SMART CREATORS ARE GETTING CLOSER TO THEIR FANS EVERY DAY

A decade ago, when Cameo (www.cameo.com) first started in Chicago and was working out of 1871, the tech incubator which I ran there at the time, only a few of us understood what the company’s long-term roadmap looked like and how utterly disruptive this little firm (with ugly videos from jocks in their cars and “D” level celebrities holding forth in their basements) was going to be for the entire entertainment industry. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/how-cameo-became-a-star.html.)

One of the great ironies at the time was that the most cogent observation came from no less an authority than Snoop Dogg, now a noted Olympic commentator, who said: “There is no platform or middleman filtering my message anymore.” The idea that artists and musicians could bypass many expensive and controlling layers of agents and managers and directly reach out to and connect with their fans wasn’t exactly revolutionary, but Cameo and others were the earliest players to provide painless technology solutions and easy access to anyone and everyone who thought they had something important to say. However, the economic problem for the creators and content providers was still a sizable concern because Cameo as the platform provider took a healthy cut of the revenue earned in each transaction. It was a better deal, but not the right deal.

A business that depends on resources which it doesn’t control isn’t really a business; it’s a hostage to the whims and vagaries of others. Even Steven Galanis, one of the co-founders of Cameo, advises creators to own their audience rather than rent it, which he defines as building monetization that does not depend on any single platform’s algorithm or content policies remaining consistent.

So, a few years later, along came bemyfriends (www.bemyfriends.com) riding on the huge success of its first major customer, the South Korean pop group BTS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTS ), and offered musicians and other creators their own platform with all the basic features required to build direct and lasting connections to their own fans without any intermediaries. This platform enabled special fan events, merchandise sales, access to the performers themselves, data analytics, advertising opportunities, fan voting mechanisms and numerous other tools which permitted the platform owner to focus on their principal activity while all the commerce and other business concerns were handled by the b.stage and b.stage+ platforms provided by bemyfriends. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/start-your-own-platform.html.) Most importantly, all the fan contacts and other proprietary data were owned exclusively by the artists and not by the platform operators. But the glaring omission in their offerings was the very critical area of ticketing which was controlled for almost all of the major U.S. concert venues by Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment.

The recent Ticketmaster and Live Nation litigation (See United States v. Live Nation Entertainment - Wikipedia.) where the suing states secured an initial determination that these two industry overlords were engaged in illegal monopolistic behavior (and notwithstanding the sad fact that they took the Trumpian payment path to bail themselves out of the federal proceedings) has energized talented musicians to be more entrepreneurial and aggressive in addressing the whole ticketing swamp. Here again, for artists with substantial fan bases and international followings, the attraction of building their own ticketing app and controlling their own interactions with their fans is very attractive and potentially quite lucrative.

One very significant example of direct-to-fan ticketing is the recent successful sold-out tour of Australia by GiaNina Paolantonio which employed a new free iPhone app ( ‎GiaNina App - App Store) that allows her to sell tickets worldwide to her fans without any service fees. She can sell tickets through the app for dance classes, performances and concerts to her followers which number over 4 million on TikTok alone. Add another 2 million fans for Snap, Insta, and YouTube and you can begin to understand the reach and power of what she’s doing. These are not thin or casual connections but rather relationships she’s been building since her work on Dance Moms (See https://dancemoms.fandom.com/wiki/GiaNina_Paolantonio) first gave her a persistent global audience. She’s choregraphed viral dance moves for Jennifer Lopez, Billie Eilish and Sombr, among others, and is now recording her music with Atlantic Records.

I wrote a piece quite a while ago noting that we’d probably all reached peak apps (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tillman/we-have-reached-peak-apps.html ) and that no one was looking to add more applications to their phones, but it’s a whole different story and a dream marketing scenario when an app developer is an artist who can speak directly to 6 million fans and tell them to get with the program and install her app to keep up with everything she’s doing – new music drops, hosting dance classes, extending her tours and, of course, other merch opportunities. And that’s only half of the really bad news for the twin ticket ogres.

The viral flywheel aspect (See The Future of Content Marketing) of her launch goes like this. Once a fan sees how easy, cheap (actually free) and speedy this app is, they’re never going back. All consumers’ expectations are perpetually progressive and – just as Amazon set a brand-new curve and standard for delivery times and goosed the world’s expectations – every one of GiaNina’s fans will be asking her to add other artists, acts, creators and tours to her app. And every one of those fans will also be asking every other act, musician and performer why they’re still doing things the old, slow and costly way. It’s only a matter of time with millions of consumers waiting worldwide at the end of the channel that GiaNina’s building until every artist will be speeding their way to GiaNina’s door. You can never go wrong counting on smart people to act in their own self-interest.

I wrote recently about Beni (www.shopbeni.com) which is becoming a major player in the used clothing resale space. (See Resale Is Booming. Inside the Consumer Shift Reshaping Apparel .) Beni offers a clever Chrome pop-up which appears as shoppers look at specific apparel items online and offers them the opportunity to instantly locate and purchase secondhand versions of the same or similar items at dramatically discounted prices. The retail resale marketplace is growing at a sizeable multiple of traditional retail and it’s likely to continue to expand especially as Trump’s economy continues to tank. There’s no longer any stigma attached to smart and economical shopping, especially as fast fashion items become instantly disposable. In addition, “used” has become “vintage” and wearing vintage clothing has become a “statement” that’s cool with the kids, politically correct, and good for the environment.

I noted in my earlier INC. column that many of the major retail brands were now also adding sections to their own websites – assisted by Beni and others - which offer discounts on their own products. While some of the merchandise offered on these sites are returned goods, and some are described as gently used, it’s clear that another significant portion of the goods were unsold and excess inventory which the brand manufacturers try to keep out of the discount apparel channels and downstream stores. I thought at the time that these were mainly items which hadn’t appealed to consumers for various style and color reasons. But I missed two other major drivers of returns and accelerants in consumer behaviors which I expect will only increase substantially in the future and become even more challenging problems for online retailers. As always, problems for traditional players turn into opportunities and openings for aggressive young entrepreneurs.

The first major change is the absolute flood of returns that every online retailer is facing because ordering three or four different sizes or colors of the same item - with every intention of returning (at the vendor’s cost) most of the items – has become standard shopping behavior which the retailers need to account for and treat as a cost element in every sale transaction. While it’s easy to sample alternative sizes and colors in a store, it’s become an expensive cost to the sellers both in terms of the return shipping costs and, equally important but often overlooked, the cost of inspecting, repackaging, and restocking rejected apparel. Related to this basic activity is the more shameless “wardrobing” that goes on every day now where young consumers order the apparel, wear it once or twice, and then return the items for a full refund.

Frankly many retailers are concluding that restocking customer returns at this scale is no longer economic and, in the absence of better alternatives, they’re sending more and more apparel to the landfills. Combined, these return costs can often approach the vendor’s entire margin – especially when we’re talking about low cost, fast fashion items. As the speed and ease of returns increases (Uber and Door Dash are both looking at extending their services into the return space), the volume of returns and excess inventory piling up in sellers’ warehouses is going to explode. And, to be honest, if we want an inclusive and diverse economy where everyone has access and participates, we have to value more than just pure economic efficiency.

One clever win-win answer is a service developed by LiquiDonate (www.liquidonate.com) which automatically routes unsellable returns or excess inventory to local nonprofits, charities and schools and thereby reduces supply chain costs, eliminates waste, and helps to protect brands’ reputations. The firm has already processed over 16 million items and they’ve built sufficient infrastructure capacity to handle up to 1 million items a month. LiquiDonate also offers services to manufacturers and retailers looking to unload excess material directly from their warehouses. And while the savings are mainly operational, the company does provide documentation to vendors who are interested in taking tax advantage of any available charitable donations.

The second behavioral change relates to the very expensive problem which young growing families have in cost-effectively keeping their kids in clothes that fit and getting rid of the outgrown stuff. The latest estimate is that it’s going to cost more than $300,000 to raise a child and smart families are exploring every available alternative to save money. Handing down the used goods to younger siblings (often a tough sell) or giving the older apparel and other equipment to friends and family with right-sized kids have been the traditional path along with an occasional trip to the nearby Goodwill store to dump a load of random used items.

