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Sickly Business Owners

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If you own a home business and have an illness or disease do you have an obligation to tell your clients?

Lest I look like a total insensitive boob, let me start off by saying that I am very sympathetic when someone or someone’s child gets sick or if there is a death in the family or other crisis.   I get that life happens. It would be unreasonable to expect any business owner to truly be available 24/7 365.

One of the many benefits to owning a home business is that it affords you flexibility. Entrepreneurs generally choose to work at home either because they simply want to or often because of health concerns or caring for a loved one make it difficult to work outside the home.

Within my own team we have members who are dealing with Lupus, Cancer, Crohns, COPD, Narcolepsy, RA, Chronic Fatigue, depression, Bi-Polar, a brain tumor and Heart Disease. We have parents with special needs children and consultants taking care of aging parents. We have single parents and military spouses whose husbands are deployed overseas and we have pregnant and new moms. And those are just the challenges of which I am aware. I am certain there are plenty others that have remained private.

That said – if you own a home business and have an illness or disease do you have an obligation to tell your customers? My take on it is that no, you do not need to reveal this information providing your problems do not become your customers’ problem.   If you can carry on your business in spite of challenges, and no team members will feel ignored or unanswered and if customers receive their product in a timely manner, then your health issues is no one’s concern. [Read more…] about Sickly Business Owners

Taking Your Online Business Offline

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Having an online business is a wonderful thing. At this point in my life I can’t imagine having it any other way. I have my internal customers – my downline team members, and also my external customers – those who order from my website. One of the key factors in maintaining an online customer base is going offline.

While email is so convenient and a great tool to manage a large organization, it’s missing a human element. The time that I save with emails allows me more time to write hand written notes. And I do write many handwritten notes almost daily. For example:

  • Thank you notes for online orders; and I mention something specific about their order so they don’t just think it is a generic note.
  • Follow up cards to customers who have not ordered in two or more months
  • Welcome to the team for new consultants
  • [Read more…] about Taking Your Online Business Offline

3 Smart Words: I Don”™t Know

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Think you’ll look stupid if you respond, “I don’t know”? If you’re of this mindset you’re wrong.

If you want to look smart to your customers and downline use these three words: I don’t know. Then if you really want to dazzle them, follow it up with: But I’ll find out and get back to you.

There’s a quote that says, “If you can’t dazzle them with your intelligence, baffle them with your bullshit.” If you have ever been the recipient of such baffling, I’m sure you’ll agree that the person who is handing you a load of bulllloney, is the one who looks like a buffoon. People can see right through that.

I often see consultants in a state of analysis paralysis. They’re getting ready to get ready. Fear is crippling them; fear of not knowing all the answers. That’s just a bunch of hooey. What would make one think that they have to know all the answers? Do these people really think that they’ll be judged so harshly if they don’t have an accurate, on the spot response to every question that could possibly be thrown their way? [Read more…] about 3 Smart Words: I Don”™t Know

Working Smarter – Pt. 3 Complete Tasks in Bulk

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In continuing with the Working Smarter, Not Harder series, remember that having more people to manage doesn’t have to mean working more hours. In order to survive being the leader of a large organization you need to eliminate, mitigate and delegate duties that are not the best use of your valuable time.

We all have non-income producing tasks as part of our business. An income producing task would be activities such as facilitating a home party or attending a vendor event – some action where you are directly earning money. Then there are all the other tasks that are required but don’t directly earn you any income at the time of completion. These are tasks such as assembling hostess packets, updating your bookkeeping records, bagging and tagging orders, etc.

Generally the non-income producing tasks are somewhat mundane and not nearly as fun; yet they still must be done. For example, when someone requests a catalog do you go to your shelf, grab an already assembled info packet, address it and pop it in the mail – bada bing, bada boom? Or, do you grab a catalog, then stamp or label it with your contact info, possibly add a business opportunity sticker to the front, add a recruiting DVD or brochure, add your business card and a sample, grab an envelope, stamp your return address, address it to the prospect and then affix a postage stamp? [Read more…] about Working Smarter – Pt. 3 Complete Tasks in Bulk

Working Smarter – Pt. 2 Automate the Answers

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In continuing with the Working Smarter, Not Harder series, remember that having more people to manage doesn’t have to mean working more hours. In order to survive being the leader of a large organization you need to eliminate, mitigate and delegate duties that are not the best use of your valuable time.

This blog started as a way for me to answer questions before they were asked. While I appreciate the kudos for providing a wealth of information, it’s really here to save me time in answering individual questions on a routine basis.

For example, one FAQ I get is from potential recruits who want to work their direct sales business using Internet Marketing (yet frequently these same people have zero IM knowledge and want me to teach them everything I’ve learned over the decade). It didn’t take me long to figure out I was eating up a large chunk of my time responding to this same question. Thus the post: My Online Direct Sales Business was developed to answer these questions.

Another question that can be time consuming to respond to is How do you make samples? Voila – the answer is right here. [Read more…] about Working Smarter – Pt. 2 Automate the Answers