Accountability and Adaptability in Today’s World of Self Employment – SCCMH [Podcast 80]

Jim Edwards:  Hey everybody, Jim Edwards here and welcome back to the Sales Copywriting And, Content Marketing Hacks Podcast…

I’m your host, Jim Edwards, and a part-time pickle along with my trusty co-host and Podcast Producer, Mr. Stew Smith…

Welcome, Stew…

Stew Smith:  Thank you, Jim!

Jim Edwards:  So, Stew, what are we talking about today?

It sounds kind of scary and sounds like commitment…

Stew Smith: Well, it’s a little bit of leadership one on one for the entrepreneur for the self-employed…

And this is podcast number 80, by the way.

Jim Edwards: Podcast 80, that’s pretty cool…

Stew Smith: Yeah…

So, I got the idea from one of your letting the chickens out with Jim episodes, which are great, by the way.

People aren’t familiar with these little daily nuggets of wisdom coming from Jim…

Jim Edwards: Sometimes, it’s a “fowl” stream of consciousness…

Get it…

Stew Smith: Yep…

Okay…

That’s a good one…

But anyway, great idea, a great way to build a habit to which we can get into that a little bit later…

But anyway, this one is about accountability and adaptability in today’s world of self-employment.

Jim Edwards: Nice, what about responsibility?

Stew Smith:  Well, there are similar a little bit different so let’s kind of take it on the letting the chickens out with Jim you have a responsibility to those animals to take care of them and make sure they’re taken care of that is a responsibility.

However, you are not necessarily accountable to them producing eggs…

Jim Edwards: Or I’m not accountable for them producing eggs…

The production of the eggs is dependent on nutrition, hydration, exercise, a balanced diet, protecting them, because if chickens get super scared, it’s something a predator…

Something comes around, they get super scared…

They stop laying, they will not lay…

Yes, um, that happened not too long ago with we had some snakes we had our snake infestation there for a while was a bad day to be a snake on the Edwards Ranch, I can tell you that.

I could have made boots out of those snakes, I would have done it…

But we took care of what we had to do…

But you’re right…

I mean, the responsibility is I’ve chosen for my wife chose for me to take care of these chickens…

Now you are accountable to your wife every day, many times a day…

Stew Smith: That’s the difference…

Yes…

Accountability and responsibility…

So, they’re very similar but just depends on really your rank.

Jim Edwards: In the pecking order?

Stew Smith: The pecking order on how you’re accountable if you were selling these eggs, you would be accountable to who you were selling them to.

Jim Edwards: Let’s get something straight right now you inferred something that I’m gonna take a little offense to.

Stew Smith I can do anything I want whenever I want…

As long as I asked my wife first, yeah, I can do whatever I want…

I’m a big person now.

Stew Smith: I call it teamwork…

Jim Edwards: I got a check…

You can call it whatever you want…

I gotta check with my wife first.

That’s a count…

That’s true accountability…

That’s training…

That’s why I’m not divorced…

And I ain’t going to get divorced because I do check with my wife…

I wonder if you could…

Totally off topic…

But I wonder if you could trace the cause of divorce…

Down to that one simple statement…

I need to check with my wife first.

And how many people that don’t do that end up getting divorced…

I just have no way of knowing, but it’s true…

I mean, I would never make any big life decision…

And this is an accountability thing…

I hold myself accountable to her…

She holds herself accountable to me…

We don’t we’ve always had rules like when money was really tight, we had an agreement, neither one of us spent more than $10 without consulting with the other person…

Now we have a rule that pretty much keeps it under 10 grand.

And it might make sure it’s something I’m interested in now I’m just kidding…

I’m no 10 grand…

Stew Smith: It’s like anything over about 100 hundred and 50 bucks…

We checked with each other…

Yeah, like we don’t make a check whether whenever you contacted me the first time.

Jim Edwards: Right, I did.

I made sure with her it was okay with her for me to hire this coach because it was not; it wasn’t exorbitant, but it also noticeable.

Um, but I mean, I hold myself accountable to her she holds herself accountable to me, I hold myself accountable to you maybe even more than, or expect or realize or anything, but I mean, when you send me to work out every single week…

I hold myself accountable for doing it…

And sometimes when I do on my workout when, I didn’t do my workout today because of this and that and the other, and you’re like, What the hell are you telling me for?

I mean, I don’t think that, but it’s kind of like Calm down, dude…

It’s not like life or death…

It’s not like you won’t get into BUDS…

Because you didn’t do the pyramid, but I mean, I, I hold myself accountable to an ideal.

