As I was listening to the radio today, I heard this a bit on a morning talk show, one of the DJs was talking about the concept of humility. What he was saying was that leaders take full responsibility for everything that goes wrong in a business, but they don’t hesitate to give credit when things go right. He got me thinking about home based businesses and how it relates. In fact, one of the biggest struggles in a home-based business is…
ACCOUNTABILITY CONSISTENCY IN YOUR HOME BASED BUSINESS!
Clearly these two ladies are working on the opposite angle of what we are talking about! Aside from all the fun, though, it’s a very important component that I think most home-based business owners don’t have in their repertoire of skills. Why do I say that? Because most home based business owners were employees and are used to BEING RESPONSIBLE but not necessarily involved in BEING RESPONSIBLE.
There is a big difference between these two simple differences in wording. Being accountable means that someone else is always following up with you to make sure you are completing your tasks, goals, or action lists. It means that someone else is taking the initiative to make sure that she is taking the necessary steps to succeed in her home business.
However, being accountable means that you are taking the initiative to ensure that you are completing your own action items, PLUS ensuring that your organization is doing the same. We are our own worst enemies when it comes to a home business, because we are tasked with seeking to become entrepreneurs. That means we must take success on our own, on our own (making our own schedule, organizing our days, being diligent in self-motivation and self-learning).
Once again, the employee’s part is at fault. When you work for someone else, the little things are “out of sight, out of mind” because someone else is responsible for handling them. However, in your own home business, you need to be aware and know all the “ins and outs” of your craft, whether you are ready or not. As one of the great home-based business entrepreneurs said, “You don’t know what you don’t know because you never knew you needed to know it.”
So how do you implement an efficient accountability system?
The first step is to have a list of daily goals that you need to meet. If you don’t have goals, you need to figure out why they are so essential to success. If you want, you can visit my blog to find posts about it. The next step is easy: complete your list every day! Get in the habit of achieving those goals every day and you will witness first-hand your business EXPLOSION! However, what business owners struggle with is consistency.
I find it very funny that people say that they themselves are their own worst critics and their own worst enemy, but when it comes to doing things that will prepare them for the future, they take it in stride. WHY GIVE YOURSELF AN EASY OUT BY SUCCUMBING TO EXCUSES? The best of the best make it possible, regardless of what gets in their way. That’s why they are where they are. Excuses are not allowed because they know that each day that they fail to comply with their daily action plan is another day in which they have pushed away their dreams and aspirations. how does it make you feel? Hopefully that makes you feel sad… cheer up!
What are some methods to stay accountable?
– Responsibility partners
Find someone like-minded who is interested in success, grab each other and help each other take their businesses to the top. Motivated people should always associate with other motivated people, and a great method of accountability is for you and your partner to call each other a couple of times a week to make sure you both stay focused.
– Fault statements
A self-motivation method to psych yourself up could be to create a failure statement to read to yourself every day that you don’t meet your daily tasks. It might be something like, “I didn’t get what I set out to do. I guess (insert your ‘why’ here) just wasn’t important enough for me today.” For visual and emotional people, this works wonders.
– System of points
This is something to implement in a group setting at your home based business. It’s almost like a game of friendly competition to see who can be more successful and faster. You create a series of activities that produce results and assign point values to them. Every time you or a teammate completes the task, you get that point value. You add up your points daily and report your daily or weekly scores in a group conference call. This method is directly squeezing the inherent pride within you to motivate you to act, so you won’t be embarrassed in front of your group.