But here again, a Chicago-based operation, Kidsy (www.kidsy.co ) has come up with a much better idea to lean into sustainability, save growing young families plenty of cash, and abandon the lazy throw-away culture to which we’ve all fallen victim. Kidsy’s recommerce platforms work with major players like Amazon, Target, LEGO and Macy’s to resell excess, open-box and customer-returned baby and kids’ products at heavily reduced prices ranging upwards of 50% off the original retail pricing. Conscientious parents can shop for the best brands and premium products, save significant amounts, and also help sustainably support the whole new circularity movement. Price is what you pay, but value is what you get. In the last 2+ years, Kidsy has helped to divert almost 2 million pounds of products bound for landfills and helped more than 150,000 families nationwide to take care of their kids and stay within their budgets. Circularity gives new meaning to the old “what comes around goes around” adage, it helps our planet and improves what we’ll be leaving behind for our kids, and, best of all, all the participants come out ahead.

Customers consume products and they consume company values as well. All of these actions are components that constitute a brand’s promise. A good brand is a promise kept. This is a very powerful way for major brands to present and provide their products to millions of customers who might not be able to initially afford them at retail, but who may very well ultimately become lifelong customers after being exposed to these items in a “feel good” fashion.

In the not-so-distant past, and long before the carefully crafted legends of Nordstrom’s in-store customer experiences spread far and wide, the state-of-the-art in the consumer retail business from a customer service and satisfaction standpoint was Chicago-based Marshall Field’s which was later folded into Macy’s.

There were myriad stories passed down through family generations of how Field’s would accept years-old goods for no-questions-asked returns and refunds, how every Fall senior staff from the store would ride along with their delivery drivers to personally oversee the seamless delivery from storage of important clients’ furs and other winter garments, and how expert tailors, seamstresses and jewelry specialists could clean, repair and restore virtually anything for their clients as they worked tirelessly in their underground ateliers and craft workshops.

This kind of demonstrable commitment to end-to-end customer satisfaction – thinking far beyond the immediate sale and towards a long-term and loyal relationship - and the entire organization’s willingness to go above and beyond the basics in order to deliver whatever was required - was built on decades of exemplary service, a powerful brand promise, and a culture where every expected action was a personal commitment, a one-to-one connection, and an obligation to do things right – start to finish. No sale was complete until the buyer was 100% pleased. The result was the kind of consistent customer loyalty and exceptional degrees of customer satisfaction that every new business dreams of. It was driven in no small part by a strategy of vertical integration and across-the-board accountability so that the entire process was under consistent supervision, direction and control.

Today, even some of the most well-known companies with high quality products like IKEA spend millions of dollars promoting their image and product quality and then totally drop the ball when it comes to support and delivery. They seem to completely fail to understand that every step in the process is critical. Nothing is more important to a completed sale than a smooth and successful delivery and a competent installation especially when you’re dealing with bulky, complex and expensive goods including furniture of all kinds, onsite and in-home assembly of storage units, and connecting large-scale electronics. As amazing as it seems, and rather than making this a strong source of positive competitive differentiation (as other vendors in the same space such as ABT and Wayfair have done), IKEA has farmed out the entire delivery process to third parties.

Worse yet, IKEA washes its hands entirely of any responsibility for their delegees and their results and outcomes. There’s no one willing to answer the phones, no one who coordinates or follows up on the delivery, and constant instance where the left hand has no idea what the right hand is supposed to be doing. Its unfortunate and unhappy clients and customers are stuck in a whirlpool of denial, indifference and finger-pointing wherein no one at IKEA makes any attempt to aid, respond to or resolve any difficulties, differences or other performance problems. They lay all the blame on Task Rabbit which might just as well change their name to Trash Rabbit or Task Rubbish.

By farming out their future connection and severing the customer connection at the very worst point in the process, they’ve just become the latest business to believe that the “savings” from incorporating the often untrained, incompetent and indifferent minions of the gig economy into their delivery system are worth the damage to their brand and reputation as well as the psychic injury and actual harm done to their customers. There aren’t too many ways that even a lazy moron can mess up a pizza delivery, but there are a million ways that some part-time installer can ruin a brand-new wall unit, misalign or otherwise damage hinges, handles and closers, or simply rush thru an assignment and do a half-assed job.

We’ve heard for years that you never get a second chance to make a first impression and, while that’s largely true, the more important consideration is that the most lasting impression, reaction and feeling that any customer has is the final touchpoint which is always the delivery. Companies which hand off that critical moment to amateurs and untrained third parties to save a few bucks are sacrificing future sales, positive word of mouth promotion, and vast amounts of brand equity.

For quite a long time the most common defensive assertion regarding the threats presented by AI has been that because the entire system depends on prior knowledge and information even the most advanced systems will never reach the point where they will overtake or replace inventive humans who are creative and innovative and who are designing, developing and delivering new ideas, products, and solutions every day. At the same time, these are the very folks looking most anxiously over their shoulders at the oncoming onslaught.

Of course, to the extent that millions of these new ideas are never commercialized or even implemented and, worse yet, that other millions of these bright concepts turn out to be nothing more than incremental changes, enhancements or extensions of existing products and services which essentially add nothing to the aggregate base of human knowledge, it’s no great loss to humanity that the proliferation and production of these kinds of menial materials will soon be left to the tender mercies of A.I.-driven applications and programs. Ideally getting rid of the scut work will free up folks to do more challenging and valuable tasks. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

I give you the absolute flood of A.I. slop which is already overwhelming every social media channel and other information delivery system as the first of many proof points in this regard. If humans who previously toiled in the creation of massive mounds of this kind of promotion, media, marketing and advertising crap are soon replaced by machines doing the same work more efficiently and economically, there’s an argument to be made that we’ll be doing those poor impoverished souls a favor to put them out of their daily misery so they have some prospect of moving on and finding meaningful work. And it’s not like the ultimate A.I.-driven output is likely to be materially better or worse. The truth is that you can’t polish a turd no matter how hard you try. Garbage in always means garbage out.

But more recently there has been a somewhat vocal and despondent group of technologists who dejectedly argue – especially because A.I. has proven so overwhelming adept at coding – that there are simply no longer any barriers to the advance across the board of these technologies. They believe that even building the best and most novel software offers an entrepreneur, a new business builder or even a senior and highly talented developer no sustainable moat or substantial protection from readily available A.I. tools simply copying, rewriting, reverse engineering or otherwise duplicating any of their new offerings and solutions in a matter of hours or days. How accurate this threat turns out to actually be is an open question, but it doesn’t take much talk like this to scare away early-stage investors and prospective employees. Years ago, the fear was that Microsoft (and then Facebook) would either buy you or roll right over and crush you. Today A.I. is the new boogie man.

So, the real strategy for software startups looking to survive beyond only a momentary flash in the pan seems to be a two-fold approach. First, take what you need in the way of funding but stay lean and don’t be a pig in terms of raising capital because that only makes it harder for you to pull off the easiest of the most likely positive outcomes. In these crazy times, if you hit on a compelling idea and can build an early viable offering, you want to always have one eye on a quick exit.

I call this plan: Build to be Bought. (See In a World Ruled by Giants, Staying Small May Be the Smarter Play ) You want to make sure that, when an eager buyer shows up, you haven’t created too many financial or other impediments to an attractive sale which can get in the way of giving your investors and your team a great return and give you all the ability to happily move on to the next challenge.

The second plan, if you’re planning to stay in the race for the long run, is to keep moving forward and head to where the machines can’t follow. Your most effective moat is that you’re constantly in motion and that you’re always at the tip of the spear, which is essentially and inevitably the point of human contact and interaction. This is hard but it’s not as difficult as you might imagine because what it translates into is to always be focused on and building to the front end – upgrading, simplifying, and extending the points at which the end users access and interact with your product or service. That relationship which is so central to every part of our lives will never be fully appreciated and mastered by the machines because they don’t appreciate that we’re never going to be willing to fully abdicate our actions to any of our devices or machines.

The machines keep getting swifter and smarter, but they will never bridge the final space which will always be defined by EQ emotional considerations (the user interfaces) rather than IQ technical attributes (the operating core). We see this dilemma every day when prospects are presented with and swayed by powerful utility claims and new levels of agency and then are quickly and totally turned off by the substantial technical implementation and onboarding challenges which they never signed up for. New users and even early adopters don’t want to build these things; they just want them to work. They don’t want to read a manual or learn a new trade or even invest a reasonable amount of time learning the basics.

