If you’re like so many network marketers, you’re always looking for ways to deliver high-level service to your customers, prospects, and distributors. However, in the process, you may be overlooking one thing: YOU! That’s right if you want to deliver great service to everyone you meet – current and prospective customers and team members alike – you gotta work on you. Here’s why:

3 reasons to make time for self-improvement

If you want to build a business that not only succeeds but thrives, it’s important to continue to develop personally and professionally – if you want to grow your business, you have to grow your self first. By bettering your skills and expanding your knowledge, you’ll gain three valuable tools:

#1 Serve customers and your team better.

You’re always looking for new and innovative ways to listen for and meet the needs of your customers and team members, right? After all, being attentive to them and learning more about what is going on in their lives provides unique insight into ways you can help them! Unfortunately, no matter how creative we think we are, there’s always room for new ideas and approaches.

Trainings, such as Elite Business Bootcamp, give you the latest tools to add to your business toolbox to help you become a more effective business leader. Throughout the course, you’ll learn more ways to truly connect with your customers and meet their changing needs, with the help of your products or not. Additionally, you’ll learn strategies that help you talk to other people about your business without feeling like an icky salesperson. You’ll also learn and share ways to connect with your current team members to keep them motivated and happy. Although the current session of Bootcamp is well underway, stay tuned for more information about the next registration period.

#2 Organize and manage your business.

Whether your business is a full-time job or a side hustle, one thing is for sure – in order to succeed, you have to get and stay organized. Think about it: the less organized you are, the less efficient your business will be. For example, the time spent trying to find a slip of paper with a phone number or your latest to-do list on it is better spent connecting with your customers, prospects, and distributors and making their days. That doesn’t mean that you have to set your workspace up according to the KonMari method (though, honestly, for most of us, it couldn’t hurt); however, it does mean using a CRM, like Teamzy, that keeps your business sorted and organized at the tap of a button.

Once you have your network and business sorted, learn new techniques to help you become even more efficient and productive. Read books, listen to business-oriented podcasts or subscribe to business magazines – all of these resources are chock-full of tips from leading entrepreneurs and business leaders that you may be able to modify to fit your business.

“It isn’t what the book costs. It’s what it will cost you if you don’t read it.” – Jim Rohn

#3 Prepare your business for the future.

Business is changing and Network Marketing is no different. As more people become turned off by traditional sales techniques, relationship marketing is gaining steam and becoming a more and more powerful strategy for building a great business while improving your relationships with those in your network. The more you know and understand relationship marketing and how it can help your business, the more successfully you’ll be able to use it. You’ll also be able to share the system with your team and, most importantly, show them that it works.

You’re probably saying, “well, that’s all fine and dandy, but I just don’t have the time for personal development. It sounds like it’s a full-time job in itself and I barely have time to work on my business.” Personal development doesn’t have to take up a ton of your time. In fact, you can usually work on it while you’re doing other things.

How to squeeze in personal development when you just. Don’t. Have. Time.

Although training may take up a chunk of your time, personal development strategies such as reading and listening to podcasts shouldn’t take up that much of your time – maybe 10 minutes a day. You may be looking at your planner and saying, “Nope, my schedule’s jam-packed,” but trust us; it’s not that time-consuming.

• Wake up 10 minutes earlier or go to bed 10 minutes earlier to read a few pages of a book by a successful business leader.
• Listen to a business podcast while you’re driving the kids to school, running errands or driving to work.
• Listen to a business podcast while you’re working out. (We admit it’s not as adrenaline pumping as anything by Flo Rida, but you’re likely to learn a lot more.)
• Listen while you work. While you’re at your laptop or on your phone, queue up that latest episodes of your favorite business podcast in iTunes.
• Don’t have time to read? Listen to the audio version; then you can listen to it anywhere.

If you’re still not convinced, take a notebook and keep track of each minute of the day. Yes, it sounds super tedious to do, but you only really have to do it once. Then, you’ll be able to find those little pockets of time during the day where you can squeeze in a few minutes of personal development.

How to get more out of your self-improvement experience

Actively learning more to help you grow personally and professionally is so vital to becoming a successful business owner. However, although many of us read and listen to everything we can get our hands on, we may not retain everything we learn. Can you remember the intricate plot points of a book you may have read a year ago? A lot has happened since you read the book and you may not remember the details or even the basic plot.

Even if you say to yourself, “Oh, I will totally remember all the important parts,” chances are slim that you will. And, that’s not a cut about your memory; it’s just that the brain processes so much information in every second of the day that it’s near impossible to remember it all and remember it all accurately. Here are some tips to absorb more of what you learn so you can tap into it when you need to.

Keep a book journal.

The process of writing down what you’ve read can help you retain it better. That’s not to say you have to write long entries that rehash the entire book; instead, write down the title and author and note the basic points or the main points as you see them (e.g., What points hit home for you? What are you excited to incorporate in your business?). If the book brings up strong feelings (such as “Yes, that’s a great point!” or “No, that’s an awful idea!”), write it down and make a note about why it elicited such strong feelings.

Later on, you’ll be thankful you wrote down the main points of the books you’ve read. If you want to reread a point or refresh your memory about the book, you can just flip to that page in your journal and remember the basic points and how you felt, without having to reread the entire book again.

Practice what you’ve read.

The next best way to absorb what you’ve read is to put it into practice. Doing what you’ve learned is a sure way to build the habit and make sure you’re incorporating it into your business and life. For example, if a book suggests setting weekly goals every Monday, start doing it. Then, you can see firsthand if the suggestion will work for you in the first place, and if it doesn’t fit into your process exactly, you can modify it so it does. Practice what you’ve learned often enough and it’ll become so automatic that you won’t even have to think about it.

Share it with others.

Sometimes things are so good and so impactful, whether in our lives, our businesses or both, that we want to share them with everyone we know. The good news is there’s nothing stopping you from doing so. If you think someone on your team would enjoy or benefit from a book or article you’ve read or a podcast episode you’ve heard, by all means, share it with them. Let them borrow it, send them a link or get them a copy. Once they’ve read it, discuss it with them. They may offer a fresh perspective and additional insight into it as well.

With your team, you can take this a step further and share what you’ve learned and how you’ve incorporated it into your business. Then explain how you think it can help them as well. Not only will it motivate them to grow their businesses, but you’ll also deepen your relationships with them by showing your care and concern. What’s better than that?

Teamzy gives you the tools you need to build and grow your business.