Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Coronavirus

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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The New Regular: Claim this Powerful Pandemic Present

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This is the 17th edition of my New Regular series, devoted to helping your small business successfully navigate the uncharted, post-pandemic economy. When normal tried to pass as “new” on Twitter, the cancel culture came apart and the account was immediately suspended.

Protomarket was born 10,000 years ago when Og and Gog dropped their clubs and said, “Let’s stop fighting and do business.” At that same moment, something else was born that became the second most powerful human force: Trust. Only a mother’s love is more awesome. Everybody knows that.

Fast-forward to 2020 and trust is still the abiding nexus of every human interaction. Arky Ciancutti, M.D., my friend and co-author of “Built On Trust,” says, “We are a society in search of trust.”

In life, the expectation of trust is non-negotiable. Humans may be illogical about love, but we’re not confused about trust – we require it. 

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The New Regular: Small Businesses Need IP “Corpsplaining”

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This is the 16th edition of my New Regular series, which has the singular purpose of delivering small businesses safely to the other side of the pandemic abyss. Normal was just inducted into the Irrelevance Hall of Fame, joining payphones, VHS tapes, and, sadly, fellow 2020 inductees, the hug and the handshake.

There are innumerable ways that the small business sector is better than Corporate America, and all are ingredients of the legendary Main Street special sauce, regularly chronicled here. But in at least three disciplines – human resources, marketing, and intellectual property (IP) – most small business owners should sit still for some corpsplaining from the big guys. Corpsplaining – “You say you know, but let’s review anyway” – is my latest coinage. It’s like what ladies call “mansplaining,” only not as cute. 

Saving the first two Big Business advantages for another day, let’s discuss intellectual property in terms of operating your post-pandemic business in the New Regular marketplace. Stay with me because your small firm eats IP by the gigabit. In fact, you couldn’t function without it.

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The New Regular: What Really Matters During a Pandemic

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This is the fifteenth edition of my New Regular series, which has the sole purpose of helping small business owners emerge into the post-pandemic economy successfully and happy. Normal is now as relevant as an employee-of-the-month parking space during the shutdown.

In any other year, my column this week would be about the national holiday which for at least 126 years has provided America’s workers with a paid day off on the first Monday of September. Also noted would be that half of those Labor Day celebrants – over 70 million – would be paid to not work by America’s 6.5 million small business employers.

But this year, in the throes of a coronavirus pandemic threatening our lives and the economic shutdown attacking our livelihoods, the Labor Day needle registers low on the concern-o-meter. Instead, my thoughts keep coming back to something emphasized earlier in this series: Perspective. Part of the New Regular is keeping what’s happening to us this year in perspective. With that in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple of stories.

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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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