Everybody Talks About Accountability, But This Is What Accountability Really Looks Like
May 23, by Tanya Alvarez
I want you to meet someone.
Meet Juliana:
What happens when it rains in the jungle? You still get out of your comfort zone and face your #fears and #goals.
Juliana’s a solo entrepreneur who runs a business called ScaleTime, helping entrepreneurs create systems so they can scale their businesses while doing the one thing they do best. She studied at the London School of Economics and worked on Wall Street. So, you know, she’s an underachiever.
Juliana was doing well with her business. Her clients were getting amazing results, and she was pretty happy with her income.
There was just one problem: she was relying WAY too much on referrals. Referrals are great, but it’s never a good idea to rely on one source of leads.
This isn’t going to be a story about how you need multiple lead sources, though. (Let me know in the comments if you want that in a future article).
No, this is an article about accountability AKA how Juliana’s accountability team and I FORCED HER to develop a new lead source. We gave her a deadline, we called her out when she didn’t follow through, and we offered encouragement when she did. We even showed up at her house and kidnapped her dog, refusing to release him until she implemented certain steps.
(OK, maybe not that last part.)
How Juliana Used Accountability to Create a Predictable Lead Generator for Her Business
Juliana knew she wanted to take her business to the next level, and she decided on LinkedIn for that goal.
She started by doing a lot of research on LinkedIn lead gen. You know how it goes. A new strategy! You’re so excited! You research it…for weeks…and weeks. Analysis paralysis kicks in. Eventually, you add it to your “someday” list and move on to researching the next exciting strategy.
Not this time! Juliana’s accountability group gave her a deadline for her LinkedIn strategy. If she didn’t meet the deadline, she’d have to sing an embarrassing song to five people at our weekly video call. At first, she resisted a bit. “How do I write my profile?” “How do I reach out to people?”
“Tough luck — figure it out!” we said.
Just kidding. We gave her feedback on her LinkedIn profile and outreach scripts, and we held her to her deadline.
And you know what? Surprise, surprise: she met the deadline. (Turns out avoiding having to sing “It’s Raining Men” on a recorded video call is a powerful motivator.)
As Juliana got results from her LinkedIn outreach, she was more and more encouraged to continue, and today, she’s generating a consistent flow of leads into her business. With this predictable lead generator in place, she’s not worrying about where the next referral is coming from. She even had leads coming in when she had knee surgery recently!
Everyone Else Jumped on the Bandwagon Too
But that’s not all! Juliana’s LinkedIn work got the other four entrepreneurs in her accountability group excited about LinkedIn too. Juliana found an awesome automation tool for LinkedIn and sent me the info.
“Hmmmmm,” I thought.
I negotiated a deal for the tool, and we all signed up at a 25% discount. (The power of numbers in action!)
Pretty soon, we were ALL using LinkedIn for lead gen.
So now, instead of everyone doing this all alone, we were doing it in a team and keeping each other accountable because we were excited about it. We got super competitive, in a good way, because we didn’t want to fall behind our teammates’ progress. And best of all, we were learning from each other and leveraging each other’s experiences.
Goals are hard when you work on them alone and when you have no one to bounce ideas off of, to hold you accountable, and to celebrate your wins with you.
But with a team, achieving your goals is faster — and a lot more fun!
What’s a Lack of Real Accountability Costing YOU?
What’s the mysterious accountability group that got Juliana these amazing results? Her OwnersUp group. OwnersUp is a community of successful business owners who help you stay accountable and focus on what matters — every day. So you can grow your business and do what you love.
This is so different from how accountability usually works. Just try Googling “accountability.” You’ll see the old Jerry Seinfeld “don’t break the chain” thing, or advice to have a friend donate money to a group you hate if you don’t follow through.
At some point, though, if you really want to get serious and take your business to the next level, you need more than recycled accountability hacks everyone’s already shared a million times. You need real people to hold your feet to the fire. You need real accountability: a team pushing you when you need pushing and celebrating when you follow through.
That’s what OwnersUp provides. Want to learn more about how you could grow your business with accountability from other online entrepreneurs? Reach out here, and let’s talk.