Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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The New Regular: Putting Lipstick on the Bankruptcy Pig

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This is the ninth edition of my New Regular series, dedicated to helping small businesses cope with the one-two punch of the coronavirus pandemic and associated economic constraints. Normal was just sighted in a homeless shelter in the north of France.

The subject today is a serious and troublesome one. No amount of lipstick will make the bankruptcy pig pretty. But as we roll into the post-pandemic era, we should improve our understanding of it.

You can be technically bankrupt without being legally bankrupt. At some time in their existence, most businesses will experience an upside-down state of negative net worth, where liabilities exceed assets. It’s likely that such a condition will pass unnoticed, possibly even by the owner, because the business might not be insolvent.

Insolvency is a pre-bankruptcy state of financial distress when near-term payment obligations exceed cash-generating ability. This condition is not only noticed, it’s consuming. If you dig yourself out of insolvency and avoid bankruptcy, that becomes a badge of honor. Yes, your humble correspondent knows something about that.

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The New Regular: When Small Business Brain became COVID Brain

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This is the eighth edition of my New Regular series, which is devoted to helping small business owners deal with the financial and emotional damage created by the coronavirus shutdown(s). Normal went MIA around March 15.

Recently on my radio program, one of our many smart Brain Trust members, Jim Schreier, introduced us to a new condition that neuroscientists are studying. Markers of this syndrome include, but are not limited to:

  • Being stressed out
  • Feeling you can’t keep your head above water
  • Trouble sleeping
  • Struggling with decisions about if/when to pivot
  • Worrying that the next decision could bankrupt you

Veteran small business owners will laugh at these, recognizing them as a short list of what they eat for breakfast every morning. Stress? Worry? Struggle? Is that the best you got?

The levels of adversity Main Street operators take in stride every day would kill most civilians (anyone with a regular paycheck). But on top of all the risks and rough edges small business owners learn how to manage, the pandemic-caused, unprecedented, economic shutdown that separated us from customers, frankly, is a new item on our business breakfast menu.

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The New Regular: The Three U’s of the Apocalypse

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This is the seventh edition of my New Regular series, which is devoted to how small businesses have been impacted by the coronavirus shutdown.

In barely more than the lifespan of a housefly, we’ve been extruded through a pandemic wormhole, from a place called normal into a new reality devoid of that concept. Along the way, the orbit of our lives has been altered by the rude gravity of what I call the “Three U’s of the Apocalypse”:

  • an Unprecedented coronavirus pandemic,
  • precipitating an Unprecedented economic shutdown,
  • necessitating Unprecedented direct government assistance.

Regarding that last U, it’s time for a 90-day update, including new rules and offerings.

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America celebrates liberty and the world is the beneficiary

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Seven score and seventeen years ago, in his inspired speech at the 1863 dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, President Lincoln delivered these immortal words: “…our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Four score and seven years earlier, one of those “fathers,” an inspired Thomas Jefferson (with suggestions from no less an able editor than Ben Franklin), authored what is arguably the most momentous secular document in history. The second paragraph of America’s Declaration of Independence begins with this passionate passage:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

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The New Regular: Beware The Compounding Effect

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This is the sixth edition of my “New Regular” series. No one’s seen hide nor hair of normal – old or new – since March 15.

Today we start with two quotes. The first is from a certified genius, and the second … not so much.

“Compound interest.”

Reputedly, that was Albert Einstein’s answer to the question, “What’s the most powerful force in the universe?”

And now a maxim coined by your humble correspondent, from years of experience operating a small business.

“When it starts going bad, it all goes bad.” This is not hyperbole or meant to be pessimistic, just sobering.

“The Compounding Effect” is my term for that maxim, and it, too, can be powerful. Except, unlike compound interest, not in a good way.

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Why a father’s tough love is the harder job

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As the father of an adult daughter and son, plus the grandfather of four knucklehead boys (Hurricane, Tornado, Crash, and Train Wreck), I’ve learned some things about love. 

All the hours logged as Dad and Poppy have often caused me to contemplate how different are the roles of mother and father, especially in the overt demonstration of parental love. It’s fascinating how the manifestation of this love differs between mother and father – biologically, emotionally, and experientially. 

A mother’s love, at once sweet and fierce, is observed in almost all animals, not just humans. No doubt you’ve heard this simile: “… as sweet as a mother’s love,” and this warning: “Never get between a momma bear and her cub.” I’ve witnessed and have been the happy recipient of this kind of love, and there truly is no other force like it in nature

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