Accountability

Hey, what's up gigging pros! Its Jared Judge, welcome back to another episode of the Gigging Musician Podcast. Today we're going to talk about something that might make you some of you uncomfortable, or others of you might love it and might think like, Yeah, this is awesome. Everybody should be talking about it, which is the concept of accountability. Now, what is accountability? And why is it so important for musicians to hold themselves and others accountable? Well, accountability is simply fulfilling the promises that you make to yourself and to others. And likewise, you can hold others accountable by making sure that they fulfill on the promises that they make to both themselves and others. The reason why I'm bringing this up now is because I'm actually a part of a business mentorship, where we have daily accountability meetings. And so every day, I get on zoom with about four other people who are all trying to grow their businesses. And we check in with each other, we set goals, what are we going to do today? What did we do yesterday? Did we meet our goals, and they hold each other accountable? It's not like they're punishing us if we don't meet our goals. But truth be told, like, if you show up, and you say, yesterday, I was gonna do X, I did not do X. It feels really embarrassing. Like that in its own right, is punishment enough to motivate you to actually go out and, and do it, and not only just to do it, but like, set goals that you know, are in your control? So you know, it's super fun. Like, why is this relevant to musicians? And you might question, is it really super fun? Like, obviously, I'll be honest, yes, it is fun, because I get so much more done because I have accountability buddies. And so this is so relevant to musicians, because there's so many times where we make these promises that we don't fulfill on whether that's musical promises, like I promise, I'm gonna learn that solo by the next rehearsal, maybe somebody you feel called out by that. Or it is accountability. As far as like the business goes, like, I plan on booking X number of gigs in this following month, where I plan on reaching out to y venues or I plan on following up with every email that comes in within 24 hours, like these are all promises that you make to either yourself, or bandmates. But the question is, do you actually follow through with it. And I know for the longest time, I was not great at that. And let's, let's be real here, I'm still not 100%. I really try. But having this accountability group has been so important, so helpful for that, that actually, recently, in Fulltime Music Academy, we started doing these daily accountability posts in our private Facebook group, where you just share what you did yesterday, and what you're planning on doing today. And people will comment on it. And it's really cool, because then you get to see what is everybody working on? What is important for them at this moment in time. And then people comment on other people's posts, and say, like, yeah, I just worked on something similar for my group across the country. And it was hard, but we did it. So you know, power on through, you can do this, like people are supporting each other. And to me, that is one of the bigger values of having an accountability system is just being supported by people going through what you're going through trying out the things that you're about to try out. One of my mentors, he actually mentioned that he was in an accountability group, a couple of years ago, it was just him and one other person. And what they did was they actually made it like high stakes accountability, where the each rep themselves a check for$2,000 that they did not cash. But basically, they met every other week. And they said, We're going to set goals. And then we're going to check up on if you accomplish those goals, the following like two weeks later, and if either of them did not accomplish those goals, then they were going to cash the check. Like you basically paid $2,000 to learn to be held accountable for what you did. Now, I'm not well, I'm not the kind of person who would go that far. Although maybe I would one day, I don't know. But I could see the value in that like having a real, tangible, painful consequence. Aside from just embarrassment of having to say no, I didn't accomplish my goals. That would be a real motivator. But I want you to think about like, what are some promises that you've made to yourself or to others? Like is it in music? Do you have musical goals that you're planning on accomplishing? Is it in the business? Do you plan on getting that website up? Finally? Are you trying to release a new album are you this, that and the other like these are all promises that you've made to yourself and to others? The big question is, are you holding yourself accountable? Are you following through on those? And if not, how can you get yourself an accountability system, whether that's a PA aren't new, or whether that's a group. We're at Facebook post in a private Facebook group, how are you going to make yourself accountable to what you promise? And similarly, how are you going to hold others accountable for this? Because you know, it's not just a one sided relationship, when you're working with others they need to fulfill on their promises to. So that is kind of my little mini rant on accountability. I hope that inspires some of you to take action and hold yourself and others to a very high standard because, you know, we don't have that much time on this earth. Let's do what we say we're going to do. And let's get more done, because we're holding ourselves accountable. So that's the goal here. All right, cool. Well, thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "You are just one gig away!".