Depending on your use cases for your logo as well as how ambitious you are for your company, using Canva for your logo may pose problems – or not be permitted at all.

Thankfully, the details are relatively straightforward, and easy to understand.

So, I’ll be covering whether or not Canva allows you to use their service for logos, use cases that aren’t allowed, and other important information you’ll need to know!

Can You Use Canva For Your Business Logo?

Yes, Canva does allow you to use their software, as well as their design elements to create a logo for your company.

However, because the elements are shared between all Canva users, Canva has a few restrictions in place in terms of what you’re actually allowed to do.

This can severely limit how you’re able to use your logo, and should certainly be something that you consider before making your logo with Canva.

Why You Shouldn’t Use Canva For Your Business Logo

Let’s look at all of the possible issues that may come up if you create a business logo with Canva, and why you may wish to choose alternate software to design your logo instead.

Note that not all of these may be important to you, especially if your project is small. That being said, having a full picture on what’s allowed and what isn’t will allow you to make the best decisions going forward.

1. Canva’s License Prohibits You From Trademarking The Design

This is a big one.

Once your company reaches a certain size, you may wish to file a trademark for the logo.

However, if you’ve used any of Canva’s design elements (beyond basic shapes or fonts) within your design, you will not be allowed to file a trademark for your logo with the United States Patent and Trademark office (or any other trademark registrar.)

Details about this can be found in Canva’s help center article regarding the commercial usage of Canva designs.

So, while you’re allowed to use Canva elements in your logo, you will be unable to file a trademark for it.

This means you may end up needing to rebrand later on anyway.

Note that Canva does recommend and encourage people to use Canva to create mockups / inspiration for logos, that can be recreated by another designer without using Canva’s elements.

If you were to simply use Canva for inspiration / ideas, this would be completely fine!

2. The Elements Are Not Exclusive

Secondly, the elements and graphics used within your design are not exclusive, if they are part of Canva’s library.

You are unable to claim exclusivity over them, and other people are free to use them for their logos as well.

This poses a problem. Logos are meant to be unique, and help consumers to identify the company. If other people are allowed to use the exact same designs within their logo, this can lead to confusion and a poor experience for your customers.

This is best illustrated with an example. Take this example logo here:

Now, let’s see what happens when we do a reverse image search for it on Google, which will show us similar logos to this one:

And it doesn’t stop there – dozens to hundreds of people have used this design for their company’s logo!

Since a logo is meant to be unique and a core part of your brand, it doesn’t make sense to use something that can simply be reused by hundreds of other people.

Therefore, you should think twice before using Canva elements for your design – even if you’re allowed to!

3. Canva Has Limited Support For Vectors

Finally, Canva has very limited support for vector files, which are critical to have for your logo.

Vector files are a bit different than images – they can be scaled to any size without becoming blurry, and are far easier to edit in many circumstances.

If you ever plan on using your logo in print (for example, on merchandise or on product packaging), it’s critical that you have a vector file of your logo to use – commercial printers will always ask for one.

Good graphic designers will ensure you have every file format for your logo that you need.

Canva is much more limited in this regard.

Where You Should Get Your Logo Done Instead

So, if Canva should be avoided for most projects, where you should you get your logo done instead?

Really, it depends on the size of your project.

While expensive branding agencies are available for those with really large budgets, they usually aren’t worth it for companies that are just starting out.

A good compromise between something free like Canva and something ridiculously expensive for the average startup is hiring a freelancer off of a website like Upwork.

By detailing what you’re looking for and giving regular feedback during the logo creation process, you can get an excellent logo done for less than a few hundred dollars.

Plus, you’ll be able to ensure that it’s actually unique to you, and can’t be reused by someone else.

A Word About Fiverr

When many people start looking into outsourcing their logo creation, one of the first places they often turn to is a website called Fiverr.

Fiverr lets people set up jobs they offer for as little as $5, and the platform has been flooded with people offering to make company logos for new businesses.

The problem is, you generally get what you pay for. While there are a few good gigs on Fiverr, the vast majority of them aren’t even worth the time.

Here’s why.

Fiverr is a ‘race to the bottom’ so to speak – many people shopping there care only about price.

In order to make it worth their time, designers on Fiverr rush through creating logos as quickly as possible, reusing the same exact design elements, icons, graphics etc. throughout multiple logos.

This means you end up with the exact same problem you have on Fiverr – you may end up with others that have similar logos to you, and you may not be able to trademark the design because you don’t have exclusive rights.

So, Fiverr should generally be avoided when it comes to logo design!

Conclusion

According to Canva’s license documentation, you are allowed to use Canva to create your company logo.

However, just because you can doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea.

Because Canva’s graphics are non-exclusive, you cannot trademark your logo and additional companies are free to use the same elements in their designs as well. So, hiring a freelancer on Upwork to design your logo is a much wiser choice.

I hope that you’ve found this article to be helpful. If you have any other questions about logo design with Canva, please ask them using the comment form below.

Wishing you the best,

– James McAllister

The post Can You Use Canva For Your Business Logo? (Answered + Details) appeared first on James McAllister Online.

You pour your heart and soul into something, really working hard to make it into the best possible thing it can be.

You release it into the world, excited for people to find it. You just know that they’ll love it.

Except nobody ever does. Instead, everyone flocks to a competitor, to someone who clearly didn’t invest in much time and effort as you did.

Why is that?

It hurts to say it, but a good product with great marketing, will always be out a great product that isn’t marketed well.

The product is important, but in today’s busy world, the marketing is even more important.

What You Don’t Know, Can’t Help You

Here’s an interesting concept.

Content online is so abundant, that you could never consume it all even throughout multiple lifetimes. And that doesn’t even factor in everything new being published every second.

After all, we each only have a limited amount of time and attention to dedicate to any one thing.

But here’s something even more interesting – because most of what’s out there has never been marketed to you at all, you don’t even know what you’re missing.

You almost certainly haven’t discovered what would’ve become your favorite song, or movie, game, book, podcast, and so on. If you could magically consume all of them at once, your favorites list would almost certainly look different than it does now.

And some of these may have influenced your life in minor or major ways.

We design our content and our products to have the maximum impact we can on our audiences, but if they never discover it in the first place, than what is even the point? If you’re not able to get your products or ideas in front of people, you can’t help people regardless of how good it is. And this is one of the huge issues I still see – people spend all of their time and energy into improving their offering, that they never learn (or take the time to) ensure it is ever consumed by anyone.

With all things in business, there has to be a balance – without it, nothing else really matters.

Life Isn’t Fair – So Capitalize On It

Here’s another harsh reality.

Life isn’t fair. You can do everything right, and still lose out to a cheater.

When I started selling baby clothing on Amazon and had a product enter Amazon’s top 250, I got to deal with things like…

• Dozens of other people stealing our intellectual property, and copying the design.
• Other companies selling counterfeits on our listing.
• Competitors leaving bogus negative reviews, then having people mark them as ‘helpful’ so they’d appear first on Amazon’s review section.
• Competitors buying our entire inventory so we’d go out of stock, then cancelling the order right before they shipped (and repeating the process.)

And many, many other issues.

It sucks, but it’s part of the experience. It’s not only limited to products, either.

It would be nice to believe that Google for example would rank the best content the highest, but even today, Google still isn’t perfect at judging what good content is and what isn’t. They rely heavily on external signals to determine how people feel about a given page.

Even then, you could rank #1 for a keyword for years, and lose it in a matter of weeks when someone starts buying backlinks to their (clearly inferior) article.

(P.S: Google has very little idea which backlinks are purchased and which aren’t, and backlink buying is a common practice that few seem to want to talk about.)

