• 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
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Third Ingredient
    • Age of the Customer
  • Speaking
  • About Jim
  • Press Room
    • Jim In the News
    • Press Materials
  • Blog
  • Contact

Business Planning

The New Regular: The Pandemic Paradox of Business Growth

November 12, 2020 by Jim Blasingame

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.

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Business Planning, Entrepreneurship, Management Fundamentals, Start Ups

The New Regular: Your Post-Pandemic Business Plan

August 29, 2020 by Jim Blasingame

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.

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Business Planning, Coronavirus, Entrepreneurship, Ethics / Trust, Leadership

The New Regular: There Will Be Many New Niches

August 8, 2020 by Jim Blasingame

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.

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Business Planning, Demographics, Generations, Futuring, Management Fundamentals

The New Regular: The Power of Post-Pandemic Brainstorming

July 30, 2020 by Jim Blasingame

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.

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Business Planning, Coronavirus, Innovation / Creativity, Management Fundamentals

Why, how and when to change your business’ DNA

May 9, 2019 by Jim Blasingame

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:

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Business Planning, Finance / Accounting / Taxes, Legal

What is your small business exit strategy?

July 29, 2018 by Jim Blasingame

In the United States, it’s very easy to start a small business. Maybe too easy.

If you remember those early startup days, then you’ll also remember that very soon the easy part ended. Indeed, from the moment you transitioned from your initial capital to needing to generate the Holy Grail of capital – profit from sales to customers – things started getting really hard. And over the next few years, maybe decades, if running and growing your business ever got a little easier, it was only because you figured out how to do it without killing yourself.

Then, one year you started tinkering with the idea of, you know, actually leaving your baby. Tossing the keys to someone else and riding off into the sunset. You know – retiring. And the more serious you got about the idea, the more you realized you were entering another phase of business ownership that’s also really hard – selling a business.

[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Business Planning

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Next Page »

Categories

  • Banking
  • Business Planning
  • Cash Flow
  • Communication
  • Coronavirus
  • 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
  • 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

  • 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

© 2021 · Jim BlasingameContact Us