This is where A.I. falls off the cliff because the machines’ tendencies are always to growing complexity, increasing bells and whistles, and expanding functionality while the target users want simplicity, rapid access, obvious controls and inputs and useable results and outputs. This is the old curse of engineers who are building to impress their peers and not to satisfy the real needs of their customers. It’s the reason that less than 5% of the tens of millions of users of all of the major Microsoft products never use or even discover 95% of the bloated and buried functions and features of the software.

The moat that still makes the difference and the key to sustainable success is to be constantly focusing on the quality of the end users’ experience, building customer confidence and continuity, and managing and meeting or exceeding the buyers’ expectations. The goal is simple: you want the competition to find your warm campfires and by then, you’ll be over the next hill.

It’s hard to find anything good to say about the pain and isolation that so many people suffered during the pandemic but, for pet owners and especially single men and women, it was an amazing opportunity to head outdoors and safely meet with your neighbors and their pups as well as interesting strangers on neutral turf with no strings attached. Pet adoptions during COVID were absolutely through the roof and for many of us, our animals were worry sponges. Also, because work from home (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/are-you-ready-for-the-wfh-future.html.) has now seriously taken root in more than 35% of all working households, millions of folks have been able to keep their new best friends and make them a major part of their daily activities and especially of their social lives.

Millennials and Gen Z make up the majority of pet owners and over 60% are remote workers, entrepreneurs, and retirees with flexible schedules. More than 75% of pet owners say that current economic conditions haven’t changed their pet spending and roughly the same number of Millies admit that they’re more likely to splurge on their pets than themselves. It doesn’t hurt the company’s prospects that the U.S. pet market is relatively recission proof and should top $160 billion in 2026.

There’s been a throwback to those imagined days in the 70’s romcoms where all it took to meet the man or woman of your dreams was a leash, a cute cocker spaniel, and a walk in the park. Outside in the fresh air – even during the worst of the pandemic - not even the omnipresent masks were a problem. Of course, the whole program was largely dependent on the weather, which back in those days was unpredictable at best. Rain, snow and bitter cold made the daily rituals tough on the pups and even harder for their parents. These days it’s even crazier.

The truth is that in most cities, you can have 3 seasons of weather in a single day with the occasional hailstorm, hurricane or tornado tossed in as well. This is one of the main reasons the team from Zoomies (www.zoomieschicago.com) is opening a huge new indoor dog park in Chicago which takes the weather out of the equation. Chicago has about 600,00 dog-owning households with about 250,000 homes withing 20 minutes of the new location. This is its initial location with rollouts planned for other major urban areas shortly. After the business model is proven out, the plan is to expand through franchising. The Zoomies environment has been designed with a powerful HVAC system that refreshes and replaces all the air in the entire 24,000+ square foot facility every 8 minutes as well as an impervious rubberized floor that’s easy to maintain and comfortable for the four-footed fans and their folks.

The first of its size in the U.S., it’s a clean, cool and inviting place to let your pup play with others in a safe, secure and leash-free park. There’s a separate area for smaller dogs, some enclosed outdoor runs for when the weather’s great, private runs, and a full line of daycare, boarding and grooming services. And for members, there’s an included free monthly nail trim which eliminates one of the most uncomfortable and squeamish tasks of any conscientious owner. I’d love to have a quarter for every unused nail clipper sitting and gathering dust in people’s homes after their first abortive attempt to clip their own dog’s nails. It’s not a job fit for man nor beast.

But the real bonanza at Zoomies is that it addresses the community and social component which is missing in most outdoor park visits these days where the dogs need to be leashed, the nannies and yuppie parents give you dirty looks for invading their kids’ space, and half the crowd are surly and snarky dogwalkers who could care less about anything other than getting the dump done and moving on to their next gig. These aren’t reliable regulars or partner prospects; they’re more like unhappy folks working off their community service sentences. Not the crowd you’re ever looking to hang with.

Zoomies are designed to be upscale social clubs as well as dog parks and frankly look to me like a fun place to spend some time with your pets and friends. There’s a full-service bar, comfortable seating, and a coffee lounge so you can get just about whatever you need to eat or drink – morning, noon or night. The business plan expects that regular monthly and annual memberships will contribute about 25% of the recurring revenue with other principal revenue streams including day passes and daycare, grooming and boarding, community events and private parties, and retail sales and sponsorships.

Pets represent an interesting emotional intersection – responsibility without romance - although at Zoomies there’s a strong likelihood that you might just have both. And remember that a dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.

There are few things more traumatic than buying or selling a house especially in today’s market - where the good homes draw multiple competitive cash bids over the asking price – and the tired, old residences just sit and wait for the phone to ring - which it rarely does. Sales of previously occupied homes fell in March to their slowest pace in 9 months at a time of year which is traditionally the busiest season for the real estate industry. 2026 annual sales could be up to a million less homes than the historical norm. This is not good news for anyone.

But the one thing that is definitely more traumatic is helping your aging, often infirm, and stubborn as heck parents to list and sell their house. Which, of course, they call their home. Putting aside all the psychological issues, aggressive guilting, and the constant reminders that you’re an ungrateful child who’s trying to toss them out of their lifelong residence, the fact is that the entire process basically stinks for buyers and sellers.

The best of these lousy situations is the prospect of moving your folks into a nice condo or rental apartment in a retirement committee. Nonetheless, the downsizing is very painful and there are almost as many steps backwards as forward in the discussions and negotiations leading up to the inevitable decision. The worst of these conversations is when the trip isn’t to alternative independent, albeit smaller, housing but instead to an assisted living facility with multiple levels of care. This is like showing your parents a painful vision of how sad and ugly their last days are likely to be. It’s no wonder that the resistance is fierce and that the eventual acknowledgement of the oncoming new realities never feels like much of a validation or victory for anyone concerned.

Add to this perilous equation, all of the angst, anger, anxiety and uncertainty inherent in the best and mostly smoothly managed sale process and one which employs – for better or worse – an experienced real estate agent, and it’s still an uncomfortable and challenging process. It’s especially hard for seniors to get their homes into market-ready selling condition; it’s difficult and uncomfortable for them to have to be leaving the house on short-notice for showings; and – even at these late dates – many seniors may still need financial and equity assistance in order to fund their new acquisition. If they’re stuck in the middle, having not sold the old place, but needing those proceeds and possibly some additional financial help to pay for the prospective new place, the stress on all of the parties is terrible and unrelenting.

But, as any good entrepreneur knows, there’s nothing like someone else’s pain and problems to create a new opportunity for an innovative solution. The best entrepreneurs see what everyone else has seen but think what no one else has thought. In this case, the primary goal was to get rid of as much as possible of the fear, uncertainty, and friction in the sales process and, at the same time, add more flexibility and leverage for the seller.

That’s why the QuickBuy (www.quickbuy.com) program was created by some young Chicago entrepreneurs. It originally began as an adjunct to an ongoing senior living relocation program where, in case after case, the folks anxious to move into their new living space had the delays and complications of selling their old place hanging over their heads. While the QuickBuy program started with a focus on assisting nursing homes and self-help facilities which were looking to recruit seniors, it expanded over the years into a service for all home sellers and the business has grown exponentially since then.

It’s basically a B2B service now offered as a convenient tool by various partners across the country including large brokerages, mortgage companies, and real estate portals to their own clients who are trying to sell their homes. It’s designed to eliminate a great deal of the angst and aggravation inherent in the sales process and, at the same time, give the sellers some support and confidence in their negotiations to acquire their new living quarters.

And, just to be clear, having the QuickBuy solution in place actually gives some comfort and assurance to the parties on the other side of any deal because it essentially eliminates the second worst contingency in any offer to buy a new home – the requirement that the prospective buyer sell their old home. The worst contingency, of course, is that the buyers need to secure mortgage financing to make the purchase which is extra hard to come by if they’re still on the hook for their old home.

The QuickBuy process is straightforward and offers two options, Immediate Offer and Advantage. QuickBuy Immediate Offer is designed for unlisted properties. It provides a single settlement offer that allows the seller to close on the home based on their preferred timeline. QuickBuy Advantage is available for all homes, whether listed or unlisted. It is a dual‑settlement structure. At the first closing, the seller receives a majority of their equity upfront. Then, once the home sells to a market buyer, the seller receives a second payment equal to the net sales price from the market buyer minus the amount already paid at the first closing. Both programs are designed to deliver convenience, ease, and certainty. For sellers whose primary goal is certainty, QuickBuy also offers the Lock program. For a small fee, QuickBuy Lock keeps the QuickBuy offer open for up to 150 days, giving sellers the peace of mind of having a qualified cash backup offer if their home does not sell traditionally.

