Ann Howie, The Party Plan Expert shared on the CashFlowShow – Direct Sales Radio success and business organization tips so that as your business grows you already have systems in place to handle the work.

This is the 4th article in the series. If you have not listened to the first one, then please start at the beginning:

Anne Howie, Party Plan Expert Interview #1

DEB BIXLER: Welcome back, everybody! Welcome to the cashflowshowradio.com. This is Deb Bixler, and we’re here with Anne Howie, who is a direct sales success story — I think we have a lot in common, Anne, like you’re Deb Bixler CashFlowShow of Australia and I’m Deb Bixler CashFlowShow of US. [Laughter]

ANNE HOWIE: Deb, you’re the party plan expert over here.

DEB BIXLER: Yeah, there you go. I knew you were going to say that. [Laughter] Well, I’m telling you something, Anne, about radio. Because of the commercial breaks and things like that, it goes really, really quick, and the last segment is the shortest one. It’s three minutes shorter than the first three, so we are already down to eight and a half minutes. But why don’t you, before we run out of time, give your contact information again. How would people reach you?

ANNE HOWIE: Okay, so you can visit my website by going to www.ThePartyPlanExpert.com, and you can email me through anne@thepartyplanexpert.com.

DEB BIXLER: Excellent, very good and I know the blogs are linked off your website too. You have a lot of good training articles there.

ANNE HOWIE: Yeah, lots of stuff – and it’s all free. You can go and sign up for whatever you like, everything from beginners to senior leaders there’s lots there for you.

Grow Big Party Plan Business

DEB BIXLER: Right, and I really like the way that you’ve laid this out that if you want to grow a big party plan business, and you want to grow a big sales team, so look at the future where you want to be and really analyzing how you can set yourself up for success now instead of putting systems in place later.

Now, we talked a little bit about your personal business and how you look at that, but I think people might want to hear about some tips on the personal life piece.

ANNE HOWIE: Yeah, I’m just thinking I better start talking faster and…

DEB BIXLER: Well you’re not going to get it all in, Anne. [Laughter]

ANNE HOWIE: Please excuse my accent. I hope it’s not too difficult to understand, but yeah, let’s talk a little bit about personal life because that’s what does take over everything, actually, and we end up being quite resentful at times because on one hand, we’re doing the business for our family and to give our family a better life and to have a better lifestyle, and on the other hand, they get in the way. So it’s quite a difficult juggling act, but there are things that you can do.

So if you think about your personal life, all of the things that you do in your personal life and what can you do better, more efficiently. So some examples would be cooking. I cook in bulk. When I cook, you might as well cook twice as much as you need and freeze half of it, so then on busy nights or not that you need to work, you’ve got some frozen meals that you can just take out of the freezer. So we actually bought a bigger freezer just so that we can do that, and it means that I’ve got time to cook, I cook double or three times as much, and then we eat one of them and chuck the rest in the freezer.

DEB BIXLER: So really, you’re saying make the same kind of list for your personal life as you did for your business. Like oh, I’ve got to cook dinner, I’ve got to do laundry.

ANNE HOWIE: Yeah.

DEB BIXLER: And what can you do to organize that better now so that when you’re busy, you can handle it?

ANNE HOWIE: Yeah, exactly.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: And things like some shopping. I have to go and do shopping, the groceries. That takes ages, you know. So why not do your shopping online?  I can count on it one hand how many times I’ve been in a supermarket in the last couple of years. And they bring it to the door. I don’t have to drive anywhere, you know, it’s so much easier. It saves me hours.

DEB BIXLER: I do that here, too. I know some people are probably thinking they don’t do that here, but they do. My grocery store over here, you can order online and they — you can either drive by and pick it up, like they have it ready for you or I think they deliver it, too.

ANNE HOWIE: Yup, excellent. So I mean, that saves a lot of time unless you love doing the shopping. I mean, go and do it if you love it, but same as ironing, same as housework. A lot of people think: when I earn more money, then I’ll pay to get someone to come and do my housework. That’s the wrong way around because you will never get to the stage where you feel like you’ve got enough money to pay for it, so do it now. It really doesn’t cost very much. The hourly rate of someone to clean your house is not as much since your hourly rate when you go out working, so save that time and use the time that you’ve saved to do something that’s income generating for yourself.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: So in your personal life, there are things that you can make a lot easier for yourself, and obviously we can’t go into huge detail today, but I’m sure that if you sit down and make a list of all of the things that you do all the time that you repeatedly have to do, you’ll be able to find ways of making it better. You know, if you’ve got children — my children from the age of 12, they have to cook a meal every week, and at the beginning it was hard work because I had to teach them, but now that they’re 17 and 21, goodness me, they’re fantastic cooks. I can say to them, listen I haven’t got time to cook tonight, can you cook, and they’ll just cook.

DEB BIXLER: Right, right.

ANNE HOWIE: Now, they are well set up for their adult life, and for the last goodness knows how many years, I’ve only had to cook half of the week.
DEB BIXLER: Right, right.

ANNE HOWIE: You know, because I have them cooking.

Office Work & Personal Family Time

DEB BIXLER: And in the whole process of looking at your personal business, your personal family life, your office work and your team,  think about what — like I always say, well what’s minimum wage work?

