It was a Monday morning – 8:30 to be exact – when the phone rang. I was the national sales manager for a publishing company, working out of my home office.
As a high school senior, I was the only member of my class to have what was essentially a full-time job. For the next 20 years, from flipping burgers to the C-Suite, I was never unemployed, even during the recessions of 1969, 1974, 1981 and 1983. But that all changed when, in 1988, I lost my VP job as my employer downsized itself, eventually to nothing. So, the irony wasn’t lost on me when I attended my 20-year high school reunion unemployed.
Back to that phone call. It was May 22, 1989, and my boss on the other end explained that the company had a new plan, but I wasn’t part of it. So, if you’re scoring at home, that was me getting fired, sacked, canned, downsized, (your unemployment idiom here) twice – in 1988 and 1989.
After hanging up the phone at 8:35, for about three seconds my first thought was to dust off my resume and hit the bricks. Two teenagers and two mortgages are strong motivators. But then, thinking out loud, said: “I don’t need any help screwing up my life, I can do that by myself.” So, I addressed the keyboard and gave birth to my new business, “Jim Blasingame and Associates, Business Consultants.” My “Associates” at that moment were a Macintosh Plus and a laser printer.
Thirty years later, a period that included a second entrepreneurial reinvention, I think I can declare myself a successful business owner. A professor friend of mine describes me this way: “My friend Jim is a small business owner; he lives by his wits.” No doubt you know how accurate that is.
What’s the big takeaway as I celebrate my business’s 30th anniversary?
Reasonable people disagree on the exact origins of what is now called Memorial Day. But most accept that the practice of decorating the graves of Americans who died defending their country began in earnest by women of the South during and following the Civil War.
One of the markers of American culture is the “sticker” on the window of a new car. This document reveals to shoppers a listing of standard equipment and options, plus, of course, the manufacturer’s suggested retail price or MSRP.
In nature, all life comes in two forms: plant and animal.
It’s important to note here that there are essentially two kinds of business tax reporting: 1) C Corps, mostly all the large corporations, which file and pay taxes like an individual, but at their own rates; and 2) most small businesses are legally structured as S Corps and LLCs, which file a return, but – and this is important to remember – “pass through” any net profit as income on the shareholders’ personal returns. Most small businesses – millions – are “pass-throughs.”