Jim Blasingame's Blog, page 13
July 30, 2015
How to get a bank loan: Part One
One of the markers of this post-recession, so-called recovery has been the practice of deleveraging. Across the economy, from consumers to businesses large and small, debt has become something to get rid of.
Out here on Main Street, this trend has manifested in a dramatic drop in bank borrowing by small firms. Indeed, for more than a half decade, survey after survey has shown that less than 5% of business owners report their borrowing requirements have not been met, while the majority say emp...
July 20, 2015
Dave was an entrepreneurial horse
Dave was the fifth of twelve children 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...
July 13, 2015
Business Growth: An Irony in the Marketplace
Here’s a scenario that plays out in the marketplace every day in Small Business, USA:
“My business is really growing these days,” a small business owner confides to his friend, “but we’re still experiencing negative cash during the month.”
And then, with that deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, he completes his concern, “I thought by now, with sales and profits up, cash flow would be the least of my worries. I used to be afraid I couldn’t grow my business; now I’m worried that our growth...
July 8, 2015
Climbing the hill
In a former life, whenever I felt deficient in my ability to meet a particular challenge, one of my mentors would say to me, “This is no hill for a climber,” followed immediately by, “and you’re a climber.”
Today, whenever I’m feeling deficient in my ability to meet the challenges of my small business, I say these words to myself, “This is no hill for a climber and I’m a climber.”
In an even earlier life, growing up on a farm, we had an old two-ton Studebaker truck. This was a brute of a truc...
July 6, 2015
We Began With Freedom and We’re Better for It
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.
Ambitious and highly intelligent, Henry’s attempts to consolidate all of the 12th century British Isles under his rule created the need for order. And while the subsequent reforms were intended more for his own political expediency than to empower the people, they actually gave birth to a body...
July 2, 2015
Dealing with Pessimism
Do you know what a jet fighter is? If you said airplane, you’re only half right. In the strict nomenclature, a jet fighter is actually a weapons platform. Its job is to deliver ordinance to a target, not to fly the pilot around.
In that sense, the human body — this vessel of protoplasm we drive around — is not really what a human is. It’s actually a delivery platform for the will of our spirit; the true life force that is who we really are.
One of the things I have observed about humans is th...
July 1, 2015
It’s Time to Tell The Truth About Minimum Wage
Before any product or service is offered to customers, the price must be determined. The foundational element of this calculus are costs, which includes labor. In a true free-market economy, all elements of cost are determined by the marketplace. But in the U.S., we don’t have a true free-market economy because of mandates and subsidies imposed by the federal government, one of which is the minimum wage.
Alas, raising the minimum wage is being proposed again.
When the government is involved,...
June 25, 2015
POLL RESULTS: The Supreme Court and Obamacare
5% - I like Obamacare and hope they don’t change it.
66% - I don’t like Obamacare and hope they strike it down.
18% - I won’t be impacted either way.
11% - I don’t know.
Jim’s Comments:
As you can see, the Affordable Care Act is not popular among small business owners. The primary reason is it isn’t more affordable than what most of us already had, plus...
June 24, 2015
The Out Basket
Harold Alexander, British field marshal during WWII, and 1st Earl of Tunis, had a habit at the end of the day of “tipping” the remaining work left in his In basket into his Out basket. When asked why he did this he replied, “It saves time and you’d be surprised at how much doesn’t come back.”
For small business owners, the Earl’s management style could be dangerous; many of us don’t have anyone to come by and take the stuff from our Out basket. If we don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. But I w...
June 23, 2015
A father’s tough love is the harder job
This is Jim’s traditional Father’s Day column.
As the father of an adultdaughter 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 thislove differs between mother and father-biologica...