Because your time is worth more than minimum wage work, and so think about something like stamping catalogs, or like you said, putting host packets together. Why don’t you make a check list and let someone else do it? Because if it’s minimum wage work, you can pay someone else cheaper and you can make more money developing your team, right?

ANNE HOWIE: Yes, it really does work, and it creates a bit ahead space for yourself and gives you more time with your family. So would you rather spend time with your family or time putting hostess packs together?

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: Or doing the ironing, you know, so…

DEB BIXLER: So we’ve got three minutes for you to summarize this.

ANNE HOWIE: Okay. So I guess it goes around the idea that you just need to sit down and go with a fine-toothed comb throughout your business. You know, what can you automate in your office?  These days, there’s so much software available for nothing or $10 a month that can automate you and mean that you don’t have to do a lot of things on the computer. So the idea of this entire exercise is to free up time so that you can spend that time working with your team. As a leader, you need to keep yourself high, so you need to find ways to keep yourself high so that you’re still getting recognized and being seen to be walking the talk, but you need to reduce the time that you’re doing everything so that you can work on helping other people be successful.

The Team Training & Recruiting Duties

So, when it comes to your team and to your recruiting duties…. sit down and do the same thing.What are all the things you do with them?

• You do trainings
• You do meetings
• You do different communications
• You do leader development

Sit down and think about how you’re going to do that when your business is five times bigger and start it now. You know, trainings can be recorded. You can do Skype group calls. You can run webinars for your team; record them when new people come on board.

You can say to them, “Well, look, here’s the recording for how you do the hostess coaching, go and watch that, and then we’ll talk about it later,” rather than repeating yourself all the time. So anything that you repeat often can normally be done better.

DEB BIXLER: Right, right. Good, good. Well we’re down to a minute and a half. Anne, this has been a lot of fun. [Laughter]

ANNE HOWIE: Yeah. I feel like I could just keep talking all day, but…

DEB BIXLER: You know, I had the same problem when I moved from teleseminars into radio, because in teleseminars, you talk for an hour: 60 whole minutes.

ANNE HOWIE: Yeah.

DEB BIXLER: But in radio, you talk for three 12-minute segments and one 9-minute segment. It’s totally different. So the whole goal here is that listeners have more desire so they’re going to go to your website now and check you out because they want more information, and that is The Party Plan Expert at www.ThePartyPlanPxpert.com, correct?

ANNE HOWIE: Excellent and there are some ideas you’ll find on the blogs, some ideas that I’ve talked about a bit. The main thing is don’t feel overwhelmed, and sit down and make a list. Go and buy a nice little book and take yourself off to a coffee shop or café and to just sit down and have some time by yourself to think about everything.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: And start thinking about it but don’t be overwhelmed by it. Just pick one thing, make one change, like your hostess packs, and that’s going to make a big difference to stick one thing. So, once you get that sorted then choose one more thing.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: And you’ll find that you make big differences really quickly.

DEB BIXLER: Small changes one at a time add up to big results when done consistently. Big impact habits, right?

ANNE HOWIE: Yes, exactly. And on my blog actually I have written a whole blog posting about that butterfly thing, so if you want to go and read it.

DEB BIXLER: I saw it on the Internet. It’s called the butterfly effect. We’re out of time, Anne. It’s been fun.

ANNE HOWIE: It’s been great. Thanks, Deb!

DEB BIXLER: Thank you so much. And a lot of our sponsors do have some automation services, so scroll down the page, cashflowshowradio.com, and look at some of our sponsors because they do automate party plan businesses and visit Anne at www.ThePartyPlanExpert.com.

You are listening to the CashFlowShow Direct Sales Radio. Goodnight, everybody!
[MUSIC]

Party Plan Consultant Training Transcribed

The CashFlowShow Radio is transcribed into text for the hearing impaired so that all home party consultants can benefit. Please share this with everyone on your team and anyone you may know who is hearing impaired.

Print the PDF of the Anne Howe The Party Plan Success part #4.

In order to be updated when subsequent articles are posted, please subscribe to the CreateACashFlowShow RSS feed.

Share With Your Team!

• 

Ann Howie was a guest on the CashFlowShow – Direct Sales Radio earlier this year.

The New Zealand Party Plan Expert talked about how to plan ahead and put systems in place to get organized before you are a success so that you can grow into them.

This is the 3rd in a 4-part series of articles that have been transcribed into text for the hearing impaired home party plan consultant.

If you have not listened to the first one, then please start at the beginning of the series:

Anne Howie, Party Plan Expert Interview #1

Anne Howie On The Radio, Transcribed To Text

DEB BIXLER: Welcome back to the CashFlowShow Direct Sales Radio airing in every country in the world seven days a week. So we are live on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month, and feel free to email if you are listening on June 13th, which is a Wednesday night or in New Zealand that will be Thursday at noon, and we will take questions at deb@debbixler.com. And Anne, we did get a question during break.

ANNE HOWIE: Oh great, cool.

DEB BIXLER: Yeah, and it’s actually two questions in one. It’s from Lisa Freeman Williamson, and the first one — I’m pretty sure she is referring to your recruiting of 110 people or having your team leveraging, and that’s what this — you know, when you can get other people doing the same the thing, you’re leveraging your system.

