tactics or accountability

Summary

there are two reasons people hire help. tactics and accountability. they’re not the same thing and they don’t apply at the same stage of your business.

1. early stage you need tactics. you don’t know how to set up a funnel, write an email sequence, run an ad, structure an offer. you need someone to show you the actual moves. you’re paying for know-how.

2. mid stage you have tactics. what you don’t have is execution. you know what to do. you don’t do it. you need someone to make you do it. you’re paying for accountability.

3. the trap: mid stage entrepreneurs keep buying tactics they already know because tactics feel productive. another course. another book. another framework. it’s a way to avoid the work. you don’t need a new tactic. you need a coach who makes you ship.

studies show people with explicit accountability hit goals at multiples of the rate of people without it. I regret not having a coach during several of my growth phases. fix that for yourself sooner than I did. try harder.

Transcript

introduction to the importance of accountability in entrepreneurship

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. To grow your business, do you need tactics or do you need accountability? This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon, and I want you to think about that right now. If you had to ask yourself, hey, what’s stopping me from growing my business right now?

I would say it’s one of two things. It’s either lack of tactics, meaning you actually need to find out what to do. You don’t know what to do to grow your business. You just don’t know. You need a specific tactic from somebody who’s done it, and it’s vetted, and it’s, hey, this is what you need to do to grow your business.

analysis of the early need for tactics in business growth

Here is the specific tactic. Go do it. So lack of knowledge means I need a tactic. This is obviously, I would say this is more of a beginner business type thing, and I’m not throwing any shade there. Within the first five years, I would say you need tactics. You just need to go learn tactics, whether that’s from mentors or books or YouTube, really.

You can get tactics from just about anywhere, but you need tactics. Or the second thing is you just need accountability, and this is actually typically for more advanced business owners, but it can also be for people who need the tactics. Accountability means the tactics, but you might have so many ideas, you’re just not sure which one to stick to, so you really just need someone to hold you accountable to doing the thing.

You just need the accountability to do the thing. So and then I guess there’s that third bucket where you could be, hey, I need tactics, and I need accountability, but eventually you’re going to grow out of needing the tactics, and then you just need the accountability. I know this is how it was, that’s how it was for me in my business, but when I started, I had no clue what to do, and so all I needed were tactics.

transitioning from tactic accumulation to prioritizing accountability

Like I did not need a coach. I did not need accountability. That was the last thing I needed because you could tell me to do anything, and I would do it. I would have it done by the end of the day if it was easy, if it was a bigger project, I’ll have it done five times faster than anyone else you’ve ever seen because I want to get it done, and I want to see if it works or doesn’t work.

I needed zero accountability in the first couple of years of business, but I needed all tactics. I needed to find out what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and the best way to do it, I just needed all the tactics. Eventually, you learn all the tactics, and you can still innovate. I’m not saying you don’t keep learning, but after a certain point, you have so many ideas and so many things, so many tactics that you’ve read about and learned from coaching groups and mentors that you can’t even implement them all.

It’s almost like a backlog. It’s okay, after I do this, then I’ll do this. This is going to take me years to implement all the things that I’ve learned. Once you get to that stage, all you need is accountability, but here is the common error and flaw that I see. First, people thinking that they always need a new tactic.

personal reflection on the impact of lacking accountability

That’s the first error. You do need new tactics for a while. You need to learn all those things, but after a certain point, it’s not lack of tactics that’s keeping you from growing your business. It’s going to be lack of leadership. It’s going to be lack of execution, lack of productivity, something along those lines.

That’s what’s actually stopping you. You got into this early mindset that I need more tactics. We hear this from customers all the time. I need more customers. I need more customers. I need more customers. More leads. More leads. More leads. More leads. More leads. That’s all I need is more leads, but it’s not really all that you need.

You can shove a million leads into a half good business and it’ll do okay, but you could optimize a lot of system and process on the back end. It’s not always about leads. It’s not always about the tactics. That’s the first thing. As you get more advanced, the second problem I see is thinking that you no longer need accountability.

discussion of scientific studies supporting the effectiveness of accountability

Now, this is a big one. Over-reliance on I need more tactics. At some point, you don’t need more tactics. Keep learning, but you probably don’t need more tactics. Then as you get more advanced, the second problem is I don’t need accountability. This is like you’ve transcended humanity and you’re like, I know all the tactics.

I don’t need anybody to hold me accountable. Here’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in business. I recently did a podcast about some of my biggest mistakes, but I think the biggest mistake I’ve made, having time to reflect on it more, is going through gaps of my entrepreneurial journey where I did not have a coach or mentor.

With a frequent meeting cadence, someone I could talk to, I’ve had that on and off throughout my entrepreneurial career, and I regret the off periods because I think that I have a really strong work ethic, I know a lot of tactics, and so the ego and the arrogance can slip in a little bit and I’m like, I don’t think I need the coach, I don’t think I need any more tactics, I just need to get stuff done.

strategies for implementing accountability in your entrepreneurial journey

I don’t need these people. By far the biggest mistake I’ve ever made because you don’t need a coach who knows every tactic and every single thing, you need somebody who can just help you go through a decision making process, somebody who can help you. You might be the innovator, the person with the most amazing ideas.

That’s not your coach’s job. Your coach is to make sure that you think through all the possibilities. The coach is there to make sure that you actually do what you’re supposed to do. Even if you came up with the idea, just commit to doing the thing that you said you were going to do. Accountability is everything, and again, one of my biggest regrets in business is going through any period of time without having that person.

I started to look at some scientific studies behind this, just accountability and its relation to goal achievement. There was one study, the American Society of Training and Development, it said this study found that individuals are 65% more likely to meet a goal after committing to another person, and this likelihood increases to 95% if they have ongoing accountability appointments.

conclusion: upholding accountability as a core component of entrepreneurial success

So you’re meeting in accountability groups or accountability one-on-one, 95% likelihood that you’re going to achieve it. And then the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2020, they had a study that showed that goal setting combined with accountability significantly enhanced performance and goal attainment.

It emphasized the importance of regular check-ins and progress reviews. You need these things, and you do not outgrow them. So I’m trying to speak to both entrepreneurs, the one who’s like me, who’s a little bit more advanced, and letting the ego and the arrogance slide in so you don’t think you need these things when you do, and you always will no matter how successful you become, you need those things.

And I’m also trying to talk to the beginner who thinks, all I need are tactics, tactics, tactics, I don’t need the accountability, I just need somebody to tell me the next secret, the next thing I need to do, the next ad I need to turn on, the next way to get leads. That’s not true either. You only need so many tactics to grow a business, but you forever need accountability and for someone to hold you accountable to doing the things that you know you need to do.

We’re all humans, we’re not perfect, and we all need to try harder.