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Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Archives for March 2019

It’s the Digital Age: Ethically speaking, things here are different

March 30, 2019 by Jim Blasingame

As arrogant occupants of 21st-century Earth, who can rightly boast of creating exciting innovations, like the computer, talking paint, and the margarita blender, it serves us to believe we’re also the more enlightened generation.

But honesty demands acknowledgement that contemporary applications of wisdom, morality, and ethical behavior are in fact derivative of concepts first proposed long ago by the ancients.

For example, in addition to the almost four-millennia-old, legendary Mosaic Laws, consider the 10,000-year-old Chinese wisdom, I Ching, The Book of Changes. Then there’s the 5,000-year-old Upanishads from India, and finally, King Solomon’s first millennium BCE wisdom from Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. It must be noted that some of this awesome self-awareness was first contemplated at a time when receding Ice Age glaciers were still carving Scotland’s Loch Ness and the Great Lakes of North America, while others came to light barely on the threshold of the written word.

Alas, ethically and morally speaking, we moderns are merely the new models, not the better ones. Hold that thought.

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Filed Under: Technology / General, The 3rd Ingredient, Uncategorized

Performance: the Arch-Enemy of Fear

March 26, 2019 by Jim Blasingame

Anyone who has contemplated forsaking the perceived, if not real, security of employment to start a small business has come face-to-face with and overcome the greatest of all business challenges: the fear of failure. Countless would-be entrepreneurs have discontinued their self-employment pursuits for fear of losing too much – the risk is just too great. Everybody knows that.

But if you pushed through these trepidations and, against all odds, became a business owner anyway, you know that wasn’t the last time you experienced fear. Indeed, fear is so much a part of being a business owner that, in time, we recognize and accept fear as something that can be quite handy.

Not paralyzing fear – like when you’re ignorant of how to prevent or recover from danger. But rather, the kind of fear that helps you seek excellence by motivating you to become more aware, knowledgeable, capable, prepared, decisive and effective.

Remember these two things about fear:

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Start Ups

How small businesses saved our job-creating, uh, bacon

March 15, 2019 by Jim Blasingame

If you’ve read my column in the past, you know that I consider the only positive to accrue to the Main Street economy during the Lost Decade (2007-2016) is the unprecedented financial strengthening of America’s small business sector.

Make no mistake, the Lost Decade, created by three avoidable disasters – the Great Recession (2007-2009), the 2008 Financial Crisis, and Washington’s anti-business policies (2009-2016) – was devastating to this sector. Millions of small firms were wiped out when these three calamities converged to create the economic equivalent of a perfect storm.

But the small firms that survived, the ones that somehow weathered the insidious “New Normal” that defined that period, became stronger from their devotion to these two specific practices: 1) They learned how to operate leaner and more efficiently than they ever thought possible; 2) They deleveraged – got out of debt.

To support my analysis, consider the responses from a recent poll of my small business audience.

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Government / Politics, National and Global Economy

“Customers from Hell” and the #1 business fundamental

March 7, 2019 by Jim Blasingame

“This is for one of those customers from hell.”

That’s what a small business owner said to me during one of my road trips across the country to check on how things are going out on Main Street.

“Ann” was responding to my query about her business. Her full answer was closer to, “Business has been good. But now I’ve got to spend most of the day dealing with this customer from hell.”

Turns out, what caused this customer’s alleged domicile to be mentioned was because they required a lot of extra attention – they wanted things the way they wanted them. Like Ann, you might be surprised at my response, which is our next “Business Fundamental.”

“You should never have a customer from hell.”

Before you start yelling that you want to introduce me to some of your customers who surely are kin to Ann’s, let me tell you a story.

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Customer Care, Management Fundamentals, Profitability

Even Og and Gog knew fundamentals are fun

March 2, 2019 by Jim Blasingame

As you know, I’ve written a few columns recently in my “Fun with Fundamentals” series. As you know, something is fundamental when no matter who you are, how long you’ve been in business, or what you sell, they apply to essentially everyone, every day.

These fundamentals I’m revealing here are no less than operating natural laws, and they’ve served businesses since proto-market was born 10,000 years ago when Og dropped his club and suggested to Gog that they do business instead of killing each other for what they wanted. That’s what’s so great about fundamentals, they’re as handy as they are immutable.

Become devoted to incorporating these non-negotiables into your daily/weekly/monthly management practices and you’ll have more fun because success will come and play in your backyard. If you don’t, well – you know.

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Management Fundamentals

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