Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Business Planning

If Your Business Was A Tree, How Big Should It Be?

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The redwood is arguably America’s greatest and most famous tree.

Two of the three species of this prehistoric survivor – the slightly taller coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the thicker sequoia redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) – are so well known they’re often referred to as “The Big Tree.” And for good reason: both can top out at over 300 feet. 

But what about that third one? You know – the diminutive Metasequoia glyptostroboides.  This baby, aka “dawn” redwood, aka “amberglow,” is small enough that you can buy one, plant it in your yard, and watch it shoot up to 10% of the scale of its giant cousins. 

So, how does an amberglow know it isn’t a sequoia – to stop growing at 30 feet? As with every living thing in nature, including humans, it’s in the genes. When that first drop of water wakes up the amberglow seed kernel and break out of the husk, its genetic code is already at work to make you confident that you can plant them about 20 feet apart.

What if entrepreneurs could shop for a genetically pre-sized business? On that rainy, predawn June morning in 1896 Detroit, when a young Edison Illuminating Company engineer steered his “quadricycle” onto Bagley Street for the shakedown drive, Henry had no idea how big Ford Motor Company would become. Because a small business – Enterprisus incrementum indeterminus – doesn’t have a genetic code. And that’s good news and bad. 

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The New Regular: The Pandemic Paradox of Business Growth

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This is the 22nd edition of my New Regular series, which is devoted to helping your business survive the rest of 2020 and grow in 2021. Normal was last seen looking for hanging chads in Palm Beach County, Florida.

One of the greatest professional accomplishments is to start a business and grow it successfully. And just now, emerging from the pandemic punch-down, millions of pathologically optimistic small business owners are doing their best to transition from survival mode to growth.

But we all know the post-pandemic marketplace will impact growth differently than ever before. Indeed, many coronavirus veterans are watching their business models being reset in front of their eyes.

Meanwhile, millions more Americans have responded to being unemployed by morphing into that exciting entrepreneurial quark – a startup. And it’s part of my tough-love act to point out that members of this group likely have no concept of what it takes to grow a business.

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The New Regular: Your Post-Pandemic Business Plan

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This is the fourteenth edition of my New Regular series devoted to helping small business owners have the maximum opportunity to open their businesses on January 1, 2021. Normal was caught stalking Dr. Fauci and arrested for not wearing a mask. 

Every Main Street business owner had a business plan when they opened for business in January 2020, from a fancy, multi-page model, to thoughts printed on the owner’s brain. Regardless, these two operators have one thing in common: They’re both going to need a new one. A post-pandemic, New Regular business plan. Stay with me – you’ll thank me later.

Emerging out of a government-mandated shutdown, we’re finding a marketplace shrouded in a fog of uncertainty. But the good news is the fog will lift once you find answers to three questions: 

  1. What do customers want right now? 
  2. How has the competitive landscape changed? 
  3. How far out of alignment is my business from these two?

These aren’t new questions, but in the span of several weeks, the answers are. They’ve morphed from a little different to unrecognizable since February, and here’s the foggy part: they’re still changing.

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The New Regular: There Will Be Many New Niches

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This is the 11th edition of my New Regular series, which is committed to helping Main Street businesses make the tenuous transition to a post-pandemic economy. Normal hasn’t been seen since corona was just a beer.

Do you like baklava – that pastry so luscious it’s served in little pieces? Who doesn’t? But what does baklava have to do with operating a business in a pandemic-induced panic? Well, as scrumptious as it is, the connection isn’t about how it tastes, but rather, how it’s made.

Cutting a baklava square in half reveals that it’s constructed of multiple layers of buttery, cinnamony, honey-drenched, walnut-laden sheets of phyllo dough baked into an elegant and rich eating experience.

Slicing into the marketplace you’ll see it looking increasingly like baklava: multiple layers of innovation-drenched effort baked into elegant choices and rich experiences. But zoom in closer. Just as each wafer-thin sheet of baked baklava breaks into more layers of cookie-inside-a-cookie, the marketplace stratifies into finer layers of even greater variations, nuances, and elegance.

Those finer layers are called niches. (My snooty friends say “neesh,” I prefer “nitch.” Tomato, to-mah-to). A niche is defined as being “perfectly suited for the person or thing in it.” And if there were ever two things perfectly suited for each other, it’s the niche and small business. It’s a beautiful thing to watch an entrepreneur discover a new niche and fill it, and later identify and fill a niche of that niche.

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The New Regular: The Power of Post-Pandemic Brainstorming

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This is the 10th edition of my New Regular series, which is committed to helping Main Street businesses make the tenuous transition to a post-pandemic economy. You can catch normal in a bit-part on the revival of PBS’s “Downton Abbey.”

Whatever your business looks like going forward, it won’t be what you used to call normal. The easy part is that, as the recovery plays out over the next year, what you’re supposed to be doing will be revealed to you by customers. The hard part will be making that transition personally and organizationally. In other words, getting out of your own way.

Since it’s likely that how you serve customers this December will be drastically different from how you did it last December, there’s no better way to “get out of your own way” than through brainstorming.  This is a leadership practice that helps shed hidebound baggage – “Well, that’s how we’ve always done it” – your business can no longer afford in the New Regular.

Brainstorming has always been powerful. But now that we’ve been keelhauled by the coronavirus shutdown, it’s essential. Plus, it’s the best way to get organizational creative juices flowing. And creativity is the mother’s milk of a powerful tool without which you cannot brainstorm: adjectives.

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Why, how and when to change your business’ DNA

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In nature, all life comes in two forms: plant and animal.

In the marketplace, all business entities are found in two forms: human and non-human. But unlike plants and animals, a human business can morph into a non-human entity.

A human business is a sole proprietorship or a partnership. Of the non-human species, there are three: C Corporation, Subchapter S Corporation (aka, Sub S, or S Corp) and the Limited Liability Company (LLC). All corporations begin as a C, and some, typically small businesses, “elect” to morph into the Sub S structure for reasons revealed in a minute. The LLC is the new kid on the block, only being available for about the past 30 years. It can be a very handy legal structure, but not for everyone.

So why should your human business morph to non-human? There are at least three excellent reasons:

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