Working from Home can be a Walk in the Park. Jurassic Park.
And it can feel like you are dropped in the middle of nowhere, in the rugged mountains. Granted the view is beautiful, but if you don’t figure out how to find a way out, you will soon starve. Or chased by bears back to the cozy cubicle confines of Corporate America.
The AT-Home business is not easy – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t one of the best things out there. But it’s not easy navigating in the new Economy or the COVID economy or the upcoming CASHLESS one either. It’s not easy no matter what you do. Unless you win the lottery – and then it’s not easy dealing with the new friends and family that you suddenly discovered you had.
For many, working from home is not our natural habitat – even if it looks serene and peaceful from the windows of your 12th story office at the company you have been at for the past 25 years. If you are starting a new venture from home, or even doing a part time side hustle, you have an uphill battle – first the at-home work environment can be challenging. Young children will interrupt you a whole lot more often than your manager would. Your manager doesn’t invite you to go to Lowe’s to mix some paint spontaneously or to go let the dogs out and doesn’t call you instead of the plumber if a child just flushed down a plastic boat. You are very attractive free labor for every emergency, spider needing stepping on, car needing gas, laundry needing switched, cat having poop stuck to his fur, and kids ready to kill each other because it’s been 61 minutes since the oldest brother had the Nintendo Switch and he is about to start a war with the rest of the brothers.
You have to learn to multi-task or at least do a whole bunch of things that pile up and you often get stuck on one part and then don’t have a whole department at your disposal to handle that trouble shooting or a stuck printer or that stucked toilet. You are a one man show, a twenty trick pony, a Jack of all trades. I remember thinking I could get a camera installed on my desktop so I can do live videos and market a little better. So I paid a guy to order and install it and get it working. I used it once. The next time I went down to my office, it was unhooked and the kids had taken it down and used it to play Spy. I haven’t been able to use it since.
An employee is basically just trusted with one mundane task and paid enough to keep him doing it. Like a circus seal doing the same 4 tricks for a measly 3 sardines an hour. And you are doing the same tasks until you quit or die, or they find a robotic replacement for you, and then they find your replacement by the next morning.
The challenge here is it can be overwhelming. You need to at one time or another prospect and market, invite people to take a loot at your business to see if it is a fit, present, follow up, close, sign up, enroll, be on training, be on corporate zooms and team zooms and go to Events, read the updated emails, learn about the products goods or services, get folks on a call, answer questions, answer emails, and more. You handle accounting, scheduling, training new “employees”, and managing your website and logging on to it regularly. And a lot of that isn’t guaranteed income-generating activity.
By the time you put all that work in at a regular job, you would have 2, 3, or maybe 25 paychecks perhaps. You maybe got even promoted during that time you were building from home. So the delayed gratification and the intense learning curve may be a stumbling block perphaps to you – and by understanding John Maxwell’s LAW of the LID things can even look bleaker, as those below you that may join your at home business will likely have even less stamina and passion and drive for all that needs to be done than you have.
What is the secret? One simple one might be to chuck the idea that you have to be this rugged mountain climber all my yourself. The employee mindset is every man for himself. The top leaders in the company won’t share their inside trade secrets and will only want you to go down the mountain to fetch some firewood perhaps. I think ONE BIG LESSON is to try and find a guide that has already been up the Mountain. In the employee world, that is not something that makes sense. It will look like you can’t do your job and that makes you expendable. BUT a guide in a at home business can make or break you.
I had this thought today that might help you as well – one idea – especially if you have what I have – a male brain- which tends to compartmentalize everything — instead of getting overwhelmed by seeing it all as one big business where you have to have all the gears and cogs and wheels all working like a tight fit glove and a well-oiled machine – so just take a step back. GET A GUIDE, get a WHY, and focus on one task at a time.
It’s like heading up that Mountain — you don’t have a corporate helicopter to get you immediately to the top, so you have to take baby steps up often uncharted terrain, where you don’t see a trail, you don’t see any footprints, and you aren’t sure if there are bears, or a bad storm approaching. You just know you better start climbing. Without a guide, you will be paving your own path.
Lord, what is the NEXT step?
Well, let’s first ask, WHAT IS THE FIRST STEP?
Is it a blog post, is it ordering business cards, is it completing a whole bunch of tasks, is it doing the income producing activities first or getting non-income producing activities out of the way? Is there a way to avoid distractions on your mountain climb –SQUIRREL!!!
Here is a suggestion if you are overwhelmed. I get overwhelmed. And I get stuck too.
Let’s say I am your guide here. I would try and get you to break down your journey into manageable steps.
