If you’ve worked in a larger organisation before becoming self-employed, you will have been used to having teams around you, and your manager may have set you goals with specific deadlines. Sound familiar? When you work for yourself, that doesn’t happen. You’re the one setting your own goals and deadlines. You have plans for your business to grow, but the time you spend actually working on your business can slip, especially when client work comes in, as that takes priority; that’s billable time after all. That’s where having a form of accountability that works for you is invaluable, as it helps keep you focused and on the right track.
How do I work out what goals/tasks I need accountability support with?
As a small business owner, you may have sat down at the end of the year and reflected on how much you have achieved in the past year. If you haven’t done that yet, don’t worry; try to plan it once a quarter. Take time out of your business, maybe head out for lunch and celebrate what you’ve achieved. If there are things you’d like to have done but haven’t, ask yourself why.
- Is it that they aren’t aligned to your personal values?
- You didn’t have the time to learn the skills you needed to achieve them.
- Your goals changed, and they weren’t key to achieving your dreams.
- You’re always putting off certain tasks until the last minute: submitting the tax return, creating/updating your website, and setting up a mailing list. They can be time-consuming and only become priorities when really urgent.
Does brainstorming ideas with other people really help?
In short, yes. It can help you to understand what tasks are the most important at the time to help you achieve your goal. Remember that if you worked in a team before, how useful it was to bounce ideas off other people (not literally of course)! Now you predominantly work alone and come up with some amazing ideas only to talk yourself out of them, often because you’re missing a piece of the puzzle or don’t know who to ask to fill a skills gap you might feel that you have.
You have the ideas, now what? They sit in that notebook only to be looked at again when you finally get around to sorting your workspace. Having a small group of people you trust can really help you reignite your passion, come up with ideas on how to set aside the time needed to focus on them and identify what support might be useful for you.
So, you have the ideas, how do you make them a reality? That’s where accountability comes in.
You could get together with a fellow business owner. This works well until one of you gets busy, and then accountability is no longer at the top of their list. You’re then left knowing what you need to do, but it’s not the exciting stuff that you set up your business to do, so it gets put to the bottom of your priority list again.
That’s why I set up my Reignite and Refocus accountability sessions. They can be tailored to suit your way of working. From quarterly in-person sessions in Leicestershire, where I live, to monthly online sessions, right through to an online membership and 1:1 sessions. We meet once a week. First, to set business and personal goals, then refine those goals and break them down into manageable tasks. There’s a refocus co-working session to help you mop up the tasks that even with accountability nudges in our WhatsApp group fall to the bottom of the to-do list. Then we finish the month with a short celebration session to recognise what you have achieved. As all too often we just move forward to the next goal without taking the time to really realise what we have accomplished, and who doesn’t like to celebrate?