Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

header image

Work-Life / Balance

The New Regular: The Marketplace Is More Than Fear and Greed

by

This is the 20th edition of my New Regular series that focuses on the macro and microelements of small business success in the post-coronavirus economy. “Normal” is a term used by those who haven’t made a pandemic payroll.

Fear and greed. Individually, they represent two of the purest primal emotions of modern humans. The headwaters of both spring from the emotion-dwelling part of the brain called the amygdala. 

When used together, it’s appropriate that fear is first because it represents a primitively instinctive and less reasoned response. When an unexpected blast occurs, we duck first and determine the caliber of the cannon later. A very primitive emotion.

Unlike fear, as an emotion, greed is a wholly-owned human franchise. When people progressed to produce more than was needed for survival, the luxury of greed was born. Greed is a modern human emotion.

But as different as these two emotions are, humans have leveraged them in tandem for 10,000 years to form the paradoxical pendulum that created and continues to power one of the most important human creations: the marketplace. 

[Continue Reading]

The New Regular: What Really Matters During a Pandemic

by

This is the fifteenth edition of my New Regular series, which has the sole purpose of helping small business owners emerge into the post-pandemic economy successfully and happy. Normal is now as relevant as an employee-of-the-month parking space during the shutdown.

In any other year, my column this week would be about the national holiday which for at least 126 years has provided America’s workers with a paid day off on the first Monday of September. Also noted would be that half of those Labor Day celebrants – over 70 million – would be paid to not work by America’s 6.5 million small business employers.

But this year, in the throes of a coronavirus pandemic threatening our lives and the economic shutdown attacking our livelihoods, the Labor Day needle registers low on the concern-o-meter. Instead, my thoughts keep coming back to something emphasized earlier in this series: Perspective. Part of the New Regular is keeping what’s happening to us this year in perspective. With that in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple of stories.

[Continue Reading]

The New Regular: When Small Business Brain became COVID Brain

by

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.

[Continue Reading]

America celebrates liberty and the world is the beneficiary

by

Seven score and seventeen years ago, in his inspired speech at the 1863 dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, President Lincoln delivered these immortal words: “…our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Four score and seven years earlier, one of those “fathers,” an inspired Thomas Jefferson (with suggestions from no less an able editor than Ben Franklin), authored what is arguably the most momentous secular document in history. The second paragraph of America’s Declaration of Independence begins with this passionate passage:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

[Continue Reading]

Why a father’s tough love is the harder job

by

As the father of an adult daughter and son, plus the grandfather of four knucklehead boys (Hurricane, Tornado, Crash, and Train Wreck), I’ve learned some things about love. 

All the hours logged as Dad and Poppy have often caused me to contemplate how different are the roles of mother and father, especially in the overt demonstration of parental love. It’s fascinating how the manifestation of this love differs between mother and father – biologically, emotionally, and experientially. 

A mother’s love, at once sweet and fierce, is observed in almost all animals, not just humans. No doubt you’ve heard this simile: “… as sweet as a mother’s love,” and this warning: “Never get between a momma bear and her cub.” I’ve witnessed and have been the happy recipient of this kind of love, and there truly is no other force like it in nature

[Continue Reading]

Defunding police will hurt America’s small businesses

by

No other single group does more to benefit America than Main Street businesses. And no other has a greater stake in the stability of their communities.

Small business owners anchor thousands of communities by producing half of the U.S. economy, creating jobs and signing millions of paychecks every week, building things you can hold, delivering customized service you can see, and leading with class. President Kennedy had something to say about that last thing: “Class is grace under pressure.”

Surely, JFK was thinking of a small business owner, because no one scratched their head when Gallup reported public admiration for small business owners as number two out of 15 groups. They were right under the armed forces, immediately followed in third place by – the police. By the way, the “media” and Congress are on the bottom – 14 and 15 respectively. Just saying …

[Continue Reading]

Categories

Archives

Share this page with your friends and followers