Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Management Fundamentals

Beware The High Price Of Free Information

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Stone Age humans had about 2.5 million years to prepare for the Bronze Age, followed by 2,000 years to transition to the Iron Age, which lasted about 800 years. Meanwhile, modern humans, barely in the third decade of the 21st century, are dealing with the 50-something Digital Age transmogrifying into the Information Age at the speed of light, literally in front of our eyes.

No other human generation in history has ever had to make this kind of shift.

A wise person once said that the most powerful force in civilization is information. Well, today, humans are awash in that power in the form of digital records of everything from “Breaking News!” to virtually everything that’s ever been said, written, or happened since Og and Gog invented the wheel in the Stone Age. And the following points represent the two sides of the Information Age Paradox:  [Continue Reading]

Buying A Business? Consider These Principles First

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Recently I offered an article on how to “Buy Your American Dream” by buying a business from someone else. Let’s continue that theme with a few more principles to employ when considering this ownership option. Thanks to my friend, Russell Brown, and his book, Laws of the Business Buying and Selling Jungle for the inspiration.

Buyer beware – of himself.
In the securities industry, full disclosure is the coin of the realm. But in the marketplace, caveat emptor — let the buyer beware — is the fair warning standard. If a seller misleads or misrepresents something, legal redress may be available. But business purchases that don’t work out are born more from inept buyers than from seller malfeasance.

What’s a business worth?
Many metrics and factors are used to divine the value of a business, including strategic elements outside of the empirical. But primarily, you should focus on the business’s ability to generate earnings — net profits. With the exception of strategic factors, if the prospective business isn’t creating acceptable earnings and you don’t know how to change that, don’t buy the business. [Continue Reading]

Can Your Business Survive Accelerating Inflation?

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The current inflation rate is 7.5% and trending the wrong way. Since you probably already don’t charge enough, what’s your plan now?

You might think that a rude and presumptuous opener, but it’s intended as a tough-love reality check for which you’ll thank me later. Because no business owner has experienced such a spike in inflation since Carter tossed the White House keys to Reagan and “The Jeffersons” replaced “All in the Family” on TV. That was more than 40 years ago when inflation was double today’s rate.

Those facts are why we’re going to discuss the impact of inflation on your pricing strategy. Wait! What? You do have one of those, don’t you? I’ll give you a minute. [Continue Reading]

When The UGC Says “Nu-uh,” You’ve Gotta Problem

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Once upon a time, but not that long ago, a brand message could be successful even if it was close to a work of fiction. 

Created by Madison Avenue wordsmiths, copy for an ad or brochure was crafted to manipulate and motivate using puffery, a legal term referring to acceptable marketing exaggeration. And most of the time it worked. In fact, generations of consumers allowed themselves to be manipulated by puffery that became part of the soundtrack of our lives. Here are three Memory Lane examples:

“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is.”

“Put a tiger in your tank.”

“The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”

Here’s a local example: “Largest inventory in the tri-state area.”

Since the release of the Internet for commercial use in 1993, the 10,000-year-old Age of the Seller paradigm has shifted in favor of the Age of the Customer. The primary differentiator between the two Ages is control of the information, which your customer now co-owns, including the truth about your products, services, and marketplace behavior. This customer control is derived in part from something called User-Generated Content, or UGC. [Continue Reading]

Storytelling Gave Birth To The Marketplace

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Cogito ergo sum. French philosopher Rene Descartes proposed this idea in 1637, which translates to “I think, therefore I am.” Certainly, the power of abstract thought is what separates humans from other animals.

Anthropologists now believe Homo sapiens succeeded, unlike other members of the genus Homo, Neanderthals, and Cro-Magnon for example, because their (our) brains had a greater capacity for speech and language. Today Descartes might modify his philosophy to “I think and speak, therefore I am.”

In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith proposed the written word as one of the three great human inventions; the other two are money and mathematics. But long before humans were writing we were telling stories. And these stories – told, memorized, and retold over millennia – became the headwaters of human development. And here in the third decade of the 21st century, humans still love to tell stories almost as much as we love to listen to them.

Another thing that’s older than writing is the marketplace. Long before Madison Avenue ad copy, merchants were verbalizing the value and benefits of their wares. Clearly, early business storytelling was the origin of modern selling skills.  [Continue Reading]

The “Customer? What Customer Syndrome?” Part II

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Last week you were introduced to a dangerous trend in the marketplace, which I’ve named the “Customer? What Customer? Syndrome,” or CWCS. This condition is found in companies that are more concerned with competitors than with customers.

You learned that Level One CWCS infects employees who have received little or no training about the direct link between customers and their employer’s success and, therefore, their paychecks. Level One is dangerous but not hopeless because those so afflicted can be cured with better hiring and training.

Now let’s talk about Level Two CWCS, which only afflicts managers. Level Two is more troubling and organizationally more devastating because it occurs at the top, where strategic decisions are made.  [Continue Reading]

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