Bottom line: if you’re trying to pry your aging parents out of their current house for their own good and move them to a new place, being able to relieve them of all of the grief, work, uncertainty, and anxiety inherent in selling their long time residence couldn’t be easier with an assist from the QuickBuy guys.

IGNORANCE IS BLISS UNTIL IT BITES YOU IN THE ASS

It’s hard to know these days whether the greatest risk to our personal and financial security is laziness or ignorance. I’d say it’s a tossup but, while ignorance is theoretically curable (if you’re not a MAGAt), laziness is a lifelong curse. Worse yet, if you’re too lazy to look and learn, you’ll never be free of the risks of your own ignorance. So many of us, even apart from politics, choose the blissful comfort of ignorance over the inconvenience of painful truths and honesty. We go through life with our fingers crossed just hoping and praying that bad things won’t happen to us. But hope is not a strategy, and we have to stop kidding ourselves and admit that knowledge, for better or worse, makes life messier and more fraught.

One of the problems we’re facing with the rampant spread of all kinds of new technologies is that - in far too many cases - we don’t even understand that our mundane and habitual behaviors now represent dangers that we could have hardly imagined a few years ago. Real knowledge gives us the ability – if not necessarily the will or desire – to recognize and acknowledge the extent of our growing ignorance. The most recent announcement by Anthropic that its latest A.I. model is too powerful to trust to mere mortals is just the latest warning that the world is likely to shrug off as more tech hype and hysteria. The time has come to overcome our studious obliviousness and at least listen to the folks who know better.

We decided long ago that we were willing to sacrifice a great deal of our privacy for immediate access and convenience in virtually every aspect of our daily social and shopping activities. Virtually everyone suffers from the stupidity of employing the same simplistic word or phrase multiple times for access in various applications and accounts that we use regularly. And today we hear jokes all the time about people using the word “password” for their passwords. On average, each household has about 100 critical passwords for their many accounts and services and experts estimate that more than half of those are the same word or phrase. Google and Microsoft systems regularly alert users to the fact that they have multiple identical and common passwords or that their codes have been included in data breaches or other dark web listings. But, because we’re all too busy or too lazy, we almost never take the time to update and change these words.

Now we’re seeing several new threats which don’t rely so much on new or exotic technologies as they do on our habits, typical actions and behaviors, and the fact that we have reached the point where we take far too many conveniences for granted and never even consider that they might pose security risks. We’ve seen this problem for years now with crooks inserting skimming devices in ATMs and other card readers in order to steal credit card numbers. But now our increasing reliance on ubiquitous connectivity and shared infrastructure is presenting a whole new level of exposure and risk.

We don’t give one second’s worth of thought to plugging in any of our devices to any available power outlet and we’re just grateful that they are there. But when public USB ports and power stations began to be deployed in airports and elsewhere, the focus was 100% on location, access and convenience and not a bit on security. As a result, a new threat – juice jacking – which is based on our incautious use of public USB ports to charge our devices can lead to compromised equipment, data theft, and the insertion of malware in moments. When we’re in a hurry, distracted, and grateful to find a source before we hop on a plane, no one’s thinking about data loss, identity theft, or worse. But in doing so we’re all sharing a common port and an anonymous connection.

As Eric Plam, the CRO of Simo (https://www.simo.co/ ) says: “The safest move today is simple—don’t share infrastructure with strangers.” Simo makes portable and powerful devices which supply both power and secure dedicated Wi-Fi connectivity for mobile workers and especially for travelers. And to be clear, these kinds of risks aren’t limited to power concerns. Simo’s devices also address another new connectivity problem which is the growing development and deployment in public spaces of imposter Wi-Fi networks.

Plam calls these “evil twins” which look very much like a legitimate network that we’re all familiar with and to which we readily connect without taking a moment to verify anything. In fact, we’re pleased that we see a rapid connection and, where necessary, that our password is accepted (along with anyone else’s). Once the connection is made, your messaging, transmissions and other traffic can be intercepted, your credentials captured, and you can even be sent to other fake or spoofed sites. There’s no magic here or complex technology, it’s just a case of crooks riding on and relying upon our typical conduct and routine actions.

Avoiding these threats isn’t hard once you’re aware of them, but habits are ridiculously difficult to break or change. Moving from using public facilities and infrastructure to reliance and use of a secured and trusted private connection is clearly the way to go and, frankly, cheap compared to the likely costs of losing your data or your identity. Simo suggests a few other basic steps for travelers to take:

(1) Avoid public Wi-Fi for sensitive activity

(2) Verify network names before connecting

(3) Disable auto-connect on the road

(4) Use wall outlets rather than USB ports

(5) Carry a power pack whenever you’re away from home or office

(6) Use a Solis Go secure Wi-Fi + Power Bank

Ignorance is the absence of knowledge. Stupidity is the rejection of knowledge. Now you know. Forearmed is forewarned.

One of the great quotes from Gretchen Rubin about life and work is that “the days are long, but the years are short”. Every day may seem like a dreary Sisyphean struggle, but then one day you wake up and you’re carrying a cardboard box of your belongings out of the building and on your way to whatever’s next. Whether you want to admit it or not, for millions of us, retirement – whether voluntary or otherwise – is much closer than we imagine and now’s the time to start thinking about it.

I’m not talking about anything relating to financial matters, buying cheap life insurance, or whether it’s wise to have a will. You can see ads for those concerns everywhere you look. I’m talking about making some plans and decisions about how you’re going to spend your post-employment days which – in somewhat of a mixed blessing way – are likely to be much longer than you might think.

For better or worse, we’re living much longer these days although the quality of life in those bonus “golden” years is an entirely different question. This longevity is largely because we’re paying much more attention to our diets, we’re exercising more regularly, the meds and medical treatments available to keep us alive are far more powerful and effective, and only the morons are still smoking whatever, doing recreational drugs, and/or drinking too much.

Having lived through this transitional process several times and talked with dozens of others who are similarly situated, I have a few ideas and suggestions, warnings and words of encouragement, and other observations which I hope will be of value to you as you start to give some serious thought to an increasingly uncertain and challenging future.

First of all, try to avoid squandering your savings, severance and social security payments (such as they may soon be) on a startup or in buying a quaint neighborhood business that you’ve always liked and frequented. You may think you’re ready to roll up your sleeves, do whatever it takes, and jump back into the game, but the game has changed radically in many ways and you’re most likely not up to the task. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/should-you-start-a-businss-now.html.) And if my list of perils isn’t persuasive enough, try filling out a loan application or a new credit card app and putting the words “unemployed” or “retired” on the form. The word “retired” on a loan app is like a bright red stop sign for lenders – even at your own bank – and the pitiful excuses they give you are even more depressing.

Second, don’t try to teach anyone younger than 35 anything. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a bunch of high school kids who really don’t care, college students who simply can’t be bothered, or MBAs in grad school who think they already know everything. The truth is that you don’t have the patience to deal with their lack of patience, the thick skin to deal with their arrogance, or the disposition to put up with their indifference and laziness. Worse yet, if you try to instill a little rigor or discipline, it’s like walking on eggshells among a bunch of snowflakes. It turns out too often that you’re the nasty ogre who just doesn’t get it. Teaching exec education courses is a slightly safer path, but even there no one is really interested in paying a ton of money to hear you rehash your old war stories.

Third, don’t expect or try to replace your prior earnings. That’s a pipe dream. It’s an employers’ market and there are dozens of over-qualified and out-of-work candidates chasing the same slots and opportunities. Sadly, it’s often a race to the bottom in terms of salary or other comp and it rarely includes health insurance or other fringe benefits. It takes an especially strong stomach to settle for something which you regard as beneath your abilities and experience and it’s even more painful when you end up reporting to supervisors and managers who may be younger than your own grown kids.

Fourth, most of your technical skills are going to be regarded as anchors to the past rather than valuable tools. (See How to Know If the Experts Advising You Are Still Qualified). Look for jobs that take advantage of your negotiating experience, social skills, and storytelling ability. These may be the most satisfying positions anyway because you won’t be spending your days in a race trying to catch up with constant technological changes and dealing with patronizing nerds who are half your age.

