a bunch of people, right? So it's one of those things where like, it's like, it would be so painful. Like, you're basically using painful motivation, like, like, as you're using pain as a motivator. But it would be so painful to look dumb. It'd be so painful to like, you know, be like, have like no one on your masterclass, that, that scenario, that situation is more painful than it is for you to actually sit down and do the freaking work to put the masterclass or the program or what have you together. So anyways, that's kind of why that works, like, from a psychological perspective. Now, the second thing, um, that I want to— second method that you could use, or at least something that I have, um, used a lot in my life, is not wanting to disappoint my coach or not wanting to feel like I had wasted an investment, which is part of the reason why investing in mentorship or courses or programs work is because you put skin in the game like you put your ass on the line, just like in a little bit of a different way. Again, you don't want to look stupid to yourself of how like you invested that money and like you got nothing from it, right? You don't want to look stupid to your coach where it's like they're giving you stuff and you're not doing it right. And so like another way that I have found to hold myself accountable, um, with running my own business, like not having a team, not, you know, working for anyone else, is, is through making investments in mentorship. So, you know, just to give you even a tangible example, like I recently, um, I think I told this story in the last, um, you know, podcast that I filmed, that I recorded, I guess filmed too. But, um, I recently reinvested for another 6 months of mentorship, another 6-month mastermind with my previous coach. And the funny thing is, like, before I made that investment, I was honestly being a little complacent in my business. Like, I was like, I just, I didn't need to sell anything. Like, I was, I was kind of comfortable for lack, like, for lack of better words. And honestly, for the truest words, like, I was honestly like a bit comfortable where I was at. And but I like, I'm such a human who's motivated for growth and certainly for myself and also like being better for my clients., and it just started to feel like not that good, you know. And, you know, I knew I was going to invest in something, but anyways, I, I pulled the trigger on, on reinvesting with her. And basically I committed to another 6-month container with her, and that's like a $24,000 investment. And so what that did was like instantly just like raised the urgency on stuff, right? And it was like, okay, I have 3 one-on-one spots open. Let's fill those spots. Like, how come I haven't been filling those spots, right? I was being like, God, I'm like, I'm like one of the most— I feel like I'm one of the most disciplined and like driven people that I know, but still, like, if left to my own devices, I do get a bit complacent. Like, I just— it's just human nature, right? And so when I made that investment, it's just like, whoa, like the urgency raised, like the drive just like raised, and You know, we got on a call, put together a plan, and, you know, within— I mean, we got on a call and by 8 days later, like, I had made back like $23,000 out of the $24,000 that I invested. And I will say for sure, like, had I not had that call with her and had I not, like, you know, for lack of better words, kicked my ass into gear, I probably wouldn't have sold anything in December. I just would have like— I would have waited till, you know, January or February to start selling things again. And so yeah, like, that is, that is the second way that I have used and I have found, um, just very helpful to create accountability for myself. And so like I say, the reason psychologically that this one works is partially because, again, again, you don't want to look stupid to somebody else, right? Like, I don't want to, I don't want to look stupid to my mentor and be like, well, she gave me this plan and I didn't execute it, you know? Like, I don't I don't— I just don't want to be that client. And then the second thing is I don't want to look stupid to myself. Like, you know, it would just— I, like, I wouldn't have wanted to waste that money, if that makes sense, right? And so that's the second way, um, that I have found to, um, kind of hold myself a little bit more accountable. Um, but let's talk about the third way. So the third way is, um, Again, I'll use a story of just something that I'm experiencing right now. Um, not necessarily— so, so the mastermind that I'm in, there's, there's two pieces to it. So one of the pieces is, um, you like the one-to-one mentorship, like from my coach. And then the other piece is like the mastermind itself, which is a group of other ladies who are, you know, we're all doing, I don't know, probably somewhere over $10,000 a month, but some of them are doing, you know, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, doing— God, some of them are doing like $100,000 months, which is crazy. Um, but anyways, what's my point with this is, um, the second piece of that, um, container, that program, is like the group calls, like with the other ladies, um, who are in there. And so the thing about, about this group is like, you know, this is a very high-level mastermind, and like these ladies are playing a really big game. And, um, another like human psychological factor that starts to get involved when you become part of group programs or masterminds or like just, you know, any sort of community where there are other like-minded people going toward the same goal is you start surrounding yourself with different people. And I don't know if you guys have heard the quote from Jim Rohn, like you're— I hope they said that right, Jim Rohn— but you're the average of the 5 people. Like, this is like a life hack, guys. I'm telling you, this is a life hack. You are the average of the 5 people that you hang around with the most. And kind of how this influences you is like, as humans, we are so designed to like want to, uh, fit in and, um, you know, be like a part of the community, a part of the tribe. I think this comes from some, some really deep-rooted stuff like from back in the day where like if you weren't a part of the tribe, if you weren't a part of the