One day my mentor said to be, “Be productive, not busy.” What the heck does that mean?
Seriously, it was a new concept for me. That’s how I came to learn about income generating activities to be profitable in network marketing.
If you wonder why you are not making money in in network marketing, it’s probably because you are busy and not productive. Busy is easy and comfortable but won’t get you anywhere.
In this article I will share two income generating activities that you need to for a profitable business.
Income Generating Activities – Put Money in Your Pocket
Many people spend way too much time doing busy work and therefore do not have any income generation activity. You will not earn income through product sales or add people to your team this way.
Here are the only two things that matter to Income-Generating Businesses – you must put the most time right here:
- New customers that use your products or service.
- New business builders that join your team.
That’s it!
You must continually develop a flow of people to expose your opportunity or products to if you want to build financial freedom in network marketing.
There are endless tasks that we can spend hours on but they won’t put money in your pocket. Here are a few that may be familiar to you:
- Checking email
- Reading an endless number of blogs
- Checking and updating your Facebook status every 10 minutes. I know you may have a problem with this one! We all know social media is important. It is busy work but it can lead to productivity.
- Reading news
- Talking to the same 10 people over and over instead of looking for new prospects
The list of non income-generating projects can go on but you get the idea. The It doesn’t mean you should never do these non-productive things. Just don’t be consumed by it!
Your job as a network marketer is to share your products or business with as many people as possible. When you find and engage with prospects, you are building relationships and that is exactly what network marketing is all about!
I like to spend 80% of my time finding, sharing and following up with people. That is one of the key income generating activities because without network marketing leads, you do not have a business.
20% of my time is spent doing other activities like planning, training and working with my team.
Stay focused on what you need to generate an income. At the end of the day, ask yourself: if my team did what I did today, would everyone have made any money? Scary, I know!
Hey Lisa,
Excellent job putting that into perspective. Boy did I have to learn that the hard way. It’s funny how we think we are being so productive writing new blog posts, taking a course on this or that… But you are so correct. Those are not what I call Income Producing Activities or IPA’s. I did an article a while back on this exact subject.
To all of your readers here: Pay attention to what Lisa is suggesting. Read this article 2 or 3 times if you have to. The 80/20 rule is the only thing that is going to start generating any income. Once I got that through my thick skull, everything started to change.
Thanks Lisa for the great reminder. It can be difficult to keep on track with this. Glad I stopped by today!
Richard
Hi Richard!
We all learn it the hard way, don’t we? I like that, IPA’s – will have to add it to the growing list of acronyms. I sometimes call it MMA (money making activities) depending on what context I am speaking in.
Thanks for sharing your insights!
Lisa
Great post! Sometimes people get confused between ‘IPAs’ and Necessary activities.. And it’s usually due to laziness people want to stay in the comfort zone and not get into IPAs.. Very important point..
Thanks for your comment Siddharth! Comfort zones are more risky than stepping out of them!
Lisa
Great point here Lisa. Income Generatinf activities are the most important part of growing our businesses. I think the reason people get frustrated is that they commit too many days doing the sidetracking activities (checking email etc). You need to clear your head and do the income Generating activities first!
Thanks Nick! Glad you like the article. It’s so true, I hear people so frustrated but it turns out, they spend way too much time on “busy work!”
Hope to see you again soon! Lisa
Thanks Lisa for the wonderful inspiration… It really makes me crazy.
You really have done a great job of breaking this down, Lisa. I’ve heard of focusing on those 2 things as your IPAs, but it never occurred to me to use the 80/20 rule with it as well (and I’m a HUGE proponent of the 80/20 rule, lol. Looks like I need to practice more!)
Thank you for such a great article 🙂
– Eddie