Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: If you want more time, money, freedom, and have a business that's not reliant on you, then you're in the right place. Each week, Mark Creedon, along with some of the very best business minds in the world, will take you through simple, practical steps you can take to create the business you always wanted. From his own practical experience, Mark will show you how to work less, make more, and get the business you always wanted, the one that you deserve.
Now, here's your host, one of Australia's most sought after business coaches, Mark Creedney.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Welcome to the latest edition of the Mastermind for Business podcast. I'm Mark Creedney, your host. And have you ever wondered how it is that some people get so much done? How some people squeeze more into the 24 hours period than you normally do and you look in, or, and you think either they're made of some kind of superpower or they don't sleep, or they've got a staff of 100 people around them. The truth is, it's probably none of that. Probably what they've got is an accountability coach. And if you'd like to know more about that, then well done. You are in the right place because today on the podcast, I've got Darren Finkelstein from tickthoseboxes.com au having a chat with me. Let's get underway with that right now. Darren, good morning.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Good morning, Mark. How you going?
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Really well, mate. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: My absolute pleasure. Thanks for wanting to share the superpowers of accountability with your audience.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So, Joyce, Darren's been my accountability coach. Goodness me, Darren. A few months now.
[00:01:56] Speaker C: Five, six months something. Five, six months. That's right.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: And the thing that I found, and I guess it would be silly for me to say anything other than that I believe in coaching, obviously, as a coach, but I absolutely do. But I think the other thing is that I firmly believe that there are expertise in coaching in various areas. So I know we've had Michael Yardney on the podcast. He's got a sales coach. Not my bag. I knew that I had an enormous amount of things to do. So looking after the mastermind business, running this podcast, taking on the CEO role of the Metropol group, and I knew that what would happen is I'd collapse in a big heap and end up in the fetal position under the desk somewhere if I didn't get some help with how I was going to do that. And that's how I got to meet Darren. And I can honestly say that it's been enormous help in just getting some structure for me. Darren, we'll get into how you do it, but I'm just wondering what's the biggest issue that you see with people when they sort of try to get more accountability?
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a really good question mark. It'd be just so wonderful to give everybody do the bewitch thing and give everybody wiggle my nose and give everybody five more hours in your day to do all the things you want to do. But it's really important that people set realistic and attainable goals, because quite often we all have the right intentions, of course, and we set off on a path and we haven't really thought about how we're going to do it and what are the steps that are required to complete that task, to hit that goal, to reach that quarterly number, to whatever it is your focus might be on. So it's really about making sure that we set clear, measurable goals and we understand what's the destination we're heading to and is it real?
Is it connected to what I'm doing? Is it part of my natural evolution?
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's an interesting point, and I know you've got a process, and I'd love you to share that with the listeners shortly. But it's an interesting point because I think that nobody wakes up in the morning and purposely sets themselves up for failure.
But what we often do, I think, is either choose to do too much or not the right things, or not working in our flow, or allocate things for us to do that actually aren't going to get us to where we want to be.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: Mark, that is such an interesting question. Are we all doing the things, the steps that are needed to get us to where we want to be? Because that question is where most people come off the rails. They've got the right intentions. They start off with all the most genuine plans, but they're not taking the necessary steps to get them closer. What they're actually doing, Mark, is taking themselves further away and getting distracted and wasting all that good energy in doing the things that aren't going to get them close to where they want to.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, because I know when you and I first started working together, one of the very early questions you asked me, know, where do I want to be? What am I trying to achieve? And the other thing, too, Darren, is I remember having a conversation with a good mate of. We play a bit of music. I mean, you know, I don't know if you can call a drummer a musician, of course, but we play a bit of music together, and he's in his own business. And I rang him on Friday morning, and I said, hey, what are you doing tonight or tomorrow morning? Let's get together and play some music. And he gave me this big, long list of things that he was going to achieve that day. And he said, look, I'll come over this afternoon, but I just need to get all of these things done first. And I remember thinking to myself, you're never going to get all that.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: Just.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: That's just an outrageous list. And when I rang him in the afternoon at about 04:00 and said, how you're shaping up, and he said, I gave up and watched Netflix all day.
