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Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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success

Shocking Confessions of a Legendary Actor and the World’s Greatest Salesman

February 16, 2023 by Jim Blasingame

After a lifetime on stage and screen, the legendary English actor, Sir Laurence Olivier, once admitted that he had always suffered from stage fright.

Imagine that. One of the 20th century’s most revered actors, appearing in over 120 stage roles, 60 movies, more than 15 television productions, and countless performances, actually battled the fear of rejection and failure. But when you look at the numbers of his body of work, it’s obvious that Sir Laurence didn’t let his “condition” cost him success.

And now, after a sales career that has spanned more than a half-century, a legendary salesman named Blasingame reveals that he’s suffered from the marketplace equivalent of stage fright – call reluctance – his entire career.

Imagine that. Having conducted thousands of sales calls on multiple continents, in front of decision-makers from the towering C-Suites of Fortune 100 CEOs to bell-over-the-door Main Street mom-and-pops, perhaps the greatest professional salesperson of all time struggles with…making first contact. But when you look at the numbers of his body of work, it’s obvious that the man known as JB to colleagues and “The Force” to competitors, didn’t allow his “condition” to cost him success.

Alas, it’s a sad truth that even well-trained and motivated people can suffer from the scourge of the sales profession to challenge their performance. What about you? Have you experienced call reluctance? If so, what do your numbers tell you? The good news about stage fright/call reluctance, as proven by Sir Lawrence and JB, is that it’s a condition you can overcome. Indeed, their success, and the fact that they’ve been willing to share their personal struggles, provide us with at least four clues about their professional grit and spirit. [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Management Fundamentals, Sales / Sales Management, Start Ups Tagged With: management fundamentals, selling, small business, small business owner, success

Success Will Come From Relationships You Build With People

December 19, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

Dave was the fifth of twelve children raised during the Great Depression. His father worked at a sawmill and was a part-time basket weaver.

Dave had some problems: He was a stutterer, he had epilepsy, plus a learning disorder, all of which prevented him from graduating high school until he was 21. How do you like Dave’s chances in life so far?

But Dave was a good employee: first a Fuller Brush salesman and next a route man for two bakeries. Then, with all of his personal challenges, he purchased and successfully ran a restaurant and a grocery store.

Remember Dave’s father’s part-time basket weaving? Well, he started selling baskets: first from his father’s hands, and later from Dave’s factory. Oh, that’s right. You didn’t know Dave had a basket factory. Well, it was the basket factory Dave sold his two very successful businesses to buy. Turns out Dave had serious entrepreneurial sap rising in his bark.

Dave’s friends, family, and bankers were incredulous. Why leave a successful and sure thing to make baskets? By the way, they knew Dave didn’t know anything about how to make baskets himself. Would you have invested in Dave?

We now know that Dave also had vision. He envisioned a world that would need baskets – lots of baskets. And Dave Longaberger wanted to fill that need. [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Ethics / Trust, Leadership, Networking Tagged With: entrepreneurship, leadership, networking, small business, success

Spring Cleaning For Small Business? Yes! In December!

December 1, 2022 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 fundamental 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: Customer Care, Human Resources, Leadership, Management Fundamentals, Sales / Sales Management Tagged With: leadership, management fundamentals, small business, small business owner, success

Entrepreneurial Intangibles Are Essential To Tangible Success

November 20, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

Now in my fifth decade as a business owner, this Baby Boomer has been reflecting on what’s been learned that would benefit the next generation of entrepreneurs.

It’s understandable to focus most of our attention on the many hard fundamentals of how to sustain a successful small business operation. But after logging many hours in that tangible mode, you’ll discover that it’s just as critical to respect the softer entrepreneurial intangibles that tend to be the human being behind the venture. And those who recognize and incorporate these in their approach to ownership are more likely to achieve that elusive holy grail of human intangibles: happiness.

In that spirit, allow me to offer two intangibles that are just as essential to business success as cash flow and profitability:  [Continue Reading]

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

Implications of the Pandemic Workforce Diaspora on Corporate Culture

September 20, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

“Frankly, I’m amazed at how well we’re working right now. We’ve experienced zero drop in performance.”

That quote, and variations of it, came from several CEOs during the second half of 2020, in response to my question: “How have your teams performed so far during the lockdown?” These CEOs were guests on my weekday, syndicated radio program, “The Small Business Advocate Show.” In fact, they were so pleasantly surprised that one executive even asked rhetorically, “Tell me again why we’re spending $5million a year on office rent?”

For date context, that was the initial period when the marketplace was essentially locked down, and the workforce was sent home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Overnight, millions of workers across the globe started working remotely and, ready or not, subsequent teamwork, collaboration and meetings were conducted in the two-dimensional digital domain, like on a Zoom call.

Based on the answers to my question, it seemed that this emergency, once-in-a-career, global workplace disruption had revealed some previously unknown magical management formula [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Corporate Culture, Demographics, Generations, Futuring, Human Resources Tagged With: culture, demographics, leadership, organizational success, small business, success, teleworking, workforce

Awareness and Consciousness: The Secrets of Success of Highly Effective People

August 11, 2022 by Jim Blasingame

Ever wonder why some people are more effective than others? Life just seems to be easier for them, right?

The answer to this mystery is likely found in one of the most obvious traits that separate us from other members of the kingdom Animalia: humans are self-aware.

Human’s self-awareness looks like modesty, shame, empathy, fairness, greed, selfishness, selflessness, and ambition … just to name a few traits from our awareness inventory. But the most self-aware among us – those highly effective people – are informed by a bigger picture perspective regarding the impact of their behavior and actions on the world around them, especially with other humans.

As students of Newton’s 3rd Law – for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction – highly effective people are not surprised when and how the world reacts to them, because they’ve already role-played at least some level of that potential response in their minds. And members of this special cohort of effectiveness fashioned all this awareness into something that looks like a practice, a behavior, a skill, and/or a tool, but is called self-analysis. Intuitively named, self-analysis helps regulate future behavior for maximum effectiveness. More on self-analysis in a minute. [Continue Reading]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Start Ups, Work-Life / Balance Tagged With: entrepreneurship, leadership, small business, small business owner, success

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