• Skip to content

Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

header image
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Third Ingredient
    • Age of the Customer
  • Speaking
  • About Jim
  • Press Room
    • Jim In the News
    • Press Materials
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Third Ingredient
    • Age of the Customer
  • Speaking
  • About Jim
  • Press Room
    • Jim In the News
    • Press Materials
  • Blog
  • Contact

small business owner

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:

  1. The perennial push to close out the sales year as strongly as possible, while
  2. 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]

Filed Under: Cash Flow, Customer Care, Entrepreneurship, Finance / Accounting / Taxes, Human Resources, Management Fundamentals, Profitability, Sales / Sales Management Tagged With: management fundamentals, small business, small business owner, success

Veteran’s Day: Recognizing And Honoring All Who Served

November 11, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

Veterans Day in America has its origins in Armistice Day. 

“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory.”

That 1919 quote by President Wilson commemorated the first anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI “in the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” And then, on November 11, 1938, Congress made “Armistice Day” a federal holiday.

But since that war did not, in fact, end all wars, a decade later, an Emporia, Kansas small business owner named Alvin King had a problem with the narrowness of the Armistice Day definition. It turns out that Al’s nephew, John E. Cooper, was killed in the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, which motivated him and the Emporia Chamber of Commerce to start a movement to redefine Armistice Day and give it a new name: [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Government / Politics, Leadership, Miscellaneous, Work-Life / Balance Tagged With: America, Armistice Day, entrepreneurship, leadership, small business owner, veterans, veterans day, work-life balance

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]

Filed Under: Business Planning, Cash Flow, Finance / Accounting / Taxes, Management Fundamentals, Profitability, Sales / Sales Management, Start Ups Tagged With: accounts payable, accounts receivable, cashflow, management fundamentals, profit, profitability, small business, small business owner, success, vendors

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]

Filed Under: Cash Flow, Finance / Accounting / Taxes, Management Fundamentals, Profitability, Start Ups Tagged With: accounting, cash flow, financial fundamentals, management fundamentals, profit, small business, small business owner

Your Blockchain Close Encounter Of The First Kind

September 19, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

This is the third article in a series about Blockchain technology and its implications. The first, in June, was an introduction, and the second, in July, was how Blockchain works and its role in creating digital trust. This article is about your likely first contact.

As small businesses have increasingly become vertically integrated with Big Business customers, they’ve had to step up their Main-Street-Mom-and-Pop game to become more sophisticated while continuing to be nimble, quick, versatile, and efficient. With this integration, larger customers have notified smaller partners of their evolving expectations, as driven by macro events and trends.

Consequently, over the past 25 years, millions of small businesses have received letters requiring compliance with four of those macro markers: [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Cybersecurity, Ethics / Trust, Futuring, Technology - Blockchain, Technology / General Tagged With: blockchain, digital trust, leadership, small business, small business owner, trust

Three Words That Might Change Your Life – Really!

September 12, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

For most of my half-century-plus career, I have consulted with small business owners about their current situation and future plans. Alas, the reality of operating on Main Street is that often the issue on the table could take them down. In fact, the circumstances might be so desperate and the prognosis so dire that the person upon whom the business’s buck stopped – or crashed – might be close to being unable to function.

During one such session, sitting in front of a client who looked like he was about to be eaten by an alligator, and having experienced a similar state of affairs myself in the past, I called upon what I’d learned about perspective and what really matters in life with this question: “How’re your children?”

“What the … ?!” he exclaimed incredulously and not a little irritated.

When I repeated the question more slowly, his next response was delivered with a level stare: “They’re fine. My business is going down the tube and you’re asking me about my kids?[Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Start Ups, Work-Life / Balance Tagged With: entrepreneurship, small business, small business owner, work-life balance, Zevon

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • …
  • Page 6
  • Next Page »

Categories

  • Banking
  • Business Planning
  • Buying a Business
  • Cash Flow
  • Communication
  • Coronavirus
  • Corporate Culture
  • Customer Care
  • Cybersecurity
  • Demographics, Generations
  • e-business
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Ethics / Trust
  • Finance / Accounting / Taxes
  • Franchising / Licensing
  • Futuring
  • Global affairs
  • Government / Politics
  • Human Resources
  • Innovation / Creativity
  • Intellectual Property
  • Investors
  • Leadership
  • Legal
  • Management Fundamentals
  • Marketing / Branding / Advertising
  • Miscellaneous
  • Mobile Computing
  • National and Global Economy
  • Negotiating
  • Networking
  • Profitability
  • Sales / Sales Management
  • Social Media
  • Start Ups
  • Technology – Blockchain
  • Technology / General
  • The 3rd Ingredient
  • The Age of the Customer
  • Trade: Import, Export, Globalization
  • Uncategorized
  • Work-Life / Balance

Archives

  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017

Share this page with your friends and followers

© 2025 · Jim BlasingameContact Us