So how do deal with this? What do you do to counteract situations like these?

The solution comes in what makes your product (or content) unique to you.

Your brand, your stories, your experiences. The aspects of it that help relate people to you, and cause them to seek you out specifically – even if there are alternatives available.

With a strong brand, you aren’t reliant on the algorithm of a company like Amazon, Google or YouTube to thrive and succeed. They can unfairly favor inferior products, and you’ll be relatively unscathed by it.

Coca-cola doesn’t make the best drinks.

Starbucks doesn’t make the best coffee.

McDonald’s doesn’t make the best burgers.

None of these brands are known for the quality of their products. They are known for their systems, and for their brand. And that’s why we go back to them over and over again.

Word-Of-Mouth – The Savior For Product-Focused Entrepreneurs

I would never encourage entrepreneurs to release offers that aren’t the best that they could be, provided they also have the resources to market it.

After all, it is most exceptional products are usually the ones that get remembered.

They’re also the ones that get marketed for you for free, from people sharing them with others.

That’s the beautiful thing about having a wonderful product, wonderful content, a wonderful brand. When people do find your company – a diamond in the rough, they stick around and spread it to others.

The good foundation that your product provides sets you up for long-term, steady, and exponential growth.

Of course, it still requires you to have an effective marketing strategy in the first place.

Conclusion

A good product and effective marketing are both important, and you can’t succeed unless you have both of them.

However, if you spend all of your time perfecting your product without ever effectively marketing it, than you’re not doing yourself (or anyone else in your favors.) A great product on its own will not bring you success.

My goal with this post was simply to serve as a reminder to spend time marketing what you create, because it really is half the battle.

Wishing you the best! To your success,

– James McAllister

The post The Best (Product, Article, Video, Podcast…) Doesn’t Always Win appeared first on James McAllister Online.

We all want to have as big of an audience as possible. We see websites with hundreds of thousands or even millions of visitors and think,

“Why couldn’t that be me? What am I doing wrong? My content is a lot better then theirs, and look how successful they are!”

This is a dangerous way to think, and can set you up for the wrong targets.

The reality is, it is possible to make 10x the income with an audience a fraction of the size, and it’s dependent on several different factors.

Let’s look over some of these now, and prove that audience size – for the most part, doesn’t matter when it comes to online business success.

Niches, Content, And The Value Of Each Visitor

To illustrate an extreme example, let’s look at two very different markets: video games, and business.

It is exceptionally easier to get Google clicks or YouTube views to gaming content. You could definitely get to 10,000 organic visitors a day on a gaming site far more quickly than you could get to even 1,000 visitors a day on a website targeting business owners.

If you take the numbers at face value, it would seem that the gaming site would appear more successful.

It isn’t until you look at the demographics and spending power do you realize how big the difference is here. To the gaming site, many of the visitors are kids with no disposable income. Even to adults, there are less opportunities available to monetize them.

(Remember, every content monetization strategy has its basis in a transaction happening somewhere – even if you monetize with display ads.)

Business owners on the other hand tend to be wealthier, spend much larger amounts of money, and there are much more opportunities to sell products and services to them – either yours, or promoting other people’s as an affiliate.

When a single visitor to your website can make you tens of thousands of dollars, each individual visitor becomes quite valuable on average – even if most people still end up spending nothing. This is why lawyers for example are willing to spend $30 or more for every single click to their website.

The difference in numbers isn’t just true on a niche level, but on a content level as well.

Content creators that publish content targeting buyer-intent topics – such as reviews about products, are likely to experience a higher return per visitor than those publishing purely informational content.

When a visitor consumes informational content, the next step is for them to end their search and go on with their lives.

When a visitor consumes buyer-intent content, the goal is that they’ll immediately purchase the product, book a consultation, start a free trial, etc – all things that increase the likelihood of money being exchanged.

Monetization Methods

In addition to your niche and the type of content you release, another major factor in determining the value of each visitor comes down to how your monetize.

Content monetization kind of works like a pyramid, both through blogging as well as releasing videos on YouTube.

Bottom: On the bottom, you monetize through something like display ads. These require the highest volume of people to make an effective living from, but the lowest amount of trust. You make money from people showing up and being exposed to ads, regardless of your relationship with that audience. It doesn’t matter if people only view a single page on your website as long as you have a steady stream of people coming in.

In this instance, you tend to need a higher volume of traffic – thousands of visitors daily to see any significant money. Ad revenue depends heavily on your niche as well – you may earn $2 per 1,000 visitors on a gaming site, but $40+ per thousand visitors in something like health or finance.

Middle: Affiliate marketing falls into this category. With monetization methods like affiliate marketing, you’ll make far more from a sale than you ever would with advertising. That being said, there needs to be some level of trust that the visitors have with you before they’re willing to buy anything, unless you target people who are already about to make their purchase.

Typically, this doesn’t require you to have any sort of ongoing relationship with the visitor, though this is beneficial. If your content is good enough and critiques the product fairly, or you’re able to present it in the best possible light, that visitor may go on to purchase without any additional reading necessary. The recognition and branding of the product you’re promoting carries a lot of weight already.

That being said, the affiliate marketers that make the most all work to build an audience they can reach out to again and again.

Top: Up at the top, we have high-ticket affiliates who specialize in selling expensive products, as well as companies selling their own products they’ve created. These marketers require a much higher degree of trust to make a sale, but when they do make that sale, they tend to keep a much higher percentage of it. It also becomes much easier to sell additional products or services to that customer again.

That is not to say that any one of these monetization models is better than the other. Selling your own products may require much less of an audience to make the same amount of money, but there is a lot more work that goes into building trust with that audience. Those looking for passive income may prefer something like display ads, using the time they would spend cultivating relationships to simply crank out more content.

Personally, I find the reward of selling products to be worth the time and skill necessary – particularly as so much of the process can be automated through systems.

For example, I have hundreds of pre-written emails in my autoresponder sequences, with sequences starting and stopping automatically based on user behavior. This was complicated to set up, but over time it turns email subscribers into buyers, and buyers into repeat purchasers.

In very profitable markets, where you are able to repeatedly contact the same sort of people, it becomes possible to make a full-time living with as little as 100 visitors a day – as long as a small percentage of those become email subscribers.

And for those that originally pursued a ‘high traffic, low profitability’ business model like display ads, introducing email marketing means you can build a massive list, very quickly – all without increasing traffic further or publishing new blog content.

Issues – And Solutions

We’ve already talked about two ways to maximize the value of each visitor – choose a more profitable niche, or focus on content that targets buyer-intent keywords.

The problem with this is that these both tend to be more competitive. There is a direct correlation between profit potential, and competition on those niches or articles.

Profitable reviews for example may require you to spend more time building links than actually writing content, which isn’t appealing to many people. I call this ‘The Competitive Link Builder Strategy‘ and some people build entire businesses around it.

Personally, it’s not for me.

I would much rather build up a massive email list, where I can provide value, build relationships and yes – promote targeted products to large groups of people at once.

Over the last 10 years, I have consistently found this to be the most powerful and profitable way to monetize an audience. Your list will grow over time as you naturally attract visitors, and you aren’t prone to Google updates or social media algorithms suppressing your content.

It is truly the best way to reach your audience over and over again, and actually have your message be delivered.

I put together a course specifically on building as large of a list as possible, and maximizing revenue from each subscriber.

The beauty in this strategy is that it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

On one hand, you could simply write an email and send it to your entire list at once when you have something to say. On the other, you can automate entire sequences – automatically promoting relevant products after subscribers have indicated interest in that subject, targeting the specific pain points or problems subscribers have indicated that they have.

