PILLAR 3
Establishing Accountability
You have your goal in front of you: becoming a first-generation millionaire. You have started the search for a mentor. You believe in your value, you have faith in yourself, and you are committed to your cause. Now what? You need accountability. It is well and good to have all these pieces ready to go, but you must have a driving factor in your life that will keep you moving forward. This is where accountability comes in. While your mentor can hold you accountable, that is not his or her primary job. You need to find someone who cares about you, who is invested in your success, and who will help you stay on track. I had such a person in my own life when I was working on one of my first big projects.
In my church leadership program, I was blessed to be surrounded by truly special, genuine people every week. One of my fellow students at the time, Christopher Lloyd (no, not the actor), is such a person. When he asks you how you are, he is not just making conversation. He truly cares about how your day is going. It is a rare gift that everyone around him appreciates, and it was especially appreciated during that grueling leadership training.
This was back in 2002. I was 27 years old. Christopher and I were both high-level students in an exclusive leadership class that required major service and volunteering. I served so much back then that I had holes in my shoes, but I could not afford to replace them. My oldest daughter had been born the year before, and my wife was pregnant with our second. It was an extremely tough time for all of us. But I served through pain and tears because I was so hungry to learn leadership. And a major part of learning was getting through endless days of serving leaders by driving and being on hotel duty and acting as their security detail. While it meant long days and time away from my family, it was this service that got me in the presence of very influential global trailblazers. I was not allowed to talk to or engage with them unless they started a conversation with me first, but that didn’t matter because I had always found that the best way to learn was to watch, not talk. Christopher and I did this for years, bringing us closer and building our character together.
When I was writing my first book—From the Hood to Doing Good—I needed to describe it to everyone I knew in order to make it real, to make it happen. If I had kept talking about the book, but no book appeared, everyone would know that I hadn’t followed through on my goals. I knew if I told Christopher, he would ask me about how the book was going every time he saw me—at least twice a week in our leadership meetings. And he did. Every time he asked, I would reply, “Fine.” As long as I thought about the book, wrote some notes down, or even talked about it, I would reply, “Fine.” But in truth, nothing was happening. Months went by, and all I was doing was spinning my wheels. Christopher’s questions only reminded me that I was not getting anywhere on a project that was very important to me. I was going from being a winner to being a whiner.
One day, before Christopher could ask me how the book was going, I cut him off. “Enough of asking me how it’s going. From now on, I want you to ask what page I am on.” I knew that if I had to see him twice a week, I wouldn’t be able to stand repeating the same page number even once. I would be extremely embarrassed about my lack of progress, especially when I had to say it out loud. “Fine” was no longer going to cut it. Christopher was holding me accountable, even if he didn’t know it.
After that, I finished the book within a month, proudly giving Christopher a new number every time he asked me what page I was on. My plan worked only because I knew Christopher cared so much, that he had a genuine interest in my success, and that he was paying attention. I would have never trusted my accountability to someone who only half listened, or forgot to ask me, or didn’t even remember I was writing a book. My accountability was precious to me.
Be very careful to never place your precious jewels into the mouths of pigs. As it is written in ancient writings, “Do not cast your pearls amongst swine.” I was not about to cast my pearls among swine. A pig will eat a million dollars in cash! Why? Swine have no concept of value or extravagance. Likewise, never cast your ideas or goals onto the ears of someone who has no interest in seeing you succeed. The faster you learn the value of protecting your ideas, visions, or intellectual property, the more likely you are to establish a millionaire mindset. Why? When you decrease the invitations and opportunities for negative noise and distractions, you become more empowered with divine discernment of whom to allow into your inner circle for support and accountability. Only those who have a genuine interest in my success have access to anything that’s building my future wealth. The danger of allowing random people into your success circle just to impress them could be a self-inflicted death blow killing your ability to truly establish a millionaire mindset.
I established accountability without permission. Most people wouldn’t have known the difference between asking me about my book or asking me about the weather. It was all the same to them. Instead, I chose someone special, someone who cared about me, someone who took a keen interest in me and my life, and someone who would hold me accountable. I knew that by doing so, I was pushing myself forward and participating in my own rescue.
My experience with accountability goes both ways. For every time I have asked someone to keep me accountable, I have done the same for someone else. Take my amazing mentee Lillie Ennis from Connecticut as an example. Very soon after she started working with me, she began scaling the ladder quickly and aggressively, landing a very significant rank in the company right out of the gate. I was very impressed, but I didn’t want her to rest on her laurels. It was wonderful, what she had accomplished, but I knew she had more in her.
I told her, “If lightning strikes once, that’s great. But it is really special when lightning strikes twice. I want lightning to strike you twice.” I told her to take what she did in her own accounts and duplicate that success with someone on her team. She said to me later, “When you told me this, it was my first time meeting you, and honestly, I was surprised. Any other boss or mentor would have blown smoke up my ass, would have told me that I was doing a great job, and to just keep doing well. But not you. You said, ‘You did well. Now you can do better.’ I took this push and made sure you held me accountable to the task.”