[00:05:55] Speaker C: Wow. And you could have told him that right up front. There's the outsider looking into your mate's situation and realizing there is no way in hell you're going to get all that stuff done.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you see that with the people that you work with? Do you see a lot of people setting themselves up? How we started that little chat was about, I don't think anybody wakes up purposely setting themselves up to fail, but I think that's what they do. Is that the sort of thing that you see a lot of.
[00:06:20] Speaker C: Look, I see a lot of that. It's unintentional self sabotage, because they don't really understand the steps that they need to undertake to get to where they want to be. So therefore, they start off with all the right intentions, but they don't have a plan.
And without that plan and understanding what needs to be done, it is all going to go to crap.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah. What's that old saying, mate? A failure to plan is a plan to fail.
[00:06:48] Speaker C: Plan to fail. Yeah, very much so. I mean, everything we do in these days has a know you jump on an aircraft, go between Brisbane and Melbourne and Brisbane and Sydney, or wherever there's a flight plan that's been lodged, go do some building works. And there's a permit which has a plan, a set of drawings attached to it. Everything we do, a game plan. In the football match, a soccer match, a rugby match, whatever the sport, there's a plan we just need.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: It's interesting because something we do in the mastermind program is we actually call them a game plan. So we sit down with our clients once a month and we map out, or every six weeks and we map out a game plan, which is, this is what you've achieved, but where are you going with it? What are you doing with it? What's the process from here?
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Yeah. And so that's why we all make wonderful plans on New Year's Eve, particularly when we make that New Year's resolution to our partner that we're not going to get on the booze next year or we're going to go to gym every day or I'm going to run a marathon, but we actually don't plan out how we're going to do it. What are the steps required for me to get to that position where I can do that, I can do it enjoyably, safely and get some benefit out of it. It's not something that you can just wiggle your nose and make happen. And that's where the plans all fall apart because there just isn't mean.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: There's this quote, I think it's attributed to Michael Jordan, but I mean, who knows? And it know, don't wish it was easier, wish you were better. What made me think of that was when, you know, set up the process of going to the gym. And that's something you and I have been talking about. For me personally, I don't like the gym. I don't enjoy the gym.
If I could find any excuse not to go, I'll pick it up. But the truth is I know I need to go and I always feel better when I do go. So one of the things that you've really helped me with is to have a plan for doing that. And really it's not, oh, I'm going to go to the gym for 4 hours a day for the next seven days in a row. It was a nice, simple plan for how I can actually start into that and make it.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: And the problem is, I think, mark, that a lot of people bandy around the just suck it up, just get on there and just do you know if you're uncomfortable at the gym, let's talk about that. Let's understand why that's the case. Let's not give it a ton of energy if we don't need to. But let's understand that and find if there's an alternative is another perspective you could have to getting the same outcome by doing those tasks. Can we spin it around and find out what is it about the gym you don't like and you don't want to go at a particular time in the morning because it's too packed, et cetera, then great. Let's pick a time that works for you. Let's make it easy.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: 100% mate. Let's talk about how it is. Because one of your catchphrases and you very kindly sent me a wall plaque is I get shit done. And that's great. How do you get shit done?
[00:09:48] Speaker C: Yeah, good question. Well, firstly, there's a plan. Naturally, we've just been talking about planning, but there are steps that we take. Right. And the first set of steps we have, and there was a study done out of the US in 2010 by the American Society of Training and Development and it looked at the probability of completing a task or goal or a project, the probability of you getting shit done, to bring it into the context of your question. And there's some really eye opening statistics. So you get a 10% success if you merely have an idea in the first place. So we start off with an idea and we can move forward. Our probability goes to 25% if we consciously decide we want to pursue it. Right, so that's you going to the gym and we talk about the benefits you have by going to the gym and how it makes you feel and how good it is for us blokes at our ages. And we then get tangible reasons why we need to do it. We have a 40% chance of completing our task, a goal, if we set a specific timeline. Right. So we're not talking vagaries here, we're talking specifics. I'm going to the gym tomorrow morning at 07:00 and then I'm going to go again on Sunday morning at 07:00 and you make sure that those dates are available in your diary so that you actually have.
