Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Entrepreneurship

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: The Small Business Standup Act

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This is the 12th edition of my New Regular series, designed to help Main Street operators restart their business into the post-pandemic economy. Normal tested positive and has been quarantined indefinitely. 

Most comedians and all entrepreneurs write their own material for when they stand up in front of their respective audiences. Other than that, what does your small business have to do with a comedy act?

It’s true that even when operating a business is fun, it usually isn’t funny (except when we laugh at ourselves). But perhaps we can learn something from the simple truths that are foundational for all good comedy. And who better to model our simple truths after than Jeff Foxworthy and his one-liners.

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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: Your Cheese Has Been Moved

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These are rough days on Main Street. Business owners are experiencing extreme stress and anxiety, unprecedented in cause, abruptness, velocity, and impact. 

Just now we’re dealing with a one-two punch to our lives and livings. The first blow was from a novel coronavirus pandemic and the second from the shutdown response to it. 

The shutdown punch – however necessary and politically-variable – has dealt a devastating financial blow to millions of small firms. And as the arc of the disease danger seems to be descending, business owners are increasingly struggling with an unprecedented internal conflict I’ve termed “Owner’s Choice”: Having to daily reassess the risk of a deadly disease against ongoing damage to their family’s financial future.  

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It’s time for America’s Main Street to go back to work

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America’s small business sector is currently on an emotional roller coaster. Let me tell you a story about how far back we have to go – over 240 years – to find comparable unprecedented circumstances imposing similar anxiety on Main Street. 

During the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), colonial business owners, who were also American Patriots, were up against that conflict’s ebb and flow as it overlaid their marketplace. In any given month, the Continental Army would be dominant in a region, allowing the Patriot’s business to operate with its owner’s politics on display. But when the British later occupied that region, patrolling Redcoats would create a different atmosphere, as the King claimed military and political dominance. 

During that unprecedented period, the life of any Patriot entrepreneur became extremely complicated. As they attempted to claim liberty, they simultaneously had to balance the risks of their business with a very real threat to their lives and beloved families. And as they contemplated these factors, surely they had to allow for the possibility that the revolution might fail. On the subject of risk management – more safety or more liberty – Franklin offered this immortal truth: “Those who trade liberty for safety deserve neither.”

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Your 2020 Attitude: Surviving is Winning

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In response to the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve written recently about Black Swans, maintaining perspective and anticipating government assistance.

Today, it’s all about attitude.

Not since the convergence of two deadly, cataclysmic events over a century ago – when a World War teamed-up with a Spanish Influenza pandemic – has there been a comparable time of pain, fear, and uncertainty as today. We’ve watched the novel coronavirus expand from a regional outbreak in China to a textbook pandemic, on its way to causing a global economic crisis.

When the Enter key was pushed to send my “Perspective” column exactly three weeks ago, less than 200 Americans had succumbed to COVID-19. In the blink of 21 days, that number is now over 16,000. No one was prepared for the sheer velocity of the human and financial toll as, incredibly, the coronavirus infected the planet. It’s now abundantly clear that this is one mean disease – tough and angry.

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