When emails that you’ve written years ago are still making you consistent sales daily, it’s an incredible feeling.

I share everything I know about email marketing inside of my course, which you can find by clicking here.

Conclusion

It’s worth paying attention to your total number of visitors – but this isn’t the most important metric to track.

I’d take 1,000 visitors a day in a profitable market, over 10,000 visitors a day in one that isn’t so profitable.

Ultimately, what matters is the total amount of money that ends up in your pocket.

Thankfully, there is a lot you can do to maximize this number, even without changing niches or drastically altering your content strategy.

I hope that this article has been helpful for you. If there are any questions that I can answer, feel free to ask them in the comment form below.

To your success,

– James McAllister

The post How To Succeed In Business With Small Audiences appeared first on James McAllister Online.

As entrepreneurs, it goes without saying that we very well may be low on both of these. From the new business owner working a full-time job on top of running their business, to the cash-strapped company that can’t afford to make that extra hire, we are often spread extremely thin without much to show for it.

Unfortunately, unless we change the way that we approach business, it is easy to stay stuck in this trap forever.

Scaling Your Time Vs Scaling Your Money

The key difference between spending money to grow your business versus spending time, is that money can be scaled, but time cannot.

Regardless of how efficient you become, you will only ever have 24 hours in a day to get things done – and a lot of that will be used for things like sleeping and eating.

You could use every minute of that at maximum effort, working on meaningful tasks with perfect time management, yet time will still limit you.

Money on the other hand, can be scaled infinitely. There is no limit to how much you can spend.

Even in the instances where there needs to be human work done to move the business forward, this can be paid for in the form of new hires or by outsourcing tasks.

This is an instance where it’s important to be self-aware of your business goals. If you want to grow beyond a certain level, then you must develop profitable systems.

Companies that figure this out are the ones that skyrocket quickly – going from seemingly unknown to 7 figures out of nowhere. They have figured out how to put $1 in and get $2 back, repeating the process as long as they can.

[easy-tweet tweet=”When reinvesting back into your business, money can be scaled infinitely. Time cannot.” user=”JamesMOnline” usehashtags=”no”]

Bigger Isn’t Always Better

One of the beautiful things about online business is that you can still be extremely successful, even if you never end up hiring anyone.

Sure, you’ll always be limited by the amount of time in the day. And regardless of how skilled you are, you probably won’t ever run a company beyond a certain level.

But that’s not a bad thing.

In fact, I would wager for most of us, the headaches that running larger companies can bring is not worth it. The day-to-day work life, the problems, struggles, and attention is more of a burden than it is a blessing.

Especially since you can go so far – providing a full-time income and more, just on your own.

And even with just a few remote workers that don’t require a lot of management, you can go even farther.

Again, self-awareness is key. If your long-term goal is to run a massive company, you need to take the appropriate steps to build that foundation.

If your goal is to peacefully run something small, you need build a foundation that allows for growth without hiring a ton of employees.

[easy-tweet tweet=”There is nothing wrong with keeping your business small. In fact, for many people, this is the ideal choice.” user=”JamesMOnline” hashtags=”SmallBusiness”]

Where Should Your Money Go First?

One of the most exciting stages of running a company is when it starts to become self-sufficient. You finally have a little extra money to work with, something that can actually move you forward and take you to new heights.

Today, this doesn’t even have to be a whole lot of money. Even a few hundred dollars a month is enough to dabble in paid advertising, hire a full-time virtual assistant, or do something else that can bring you new opportunities.

Of course, the less money you have to work with, the more you have to make it count. Otherwise, you end up no better than you started off.

The key? Reinvest into something that immediately yields a positive return.

Now is not the time to throw money into long-term projects that may or may not pan out.

You want to put money in, and get it back with a profit as quick as you can.

Then do the same with that money, as long as you can.

Most often, this means doing more of whatever earned you that initial money in the first place, if there is room to scale it further.

A Personal Example

When my baby product brand was getting off the ground, we invested heavily in influencer marketing.

Manufacturing our products was cheap (because we owned the machinery and could run small batches), so the majority of our monetary costs was in shipping. To start out, we specifically worked with micro influencers that didn’t ask for any form of additional payment on top of receiving the product.

Of course, there was a large time cost to arranging these deals. Not only did we have to find the influencers, but we had to message them, follow-up, arrange details, and so on.

Since we had proven that influencer marketing was already working for us, we hired a virtual assistant to handle this entire process. They would find the influencers, arrange the deal, and add the influencer’s shipping address and product choice to our order management system. Our order fulfillment team would then mail these out just like any other order.

It became seamless, completely hands off, and removed me from being involved in the process at all, giving me all of my time back.

That $350 / month we paid for a full-time VA (who admittedly, ended up working on some other tasks as well) was well worth it. Not only did we make more money from arranging more deals, we did it at a far cheaper cost because I was no longer working on it.

Other Great Ideas

The key to scaling any system is knowing your numbers at each step of the process.

You need to know exactly how much money you’ll earn for each dollar put in. You also need to know how long it will take for that money to return to you.

For example, you may profit off of an advertisement the first day you run it.

Or, you may make just as much money by investing in another article for your blog, but it may take 6 months for that article to actually pay for itself.

When money is tight, you should prioritize low-risk, short-term projects that will return your money back to you quickly. Save the longer-term projects for a time in which you have healthy cashflow and nothing else to invest in.

Some good examples include:

• Scaling whatever’s currently working – doing more of it, or cutting costs.
• Direct response advertising. Note that PPC advertising like Facebook Ads or Google Ads often are unprofitable at first, and you may need to run many variations to end up with a profitable campaign.
• Hiring someone whose job can be directly tied to revenue. Or, hiring someone that frees up your time, so you can do work that ties to revenue.
• Education and training that can help you make more out of what you already have.

Some poor examples may include:

• Launching new product lines.
• Branding campaigns.
• New projects that do not tie in, or help lift up your original revenue source.

Calculate The Value Of Your Time

If you’re struggling with the idea of outsourcing or hiring, there’s one simple rule of thumb to follow.

Take whatever you could earn for an hour of your time – even if it is only minimum wage. If you’re able to outsource something cheaper than that price, you should always do it.

This is true even if the person you’ve hired isn’t as efficient as you are.

For example, let’s say you earned $8 an hour. You outsource a project that would normally take you 1 hour, costing you $8 in time.

You can outsource this to someone that you’d pay $2 an hour. Even if they take double the amount of time to get the work done – costing you $4 in total, then mathematically you’ve still come out ahead.

I am convinced that business owners should continue working part-time jobs if it means they’ll be able to hire 2 full-time employees from the Philippines – it just makes sense mathematically.

Outsourcing: Building Full-Time, Philippines Based Teams

If you’re a solopreneur looking to move to the next level, then you should consider making your first hire from the Philippines.

Hiring a Filipino worker can be 10x cheaper than hiring somebody from a country like the U.S or U.K, and the quality of work will be just as good.

I consider it to be one of the biggest advantages my eCommerce brands had as they were growing.

As for what role to hire, it typically depends on the type of business you’re running.

Bloggers and content creators may benefit from hiring a writer or video editor. Freelancers may benefit from hiring the same role that they perform now, moving from a solo freelancer to a small agency.

Most businesses however can benefit a lot from a virtual assistant – somebody who frees up your time, by taking care of all the small tasks that you don’t really think about. Some examples include…

• Customer service
• Posting on social media
• Email outreach
• Data entry
• Any task that can be done solely on the internet.

Think about it – how much do you do each day that could be done by someone else, if you only took a moment to show them?

