Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Start Ups

Success will come from relationships you build with people

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Dave was the fifth of twelve children raised during the Great Depression. His father worked at a sawmill and was a part-time basket weaver.

Dave had some problems:  He was a stutterer, he had epilepsy, plus a learning disorder, all of which prevented him from graduating high school until he was 21. How do you like Dave’s chances in life so far?

But Dave was a good employee: first, a Fuller Brush salesman and next, a route man for two bakeries. Then, with all of his personal challenges, he purchased and successfully ran a restaurant and a grocery store.

Remember Dave’s father’s part-time basket weaving? Well, he started selling baskets: first from his father’s hands, and later from Dave’s factory. Oh, that’s right. You didn’t know Dave had a basket factory. Well, it was the basket factory Dave sold his two very successful businesses to buy. Turns out Dave had serious entrepreneurial sap rising in his bark.

Dave’s friends, family, and bankers were incredulous. Why leave a successful and sure thing to make baskets? By the way, they knew Dave didn’t know anything about how to make baskets himself. Would you have invested in Dave?

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Sustained small business success requires two kinds of passion

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Over the years, when I’ve counseled budding entrepreneurs about their startup plans, the exuding passion would often seem to override the imperative of knowing how to operate and sustain their baby. Indeed, they often act as if they must get their business started right now or they would just pop.

Of course, that kind of impatience and lack of discipline is dangerous, and I would do my best to talk these starry-eyed startups down off the ledge. The trick is to walk the fine line between slowing them down to the speed of prudence without dousing the fire of their entrepreneurial passion with a bucket of tough love.

Yes, passion is important.

When would-be small business owners get that far away look in their eyes at the impetuous startup stage, they have plenty of what I call market passion: passion for what the business does. They can’t wait to sell suits, manufacture motors, bake bagels, or (your dream here). But without full devotion to what I call “operating passion” – aka, business fundamentals – market passion will find itself with a dangerous critical mass deficit. Or as they say in Texas, “All hat and no cattle.”

This will be on the test: Success as a small business owner requires evidence and application of both market and operating passion.

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Thirty years of living by my wits

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It was a Monday morning – 8:30 to be exact – when the phone rang. I was the national sales manager for a publishing company, working out of my home office.

As a high school senior, I was the only member of my class to have what was essentially a full-time job. For the next 20 years, from flipping burgers to the C-Suite, I was never unemployed, even during the recessions of 1969, 1974, 1981 and 1983. But that all changed when, in 1988, I lost my VP job as my employer downsized itself, eventually to nothing. So, the irony wasn’t lost on me when I attended my 20-year high school reunion unemployed.

Back to that phone call. It was May 22, 1989, and my boss on the other end explained that the company had a new plan, but I wasn’t part of it. So, if you’re scoring at home, that was me getting fired, sacked, canned, downsized, (your unemployment idiom here) twice – in 1988 and 1989.

After hanging up the phone at 8:35, for about three seconds my first thought was to dust off my resume and hit the bricks. Two teenagers and two mortgages are strong motivators. But then, thinking out loud, said: “I don’t need any help screwing up my life, I can do that by myself.” So, I addressed the keyboard and gave birth to my new business, “Jim Blasingame and Associates, Business Consultants.” My “Associates” at that moment were a Macintosh Plus and a laser printer.

Thirty years later, a period that included a second entrepreneurial reinvention, I think I can declare myself a successful business owner. A professor friend of mine describes me this way: “My friend Jim is a small business owner; he lives by his wits.” No doubt you know how accurate that is.

What’s the big takeaway as I celebrate my business’s 30th anniversary?

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It is possible to succeed yourself right out of business

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This is another offering in my ongoing series on understanding the fundamentals of business as we become better business managers. Remember, fundamentals are like natural laws: they don’t change; they’re the same for everyone, and you can’t succeed without understanding and respecting them. The fundamentals today are all about funding growth.

Consider the following scenario that plays out on Main Street every day:

“Finally, my business is growing,” a small business owner confides to his friend, “but why is it creating so much negative cash?” And then, with that deer-in-the-headlights look, he completes his report, “I thought by now, with increased sales, cash would be the least of my worries. I used to be afraid I couldn’t grow my business; now I’m worried it will collapse from growth.”

This entrepreneur’s lament is one of the great ironies of the marketplace: a small business in danger of succeeding itself right out of business.

Beware Blasingame’s 2nd Law of Small Business: It’s redundant to say, “undercapitalized small business.” This maxim is especially true for fast-growing companies because revenue growth depletes cash in two dramatic but predictable ways.

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Shocking confessions of a legendary actor and the world’s greatest salesman

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After a lifetime on stage and screen, the legendary English actor, Sir Laurence Olivier, once admitted that he had always suffered from stage fright.

Imagine that. One of the 20th century’s most revered actors, appearing in over 120 stage roles, 60 movies, more than 15 television productions, and countless performances, actually battled the fear of rejection and failure. But when you look at the numbers of his body of work, it’s obvious that Sir Laurence didn’t let his “condition” cost him success.

And now, after a sales career that has spanned more than a half-century, a legendary salesman named Blasingame reveals that he’s suffered from the marketplace equivalent of stage fright – call reluctance – his entire career.

Imagine that. Having conducted literally thousands of sales calls on multiple continents, in front of decision-makers from the towering C-Suites of Fortune 100 CEOs to bell-over-the-door Main Street mom-and-pops, perhaps the greatest professional salesperson of all time struggles with…making first contact. But when you look at the numbers of his body of work, it’s obvious that the man known as JB to colleagues and “The Force” to competitors, didn’t allow his “condition” to cost him success.

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Performance: the Arch-Enemy of Fear

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Anyone who has contemplated forsaking the perceived, if not real, security of employment to start a small business has come face-to-face with and overcome the greatest of all business challenges: the fear of failure. Countless would-be entrepreneurs have discontinued their self-employment pursuits for fear of losing too much – the risk is just too great. Everybody knows that.

But if you pushed through these trepidations and, against all odds, became a business owner anyway, you know that wasn’t the last time you experienced fear. Indeed, fear is so much a part of being a business owner that, in time, we recognize and accept fear as something that can be quite handy.

Not paralyzing fear – like when you’re ignorant of how to prevent or recover from danger. But rather, the kind of fear that helps you seek excellence by motivating you to become more aware, knowledgeable, capable, prepared, decisive and effective.

Remember these two things about fear:

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