Fifth, get comfortable with answering the omnipresent question: what are you doing now? Men and women who have worked hard and successfully for decades have a great deal of difficulty answering this inquiry without being embarrassed in one way or another. If you’ve retired after 40 or 50 years, be proud of that and understand that it’s perfectly fine to say either that you’re doing “nothing” or that you’re “looking” for what’s next. You’ve earned a break and some time off and there’s nothing to be ashamed of or any obligation on your part to be rushing around trying to get back in the saddle.

And finally, remember that it’s a great time to get back in touch with your kids, grandkids, and old friends you haven’t seen lately. You never know how much time you have left and no one’s kids ever said, “we wish he’d spent more time at the office”.

There are plenty of ancient rules of thumb that are akin to gospel in certain industries. Most of them have long outlived whatever limited value and usefulness they may have once had. Spilling salt, whistling in the kitchen, changing menus on a full moon, or directly handing someone a knife are among the many restaurant “rules” that I had to contend with when I ran Kendall College, a large Chicago-based culinary school, which turned out hundreds of cooks and chefs every year. Modern business operators regard the vast majority of these beliefs - and the often irrational behaviors that are based on them - to be little more than foolish superstitions.

But to date no one in the food service industry - which has plenty of its own customs and peculiarities – has ever even questioned the core proposition that for a restaurant to succeed over the long term, the ratio of food to liquor revenues needs to be about 60% drinks to 40% eats. That critical assumption is now under attack due to emerging major macro changes which are largely outside the control of even the most experienced restaurateurs. For new entrants and young entrepreneurs, the stakes are even higher and the obstacles far more daunting.

The first-year failure rate of new restaurants is less than 18%, which is actually a bit better than the success rates for all service-based startups in general. It’s even more impressive because restaurants require such a large and disproportionate investment in equipment and infrastructure upfront. There’s no way to tiptoe into opening a new place or to test the water before you dive in even when you take over an existing location where a prior venture failed. Location is always a critical concern, but I think that the stigma of a location’s prior negative history is probably not worth the cost savings of not having to build out a new kitchen.

But in any case, if the financial results and the right ratios aren’t there early on, it becomes quite quickly obvious to the owners and investors that the dogs aren’t eating the dog food (no pun intended) and that the business may be doomed. This is especially painful for new entrepreneurs because one of the real keys to long-term success is building a sufficient base of returning and regular customers. Regulars in an established local restaurant will deliver close to 70% of the annual profits. But the operating math and traditional ratios don’t matter if there aren’t enough customers coming in and coming back to keep the business alive. And when the right traffic doesn’t show up relatively quickly, it’s very hard to keep the doors open. More than 500 Illinois restaurants closed in the first half of 2025. I expect to see a significant jump in the number of failures – for both new and long-established operations – in the next two years.

Right now, in the post-pandemic world, it’s been a long enough time so that any restaurant operator should acknowledge and admit that the bottom-line challenges they’re currently seeing aren’t any longer due to sick or scared customers staying home since the overall traffic in most places – except for downtown lunch places - is returning to pre-COVID levels in most parts of the country. Massive workforce reductions have certainly had their own impact as unemployed Gen Zs (about 10%) and laid off Millennials aren’t comfortable dining out with their still-working peers. Everyday price shocks at the supermarket have impacted the psyches of both customers and providers.

But the main problem isn’t that the folks aren’t coming, it’s that they’re spending far less when they do. As a result, the average meal ticket size has been shrinking for a couple of years now and, while it’s true that the GLP-1 drugs have reduced millions of customers’ appetites overall, the main culprit in the profit crunch is clearly shrinking liquor sales because that’s where the real margins are in the business and people are just drinking a lot less. And, needless to say, trying to raise the prices on all their drinks is like using alcohol to try to extinguish a raging inferno. As the sales of Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro continue to grow exponentially, accelerated even further by the introduction of these medications in pill form, the pressure on profits due to the reduction in the desire of millions to drink will continue to increase.

If that trend wasn’t depressing enough, the truth that no one in the biz really wants to talk about is that the “kids” - which is to say anyone in their twenties - just aren’t drinking these days and there’s no single explanation for why that is. It could be costs, it could be the stay-at-home effect of phones and social media, it could be drugs and gummies in particular, or perhaps health concerns. In addition, A.I.-driven eliminations of entry level tech jobs have reduced openings for job seekers in their early 20’s by some 16% since 2022 which makes for a lot less campers at TGIF happy hours. And it doesn’t help that over 10 million student loan borrowers have defaulted or are more than 3 months behind on federal loans totaling over $200 billion.

For whatever set of reasons and explanations, younger prospective customers are simply not stepping into their predecessors’ shoes and replacing the hard-drinking Millennial Mad Men as they age out, and as a direct result, the liquor business in bars and restaurants from top to bottom is collapsing. As I’ve asked large and small food service owners, investors and operators what their plans are to address the situation, they all seem to be looking around to see what everyone else is doing - which is largely nothing.

It reminds me of the drunk who had lost his keys somewhere and was standing under the lamppost looking for them. When he was asked why he was searching right there, he said it was because the light was better.

I’ve maintained for many years that until we outgrow the stigma that we’ve traditionally attached to vocational education - and unfortunately already passed on to the next several generations – we will be wasting the opportunity to direct millions of eager and energized young people into careers and opportunities that are appropriate for them, economically smart for them, and likely to offer them both job satisfaction and successful paths to a reasonable income and lifestyle. Four expensive years at a fancy liberal arts college and a mound of accumulated debt aren’t for everyone.

In addition, in case you haven’t tried to find a plumber or an electrician lately, jobs in the basic trades aren’t going away any time soon, offer union protection and benefits, and have established progress and advancement paths that plenty of “white collar jobs” no longer offer if they even still exist. I remind my friends all the time that my car mechanic works 9-to-5 with no after hours stress, makes far more money than any recent liberal arts college grad, spends more time with a keyboard than a wrench, and – as the average age of cars on the road continues to lengthen – has pretty much locked-in employment for his lifetime because those millions of cars won’t fix themselves.

The average age of cars on the road in the U.S. has increased for the last 8 years in a row and reached a record high in 2025 of 12.8 years so the demand for skilled mechanics will only increase for the next decade or two. In addition, it looks like most of the major U.S. vehicle manufacturers are bailing on EVs which were touted as easier and less expensive to maintain and repair, but which simply haven’t caught on with U.S. dealers, much less buyers. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/if-carmakers-want-to-sell-evs-they-need-to-sell-the-dealers-first.html.)

But the facts alone won’t get the necessary changes made unless we change the attitudes of millions of snobs in this country who are giving our kids the wrong messages. We take far too many of the folks we work with and around for granted and regularly fail to appreciate the contributions they make to our lives and businesses.

Anyone who’s worked in a busy restaurant knows that a talented and professional waitress is a lot more skilled and effective in managing nut cases of all kinds and pleasing the customers than any self-important shrink slouching on a couch somewhere. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/what-i-learned-from-my-waitress-and-what-you-can-too.html.)

Anyone who’s watched The Pitt knows that the nurses probably save at least as many lives as the doctors and get little or no credit for it. And this may be the only medical show where Dana Evans, the main charge nurse, plays a recurring and prominent role throughout each episode. This is the kind of messaging that we need to have far more of in order to move the needle. No pun intended.

And anyone who’s walked into an office and found a receptionist who’s too “busy” to pay attention and acknowledge you while you cool your heels and feel like an imposition knows that it’s a place that doesn’t understand that your receptionist is the face and front line of your business and that you don’t get a second chance in this world to make a first impression. If you’re not eager to please, ready to help, on the case, and raring to go, you shouldn’t be at the desk.

All of which brings me to The Rhonda Rule. I built and ran 1871 in Chicago which was - at the time not too many years ago - the Number 1 university-affiliated technology incubator in the world with more than 500 startups under one massive roof. We hosted tech geniuses, hundreds of VCs and investors, foreign leaders, ambassadors, and other dignitaries, President Bill Clinton, many U.S. Senators and Congressmen (when those people still had working spines), and thousand of other visitors every month for a number of years. The place was huge and impressive, the energy and enthusiasm were through the roof, and the excitement was palpable. It was the best show in town with Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel acting as a regular cheerleader.

But years later, as I travelled all over the world to meet with and speak to and for many of our diverse guests at their various venues and company sites, to a person, without fail, the first question any of them asked me was simple. They asked if Rhoda was still there, and if so, they asked me to be sure to please say “hello” to her from them.

