Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today we're going to talk about accountability and motivation and some of the habits that I've developed and refined over the last couple of years to help me stay in the game, stay motivated, stay productive, stay effective. As a founder, if you listen to last episode with Rob Walling, you'll hear that I have had times where my intrinsic motivation has kind of waxed and waned, and I think that's natural for anyone who is in the game or in an industry or in a particular business for a long period of time. I've been running castos more than eight years at this point. Podcast motor, kind of a year and a half before that. So I'm ten years in this podcasting game in the industry, and I love it, and it's given me so much, right? And I think a lot of you can, can relate, but at the same time, it's like, man, I've been doing this for a while. Like, gosh, I need a break, I need a refresher, I need a different way to do things. And I've kind of had that over time where my, uh, you know, maybe I'm burnt out. I don't know, maybe I have been burnt out in the past, and maybe I need that time away and that, that time to get back into things. So today, just really practical. Want to talk about a few things I've done to really help, uh, in this way and some things that have really been bad for me in this department. So you can identify if you're doing some of these things, maybe, and then you need a bit of a change. I think the first one is, is just not being alone. I'm a single founder. That is the most lonely thing you can do. I work remotely, my wife works, my kids are at school. I'm here with the dog and the cats all day, every day. And so I think just being alone is really hard, and so don't do that, right. Join a mastermind group or get into some sort of a program or go to a co working space, right. Just get out of the house, start talking to people. Started playing tennis two nights a week. I like tennis. Okay, right. But I really like going and being with people and having some exercise, and that's great. So my work time is this. I have family time, and then I have time socially with friends and stuff. And playing tennis in a league has been, has been really cool and really helpful, but. But just don't be alone.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Right?
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Whether that's a coach or an advisor or a program like tiny seed or the DC accelerator or SAS Academy or whatever. Like, it's. It doesn't matter kind of. Right. Like, the things you learn there will be great, but the real benefit to a program like that and a thing like that is that you will be around like minded people who will help you level up. So. So I think that's the first. And I've had that and I've not had that in my. In my career. The times where I've had that and I've had a good sense of community and purpose. I've been happier and I've been more productive and effective. I don't want to confuse productivity and effectiveness. Cause they're not the same thing.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: You can do a lot of stuff and be productive, but those things not be the things that are important. And so you're not effective.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: So you can be productive by doing stuff, but not effective by those being the right things. So, for me, community and a sense of belonging is the foundation upon which I can start to make the good decisions that affect the effectiveness of my activities. So. So that's like, the first place to start. And I think, like, a little more granularly within that is, like, I need somebody to be accountable to. So for those of us with businesses, and this is where I think the solopreneur myth really falls down, is like, I can't imagine anything worse than doing this alone and not having a team to just chat with, but also to be accountable to.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: I gotta make payroll at the end of every month. I gotta pay people. I gotta, but I get the opportunity to work with them and say, hey, Francois, what about this thing? Hey, Kelly, what about this thing? Hey, Jesse, what about this thing? Hey, you know, Dennis, what about this thing to where I'm not doing this all alone and I have a team to support me, to bounce ideas off, to make me better, but also to keep me accountable to them because they rely on me and this business to pay their bills.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: So I think that's really helpful. If you don't have that, if you're super small and just starting out, I would try to find that somehow and that can be with a peer that you're kind of in a friendly competition with or something. I would just encourage you to explore that kind of wherever and however you can, really, practically. One of the biggest benefits that I've had of getting the right things done is making a list. I have a pad on my desk here, and every morning I come in and I put it on my keyboard when I leave for the evening, the day before, and I come in, and the first thing I do before I open my computer is I write down three things that I want to get done today. And they can be really simple. Like, I want to shoot this video, or I want to update this article, or I want to reach out to a few people. It can be really long, but it should be something that I get done that day. So if it's a really long project, it's a part of that, but just really, like, I put it on my keyboard so that I can't go and check email or slack or something. Like, I. I literally have to move this notebook in order for me to get at what I'm trying to do that day. And I take the couple of minutes at that point to say, okay, what's the most important thing for me right now? And I like doing this in the morning as opposed to the night before, because I like the time, the night before to give me a little time to process what's going on, what's really important, and what my priorities are. And so that I come in to work fresh, maybe a little bit different perspective, and I'm able to go and prioritize the things I want to do and then be productive in doing those things to be effective in the business. So that has really helped. I did talk with Rob in the last episode about an external accountability buddy, and I just wanted to let you know that, like, we're looking at putting this together record scratch here. I said we. I always just say we, but it's really me. Rob isn't involved in this at all, other than having the great idea of having a system and a network for us all to have external accountability buddies. So sorry if that was misleading, not necessarily doing this with Rob. It was a great idea. I'm just going to steal it and run with it. Who knows what might happen in the future? But I did just want to clarify that this is not a Craig and Rob kind of thing. I'm just going to gauge some interest. And if it's helpful, love to facilitate this for the community. Okay, back to the show.