group, like, you know, like your survival was at risk, right? Like, you weren't a part of the pack, you're fending for yourself, like you might, like, die, right? And so this is like a very deep, like, deep sort of, um, human thing. I don't think you say it's psychological thing, but like a very, like, human thing that is just like deep-rooted within us is like we do desire to belong, we desire to be a part of the community, of the crew, of the pack, and This is part of the reason why being a part of a group program or a mastermind or something where there's that like community vibe and you're working to the same place is super, super powerful because it's this sense of you don't want to— it's almost like you don't want to be left behind, right? Like there's almost like two sides of the coin. Part of it is like you see these other people in your group and what they're doing and what's working and it really inspires the heck out of you and you're like, it just opens up your eyes and it just opens up like so many new doors. You're like, whoa, Oh, I never thought about that. Like, like sometimes when I run, you know, group programs, like one person is like starts doing this strategy, it starts really working for them, and then everyone else in the group starts getting ideas. They're like, wow, I could make that work in my business. And like, you know, it's just like, it's like this spiral, like this positive spiral of inspiration. Um, and the other part of that is like, you know, when you see these people start to move, there's a, there's a, there's a bit of a feeling within you that's like, man, I don't want to be left behind, right? Like it, it, it kind of forces you to like level up because it's like you don't want to not be be a part of the pack or the crowd or the crew, right? And so, um, I think this is like the, the third way that I would say that I have found, um, to create that accountability for myself, um, and my business, even though I'm, you know, I'm still a solo— like, in a lot of senses, I'm still a solo entrepreneur, um— is, is being a part of, of groups, masterminds, group coaching programs, communities, um, of people who are doing bigger things, um, because it is something that, like, number one, one really inspires you to, you know, just see your own potential. And number two, like, shows you like, oh, I'm kind of gonna get like left behind here if I like don't take action. And so, um, that has been really, really powerful for me. So that is, uh, you know, pretty much— I would just, just come back. It's Sunday. Oh my God, 333, look at that. Um, so it's Sunday. I just got back from a walk outside and I just— I don't know, this thought crossed my mind. I was like, you know what, speed of implementation, let's just record this, let's just film this. Um, there's probably somebody out there who needs to hear this, you know, somebody who is, uh, you know, just wanting more for themselves in 2023 and maybe didn't have the greatest, uh, you know, 2022 and just wants to take it to a new level. And, um, you know, feels like to some degree that like, yeah, it is a totally different game when you're not working for someone else. It's a totally different game trying to keep yourself accountable when you are the only one inside your business. And so, um, these are 3 of the best ways that I have learned to keep myself accountable. And so my hope is that you choose one or all of these things, um, and use it and yeah, you know, use it, make it work for you so that, um, you can create, you know, both the business and the life that you're desiring to create. So to do a quick recap, uh, the number one thing I talked about is public accountability. Um, you can do that through using your Instagram audience, you know, committing to something like that. Um, you can do it through even, uh, you know, your clients, like people who have paid you, like my example with, you know, they paid for the program and it's like, okay, well, I better create this program really quickly. That is sort of method number 1 is you can have that kind of like that public accountability. Method number 2 is I would say like investing in yourself and choosing, you know, having a mentor and the really the things that are at play there is like, number 1, you have like financial skin in the game, which is like raises the level, like it raises the urgency, it raises the level at which you're gonna play at. And then the second thing that's there, again, kind of similar to the first one, is like you don't, you don't want to disappoint your mentor, you know, like you, you want to be a good client. And, um, so that's kind of like the factor that's at play there. And then the third thing, uh, the third method is to find a way to be a part of some kind of community where people are moving forward and specifically moving forward in the direction that you are trying to go. So if you can get around people that are, you know, at your level or higher and they're going in the direction that you want to go, um, you truly will pick up their habits, their mindsets, their beliefs. Like, this stuff is so powerful. Like, you want to talk about tapping into subconscious work, like, this is a way to do it, like, in a very, um, a much more effortless way, is to just get around people that have the empowering beliefs that you want, that have the habits that you want, the actions, the behaviors, the character traits that you want. And you will find yourself just naturally absorbing those things through osmosis. And that right there would be, you know, the third way that you could potentially use to keep yourself accountable. And I think, you know, a lot of what is going on there is just like, yeah, you do tend to be the average of the 5 people that you surround yourself with most. And a lot of this I think is coming from that like deeply rooted desire to, you know, from kind of like back in the day, our ancestors, what have you, to want to belong and like be a part of the tribe. So that's pretty much it. Those are the 3 ways. I hope that you found this podcast helpful in some way, shape, or form. If you did, hit me up on Instagram @iamorgangillis and let me know what you thought. Let me know if you have any ideas for future podcasts. And that's all I got. I will end this by saying peace, love, and abundance. All right. Peace out.