Rhonda was the receptionist at the front desk of 1871 for many years and the impression she consistently made on these serious businessmen and women from around the world was the best sales tool for 1871 and the strongest single memory that these folks had of our entire institution. She never had less than a happy smile on her face. She never forgot a name. She treated everyone who came through that door exactly the same – as an honored guest who was welcome - and as a respected individual. And, what really came through the daily interactions was just how very much she loved what she was doing. That warmth – that openness – and that attention set the stage for everything at 1871 that might follow and she did it with great style and made it always seem effortlessly.

Every job can be challenging and rewarding if you let your people make the job their own, encourage them to add themselves to the equation, and have them take control and ownership of the work. All work is creative if it’s done by someone thinking about what they’re doing instead of repeating a routine that they learned from others in an uncritical stupor or following a set of rules and procedures that make no sense in the real world. Any job worth doing is worth doing well.

The real goal of every service business is to create the intangible but crucial feeling of being cared for and that’s the responsibility of everyone – top to bottom - working in the business. And sometimes, the measure of those feelings is not simply how you feel in someone’s presence, but how acutely you miss the person when they’re gone.

There’s really no mystery about the fact that over the last 10 to 15 years growth in retail apparel sales has cratered while the resale market for secondhand clothes – both bricks-and-mortar and online – has absolutely exploded. Resale growth is scaling at five or six times retail’s growth rate and should double by 2028. Most of the current and conservative estimates expect that global sales of “previously owned” clothing will grow by more than 10% annually while traditional retail results will be flat or even down. The truth is that virtually no one these days has any interest in paying “full price” for anything and especially for costly items that they’re likely to wear a couple of times and then forget about, hide in their closet, give away, or just discard.

The rise of the whole “fast fashion” industry and their messaging didn’t do any favors to the old-line brands and manufacturers when they taught several generations of upcoming kids, mini-fashionistas, and social media influencers that all these products were quickly and cheaply made, likely to last for a single season, and imminently disposable. They’re hot for a moment and then they’re not. Prices are up while quality is down in flimsy fast fashion items.

No one under 35 (40% of all used apparel shoppers) thinks of clothing as classic any more or multi-generational hand-me-downs or expects to wear well-made garments for years to come. And, even more importantly, the stigma associated with wearing old and worn clothes has totally disappeared and now “vintage” is in especially with Gen Z. We’re re-entering a period where looking like a bum or a slob to the uninitiated is a strong social statement that you’re socially responsible and that you don’t really care about material things.

An under-appreciated aspect of the whole resale revolution is how social the entire shopping experience has become with direct links, rewards and incentives being pushed by TikTok and Instagram. Retail is boring and mass; resale is an adventure in personal branding and an opportunity to discover unique items and stand out from the herd.

The broader explanations offered for this shift in demand, desire and taste are several and typically fall into four areas: affordability/budget consciousness, sustainability/eco-friendly action, thrifting as an adventure/social signaling, and uniqueness/non-mass market. One of the modest ironies with respect to this desire for non-mass market goods is, of course, that most of the apparel now available for resale was in fact mass produced back in the day when it was new. But now it’s chic and charming. Smart young shoppers are also aspirational and appreciate the opportunity to acquire upscale brand apparel at a discount. Another curious consideration is that if the goods weren’t well made initially, they probably wouldn’t have lasted and been available for the secondary market.

In any event the main driver of the exponential resale expansion has been internet connectivity, technology advances in management of large scale data and images along with the emergence and popularity of online resale sites like Depop (

https://www.depop.com/), Poshmark (https://poshmark.com/), and ThredUp (https://www.thredup.com/). At the higher and more expensive end, The RealReal (https://www.therealreal.com/) sets the price and luxury curve. The RealReal management has also experimented with bricks-and-mortar stores, but with only limited success.

Much like the car business, no one calls these clothes “used” however and – as the big brand chains have slowly started to respond to the resale trend by offering their own versions - they’ve all come up with clever names like Worn Wear (Patagonia), Athleta Preloved, Hanna-Me-Downs, Rejuiced, and Madewell Forever. In many cases, this response is accelerating because, aside from the obvious pressure from the resellers, the big brands hate the embarrassment of mark-downs, don’t like to see their goods sold in discount and outlet chains, and like to avoid all of the problems disposing of excess inventory.

As a result, a fair amount of the goods moving through these channels may, in fact, be virtually brand new, in colors and styles that simply didn’t sell, or returned goods. Resale companies like Archive (https://www.archiveresale.com/) are pitching brands every day to help them increase their profits by more efficiently and quickly disposing of unwanted inventory.

But, as exciting as the rapid growth has been, there’s an enormous remaining volume of resalable goods (including adjacent markets like shoes, toys, outdoor and sports gear and baby products) which all share similar ownership and behavioral characteristics. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/five-reasons-your-market-is-bigger-than-you-think.html.) No one outgrows and ages out of expensive infant products faster than sprouting little kids. And no one abandons running shoes, pickleball racquets and other exercise gear more quickly than fat, lazy and deluded Millennials. The spread and lowered costs of GLP-1 drugs have only made the trends more obvious every day as prior wardrobes are rapidly obsoleted. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tulllman/the-opportunity-right-next-to-you.html.)

But it’s not as easy as it may seem to enter these spaces and to cost-effectively attract, aggregate and market millions of these items especially when the vast majority of the amateur “sellers” are “one of one” cases. It sounds like a great idea to sell your stuff until you actually set out to sort, take pictures of, write descriptions for, and then “list” those everyday items which might ultimately not be worth the time and effort. But it’s a great green space for enterprising entrepreneurs.

Two-way consumer-targeted markets are ridiculously expensive to build and grow unless you can figure out a way to work with the existing players and “ride their rails” so your business can avoid the vast majority of costs on both sides of the process. Let existing vendors expand, aggregate, and organize all the inventory on one side and find partners and affiliates who are already attracting millions of shoppers on the other side and figure out a win-win way to work with both groups. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/dont-slow-up-your-startup.html.)

That’s what is so interesting about Beni (www.joinbeni.com) which permits retail online shoppers to quickly and painlessly search for second-hand items matching their searches through over 300 million apparel and accessory offers from more than 40 different resale sites in a one-stop online location and/or through its own app. Visitors can search by image, text or URL. Beni’s browser extension overlays other vendors stores and “tags along” essentially as an intelligent assistant that accompanies and interrupts a typical retail search with suggestions of comparable (and less expensive) secondhand goods available at any of its affiliates’ sites. It’s already so effective that in some cases the company is working directly with brand sites like Patagonia to offer their own secondhand items so that the brands don’t have to build out and maintain their own systems. While we’re clearly well past the “peak apps” point in our lives and our phones (See We Have Reached Peak Apps ), the truth is that a simple Chrome browser extension is a pretty simple and painless ask for all the search power and access which Beni provides.

And, of course, the Beni enabling technology strategy avoids virtually all of the marketing and acquisition costs on both sides of the resale search marketplace. Their offerings are expanding and improving at a rapid pace with photo management tools (Beni Lens), real-time alerts, and wish lists all in one place. They have a good shot at becoming the secondhand search engine for the entire resale marketplace.

DON’T BE DUMB ABOUT DISCOUNTS

Before the pandemic, I can honestly say that my visits to our neighborhood grocery stores were few and far between. Much like most of our Presidents over the last 30 years or so, I couldn’t tell you the price of anything in the store including the dozens of CPG items that I consumed daily. And when, of some necessity, I was forced on occasion to venture into one of these arcades of consumption, clutter and confusion, I didn’t have a clue as to where various items might be or which of the dozens of brands, sizes, and flavors I was supposed to buy. But I soldiered on – knowing full well that - upon my return home, I would be humiliated and chastised to no end for all my errors, oversights and bad choices - regardless of what I selected.

But these days are far different and every trip to my nearby Jewel Osco store is an adventure and a complex contest to see exactly how much I can save by using my Jewel phone app as well as by carefully scrutinizing all the daily deals and other offers plastered all over the store. While I must look like a phone-obsessed teenager to novices and the uninitiated as I wonder through the aisles with my nose stuck in my cell, the truth is I’m scanning and selecting and saving money with every click. Honestly, I feel badly for the people too uniformed, too stupid or simply too lazy not to take advantage of the power of this free app.