I did. I did go out and register a couple of domains. So if you're interested in having an accountability buddy for your business, you can go to myfounderpal.com myfounderpal.com dot sign up. We have kind of a waiting list to gauge interest. We have about a dozen folks on the list so far, and I think this could be really good. This will be a very kind of light touch. No kind of no involvement, really, from my perspective, other than checking in with you.
And maybe you kind of get paired with a peer or peers to keep each other accountable. But the goal here really is have a person who can check in with you once or twice a week say, hey, how are things going? You talked about doing this thing last time. We set goals. How's that going? Did you get those things done and then, like, maybe vice versa? So maybe that's me checking in with you. Maybe you're checking in with each other as kind of a network. I don't really know. If we get enough people interested in my founder pal, we'll do this. I do want to make it free just as a service to the community, so it does need to be a bit automated. I am not going to be checking in with you, like, one on one, several times a week. So that's what that looks like. Sign up if you're interested. I'll put an email out in the next week or two to kind of share more about what this is looking like. But that's what I'm thinking so far. I am in a slack conversation with another founder on this, and we just check in a couple times a week. Hey, this is what I'm planning on doing. They reciprocate, and maybe we'll kind of ask a question about, like, hey, why are you doing that? Why do you think this is so important? What's the goal or the motivation behind that thing? I think these are all the healthy things in an accountability buddy. So I definitely have an accountability buddy in addition to a coach. They're not the same thing. The coach should help me with strategic direction and not be an accountability buddy, necessarily, in my case. At least.
One other thing that I do, again, kind of going back to having a team, is I like to show my work right when I do something from a marketing or an ops perspective, I share it in slack in the kind of appropriate channel. So when we get a new YouTube video go out, I post in there for folks to check out. When I have a new playbook that I've written, I put it into our ops channel. And so this is just a healthy way for me to share what I'm doing with the team. There's a little bit of friendly competition. They're like, hey, look at the shit I'm doing. Where's yours? Right?
And so I think that's healthy again, like, as you have a team and as you have that kind of structure and that support network around you, that might be an option for you too. Now onto some things that I've done that are bad. So if you're on the lookout for behaviors or characteristics of things that might not be great for you as a productive and effective founder, I think that the first one for me is just bitching and complaining and overanalyzing too much.
It's really easy to be negative. It's really easy to say, fucking SEO is dead or cold, outreach doesn't work, or my industry sucks, or my customers are too price sensitive or whatever. Like, look, we all got problems. We all have warts on our business. There is not a perfect business out there. I have some that I like quite a bit, mine being one of them. Like, I really like my business, but there's not a perfect business out there. So, like, you gotta understand and accept the limitations and the risks of your business and then put it away in a corner of your mind and go to work. And I'm saying that a bit to myself. Cause I definitely have had times, especially when things aren't growing great, where I'm like, God, this just sucks. And then I'm just so much less effective because I see only the bad things in kind of the world, right? And that's all the way to kind of coming home to family stuff and money and all this, right? Like, times when things aren't great, I see the warts a lot more. When things are great, you're just like, hey, this is awesome. It's sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. But. But I would just encourage you to compartmentalize, if you will, the limitations and the downsides of your current situation as much as possible so that you can get active and productive in shipping stuff. Doesn't mean that you need to put the blinders on completely and just ignore those things. But if they're limiting your productivity and your effectiveness, you have to find a way to just put them away and. And get back to doing the work. Because doing the work is really what's going to make a successful business. Again, talking to myself as much to you on this, but. But that's kind of something I've come to realize and embrace.
