Five hours a week?

Yesterday we talked about some of the problems that you may be having in controlling the amount of time you send on your home based business. It really comes down to two things; priorities and results. Keeping you priorities in order and focusing on the things that produce results in your business. I hope you were able to complete the exercise that I asked you to which was to rank the business events that you have available to you in order of effectiveness. If not, do it now, we’ll wait…..

Ok, so we used an example of someone having five hours a week to build their business plus one full weekend a month. This is not much time but in reality it is what many people have when they start a new home based business. As your success increases and your income grows you may find that it makes sense to create more time for your business. The trick is to stay in control of your time and not let your business control your time.

Today, I want to address that five available hours and your weekly schedule. It doesn’t really matter how much time you have as long as you use this formula to allocate your available time. I first heard this presented many years ago by one of the people who has influence me greatly and it makes a ton of sense. That formula is: 80%, 19%, 1%.

The 80% represents the time you should be spending on talking to new people. This includes inviting your list of resources to take a look at your product and/or business and not much else. So if you have 5 hours per week, 4 hours goes into this activity. This will be the single biggest way to gain skill and make money. It is also the most challenging thing to do when you are new but it is NECESSARY for success. TIP: If you really want to be effective in these four hours per week you need to use Dani’s script books, it will save you weeks of frustration and get you making money faster.

Now, included in the 80% portion of time is the actual showing of your business or product. Online presentations, conference calls or live group presentations are all great ways to show your prospects your opportunity. Your job, at the beginning, is just to put people in front of the expert and let them do the presentation for you. If you are using an online presentation you may even be able continue calling new folks while others are watching the video, further leveraging your time. Just remember that activity and your enthusiasm will overcome your lack of skill in the beginning, so just smile and get to work!

19% is portion of time you should be spending helping your team succeed. Three way calls to help close a prospect, the “three meeting plan”, and helping a new person get started all fit into this category. When you are new, and don’t yet have a team, you can invest this time into developing your skill set or add it to your 80%. One bootcamp session a week and 4 hours of work is better than all 30 hours of the Bootcamp and no activity.

“But, Brian, I need more training than just one hour a week!” You’re right, but remember your best training comes from doing, your 80%. And, you should also be leveraging the time you spend commuting, working out, making dinner, getting dressed, cleaning the house, mowing the yard….by upgrading to the PRO version of Smarter Networker and take all 300 hours of content with you everywhere.

Now what about that last 1%, what’s that for? It’s for solving problems. Because we are in the relationship business many of the people we get started in our business will come to us when they have a problem. Maybe their order is late or the company double charged their card or they didn’t get the recognition they think they deserve….the list goes on forever. Every company has a 1-800 number– USE IT! Three way your new person into the company, introduce them to a customer service rep and get back to what makes you money.

The other kind of problem you’re going to encounter is your team asking for help in recruiting, presenting, closing, motivating….again the list goes on. This is the most dangerous part of our business because “working with your team” feels like you are working, it feels like you are helping people grow, it feels like you are spending time in the 19%. It feels good until you get your next check and it is half of what you earned in the prior month.  What’s the solution? Well, Smarter Networker, among other things. Any good third-party resource that can answer their questions without using your time is priceless.  Get familiar with the tools that your company and your team offer and put them to work. The bottom line is that your people need to become independent to be successful and they need to exhaust their available resources before they steal your time. TIP: Check out this video that I did a while back on how to use Smarter Networker as a problem solver.

80%, 19%, 1%, apply that formula to whatever amount of time you have to invest in your home based business. If you stick to these rules you will see results and results equal success.

Next, we’ll talk about how to best use that one weekend a month that you are willing to spend on growing your business. Be ready, I might just surprise you.

Thanks,

Brian