My savings from each session are promptly displayed at the bottom of my receipt and it’s clear that this simple process will save me more on an annual basis that the $1200 that Trump’s costly tariffs are costing me and millions of other American every year. And to be clear, anyone who hasn’t shopped lately and been freaked out by a downsized bag of chips which now costs $8 dollars simply isn’t paying attention or is too wealthy to care. More likely those folks aren’t doing their own shopping anyway or shop on Amazon or Instacart.

It’s not simply a matter of dollar and cents, there’s also just something sad and unfortunate about the fact that I can click a button on my phone and save twenty or thirty dollars a visit while dozens of people shopping beside me with or without phones probably can’t afford to, but have no alternative to paying full price for the same items or, maybe worse, going without them. You might also ask yourself why the store can afford to sell me a product at half the price that others are paying at the same time for the identical item? Are the “retail” prices just so artificially inflated that they make up their margins by ripping off all the folks who don’t use the app and take advantage of the discounts?

And speaking of discounts and being ripped off, have you filled a prescription lately for just about any drug and had the sinking feeling that the experience was very similar to playing a slot machine where you had no idea what numbers might be coming up when the spinning stopped. You stand there waiting with bated breath for the clerk (behind the security glass) to tell you what the dollar damage is. The widespread prices for the same product are breathtaking and, if your prescribing doctor was lazy or greedy enough to go with a brand rather than a generic version, you’ll end up paying even more. Big pharma has paid doctors for decades through various incentives and attractive saleswomen to push their particular premium-priced drugs.

The “usual and customary” cash price that you’re asked to pay at the counter (without insurance) for a drug is typically an inflated number compared to what insurance companies or the pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) pay for the same drug. There’s no practical end in sight for the average consumer regardless of what new lies we might hear made by our drugged and drug-addled president (price reductions of 800% and 900% are his latest absurd claims) as well as his kids who – to their undisputed credit – are definitely very knowledgeable about their drugs.

But much like the story in the grocery stores, there turns out to be some relief which seems almost magical in its application and once again demonstrates the shameless price gouging of the uninformed and disconnected consumers that goes on every day. GoodRx (www.goodrx.com) is basically an information middleman which contracts with large PBMs like CVS and OptumRx in order to provide its members with free coupons that permit them to receive the same discounted drug prices that are typically negotiated by insurers and large employers.

You can check the GoodRx price on any drug right on your phone using their free app and it will immediately tell you (for almost any typical prescription) which nearby pharmacies have the drug and will honor the discounted price for it. Here again, the discounts are simply amazing – it’s nothing to see the price of a given drug cut by half or more. How any rational human being isn’t taking advantage of this program is beyond me and essentially shame on them. And amazingly in most cases, it’s even more beneficial for uninsured folks who don’t have to deal with deductibles.

How and why does it work? (1) Retail prices for drugs are a sick joke – very much like the MSRP used to be for many years on automobiles – which no intelligent person should expect to pay. (2) Pharmacies are willing to participate because they assume most of their customers will have insurance anyway which reduces the price and they are happy to have additional customers, more recurring traffic and ancillary sales. (3) Drug prices in the U.S. (as a result of paid-for politicians) are not regulated in most cases and the entire pricing scheme is opaque at best so no one knows what a realistic and fair price should be.

Bottom line: whatever you do at the grocery store, don’t wait another minute before you sign up (for free) for the GoodRx program because, while money doesn’t really care who makes it, it makes much more sense for it to end up staying in your wallet than watching it be wasted paying inflated and pretend prices at the pharmacy. The money’s always there, but the pockets can change. As Kevin O’Leary says: “it’s a sin to kill money”.

I realize that these days we’re all afflicted with hurry sickness and that everyone wants everything right now. Amazon’s not entirely to blame for this illness although no single enterprise has done more to enable, indulge and encourage the demands of the world’s consumers for instant gratification than the bald-headed ogre from Seattle. And one of the clearest message from Amazon’s aggressive actions and the continual raising of the delivery bar is that no other retailer (large or small) was immune from the pressure and the necessity to respond and try to compete if they wanted to hang on to their clients and customers.

Price is always a consideration, but speed is now the name of the game. Today most of us acknowledge that our time is scarcer and more valuable than our money in most mundane transactions. One Jeff Bezos quote that will live in infamy was the observation that “people don’t want to negotiate the price of things they buy every day” which he went on to make the very heart of the Amazon pricing algorithms. What’s an extra buck or two if I can have it delivered this afternoon? Brand and quality are secondary considerations at best - ease of access and convenience are critical.

In an environment where a million choices are just a click or two away, and where the expectations of buyers are perpetually progressive (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/keep-your-customers-by-thinking-ahead-of-them.html.), it’s a “what have you done for me lately” world. Loyalty these days means nothing more than “I haven’t seen anything better - yet”. This transactional mindset – “what’s in it for me” - is leaking every day into every single aspect of our lives.

CEOs, politicians, and coaches of NFL and college teams all understand that if they don’t deliver the goods today, it’s very likely that there won’t be a tomorrow. And, of course, the absolute and most shameless advocate of this selfish and self-serving philosophy is the Great Grifter himself to whom everything in life is about illegal shortcuts, cutting corners, reneging on promises, cheaping out, and running one grift after another trying to take advantage of someone.

Trump is too demented, too corrupt, and too far gone to be salvageable, but it’s a much bigger concern and issue for the thousands of student athletes (especially prospective quarterbacks) whose lives are being turned upside down by the NIL (name, image and likeness) financial insanity along with the millions of young prospective entrepreneurs and new business builders who are being told that learning your craft, paying your dues, waiting your turn, and bloom where you’re planted are all slow, stupid and costly strategies in today’s high-speed and hyper-competitive world.

You don’t need to know much of the NIL details (which change every 6 months anyway) other than to know that since the NCAA changed the rules in 2021 student athletes can now sell and profit directly from their own name, image and likeness through all manner of cockamamie side deals, endorsements and promotional arrangements, and other behind the scenes funding scams which are now “legal”, if still shabby and hypocritical. (See https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2021/7/9/name-image-likeness.aspx.)

Even more material changes in the ability of players to jump from school to school every year through the transfer without any eligibility penalties came along a few years later and, of course, everyone knows that both the quarterbacks in the college national championship football game (as well as the Heisman Trophy winner) were transfer students as were the quarterbacks in the prior year and those who will start for both teams in 2026.

College ballplayers in multiple sports are being bribed by big donors and collectives with NIL dollars to jump ship, abandon their school and teammates, skip the leaving curve spent sitting on the bench, and move to another program where they have a shot at being a starter whether they’re ready and mature enough for the challenge or not. Similarly, VCs and headhunters are frantically pitching second-tier talented A.I. techies at every major computer company to spin out, grab a couple of buddies, start their own businesses with Day One unicorn funding, and try to figure out how to spend hundreds of millions of dollars overnight. Many of these men and women have never run a Kool-Aid stand before or frankly managed a team of others.

Just to be clear, most of the most visible NIL “winners” in the short term (with upfront payments of millions of dollars) are likely to find that the whole process is a double-edged sword and that the slightest hiccup in their super-hyped and expected performance will have them moved aside or dumped entirely (with their careers in the crapper) in favor of the next hot guy coming through the transfer portal. In the same way, hundreds of new A.I.-adjacent startups will implode and tank (without skid marks) because their founders were in such a rush and so far out over their skis that no one could pull off the miracle which they eagerly signed up for at the behest of the usual greedy VCs. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/failure-happens-four-ways-to-do-it-well.html.)

There are a few common lessons and plenty of cautions here that apply across the board. Whether you’re a parent, peer, coach, counselor, prospective employer or just someone interested in the future mental and physical health of our kids, it’s essential to remind all these excited jocks, new business builders, and other up-and-comers of a few facts of life to accompany and hopefully help to offset all the sweet talk and “tricks of the trade” that are being whispered in their ears – especially about their exceptional talent – by people who see them as nothing more than their latest meal ticket.

First, you can’t get by in the long run relying on your talent alone even if it’s extraordinary. Great competitors in any field will tell you that failing along the way (and especially early in their careers) is what taught them that it takes more than raw ability to succeed. Failure is a better teacher than success. When someone does something really well, and gets praised for it, very often they don’t learn anything new for a long time. But failure can make them confront what they have been doing wrong and drive them to new learning. Talent combined with education and mental agility is what wins. Great quarterbacks aren’t just stronger and more skilled than the others, they’re much smarter and more analytical as well. Fernando Mendoza can fling it a mile, but it’s his powerful pre-snap recognition that makes him a winner and a Number 1 draft.