So in the system that you developed, how important is cold calling, and was the majority of the business from referrals?

ANNE HOWIE: Well, I’ve never been very keen on cold calling. I’ve always found it very difficult to do.

DEB BIXLER: Okay. [Laughter]

ANNE HOWIE: And actually, I’m now actively training people not to do cold calling because I think that what happens is that with cold calling, you sit down and you could make 50 calls, and you might get two or three successful calls, but in that time, you’ve actually wasted a lot of time in all of the other calls.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: So a major part of my business is always being customer service and customer care, making people feel looked after, giving them an experience so that they would not go anywhere else.

DEB BIXLER: Right, right.

ANNE HOWIE: In that way, you never have to cold call. You actually never cold call because you’re always working with people that are really happy to be associated with you.

DEB BIXLER: Right, and cold calling:  for Lisa, there’s the article on the website with some real statistics about how ineffective cold calling is. [Laughter] So go to the website in cashflowshowradio.com. Click the blog link, and there’s like five or 10 categories on different topics, so that would be probably under sales, skills, or bookings, or you could do a search for cold calling. Cold calling rarely works, I think, because — it’s all about connections and creating a relationship.

ANNE HOWIE: It definitely is, and I think that often we do cold calling because we don’t know what else to do, and there are so many other things you can do apart from having to go through the pain and torture for yourself and also for the person that you’re calling.

DEB BIXLER: Right, right. Well, the other half of her question, maybe this will lead in to what we’re going to talk about anyway, was how do you break down the time? Maybe we have some people tuning in late; we’re talking about how to grow your business three, four, five, 10 times bigger. What’s it going to look like when you get there so that now before you’re there, you can plan ahead and put some systems into place to deal with that? So her question is how do you break down the time—admin, personal life, sales, recruiting—how do you break down your time? Do you have a system for that?

Systems To Organize The Party Plan Office

ANNE HOWIE: That would be difficult to answer in a really short, concise way, but there are lots of different ways that you can organize your time and your party plan office…. and what I’ve found is that the way that works for me doesn’t work for everyone.

So when I’m working with my team or when I was working with my team, it’s about finding a way that would work for them. The way that it works for me was using a planner and blocking in times.

So first of all thinking about what are the important people and activities in my own life, which involved obviously children, partner, friends, social time, and I think you put that in first, because those things get missed out when you are in the thick of things. You’re so busy doing your business that all of these things that are very important to you get missed out, so they go in first. They get blocked off. Each week every Sunday night, sit down and do this. They get blocked off.

Next, I would put in any other commitments that I had. If I was on a committee or something, they get put in as well. I’d end up with all of the spaces that are available for my business, and some of the times that are available will be suitable for doing parties. They would be party times. Some would be suitable times for working with team members. Some would be dead times of day where I couldn’t talk to customers, I couldn’t do parties, you know, I couldn’t do anything, so that would be times for me to do office work in those steps.

So I just organize it that way. I have it in my diary or in my calendar, and every morning, I just look at it and say right, that’s what I’m doing today then.

DEB BIXLER: Right, right. And something you said, prioritize a little bit. One of the things that I sometimes tell people is like okay, make a list from one to 10 of the most important things in order, make the list first and prioritize them in order, what’s the most important? Your personal life, your family, recruiting, sales -  prioritize these things, and then try to line up the amount of time you spend on them, because then we tend to prioritize where we spend our time and it’s totally inverted. So you need to plan — where you’re spending your time one to 10, what’s most important, and then try to make an alignment so they’re congruent. But where do we want to go here? We’re going to talk about some more examples where we…

ANNE HOWIE: Okay.

DEB BIXLER: Yeah.

ANNE HOWIE: Yeah, let’s talk about how to get the system sorted, and really, all we can today is get you thinking and get you on your way, so I’m hoping that the listeners might be jotting down some ideas. You know, when we start talking about this sort of stuff, sometimes sections of inspiration can happen for you and you go…

“Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I’m doing it that way and I can do it this way,” so catch those things if they do happen while you’re listening. Catch them and write them down. And maybe it would be really quite fun if you do think of something while we’re talking if you emailed it into Deb and we could hear some of the light bulbs that might have gone off as you’re listening.

Organizing The Business

So there are really four areas that I sort of looked at in your business, and I think when organizing it can all be covered in almost every part of your life in four areas.

And the four areas would be:

• Your personal business, which is your own sales and your own recruiting at your own party. So your own business, what you did when you were just a consultant, because you still have to do that.
• The second area would be your personal life.

These aren’t in any particular order.  They just… are random orders. I know personal life should have come first, or it should have, but personal life, so everything around personal life.

• Your office administration, which I’d make different to your personal business because this is just running the back office of your business.
•  Then the fourth area, which is the area that’s most important for your growth, is running your team.

So we take it to those four areas…. What you could do as an activity is sit down and think about all of the things that you do within each area.

The Consultant’s Personal Business

So personal business, what are all the things that you do?

• You place orders.
• You possibly make deliveries, not everybody does, but some companies do deliver your products.
• You have to organize your parties.
• Maybe you have to make hostess packs.

