The Social Selling Sisterhood Podcast Episode 65- Must Have Organization & Systems for your Business

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Yeah, Hi friend. Welcome to the social selling sisterhood podcast. I am Lindsay Dellinger and I have many titles, high school spanish teacher, dog mom, world traveler and direct seller. I empower women to run your direct sales business is the right way. So you can earn the money, You deserve to live the life of your dreams and travel the world. Now we got that out of the way, let's get started. Hello! Welcome back to another episode of the social selling sisterhood podcast. This is Lindsay Dellinger and I'm the host of this podcast and as usual in my business thursday podcast and driving in the car, I'm thinking all the things and I'm bringing them to you. So one of the things that I am teaching my ladies in the foundations of social selling four week mentorship program is the power of organization. I think organization is something super huge um that as business owners, we get to constantly be improving and tweaking in order to have systems that work for us. So ultimately, at the end of the day, our goal is to get more done in the least amount of time, right? It's to be more efficient and to get bigger, quicker, better results. So one of the ways that I really started doing that was just getting organized and I've always been a pretty organized person, so I'll preface it with that. So I didn't really think that I needed additional systems. I thought I could do it all. And then as my business was growing and it was scaling and I was trying to teach the method to my madness, to my teammates, I realized that I needed to create something that was more duplicate herbal that I could share super easily with other people. So from the very beginning I had a google drive folder just for my business. I just called it Color Street Team folder. And I got that idea actually because the bigger teams that I'm on for with my company, they each had a google drive folder as well. And in that folder they had documents that were not editable, so they had him locked but you can still view them and they had documents like for party templates for different kinds of scripts for posts that you could put in your considering or behind the scenes group, like application instructions, just all these. It was basically just like the jackpot for someone who, especially if you're starting and this was your first company and you had absolutely no idea what to do. Um, you could go into that folder, pick anything that you needed to make a copy and put it in your own google drive folder, Make it your own or honestly a lot of the stuff you didn't really even have to change. Like you could just print off the instructions for the application of our nail polish strips and um, not personalize them or anything if you didn't want to. So I saw that I, and I immediately was like, okay, I need to have this for me and my future team because obviously when you start a business for the most usually I guess I should say, um, you don't really have, you don't come in with a team. You're not like I had to find my teammates. I didn't have anyone ready and waiting to join me because if you don't know my story, I kind of join my team on a whim, which is a story for another day. If you do not know it. So that is probably the very first system and the very first type of organization that I made. So I made my own folder I put in um copies of documents from my bigger teams that I was on that I really liked and then anything that I created like a party template, different scripts, my power, our checklist for my team, onboarding checklist. I put in that folder, so has my team grew, I could send them a link to that folder, tell them to add it to their own google drive um and they knew they could always get the materials that they needed. So that is a huge asset. If you are a google user, if not you can make a free account. I highly recommended. I believe they are one of the safest email, search engines or not search engines but email providers. Um so you can make a free account with your business name or whatever. And then you also then get access to google drive, which is where I keep that border. That's also where I have my sample form that I created. This also was an idea for my up line. But um And and we encourage women on our team to have it. Now some of them used drop form but I would say probably 90 of the women use Google google forms and so we make a form in there asking for some information that we need so that we're able to send samples to our customers. And then I figured out you could go into the answers of that form and click like the green almost looks like a plus sign. And that brings that makes a spreadsheet of those answers. And there's also an option there that you can click to get notified for new responses, which really helped me. So I didn't have to go into the form every day and see if someone had requested a sample or not. And then obviously you get bombed if no one has requested a sample, right? So that was another really easy simple. We can talk really easy simple system that I created for and that's more for my personal business, not even my team, right that I was able to to offer samples to my customers. I get notified then when someone filled out the form and then I could get them in the mail. Um And I decided pretty early in my business that I was not shipping out things every day. So unless you are someone who is doing parties or you just have a crap ton of samples or things to ship out. Um You know I I ship things out once a week and I've been pretty, I've always done that. So my existing customers anyway know that they might not get their nails in two days and I've never had anyone complain about it, which is really nice. Um Another thing with the system that I was just just came to me as I was sharing that I pick, so I pick a day that I do my shipping. Um When I very first started off, I usually shift on Wednesdays, I have no idea why, it's just what I did. Um but I also pick a night and that is my party night. So my party night for a really, really long time has been Mondays and again, when I very first started, I was doing just