I’ve put together a course on hiring from the Philippines, which you can learn about by clicking here.

With over 50 video lessons, it contains everything I know about recruiting the best possible talent for the best possible price.

Conclusion

Failing to reinvest back into your business will severely hamper its growth.

While you will only ever have 24 hours in a day, there is no limit to how much money you can pour back into your business. It is the act of reinvestment that turns small hobbies into massive companies, and the key is creating profitable systems.

I’d love to learn more about your business, and what your immediate plans are to help it grow. Leave a comment below and let me know.

To your success,

– James McAllister

The post If You Want To Scale Quickly, You Need To Master Paid Systems appeared first on James McAllister Online.

You probably already know everything that you need to succeed.

And if you’re like most people, there’s a chance you’re not actually doing it each day.

I had an interesting realization the other day. When progress comes to us slower than we feel that it should, our natural inclination is to look for the reason why.

We want to know what we’re doing wrong, and why the results are not showing up.

By doing so, we jump on opportunity after opportunity, but never stick with any of them long enough to actually see them through.

The funny thing is, there are no secrets. Chances are, you’ve already been told everything you need to find some initial success with your brand. I call these actions ‘The Basics’, and I’m going to share them with you here.

Why Newbies Sometimes Beat Those With Experience

As a business coach and teacher of marketing courses, I like to pay close attention as to why students succeed, and why some never seem to (despite how much extra guidance I provide to them.)

There’s an interesting pattern that I’ve noticed.

People who are starting from scratch – who are early in their business career, find success – sometimes even more frequently, than experienced businesspeople.

In fact, the more failures an entrepreneur has had, the more likely they are to jump from opportunity to opportunity.

If you think about it, it makes sense. They want to avoid wasting time, only to be disappointed. They are so desperate to finally see some results, they jump on anything new that seems promising.

Newbies on the other hand, don’t know any other way. They take the material to heart, and execute on it consistently over time. They have not been exposed to other distractions, other opportunities that pull them away from the basics and the other unique strategies that I share with them.

I believe that the basic activities that I’m about to share with you are the core foundation of any successful personal brand (and many non-personal brands also.)

If you follow them, the results will come. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t focus on other projects, but you should always make sure that the basics are taken care of first.

Without any further ado, here they are.

Action #1: Consistent Posting On Your Main Content Hub

Typically, I am talking about a blog, YouTube channel, or podcast.

Wherever the majority of people are exposed to your in-depth, meaningful content.

I believe that it’s very important to have a platform to connect with your audience on a much deeper level, than something like a social media post is capable of.

Building connections as a personal brand owner is all about giving people a deeper look into your lives, thoughts, and values. Telling stories, and educating your audience through the valuable content you share over time.

It’s certainly possible to do this on social media (Instagram Stories are a particularly powerful medium) but longer content is so much more effective for building relationships.

Blogging is wonderful because you truly own the platform – it can never be taken away from you.

Getting in front of your target audience regularly through Google also helps to keep you top-of-mind, demonstrate your expertise, and provide consistent value over time.

Action #2: Responding To All Interactions Daily

One of the biggest mistakes personal brands make, is that they take their audience for granted.

We can become so focused on growing our following, our viewership or our subscribers, that we ignore those that we already have.

However, it is your existing following that will be the most valuable to your business. These are the people that already decided that they liked you enough to engage with you further.

Remember that personal branding is all about relationships, and these relationships must go both ways.

Regularly interacting with your community – in a timely and thoughtful manner, is what turns people from casual followers into raving fans.

Always respond to all emails and social comments on a daily basis – ideally, multiple times throughout the day.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Regularly interacting with your community – in a timely and thoughtful manner, is what turns people from casual followers into raving fans.” user=”JamesMOnline” usehashtags=”no”]

Action #3: Active Networking

We all know that we’re supposed to be networking, but few people are actually proactive about it.

Active networking means that you are the one actually reaching out and forming connections with new people.

You aren’t sitting around waiting for people to talk to you. You’re deciding to find new people that you want to connect with, and taking steps to escalate that relationship.

This can be in the form of blog comments, reaching out through email, engaging in discussion, and so on.

The quickest way to grow as a personal brand (without paying astronomical amounts of money) is to leverage the work other people have done building their audiences.

This doesn’t mean you become selfish, and seek connections only to get something.

However, networking brings incredible opportunities that nothing else can, and is worth partaking in daily.

I believe that even if you reach out to just one contact a day – either someone new, or an existing contact, you can change your life in a matter of months.

Action #4: Daily Social Media

The problem with posting content to your main platform, is that it’s hard to create fantastic pieces on a daily basis.

And to be honest, not everybody wants to consume a huge piece of content every single day.

This is why social media is important.

For personal brands, social media accomplishes a few important things that blogs, YouTube channels or podcasts usually don’t:

1. They keep you top-of-mind, and remind your audience that you exist.
2. You’re able to consistently show them the value you and your products provide. This allows you to promote without coming across as salesy, allowing followers to buy at the moment they feel ready to.
3. You get to share tidbits of information with them, that help build the relationship further. Because it only takes a few seconds to see a post, it may actually be consumed in full.
4. It builds community. Your audience will grow exponentially over time.

Frequency matters. Social media provides a platform where you can get in front of the same people constantly, for free.

Action #5: Email

Despite the power of social media, it still does not come close to the power of email for actually selling products.

No platform is more intimate than email. It is the ultimate relationship-building and sales tool.

For most personal brands, email will make them more money than anything else.

More than their blog. More than social media.

In fact, it’s not even close.

There’s a reason I push my email marketing training so heavily. When you master email marketing, you can practically generate money for yourself any time that you want.

Therefore, most of my personal branding efforts are centered around the following two things:

1. Getting people from other platforms to sign up to my mailing list.
2. Using the other platforms (like my blog or social media) to build relationships, demonstrate credibility, and provide value to my email subscribers.

Although you can create lengthy automations to send out emails to each subscriber as they sign up, eventually your automation will finish.

At that point, you’ll need to write out broadcast emails that go out to your list.

Depending on your industry, this can be as infrequent as once every two weeks to several times a day.

Personally, I have found ~3x a week to be my sweet spot.

When marketers say the money is in the list, they aren’t kidding.

Action #6: Community Interaction

Never forget that behind each visitor, is an actual human being with thoughts and feelings.

If you have any free time and you’re not absolutely swamped with work, than you should be interacting with people one-on-one.

I get it. One-on-one interaction is not scaleable. This also means that few people actually care to do it.

However, these meaningful interactions can build the foundation of your community.

They say if you can create 1,000 true fans – people who will support you in everything you do, buy every product, and spread the word about you, then you’re set.

If you’re starting from zero, then 1,000 sounds like a lot. In reality, that’s only 3 people a day for a year.

So what does this look like? Here are a few examples:

1. Jumping in on social media conversations. Asking questions, and taking a real interest in what they’re saying. Not just leaving a comment, but starting to actually talk with people.
2. Answering questions. Quora and Reddit are both great platforms for this. It’s also a great way to demonstrate your expertise and provide value, which can directly lead to sales (even if you never promote a product.)
3. Joining forums and social media posts. Posting in them consistently, so people actually begin to recognize you as a community member and learn a bit about you. It is important that you appear frequently enough to actually make an impression on someone’s mind.

This strategy is one of the most effective things you can do to grow your audience, but nobody talks about it because it isn’t exciting at all.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Never forget that behind each visitor, is an actual human being with thoughts and feelings.” user=”JamesMOnline” hashtags=”DigitalMarketing, Blogging”]

Action #7: Connecting It All Together

For any of these to be effective, you need to have a funnel that you’re moving people through.

