James McAllister Online

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How To Recession-Proof Your Small Business

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Economic recessions are an inevitable reality of business, and destroy those who are unprepared.

This is especially true for small businesses, and even more so for first-time entrepreneurs who have never witnessed an economic recession from the perspective of a business owner.

See, as entrepreneurs, we tend to be risk-takers. We make decisions that lead to quick growth of our companies, and sometimes go a bit too far. We bank on the good times continuing, our carefully thought-out plans succeeding, and a bright and prosperous future.

Unfortunately, we may not factor in the hiccups we’re bound to face along the way.

In this article, I want to lay out some steps you can take right now to reduce your risk of collapse during even a very tough economic recession, and ensure that your company can continue thriving even during the worst of economies.

This isn’t to say that I believe a recession is about to strike, but this topic is too important to ignore.

Let’s get into it!

[Read more…]

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Don’t Put It Off – Why You Should Begin Utilizing Influencer Marketing Today

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Every so often, marketers are given access to an advertising platform that offers an incredibly good return.

Typically, these platforms are new, unproven, and businesses are weary about jumping on board. Because of this, they tend to offer an unusually high return for marketers that able to figure out how to utilize them, capitalizing on the inbalance of supply and demand.

Influencer marketing right now is one of these powerful, undervalued advertising channels that even now in 2019, is still underutilized and underappreciated.

Although it is not considered anything new (celebrity endorsements have been utilized in advertising for ages),  we’ve never been at a point where influencer marketing was so accessible to even the smallest of brands – it doesn’t have to cost a single dollar for you to start.

In this article, I intend to highlight some of the most compelling reasons you should begin your first influencer marketing campaign right now, or scale it up further if you’re already utilizing influencer marketing to grow your business. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling a tangible or intangible product – influencer marketing can benefit your company and help you grow in the coming months.

Let’s look at some of these reasons in detail. [Read more…]

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Cold Email Outreach: A Detailed Strategy To Following Up Effectively

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It takes an average of 7 contacts before a person will make a deal with you.

90% of salespeople, marketers, and entrepreneurs will not follow up with a person more than 3 times.

Yet, 80% of deals are made on the 5th to the 12th contact.

Can you imagine all of the money that you’re leaving on the table?

This isn’t just applicable to making a sale. It could be arranging a meeting with an important person, pitching somebody to link to an article, or trying to get somebody to appear on your podcast.

Email outreach is more important than ever, yet a whopping 90 PERCENT of people will not even put the effort in to do it right.

It’s time to get relentless with your follow up. To form a strategy that will help you to achieve the results that you’re looking for.

Because clearly, the vast majority of us are leaving a LOT of money on the table.

The above statements should showcase just how important following up with people actually is. Therefore, this article will serve as a quick guide to getting started, showcase some examples, and help you to form a systematized strategy to make following up quick, easy, and effective.

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When To Work Hard, And When To Work Smart – Concrete Examples

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Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘work smart, not hard’?

Wonder what genius came up with that one?

The idea that there is some ‘secret strategy’ guaranteed to make you riches without any real effort is ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as the idea that if you just work hard enough (even if you’re doing the wrong thing) you’ll inevitably find success as well.

Therefore, ask yourself – should you work smart or hard?

The answer, put simply, is both. Not only do you need to have the right strategy in place, but you have to back it up with enough effort and hours to execute that strategy to its full potential.

However, there’s different times to focus on working smart vs. working hard. In this article, I intend to highlight some of these examples. This way, you can structure your work days in a way that truly maximizes your results. [Read more…]

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Should Entrepreneurs Learn To Program?

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Should entrepreneurs learn to program? Should everybody learn to program?

This has been a debate going on for quite a number of years now, and the answer isn’t entirely clear. On one end of the argument, most entrepreneurs don’t write code, and get by just fine. On the opposite end, many people believe that not knowing how to program will one day be akin to not knowing how to read or write.

One thing is clear – the world is being increasingly ran by computers, and as entrepreneurs – creators, we can benefit immensely by knowing how to create our own software for these machines.

In fact, even a very basic understanding of programming can be transformative for some businesses, even those not working in the tech sector.

I must warn you, however. While I’m going to be sharing with you a lot of benefits that will sound very enticing, please keep this in mind – learning to code is not a prerequisite for entrepreneurial success. It is definitely possible to build a massive company without writing a single line of code (just ask Steve Jobs!) In fact, learning something just for the sake of learning it never is particularly useful. You must have a practical plan to implement it in order for a skill like this to become valuable.

