Direct sales or party plan business is absolutely ideal as a side hustle because it’s so flexible. It’s one of the reasons I love it so much!

But, because it’s not your main hustle, you don’t have time to waste! So you must ensure you’re investing your time wisely, not just spinning your wheels but moving forward.

This means that how you spend your business time is vital. Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle? This principle states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts. This means that 80% of your efforts are not doing much for you!

When I first learned about this, I was excited to work out which 20% of my tasks were producing the results because it would mean I could reduce the amount of time I spent on my business while at the same time growing it!

Things to stop doing in your direct sales biz

• I stopped investing massive amounts of time studying the products. I decided that if a guest or customer wanted to know more than I could tell them, I learned how to find out. I always got back to them, which became another opportunity to continue that relationship with the customer.

• I also stopped investing lots of time in team members who were less active or less engaged. Instead, I used my team to focus on my eager ‘rising stars‘ and get new team members off to a great start.

• I focused my activities on getting parties (online or in-home) rather than chasing individual orders. It’s much more time efficient to see a group of people at once and gather a bunch of orders in one go. I used to feel like I was constantly chasing orders.
  
  If you need some ideas on how to get bookings, check this article so you can get off the individual order treadmill too.

• I focused more of my time on finding new team members and supporting them in getting their own businesses started. I realized that team growth would significantly impact my long-term income and that the faster I recruited, the faster my business would grow.

• I started scheduling my social media posts in advance. I would sit down monthly to plan and schedule content for my business page, customer group, and team group. I found those monthly sessions were super productive, and my content became more thought out and better planned. 
  This change stopped me running around through the week madly, trying to think of something to post on Facebook. I love using Cinchshare for my scheduling, but you can use Facebook too.

I found that once I cut out ‘busy work’ – the tasks I used to do that didn’t add to my bottom line – I could do more to grow my business. For example, I spent hours preparing folders with product information or color-coding my customer files. So now, I focus my time on the 20% of tasks that build my business.

Another key to working smarter, not harder, is consistency. Your business won’t progress if you only work on it randomly. Of course, you don’t have to dedicate much time (I hope that much is clear now), but it does help to be consistent for people to trust you with their business.

Direct sales is a business where you can step up to leadership, bringing new challenges and opportunities.

If you’re new to leadership, below are five tips to help you grow into the type of leader that a team likes to follow.

Keep in mind that the number 1 complaint from consultants about their leaders is that they only hear from them when the leader wants to know how many sales they have!

I see that behavior all the time, making the team feel used – as if they’re only a number to help the leader get paid. It leads to resentment and negative team culture.

You don’t want to be that kind of leader. So check these tips to help you become a fabulous leader of a fantastic team.

Help your team members to feel successful

When teamies feel they are successful, it will help them build on their success and keep striving for more. Think about recognition. What are you celebrating in your team, and how are you celebrating it?

What you focus on with recognition will increase.

Do you create certificates? Do you hand out trophies? Do you post a brag in your team group on Facebook? Do you call them or go Live to congratulate them with a personal message? The more you do, the better!

If your team members are excited about their achievement, they are more likely to repeat it and strive for more. It will also inspire others in your team to strive for recognition.

Encourage effort

Not everyone in your team will achieve the standard required for public recognition. But a good leader will make everyone in the team feel valued.

Try to find a reason to congratulate as many team members as possible each week for something. A quick text message can make a big difference in helping someone feel acknowledged and valued.

Always be on the lookout for team members who’ve stepped out of their comfort zone to take action. When they do, consider going the extra mile and post them a personal card in the mail to let them know how proud of them you are.

Even if their actions don’t lead to results this time, they might next time. And in the meantime, you have a loyal team member who feels valued.

Mark significant occasions

I keep a box of cards handy, so I’m ready to send a personal postcard when something noteworthy happens in a team member’s life.

Think of life events such as a new baby, engagement or wedding, passing of a loved one or pet, illness, etc.

It’s essential to show team members that they matter to you and that what happens in their life matters to you.

Talk less and listen more

As a leader, we have to stop trying to fix everything. Realize that your team members often already have the answer! Our job is to coach them and help them find it. (Check this article on coaching.)

It can be hard to stop ourselves from telling our team members what to do. Remember that if you let them choose their action steps, they’re far more likely to take that action!

Be a cheerleader

Be the best cheerleader you can be! When I think of cheerleaders, I think of someone happy, positive, energetic, and smiling. That’s your job!

Always be positive. Acknowledging concerns is okay, but you must continually re-focus on the positives and the next step.

Sometimes you’ll have to remind a team member of their exceptional qualities or how far they’ve come already. Sometimes you’ll need to remind them of how excellent your company is.

Focus on gratitude, focus on what’s in your control and enjoy the process.

“I get asked all the time how I juggle everything in my life.”

It sounds like a lot when I list it out like that! And yet I manage to balance work, family, sports, leisure, and service to others.

So let me share how I achieve that in 3 steps.

How do you define balance?

First of all, it’s essential to think about how you define balance in the first place. My whole concept of balance was changed after reading a book by best-selling author Laura Vanderkam. She believes that balance should be viewed across a week or a month, not day-to-day as we’ve been conditioned to think.

Too often, we feel pressure to be all things to all people all of the time. But we don’t need to feel guilty.

Sometimes we need to work on our careers and work hard for a time. Other times we need to be with our children and play and learn and parent and take the time to do this.

So I realised that it’s okay to get off the old merry-go-round of feeling guilty when I was working because I wanted to be with my children and would feel guilty when I was with them because, in the back of my mind, I thought I should be working!

