• Skip to content

Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

header image
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Third Ingredient
    • Age of the Customer
  • Speaking
  • About Jim
  • Press Room
    • Jim In the News
    • Press Materials
  • Blog
  • Contact
Buy Now
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Third Ingredient
    • Age of the Customer
  • Speaking
  • About Jim
  • Press Room
    • Jim In the News
    • Press Materials
  • Blog
  • Contact

Blog

It’s the Digital Age – Ethically Speaking, Things Here Are Different

October 20, 2022 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 an acknowledgment that contemporary applications of wisdom, morality and ethical behavior are in fact derivative of concepts first proposed long ago by the ancients.

Consider the 10,000-year-old Chinese wisdom, I Ching, The Book of Changes. Then there are the 5,000-year-old Upanishads from India. And of course, the new kid on the block, the four-millennia-old Mosaic Laws (Thou shalt not …). Indeed, no wisdom is handier than that of King Solomon, from the first millennium BCE in Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Psalms.

It must be noted that much of this awesome introspection and 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, on the threshold of the written word.

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

Filed Under: Cybersecurity, Ethics / Trust, Technology / General, The 3rd Ingredient Tagged With: 3rd ingredient, Digital Age, digital trust, ethical, ethics, small business, technology, trust

The Archenemy of Fear Is Performance

October 15, 2022 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 being 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. The kind that motivates you to become more aware, knowledgeable, capable, prepared, decisive, and effective.

Remember these two things about fear: 1) it’s a shape-shifter, capable of appearing in many forms; and 2) successful entrepreneurs learn how to recognize and deal with fear in all its shapes. Let’s look at some of the manifestations of fear, followed by what each one might sound like.  [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Management Fundamentals, Sales / Sales Management, Start Ups Tagged With: entrepreneurship, management fundamentals, selling

“Customers from Hell” and the #1 Business Fundamental

October 6, 2022 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 is 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.” [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Customer Care, Management Fundamentals, Profitability, Sales / Sales Management, Start Ups, The Age of the Customer Tagged With: age of the customer, customer care, management fundamentals, selling, small business, small business owner

“No Problem,” The Vuvuzela Of Customer Service

September 29, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

“No problem.”

That’s exactly what the young man on the phone at the bank said after thanking him for not being able to answer my question.

He didn’t say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be of more assistance,” or “I’ll be happy to take a message.” Instead, he slouched into the verbal scourge of the 21st-century marketplace: when an employee serving a customer says, “No problem.”

In addition to the sound being harmonically dissonant to a customer’s ear, “No problem” is also cognitively dissonant to the Universe because of its misuse in the following two service scenarios, both inappropriate and unprofessional: [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Communication, Customer Care, Sales / Sales Management, The Age of the Customer Tagged With: age of the customer, customer care, selling, small business

Implications of the Pandemic Workforce Diaspora on Corporate Culture

September 20, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

“Frankly, I’m amazed at how well we’re working right now. We’ve experienced zero drop in performance.”

That quote, and variations of it, came from several CEOs during the second half of 2020, in response to my question: “How have your teams performed so far during the lockdown?” These CEOs were guests on my weekday, syndicated radio program, “The Small Business Advocate Show.” In fact, they were so pleasantly surprised that one executive even asked rhetorically, “Tell me again why we’re spending $5million a year on office rent?”

For date context, that was the initial period when the marketplace was essentially locked down, and the workforce was sent home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Overnight, millions of workers across the globe started working remotely and, ready or not, subsequent teamwork, collaboration and meetings were conducted in the two-dimensional digital domain, like on a Zoom call.

Based on the answers to my question, it seemed that this emergency, once-in-a-career, global workplace disruption had revealed some previously unknown magical management formula [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Corporate Culture, Demographics, Generations, Futuring, Human Resources Tagged With: culture, demographics, leadership, organizational success, small business, success, teleworking, workforce

Lest We Forget – The Moments That Changed America

September 15, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

Concluding my live broadcast at exactly 8:58:50am EDT that Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001, was no different from the previous 198 Tuesdays since I started The Small Business Advocate Show in 1997. With the unremitting ticking of the clock, every weekday at the same moment, I transitioned from my on-air world to my off-air life. A talk show is an imprecise activity conducted in a precise environment.

Having conducted half-hour interviews with four different small business experts, as if it were just another day, we discussed marketing, communication skills, a survey about computer usage, and salesmanship. Tax rebates were hitting mailboxes, as the economy continued to be the big news.

There were errands to run, so by 9:02am, I was turning the key in the ignition of my Crown Victoria. Our world is filled with familiar sounds from which we receive information and sometimes comfort: in one second the sound of the engine told me it was okay to engage the transmission, and in the next, the voice of the radio announcer gave me subliminal comfort that the outside world was still there and reporting in.

But with the next tick of the clock, the content of the news registered, and I learned that as I was wrapping up my last interview at approximately, 8:45am EDT, a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Without moving a tire I turned off the engine and went back inside to turn on the news.

Barely five minutes after the hour, horrific images came into focus [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Work-Life / Balance Tagged With: 9-11, America, memorials, september 11

  • « Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • Page 5
  • …
  • Page 46
  • Next Page »

Categories

  • Banking
  • Business Planning
  • Buying a Business
  • Cash Flow
  • Communication
  • Coronavirus
  • Corporate Culture
  • Customer Care
  • Cybersecurity
  • Demographics, Generations
  • e-business
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Ethics / Trust
  • Finance / Accounting / Taxes
  • Franchising / Licensing
  • Futuring
  • Government / Politics
  • Human Resources
  • Innovation / Creativity
  • Intellectual Property
  • Investors
  • Leadership
  • Legal
  • Management Fundamentals
  • Marketing / Branding / Advertising
  • Mobile Computing
  • National and Global Economy
  • Negotiating
  • Networking
  • Profitability
  • Sales / Sales Management
  • Social Media
  • Start Ups
  • Technology / General
  • The 3rd Ingredient
  • The Age of the Customer
  • Trade: Import, Export, Globalization
  • Uncategorized
  • Work-Life / Balance

Archives

  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017

Share this page with your friends and followers

© 2023 · Jim BlasingameContact Us