Are You a “Busy Beaver” Part I
In a church I had visited once it had a saying on the wall in the entry way, “If You Are Too Busy, Then You Are Too Busy”. I never quite understood what that meant as a child. I mean it just didn’t make much sense to me. However, after several years of being in business for myself, I began to get people coming to me asking if they could work for me or work with me… when the opportunity arose I would give some people that chance they had been pressing me about… And believe it or not, more times than not once I opened up the opportunity I saw dismal performance, constant excuses, people wanting to be handheld… it was demoralizing for me. You see, I am not in any way, shape or form a micro-manager. If you work with or for me, I assume you are competent in your field. Well, I soon learned my problem as a young, naïve entrepreneur… I was choosing people with an “employee” mindset and not people with an “entrepreneurial” mindset. It was at that time I really started thinking about that phrase that was on my old church’s wall… “If You Are Too Busy, Then You Are Too Busy”. To busy for success, to busy to accomplish your goals… just too busy.
All of these people pressed me to the core to work with me because apparently I made my success seem as if it had come with tremendous ease… hmmm. So not true. However, once they were in the doons, they had nothing but excuses, pushing paper clips from one side of the desk to the other, not understanding why after a mere 30-60 days they were not multi-millionaires… boy oh boy, it was absolutely exhausting to hear all of this “noise”. Then sooner or later, you start getting their laundry list of why their performance was sub-par. It was then I realized what that phrase meant. If you are too busy than you too busy means you are busy doing a lot and not getting anything done but yet you are so busy you cannot accomplish the things you claim you actually want. Just being a busy beaver with no real productivity. You see those people who had worked with me had full days of “busy”, but lacked “productivity”. Hence, no real successes would ever be realized by them. So fast forward to today and let’s talk about this as it relates to network marketers.
If you are a network marketer or in direct sales, then your primary goal is to make money while serving others. Period. You may have secondary goals to serve the interests of your customer base and be a good marketer, but your number one priority is strictly return on investment. Profit. Let’s just be real.
When I do mentoring sessions or bring on a new client, I often find that business owners or prospective business owners do not have their priorities straight much like my old contractors I just spoke about. The result is they never actually get any momentum in their businesses, they end up spending themselves into the poor house or are constantly on the search for the latest piece of software that will suddenly make them wealthy. They may work hard and think positively, but their impact is marginal at best.
On the other hand, by simply realigning their priorities network marketers can grow their businesses in a way that builds their lists and generates highly targeted leads that can convert into customers and serve as a model network marketer all at the same time. You won’t have to work any harder; just smarter. To find out how, answer the following questions according to your current practices. Then tomorrow, come back to get the accompanying suggestion for the best way to optimize your time and effectiveness. So no one will ever be able to put you in the category of “if you are too busy, then you are too busy” type of person.
What is normally your first task of the day?
* a) returning phone calls
* b) administrative paperwork
* c) work on strategic projects
* d) dealing with customers
* e) responding to employee requests
Of your major project work, which do you typically work on first?
* a) the one with the most pressing deadline
* b) the one that’s the easiest to do quickly
* c) the one that will generate the most profits over the long term
Administrative activities are some of the most important tasks as a Network Marketer
* a) true
* b) false
