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Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Start Ups

Buying A Business? Focus On These Four Factors

March 22, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

Continuing my series on buying a business, consider these four critical factors when you’re on a small business acquisition quest.

Old sellers are the best sellers 

One of the best opportunities to acquire an existing business is when you can buy one from an owner who wants to retire from a business that’s still viable. Two good reasons are: they’re less likely to change their mind before the transaction is complete, and they’re more likely to finance a larger part of the sale price to get monthly income.

Notice I said, “still viable.” [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Buying a Business, Entrepreneurship, Start Ups Tagged With: business acquisition, business startup, buying a business, entrepreneurship, small business

Buying A Business? Consider These Principles First

March 14, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

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]

Filed Under: Buying a Business, Entrepreneurship, Management Fundamentals, Start Ups Tagged With: aquisition, small business

Can Your Business Survive Accelerating Inflation?

March 7, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

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]

Filed Under: Business Planning, Entrepreneurship, Finance / Accounting / Taxes, Management Fundamentals, National and Global Economy, Start Ups, Uncategorized Tagged With: entrepreneurship, inflation, management fundamentals, pricing strategy, small business

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

February 28, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

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]

Filed Under: Customer Care, e-business, Ethics / Trust, Management Fundamentals, Marketing / Branding / Advertising, Social Media, Start Ups, The Age of the Customer, Uncategorized Tagged With: management fundamentals, marketing, small business, success

Storytelling Gave Birth To The Marketplace

January 24, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

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]

Filed Under: Customer Care, Entrepreneurship, Management Fundamentals, Sales / Sales Management, Start Ups, The Age of the Customer Tagged With: customer care, management fundamentals, sales management, selling, small business

Business Planning Will Always Be Relevant To Success

November 29, 2021 by Jim Blasingame

First, The Age of the Customer disrupted and made obsolete many older practices. More recently, a global pandemic – and our response to it – reset our businesses and the marketplace even more. But neither of these diminished, replaced, or made obsolete the requirement for business planning, especially cash flow.

A business plan is the result of thinking, researching, strategizing, and reaching conclusions about how to pursue opportunities. It may exist only in the head of the planner, but it’s better when written down.

Whether elaborate or simple, a written business plan is an assembly of facts, ideas, assumptions, and projections about the future. Here are three ways to use a written plan: [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Business Planning, Start Ups

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