any random night. I would ask people what night works best for you and they would give me a date and so I would have a party on literally any day of the week and I quickly realized that I was getting disorganized. I wasn't keeping track of everything. And it was really hard for me to plan my personal life when I might have a party online, even though we can schedule posts, which I think is a really important part of organization and systems, you know, I still like to be able to check in on parties, for example, or anything that I have going on in my group and respond back to people because we know that really helps algorithm if we're responding back pretty quickly after things are posted. So I do monday parties and something that I do that is a step further is now I do a mega party and if you're not a party playing company, this might um, you know, men that pertain to you, but if you are doing parties or events and you can find in a way to combine those parties and events so that you are only committing to once a week or even once a month if you're super organized of your party and events um that's worked really well for me and I know that's really helped me as well to combat burnout in my business. So it does take a little bit of planning ahead and getting parties for you know like so right now I should be thinking about I haven't yet but I should be thinking about my parties for the next month and reaching out to people getting them scheduled because ideally my ideal business would look like me doing one giant mega party once a month and that's gonna be, it would have several hostesses in it. I find when we have several hostesses it can be a lot of fun with a lot of people commenting and uh yeah so anyway that mentality and being able to do that has also really helped me with my organization, my business because I know one night this month or one night this week I'm going to be doing my parties something else that has been really helpful for my business is and I started doing this at a regular time in a regular night when I started doing with my team and this is a power hour. So I've always worked power hours literally since my very first company that I joined, they were really big with power hours. I saw great results doing them and so I tweaked it and made it my own for my current business. And so now I do on thursday nights my whole team knows on thursday nights from 8 to 9 p.m. Eastern time. I am on our team zoom link and I am on it working on guided power. Our and most weeks kind of depends on the week, but most weeks I'm also on afterward for any troubleshooting question, answer anything like that. So I know that Thursday nights from 8 to 9 one, I don't plan anything else. Like that's my sacred time. I know I need to be home so I can work my power our um I know I'm gonna be getting an hour and on my business that night also and I also know that I am modeling and being a good guide and being a mentor to my team to show them what they need to do to be successful and we have duplicated this now and that several of my leaders lead a power hour one day a week in our team space with our team zoom. So we put up a schedule on Sundays it says. And for the most part it's the same each week. But it says the time it says which leaders leading the power hour and it has our zoom link and people can hop on. Sometimes we do prizes and points for incentives for things but people can hop on that that power our and every leader kind of does it their own way. I have given my leaders a couple different options because I have three different Power hours that I have provided in my team that they can kind of pick and choose what they need. One of them is way more structured with exact examples of things of what to do. Um one more one the one that I usually run is split into 320 minute chunks. And then I know some leaders just straight up to like a working zoom time where um they get on, get started, you work and the zoom screen is up for like that added accountability and they kind of chat a little bit after. So if you have someone that you can do that with, maybe you're just starting out, you don't actually have teammates under you, but you know someone else in your company or even a friend who is building a business with you alongside you um you know, reach out and see if you can do something like that. It has been Just really beneficial for my mindset. Um just to know that like Thursday nights 8-9, I'm going to have a dedicated our for my business and when I very first started doing them I would alternate like this week's power hours on Tuesday next week, says on thursday, next week's on monday. And I found that once I secured a day, my Thursdays a tonight, everyone got used to that schedule myself included. And I just kind of naturally didn't plan anything for that night, which really helped with my scheduling. So as much of a routine as you can get into, as much planning, planning to plan kind of that you can do, I think it will be really beneficial in your business as well. And then the last thing I wanted to share. So we mentioned google docs, you mentioned power hours um that I really like to create systems and organization of my business is the website trail O T R E L L O dot com. I will share a link to the template of one of the boards that I'm going to quickly chat about and explain all of this and my foundations of social selling groups. So if you were in that, um, you're gonna see all this firsthand, you're going to get all my temple. It's not just this one, but so what I do, Latrell, oh, Trillo essentially is like electronic sticky notes, which sounds like it wouldn't be that beneficial, but it's actually super beneficial, especially if you have a virtual assistant or you are trying to plan something with a team of people. So some of my boards include, I have a Color Street customer, a relationship management board, Crm and that board, I have different categories. I have, like people who are new to my group. I have people that I need to connect with people. I need to invite people, I need to follow up with people who are, have scheduled parties, active parties, past party's potential stylists, people who have joined my team, like literally any kind of