You know, all of those things. You have to do customer follow-up, so make a list of everything that you do for your personal business, and then goes through that list and think about how you do it, how could you change it if your business is five times bigger, how would you have to change it. So first the thing I would do is see what I can get rid for all of these categories.

First thing is what I can get rid of, and that would mean delegating.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: So what can I delegate? You know, making up hostess packs. A teenager down the road could come and do that for me. So you don’t have to spend a fortune, but we need to try and free up as much time as possible. So first of all, delegating, and then you’ll be left with things that actually you have to do.

There are some things that only you can do. I don’t believe that anybody else should do your customer’s follow-up. If you are speaking to customers, I don’t think you can delegate that. I think you have to do that because it’s about relationship building. Same for deliveries, you know, you need to do that because that’s a fantastic opportunity for recruiting when you have another contact with the hostess. But what would you change? If you think about your orders, how would you change that? Would you maybe just place orders once a week? Would you change how you did it? Would you change how you do your deliveries?

And just think about all those things. You know, hostess packs. I went through a time where by the end of my life, these making up hostess packs and recruiting packs, actually, business information packs, I’ll be just about to go out to a party and realize that I didn’t have any so then I’d have to quickly print out stuff and stuff them in the envelopes and get it all ready. So when I did this activity, I realized that what I could do is actually make up a hundred packs.

DEB BIXLER: I see. That’s what I did.

ANNE HOWIE: In a couple of hours and make a hundred packs and have them on the shelf.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: And it took up a whole shelf. And every month, some of the contents were changed because promotions changed or products changed, so some content would change but most of it would stay the same. So that would mean I’d have all of these packs on my shelf, and then once a month, I would take out some that I thought that I needed and I’d put in the relevant information for that month, and then as I go out the door, I’d just take three or four with me. It saves me hours and a whole heap of stress, so that’s an example of a fairly small change that made a massive difference not only to my workload but to my state of mind.

DEB BIXLER: Right, we’re less than a minute out here.  And you’re right, doing things like that, like making all your host packets for the entire season and then just adding the specials in at the last minute is excellent. There’s so many people do exactly what you said there, assembling at the last minute. Can you give us your contact information in 40 seconds or less, and then we’ll come back after this break?

ANNE HOWIE: I certainly can. If you’d like to email me, my email address is Anne with an E: Anne@thepartyplanexpert.com, and my website is thepartyplanexpert.com. I’ve got some blogs if you want to go and have a look at my blogs, and they are partyplanblogs.com.

DEB BIXLER: Excellent, excellent so your email was anne@thepartyplanexpert.com.

ANNE HOWIE: That’s my email, yup.

DEB BIXLER: Yup, and that’s www.thepartyplanexpert.com. You are listening to the CashFlowShow Direct Sales Radio.
[MUSIC] [BREAK]

Party Plan Sales Training Transcribed

The CashFlowShow Radio is transcribed into text for the hearing impaired sales consultant. If you know any party plan consultants can benefit from this service please pass this along!

Print the PDF of the Anne Howe The Party Plan Organization part #3.

In order to be updated when subsequent articles are posted, please subscribe to the CreateACashFlowShow RSS feed.

Share With Your Team!

• 

Ann Howie, the New Zealand Party Plan Expert, was our guest early in 2012 on the radio.

This is the 2nd in a 4-part series of articles that have been transcribed into text for the hearing impaired home party plan consultant.

If you have not listened to the first one, then please start at the beginning of the series:

Anne Howie, Party Plan Expert Interview #1

DEB BIXLER: Yes, welcome back everybody! Welcome to the CashFlowShow.

This is the CashFlowShow, and we have Anne Howie here, and Anne is from New Zealand and she is the Party Plan Expert!

She has 15 years of experience in the direct sales industry. Anne, how did you bring in 110 consultants in one month? No wonder you’re overwhelmed.

Anne Howie The Party Plan Recruit System

ANNE HOWIE: I’m not too overwhelmed; actually everything was fine because I’d sorted out how to run a big business. I didn’t personally recruit 100 people, by the way, every month. That would have been really a lot of work.

What I did was I managed to systematize and duplicate myself and duplicate my systems so that people that came into the business became leaders fairly rapidly and just copied what I did. So when I say 100, the biggest we had was 119 in one month. That was in my entire business, which I had 26 leaders in my business at that time. First of all, you get this system going where you’re recruiting people and then you get the system going where the people you recruit become leaders, 26 leaders all recruiting as well as me, they only had to introduce five or six people each into their group in a month for us to get well over 100 people.

DEB BIXLER: Right, right, right.

ANNE HOWIE: So it’s all that duplicating and just getting the system right and making it so that everyone can copy it. And of course there’s going to be personality differences. You can’t have a system and make everyone do it the way you would do it, but you can have a system which can allow for personalities so that anyone can just pick it up and go for it.
DEB BIXLER: Right, duplication is the name of the game, really.

ANNE HOWIE: Yeah.

DEB BIXLER: So we talked about these challenges that new leaders have, and I have a lot of customers who say exactly that. So what are your recommendations?

