In this episode, I’m digging into something most solopreneurs avoid until it’s too late. Accountability.

Hi, I'm Mike Fox, host of this podcast, "Lone Wolf Unleashed."

When I talk about accountability, I don't mean the fluffy “how are you feeling this week?” kind… the real kind.

The kind that checks whether you actually finished the thing you swore you’d do, whether you're using the systems you built, and whether those systems still serve you instead of slowing you down.

I walk through the three types of accountability every solo operator needs:

And you'll want to hear them because — honestly — most people fall down on all three!

If you’ve ever half-built a dashboard, ditched an automation on a busy Tuesday, or kept a pointless process alive simply because it’s what you’ve always done… this episode will probably sting a bit.

In a good way.

Stick around to the end where I talk about how to ensure you'll have people who call out your excuses (nicely) and how it might well end up being the thing that finally gets you your time back.

Timestamped summary

00:00 "Implement Fully for Success"

05:25 Systems, Accountability, and Optimization

06:30 "Making Accountability Simple and Effective"

09:48 "Systems Accountability Simplified"

14:26 "Commit to Your Business Goals"

Mentioned in this episode:

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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 going to be walking

through today. And I know it's a very uncomfortable

topic because people don't like. People don't like accountability.

They think it's a roadblock. It means that there's

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 6:30 in 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 because, 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 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 solo operators, you have a folder of partially completed

systems. There's that automation that's missing the error 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 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 has it done enough that you abandon 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 going to be most beneficial? All

those things. It's a project. And if you're 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 build 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're 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, I

say this a lot, they're like water. Human beings are like water.

They follow the path of least resistance. If it's easy, they will 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 going to 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 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 going to use it? That's the

question. I thought that we agreed

that you were going to 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 going to do that naturally. They're going to go to the workshop, they're

going to get something out of it, they're going to learn something. But implementation is

the hardest part. They're not going to 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 optimization, 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 because you're solo operator, but it creates more

delays than 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 in 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 optimizing 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 want to 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 want to 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 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're feeling. Or joining

a mastermind where everyone's too polite to call out your bad

behavior. 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 because 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. Well, where is it in your calendar that you're going to 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 built that thing, how's it working for you? Is it still working? Because

we, you know, we can ride that high of having achieved

something, but we want to 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 you 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 judgment, 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 figured this out in software

development as well, right? They've got things like Agile and Scrum and all 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 going to work on this thing. I run into this

roadblock. I actually don't know how to do this specific part. Can we figure this?

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'm automating my invoice. Follow up by Friday. You're

verbalizing 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.

Verbalizing it hits different than what it's said in front of people who remember

that you said it. You're not just talking to a mate at barbecue. Oh yeah,

I'm going to 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 Wolfpack.

So the Wolfpack is systems accountability for solo 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 Wolfpack is Coming. I've literally just been building it this

week. I am going to be launching it at my event

on Friday 5th December in Brisbane. I have a couple spots

left to that if you want to come. It is free for the whole day.

You can find the link to register on my website. So the

Wolfpack is not going to be about the weekly implementation. The

Wolfpack is not a mastermind, okay? It's not a coaching program. There are going to

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 a 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 your 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 going to get used? The pack is coming and 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 your guru.

If you're 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're tired of building systems 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 going to 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, can be

on a piece of paper, it can be on a sauna 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 going to 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. For you and your time, and I'll see

you in a fortnight.