The other thing is looking at outputs or outcomes more than inputs. I think that we. We are on this journey as founders where we don't really know what's going to happen. And so we put in a bunch of time with marketing and we hope for some kind of outcome. We put in a bunch of product work and we hope that it has product market. Fitzhen it. We develop a new business idea and we hope that we have traction in the industry, but, but we don't know. And so for me, the times when I have focused too much on the outcomes of a thing as opposed to the inputs, it has really limited my ability to stick with something long term. So if you're saying like, hey, this is the marketing channel that I've chosen, maybe you want to like, put the blinders on for a quarter and say, we're going super hard on LinkedIn outreach for a quarter, and then we're going to come up for breath and reevaluate whether it was successful or nothing. But what we're not going to do is start on Monday and then on Thursday say, fuck, this just doesn't work because I haven't seen the results yet.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Right?
[00:11:08] Speaker A: All of this stuff takes time. Even something like paid acquisition takes some time to see all the way to the end of that funnel. So to me, it's just helpful to say, like, I'm going to make a strategic decision. I'm going to, as much as I can, put my head down, put the blinders on and see this thing through, and then at a predetermined time say, okay, I've done that. I now know this, but I put in this body of work and I can make an educated decision based on a reasonable amount of input and data. So that's been helpful to me. Times when I've not been effective is when I do something, get a little bit of data, and then make a rash decision, which is usually wrong. And last one that I just wanted to share, again, things that have kind of helped and hindered me in my journey of productivity is I fall into a trap where I try to do everything around a project at one time. And for me, again, and this could be different depending on you and your preference and your style, this doesn't work great for me. I'm much more successful when I separate the strategic and the planning part of something from the execution. And so a good example of this might be like YouTube, right? I want to shoot a YouTube video. If I just sit down and say, okay, I'm going to script this out and get all the scenes and the screens and, you know, got to get my application in the right state so I can do the screen share or something and then have the energy to go record something.
Usually it doesn't work great. What works better is if I, if I script it out or if I get the scenes ready or get my environment into a good place, and then the next morning or the next day or later that day or whatever it is, go record. I come in fresh. I'm ready to go. I have a good perspective. I've probably again kind of thought about what's important and not in this whole thing. And so to me, separating out the planning from the doing has been helpful because both are super important. You know, you could probably argue whether the planning or the doing is more important.
There's a lot of spreadsheet millionaires out there, right? So I guess the doing is more important than the planning. But to me, times when I just jump in and do something and haven't strategically thought about like, why am I doing this and who is it for and what's the desired outcome?
I create a lot of stuff that's not very effective. And so to separate those two, because they are kind of different mind processes a lot for me has been really helpful. So I hope this is helpful in you maybe being able to identify and reflect on things that you do or don't do that make you productive and effective in your business. But really, I'd love to hear from you and learn from you. What do you do or don't you do in your business that makes you productive or nothing? I'd love to hear drop in a comment below if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening, shoot me a message podcastups.com dot I'd love to hear what what you do to stay productive and effective and accountable in your business so that we can keep doing this for a long time. Because I'm only 44 and I want to keep doing this for another like 20 years. I want to keep optimizing how I work so that I get more out of my time and make a bigger impact in my business. And I hope the same for you. So that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed if you're a not already, please subscribe. If you're on YouTube, like comment, ring the bell, do all the good things. I sure appreciate you sticking with me for this episode and we'll chat soon.
