- Get super organized with Tools #1-5
- Tool #6 is a daily action plan blueprint to grow your network (get more sales & signups for free)
- Tools #7-8 will help you automate to free up your time pulling in more traffic
- Tool #9 will make you look more professional and help you brand yourself to attract the right prospects
- Tool #10 will be your new secret weapon to fight off the zombies that steal your energy, make your brain foggy, & kill your motivation
It’s important to use tools that compliment your style, how you think, & how you like to work. No tool is going to be perfect for everyone, so choose what suits you best. I hope this list will inspire you to get organized and more productive with your network marketing business, so you can have systems in place that support your success & you can spend less time getting stuck & more time doing income producing activities or playing with your kids at the park.
Let’s dive in!
Boring Disclosure: I use this site to teach you how to become more productive. That comes with expenses & my family likes frozen yogurt, so occasionally I use affiliate links to recommend products I love and I know will help you. Click here if you want to read the full disclaimer (or take a good nap).
Tool #1 - Asana for Productivity - Manage Tasks Lists & Organize Projects
I’ve seen several people who use Trello for literally every aspect of their business & even personal life. I was even going to put it on this list, but honestly, I have found myself moving away from it & using Asana more & more. The more I use it, the more I love it.
Honestly, I love Trello for many reasons but since Asana has a visual Kanban-style view just like Trello, I’m just not using it as much any more. I’m finding it’s important to choose ONE home base operation hub that houses everything…. and then USE IT CONSISTENTLY and STICK WITH IT.
Asana is also what I use to work with my virtual assistant team. It makes it very easy to see the task lists, who’s doing what and when, comment back & forth on projects, etc.
Even if you’re a solopreneur without a team, Asana is the best tool for project management & task lists. You can integrate it with Google Calendar to see your upcoming projects right on your main calendar.
While Trello does have some checklist functionality, it is so much easier to set up recurring tasks in Asana. For example, we have daily and weekly tasks set up for our Pinterest strategy. As soon as the tasks are checked off, Asana automatically re-creates the task with the next due date on it per our schedule.
You want to do “follow-up Fridays”? No problem. Just set up a task that repeats every Friday. When you mark it as complete, Asana will recreate it with next Friday as the due date. It’s magic & it just makes it so much easier to run your home business.
THIS is the tool you need to get your crap together. It’s just a matter of committing to using it consistently.
Tool #2 - Airtable for Spreadsheets & Databases
This is a tool you may not have heard of yet, but once you understand what all it can do, it’ll be your new best friend. What is Airtable? It’s basically like Google Sheets, Trello, and some kind of awesome database all made one glorious baby together with magical unicorn powers that get you organized and more productive.
You can use Airtable to keep track of new ideas that pop into your head (no more forgetting those things you thought up that were so awesome), inspiration for new content, your affiliate links, Pinterest keywords, all of the courses you’ve purchased, Facebook Groups you promote in, and so much more.
You can even have zaps set up that automatically create new tasks for you in Asana based on a triggered event in Airtable. For example, if you have a table full of ideas (future to-dos) in Airtable, you can set up a zap that pulls an idea into Asana automatically when you assign it to someone or put a due date on it. That way Asana can still be your primary place for projects & deadlined tasks & you don’t have to look in two places for those things.
I’m sure I’ll be creating some tutorials on this tool.
I can’t even begin to scratch the surface here of what Airtable can do, so I’ll have to save it for another day. In the mean time, use my link & go explore the free version. You can do pretty much everything you probably need without upgrading.
Tool #3 - Notion - for Notes, Scripts, & Planning Content
If you’re not familiar with Notion, think of it as digital notebooks with database capabilities. The bulk of what I use Notion for is taking notes during training and creating scripts or outlines for my own training videos & courses. But I’m barely scratching the surface of what it can do. Any time you need to take notes or jot down thoughts, this is your tool. Notion allows you to share your notes as well, so I use it to share training with my team and have even used it to create a knowledge base.
Using Notion for a project? You can use Asana to plan your project scheduling & coordinate with your team (if you have one) & add your Notion note’s URL right into Asana to make it easy to find when you’re working on the task.
Using Notion to take notes during a training? It’ll let you create a database page to house the list of all of your training courses, with links to the course login dashboards & each record in the database will pop up a page with your notes when you click it. Starting to see how powerful this can be when you use the tools synergistically?
Tool #4 - Google Drive to Organize Digital Files
Google Drive is absolutely awesome for backing up all of your files to the cloud & being able to access them from your computer, phone, tablet, and any other device you have.
I recently had the realization that I was using 3 different tools for online file storage when I could just be using one. I was using iDrive to back up my computer and phone. Then I was using Dropbox and Google Drive to store some of my files online & share some of my files with my team, VAs, husband, etc.
That’s when I decided to move everything out of Dropbox & over to Google Drive. I’ve used Google Drive for a long time but realized there was really no need to have both programs hogging resources on my computer when realistically they do the same thing.