You've got the time available to do it. There's no point in setting a time or having the intention, I'm going to go to the gym and then finding out I can't do it this week. We need to make sure that we can do it this week and then we have a 50% probability of completing our goal or our task if we have a detailed plan. So we need to do this particular task. So what is the outcome we're looking for? And let's deconstruct the outcome back to the first steps. I need to do this by this date. We move forward, I need to do this now by this next date. And we slowly plot our journey. And all we're focusing on is what that task is in front because we've actually taken the whole outcome and we've broken it down into the small steps.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Because small steps you can achieve, right?
[00:12:04] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And they're not overwhelming.
We don't get filled up with anxiety and stress because we think there's this bloody huge mountain to climb. No, we're not climbing the mountain in one go. We're going to go to camp one, which is our first step in our plan, in our milestone. So our probability then jumps to 65%. If you commit to someone, you're going to do it right.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: If we can then tell as many people as we possibly can of our desire and our plan to complete that goal, to run that marathon, to go to the gym, to play that music, that learn that tune in that beat, and if we're very specific about what we want and tell as many people as we can, because the theory is or not the theory, the facts are that people don't share their goals with others because they're scared of failure. So if they don't achieve that goal, they're going to look like an idiot. They've put themselves out there and they're going to let themselves down.
It's not going to be a positive or fun experience and the goal becomes 95% probability of completing it if you have an accountability appointment with someone who's holding you specifically accountable for that task. So this is where we come down to frequency. Out of mind is out of sight. Okay. So if we're only. I'm seeing the person who's keeping me accountable in six months time or the end of the quarter, that's too far away.
We want to get some sort of regularity going because we then start completing our deadlines and reporting in on our progress.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:44] Speaker C: And so if we get stuck or we have a question or we get a bit derailed or we start to get distracted, we can get pulled back onto course again before it's too late.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really interesting, mate, because when you talk about this public accountability, first of all, public accountability, and then I guess that private accountability, by having an accountability budy, one of the things we do in mastermind is talk about holding each other accountable within the community.
But you're right. As you were saying that I was thinking, one of the reasons why I haven't shared some of, say, my personal goals externally is because I might not reach them.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: How are you going to feel then? Yeah, you're going to feel like you've let everybody down.
Perhaps some people have an expectation that, oh, Mark, he's right on it. So if you don't achieve your goal or the activity you've set out to, then how can mark fail?
It just brings a bit of shame on you in the.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Whereas interestingly, if you pick that up and turn it around the other way and go, well, instead of, oh, look, I'm not going to share that in case I don't achieve it. And instead you go, I'm going to share it because it will increase the probability that I will achieve it.
[00:15:04] Speaker C: Yes. And what you're going to share with these people is your plan.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: Right. So the steps that are involved. So, yes, if your goal is to write a book, let's say that you're not going to just give them the finished product. You're going to share with them the steps and write to the basic points of mind, mapping your idea and coming up with a concept and a chapter plan. Here we go with a plan. Word again. A chapter plan of what you want to talk about, to share it with people. Along the way.
They become your supporters, your fans. Your friends are going to want you to succeed, so they're going to be checking in on you. And I know that from personal experience. When I was writing my books, I shared it with my friends. In fact, I shared my first book with my friends at my 50th birthday party and a bit late in life to be sharing a goal like that. And everybody's looked up and go, what the hell are you talking about, Darren? You're never going to write a book. You hardly ever read them, so how is that going to work? But I was keen enough because I understood what my plan was. I shared it with my friends and I was getting nothing but support and encouragement and sounding board for people and running ideas by them, and they became part of the success. And it's just a wonderful level of encouragement to keep moving forward.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Can I say, what a book, guys, it is this one. The accountability advantage, how to play your best game, by Darren Finkelstein, the accountability guy. I really like the book. I read the book when you first sent it through to me when we first started working together. And I can honestly say I have read it and I think it's a great book. So, first of all, well done on setting that goal and then achieving it. But I guess if anybody was going to set a goal and achieve it, it's probably you to.
