Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Archives for April 2018

Buying a business? Consider these principles first

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Recently I wrote an article on how to “Buy Your American Dream” by buying a business from someone else. Let’s continue that theme with a few more principles to employ when considering this ownership option. Thanks to my friend, Russell Brown, and his book, “Laws of the Business Buying and Selling Jungle” for the inspiration.

Buyer beware – of himself.

In the securities industry, full disclosure is the coin of the realm. But in the marketplace, caveat emptor – let the buyer beware – is the fair warning standard.  If a seller misleads or misrepresents something, legal redress may be available. But business purchases that don’t work out are born more from inept buyers than from seller malfeasance. 

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Don’t be a victim of key employee poaching

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There’s a qualified employee crisis in America today. Companies of all sizes are reporting they can’t find qualified workers to fill the good-paying jobs they have. Some research indicates the number of unfilled assignments may be as many as six million, with a new report showing one-third of that number is in the manufacturing sector. Many small businesses are reporting that they can’t take advantage of growth opportunities because they don’t have the people.

What does that mean for your business besides your own experience with this issue? It means other businesses – especially big ones – will go key-employee hunting and poach the best of the best from small businesses who can’t compete on compensation and benefits.

So how do you prepare yourself for this assault?  Focus on these two areas:

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When the UGC says “Nu-uh,” you’ve gotta problem

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Once upon a time, but not that long ago, a brand message could be successful even if it was close to a work of fiction. 

Created by Madison Avenue wordsmiths, copy for an ad or brochure was crafted to manipulate and motivate using puffery, a legal term referring to acceptable marketing exaggeration. And most of the time it worked. In fact, generations of consumers allowed themselves to be manipulated by puffery that became part of the soundtrack of our lives. Here are three “Memory Lane” examples:

“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is.”

“Put a tiger in your tank.”

“The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”

Here’s a local example:

“Largest inventory in the tri-state area.”

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You are a CEO, but are you doing the job?

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The hardest job in the marketplace is the Chief Executive Officer of a small business.

So, how could it be harder to be the CEO of Excel Supply, LLC than the CEO of Exxon? Let’s look at the definition.

Investopedia says a CEO is “the highest-ranking executive in a company whose main responsibilities include developing and implementing high-level strategies, making major decisions, and managing overall operations and resources.”

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Bring Your Customer’s Customer Into Focus

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When you take a photograph, the resulting product is two-dimensional: tall, wide, and flat. But in most cases, you want the photo to actually show depth, where images in the foreground and background are all in focus.

In photographic terms, the range of focus front to back is called depth of field. The best way to expand depth of field so more of the subjects in the photo are in focus is to add light. Light contributes to depth of field.

If you were given a photo of people who were the most critical to your success, you’d easily recognize your customers in the foreground in perfect focus. But as you look deeper into the photo you’d notice the images behind that first row increasingly drop out of focus with each receding row. The reason is that for most of the history of the marketplace, businesses have gotten away with having a very narrow customer depth of field.

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