Most people operate direct sales businesses part time alongside other important commitments such as, family, school, a career or any combination thereof.
If you’re running your business as a source of income (and I hope you are), I’m sure you’ve noticed that those other obligations don’t just go away a you’ve probably had to get really good at managing your time.
Time Management is Hard!
Time management is one of my biggest challenges. I don’t have any problems doing the work, my issue is that I’m often not working on the right tasks. I’m talking about income-generating activities: the tasks and activities that bring in the most money (calling potential hosts, team members, following up with customers who have purchased in the past, etc.).
Think of tasks like buckets. Every day, you should be working to fill a few of them up. Depending on where you are with your business, the buckets might be a little different.
If you’re a brand new consultant, you might want to focus on bookings, developing relationships and learning about the Wine Shop at Home business. If you’ve been doing this for a while, you might need to spend more time each day filling up your team building bucket or working on leadership development. Different strategies work for different people.
The Dangers of Working from Home
A lot of us get into direct sales because we like the idea of working from home. But working from home can be dangerous since there’s always something to distract you from what needs to get done (hello, Real Housewives…). Your business can easily become your lowest priority.
I’ve started making my time commitments at the beginning of every week. I’ll commit to working 3 hours a day, 5-6 days and then decide how I want to spend those chunks of time. By the end of the week, I “look back” and make sure I’ve spent enough time in the right places. If not, hello catch up time. Some people like to commit to working a total number of hours for the entire week. If you need a visual, put some buckets on your desk and every time you spend 20 minutes on an income producing activity, toss a cork in the bucket for that activity. At the end of the week, look for balance and to have spent time on each bucket.
I advise my ”full time” consultants to shoot for a 20-30 hour workweek and I try to model that schedule myself. I advise my “part time” consultants to commit 10-15 hours each week. But remember, it’s not just the amount of time you’re spending on the business, it’s how you’re spending that time.
Don’t Talk About Doing the Work. Just Do It.
In order to keep their membership active, WineShop consultants are required to do a certain amount in sales every quarter. So every three months I send out a little reminder note to nudge people along, saying, “Look, even if you’re not selling to other people, make sure to purchase from yourself to keep your membership active because you just don’t know when you might want to do more with this!”
I sometimes get responses like, “I tried to get this off the ground but it’s just not working.” With a little digging, I’ll normally discover that maybe they talked to four people and those four people told them they weren’t interested. But talking to four people isn’t enough. You have to be willing to put in the time if you want to see results. It might even be that someone wasn’t supportive of them starting a side business (more on that in a future blog) but I don’t think you should count an opportunity out until you’ve really given it a solid GO!
It Has to Be Fun
The wonderful thing about a business like this is that there’s a lot of scheduling flexibility. You have the potential to earn full time money working part time hours – how awesome is that? This doesn’t necessarily mean six figures right away, but it does mean not being tied to a desk all day long.
However you like to work, make sure you’re having fun. In order for these businesses to be successful, you have to enjoy what you’re doing.
Are you interested in becoming a WineShop at Home consultant and starting your own fun and flexible home-based business? If so, let’s talk. Click HERE to set up a time to speak with me directly.