Let’s face it – no one is coming into your business becomes they have a tonne of spare time and nothing to do.
They’re coming into Network Marketing to try and create more time in their life. More money, more purpose, more excitement, more friends, more culture for sure – but ultimately, more choice, more time and more freedom.
And because of that, Time Management isn’t just important – it’s essential.
And before we go any further – let’s look at the phrase Time Management itself. Because ‘management’ suggests that you can control it. And we can’t control time. We can’t change the number of hours in a day. It’s not how we manage our time but how we prioritise what we do in the time we have. That distinction itself is where a lot of people struggle. They try to focus on controlling their time, rather than controlling what they do within the time they have.
So from here on out, we won’t be talking Time Management, rather Task Prioritisation.
And if you can prioritise doing the right tasks with the right people – you’ll be able to build a business, and income, that will buy you all the time you need.
In his original Network Marketing bible – Go Pro – Eric Worre talks about the 6 Skills of Network Marketing. In subsequent editions, he has adjusted these slightly, and added a 7th, but for this blog we will use his 6 Skills. They are:
- Finding People to Talk To
- Talking to the People You Find
- Supporting People
- Bringing People to Events
- Building Belief (your products, company, compensation plan, industry and self).
- Personal Development.
Whether intentional of not, these 6 Skills are also in order of prioritisation when it comes to growing your business.
Finding people (Networking) and Talking to People (Marketing) are directly income producing. We can control them. Doing these tasks successfully will result in enrolments, which will lead to our business growing.
Supporting People (Business and Product Coaching) and getting Bums on Seats at Events (Promotion) are indirectly income producing. We can control how many people we invite to the event, we can improve our coaching systems and retention so much – but we can’t control if someone decides to do anything after they’ve started. Someone can come to an event, love it, but go home and never actually speak to anyone. Someone can lose 10kg, gain a heap of energy, improve their skin and look amazing – but they may never open their mouth about how. Even worse – some people will stop doing what works and go back to what wasn’t working – ‘Oh I can fit in my pants again so I’m going to go back to what I was doing before’ – the exact thing that stopped you being able to fi tin your pants. Sigh.
Finally – Building Belief and Growing Ourselves are both incredibly important Personal Development Skills. But we don’t get paid for Personal Development. Growing our skills, and ourselves, helps the above tasks become easier. We get better at telling our story, our posture is stronger, we deal with negativity more easily – but no company is going to pay you $10 for reading this blog. They are non income producing tasks at the end of the day.
The key to having success here – is making sure that you prioritise the direct income producing activities first, then the in-direct, then the non income producing activities.
Think about it like baking a cake. 6 ingredients, all equally important at the end of the day. Just as important – the quantities and the timings. Bake the cake first – ice it after. Putting the icing on first – nothing but a hot mess in the bottom of the oven. The same goes for your business. Personal development tasks like reading and growing ourselves – hugely important. But they can’t come before having conversations. Spending all day on growing ourselves is really just procrastination – and that will kill your business growth. Spending all day with other people but never doing anything yourself – well it sounds noble. To put it nicely, it’s Management Mode. Really – it’s expecting everyone else to do the work. Which is putting your future in someone else’s hands. And it’s very poor leadership.
Whether you have 10 minutes or 10 hours – it’s not about how much time you have. It’s about making sure you make the main thing the main thing. Start your working hours by having conversations – face to face, social media, wherever. It’s about ensuring that you prioritise those activities first. Then, prioritise working with people who are in action and getting them to events. Then, work on yourself.
As your business grows, you’ll make more money. And if you take care of it, you’ll be able to have more spare time from there. Once you go ‘full-time’ it’s even more important to lead by example. Fill your day by doing the income producing activities first. Make them a priority, show everyone in your team you’re still leading from the front – and your business will continue to grow.
Put the right ingredients in, in the right quantity and in the right order – and you’ll have the business, and lifestyle, of your dreams.
To your success.
Andrew Logan
Andrew Logan is a Network Marketing Author, Coach and Mentor.
You can access more free training on his YouTube channel here and his Podcast here.
For your Free 7 Step Guide to Financial Freedom Through Network Marketing, click here.
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