Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Eleven financial fundamentals every small business CEO must know

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Regardless of the size of the business, the ultimate responsibility for success lies with the CEO. If you’re a small business owner, that’s you. And the most critical CEO tasks that result in success or failure lie in the knowledge and practice of financial management fundamentals.

Recent statistics show that over half of small businesses fail within the first four years. Clearly, that mortality rate could be significantly reduced if, before a business opens, the founder/CEO was required to pass a course that teaches business financial fundamentals and how to operate a business with them.

Don’t worry. Your humble advocate would never presume to lump you in with those who need business finance schooling. You, no doubt, are squared away on that score, but perhaps you know a small business CEO who isn’t. And let’s say you’re keen to give that CEO – your “friend” – the maximum opportunity to avoid becoming a marketplace battleground casualty.

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Jim Blasingame’s 2020 crystal ball predictions

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Here are my 2020 Predictions – my 21st set – by major category. Through 20 years, my record is 73% accuracy.

Small Business

Prediction: Small business confidence will remain strong for the fourth consecutive year, exceeding the NFIB Index’s almost half-century average.

Prediction: For the 13th straight year, small businesses will continue to limit borrowed capital and rely on organic resources to fund growth.

Prediction: The USMCA and China trade deals will deliver direct and indirect economic benefits for U.S. Main Street businesses.

Prediction: A growing number of state minimum wage increases will cause harm to the least of the marketplace participants: the smallest small businesses and low-skilled workers.

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Small business owners are still crazy after all these years – thank God

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“Still crazy after all these years.”

That’s the title of a 1975 song and album by the legendary Paul Simon. Hearing that song – for the zillionth time – makes me think about what makes small business owners different.

It’s the crazy way they look at the world.

Entrepreneurs think about challenges, imagine outcomes, appraise risk, project potential, and measure all of that against their resources and themselves, differently than everyone else. And when they decide to move forward, like the poker player who pushes all his chips to the middle of the table, small business owners are all in. Against all odds. No one else in the marketplace does that.

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In defense of the misunderstood scrooge

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This is Jim’s traditional Christmas column.

Some say I’m a scrooge. They might be right.

Here are three exhibits (some say excuses) in my defense of this indictment:

1. The early part of my career was spent in retail. Retailers know what that job does to your holiday spirit. There’s a syndrome for everything else; why not one for retail survivors? Let’s call it RPTHSS: Retail Post-Traumatic Holiday Shock Syndrome.

2. Since I don’t wait until the holidays to give someone a gift, I just don’t get all worked up about holiday giving. Not that the ladies mind getting stuff all year (let’s not lose our heads!). It’s just that they want me to be giddy about giving at Christmas-time. Giddy? Bah! Humbug!

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Jim Blasingame reconciles his 2019 Predictions

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Allow me to reconcile my 2019 Predictions from a year ago – my 20th edition – with what happened. Up to now, I’m batting .733.

Small Business

Prediction: Small business confidence will again record levels above NFIB’s 45-year average.
Actual: NFIB Index of Small Business Optimism finishes well above the multi-decade average of 98 points: +1

Prediction: Millions of Baby Boomer business owners will be challenged in divesting to the next generation.
Actual: Research shows (Kaufman) and books have been written (“Boomer Bust”) about the unprecedented challenge of older owners selling to the next generations: +1

Prediction: Stronger financial conditions will help small businesses deal with economic headwinds.
Actual: The best indicator is how well the small business sector has weathered the global trade issues while supporting those strategies: +1

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Four business lessons I learned on the farm

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Growing up on a farm provided many valuable lessons that have transferred beautifully to my life in the non-farming marketplace. Here are four of those timeless and universal lessons.
 
The Application of Patience
In civil society, patience is respected as one of the great virtues. Who hasn’t heard the admiration, “The patience of Job?” But in the marketplace, patience is half of a powerful paradox because of its alter ego – impatience.

Impatience can be a problem – everybody knows that. But not when it morphs into urgency, because in the marketplace, urgency is not only good, it’s essential. Knowing how to transmogrify impatience into urgency is a lesson we can take from the farmer.

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