Episode 18

Hey, my name's Mike and you're listening to Lone Wolf Unleashed the podcast where I help you switch off sooner and live larger by building effective systems. Today we're talking about accountability. I know. Really uncomfortable.

So there's three different types of accountability I'm gonna be walking through today. And I know this is a very uncomfortable topic 'cause people don't like, people don't like accountability. They think it's a, a roadblock. It means that there's a, a quote unquote, lack of freedom or lack of choice. But what accountability is, is basically following through on the thing that you said that you were gonna do and making sure that you're doing it right.

And this can be really hard as a solo operator because you have so many things to do and things slip through the gaps. I'm facing this at the moment, you know, I'm currently recording this at six 30 in the morning because I'm preparing for an event and I've got a few things on. And I'm going through those, I feel like I'm at the peak of those ebbs and flows that you sort of have.

And it's not a forever thing, obviously, which is great. 'cause you know, I try to set good boundaries. But there comes a point where when you're working on your business, it's really hard to stay working on your business and not go back into working in your business. The first accountability that we're looking at here is implementation accountability.

So did you actually finish building it or did you stop 80% and move on to the next shiny thing? So I have a little bit of a shiny object syndrome. I love the next new thing. I love it. I'm very good at quick starting, so I love new things. It's very difficult for me to follow through on working on things in my own business, which is, which is a bit of a paradox sometimes.

But I do have good people around me that that sort of push me to be working on the right things. And I've surrounded myself with those people because I know what I'm like. For most solar operators, you have a folder of partially completed systems. There's that automation that's missing there, handling, or the procedure that's missing the last three steps or the dashboard that's missing half the data sources.

You think it's a really good idea at the time, but the problem is, is if you don't implement. And you don't implement in full, then you're missing out on the benefits of that implementation. It's not just about getting the little bit of benefit and going, oh, that's, that must be good enough. No, we need to make sure that it's working like a well oiled machine.

What do you need? You need someone who is asking, is it done or is it done enough that you abandoned it? The problem here as well with implementation, accountability is a lot of people just don't know where to even start. What processes should I be developing? What procedures do I need to have in place?

What templates are gonna be the most beneficial? All of those things, it's a project and if you are not used to managing projects, it can be really daunting to have to break all of this down into the, into the little pieces, all the little things that need to be done. And this is what I help people with.

Is understanding what the process is, breaking it down into its little pieces, figuring out the things that need to be developed out. And then making sure that those things go and get developed.

So the usage accountability is the second accountability. So are you actually using the system you built or are you just pretending that it exists? This is where a lot of systems die. It's because you built it, you know it works, but it's Tuesday morning, you are behind and the old manual way is right there in front of you.

It's just easier. You know, people, human beings love, you know, they'll, I say this a lot, they're like water. Human beings like water. They follow the path of least resistance. If it's easy, they'll just do what's easy. Which is why one of the main questions that I ask these days when I'm doing projects is, how do we make this easy?

People aren't gonna follow convoluted ways of doing things when the easy old way, the old inefficient way of doing it is right there. Practice makes perfect when you're doing. An implementation. You've got it and you've done it, and now you're starting to use a system you've built. It is a new way of, you know, there's new neural pathways there that need to be developed.

You have to practice it. You have to practice it. You need someone checking. Show me the last five times you use this. I'll wait. Just show me. Show me the runs that you did. Show me how it was working for you. Why did you implement it if you're not gonna use it? That's the question. I thought that we agreed that you were gonna save five hours a week by doing this thing, but you're not doing it this way.

Why have you decided to do that? I've got an event coming up. The promise out of that is that people are going to get 10 hours a week back in 90 days. They're not gonna do that. Naturally, they're gonna go to the workshop, they're gonna get something out of it. They're gonna learn something. But implementation is the hardest part.

They're not gonna get the 10 hours a week back in 90 days because they don't want to implement it. It's hard. It's really hard to implement it. They can see what needs to be done, but it's really hard. The key thing here is that after that event, after they have their roadmap, is that they have someone around them who can ask the questions about how you going with that?

Can I help you with that? What are you stuck on? What are you roadblocked on? How do we move this forward? Then the third one is the optimisation accountability. So is the system serving you or are you now serving the system? Okay, so systems can drift from helpful to burdensome without you noticing. It can happen slowly over time.

You know that weekly report that you set up, maybe it hasn't changed the decision in six months or the approval workflow. Not that you might have that in your business 'cause you're solo operator, but it creates more delays and it prevents, or it's not managing the risk like you thought it was going to be.

In some ways, implementing systems is sometimes like marketing and that you're testing and seeing. Maybe there's some things that, some things on the periphery or edge cases that we didn't consider when we implement. So this is learning over time. So are we optimising it? Are we killing the things that are not doing what we thought they were going to do?

We don't want to just keep running on this treadmill. We want to make improvement. We wanna make progress. So you need someone asking, does this still matter or are we just doing it because we started doing it? A little bit of a silly question, but. You're probably listening to this. Having come from corporate, this is where they end up, right?

Look, we just started doing it, or this churn in the business and you step into a role. Why are we doing this? Oh, so-and-so who's worked here for 15 years was doing it, so it must be important. Not always.

So what kind of accountability do you need? I wanna make this easy, right? So again, asking the question, how do we make this easy? How do we make accountability easy? It can be uncomfortable, but how do we make it easy? Here's. What doesn't work? Hiring a coach that asks about your feelings? I ask how people are.

Obviously, I'm, I'm nice. I feel like I'm a good guy. I have people who tell me I'm a nice guy, but I am fairly direct in my communication style, right? What we don't need is someone who just asks about how you feeling or joining a mastermind where everyone's too polite to, to call out your bad behaviour. Or reading another productivity book and promising yourself, you'll be different this time.

