Sick of struggling to organize your direct sales business work-week?

When you are self-employed, it’s easy to get sucked into the minutia that can easily consume your day. You look up at the clock, it’s 4:30pm, and you realize you’ve been on Facebook all day.

Yup, happens to the best of us despite our furtive proclamations of conquering the to-do list.

The fact of the matter is, we all have the same number of hours in a day, right? So how is it that what takes one person 18 hours to complete, someone else might be able to finish in 4 hours? Sure, the 4-hour prodigy might have access to tools or systems that helps them bang out quality work in no time, but before they can even get to those tools or systems, they have to work on organizing their time – building the strategy.

They have to learn how to make the most out of the time they spend working so they can get things done.

Use my system to Organize your Direct Sales Business Work-week.

Once you launch your new direct sales business, your next goal is to create a system that you can make your own.

Each day of the week is designated with a certain objective around which of your tasks and activities are organized. Create to-do lists for each day of the week, so as things come up, just delegate it forward on your calendar.

Assign a focus task for each workday.

This means on every day of the week, you can focus your energy into one facet of your business.

Here's an example of how you can organize your direct sales small business work-week and manage your calendar better. Change around the names of the days as needed to fit your schedule.

Mail Monday

In small business, it seems there is a never-ending supply of mail. You're always mailing catalogs, products, brochures, incentives, prizes, or any other number of things. All that gets delegated to Monday, if possible, on one master list. One task to address labels, weigh and postage, and run to the Post Office.

Community Tuesday

This is the day where you focus on your community. Not necessarily just on your Facebook page, but really dive into your content strategy for the rest of the week, write your newsletter, and dive deeper into your overall performance on your channels.

Look at various reports, and assess where your community might be less engaged and why. Use this time to update your tracking, check-in with newer channels, write your weekly newsletter, and decide on any tweaks to your schedule you need to make based on the analytics.

Don't have a large community yet? No roblem — use this day to specifically focus on community-growing activities instead.

Work-it Wednesday

Your day for your administrative business tasks.

Phone calls, lead management, customer order and return handling, invoicing, and anything else associated with the administrative ends of your business.

Not everything in a week can necessarily wait until Wednesday, but this does allow the bulk of activities to be concentrated into one organized day.

Thoughtful Thursday

Thursdays are the perfect days to evaluate your strategies, implement new tools to streamline your processes, and track your progress toward your ultimate goals.

Follow Up Friday (Or Free Friday)

Fridays are the perfect days to wrap any tasks and activities from the rest of the week: follow up on your sent invoices, your emails, and any other correspondence. You can also use Fridays to create and schedule your social media posts for the weekend (so you can relax a bit without worrying about whether you social media profiles are dying while you take a day off.

Then… take a day off! You earned it!

Owning your direct sales small business makes it hard for you to take any time off. You wear 50 hats, you're responsible for everything, and there's often no fall-back to help catch you if you happen to miss something or can't get to something. However, refusing to take any time off is a fast road to burn out. So it's important to build systems that allow you to streamline your processes and strategies so you can take some time off.

And there are a ton of tools out there that can help you save time and work more efficiently. A scheduler like CinchShare or HelloWoofy can help streamline your presence on Facebook, while PicMonkey or Canva can help you design awesome social media graphics in no time.

Use any system that works for you, whether it’s sticky notes, a to-do list, an electronic task list, the awesomeness of Evernote, or a super cute planner, hold yourself accountable to the system you setup for yourself. It will make a difference in how effectively you manage your time.

#EmpowerSocial