management fundamentals

Spring Cleaning For Small Business? Yes! In December!

December 12, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

Whether it’s a year where something we once knew as “normal” was part of our reality, or during an unprecedented and unimaginable year of a global pandemic, the abiding management question for all small business owners is always valid: “What’s the best use of my time right now?” And at no other time of the year are we more time-management challenged than in December.

The twelfth calendar month is the only one where two powerful imperatives converge against a hard stop, each demanding a full measure of your time, attention, and resources:

The perennial push to close out the sales year as strongly as possible, while
Simultaneously taking steps to set the business up for a fast and clean start when the New Year dawns on January 1.

Pardon the football metaphor, but in the marketplace game, your business plays all year, December is the two-minute drill of your fourth quarter. And in this tight transition period, that fierce competition for precious time and resources requires discipline and devotion to fundamentals.

Our grandmothers practiced the fundamentals of spring cleaning when the weather broke warm. In the marketplace, in order to kick off the New Year right, your spring cleaning should happen before then. There are many targets for a business’s December cleaning, but here are five important ones to get you started.[Continue Reading]

Intangible Motivation Produces Tangible Results

November 7, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

Imagine that your best employee just resigned. How much will it cost – directly and indirectly – to find, hire, train, and get a replacement to the productivity level of your exiting employee? You already know the answer: maybe years. Not a scenario you want to contemplate, right?

There are many reasons why someone leaves a job, but decades of exit interview records show that compensation is seldom the main reason. Consequently, it’s an article of faith that employees don’t leave companies they leave people – usually a manager. That means that such a disruptive circumstance is likely not only preventable, but the solution is essentially one of those intangibles that cost you little to nothing. Often, just some of your time and attention.

Motivation is one of those intangibles, and smart business owners know about its power. They’ve experienced the direct link between motivating employees to be successful in their assignments and the success of their business.

You can become one of those smart managers before a key employee turns in their keys because he or she merely couldn’t come up with a reason to be motivated to stay. Consider these six motivational best practices.[Continue Reading]

Five Financial Mysteries Revealed, Part III

October 24, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

This is the last of a three-part series covering what I call The Five Financial Mysteries. In the first two articles, the first three Mysteries were revealed about the relationship between cash, accounting, and profit.

In this article, I’ll complete my attempt to help you stay on the right side of the business survival/failure statistics. So, buckle up as I reveal Financial Mysteries Four and Five.

Financial Mystery Number Four

You can get squeezed between vendors and customers.

Vendors and customers are the prime entities every business deals with financially every day the business is open. Understanding your relationship between these two, (literally between, because your business is in the middle), is the key to cash flow management. The way to avoid getting squeezed is [Continue Reading]

Revealed: Two More Of The Five Financial Mysteries

October 19, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

This is the second of three articles on how to prevent your firm from becoming part of the increasing mortality statistics of U.S. small businesses. That’s right. The SBA reports that 50% of small businesses fail in the first four years, instead of five years, as they reported 20 years ago.

In this series, I’m revealing what I call the Five Financial Mysteries. Actually, they shouldn’t be mysteries at all – they’ve been around for generations. But with this much Main Street carnage – a 20% increase in startup failures – it’s obvious that a lot of people haven’t learned what you must be able to do to sustain your business: operational financial management.

If you think you’re an excellent financial manager, then you won’t find any mysteries here. But if you could use a little help with your financial management, then this series could be just what you need. Don’t worry, we won’t get too mathy.

In the previous column, the First Financial Mystery was revealed: Cash and accounting are not the same thing. Today you’re going to discover the Second and Third Financial Mysteries. [Continue Reading]

Business Financial Mysteries Revealed, Part I

October 10, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

This is the first article in a three-part series on how to prevent your operation from joining those who are driving the increasing mortality of U.S. small businesses.

One of the pillars of the American Dream is the ability of any citizen to start a business from scratch, build it, own it, and pass it along to their heirs. Research indicates that there are more than 25 million of these dreams come true in the U.S. Approximately eight million have employees, the balance are independent contractors, professionals, etc., and together they create half of the U.S. economy.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is [Continue Reading]

The Golden Triplets Of Small Business Success

August 22, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

For most of the 20th century, Americans enjoyed what I call The Golden Age of Customer Service. Sadly, based on recent research, it appears we’re in the Plastic Age.

In a national customer satisfaction index, the average customer rating was less than 60%. Going six for 10 is pretty good – if you’re playing baseball. But any small business with that batting average is headed for the shower.

So how has such a level of unservice become a 21st-century norm? Because customers have become sensitized to what I call the Plastic Triplets: High volume/low price, impersonal e-business, and almost as impersonal face-to-face service.

For small businesses, the Plastic Triplets create both opportunity and danger. But seizing the former and avoiding the latter requires an understanding of two things: [Continue Reading]