I started using the Google Backup & Sync app to back up all of my important folders on my laptop, which really replaced my need for iDrive‘s backup service.
Now I use Google Drive to organize all of my files (documents, spreadsheets, pictures, etc). Finally setting up a good file structure has been HUGE for me as well. I really recommend getting your files organized.
I did have to upgrade my Google Drive storage to have enough space for everything, but I’m paying WAY less than I was for just iDrive before, so I was happy to do so.
It also helps that a lot of my other programs integrate with Google Drive to make it really easy to connect everything together & save me tons of time.
Tool #5 - Law of Attraction Planner
I go through phases of wanting to organize things on paper, but most planners just never fully worked for my needs. It’s really hard to find something that works well for combining business and personal. A while back, I started using this Law of Attraction paper planner and it really helped me map out my goals and plan my weeks. It’s basically a planner and life coach all in one (but easier on the piggy bank).
I like to keep as much as I can digital, but sometimes you just need to put pen to paper & write it out. The LOA planner is perfect for time blocking & planning your priorities for the day. There are pages upon pages in here to really help you map out your dream life and how to obtain it.
I recommend the undated daily planner version (the one that’s got a full year’s worth of pages, not the erasable 30-day version).
Tool #6 - Daily Action Plan
Keeping it real… I find most people who are truly struggling in home business do not have a solid action plan for success. They just don’t know what to do every day to grow their network, get more leads, or how to expand beyond their warm market audience. I struggled with the same exact things, so I’m passionate about sharing what finally worked for me…. and it’s the strategies in this free guide.
These strategies come straight from the 7 figure earners at the top of my team and just doing a fraction of them every day helped me go from 0 to over 20 in my downline in just a couple of months. Most of these tasks are straight from one of my leaders who implemented hard & recruited 65 people in just 2 months.
It just works!!!
If you are looking to grow your network using free social attraction marketing methods (no spamming, no parties), pick up your free S.M.A.R.T. P.L.A.N. Guide here.
Ninja Tip: Share the link with your whole team and watch your empire really start to grow. These strategies are super duplicatable. Anyone can follow this guide and create huge momentum for their home business. There’s even a 90-day hard run strategy that you could implement with your team for even faster results, like I mentioned above.
Tool #7 - Ninja Social to Schedule and Loop Content/Posts
Can I be totally transparent here? Building an empire is hard work. It was a tough decision to expand beyond my initial network-building strategies (tool #6) and try to reach a larger audience. One of my biggest hesitations was the amount of time and commitment it takes to post content every day and show up consistently.
It was important to me not to do it halfway, but to make sure I had something of value to put out into the world every single day, even if I was sick or on vacation with my family or at a business event.
Not only did I want to be able to batch content creation and pre-schedule it, but I also wanted to LOOP my evergreen content. MeetEdgar looked like a pretty good option, but honestly, I felt it was too expensive, especially for new or struggling entrepreneurs. And I couldn’t find anything else that would loop content the way I wanted to until…
Enter Ninja Social…
With this post scheduler, you can schedule and loop content to your FaceBook page, FaceBook group, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, TikTok, Google My Business & even YouTube & Pinterest. I wasn’t even using Linkedin before and am not yet focusing energy there, but I figured why not include it in the queue so I can build a presence there on autopilot?
Ninja Social can do much more, including Pinterest, Google My Business, and even YouTube.
I believe it’s important to choose one platform to really focus your time and Ninja Social can help you do that while also just maintaining a presence on the other platforms.
For much of my Pinterest strategy, I use Tailwind (see Tool #8 below) but when I loop post images that are quotes, I just go ahead & use Ninja Social to blast them out to a few Pinterest boards at the same time.
Grab your free trial of Ninja Social here if you want to give it a spin & just see how you like it for your post scheduling.
Tool #8 - Tailwind to mange Your Pinterest Strategy
If you’re using Pinterest for your business, Tailwind is a MUST-HAVE tool. Pins tend to convert much better if you’re at the stage where you have your own website with value-based blog posts or a YouTube channel. But you can have your pins link to your Facebook group, Facebook business page, any public post that you made on Facebook or Instagram, Youtube videos you uploaded, or even straight to product pages on your network marketing company’s website.
Tailwind is the best tool for automating your pin strategy so you don’t have to spend hours growing your Pinterest.
They’ve even added a SmartLoop feature so you can loop your best content automagically and Instagram scheduling (which I haven’t tested yet).
The feature I use the most is I use daily is Tailwind Communities (formerly Tailwind Tribes). Communities are basically groups of people who add topic-specific pins to a shared area in Tailwind & support each other by re-pinning each others’ stuff. Many people think Group Boards are on the way out and I must say I haven’t experienced much luck with those myself. But Tailwind Communities is basically guaranteed exposure if you’re creating good-looking pins (which you should be). The communities have rules about keeping a balance, so people actually do share your pins.
If you don’t have it already, grab a free trial of Tailwind with my link.