ANNE HOWIE: Okay, well I to try and think — throughout my entire business, what I’ve done is whenever there’s been a big challenge, I’m taking it as a puzzle. So you know, some people come up against a challenge and just throw their arms in the air and panic. I did that for a little while and decided it wasn’t really very helpful, so I decided, right, here’s a challenge, let’s have a look at it. This is a puzzle, and I just need to sort the puzzle out. It’s like doing a Rubik’s cube.

Please support the CashFlowShow Radio sponsor:

Business Success System

So looking at this growing pains thing that kept happening to me and happening to other people, what I realized was that what I was doing was growing out of my systems, so I’d have a system and I’d be growing out of it.

It seemed to me a bit more sensible to develop a system and then grow into it. So if you can grow into your system, the system can stay the same and you won’t even notice as the business is getting bigger. So the way that I did this was I sat down and thought about — I did a visualization exercise, I sat down and thought about my business being a lot a bigger than it was at that time. And as I’m coaching, I get people to do this as well, so you can choose a number that doesn’t completely freak you out.

You sit down and think about, right, is my business worth five times bigger than it is now? And that’s the stage where some people completely start going into an anaphylactic shock over that sort. But if five’s too big, choose three. If five’s too small, choose 10. But choose a number. If my business was that number bigger than it is now, what would it look like? So let’s go a size. So if my business is five times bigger, you know, how many people would that mean? How many people would be coming in, how much would I be selling, how much would the team be selling, how many leaders would I have?

So I’d get a real picture for what this business would look like. What would I be achieving, and what would I be doing with the family? How would these amazing rewards affect my life? So I’d really get myself into this picture, and then once I’d finished dreaming and feeling all excited and warm and fuzzy about that, then I’d step back into reality for a second and think about, okay, so if my business is really like this picture that I’ve just drawn for myself and if I continue to do on a daily basis what I’m doing right now, would this work for me? And without exception, the answer is always no, it wouldn’t. So if I ran my business the way I’m doing right now, I could not cope with this business that’s five times bigger.

So once you know that, then you say, well if I wouldn’t run it the way that I would run it now, how would I run it? What would I do? And then I’d sit down and write, you know, probably — I think what I would do is I would do my training this way or I would do this way. You know, I’ll think of different things, which we can go into in a second, and these are the things that I would be doing. And then once that’s done, the next part of the process is looking at those things and thinking well, how much of that can I do now? And even with the smallest business, some other things you can do right now.

Start Systems Now For Success In Business

If you start doing them now… putting systems in place, it means that as your business grows, you don’t have to change anything and success will be attainable.

Please support the CashFlowShow Radio sponsor:

You’re growing into your system, not out of it. And you’ve made a plan, so you don’t actually have to get to this part where you’re completely overwhelmed and taken by surprise and not knowing what to do. You’re already working a system that can accommodate five times bigger.

DEB BIXLER: Right. It sounds a little bit like writing a business plan.

ANNE HOWIE: I guess it probably is.  And funny thing though, is that if you call it a business plan, it doesn’t feel as fun. [Laughter]

DEB BIXLER: Yeah.

ANNE HOWIE: But that’s exactly another word for it, and I never called it that. I hadn’t even thought of that before, but…

DEB BIXLER: And most people don’t do a written business plan. Like a business plan, when I teach like what you’re teaching right now, you’ve got to write a business plan and it should include your dreams and your goals and then the action steps to get there and to do it when you get to manage it. So the way you laid that out was really understandable, and I’m sure people listening can get a clear picture on how to do that process. If anybody has any questions, they can email me at deb@debbixler.com. We are live. We do take dial-in phone calls if you want to call in live, 866-977-2346 extension 2, but deb@debbixler.com as well. So I think you laid that out really nicely.

ANNE HOWIE: It is a fun thing to do. It’s always fun to sit and visualize and dream if you can really get into it. And if you struggle to do that, one of the ways to do it is to pick a date in the future and then making yourself actually on that day describing what’s happened in the months or years leading up to that day.

DEB BIXLER: Right. And so the steps I guess are to decide, like, how much — what are the steps? How much bigger, one, right?

Business Success Systems

ANNE HOWIE: Okay, so what does it look like? To put success systems in place you need to look at your business

• What does this big successful business look like?
• How am I running the business now?
• Would that work for me in the future?

And so, answer all those questions first. But then you can look into different areas of your life, so I find it quite useful to just take things one part at a time.

To grow a really big empire, to grow your massive empire, your big business, it’s really important that a lot of your time or energy is involved in running your team and helping other people to be successful, but what tends to happen is that we get so involved with all of the other stuff. You know, all of the personal business, our personal life and also some administration.

We’re so busy just trying to keep up with all of that, that we don’t have time to focus on our team, so it’s important that we find ways to free up our time in the other areas so that we can focus on helping other people be successful. It’s where the money is. It’s where the insurance policy is for the future. If anything ever happens to you and you can’t work for a couple of months, you need a team to be working, but it’s also to me the most rewarding and just the most amazing part of the whole business, is just helping other people change their lives and turn around. So I’d much rather be enjoying that part of the business than sitting in my office putting out fires, and so I’m just trying to keep on top of paperwork.