I have kind of the ideal Coach Stew when it comes to the workout stuff where I think about, what would stew think if I didn’t do this, or if I was being a little whiny person?

Stew Smith: Well, I mean, that is the beauty of hiring somebody to do, what I do is that you are, in essence, accountable to me every week when I say “Hey, how’d you do?

Tell me, How’d you do?

Let’s talk about next week, right?”

So that is something you can buy, you can buy being accountable to people, and usually, it requires an investment…

Jim Edwards: But I’m gonna disagree. You can buy the potential for accountability…

But accountability is totally an internal thing…

Because I can tell you I’ve had people spend $20,000 with me before to do coaching, and I never heard from them again.

I mean, I, they would, I’d send out the emails, we had the webinars, we had the training, 10 20% of the people show up the other 80% check in maybe once or twice.

And you’re like, “What’s going, oh, I just, I want to be held accountable.”

That’s fine…

I’m here…

But being held accountable.

It doesn’t mean chasing you down.

So true.

Accountability comes from within.

Stew Smith: Yeah…

Jim Edwards: So if you and so you can create external mechanisms like I have a mastermind meeting at 11 o’clock where I have, people I’ve known for years that we hold each other accountable on when we say we’re going to do stuff, but if you’re not committed internally, any level of external accounting ability is not going to work.

I mean, look at prison.

Look at people that cheat on their wives or their husbands look at people that cheat and do things they’re not supposed to there, even though they know there are consequences, but the consequence, the external consequences, and the internal consequences and everything just don’t match up.

I mean, as an entrepreneur, you have to hold yourself accountable to take the actions that you need to take in order to get the results that you want, say you want to get…

Stew Smith: Every day…

Jim Edwards: Every day…

Stew Smith: Every day…

Jim Edwards: Every day, even, especially when you don’t want to…

And so like when we were talking again, I’m like, Dude, it’s hot outside…

I don’t want to do one…

I didn’t do my workout, and you’re like, Well, and I said, but then I said, Okay, then when we’re done, then I’m gonna go do something…

But the funny thing is, is that something I committed to doing was something I couldn’t do…

When we first started doing like the easy blow it off work out…

In 20 minutes was the thing I’m like though I could only get the seven on the pyramid man…

So it’s interesting about raising expectations and holding yourself accountable, but I think ultimately that phrase, hold yourself accountable…

Stew Smith: Absolutely.

Jim Edwards: Nobody else will hold you nobody else can hold you accountable but you.

Stew Smith: True.

I agree with that

I will find that because I have a group of people who train with me. For me, it is much easier to not blow that off…

If I’m by myself.

It’s really easy to say, “Oh, I don’t need to go work out at six.

I can do it at 6:30.”

There’s that timeline thing that I think is really important in accountability is to have that starting line, or at least that deadline of I gotta have this done by this time, period…

Jim Edwards: I think, yes, I think to have a dead-lines crucial…

Having social pressure is what you’re talking about, you’re not really accountable to those guys…

You have social pressure of letting them down.

Stew Smith: Sure.

Jim Edwards: But ultimately, the only one that can hold you accountable and make you take action is you, there’s ego involved…

There’s a commitment, there’s, there’s other stuff, but ultimately, it’s an internal thing…

So if you think about it, when it is externalized if you look at guys, I mean, I’m, I know, when I was in college, and I was in ROTC, and so some of the guys that I knew went on, I didn’t finish, but…

Those guys were in great shape until the day they got out of the military.

And now they look like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, And you’re like,

“Dude, what happened?”

And it’s because the accountability for doing the things on a physical level for working out was externalized.

They weren’t internalized.

So, there was enough of a threat externally that it overcame the internal, but as soon as that was gone, that was it.

And, it’s just it’s interesting how holding yourself accountable is like you say, it’s a daily thing.

It’s an hourly thing.

It’s a minute by minute thing.

In everything and morally, action-wise, how you what you do, what you don’t do, what you focus on what you commit time and resources and everything to.

Maybe I’m going to wide with the definition of accountability…

Stew Smith: No, no, I think you’re spot on…

I will add this, according to our title, how accountability and adaptability are for the self-employed…

We have to be responsible to learning or as I should say, keeping in touch with today’s technological advances with business especially.

Whether that is, a more advanced shipping service of your products or it is being able to learn how to do a podcast…

How to get those up on different media sources, platforms, all of those things will enhance your business in some way.