Tool #9 - Canva to Create Beautiful Images Even if You Have No Graphic Design Experience
I am by no means a graphic designer (hubby has that gene), but I have been able to use Canva to quickly and easily create beautiful images using my branding fonts and colors…. and you can too!
If you want to get ahead in Online Marketing, it is so important to create a brand for yourself and start using it on all of your images. This is how you stand out from all of the noise and attract the right people to you. Making your own images that all have the same colors & fonts will make you more recognizable in a newsfeed and make people realize that you are different. It’s a way to infuse your personality into what you do. Your images create a first impression before people ever even read the text on your posts or opt-in pages.
Canva makes it so stinkin’ easy to pump out images. You can do a ton with the free version, but may want to upgrade to the paid version to save your brand colors & fonts & time. The upgrade will also allow you to resize images to custom dimensions rather than being restricted to the various template sizes Canva offers.
Tool #10 - Zombie Fighters to Help You Operate at Your Best
I know I told you there were 10 tools, but I had to add one more because I’m a big fan of using healthy supplements to help your body function at it’s best. Why? Because none of us are perfect when it comes to sleep, food, and other behaviors.
I have a bad habit of not going to bed early enough & I have kids who are not night owls like me, so I’m waking up too early (definitely not a high performance habit, but I’m working on it)…
When our daughter was born, I turned into a complete zombie. The lack of sleep, plus possibly some undiagnosed post-partum depression really made it hard for me to even feel human every day. I wasn’t my best self. I wasn’t fully living like I wanted to. And I couldn’t break free from it. For SIX YEARS, I was a ZOMBIE!
You know when afternoon hits & you start feeling all groggy & tired & non-functional? I was feeling that ALL DAY a lot of days…. even on days when I did get more sleep. I just wasn’t ME any more. It was really hard to motivate myself to do things around the house or work my business… just normal things that people need to do every day. I felt SO BLAH!
I wanted to talk about this because I know there’s someone out there who can relate & this one little thing could be the game changer like it was for me.
I don’t drink coffee. I actually hate the smell so much that if my husband drinks it in the morning, I won’t kiss him when he comes home from work at night because I can smell it on him.
I see you rolling your eyes at me like I’m crazy. It’s ok. We can’t agree on everything 😉
I don’t drink soda very often because it’s so unhealthy. So I’ve really never been one to drink anything with caffeine in it to give me a boost.
I didn’t want to be like this forever! It’s like being trapped inside of this mental jail that you just can’t seem to escape.
And then I found something that changed everything…
I call them my “zombie fighter pills“. I’m going to tell you quickly what they do, but what’s more important is how they make you FEEL & how they CHANGE YOUR LIFE and how you can grab $10 off your first order if it’s something you need like I did.
Ok so what are these? They’re a science-based thermogenic made with plant derived, fat burning ingredients. They boost energy, enhance metabolism and support calorie burning. They help you maintain healthy blood sugar levels to reduce unwanted cravings. Say what? Basically, it’s a fat-torching formula that helps kick start metabolism and boost energy to support weight loss goals.
But the biggest benefit for me was NO MORE BRAIN FOG.
I don’t want to bore you with all of the details, BUT it’s healthy (no nasty ingredients that make your heart race or give you jitters) and it makes you FEEL GOOD! And the results are immediate.
Since I have been taking my zombie fighters, I feel HUMAN again. I am able to get things done & not only DO life, but also tackle it like a BOSS.
I’ve told you that it’s my mission to help people become life ninjas, right? THIS is the BIGGEST factor in making ME feel like a life ninja because I needed to feel human in order to get more productive. I feel more focused, more alert, I have more energy to take care of my kids all day AND grow my home business. I do NOT feel like my heart is racing or I have the jitters when I take these. And for those of you who do drink coffee, this is a chance for you to drink less (or none) and swap out those empty calories with water!
If it’s your first time ordering, you’ll get $10 off your zombie pills using this link.
P.S. - Did this inspire you or bring you value, don't forget to share &/or pin this. I appreciate it sooooo much!
If you're ready to take some serious action but don't know where to start, click here to see how I can further help you. I will show you a solid plan mapped out so you know exactly what to do to create that time and money freedom you've been craving. But you have to do the work and clear your head of the lame excuses that keep you broke.
If you've got a network marketing business & are just not sure what to do every day to attract people to your business, products, or service, I've got you, Boo. Click the image below to pick up my free daily action plan & start getting more people interested in what it is that you're doing or selling.
Time to go slay it like a ninja!
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About the Author: I'm Misty, wife to a handsome fella & momma of two amazing kiddos that I am so blessed to be able to stay at home with. I did a lot of struggling in home biz quicksand before I started researching, learning from, and invterviewing top earners to learn their exact systems for getting customers and recruiting... and began sharing their secrets. I quickly got overwhelmed trying to #DOITALL and realized home biz success boils down to having solid systems and implementing consistently. Now I'm peeling back the curtain for you so you don't have to waste time & mental calories (like I did) trying to create success while also saving your sanity. Come join the conversation in our Free Life Ninjas Community.