Please support the CashFlowShow Radio sponsor:

DEB BIXLER: Right, right. It sounds like you’re talking about putting systems in place that organize things and make things work for everybody. You know, automation is a system that makes life easier, so systems just make things work better. We’re just under two minutes here, and after the break, I’m going to hope that we can get some really specific examples of this…

ANNE HOWIE: Yup.

DEB BIXLER: But do you want to share something for a minute and a half?

ANNE HOWIE: Well, I guess one of the other things just to — before we go into some sort of specifics is that this whole process in itself shouldn’t be overwhelming. So we possibly are already overwhelmed in our business, and when we start to look at all these things that could be changed, there’s a possibility for that in itself to become overwhelming, so I don’t want that to happen for everybody. But one thing to remember is that you can make really small changes. One small change can make a really massive difference in your business and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the metaphor for butterfly wings before, Deb. Have you heard of the butterfly wings?

DEB BIXLER: No, go ahead. Share it.

ANNE HOWIE: Now I’m not going to remember the quote completely, but it basically means that a very small change can make really massive results and they likened it to a butterfly wing. A butterfly flapping its wings can set of a chain of events that can result in a tornado on the other side of the world.

DEB BIXLER: Really?

ANNE HOWIE: So if you’re interested in that, you could actually Google it and look it up, and it’s quite fascinating. And it does have its grounds in physics.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: Believe it or not, chaos theory. But what it means is that you can make a very small change and it can make all the difference. You don’t even know all of the ways that can make a difference. Like you’ll make a change for a particular reason, and the flowing effects from that change can be massive. So it means that we don’t have to sit down and change the world in five minutes. We can just sit down and find a butterfly wing…

DEB BIXLER: And use them.

ANNE HOWIE: Welcome that. Once that’s done, then find another one.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

DEB BIXLER: You are listening to the CashFlowShow Direct Sales Radio on WS Radio, the worldwide leader in Internet talk, and we will be right back after this break. Please take a minute to visit our sponsors while we’re out.

[MUSIC] [BREAK]

Party Plan Sales Training Transcribed

The CashFlowShow Radio is transcribed into text for the hearing impaired so that party plan consultants who prefer to read rather than listen can take advantage of the sales training. Please share this with anyone who can benefit from this service.

Print the PDF of the Anne Howe The Party Plan Success part #2.

In order to be updated when subsequent articles are posted, please subscribe to the CreateACashFlowShow RSS feed.

Share With Your Team!

• 

Ann Howie is the New Zealand version of Deb Bixler! LOL

She is very well known down-under as the Party Plan Expert!

This is the first of a 4-part series of posts that were transcribed from our radio interview on the CashFlowShow – Direct Sales Radio earlier this year.

We transcribe some of our best shows into text as a service for the hearing impaired. In order to be updated when subsequent articles are posted, please subscribe to the CreateACashFlowShow RSS feed.

Ann Howie Radio Interview Transcribed To Text

DEB BIXLER: Good evening, everybody! Welcome, everybody, direct sellers around the world. This is Deb Bixler, and you are listening to the CashFlowShow Radio.

We are so excited to have you here tonight, and we’re excited because we have a terrific guest from down under.

Our special guest, Anne Howie, The Party Plan Expert from New Zealand. Welcome to the call, Anne.

ANNE HOWIE: Thanks, Deb. I’m really excited to be asked to come on your show, and yes I’m looking forward to chatting to you for a while.

DEB BIXLER: Yes, and it is probably one thing you’re going to learn: it always surprises me how the radio show goes so quickly compared to doing regular teleseminar trainings. It’s really interesting.

Well, today’s show is brought to our listeners around the world. We do air seven days a week. The second and fourth Wednesday of every month is live, so we’re live tonight if you happen to be listening right now on Wednesday. What is the date today? June 13th. We are live, but we are on seven days a week. So every show replays every day for two weeks.

Okay, Anne well let’s just get started.  I want to say for everybody listening: Anne is an author, trainer, speaker, and she is based out of Christchurch, New Zealand and is a party plan expert for Party Planners down in New Zealand. But why don’t you just give us your background yourself rather than me doing it? How did you get started in the industry?

Start Party Plan Business

ANNE HOWIE: Well, I got off to an interesting start, really. I wasn’t very interested in a party plan business at all. I didn’t have any particular interest in the industry, but what I was interested in was staying home with my children and not working a 9 to 5 job. So I did come across party plan a little bit by accident, and it didn’t take me too long to realize that I didn’t have to work too hard to be able to earn the money that I needed to be able to send my son to Montessori school, which is what I really wanted to do.

We needed $100 a week, $20 a day for Alex to go to Montessori School. And I turned up at this party, and this woman was selling perfume and aromatherapy.  I actually didn’t think she did a great job with the party, but I watched her… send aromatherapy oils around all of the group. There were 30 oils, and we had to sniff them all out of the bottle, and by the end of the party, all of us felt ill. But everybody still bought something, and she sold $400 that night. I asked her how much she earned, and she earned $100 cash for herself. And I’m thinking, that’s all I have to do to pay for Alex’s Montessori. And so I thought, “Well, I’m sure I can do a better job than that.” So actually, that’s how I get started.

