Small Business Lessons from Jeff Foxworthy

By Jim Blasingame July 5, 2012

Have you seen the classic Jeff Foxworthy act?

You know, the one where he says, “If you have more than one car jacked up in your front yard, you might be a redneck.”

Foxworthy got rich with this comedic routine. And you can benefit from this cause-and-effect logic too, if you apply it to your small business.

Let’s use Foxworthy’s shtick to deliver and emphasize a few small business survival punch lines. But in this application, if you resemble too many of these one-liners, not only will you not get rich, your business might not make it.

• If the gloom-and-doom you’re hearing in the media has you holed-up inside the four walls of your business instead of getting out into the marketplace where customers are buying, you might not make it.
• If your budget cuts included wiping out your marketing plan, you might not make it.
• If you don’t have a website, you might not make it.
• If you don’t have a mobile website, you might not make it.
• If you’re a retail business and you don’t have a local search strategy, you might not make it.
• If you sell to businesses and are still making cold calls, you might not make it.
• If you’re spending more time worrying about what the competition is doing instead of asking customers what they want, you might not make it.
• If you don’t know what your monthly expenses are – every month, you might not make it.
• If you don’t know how much gross profit your operation must produce every month in order to cover expenses, you might not make it.
• If you don’t know how much sales revenue it takes to produce that monthly gross profit, you might not make it.
• If you don’t manage accounts receivable collections so there is enough cash to cover your current obligations, like payroll, you might not make it.
• If you haven’t prepared for customers on your accounts receivable list to take longer to pay over the next few months, you might not make it.
• If you haven’t developed a close relationship with a bank that makes loan decisions locally, you might not make it.
• If you aren’t managing cash flow with a 12-month cash flow projection – preferably electronically, like an Excel file – so you know the months you’ll need extra cash before you get there, you might not make it.
• It’s okay to fall in love with what you do, but if you fall in love with how you do it, you might not make it.

Write this on a rock ...Who knew Jeff Foxworthy could be so useful?

Jim Blasingame is creator and host of the Small Business Advocate Show. Copyright 2012, author retains ownership. All Rights Reserved.

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