If you’re like most direct sellers, you’ve probably been enjoying the summer season with travel and flexible schedules only to realize that fall is literally around the corner. I’m not sure why the incoming fall season always took me by surprise in my business, but each year I found myself struggling to put my focus back on my business. But over time, I’ve discovered some helpful ways to reset my mindset and shift my focus to the fall season. You can use these tips anytime you’re feeling a little out of sorts, your schedule doesn’t feel quite right, or you’re not getting the traction you want in your direct sales business. So let’s jump in.
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Tip 1: Evaluate Your Goals
The first step is to evaluate your goals. Remember those goals you set way back in January? Have you tracked them recently to see how close you are? Are you seven months closer to your goal? Are you halfway there? Did you forget you even set goals back in January?
Take the time to evaluate those goals and ask yourself these questions:
- Are those goals still relevant for my business right now?
- Do I need to change them?
- How close am I to meeting my goals?
Now is the time to revisit your goals and recommit to them if necessary. I know that’s hard when you are in the throes of “all the things.” But the reality is that now is the perfect time to do it because you can make a pivot if you need to before you move into the busyness of the fall season.
Once you’ve reflected on your goals, it’s time to make a plan to hit your goals by the end of the year. And just because you’re a little off track doesn’t mean you can’t hit them. Just take a little time and break your goals down into bite-sized chunks.
Evaluate what you have left to do to hit your goal, and then decide what you can do each month to ensure it happens. It’s important to take the time to do this before you get back into the busyness of back to school, the holiday season, and the normal patterns and routines of life.
Tip 2: Evaluate Your Time
The second tip is to evaluate your time. It’s so easy to fall back into bad business habits! One thing that can help you not fall prey to this is to do a time audit. A time audit is simply looking at where you spend your time and then evaluating if that is where you want to or should be spending it.
One thing to remember is that you must do this in all areas of your life. As a home-based business owner, work, family, and personal time are all intertwined. Your goal for your time audit is to ensure that all areas of your life are aligned.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- Do you want to spend more time with your family?
- Do you need to spend more time on your business to achieve your goals?
- Are you taking enough time for yourself? I know this one is hard!
- What does a good balance of each look like for you right now?
A time audit is simply writing down everything you do for three to seven days. The better job you do of auditing your time, the more information you’ll have for evaluation. The key here is to be honest with yourself and write everything down.
Once your audit is done, take time to evaluate where you’re currently spending your time.
- Are you wasting time on things that aren’t moving your business forward?
- Are you spending time on things that aren’t necessary for your business but are taking time away from your family?
- Are you spending too much time doing things that an assistant or family member could help you with?
- Are you actively spending time on things for yourself and your health?
Once you’ve done your evaluation, it’s time to plan your ideal week.
Do your best to set up a weekly plan that you can follow. Take repetitive tasks and assign them days. Examples might be doing all of your business mailings on Wednesday and doing laundry every Tuesday and Friday. When I was in the field, I set a specific day for all my basic business tasks. This included set times to work on my team and training activities, making my booking and host coaching calls, scheduling social media and team posts, customer follow-up, etc. If you’re unsure how to make this happen, make a plan based on your current schedule and time audit evaluation. Decide which days of the week you want to do what tasks, and remember that it’s a goal.
Is your ideal week going to happen every week starting out? Nope! Keep in mind that this is something that you’re working towards. It’s a schedule you want to have in place at some point in the future, but you have to work towards it. In the meantime, continue evaluating your ideal week and tweaking where necessary.
Let me also add something here. Friend, taking the weekends off from your direct sales business is totally ok. I’m giving you permission to step away from your business. If you can, try to build in some “catch-up” time for those unexpected things that are sure to come up. Once you have your ideal week planned, start to build your daily routine. Do your best to follow the general outline, making tweaks where necessary. If you’re making a lot of tweaks, it may be time to do another 2-3 day time audit so you can evaluate if you’re leaking time due to interruptions or just wasting time.
Most of us do financial budgets, but many of us don’t do time budgets, and it’s just as important! I would argue that it’s more important because while you can always make more money, you can’t make more time. So do your best to be as thoughtful with your time as you are with your money.
Tip 3: Evaluate Your Overall Business Strategy
And finally, you’ll need to evaluate your overall business strategy. As you look at your goals and structure your time, you can start to assess if what you’re doing right now in your business is working. Don’t be afraid to change things up to see if different business strategies bring you better results for the life that you want.
An example might be that you no longer want to work weekends after evaluating your time audit. To accomplish that, you need to shorten your party format. You decide to switch from a 5-day party to a one-hour party and evaluate it for the rest of the year to see how it impacts your time, sales, and overall business strength.
The key here is that whenever you make a pivot, take the time to evaluate it, study it, and reflect on how it affects your overall business results. It’s critical to take the time to assess how you want to show up for your business the rest of the year because only you get to determine that. This is your business. You need to own it.
To recap, I challenge you to take some time before you return to those busy routines of back to school and the fall selling season to consider your goals, assess your time, and evaluate your overall business strategy.
If you find yourself struggling to get your business under control and you’re confused about what to do first, make sure you grab our free Direct Sellers Business Blueprint. It walks you through the four key areas you need to work on to build a predictable and sustainable direct sales business.
It will help you identify where the holes in your business are and the areas you really need to work on to keep moving your direct sales business forward. It will also help you evaluate your overall business strategy. Now that it’s time to get back to school, let’s get back to business too!
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Want a proven plan for growing your direct sales business without feeling like you're chasing your tail? The Direct Sellers Business Blueprint explains the 4 key areas you must master to build a simplified, systematic business. It will even tell you which area to tackle first, so you can stop feeling overwhelmed or confused about what to do next. The best part? It's completely FREE!
Mary Haynes is a highly successful direct sales leader turned strategist and coach. Her passion is helping party plan people streamline and scale their businesses using simple, proven strategies. Her goal is to eliminate business overwhelm so direct sellers know exactly what to do and when to do it. Mary is also a homeschooling mama that lives in sunny Florida with her husband, 4 kiddos, 2 dogs, and various other backyard animals.