And I really didn’t think that I was going to last. I was quite interested in getting the kits, so I was one of these terrible people who thinks – well I just get the kits, I’ll do a few parties, and then I’ll probably just quit.

But after my first six parties, I already had money in my pocket. I paid all my investment back and I had money. But in three months, I had enough money in the bank to pay for a full year of Alex’s Montessori, and so I thought, maybe I’ll just stay a little bit longer.

So I keep staying and staying and the roads got bigger and bigger. Suddenly I was having holidays in Mauritius and Hawaii and Phuket, and I was driving brand new company cars, and I had — I started off with no skills at all, totally shy, totally scared, and learned skills all along. By the time I got to the stage where I decided to make it a life change and sell my business, I had over 100 people joining my business every month. So it was such an amazing growth for me, and going from just wanting to pay for some preschool for my son to completely changing my life and my family’s life.  It’s honestly been the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s been amazing.

DEB BIXLER: Right, right, and your story is so similar to so many. Like when I went to my first party, I was sitting there thinking, “I could do better than this.” [Laughter]

ANNE HOWIE: Funny thing is, when I went to do my very first party, suddenly I wasn’t quite as cocky or confident.

DEB BIXLER: Right, right.  So I know that you did very, very well in your company. You moved up to a leadership role?

ANNE HOWIE: Yes, I did. The whole way.  I didn’t really know what I was doing. I mean, we had reasonably good training, but I still was stumbling along the way and people kind of joined me. I didn’t really understand how that has happened, but people just kind of joined and I became a leader. And at that time, we needed four people to join our team, and I honestly remember thinking: I’ve made it. This is amazing. You know, things are just going to go so well for me from now on. I’ve made big time. I’m a leader.

But I’ll tell you what, I hadn’t even finished my first glass of champagne before that wore off, and what happened was reality was quite different to my imagination and I wasn’t really prepared for it. I had a system in place to get to do my parties, and there were all the things that was I doing as a consultant, and suddenly I was just this leader who had people calling me all the time. They had problems they needed me to fix. They wanted to tell me big, long stories about themselves, which was great, but I’d spend all day on the phone and no time doing my own business. My sales plummeted, I couldn’t maintain my group. You know, it rapidly turned into a bit of a disaster.

DEB BIXLER: Right. And you know what? I hear that so often. A lot of the people I coached that had come to leadership too fast weren’t prepared for it, and are just kind of lost with the direction to go.  So I know that’s a really common — especially with either good consultants really good at sales, you have a lot of shows, you’re going to meet a lot of people, you’re going to bring a lot in, but also with companies that grow really quick. Now, we have little more than three minutes ‘til our first break.

ANNE HOWIE: It’s fast.

DEB BIXLER: It is, isn’t it? Today, I did a map. I saw a map on somebody’s site about where they were worldwide, and so I did a map of where we’ve sent CashFlowShow home party plan training products, and I have to say that New Zealand is a little under-represented. It was one.

ANNE HOWIE: Well, we could maybe fix that.

DEB BIXLER: Yeah.

ANNE HOWIE: I do a lot of work in Australia as well, so how’s Australia looking?

Home Party Business Success

DEB BIXLER: Australia, United Kingdom, Canada of course, and United States are the top locations for product shipments, also for people coming to the website. But anyway, we’re going to come back after the break, and we’ll talk more about how to be successful in your business, three, four, five times bigger, but without that much effort.

So what kind of troubles did you have? You know, we have like two minutes and 30 seconds left before break.

ANNE HOWIE: [Laughter] Well, the main problem really was that I was completely overwhelmed, and this thing had become like a monster.

What I’ve noticed over my time in coaching and also in developing leaders in my business is that people get a shock if they’re not prepared; and that’s what happened to me, I got a shock. But what happens is that often people didn’t stay where they are.

Their business doesn’t grow because they can’t put things in place. They’re always fighting fires. Either that or they quit after a short time of leadership, which is a shame because it really doesn’t have to be like that. So it became really important for me to help people get ready for leadership and then to get ready for growth so that your empire can build. You can build a big business, but not with these awful growing pains and this feeling of overwhelm that keeps happening. And maybe after the break, I could talk a little bit about what the growing pains are and how they come about.

DEB BIXLER: Right,  cool. Well, we have a minute and a half. Do you want to share some?

ANNE HOWIE: Okay, I’m not sure what the time is, so the growing pains happened because we get into our system. Everything is running well, so as a consultant that was happening for me, and then a new phase of growth happens and suddenly we’re overwhelmed with all this new work.

So of course this happens, and we go, “Oh my goodness! I’ve got to either fix something or I’m just going to collapse,” so we fix something, and it’s always under a stressful situation. So we fix the system and we get the system sorted, and then we go along for a while thinking this is great.

Work At Home Business System

You know, I’ve got the system going to make working in your home business easier… it’s all working well. But then the business grows a little bit more, and suddenly we find we’re in that overwhelmed place again, and then we’re drowning. We’re putting out fires, and all of a sudden, we just consciously have to sort the system out. So we do some more changes, we sort that system out, we go for a little while, and then it just keeps on going.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: So this is a growing pain, and it’s stressful.

DEB BIXLER: Right.