[00:16:53] Speaker C: I've got to walk the talk. Don't. I've got to deliver. I can't just sit here and talk about it. I've actually got to put some rubber on the road and get some action happening.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: So, Darren, we've gone through that step by step process to get us to 95% probability that we're actually going to achieve that goal. As you work with people in this level of accountability, is there one of those steps that people most fall down on, or do you start to see a pattern where you go where almost you can predict maybe where somebody is likely to fall down in that process.
[00:17:25] Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting. Each of those steps has their own areas of sort of caution and danger lights and need to be careful. Setting priorities is a really important process because we started the conversation talking about the number of hours in the day we have. We can't go out there with a huge list of things, a bucket load of things we want to achieve. And in the time we have available, try and achieve those because it's just not possible. So we need to set priorities. What am I going to do first? That is going to give me the biggest impact towards that goal that I have. But we want to make sure that the goal we have is aligned to who I am. My KPIs, my purpose. If I don't have a connection with it, I'm not going to want to do it.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting, mate, because you talk about being aligned with your KPIs and your purpose. Because one of the things I often see business people doing is they come up with this idea of something they want to achieve. But the reason they don't is because it actually doesn't align with their values or with their personal purpose or the purpose of their business. It was one of the reasons why during COVID I mean, I always hated the word pivot because people talk about pivoting, but the problem is sometimes when you pivot, you pivot to something new that's actually taking you away from your core purpose or your core values. And I think that's a really dangerous thing to do.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: It is a dangerous thing to do unless it's more aligned to who you are and it's more aligned to your authenticity and who you are as you're being genuine with yourself. Because perhaps beforehand what you were doing, you didn't really do a good job of it because your heart wasn't in it.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker C: You didn't have that connection because it wasn't aligned to your purpose or wasn't aligned to your why and who you wanted to be. So you just can't lean into the experience because it just didn't feel right.
We can't try and have enough faith in our human system to realize that if I don't do anything that's aligned to who I am, I ain't going to do it with a passion that I normally have. So you're going to get caught out.
You'll just waste time and energy and it's frustrating. I've got a bit of gray hair and a bit of wisdom to earn those stripes, to say, we've all gone down that path before, but that's really important to stay connected.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting you talk about priorities, because one of the things that I think we talk to our mastermind members about time management, and frankly, I think time management is a bit of nonsense because we can't create more hours in the day. So it's not actually about time management. The secret to time management is priorities. It's managing the priorities. It's not the time you have, it's what you do with the time you have.
And I guess that then applies to how you achieve your goals, because if you're not spending the right amount of time on the right things at the right time, then you're probably not going to achieve those goals at the end of the day anyway.
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Look, Mark, you're absolutely spot on. So if we go back to what we talked about before, of having a clear and clear and measurable goal, and then we deconstruct it, right? So let's say we have a goal and we deconstruct it. And I like to sort of use, know, we can use the football analogy of saying we know, perhaps two halves, or we can say we have four quarters. You break it down to those milestones along the way. So right now, we're just focusing because we're at the start, we're focusing now at the first milestone.
Everything else is irrelevant. Everything else is parked on hold, has got to be out of our mind. We just need to focus on what do we need to do now to complete that first milestone?
And that's got to be our focus, because if it isn't our focus and we're worried about doing stuff for our fourth milestone, then you're just not going to achieve. You're not going to get there.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's getting things in the right order, isn't it?
[00:21:35] Speaker C: Yeah. And that comes down to prioritizing.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Is there value as you're setting goals? Is there value in looking for a quick win and not just any quick win, but a quick win that's in line with that goal and that journey and all of the things that we've spoken about?
[00:21:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Value in looking for that.