None of that works. Here's what works. A group of people who are going through the same thing, who've been there asking the uncomfortable questions. 'cause they know exactly how you're lying to yourself. Okay? They're in the same position you are. I'm in the same position you are. Okay. I'm building up a business and I'm wanting to stay solo for as long as possible.

You know? What are the questions? You said you'd implement that three weeks ago. What happened? Oh, I just got too busy. No. Where is it in your calendar that you're gonna be working on it? Oh, I'm stuck here. Okay. Let's think about how we're going to solve that problem. There might be more questions like, walk me through the last time you used the system.

So you might be really excited. You know, you might go, Hey, I've just built this automation for my CRM and I'm really happy with what I've achieved. Okay, great. Show us in four weeks time, we'll go. Hey. You build that thing, how's it working for you? Is it still working? Because we, you know, we can ride that high of, uh, having achieved something, but we wanna make sure that it's still embedded four weeks later, four months later, sometimes four years later.

Is the system serving your life goals or is it just keeping you busy? Remember why you started your business? Freedom and flexibility. So each, keep telling yourself right. I'm good at what I do. I'm better than my corporate mates. I can go and start a business. Now I'm working 70 hours a week. What am I doing?

Is the system serving your life goals? And then what would happen if you just stopped doing this entirely? Okay. We get caught up in doing the things. What if we just stopped? And I ask this question a lot. People look at me just like I'm a complete idiot because they've never really thought about just stopping it, you know?

And I love eliminating things. If it's not adding value, let's get rid of it. So there's no judgement, there's no sympathy. It's just here's what I see and what are you going to do about it, and then helping you sort of carve out that time so that you can actually work on those things. This is how systems accountability works.

It's not complicated. You need three things. They've figured this out in software development as well, right? They've got things like Agile and Scrum and all of these sorts of things. And the whole thing is that you're regularly checking in. We're having people work to a plan. Are they working to the plan?

Is there something they're stuck on? Is there something that they run into that they can't solve themselves? So here's what we need. Regular check-ins, not when you feel like it, it's scheduled. Someone expecting to hear, here's what I said I'd do. Here's what I actually did. Here's why there's a gap. Hey, I said I was gonna work on this thing.

I've run into this roadblock. I actually dunno how to do this specific part. Can we figure this out?

The second one is peer pressure. The good kind. Okay. Although, you know, for some people building systems is like a drug, right? So other people are implementing similar systems to you. So when everyone is going through your excuses, sound hollow even to you. And then there's the third one, which is the public commitment.

I am automating my invoice follow up by Friday. You are verbalising a goal and my goal is to have it so each person's goals and the things that they say attract so we know to ask about them. It's the Lone Wolf accountability system verbalising it hits different than what it said in front of people who will remember that you said it.

You know, just talking to a mate at barbecue. Oh yeah, I'm gonna do that by Friday. There's no follow up. It's empty because there's not going to be any accountability for that. The magic isn't in the complexity. It's in having nowhere to hide. This is what I'm doing in my Lone Wolf Pack. So the Wolf Pack is systems accountability for solar operators.

And look, I could sell you another course on building systems. I could give you templates, frameworks, you know, more stuff that you'll save that you'll never use. You can have all the knowledge in the world and it will mean nothing if you don't have accountability in implementing it. So the Wolf Pack is coming.

I've literally just been building it this week. I am gonna be launching it at my event on Friday, the 5th of December in Brisbane. I have a couple spots left to that if you wanna come. It is free for the whole day. You can find the link to register on my website. So the Wolf Pack is not gonna be about.

The weekly implementation, the Wolf Pack is not a Mastermind, okay? It's not a coaching program. There are gonna be knowledge components in it, but the primary purpose is this weekly implementation calls where you will commit to specific actions. A group of people who will notice if you go quiet. Shared templates for the systems that matter.

Monthly hot seats. So here's my problem. Tell me where I'm being an idiot. Everyone has blind spots so we can help cover each other in those things with our different expertise. And then there's access to people who are building similar businesses who understand why you're doing this without team. Being in and around other people who are similar to you, maybe who are even just a little bit ahead of you is really, really important.

In that motivation and being able to get unstuck from where you're stuck, what's the promise? We keep you accountable to the systems that give you life back. Okay. Not more systems, not more fancier systems, just are you using the ones you've got? Are you implementing well? How do we make sure that this is gonna get used?

The pack is coming, and I, I will announce that in the next episode properly about where you can sign up to do that. This isn't for everyone. You know, if you, if you want someone to make you feel good about your lack of progress, this isn't it. Okay? If you need a guru to worship, look somewhere else. I'm not you guru.

If you are happy being busy instead of effective, just keep scrolling. My goal is to not be busy. Everyone's busy. Everyone's got things. My goal is not to be busy. So if you are tired of building systems that you don't use, automating things you'll never stick with or lying to yourself about getting to it next week, this might be the exact thing that you need.

So I'll be sharing more about that later. But I want you to challenge yourself this coming week. What are the things that I said I was gonna be doing in my business? Working on my business that I've not done. Have you got a list written down somewhere? It can be simple. It can be on a piece of paper, it can be on Asana board.

Whatever it is. Go and have a look at it, write the things down, and then commit to doing one of those things by the end of next week. I know you're busy. Give yourself a little bit of time. Black out your calendar a little bit. Carve out that time to work on those things so you can go and achieve the things that you said you were gonna do.

That's it for this week. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. You could have been doing so many other things other than listening to this podcast, and for that I want to thank you for you and your time, and I'll see you in a fortnight.