How many times did you plan that masterpiece content hub article but didnt?
If you are like me and have a stream of new ideas at every second of the day and take time out to capture those thoughts and plans then this is for you. I also and it is a weakness I know I have, is I do not have enough time in the day or the week to take action on every idea.
This has stalled my growth more often than helped to grow my businesses. As opposite as that sounds but having all these new ideas forces me to take my eye off the prize. I get distracted by these new thoughts and by the time I plan out the last new idea I already had three more new ideas and Ive mnoved on to those.
This was the thorn in my achilles heel when I started out online. I would move from thought to thought and not give the last idea enough attention to get the momentum rolling.
What I did was join an accountability group. This was a group of new and intermediate marketers that I had never met. A friend had suggested I join a forum about internet marketing and web development and taking that advice I joined a forum.
[/et_pb_text]
Join a Group and Hold Others Accountable
This was very easy to take action advice. Ill be very transparent that this was one of the biggest success factors that I found working online. Having the power to hold my peers accountable made me appreciate my own workload and to do list.
The rules of the group were pretty simple, we had to meet up online every Tuesday night (for me it was Wednesday morning Im from the future) and present our weekly target list and if we had completed last weeks target list. I got a few comments in my first three meetings for not taking it serious and for not doing the work.
I will say when you get into the routine and prep before hand it is really entertaining to hear how people are doing and the success they are having. It all fell on two things.
1 Planning your week
2 Doing the work
Its that simple, the accountability group members that planned ahead of time were the most successful. The group members that were doing what they had planned were also the same ones who were planning ahead and seeing amazing results.
I’m still in touch to this day with 5 of the 15 from the group. They all have very successful bsuinesses and our timezones are a little more accommodating for the 5 of us.
Once I was on the spot in front of the groupo saying I had 3 thing sto do that would literally take me all of 20 minutes to complete it was clear to everyone I was not planning ahead and just rocking up hoping for it all to work. The advice and telling off I got from the group was great and look no one wants to be told they are slacking off but it was so true I was.
The moment I would prep my week or month in advance and track it using teh tools and standard operating procedures or SOP’s I would see gains on earnings, rankings and visitors on my sites.
Find an accountability group and stick it out. Even if you only take away the behaviours of those getting the results that should be enough to light a fire under your chair and get you working smarter and getting the results you want to change your lifestyle for the better.
What Tools Helped Me Stay On Top Of My ToDo List
I had notebooks and notebooks of ideas, plans, processes and diagrams that I could never find or organise. I knew that I had to take the ideas out of my head and to put them online and for years I bounced between Asana and Trello and also notekeeping with Notion and evernote without finding the one todo tool to rule them all.
The Tools
- Asana
- Trello
- Notion
- More recently ClickUp
I want to say that its important that you dont get caught up in the tools. These are just tools and not going to do the work for you.
Special mention to ClickUp this tool has changed the game for me with its amazing feature set. Ive moved over to it in January 2020 and its saved me HOURS!
Image Source: @officialCopHumor
Know your Strengths and Weaknesses
Ive always been very self aware and thats been a big strength for me working in teams or alone I knew my limits and my absolute strengths. I know that accountability and doing everything I said that I would was one area I was slipping. Not in my personal life just my own affiliate marketing work, I would buy these domains with the intention to domainate a market and I would get as far as buying teh domain name before I would move on to something else.
How Accountability Helps You Get Success:
It gives you a heads up on the bumps in the road ahead, especially if your networking with others in similar positions or journeys. You can learn from their mistakes to optimise your time and productivity.
It drives the resources you’ll require because of the shared knowledge. One really cool thing that I got from my accountability group was sharing resources with some other group memmbers. We pooled our budgets that we had set aside for virtual assistants and would use the same VA for our work meaning we would all pay a third of his day rate cost. This saved us money and allowed us to collaborate across projects.
We would share other tools later in our online journeys making the group a real valuable asset for me to really learn and absorb from everyone who was involved.
You come up against a lot of challenges in the online space. Technical or skill related and they can stall your growth until you figure them out. But having a accountability group also doubled as a knowledge share group as well. It was very clear who the operator’s were in that group and how they behaved when problem solving changed my view of the word “I Can’t”. I would listen to those guys talk about overcoming challenges and be in absolute awe. They became my motivators because I didnt want to be that guy in our group who couldnt figure out how to set up his website. I wanted to be an operator.
How do you figure it out for yourself?
You could try and guess or think that you already know and commit to what you already know.
I would scratch your own self assesment and create a little sheet to assess yourself.
- First up list out everything that you love doing
- List down the thing that makes you the happiest in thsi line of work
- What gives you headaches?
- What do you really hate doing?
- Does money motivate you?
- Does accomplishment motivate you?
- How do you work alone?
- How do you work in teams?
- What do you do when you make a mistake?
- What do you do when a team mate messes up?
- What do you do when you encounter a problem?
- What do you do when a team mate has a problem and asks for help?
- Ask a friend if you need to (thats cool as well)
You should have a list of things you like doing and really enjoy and a list of things you dont really enjoy and some of your own characteristics.
Take the time to do this before you decide to woerk in a team if you have never worked with a remote team before, and also if you are starting a new business or affiliate business work out your style and how you work best.
This is one of the biggest factors in helping me get over a earning limit because I could be held accountable.