And it’s up to you if you really want to take that step and try it…

It may not work for you; it may work great for you…

I’ve done over 200 podcasts now, and 80 with Jim, and I mean, these things are great tools…

For getting content out there, and people appreciate the extra content that you’re putting out there, on a regular basis…

So, being adaptable to be able to grow with the changes, because I can’t tell you how many technological changes have changed my life personally and professionally, in the last 15-20 years, even 10 years, it’s, changes so much, so, stay on the front end of it…

And you’ll be known as one of the pioneers in your business niche as well…

Jim Edwards: I agree, and right along with that, I think, is consistency.

Because the, you gotta have you got to hold yourself accountable…

You can be accountable to a system.

I mean, that’s pretty much what I do…

I create systems hold me accountable to do the actions that I need to take with my to-do list my calendar my commitment to the work period.

The work period is typically from five in the morning until four o’clock five o’clock in the afternoon, but I have certain things that I do in the middle of the day…

Like part of that I’ll workout, the other part making sure I have lunch and stuff but adaptability keeping an eye out for what’s coming…

I mean, zoom two years ago, three years ago zoom didn’t even exist…

Now Zoom is poised to take out GoToWebinar, and I hate messing around with GoToWebinar now I find it cumbersome it feels old…

Yeah, I just wish zoom didn’t charge so damn much to do, to do a webinar with like, 1000 people on it.

But I’m probably gonna have to bite the bullet on that anyway because I’m so used to doing it now this feels natural to me whereas GoToWebinar does not.

Stew Smith: I’m with you,

Jim Edwards: But then adapting…

But here’s the thing, we talked on our show on Facebook, about, just different things with, learning and other stuff like that…

But adaptability to me also means you have a core set of principles that you live by and that you understand like sales copy…

So, the principles of sales copy never change, but you have to learn how to adapt those to different mediums…

So, we talked about using sales copy in on paper flyers on door hangers and newspaper ads, magazine ads, phone scripts…

All of these things, the exact same principles are, have been adapted to an online world.

Now, a lot of times they work exactly the same…

Other times you they get used in different ways.

But the big thing is you learn principles, and then you’re adaptive…

You’re you have adaptability when it comes to what you’re up against, especially as an entrepreneur.

Because again, Facebook came around in 2007, but it didn’t really hit its stride in 20 until 2010…

Facebook is not the end-all, and it is all they are facing some real serious issues right now…

That if they get broken up by the FTC, which depending on who they piss off in the next election cycle, that might happen…

I mean, look at Twitter, look at all these things that the world when we first started online how many search engines were there in 1997?

There were there were dozens…

Now there’s now there’s one…

There’s one and then Yahoo, Bing, whatever it is, is a far distant second…

How many social media sites were they before they fought with social media, it was all blogs.

Now, forums.

Stew Smith: Yeah.

Jim Edwards: Forums and stuff.

So now everybody’s on Facebook.

The point is that there’s going to be another shift…

And you’re going to have to learn how to adapt…

But you can’t adopt unless you know principles, because otherwise you’re just tossed on the sea like a wave…

Because you just have no idea what to do.

But once you have those guiding principles that you understand and know… Sales copy, design, interacting with people content creation, article writing, video creation…

All these things, then you’re going to be able to adapt to what comes next because there will be a next this cannot go on forever, the tech monopolies are going to get broken up in some kind of way…

If they’re going to get smashed…

Yeah, they have to that’s the way it goes…

Stew Smith: And there’s gonna be opportunities when that occurs…

Jim Edwards: Right?

Stew Smith: Yeah…

Jim Edwards: So not putting all your eggs in one basket…

I mean, look at Tick Tock…

Tick Tock is I mean, I don’t really understand it…

Stew Smith: Chinese app…

Jim Edwards: It’s like Facebook and Twitter had a baby on crack.

They had like, Facebook and

Twitter at a crack, baby…

Stew Smith: Just a bunch of videos that…

Jim Edwards: Right, but some people are figuring it out…

Stew Smith: Yeah…

Jim Edwards: And there are some people that are making a bunch of money off of it…

What happens when the US government bans Tick Tock because if Trump gets re-elected, they’ll do it…

Because he is about his pro-China as…no one…

So that’s, that’s something common.

Yeah…

You’ve got to learn you’ve got to adapt…

And there are always these cycles, where there’s the start-up phase, where a lot of times the start-up phase for entrepreneurs is where you make all the money…

Because that’s where it’s the rules of the Wild West, and you just figure out what you’re going on.

They’ll take any kind of ad they’ll do they’ll do anything.

Right?

