I’ve been thinking about how I get in gear and elevate myself to the level I need to be at to make this a success.  One of the things I have generally struggled with is accountability tied with comfort. Let me explain.

I make a good living from my corporate life.  With the added income from my wife, who works as a nurse, we enjoy a lot of nice things.  Life could always be better, but right now we are pretty comfortable.  This comfort is a barrier to me being successful in a sense that when things in the startup get hard, or there’s a bunch of grunt work staring me in the face, it’s difficult for me to get motivated to take on the challenge when I can just go sit in the hot tub and plan my next vacation to the Caribbean.  I don’t say these things to brag or get sympathy, but when I’m honest with myself about why the hard work goes really slowly (or not at all), this is one of the main reasons.

The other reason is one of accountability.  I generally don’t care what most people think of me, so I am not motivated to do more for other people.  I’ve given my kids a pretty good life in regards to “stuff” and I certainly don’t need to work harder to buy them more things.  I don’t feel accountable to anybody at this point to make this thing successful.  Tie that in with comfort zone and not wanting to do the hard work, and here I am making excuses to not get things done.

I was thinking on how to beat combat this challenge.  While scrolling through my Facebook feed, I noticed that one of the entrepreneur groups I’m in was opening up spots in their paid group.  Without going into a lengthy explanation, I was/am in a free group “Coffee with Dan” which has ~15k members.  He runs a paid group of ~500 people that has more content and engagement for $120 a month.

I’ve tried some of the local entrepreneur groups as well as some of the online ones through LinkedIn and Facebook and hadn’t found one that really fit.  Many of them are trying to sell “miracle kits” or get rich quick schemes that aren’t really viable and don’t work long term.  Lots of people also join these groups to sell their own services.  Dan’s free group was the best I had found, so I figured for $300 for 3 months (I got a discount for paying 3 months), it would be worth seeing how much better the paid group was over the free, so I signed up today.

On first inspection, the amount of content in the paid group is overwhelming.  There’s so much there on all kinds of topics and a bunch of great people that are on a similar journey.  I’ll report back soon on the added value of the group, but my initial thinking for paying is this.  First, it makes it all the more real that I am making changes and becoming a different person.  I am paying my own money to get this business off the ground, and not just for tech toys that I like playing with anyway.  Paying to join this group makes this more real than anything else I’ve done.  Second, I now have accountability to others that I didn’t have before.  This might sound a little hokey, but for me it really does work.  I see these people as my peers in this journey and I certainly don’t want to let them down. Hopefully these things will come to fruition, but even if they don’t, I’m sure I’ll learn a bunch along the way that will be worth the $300 I’m out.