ANNE HOWIE: So we can actually avoid all of that.

DEB BIXLER: All right, you’re going to give us some solutions for that after the break?

ANNE HOWIE: I’m going to give it my best shot. [Laughter]

DEB BIXLER: I’m sure you are. All right, so we’re here with Anne Howie and she’s an author, trainer, speaker based out of New Zealand, and she has 15 years of experience in the industry beginning as a consultant, becoming a leader, and she has won lots of awards. Check out our sponsors please and we will be right back!

[MUSIC] [BREAK]

Party Plan Expert For Hearing Impaired

The CashFlowShow Radio is transcribed into text for the hearing impaired so that all home party consultants can take advantage of the training. Please share this with anyone who can benefit from this service.

Print the PDF of the Anne Howe The Party Plan Expert Interview part #1.

In order to be updated when subsequent articles are posted, please subscribe to the CreateACashFlowShow RSS feed.

Share With Your Team!

• 

Our guest this week (6/13/12) on the CashFlowShow – Direct Sales Radio is the party plan expert, Anne Howie. Based in New Zealand, Anne is a speaker, trainer and author who has 15 years of party plan success history and was one of the top achievers in her company internationally.

Whether success to you is paying some bills, buying a new outfit, going on a holiday or building a business empire, Anne Howie can help. She is sensible, down to earth and has real action-based steps. I am sure you will enjoy this show!

Listen To The CashFlowShow – Direct Sales Radio

Anne Howie, Party Plan Trainer Says:

Why am I not achieving my goals?

We’ve all done it, I’m sure: set some great goals for our business, got all excited when we visualized it happening, wrote out an end date and action plan and set to work, feeling like we were on fire.

We did all the right things – all the things “the books” tell us to do to make our dreams come true.

Then weeks later, when according to our plan we should have been enjoying the fruits of our success, there we are again rewriting the same goals and making a new action plan.

We didn’t quite make it that time, we say (anyway, it wasn’t our fault – it was circumstances), but we WILL this time! There are people who have been making the same goals in their businesses for literally years – and are still no closer to them. I have even experienced exactly this myself!

This is frustrating and demoralizing and it’s a cycle that’s hard to break unless you can work out what’s going wrong.

So, what is going wrong?

Realistic Party Plan Goals

As much as it’s important to be excited about our party plan business and positive about our goals, I believe we also need to be realistic about what is pulling us away from achieving them.

As a farmer has a plan for the insects, disease and weather that may affect crops before they ever happen, so do we need a plan for the problems, challenges and circumstances that may affect us reaching our goals.

You won’t hear a farmer say “Well, that’s a shame that the frosts killed the crop. I’ll just have to try again next year.” The farmer has a plan that can be activated when needed. There isn’t next year, there is only now.

We need to cultivate the same mind-set with achieving our goals. We need to identify all possible threats, and create a plan that can be activated if needed.
If you think back over some of the goals that were important to you that you failed to reach, what were the main reasons for not achieving them? Illness (yours or a family member), unsupportive spouse, difficulties with children, inability to book or recruit, time management, mind-set, handling personality clashes, or any of many more reasons why you were unable to reach your goals.

If the goal is really important to you, you owe it to yourself to keep working towards it despite the obstacles that appear in your path. Otherwise you end up with some great reasons (or excuses) why it didn’t work out. The net result is still that you did not achieve something that is very important to you.

Whatever has stopped you in the past is very likely to rear its head again in the future – but this time you can be prepared. Once you know what the threats are you can deal with them.

Take a piece of paper and work out your threats, then think about what you could have done differently last time you experienced this challenge. What could you possibly have done to be able to overcome them and manage to achieve the goals that are so important to you?

You might experience some resistance as you start this: “I couldn’t have done anything; it wasn’t my fault that … happened.” But you’ll find that if you really start digging there will have been things you could have done to stay on track.

From this, what will you do next time? How will you identify that the threat is taking hold? What specific actions will you take to stop it or reduce its effects on you?

Once you have a good contingency plan, it’s time to get back to your action plan to work on making your goals and dreams reality. As soon as you see the threat appear it’s time to jump into your emergency action plan and not let it spoil your vision for the future.

Just like the farmer you need to bring in the harvest, no matter what.

How amazing will it feel to know you didn’t let the obstacles stop you from reaching the goal that is so important to you and may well also mean a very positive change for your family?

Achieve Business Success

Taking the time to think about the obstacles make your contingency plan will ensure that you do achieve business success.

In going through the process you will grow beyond belief and will quite rightly feel that you really can do anything you set your mind to.

Imagine one day standing on stage speaking to your colleagues about how you overcame these challenges and how your life has improved beyond measure as a result. You will be an inspiration and you will help other people who are stuck in this rut of routinely setting the same goals that they struggle to achieve.

Overcoming these challenges will be a major triumph and an important part of your own personal story.

Anne Howie, New Zealand Party Plan Training

Anne Howie brings party plan tips to consultants throughout New Zealand and Australia in a live presentations on a regular basis.

She helps people create lives they love using party plan as their vehicle. She works to make sure that you grow your business successfully, with a minimum of stress and a maximum of excitement.

Share With Your Team!

•