I Get Accountable: A Follow-Up

I took my own advice this week after blogging about accountability partners. After all, that’s what the post was about. I met with a girlfriend Wednesday to catch up and discuss a book I had loaned to her a few weeks ago, Ladies Who Launch. It was the first book I read when I realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur and it eased me into the start-up mindset. So, knowing my friend was feeling uninspired, I loaned it to her. It had such an impact at a pivotal moment in my life, I was anxious to see how it would affect her.

After a great hour-and-a-half long conversation that included brainstorming business ideas, we agreed that it would be nice to do on a regular basis. Earlier that day, at a political rally, I bumped into another one of my girlfriends, an ex-coworker, who in the course of the usual chit-chat off-handedly mentioned that she was thinking of starting her own business. I made a lunch date with her for later in the week, and mentioned the idea of adding her to our weekly meetings to my other friend.

Accountability group accomplished. It’s more than that, though, since we have different interests. We’re all interested in starting our own businesses, but some of us are interested in real estate investing, stocks and inventing. The nice thing is that three people can accomplish more than one can. So, instead of one person trying to research sole proprietorships, limited liability corporations, taxes and bookkeeping, trademarking and copyrighting law, etc., we have three people who can split it up. And where one person has X contacts in her network, our group will multiply that by three.

Besides all of the rational and technical benefits of our group, there is also the more emotional benefit of knowing that there are people who get excited about the same things I do, who are striving toward the lofty goals as well, who are unsatisfied with the status quo and are willing to take action.