There should always be a clear next step.

And while you’ll never get everybody to become a customer, they can still help your brand throughout each stage of the process.

Each channel that you interact with people on, should have a clearly-defined goal.

With a blog, it may be encouraging someone to sign up for an email list. Then on that email list, encouraging people to follow you on social media, subscribe to your podcast and so on.

For community interaction, it may be to have someone become a follower, or visit your website for the first time.

While networking, it could be to start a joint venture, earn a guest post, or share ideas with someone.

The point is, nothing should be isolated. They should all work together in a system, so each builds upon each other.

This ensures that you not only reach as many people as possible, but you’re able to strengthen the relationship with each person that you meet.

When you’re able to achieve this, selling becomes easy.

Conclusion

Online success does not come from some ‘hidden secret.’

Everything I’ve shared here are things that you’ve likely heard before. They aren’t unique or exciting. However, these are the core foundation of successful personal brands.

The key here is consistency. If your goal is for people to eventually become customers, it requires you to execute this strategy over a consistent period of time. Doing this for a week isn’t good enough.

Follow through with this before trying other things out, and you’ll have the foundation you need to grow and thrive.

I hope that you’ve found this article helpful. I’d love to hear what your biggest struggles are, and how I can help.

To your success,

– James McAllister

The post Branding Success Comes From Sticking To The Basics appeared first on James McAllister Online.

What price would you pay for ‘success’? Would you trade your entire life away for a chance to make it, even if it left you miserable, and you were working in a company that wasn’t right for you?

Just like a job, it doesn’t make sense to work on a company that doesn’t bring you satisfaction, even if it makes you a lot of money.

This year, I had to make a very tough decision, and confront some harsh realities.

After nearly 5 years, I have stepped away from my eCommerce companies to return back to my roots – building and marketing online businesses, that don’t require my constant presence in order to grow and thrive. I’ll be providing strategic guidance to the new people running it, but it will no longer be my day-to-day focus.

I believe that it’s possible to build a business that helps to support your entire life, rather than consuming it.

When you realize that your business model is simply not going to fit into the life that you want and there’s no way you can make it work, it’s important to recognize that and make the appropriate changes.

You Invest In Your Business – Why Not Your Life?

We all know the struggles that businesses face when they’re getting started, and money is scarce.

But have you ever thought about what problems would arise once the business starts to succeed?

When my eCommerce brands started, they fit in well with my life. Once a week I would make products – only several hundred at a time, and send them into fulfillment centers so they could be sent out to customers. I was still working on online projects – like this site and a few others, while I was doing that and I was able to manage everything with plenty of time to spare.

Then it became twice a week, and I had to start shifting around appointments and plans to accommodate it.

Every other day, and the time I would spend dedicating to new projects was no longer there. If I didn’t ship products out, sales would stop and the company would die.

Eventually it was every day. Then I started hiring – which brought forth a lot of extra managerial work, as the company grew and grew.

I learned during this time a lot about myself. I became aware that I really hate juggling too many balls at once. I love all of the employees I’ve ever had, but between managing them, dealing with suppliers, product shipments going in and out, supply chain management, and a million other things entrepreneurs running this type of company have to deal with on a daily basis, I started enjoying it less and less.

At one point I realized that I would legitimately be happier working a 9-5 job – something I never desired to do. At the very least,  I could come home from managing headaches and be done with it for a little while.

I realized that while I was building my business, and achieving success like I always wanted, I was doing so at the expense of my life.

And that trade-off is never worth it.

So, I decided about 3 months ago that I was done.

• No longer saying no to family or friends that wanted to spend time with me.
• No longer working 40-hour shifts (not 40-hour weeks, 40-hour straight shifts) causing my mental and physical health to deteriorate.
• No longer sleeping on half-deflated air mattresses on my office floor, because the damn things would get a hole every week.

The issue with my business model was that I couldn’t walk away without the company falling apart. When I was working, 90% of the time wasn’t actually moving me forward anywhere – it was only keeping me right where I was, and ensuring at the very least, I didn’t go backwards.

I think that’s a lot of what made it so miserable – the pain was not moving me forward, for the most part. It was just preventing things from getting worse.

This is no way to live your life, though.

Hard work is necessary to grow a business, but you do not need to throw everything else away in order to ‘make it.’

If your business model is so flawed that it consumes your entire life – or is on track to, it’s important to make the key changes before it’s too late. I can confidently say that the experience I went through was not worth it, despite the incredible number of lessons and experience gained.

I have ran successful businesses before these ones, so I understand a few things:

• It is possible to run businesses that you can completely step away from, yet they can still grow without you.
• It is possible to set up your business, so you’re working on the areas that you’re best at or enjoy the most.
• The sacrifices required to succeed do not have to be as significant as some gurus claim, unless you’re trying to build a billion dollar company or something. Realistically, this doesn’t apply to 99% of us.
• A business that allows you to remain healthy, partake in your favorite hobbies, and spend time with those you love – while still covering all of your financial needs, will bring most people more satisfaction than a business that simply makes a ton of money.

If your business isn’t serving the overall vision you have for your life, then what is the point?

I legitimately believe that putting yourself before your business ultimately leads to a larger amount of success in the long run.

You will work harder, more productively, and more creatively when you are happy, well-rested and feel satisfied with the job that you’re doing. You’ll also be less likely to suffer from burn out, you’ll work more consistently, and you’ll be able to focus on projects long enough to see them through to success.

Your level of sleep affects dozens of mental functions that are at play each and every minute you’re at work.

The food you eat, and the exercise you do (or don’t do) has drastic effects on how you feel throughout the day, and the amount of energy you have.

Your mood not only plays a part in everything you do, but also affects everyone else around you. It not only affects your productivity and morale, it affects your employees’ as well.

By failing to invest in yourself – with downtime, positive habits, and partaking in activities that make you happy, you aren’t doing yourself – or anyone else, any favors.

Think about it this way – you probably have periods where you’re extremely productive – getting more done in 1 hour, than you sometimes do in 3 hours.

By setting yourself up for success, you spend more time in that productive state, and less time working aimlessly without getting much done.

This is why some people are able to get more done in 4 hours of work each day, than those working 12 hours or longer.

Conclusion

I’m very interested to see how this upcoming year is going to play out, and how things will change for me on a personal and professional level.

In some ways, I feel like a shell of my former self. In other ways, I feel stronger and more empowered than ever.

I have so many hopes and dreams for what my life will be like, and for the first time in a while I feel like I’ll be back to making real progress on those.

If you’re reading this and your story shares any similarity at all with my own, please feel free to reach out to me. Looking back, I knew the warnings were there and I ignored them. Maybe if I would have made changes earlier on, I wouldn’t have spent so much time, to ultimately move on a few years later.

In any case, here’s hoping the best days for us are ahead!

– James McAllister

The post Your Company, Or Your Life? appeared first on James McAllister Online.

Two people, with the same exact resources – time, money, knowledge, etc can take the same exact business, yet experience drastically different results.

Sadly, the majority of us make progress a lot slower than we could be – even if our time or budgets are limited.

Why is that?

Most frequently, it comes down to mindset.

The average person experiences thousands of thoughts every hour. What we allow ourselves to think and believe has a lot more of an effective than we realize. Positivity, optimism and self-belief will not magically make you successful, but there are real self-limiting beliefs that affect business owners, and have direct, measurable negative consequences.

In this article, I’m going to address some of these limiting beliefs with you – and show you how reframing some of your thoughts can yield tangible improvements for your company. Funny enough, these are all thoughts I’ve had myself at some point!