Lillie chose a member of her team and mentored him with the same lessons I had taught her. He excelled, and her rank in the company grew even higher. “I would have never hit that next level if Johnny hadn’t given me that accountability. Instead of saying ‘You are doing great,’ Johnny always gave me a challenge. He is good at giving you homework. He never settles and never wants his mentees to settle either.”
Finding someone or something (like an app or tracking system) that will hold you accountable speaks directly to your commitment. Share that commitment with someone else if you can. Remember, the vending machine will not give you half a bag. Getting someone to hold you accountable is part of putting that whole dollar in and getting the whole bag out. You won’t succeed in becoming a first-generation millionaire if you don’t put in that whole dollar.
The first step in getting an accountability partner is to find the right person. Do this by looking for people with the following qualities:
1. They have a genuine interest in you. They genuinely desire to see you win. They have no personal motives or expectations to benefit other than being proud of you.
2. They are already inquisitive and excited to listen when you talk. Invite them into your goals without making it sound like homework. Make it effortless—no one wants helping you to be their part-time job. An easy assignment can be established by simply sharing a current project with them and asking them to hold you accountable on completion.
3. They are not full of fluff and just stroking your ego. They actually challenge you in conversation in a way that encourages you to become better.
Then, make sure you put yourself in a position to see or hear from them regularly, establish frequent accountability, and be extremely transparent with your progress and failures. This will ensure that you are not going to back down. Here are two possible scripts you can use to start the accountability process:
Script 1
“Hey, Chris, how are you?”
“Doing good, Johnny. Just staying busy.”
“I hear you, man. I’m staying busy myself getting back into shape physically.”
“Really, what are you doing to make that possible?”
“Nothing major, just daily activities that increase my heart rate to burn calories. As a matter of fact, Chris, do me a favor please. Every time you see me or we talk, ask me how many minutes of cardio I did the day before.”
Script 2
“Hey guys, I am trying to push myself a little with my sales goals this week.”
“Oh, yeah? What did you have in mind?”
“Well, how about we each share our numbers at the end of every day, no matter how high or low. Seeing how we all are doing will be a great kick in the pants to get me over this line.”
I used Script 2 when I was first starting out and wanted to be the first one to reach the highest level in my rank in global sales. Not only did I reach my goal but all my buddies leveled up too. It was the perfect way to keep us all accountable.
Adapt these scripts to your situation and personality—and keep them simple! After starting the process of finding mentors, you are responsible for putting yourself in a position for them to ask the question, whether that’s in person, via social media, or by phone. Be extremely honest (this is your life), and show your gratitude that they asked, and tell them that their question has held you accountable and it is working. This will show you how far you have come. If these mentors are a good fit for you, keep going. If they aren’t, then find others who are.
Speaking of a good fit, it’s important that you find the people or resources that fit your personality type. An application or online tracker that shows you your daily progress might be the best fit for you because you don’t need someone else holding you accountable if you can see your progress (or lack thereof) on a screen. But others might be more successful working with people, as opposed to online trackers, because they will feel more embarrassment if they don’t succeed. What works for me might not work for you, and what works for you may not be a good fit for me. That’s fine. As long as you find something that works, that’s all that matters!
ACTION STEP
Ask yourself: What is my goal? Why am I here? Why did I pick up this book? What do I want from this? Once you have that figured out, tell someone else who has a genuine desire to see you win in life. Don’t just tell him or her what you are doing, however. Make sure you share where you are in the process.
Accountability isn’t just saying everything is good and moving on. I want you to create a lifestyle of a winner. Team up with people who want to see you succeed. Choose people who have a desire to see you be a winner in your life. Chris was excited for me, but he didn’t have a tangible way to help me. When I changed his question from “How is it going?” to “What page are you on?” I gave him that power. The fact that he was asking me “What page?” put me at risk of being embarrassed. That risk of embarrassment pushed me to keep going and ultimately finish my book within a month.
If I can do it, you can do it. Never be afraid to throw yourself into the deep end. There are generations depending on you. You cannot learn how to swim in shallow water. Establishing accountability is throwing yourself into the deep water, and that’s where you will find your first-generation-millionaire mindset.
Write out your vision, and make it extremely clear: a certain number of calls a day, or more money in your account, or a list of dream partnerships you want to make. Invite someone into that vision who has a genuine desire to see you win. Make that person a part of your goal. It may be awkward. It may be uncomfortable. But you will never learn to swim in shallow water. It may be scary at first, but you won’t progress if you are hanging on to that pool wall. Go find that accountability partner. Write the vision. Invite him or her into that vision. Participate in your rescue. Commit to your goal. If you cannot do these things, then you will never rise to first-generation-millionaire status.
PILLAR 3