Accountability Partner

What if your accountability partner is your competition? What if they were on stand-by to pick up your slack? Here’s why accountability is important and how being responsible to your clients, your employees and your boss keep you committed to success.

Listen: Accountability Partner

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Do You Need an Accountability Partner?

Do you need an accountability partner to be successful in your cleaning business? If you ask me, the answer is yes. The reason is that as humans, we have this thing where we will be responsible to other people before we are responsible to ourselves.

We are prime at making excuses and procrastinating and putting things off. This is because either we don’t believe we’re worthy or that we deserve the outcome of whatever the accountability will bring us.

So by ourselves, we kind of make excuses and we push stuff off. But when someone else is counting on us, oddly enough, we usually rise to the occasion.

An Accountability Partner Forces You to Take Action

And so in business, if you have an accountability partner, even if you are a solo entrepreneur and you work by yourself. If you have an accountability partner that holds your feet to the fire, keeps you to your promises. It forces you to do what you said you’re going to do.

Now, in house cleaning, we have a worksheet. The worksheet was designed for solo operators, okay? You’re one person, you’re going to clean someone’s house.

This is your accountability system, right? When you get to the customer’s house, you say, “I’m going to do these different things.” When you do them, you check them off and you leave this at the customer’s house.

You are Accountable to the Customer

Now, you are accountable to the customer. You are also accountable to your boss if you’re the employee because the worksheet is your satisfaction guarantee. So what happens is if a customer calls and they said, “Well, there are a whole bunch of things checked off, but I don’t think the work is good.”

Then you have to go back to the customer’s house and you have to double-check your work. There’s a real incentive not to check anything off unless you actually cleaned it because it is backed by your satisfaction guarantee.

So that is a system that is built into the cleaning process so that you are accountable to your customer. You’re accountable to your boss if someone has hired you and dispatched you on this job, right?

There are Levels of Accountability in Business

Now, in the business itself, we have different layers of accountability. Now, in my business early on, we have several different facets of our business. And as your business grows and as money grows, you’ll start to diversify in different companies.

The Savvy Cleaner brand that I own has several different companies under its wings. One of those companies has its own website and its own social media.

Accountability is Super Important in My Business

As a business owner, I jumped in one day to one of the websites and I was alarmed because the web designer had taken a break. And I say a break, I think because they weren’t checking back with me on a regular basis, I trusted that they had it all under control. They were not accountable to anyone.

Now, the website was technically up and it was running, but there were 12 WordPress plugins that were out of date. The WordPress platform itself was out of date. And the theme that runs the entire program was also out of date. And I thought, “Wow, this is really odd.”

Now, we do have a spam filter that catches comments that are spam comments because people will post stuff that doesn’t mean anything. There were 3,800, 3,800 comments that had been posted as spam that was in this filter box that hadn’t been dealt with, okay? So the question is when I went back to the web designer, they said, “Oh, I thought that was someone else’s job.” Okay, who else’s job would it have been because you’re the one being paid to do it?

What Happens When No One is Accountable

Then we went to the blog editor and said, “Hey, when you log in to add the blogs to this website, did you notice all these red numbers of things that were out of date?” And they said, “Oh yeah, but I thought that was someone else’s job.” Do you see where I’m headed with this?

No one was accountable to anyone and everyone else was shifting the blame. So the important thing is to stop and say, you’re both responsible to each other. No red on any of the notifications because that means something’s slipped through the cracks.

So you’re both responsible to each other. If there’s a question, both of you talk to each other to make sure it’s one click. With one click, you can update the plugins, right? So let’s make sure that we stay connected and we are accountable to each other.

Well, as soon as that happened and we put them in charge of each other, there were no more problems whatsoever. Everything started running smoothly again and everything was up to date because they were accountable to each other.

Athletes Hire Coaches for Accountability

Now, it’s the same reason and the same philosophy why athletes hire a coach. They are accountable to their coach when they are showing up for practice every day and they have to go through the reps. There are days when they don’t feel like showing up.

It is their coach that walks them through that and says, “Hey, come on, let me talk you off a ledge. Let me remind you why you’re here. Let me remind you of the hard work that you’ve put in and the reward at the end.”

And they walk them through and they hold them accountable. So you can’t just skip the practice because there’s somebody that’s counting on you and somebody that’s going to hold your feet to the fire.

Find Another Cleaning Owner to Be Your Accountability Partner

So if you are an independent and if you run a cleaning business, what I recommend is that you find another cleaning business owner in your area. And I say in your area because it will force you to stay accountable to them. Because in the event that they slip and fall through the cracks, that person has your back.

That person can pick up some of the slack on your business where they can dispatch some of their employees as independent contractors to help you out of a bind. You can help each other, but it will force you, well, I don’t want someone coming in and like messing with my business.

Accountability Partners Help You Follow Through

Then you have to follow through. You have to do what you say you’re going to do. You have to keep your promises. But by being in contact with another business owner that is local, that competes with you, what that does is forces you both to raise your game.

As you collaborate, you both become stronger. You both become better. You both hold each other accountable and your businesses grow.

So if you have not thought about an accountability partner, I encourage you to stop and mold this concept around in your mind. And then get out there and go find somebody that will keep you on task day in and day out, even when you don’t feel like it.

Resources

Worksheets You Can Edit – https://savvycleaner.com/worksheets

Vibrant: A Groundbreaking Program to Get Energized, Own Your Health, and Glow – https://amzn.to/3eflqqs

Balanced Accountability: How to Win Hearts and Maximize Performance – https://amzn.to/33bfoRl

Supportive Accountability: How to Inspire People and Improve Performance – https://amzn.to/3vFYQNr

Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations – https://amzn.to/3eKKPac

Winning With Accountability: The Secret Language of High Performing Organizations – https://amzn.to/3eQD6HJ

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