1. I Can Do It Alone

You shouldn’t feel bad for being a solopreneur – the only person working within your company. At the same time, you probably shouldn’t feel good about it either.

Believing that you need to – or you should be running your business by yourself is one of the most common thing I hear from new entrepreneurs. However, this belief almost always stems from either pride or insecurity.

If you’re a solopreneur, you may feel that you can’t trust anyone else to work with the same level of quality and care that you put into your company. You may fear them making mistakes, or not doing things as good as you can do them. To some degree, that may actually be true.

The problem is that when you’re by yourself, there are quite literally a number of limits that you will never be able to surpass.

There are only 24 hours in a day. No matter how hard or how efficiently you’re able to utilize those hours, you will always have a limited amount.

On the other hand, you can scale other people’s time limitlessly.

Sure, your first hire may not be able to do the job quite as good as you can. But what if they could do it 80% as well? Wouldn’t that still save you at least a little bit of time, allowing you to focus on something more important?

When it comes down to it, a business owners work in the long-term is not to carry out all of the day-to-day work, but to develop profitable systems.

If you can pay an employee to deliver more value than what you are paying for them, you have a foundation for scaling that you would never be able to achieve on your own.

You do not have to do this alone, nor should you.

If you want to get started with your first hire, I highly recommend bringing on a virtual assistant from the Philippines. Full-time assistants can be hired for as little as $4-500 / month, and will free up time for you to focus on improving your business’ bottom line.

2. I Need Total Control

This one ties in heavily with the last one.

As entrepreneurs, we start our own businesses because we want to be in control of our own destiny. We want to live life on our own terms, doing what we truly care about, rather than being a cog in someone else’s vision.

The problem is, we cannot possibly control every little aspect of our company. This is true even if you are the only person running it.

We cannot control the choices of our customers, our vendors, our network, family, or the economy. Even if you do everything right, one or more of these things may not go in your favor.

This is a hard fact to accept, but ultimately we must if we want to be able to grow. I understand that, because I have been there.

In 2016, I lost a child I had been taking care of, and desperately wanted to adopt. It was a very difficult time for me – by far the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. To be completely honest, I feel fortunate to still be alive.

One of the consequences of this was that I became completely obsessed with control. I could not accept that somebody else had the power to take (what felt like) my daughter away from me. Even when I was ready to pursue entrepreneurship again, I sought control over everything, at all costs.

But that is a problem.

As we’ve already discussed, fear and insecurity prevent you from being willing to delegate. It also forces you to spread yourself too thin – trying to involve yourself and influence the outcome of every little aspect of your business. This just isn’t possible.

At the same time, the desire for control prevents people from taking risks, in which they can’t directly influence the outcome. Controlling people cannot stand to be wrong, and have something go against their expectations.

When you can accept that some things will happen – regardless of whether or not you played in a part in it, your mind becomes free.

Then, you can make much better decisions.

3. A Belief Regarding Profit And Budget

Out of all the revenue that your business generates, how much gets put back into the business?

Having coached so many entrepreneurs over the years, I very rarely see clients strike this balance right when we first start working together.

In fact, they usually fall into one of two extremes – either they pour every spare dollar back into the company (leaving nothing for themselves), or they take every dollar that they can out, stagnating the company’s growth and jeopardizing its long-term health.

Both of these are bad, but for different reasons.

Pouring Everything Back Into The Company

At first glance, this may seem like the smart and wise thing to do. Surely re-investing back into the company is the best way to scale it quickly, right?

To a degree, this is true. Some additional profit should rightly go back into the business, scaling systems that are working and developing new projects. I don’t think many people would argue with that.

However, once your company has healthy revenue and has actually gotten off the ground a little bit, re-investing every dollar points to a problem.

Many business owners think that more revenue is the answer to all their problems – that they will be able to start paying themselves if they just make a little more money. Unfortunately, as more money comes in, the business owner takes on new expenses, and ultimately never ends up getting paid.

If your system is profitable, there is already money there for you take without stifling your company’s growth.

Believing that every dollar needs to be reinvested for your company to survive, probably means that there are structural changes that need to be made.

Because let’s face it – there will always be something new for your company to spend money on. At the same time, you should also be able to start projects in a lean matter.

If you want to break this cycle, I highly recommend checking out the book ‘Profit First‘ on Amazon. I’ve recommended it to countless entrepreneurs who feel stuck and unable to take profit out of their business, and it has helped them tremendously.

Taking Everything Out Of The Company

This one is just as bad.

Taking every spare dollar out of your company indicates that you aren’t sure how to multiply money within your company, or you don’t believe enough in your company to justify the reinvestment. Because if you knew with certainty that you could double your money by keeping it within your business, most rational people would pursue that.

The natural state of a business is to grow, and that comes most easily when reinvesting a bit of the profit.

As with most things in business, there must be a balance.

4. My Product Or Service Isn’t Good Enough

We all want to make our customers as happy as possible.

Sometimes however, we take this too far. And in fact, many entrepreneurs never even end up launching their product or service because they fear it isn’t good enough.

Of course, the only way to know that for sure is to test it out in the marketplace.

We are our own worst critics, and being experts of our craft, we will always see room for improvement in one area or another.

We may not feel that our product is worth the price that we are charging for it. However, our actual customers may be buying for different reasons than you would expect, and they may judge the product’s value differently than you or I would.

Your product or service does not have to be perfect to get started. Even if you do feel it reaches perfection, your customers may not feel the same way.

Therefore, it’s much smarter to build your product up to the point where it can deliver on its promises – then tweak and improve upon it as you receive feedback from actual paying customers.

This way, you build products that your customers actually want.

5. I Won’t Make It

This is one of the hardest ones to address.

It’s also one of the deadliest, because it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you genuinely believe that you won’t make it, why bother trying, right? You may still put the hours in, but without the same level of excitement, gusto, and creativity that your business could actually benefit from.

What you pay attention to and believe in, grows. Not because of magic or the ‘law of attraction’, but because you work longer, harder, and more efficiently without becoming burned out.

When you believe that your actions will yield the results you’re hoping for, you are more likely to give it your all.

The opposite is also true. If you don’t believe in your business, you will often do the bare-minimum you need to keep it afloat, but rarely any more than that.

This is why understanding your own personal psychology can be so beneficial. What motivates you? What events cause you to believe in your business more? What events take away that belief?

By having a thorough understanding on how your mind works and what things shape it, you can begin taking steps to improve it.

Success Simplified – Building A Mindset For Success

When I realized that it was my mindset holding me back from business growth, a lightbulb went off in the head.

I already knew all of the tactics and strategies I needed to grow. The problem was – at that time, I was not the right person to utilize them.

I poured all of my spare time into studying how the world’s most successful people think. How do they approach problems? How do they move past hardships? How do they stay so motivated and continue to accomplish so much, despite the fact they no longer need to work?

More importantly, how could I use all of this information to develop tangible improvements for my company and for my life?

I’ve compiled all of my research and lessons into my success mindset course, which I’m currently selling for $97.

Out of all the courses I sell on my website, I consider this one to be probably the most important. All of the strategies and tactics in the world do not matter if your mindset is broken. The importance of mindset is still dramatically underestimated.

Again, two people – with the exact same company and the exact same resources, can have drastically different results solely based on their mindset.

Learn more about the course by clicking here!

Conclusion

Although this list of limiting beliefs certainly isn’t complete, I consider these five to be some of the most important.

If you’ve told yourself any of these things before, I’d love to hear more about it. Our own thoughts can hurt or help us more than we realize, and gaining control over them is almost like its own superpower.