And then they have this maturation phase, and then they kick all the entrepreneurs out, and then there’s the decline, and then the breakup, and then there’s something else coming and going.

Stew Smith: So, let me give you a great example.

Jim, of accountability and adaptability.

Jim Edwards: Please do.

Stew Smith: In a business.

Jim Edwards: Because I’ve gone to many different directories

Stew Smith: Remember DIY Media Marketing Academy?

No, yeah, that’s what we did…

Remember, every we were accountable to each other…

We created this ebook by sending it back and forth multiple times and said, let’s have this thing done by Christmas.

Boom, we get it done.

And then I’d like hey, let’s turn this into an academy, right, and we took each chapter basically and created a monthly training cycle.

People signed up for it, it was kind of fun…

We were accountable to each other for creating that content.

And I would remember, you would send me the go-to-meeting, we would create the PowerPoint and do a show on it.

Right?

And I was like what, there’s this podcast thing that I’d really like to try to figure out…

And so like, I think month five of our training, I was like, I think I figured it out, Jim, and I sent you a Zoom link, and we started kicking it back and forth with Zoom…

And we’re like, this is gonna be our podcast, and I said, it gives you the audio gives you the video.

Let’s have training on how to do a podcast.

And we did.

And we’ve been doing podcasts ever since.

Jim Edwards: Yes, yeah.

Stew Smith: That was two and a half years ago.

Yeah.

Jim Edwards: And there’s, and there’s been plenty other stuff that’s come and gone…

But that consistency and holding each other accountable and holding ourselves accountable and not wanting to let yourself down by not showing up and being ready and all that stuff.

Yeah, I think that’s critical…

And I think those skills and those attitudes are more important now than they’ve ever been…

And they’re going to be more important than they’ll than they’ve ever been moving forward because we’re all our own little company now.

It’s the way the world is going.

More and more people are working from home…

Well, if I’m working from home, why do I need to work for this company?

As opposed to just working for myself?

It’s like all the bonds of the ‘job’ are breaking, and people realize the only way I get paid is by creating value…

And in the end, if you’re an employee, that means you have a single customer, you have one customer, your employer..

If you piss them off, and they fire you, you can lose your house, you can lose everything…

If they go out of business, if they make bad business decisions and go out of business through no fault of your own, you could lose your house…

You could lose your car, you could lose everything because you have one customer.

Stew Smith: Yeah…

Jim Edwards: And that’s, that’s actually a people think that a job is a security…

It’s actually the ultimate in security.

It’s the ultimate risk to put all your hopes and dreams and the future of your family in the hands of a single person, a single entity, and hope that you don’t piss them off.

Hope that you don’t do something that makes them upset hope that they don’t change their business model and you become redundant.

That is scary as crap.

Stew Smith: Or they don’t change their business model, and you become obsolete.

Jim Edwards: Yes.

Stew Smith: Yeah, the thing that happened to a lot of businesses don’t adapt.

Jim Edwards: Yes.

Stew Smith: And grow with technology sings.

Yeah. How many of you, in the group have had, your regular job, maybe you still have your regular job, but you got your side gig going?

I mean, I did that for years.

Fitness was, was a hobby.

Right?

Then I figured out how to make money on it, and it still wasn’t enough money yet.

And then, that it eventually evolved into where I was like, “Hmm, I’m doing pretty well with this fitness thing.”

I think I’ll just do it full time now.

Jim Edwards: And now what did you do?

What were you doing as a job?

Stew Smith: I was doing some security consulting…

Jim Edwards: Okay.

Stew Smith: Yeah.

It was good, good money.

And it was kind of fun.

after 911 doing some unique stuff with DHS and things like that, but as I said, it was the…

Jim Edwards: Probably had traveled and you don’t like to travel…

Traveling a lot…

Stew Smith: I was traveling a lot…

Jim Edwards: Yeah…

Stew Smith: Yeah…

Jim Edwards: Vicki says, look what happened in 2020.

Yep, that’s exactly what we’re talking about.

Leslie said I left the legal field to train entry-level paralegals online.

That’s cool.

Stew Smith: Nice.

Jim Edwards: Oliver says I love the idea that you only have one customer if you’re employed by a company.

It’s true.

It’s absolutely true.

Cool, Gordon says this is what Jim Edwards has given me skills to handle any insecurities that may come up.

That’s awesome…

Stew Smith: Yeah…

Jim Edwards: So, I’m not going to give you the care icon on that one, Gordon?

Um, just because that’s my big joke…

I don’t like um, David said, did you work with Jocko?