category you can think of. I have them on there, I have pictures of people's faces so that it helps me really put the name to a face, literally because I'm so bad with names of people. And then you can click on the cards and modify them. So I put in there the link to that person's facebook profile, so that while I am working on my trail aboard and I'm clicking on, I don't know someone who is scheduled for a party for me. I can click their facebook link and then I can click to message them and I don't really have to scroll my news feed or anything like that, which is really helpful. So that's my customer relationship board. I also have another board for my social selling sisterhood group or I guess I think it's just called social selling sisterhood. And in there I have um a category for podcasts and it has a podcast ideas on it. I have a category for products that I want to create or I have created, I have a category for different freebies and challenges I want to do. Um so it's kind of like just like my idea board. I have a board that I am working on for on boarding new stylists because my team is working on perfecting honestly, because we already have a system, but there's some some bumps in the road, but we're working on perfecting our system for on boarding new stylists to our company, to our team. So I have an on boarding board that has, it's broken up in today's day one day two, day three, day four, and we're putting tasks on it for people to do, to share with their newbies or for people to walk, they're newbies through as they join our team. I have a board for a party template. That is just one other way, You know, I have a party template in my google docs, but I also know maybe some people in my team visually would like to see it on the, on the trail aboard. So we have that as well. I have a trial board for just like life goals and it has just different categories, so I encourage you if you haven't used Hello? Um it's similar to Asana, there's some other names I can't think of, click click something. Um I can't think of them right now, but I really love trail, Oh, you can get 10 boards for free, it doesn't cost money, like I have 10, I think I have 10 boards now. Um one of them can go because I think I have one board, that's oh, that was another one. I have one board that's all content ideas. So I've broken down each month, each day has a card and I've written on cards ideas for posts now, I could put the actual post on there and have my v. I helped me to post them on those days. That's totally an option, especially if you're going to be traveling or you're gonna be out from your business for a while. Um Actually might do that because of my upcoming surgery, I might go ahead and put some content ideas in there and get some help scheduling or posting my content. Um But really anything like that, you can use it for blog post ideas. You could use it honestly for anything. It's basically like I said, virtual sticky notes where you can add links and pictures and type all the things and then you can also share individual boards. So like I have shared my on boarding in my party template board with my um another leader of my team joe me, we do a lot of stuff together. So I shared my boards with her and I'm going to have her help me and collaborate on those as we perfect those before we share with our team. So that is my last system. I wanted to share some systems and organizations like I mentioned because really once you put in the work of getting all of that set up, so I wouldn't like start a google drive and then immediately like feel like you need to fill it with all the things But go ahead and start one. And then as you do your next party and your scheduling your posts copy those those posts that you're putting into that group and also put them into the google doc. Also put them into your trailer board. So just like next time you start to do these things that you see yourself regularly doing or I guess okay, here's one more, one more tip as people are asking you questions. This could be customers, this could be teammates. Any time that you get a question more than once. I like to make a video explaining it. So I just use loom dot com. If you have a Mac you can screen screen record, there's other things you can do but basically I just will go to loom dot com. Open up the extension. I think you can do a five minute video for free. Usually that answers the question, but if someone's like where can I find blah blah blah resource? I will go to my computer, I will start loom, I will log into wherever they can find it, Walk them through, step by step, how to find it. Um click to end, record, copy that you are a link and send it to people. And then I will take that you are a link and put it in. Um My like DACA frequently asked questions for my team and that way next time someone else asked me that question, I'll be like oh it's already in the team doc, here's the link to the team doc and then it's on them to scroll through and find the answer. Um I think that's a really really smart thing to do to teach people how to be more independent and find things out themselves rather than you spending all your time um searching for things. Re explaining things when you could just send someone a link. That is still a very personal thing because they can still hear your voice um as you are answering their questions. So that's my last but uh tip it for today. I could talk about systems and organization forever like I had mentioned, I think it's so important for being able to scale and grow your business for you not to get burned out. Um, and for you not to hear the same thing, the same thing as the same questions over and over again if you're like me, especially after I spent all day teaching and answering questions literally all day long, it's really nice to be able to come home to my business and have some things more automated um, and duplicate herbal for my team. So I hope this helps friends. If you got any value out of this episode, please screenshot this, shared on instagram tag me or facebook I guess um share it with your team. I would really appreciate it. And if you feel inclined to leave me a five star rating and review, I would love that as well. Talk to you soon.