Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Management Fundamentals

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: 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: 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: The Coronavirus, Inconvenient and Inevitable

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This is the thirteenth edition of my New Regular series (nope – not superstitious), which is dedicated to helping small business owners stick their finger in the eye of the coronavirus. Normal has assumed the stage name “Abnormal” and is now touring in a traveling freakshow across the Australian Outback.

When you think about it, there’s not much new about change in the past 5,000 years, just variations on old themes. Electrification is lightning in a bottle and your PC or Apple Watch are battery powered Antikythera Mechanisms (circa 2100 BCE). But there is one thing new about change: its velocity. Change is happening faster.

As analog has been supplanted by digital, we’ve witnessed an unprecedented compression of time between model generations, from hardware to software to associated behaviors and practices. And out here on Main street, that velocity – not the change – is what’s taking our breath away.  Now, let’s apply that truth to both the coronavirus pandemic and our response to it.

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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: 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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