Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

header image

small business

In Defense Of The Misunderstood Scrooge

by

Some say I’m a scrooge. They might be right.

The following exhibits (excuses) are placed into evidence in my defense of this indictment:

A. The early part of my career was spent in retail. Retailers know what that job does to your holiday spirit. There’s a survivor syndrome for everything else, why not one for retail survivors? Let’s call it RPTHSS: Retail Post-Traumatic Holiday Shock Syndrome.

B. Since I don’t wait until the holidays to give someone a gift, I just don’t get all worked up about holiday giving. Not that the ladies mind getting stuff all year (let’s not lose our heads). It’s just that they want me to be giddy about giving at Christmastime. Giddy? Bah! Humbug!

C. As an avowed and devout contrarian, it would be antithetical for me to feel obligated to do what everyone else is doing. And if there’s one thing that has become part and parcel of the holiday season, it is obligation. For example:[Continue Reading]

Personal Service Businesses: Think Prices Not Wages

by

Millions of small businesses sell personal services like consulting, website development, or janitorial services, instead of something tangible like a computer or a kumquat.

Unfortunately, pricing a service is not as intuitive as pricing a tangible product. Consequently, service businesses too often don’t charge enough to sustain themselves profitably because of how they think about what they sell to customers.

Don’t make the professionally fatal mistake of comparing what you charge customers to deliver your product – a service – to how much you would expect to make per hour as an employee. Doing so, to paraphrase Mark Twain, is like comparing lightning to a lightning bug. You must think like a business, not an employee. You have to think pricing, not wages. Here’s why: [Continue Reading]

We began with freedom and the world is better for it

by

The first Plantagenet king of England, Henry II, is important to contemporary small business owners because he’s considered the founder of a legal system to which entrepreneurs owe their freedom to be.

His intelligence only exceeded by his ambition, Henry’s attempts to consolidate all of the 12th-century British Isles under his rule created the need for order. And while his motivations were more for his own political expediency than to empower the people, Henry’s subsequent reforms actually gave birth to the legendary English Common Law, which replaced elements of the feudal system that included such enlightened practices as trial by ordeal.

Six centuries later, great progress in the legal and cultural tide of personal freedoms and property rights had evolved from Henry’s reforms and subsequently strengthened in 1215 by King John’s Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights in 1689. For example, this declaration from British statesman William Pitt, Sr. in 1762: “The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter – all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”

Concurrent with the English reform evolution, across the Atlantic in the colonies, a group of now-legendary malcontents we call America’s Founders envisioned and created an extraordinary variation on Pitt’s promise. That variation was a world sans kings.

[Continue Reading]

Sustained small business success requires two kinds of passion

by

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.

[Continue Reading]

Categories

Archives

Share this page with your friends and followers