I think Jocko was after your time he’s younger than you and he just a few years Stew Smith: Now I was out I got out before 911.

Jim Edwards: Yep.

So I did not know him.

But he was a West Coast guy, I was East Coast…

So how do we wrap this up?

How do we land this plane?

How do we hock this boat too?

Well, how do we wrap this up?

Stew Smith: I would say this, give yourself a timeline…

Give yourself a deadline, give yourself a to-do list, and stick to it…

Jim Edwards: Don’t let yourself off the hook…

Stew Smith: Yeah…

And you’re going to be accountable to all those little things that you have to do every day…

And you might be surprised at all you do in a single day…

Sometimes writes it down and just say, holy crap, I really do a lot of stuff…

I didn’t even realize it, but now you have it in a list, you can kind of see then you can kind of see where there’s space to grow.

And then always just keep your eyes open on what’s in front because there’s always something that’s going to update your business in a way that keeps you relevant.

Otherwise, like said, you fall, if you don’t make those changes, you can really make yourself obsolete.

It within a three to five year period.

Jim Edwards: Oh, quicker net, I think within six months, yeah…

When we’re talking about online stuff…

Yeah, absolutely.

I real fast.

Stew Smith: Another way, another way to do it, too, is not create content, you can become obsolete real quick without the creation of new content.

And that doesn’t have to be a book or anything like that.

It could just change these, blog posts, or social media posts, whatever that is, just regular occurrences, so you got to be accountable for staying relevant.

Jim Edwards: I agree.

And, and a couple reasons that and we’ll end on that, but I think a couple of years.

Why that what you just said there’s like a hidden gem on two levels…

One, by creating content, you stay on people’s radar.

That’s what we think is the reason we create content.

But the other reason is that by constantly creating content, it causes you to be mindful of what’s going on.

And it causes you to stay engaged in whatever your area of focus because if you’re creating content that means you’re thinking about what’s going on, you’re paying attention to the changes, you’re bringing them in.

You’re mixing them around, and you’re making sure that you’re staying up on stuff.

So absolutely cool.

Oliver says, um, we had some good comments and stuff…

Leslie said something, I watched my hubby, father and others lose their jobs…

After many years, it was important, and it was important to have an online business.

Um, I watched that with my dad.

My dad worked for a company for a really long time.

The time he took a shot to go to work for another company, that was like his big shot, that was his thing.

And it didn’t work out, he ended up getting laid off and really struggled for a long time.

And that’s, I think in the back of my mind, I was like, that’s never gonna I’m not going to let that happen to me.

I’m not going to put myself in a situation where a single person and it’s funny, it kind of did happen to me when I worked at that search engine promotion company when the guy fired me.

And I was like, I’m never going to go get another job.

This I’m never going to have somebody be able to know that they hold my family’s groceries in their hand and be able to wield that type of power over me.

Never again, never, ever, ever.

I would sell door to door if I had to over having somebody be able to do that to me.

Like what He did, knowing that he did that.

So cool.

Well, I think everybody’s digging it.

And we enjoyed this.

And so I would just encourage everybody if you are not a member of the Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Podcast group on Facebook you should be we do this live in front of the group people are able to interact and ask questions and have a good rollicking time with us.

Robert, we enjoy rollicking with people online, it’s safe because we’re socially distant.

I’m emotionally distant too, but that’s a different therapy session.

Um, anyway.

So, we appreciate you guys.

If you’re looking for a good read, a good summer read.

I recommend Stew’s “101 Best Pyramid Training Workouts” his latest book…

If you’re looking for something to help you get into amazing shape…

You can make it to about page 10 before you want to puke in a bucket…

But that’s those are some good workouts in there.

I think I got experimented on for a few of those.

Stew Smith: Oh, absolutely.

Jim Edwards: Several, several of us…

Stew Smith: During the writing phase of that…

Yeah, I tested many of them out…

Jim Edwards: I did notice that when I heard…

Stew Smith: We were doing crazy…

We were doing crazy pyramids for a while test…

Jim Edwards: Yeah, but I like on one of, run 800 meters and do this and then multiply it times two times four…

I mean, I got to infinity pull-ups one day, I guess maybe I was doing it wrong…

But there you go, do this 24-hours straight and let me know how it worked out.

So, and if you need some help with copywriting, to town, get yourself a copy of Copywriting Secrets…

It’ll help you write amazing copy no matter what you’re selling or who you sell it to…

I bet it would work with Martians.

So yeah, everybody, have a great day and we’ll talk to you soon.

Bye-bye, Everybody!