Share your story with me through the comment form below, or get in touch with me through email.

I look forward to hearing from you!

To your success,

– James McAllister

The post 5 Limiting Beliefs That Hold Entrepreneurs Back From Success appeared first on James McAllister Online.

There are new things to do, constant milestones being hit, and constant excitement for what lies ahead.

As difficult as it can be to get a new business off the ground, and entirely new set of challenges start to appear when the business does start becoming successful – challenges that most people would never think of when they first launch their company.

I recently came to the conclusion that in order to live the life I wanted, it was time to get rid of my eCommerce companies – companies that pulled in millions of dollars in sales, in order to focus on my online ventures full-time.

In this article, I would like to share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned, things to watch out for, and how you can structure your business to ensure it’s going to give you the ideal life you want.

Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much money you make if your business consumes your entire life.

And that is only one of the many lessons I’ve had to learn the hard way.

Backstory

I have been running websites for about 10 years now, with blogging being my core focus.

My biggest goal in life is to be able to have children – and actually have time to spend with them each day. It means more to me than any material success in the world possibly could. Everything I’ve done in my life, I’ve tried to set up to help me achieve this one core goal.

When I lost the child I was taking care of (and hoping to adopt) back in 2015, it emotionally wrecked me. I seriously did not think I would recover from that, and consider it a blessing that I’m still alive today. Words cannot describe the amount of sheer pain I felt after such a terrible loss.

Time seems to heal all wounds though, and after a while I began looking for a new opportunity to throw myself into – mainly to distract myself from the pain I was feeling at the time.

I learned how to sell on Amazon, and delve into the world of eCommerce. It took off way quicker than expected, and I felt like I had to step away from here in order to focus on it more.

Eventually, things settled out a bit – my number of employees had grown, we did not need to fight for every dollar, and I returned here as it was perhaps my favorite business I’ve ever ran.

The problem was that both projects began to grow further, and now my attention was being spread to thin.

I’d have extra time to work here for a few days, and I’d crank out a lot of content, and do a lot of marketing. Then a new problem would pop up with the eCommerce brands, and I could hardly focus on my work here for weeks at a time.

Consistency is an incredibly key component of successful online businesses, and I was severely lacking it.

The simple fact that I would get a lot done one day, and then disappear for several after that, almost made any work I did seem pointless. I was not consistent enough to have any real effect.

As I’ve worked with bloggers and entrepreneurs over the past, I’ve seen this is an incredibly common issue.

Here’s The Problem

What I’ve come to realize more and more as the years have passed, is that the business model of my company was fundamentally flawed.

Our situation was a little bit unique – we took a hybrid of both a factory and a retailer. Our products were made-to-order, and we bought very expensive machinery to make the products ourselves instead of buying completed products from a factory.

This meant that as we sold more, we had to put more time into make the products.

So we hired people. And I thought I was set.

I no longer had to spend as much time actually making the products, although I spent a ton of time doing that.

However, now I had to deal with the unique issues that strike companies beginning to grow a bit. Between being needed to help employees, manage inventory (over 100,000 SKUs!) suppliers, etc. it all became too much.

At least if I was going to continue working here.

Now I know that I could have brought someone else in to take over some of this work, but it was not financially feasible – especially as we had large amounts of cash tied up in inventory, equipment, and other necessities needed to continue operations.

By the time I wrote this post talking about hating your own company, I knew I wanted out.

Analyze Yourself And Your Company – Is It All Flawed?

Some people love the chaos of running a company like this.

It was very profitable, and as a 24-year-old it’s a lot of money to see coming into your bank account each week.

However, when you really think about it, this entire choice of business model was flawed – at least for what I wanted in my life.

It doesn’t matter how successful the company became – I was always going to be needed for operations to continue.

I took one short break throughout all the years I’ve been running it, and even then I was needing to remote connect to the office computers to help out.

The first real vacation of my life. I vividly remember being at Disneyland, having to walk 30 minutes back to the hotel, take care of the problem, and walk back.

And that’s when I realized that I didn’t own the company.

The company owned me.

More importantly, I realized I would never be happy unless I was running a business that I could comfortably step away from, that would continue running fine without me. Even if it was just for a couple days. What’s the point of running a company, if you have even less freedom than a full-time job would, right?

I love running businesses, and maybe you do too. But you’ve really got to take a look at your business model and ask yourself, what happens when it grows? What will your day-to-day life look like? What new challenges will present themselves? How will you handle them? Will you still love your business then?

If you take the, ‘I’ll figure it out later’ mindset, it’s very easy to feel trapped in a company that is no longer serving you. It’s very easy to worry about what will happen if your company fails.

Not nearly as many people worry about what will happen if it succeeds.

Going Forward

I feel incredibly happy to share that I’ll be outsourcing the full production and order fulfillment of all the eCommerce company’s products going forward, and will fully transition away from it by the end of this year.

While I’ll still be involved in some of the marketing and strategy side of things, another person will be taking over all of the management. We’ll take a huge hit to profit, but it’s better to make less money in a business you love, than more money in a business you hate.

More importantly, this will free up time for me to work on my online ventures, such as the work I’m doing here.

I’d love to lay out a huge announcement for what I have planned and when, but I have a bad habit of getting ahead of myself. A podcast and membership site are both likely, but I’ll need to make sure that I don’t make the mistake of overcommitting before anything is set in stone. I also plan to drastically increase the amount of content I release.

As for the rest of the year, well – things will probably continue to be inconsistent, if I’m brutally honest. Q4 is always the busiest time of the year for eCommerce, and I also have to figure out how to essentially shut down and sell off everything.

To tell you the truth, I’m a little scared about it all – but I’m also very excited for what lies ahead.

After a lot of reflection and a lot of long talks with friends, I now know this is the right thing to do.

Conclusion

Thank you for taking some time out of your busy day to read my story.

Although I spent years of my life to build my eCommerce companies to what they’ve become, I do not have any regrets. I have learned so many valuable lessons, and gained so much valuable experience that I can’t wait to share with you next year.

If there’s one thing I’d like you to take away from my experience, it’s this – you started your business because you had a vision for what you wanted your life to look like. Never let your company pull you away from that – even if the money comes easy.

Determined entrepreneurs like us will succeed in the end regardless.

So don’t be afraid to do what’s hard, so you can do what’s actually right for you.

– James McAllister

Note: Customer support is completely uninterrupted during this time and all inquiries will still receive a timely response from myself or a staff member.

The post Build Your Business Around Your Life – Not The Other Way Around appeared first on James McAllister Online.

When running a company, it’s easy to get caught up in systems in processes. Numbers and figures. The day-to-day problems that need to be resolved.

And as your company grows, this problem usually only gets worse. You become so wrapped up in the immediate needs of your company, that you’re unable to step back and see the bigger picture. And unfortunately, this type of mindset often becomes reflected in the company’s leadership – which has an even more devastating effect on employees.

Recently, I went through a very stressful period for one of my eCommerce brands. Orders surged as buyers switched to online shopping shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began, and it became incredibly overwhelming for my staff and I.

In fact, it became so stressful, I began to wonder why I was putting myself through this.

My employees were stressed out as well.

To make things even worse, we weren’t sure when there would be an end in sight. While orders continued to increase, we also were unable to hire, and had to change systems around to accommodate social distancing requirements as best as we could.

In other words, we had more work to do, but a less efficient way to actually carry it out.

Finding Meaning In Suffering

I recently read back through the brilliant book, ‘Man’s Search For Meaning‘ by Viktor E. Frankl. Viktor was a psychiatrist that described his experiences and observations while forced to work in a Nazi concentration camp.

