Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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On Veteran’s Day We Should Recognize All Who Served

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Veterans Day, as we know it, has its origins in Armistice Day.

“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory.”

That was the 1919 acknowledgment by President Wilson on the first anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI “in the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”

Congress made Armistice Day a federal holiday on November 11, 1938.
But after World War II, Alvin King, a small business owner in Emporia, Kansas, had a problem with the narrowness of those honored on Armistice Day. Al was so moved by the death of his nephew, John E. Cooper, who was killed in the Battle of the Bulge, that he and the Emporia Chamber of Commerce started a movement to redefine Armistice Day and give it a new name – Veterans Day.

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The New Regular: New PPP Rules You Need to Know

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This is the 21st edition of my New Regular series, which is devoted to helping your business survive and thrive to the other side of the weirdest year in the experience of any living person. Normal “put a lid” on itself around the end of March and hasn’t surfaced since.

Earlier this year, to capture what small businesses were going through in 2020, I coined the Three U’s of the Apocalypse: an Unprecedented coronavirus pandemic, precipitating an Unprecedented economic shutdown, necessitating Unprecedented direct government assistance. What follows is a report on changes to the terms of that assistance.

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As the CARES Act was signed into law by President Trump on March 27, I posted a preview of the most likely way your business would be impacted by it. A few months later, I updated that information with the new terms of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

So, it’s now time to update that update, with new PPP forgiveness and repayment rules. We’ll span from the old rules to the new, including what you’re expected to do and when you’re expected to do it. My purpose here is to make you better informed when talking with your banker and financial advisor to wrap up these transactions. But first, 60-seconds of history.

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The Presidential Candidates’ Record on Small Business – Part II

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As noted in Part I, prior to every presidential election since 2000, I’ve compared the two major-party presidential candidates based on their performance and promises regarding top small business concerns.  Part I of this two-part series covered the economy, taxes, and regulations. Part II covers health care, entrepreneurship, energy, and the pandemic.

Mr. Biden regularly references his direct contribution to Obama administration policies: “I’m the guy who … “ is the prefix of statements lauding his accomplishments from 2009-2016.  Since he’s running on that record, we’ll follow Mr. Biden’s lead and attribute that two-term record to him.

As also noted in Part I, small business owners don’t have to like a customer or vendor to do business with them. Main Street operators favor performance over personality. As our grandmothers would say, “The proof’s in the pudd’n.”

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The Presidential Candidates’ Record on Small Business, Part I

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As a leading voice for the small business sector, part of my advocacy is to track and report on public policy that impacts the Main Street economy. In that role, I vociferously support those issues that benefit small business and pugnaciously oppose those that don’t, regardless of political party paternity.

Since 1997, I’ve stuck my finger in the eye of Presidents and Congresses of both parties for policies that hurt – or didn’t do enough to help – the heroes who create half of the U.S. GDP and sign half of the paychecks that support over 100 million Americans.

Prior to every presidential race since 2000, I’ve compared the policies and performance of the two major party presidential candidates based on the top concerns that keep small business owners up at night. This is the first of a two-part series on my 2020 analysis of seven issues that currently find their way to the top of every small business survey. Part I covers the economy, taxes, and regulations. Part II will cover healthcare, entrepreneurship, energy, and the pandemic.

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The New Regular: The Marketplace Is More Than Fear and Greed

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This is the 20th edition of my New Regular series that focuses on the macro and microelements of small business success in the post-coronavirus economy. “Normal” is a term used by those who haven’t made a pandemic payroll.

Fear and greed. Individually, they represent two of the purest primal emotions of modern humans. The headwaters of both spring from the emotion-dwelling part of the brain called the amygdala. 

When used together, it’s appropriate that fear is first because it represents a primitively instinctive and less reasoned response. When an unexpected blast occurs, we duck first and determine the caliber of the cannon later. A very primitive emotion.

Unlike fear, as an emotion, greed is a wholly-owned human franchise. When people progressed to produce more than was needed for survival, the luxury of greed was born. Greed is a modern human emotion.

But as different as these two emotions are, humans have leveraged them in tandem for 10,000 years to form the paradoxical pendulum that created and continues to power one of the most important human creations: the marketplace. 

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The New Regular: The Future Will Be More Redundant

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This is the 19th edition of my New Regular series, which is dedicated to helping small business owners have the maximum opportunity to be successful in the post-pandemic economy. Normal just checked into a halfway house for the pathologically nostalgic.

Redundant. What comes to mind when you hear that word? Wikipedia reports that it means, “unnecessary, superfluous, needless.” For example, it’s redundant to say, “undercapitalized small business.”

As business managers, we convert Wiki’s words into “expensive, inefficient, and unproductive.” In fact, we’re on a continuous quest to root out waste and the likely offenders are anything redundant.

One of the markers of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic is its disruptiveness, both on society in general and the marketplace in particular. In the third decade of the 21st century, in the New Regular economy, these disruptions have illuminated the need for more redundancy. Consequently, I’m forecasting that we’ll not only regard the word and concept with more respect, but redundancy will increasingly become a business best practice and a customer expectation.

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