Break things down into 1 item tasks. Just do that one task. If you could make a list of tasks that you can categorize in three areas — Income producing activities that include prospecting, training activities, and seed planting activities that include marketing and giving your expertise out – and if you do them consistently and persistently, you will see results in the long term. But break them down until you have a realistic daily method of operations — and then do ONE task at a time, daily, over time, and you will get up that moutain.
For example, income producing activity can be 10 phone calls to new people, 10 texts to people you are following up with, 10 emails, and 10 Facebook messages. Or 50 NO’s however you get them. Or 300 cold calls every day. IF you have to make 300 calls, do 50 then do training then do 50 more calls then do a seed planting like a FB Post or a FB live and do 50 more calls. Break the chucks down and do them regularly and over time you will be as natural doing them as you would doing your day job. If you are working and doing this part time, then have smaller goals like 3 calls a day and 3 follow ups. Small tasks you can do in the nooks and crannies of your day – the lunch break, the drive-through line, 15 minutes after dinner.
The whole picture is daunting to look at it as one big “I need to be the Top Leader in my Company by Thursday or I failed” type of pressure. IF this was your job you might be doing just one of these tasks 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and it would easily be something you could do on autopilot. Instead, we expect to be natural at all of this instantly.
So maybe see what would be the focus for the moment and break down your goals into smaller chunks you can do each day, as consistent as possible, and focus on one task at a time.
Let’s say you are in a business where you help people save on their utility bills. You can make money gathering a handful of customers and you can make money also building a team of customer gatherers.
So do you build customers? Focus on Prospecting? Do both? Well, stick to one for now even if that means the next 5 people you approach. OR with every person you talk to lead with the business opportunity and if they don’t see themselves doing the business but they see the value of the company, help them be a customer. Just get a rhythm going and be comfortable with your plan. And if you see it needs tweaking, then change it.
Rinse, wash, repeat. IF you are prospecting people for a direct sales businsess where you can help others join and make money, get ’em paid. Get them engaged. Hold their hand because they may have that same employee mindset you did. Be on the phone with them while they call their first 20 prospects. Pass on what you just did.
And share your success so they can build belief – hey, I just helped So-and-So make $1000 bucks this month and I can help 2-3 people this month do the exact same thing. Here you aren’t recruiting with things that seem unattainable. You have a legit success story and others who found success and that will make it more duplicatable.
If that is a lot, but break it down. Most companies have tools to do the heavy lifting – corporate Videos, corporate YouTube videos, an App that shares marketing materials, and more. Have some favorite videos ready to send that teach how to gather customers or get started or promote or on the services. Lean on the tools. Teach them to get a list of names and call you to help with the calls.
The big money will come when you help enough of the small people making money when it comes to team building. Too many times when it comes to businesses that leverage the efforts of those you help get started, you then go and try and find that rock star who does it all and we don’t want to slow it down and build a solid foundation that can handle the layers built on it. The true rock star will just start making music on a regular basis and sooner or later he will be more than a one-hit wonder.
Do you need help gathering more customers? Yes? Well, maybe focus on learning the ins and outs of customer gathering, so to start break it down into steps. – Watch a video on Customer Gathering. Get your WHY down solid. WHY do you want people to support your dream? Make a list of people. Call them with something that sounds natural to you, but weave in the wordings that others in your company that found success use. Then ask some closing questions – “Are you ready to get started to try my product or my service?” “If I can save OR match what you’re paying now (when it comes to a service) would you be my customer?” Then follow up. Then help them sign up. Do that 5 times. Or 10 times. OR 20 times. And then focus on the next goal. And one goal could be find one customer and then next find one prospect. Another goal would be just focus on regular income producing activities and not control who becomes a customer or not. Just keep increasing your touches / phone calls/ invites if it’s not growing like you want.
BUT take one step at a time. Do one a week or one a day or one on your lunch break and two after dinner. Write the steps out you need to get comfortable growing your customers and it will be natural prospecting because you are simply engaged in a system that works and will train first hand anyone that needs help.
When you get to the top of the mountain, you will notice there are a few below that started to climb. And you will also see a bit of the path you started when you began, so now you can lead others up that path a whole lot easier than when you started.
IT also wouldn’t hurt to find a guide at any point that found success already and just plug into the system as soon as you realize you want up that mountain.
If you are looking for a good system to follow or still looking for a solid company to partner up with, I would love to help. Just send me an email to MikeThePharmacistCo@gmail.com. Maybe you didn’t plan on having to work from home, but now you don’t have a choice. That is the perfect time to find a guide instead of walking up uncharted territory on your own.
And I can be your guide if you need one.