[00:21:53] Speaker C: There is. There's always a value in getting something that's going to release and dopamine and make us feel good. And quite often things like procrastination and overwhelm comes when we just don't know where to start. So get the first win up your sleeve, get the little easy victory, pick the low hanging fruit and then be able to enjoy the success that comes and be able to use that to move forward on your next task. So, yeah, wins along the way, big, little or small, are really important.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Then on that point, Darren, how important is it to celebrate those wins?
[00:22:35] Speaker C: It's one of my pet hates with lots of clients that I work with in my program, because they don't take the time to go and celebrate with their team. They don't want to go and celebrate with their partner, with their life partner, their business partner, and just take the little win and celebrate and talk about it and make us feel good and acknowledge that the efforts we put in, we got the thumbs up on that. We can now move on to the next step.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: Gives us closure to move forward. But people don't do that.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: No.
[00:23:09] Speaker C: Celebrate anything. And they don't celebrate with their team. And their team feels like they're not part of the big goal. They're not part of the big deal.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I think I talk about all the time the value of actually just celebrating a win and stopping and taking stock of how far you've come in a process as.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: Very, very true.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Darren, we kicked off with talking about how it is that some people get more done. Just a quick recap on what that six step process is. If somebody's sitting there listening to this podcast and going, yes, I really like the idea of how I'm going to achieve these goals. Quick recap on the six steps.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay. So the first thing is we move to 10% when we have an idea or a goal in the first place. We can identify that. We move to 25% when we consciously decide we want to pursue it. Therefore, it's aligned with our purpose, our KPIs. We got a 40% chance of probability if we set a timeline to that. That means being able to prioritize the focus. We have a 50% chance of success if we create, or when we create a detailed plan of how we're going to achieve that.
We go to a 65% chance of probability if we commit to somebody else. So that is ideally to another person. But tell as many people as you can of the task or the goal you're about to set forth on and get them to share the journey with you, because we know it's a really positive thing. They'll give you support, they'll give you TLC, and they'll want you to be successful.
And it goes to a 95% probability if you commit to somebody to hold you accountable for that task on a frequent basis.
So that really closes the loop of being able to sit with someone to work through that plan to make sure you're taking the necessary steps to meet those milestones that are time bound. Right. They've got dates associated with them.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Nice. And look, I mean, if we can get to 95%, that's pretty damn good. Darren, if somebody listening to the podcast right now is going, do you know what? I actually think I need some help with this accountability. How do they get a hold of you?
[00:25:25] Speaker C: Sure, if they head to tickthoseboxes.com au, they could book in for one of my free 15 minutes accountability assessments. So we'll jump on a Zoom call and we'll have a chat about what they're looking to achieve, and I'll give them some constructive tips towards that. And on my website, they'll also see the ability to take my quiz, which is called how accountable are you? And you can take the quiz takes about three or four minutes to complete yes or no answers, and you'll get a report from me on the things you're doing well against the different criteria that we've set.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: And, guys, can I tell you, prior to working with Darren, I actually did that accountability scorecard. It was a bit of an eye opener, and more importantly, it just helped me to go, yep, now I can see where I need the help and then how I'm going to get Darren to help me.
Thank you.
[00:26:15] Speaker C: It's a pleasure. Thank you for wanting to understand more about accountability. The dreaded a word.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. Hey, it's been great, guys. If you know somebody in their own small business or professional practice and they would like to get these are the sort of things that we teach our mastermind clients all the time. Darren's been a part of our mastermind group. He's spoken to our mastermind in hot seats and will continue to do so.
These are the sort of things that we can help them with. Metropolemastermind.com au, if you'd like to know more about that program in the meantime, please like the podcast. Share it, leave us a review. That's how other people get to find more about us. And the purpose of the podcast is to help as many people as we can to have a business that's a whole lot less reliant on them. Until we speak in the next episode of the Mastermind for Business podcast, this is Mark Creedon. Please make sure you spend time with those who matter most at the end of the day, that's why we do what we do. See you guys.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on the Mastermind for Business podcast. If you're ready to have a business that you're not a slave to, check out Metropolemastermind.com au or have a chat with Mark and the team at all the is see what's possible today.