I made the quote by David Bader my mantra!

I put it in my office and on my fridge to remind me that focus and quality time are essential.

2. Do more things at once

My second tip is to, wherever possible, tick multiple boxes with the way you’re spending time. For example, when I’m at Karate, it’s exercise time, family time, and social time because we’ve made great friends at the dojo.

So perhaps you can exercise or train with a friend while the kids play? Or instead of meeting a friend for a coffee, why not meet up to go for a walk?

If you have made friends in your direct sales team, you can be each other’s accountability buddy and cheerleader and work on your direct sales business while you get social time as well.

Disclaimer: Yes, quality time is essential and I’m not advocating that you should always be looking to do five things at the same time and never feel like you’re truly present in the moment.

But where you can do multiple things at once, don’t discount the opportunity to do so! 

3. Start delegating as soon as you can

My third tip is that delegation and outsourcing are vital. I do the tasks in my business that only I can do – where I add the most value. But everything else I either delegate or I pay someone else to do.

People often say they can’t afford that or that they’ll do it when they’re making more money, but I started doing this very early in my business. I used to pay my neighbor’s teenage daughter in free products for her help with basic business tasks and housework. 

“The time and energy that freed me to move forward and push on with tasks made a significant difference in my business and income. In addition, as my direct sales business grew, my network of helpers increased.”

Ready to prime your brain for productivity and success?

I used to think I was just not an organized person.

I was working with different notebooks and planners, lots of post-it notes and separate printables. But I thought – like lots of people – that was just how I was…

Turns out I was wrong in the best way possible!

After going through Positive Psychology certification courses, I’ve learned that your brain is actually really changeable. You can change the things that many of us think are set in stone and ‘just part of our personality’! 

That means you can become organized. You can learn to love using a planner. You can learn to focus on the things that grow your biz!

The 6 steps in this article are backed by science and are proven to work. You’ll also find two Power Up Tips that will help you to keep moving forward in your business.

Step 1: Set Intentions

Set intentions each month.

Think about what you intend to accomplish through your actions this month. Studies have found that setting intentions has a significant impact on the likelihood of you following through on your goals!

Step 2: Create a Plan

Setting goals and then thinking through the steps you need to take to accomplish the goal, will help you to be organized and feel on top of your business. 

Goal setting has been quite well researched and has been found to improve the chances of you actually accomplishing your goals. Writing goals down is essential! 

But more than just setting goals, you want to think your way through the actions you need to take to get to that goal so you can be effective and avoid procrastination.

Step 3: Set Rewards

Rewarding yourself for accomplishing small steps along the way to a larger goal has been found to be more effective than rewards at the end of a project or only after achieving a major goal.

When you give yourself a reward, you are training your brain to repeat the steps you did to achieve success again. Rewards impact your brain chemistry! 

Rewards don’t have to be expensive, it can be giving yourself a few hours to do whatever you like, a bubble bath with a glass of wine, a walk in nature, a favorite food. The important thing is that it makes you feel special and rewarded for what you did.

Step 4: Break it Down

On your weekly planner you want to set 3 priorities for each day. These are the 3 things that you want to achieve that day and they relate to your goal and the action steps that you’ve defined.

By setting 3 priorities you don’t have to worry about an endless to-do list that you’ll never finish. Instead you can be proud of yourself because you’ve done three things that day to move your business forward.

The 3 priorities could be three phone calls you want to make to follow-up, it could be booking in to a vendor event or market, locations for posters that advertise your business or planning your social media content for the week… They are simply 3 achievable actions that keep you moving forward towards your goals and your action steps without feeling overwhelmed.

You will be using Pareto’s principle of focusing on the 20% of activities that bring 80% of the results and avoiding busy work.

Step 5: Keeping all the Plates Spinning

You need a continued focus on all aspects of your business: bookings, customer care, host coaching, social media, your team, etc. This can be overwhelming and it’s easy to drop a plate…I’ve certainly done that before!

Use either a to-do list with space for each aspect of your business (download a printable here) or make space in your planner to track each area.

At the end of the week, highlight the things you didn’t get done and then move them to the priorities in the next week. That way you can prevent that plate from falling!

Step 6: Reflection

Looking back on your month will help you to plan your next month. But this last step comes with a big warning: this is not a step to skip or a  space to beat yourself up!

Many people don’t like to do reflection if they haven’t had a productive month. It’s in those cases that reflection is essential!

You might have had a month full of unexpected events that got in the way of running your business – life happens. Perhaps your goals were too ambitious or they didn’t excite you. Perhaps you got caught in a procrastination trap… it’s tempting then to skip the reflection.

But it’s actually really therapeutic to put all of that on the page and then leave it there without beating up on yourself! It’s then helpful in planning out your next month.

Power Up Tip #1: Gratitude

Studies have found that practicing 5 minutes of gratitude a day provides an equivalent increase in happiness as doubling your income!

And even better news: journaling gratitude just once a week has significant benefits.

Make time each week to think about what went well and what you are grateful for. A positive attitude and an optimistic mind are scientifically proven competitive advantages in business!

Power Up Tip #2: Positive Reach Outs

You’re in the relationship business so you want to build your ‘social capital’ – it’s your greatest asset!

A positive reach out is a message, text, phone call or postcard with encouragement, a compliment or praise. I personally also love to send cards for major life events (graduations, engagement, birth, etc.) to connect with my team and regular hosts because we get very few things in the mail these days!

If you’d like to track your positive reach outs, you can find a printable here.

If you’re in Australia, I have created a direct sales planner that uses this system. It has everything you need for the 6 steps in one pretty package!