When working for someone else you have a structured atmosphere to work in. You get to work by 8:00 am, punch the time clock; you work until 12:00 pm; you punch out to lunch; you punch back in 30 minutes later and work the rest of the day and punch out at 4:30 pm. You work hard (or you should work hard), your day is done, you go home and then do the same thing again the next day. At the end of the week you collect your paycheck. Your work life is structured, it's easy. Your work life is separate from your non-work life and thus you do not bring the stress home with you - - I know this is not the case with everyone, but for the most part this is accurate. And unless you are in management you work a maximum of 40 hours per week - (sometime more).
Working for yourself in contrast is a whole different animal! You must create your own work schedule, you must create your own hours, you must make yourself work. You must separate your work life (at home) from your family, social and personal life (at home). This for some comes easy but for most, especially those that are new to home business it is the first real challenge that they will encounter and and unless time management is in place and properly implemented it can bring a business to a halt. Having been a prof
essional full charge bookkeeper for several years I have worked with many small businesses. I've seen my share of improper time management implementation.
Time is a commodity that we all have available to us. Each one of us is given the same number of hours, minutes and seconds each day. How we utilize our time in business will determine our success. How much time do you spend on marketing your business? How much time do you spend on reaching out to people to share your business? How much time do you waste?
I read an article on
Better Networker about Maximizing Your Marketing Time by Kevin Dervin and he gives some good points which I will provide to you here:
How much time do you currently spend actively marketing your network marketing business? Is it more than just a couple of hours per week?Do you even know how much time you should spend actively marketing your MLM business? Many network marketers and home business owners don’t know what their answer to this question should be. They’re not really sure how much time they should be spending on marketing. But, a majority of the network marketers I ask admit they’re only spending a couple of hours per week.
Maximize your marketing time. In working with clients one-on-one and through my marketing coaching programs, I challenge business owners that they should be dedicating 20 to 25% of their time each and every week to purposeful marketing activity. For some, that number just seems impossible. They’re busy enough as it is and can’t imagine carving out that much time from their crowded schedules.
So where exactly do you spend your time? Have you ever tracked and analyzed your time to see how productively you’re spending it?
I would tell you this… network markters and home business owners really only need to spend their time in one of four categories:
- Income Producing Activities
- Marketing Activities
- Building Your Future
- Other - as in this, that and the other
Let’s be clear on what each of these categories mean.
1) Income Producing Activities - This includes actual time spent working to bring in new representatives, sign up new customers, and time spent developing additional passive revenue streams.
2) Marketing Activities - This includes your purposeful marketing and sales activities like networking, writing, preparing and submitting bog post or YouTube videos, setting up and sending out follow-up communications.
This also needs to include some time to educate yourself about marketing. When you’re in network marketing, you can’t deny the importance of improving yourself as a marketer. Spend a few hours every week to study marketing strategies and ideas (books, teleclasses, CDs, eZines, etc.).
3) Building Your Future - One of the constants in business is change. This is time you spend developing and improving your systems. It’s also time you spend on short-term and long-range planning. Are there other ways you could be productively generating income?
Just as importantly, this must include some time on marketing planning and strategy. What needs to be in the plan for what becomes your purposeful marketing activity?
4) Other Activities - This list is long and growing for most networkers and home business owners. It’s dealing with email, paperwork, bookkeeping, running errands, figuring out what’s wrong with that darn computer, organizing and filing, re-indexing your business card file, etc. The dreaded Other category is a huge time and energy waster that sucks the life out of your business success....
You can read the full post and view Kevin's profile
HERE
What I'm Learning
The importance of scheduling your time is a challenge that I have every day. I am the type of person, maybe you are too, who will continue to work until I get a job done, working long hours. I have this ingrained need to complete a task to obtain that sense of accomplishment and then and only then do I allow my mind to rest. There are certain personality types that are like that, they are driven and that is me. But this also creates a particular challenge because I don't know when to stop and tend to work too much - sometimes to my own detriment. I'm working on this by developing the needed time management skills.
With home based business because you work for yourself, it is hard to always feel that sense of accomplishment because you haven't yet closed a sale or recruited another member of the team. If you develop your schedule then you are able to complete the schedule and then comes the needed sense of accomplishment for the day.