Let this article serve as an eye-opener, exposing you to the benefits that learning to program has to offer, and helping you decide for yourself whether it’s worth spending further time on. [Read more…]

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Repeat After Me: I Will Never Compete On Price

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What makes your company unique? Why do people buy from you?

In business, you can typically offer two of these three things, if you work hard:

  • A high quality product or service.
  • An impressive overall shopping experience, with great customer service all around.
  • A low price.

However, you can not realistically offer all three of these at the same time. Nor should you try to.

If your goal is to actually build a large, profitable company, competing on price is not only incredibly challenging, but it offers the highest amount of risk for the lowest reward. It is a loser’s game, and by simply adjusting your strategy, you can position yourself to do far better while practically ignoring price completely.

In this article, we’re going to make clear why you should rarely, if ever try to compete on price, and cover actionable strategies to take instead.

Let’s get to it!

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Data Scraping For Small Businesses: Benefits, Tips, And How To Get Started

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You do not need to own a large company to benefit immensely from the power of data scraping.

While large organizations are already collecting and analyzing insanely large amounts of data, data scraping / mining is not only reserved for those with large budgets, powerful computers, and large research teams.

In fact, with the right frame of mind, data scraping has enormous benefits for small businesses as well.

The difference between good marketers and great marketers is how they effectively utilize data to make marketing decisions. While this certainly starts with the data we collect from our own website, our visitors, and our customers, it does not have to stop there.

With the vast amount of data available online, it’s possible to make use of data that’s available publicly on other people’s websites as well. Both collecting and utilizing it are a lot easier than most entrepreneurs think.

In this article, I intend to show you how small business owners like yourself can utilize data scraping to help you make more money from your business. Showing you the benefits that data mining can offer even for very small companies, and how to begin scraping and organizing data straight away. [Read more…]

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Learn 1 Of These 7 Freelancing Skills, And You’ll Never Be Without Money Again

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When it comes to developing new skills, some skills are more valuable than others.

While we all wish we could make money from home without actually putting in long hours, this often isn’t as easy as it sounds. Sometimes, we need to make some money straight away, and we don’t have months to wait before revenue starts to come in.

This is where freelancing shines.

Freelancing is one of the greatest businesses to start in 2019, because it’s so straightforward. You do work, and you get paid.

That’s it.

However, it does require you to actually have a marketable skill in the first place. A skill that employers are actually looking for, that adds value to their business in some way.

In this article, we’re not just going to cover the most common freelance jobs available online, but we’ll also cover the most in demand freelance skills that employers are looking for.

By doing this, we ensure that any time spent developing these skills is well worth it, and you won’t have to spend too much time actually looking for work.

Let’s get to it! Here are the most profitable, high-income skills to learn if you want to make money as a freelancer.

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7 Branding Mistakes That Will Destroy Your Company

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Your brand is fragile.

It is difficult to build up – taking months or years to really connect with a person’s mind. You can get in front of a consumer hundreds of times, invest large amounts of money, and endless hours of work to reach a point where that person finally trusts you, and aligns themselves with what you stand for.

It requires a well thought out strategy and careful execution. Pull it off, and you’ll cultivate raging fans, happy to throw money at you – even if you’re more expensive than your competitors.

Do it wrong however, and you can alienate your audience – even turning once-passionate fans into people that begin to dislike you, and everything you stand for.

Brands take a long time to build up, but they can very quickly be destroyed. While no one thing will take you down, a pattern of bad behavior can quickly ruin the credibility and image you’ve worked so hard to build up.

On the opposite end, a strong brand can pay dividends for life – making every facet of marketing more effective going forward.

In this article, we’ll go over key branding mistakes you must avoid if you want to keep people on your side. By developing a framework and keeping these principals in mind, you ensure that the fans you cultivate remain fans forever – making new fans become even more valuable.

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5 Ways To Simplify Your Business Strategy, To Focus On Execution

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Business is often made out to seem over complicated.

We are constantly being bombarded with new strategies to try out, new social networks to focus on, and new trends that we just ‘have to’ jump on quickly.

We’re made to believe that if we don’t move quickly, then we’ll miss out. That if we just try out this one new thing, or find that one special secret, we’ll instantly become successful in our entrepreneurial endeavors.

We develop complex plans in our minds with a lot of moving pieces, and expect everything to go perfectly.

Of course, it rarely does.

The fact of the matter is, you likely already know nearly everything you need to grow your business to massive levels – it’s just a matter of executing on that information.

Let this article serve as a guide to help you filter out the noise – to analyze what’s actually important for you to focus on, and develop a simple strategy that you can actually work with – guaranteed to bring you consistent results over time.

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