One of his key observations was that people who were able to find some sort of meaning to their suffering fared much better than those who found their suffering meaningless.

Now obviously, what my team and I went through is not remotely close to the horrors experienced by Viktor Frankl. However, with this concept in mind, I tried to see if I could find a way to apply it anyway.

I began to look for ways to show my employees – and myself for that matter, how the work we were doing actually had a real impact on actual people’s lives.

We primarily sell baby clothing, with cute or funny designs on the garments. Many of our shoppers are parents, but many of them are also buying the products as gifts.

I reminded my employees that there were thousands of babies wearing our clothing at that very moment. That the designs give parents another reason to smile every day. That gift shoppers were able to form better friendships by choosing the perfect gift. That countless parents have used our clothing for pregnancy announcements or gender reveals, moments that they would remember forever.

I sought out and compiled a list of some of our most recent reviews and my favorite customer stories. I found pictures and video of our products on Instagram, and helped employees to truly recognize that they made these moments possible. Notable example below:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Scary Mommy (@scarymommy) on Mar 7, 2020 at 11:35am PST

We weren’t just manufacturing and shipping products. In this new frame of mind, we were helping customers to create a beautiful moment for themselves and their families.

Which, let me tell you, is a lot more motivating than simply ‘operating a heat press’ or ‘sealing boxes.’

Look for opportunities to show yourself and your team the true impact their role has – how it fits into the overall bigger picture. Even the smallest roles have their value.

Remember, employees with a sense of purpose and meaning will be more motivated and more productive – while also feeling better about their job as a whole.

Quick Exercise

I’d love it if you’d share with me a story about how your work has impacted somebody else’s life, and how you felt when you first heard that story. I’ll be looking to feature a couple of them in a future blog post or video.

If you don’t have a story you’ve received from one of your customers, share with me what you do and how it’s improving the lives of others – even if its only a small way.

I look forward to hearing from you!

– James McAllister

The post Your Impact – A Look Into The Lives Of Your Customers appeared first on James McAllister Online.

During times of uncertainty, it’s common for business owners to begin to panic.

Revenue begins to drop, deals fall through, and the expectations you had for your company in the upcoming months are suddenly put into jeopardy.

It’s a scary time, and many entrepreneurs handle it so poorly, that they suffer permanent damage as a result – if they manage to stay in business at all.

However, it certainly doesn’t have to be this way.

Recessions are an inevitably, but they do not always have to be considered scary news. In fact, more so than anything, recessions can provide business owners with opportunities.

While businesses are falling left and right, you have the capability to grow through the next recession – capitalizing on the poor decisions of your competitors.

However it takes a well thought out, well executed strategy in order to work.

In this article, I’d like to share with you 5 steps you must take if you want to thrive during the next recession, and share some advice on how to begin implementing your strategy today.

1. Slow Down, and Start Preparing In Advance

During times of crisis, people often engage in emotionally impulsive, irrational behavior. They make lasting decisions in a matter of moments, that can quite easily screw them over later.

I’ve been guilty of this myself. I have cancelled projects on a whim and lost a lot of money as a result, all because I’ve failed to be level-headed at crucial moments.

Don’t act like this. Few decisions need to be made so quickly.

Slow down, and calm down. Don’t make extreme decisions like letting staff go, cutting important budgets, or selling off assets on a whim. Think things through logically.

This is made much easier if you already have a plan to combat recessions in advance. By developing a framework and creating steps to protect your business right now, you’ll know exactly what steps to consider taking. You’ll also be able to make better predictions about what’s to come, and have more realistic expectations on your company’s performance throughout the recession.

In any case, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

2. Double Down On Profitable Advertising

One of the primary reasons that businesses suffer during recessions is that they go into complete conservation mode  – cutting costs so drastically, that they even kill what’s making them money in the first place.

Logically this doesn’t seem to make sense, but fear and panic can take a real toll on entrepreneurs.

If there are only a few things to avoid cutting during recessions, one of them has got to be marketing.

It’s easy to believe that people aren’t going to be interested in buying what you have to offer, but cutting marketing budget brings you a couple of critical problems:

1. It deprives you of revenue in the short-term, that may help keep your company alive.
2. Consumers (and your existing customers) forget about you, and you jeopardize your long-term market share.

Your existing customer base are your greatest tool to survive a recession comfortably, so that last point is pretty important.

Maintain your marketing while so many other companies are cutting it, and you’ll surely come out ahead once the recession is over.

3. Ensure You’ve Hired The ‘Right People’

Recessions aren’t just taxing on business owners, they’re taxing for the employees as well.

Not everyone is up for the challenge of thriving during an economic recession. Morale and productivity may even drop, as employees fear their jobs may ultimately be at risk anyway.

As a leader, it is your job to inspire your employees and unite them towards a common goal. However, it’s also your job to ensure you’ve hired people that are willing to give 110% for your team as well.

It’s obvious when employees don’t truly care about their company, and instead focus only on their paycheck. If your company is made up of a lot of these people, it is particularly vulnerable during a recession, where everyone may be required to work harder only to achieve the same results.

During the Great Recession, it wasn’t the companies that laid off the most employees that did best – it were the ones that utilized the right employees to drive operational efficiency.

Prioritize talented people with the right mindset towards their work – even if it costs your company more money in the short-term.

Bonus Tip: If you’re looking to hire your next staff member as cheaply as possible, I highly recommend looking for roles in your company that can be outsourced to workers in the Philippines.

4. Use Recessions To Try Out New Systems

Some of the world’s greatest innovations came during the toughest of times. However, you don’t need to invent something that changes the world in order to innovate within your own company.

Recessions are the perfect opportunity to try things differently, in an attempt to reduce cost, increase output, and become more efficient overall.

When things are going well for your company, it is easy to relax, and continuing to do whatever is working at that moment. However, this doesn’t always mean you’re utilizing your resources to their maximum effectiveness.

Consider trying new things out, and implementing low-cost systems that you previously cast aside during periods of prosperity.

Even something as simple as developing software for routine business tasks can ultimately save a ton of time and money, allowing you to run your company even better when the recession subsides.

5. Decrease Reliance On Any One Thing

I’ve shared a lot of important advice throughout this article so far, but none if it matters if you’ve already given up control of your company.

Businesses leave themselves vulnerable when they rely too much on any one thing. This could be a single supplier, a single revenue stream, or a single client. If you’re a startup with a limited runway, it could also be a single source of funding or limited access to credit.

As I write this article, the world is experiencing the outbreak of COVID-19. Inside of various entrepreneurial circles I like to spend time in, I am watching business owners panic – not because their customers are failing to buy, but because their supply chain has been completely disrupted by the current events.

They were dependent on a single supplier in order to serve their customers, and now can’t meet even a fraction of the demand that they need to.

When I wrote my article on recession-proofing your small business, the one vital thing that I failed to mention was diversification.

Never give up your company’s leverage. I started this article by stating a scary reality – deals fall apart, and expectations crumble during periods of uncertainty.

Don’t become a casualty of somebody else’s doing.

Conclusion

Recessions are only scary if you allow them to be.

Whether you like it or not, your company will be faced with an economic recession at some point. How your company fares throughout it will depend entirely on the choices and the planning you do today.

The unfortunate thing about crises is that nobody thinks about them until it’s too late.

I hope that this article has given you some things to think about. I’d love to hear what action steps you plan to take next, and how you plan to grow throughout the next recession.

I believe you can do it!

To your success,

– James McAllister

The post How To Grow Your Business During The Next Recession appeared first on James McAllister Online.