Second, talent takes some time to temper and season along with good coaching and mentoring. Managing and overcoming the inevitable bumps in the road forward which you face in the early years build mental strength, character and persistence. Winning takes talent, winning repeatedly takes character. Without some grit, maturity and patience, you end up being too fragile to succeed instead of being resilient. Resilience turns out to be at least as critical as talent to success and the combination creates the ability to keep going in the face of defeat. Before you “roll your own”, it’s essential that you learn from others and spend some time as a role player. Waiting and watching pays big dividends down the line as you discover what you didn’t know that you didn’t know. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/entrepreneurship-will-you-sink-or-swim.html.) If you try to jump and grab the brass ring too soon, you may quickly end up empty handed.

Third, it turns out that the most talented professionals just happen to be among the very hardest workers as well. They’re constantly building on their base and they’re absolutely willing to work harder than anyone else and it shows. Carlos Alcaraz just won the Australian Open and became the youngest man in tennis history to complete the Grand Slam. Amid all the compliments about his natural ability and talent, he was careful to point out that “Nobody knows how hard I have been working” to improve his serve and other key aspects of his game.

Finally, there’s a lot to be said – even in these sad days – for loyalty and for focusing on the here and now rather than on what’s next. The temptations are everywhere and plenty of folks will tell you that you’ve got to seize the moment and move on. But, as one NFL player recently told me about dealing with all the tantalizing offers and greener grass, his mantra was to “be where his feet were”, keep his head down and on the ball, not worry about what other guys were saying or doing, and rely on his own abilities and performance to make his way forward. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/what-an-nfl-player-taught-me-about-work-and-young-workers/91023529.) He didn’t need to look elsewhere for his satisfaction or success. Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

I’ve been spending considerable time this month in board sessions and compensation committee meetings in order to deal with 2025 year-end bonuses and prospective plans and incentive programs for 2026. Surprisingly there weren’t too many tough calls this time around even though the year and the “real” economy (as opposed to the stock market) were mixed blessings at best and there were plenty of curves and bumps along the way for millions of relatively new businesses.

In most of the cases that I’ve had to deal with, the comp decisions seemed fairly binary and clearcut - if the team crushed it and beat their plan, the acknowledgment actions were obvious, the relevant mechanical formulas were applied, and everyone was onboard with the resultant payments. If the prior year’s operations were flat or a bust, there really wasn’t too much to discuss and not a lot of spare cash to spread around or disburse anyway. Math is math in these meetings and there’s a lot of resistance to moving the goal posts or changing the operative metrics after the fact even when it’s apparent that the team tried its best and worked really hard.

Some things every year are simply outside of management’s control and these events and macro movements can have really material impacts on the company’s financials – you’re just as likely to catch a wave and hit it big as you are to get a kick in the teeth in any given year especially with a demented moron in the White House. But that’s part of what you sign up for - especially as a new business builder. If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain. The most reliable owners and operators are the ones who make the best of things and handle whatever the world throws at them.

And, as often as not, what’s really relevant to the ongoing and future success of any given business has something, but never everything, to do with money. The people issues which will ultimately make or break the business are far more complex than just dollars and cents issues. Money is what people without talent use to keep score. What the people who really matter are looking for are new challenges, appropriate support and resources, increased responsibility, and recognition for their efforts and their accomplishments.

So, a significant amount of the general discussions and many of the most critical conversations in these year-end meetings weren’t simply about what people should be paid. They were all about non-financial strategies and other effective methods to retain critical key players and especially how best to hang on to specialized tech talent in a time when the world was beating down the doors trying to steal them away. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/are-competitors-poaching-your-key-people-heres-how-to-keep-them/91221763.) We’re definitely in a period of A.I. hiring frenzy which reminds me of the dotcom craziness of the late 1990s when everyone wanted to leave their jobs to start their own businesses and VCs were throwing money around like confetti to fund new startups and back every insane idea right up until March of 2000 when the whole market crashed.

And it’s important to understand and honestly acknowledge that even your most loyal and long-time tech team members are subject to the pull of FOMO because nobody wants to miss the latest gold rush or give up a chance to help to invent the next big thing. It’s only human nature, it’s part of every geek and techie’s DNA, and it’s only one of the many ways in which your tech people’s enthusiasm, commitment and engagement can be slowly slipping away.

There are three considerations which are central to the retention conversations and essential to keep in mind and which are all more psychological than pecuniary.

First, the sad truth is that all the IT guys can only really play for a tie, dodge as many bullets as humanly possible, and pray that nothing breaks. They get next-to-no credit when things are running smoothly but they’re the first ones on the hot seat when things go south. You always intend to compliment these folks but never seem to have the time or the interest in making a special effort to do so. Recognition is a lever that costs you almost nothing and is often underused. Silent gratitude isn’t of very much value to anyone. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/it-guys-stop-playing-defense.html.)

Second, the buzz of winning a big new client or customer or launching a new product wears off very quickly especially when you’re the one who has to implement the solution, explain away some of the extra-zealous promises made by the sales team, and fend off the client’s constant requests for added features and functionality on the fly. There’s a reason that it costs ten times the price of an application to implement it. It’s a day-to-day grind, there’s no adrenaline rush, and there’s really no finish line because typical software development is one brief moment of creation and a lifetime of maintenance.

Finally, especially in larger corporate organizations, a huge portion of the IT work is directed at one of three equally unappetizing and boring objectives: (a) incrementally updating old procedures and processes in the background without interrupting day-to-day operations; (b) inexpensively patching, commenting out, or otherwise working around decades-old and outdated code before it shuts down completely; and (c) introducing and implementing all manner of piecemeal and unintegrated cyber security tools and initiatives. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/dont-leave-cybersecurity-to-it.html.) If any of these engagements sound appealing, you’ve never seen the vacant stares, sluggish shuffles, and shrugs that are omnipresent in these departments. These are places where eagerness, energy and enthusiasm go to die.

So, whether you know it or not, you’re on a slippery slope that doesn’t improve over time, it just gets worse. But it’s not a hopeless undertaking if you’re prepared to talk about it and work at it. Here are 5 areas – having nothing to do with dollars – that can help you hang on to your best people.

1. Make sure that you’re helping your tech people keep their skills and training up to date. No one wants to be left behind or be stuck in a rut maintaining the same old code or simply one area or component of the entire system.

2. If you don’t trust your people to work hard and make smart decisions, they’re the wrong ones. Treat them as accountable grownups and give them sufficient leeway and autonomy to feel that they have some real ownership and investment in what they’re building. Knowledge workers need to manage themselves. Managers need to set them up to succeed. People don’t leave jobs; they leave poor managers.

3. Create a professional environment that supports thoughtful, creative work without interruptions and work plans that are flexible and individual in terms of time, location, communications and reporting. Talent is a package deal, and you’ve got to make room for all kinds of people. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/how-to-make-room-for-people.html .)

4. No one wants to spend their career in a cubicle. You need to build an advancement structure and a career ladder within IT with increasing responsibilities and status which doesn’t require your best people to move into management but rewards them for “blooming in place” and succeeding without having to manage others.

5. Get your best system thinkers out in the field from time to time and connect them directly with key customers so that they can see both the problems and pain points that need to be addressed and also the positive results of their work. No one ever tells it to you straighter than an actual customer.

Bottom line: when all the dust settles and all the stories are vetted, only a small percentage of serious professionals leave their work and their team members for more money or better opportunities. They leave for other reasons including the absence of good reasons to stay but their departures only rarely come as a complete surprise to the folks who work with them.

It’s the responsibility of your senior managers to get ahead of the curve before the regrettable attrition boat sails off into the sunset. Effective managers have the ability to hear what others are not saying. They’re your front line and first line of defense. Make sure you encourage them to keep an ear to the ground and their eyes on the ball and not to take anyone for granted.

One of my earliest business ideas was to sell macho air fresheners at truck stops which were designed to look like very aggressive versions of the various animals of the Zodiac. No one understands or really appreciates the deep connection and affection which long-haul truck drivers have for their rigs, how they decorate and embellish them, or how stinky their cabs can become. These are really their “homes away from home”. The gimmick was that each truck’s 17-digit vehicle identification number (VIN) would determine what month of the year their truck was “born” and that would determine which symbol they bought. Or they could simply choose one that matched their own sign.

You’d be surprised at how superstitious truckers are and just how many millions of tokens, 4-leaf clovers, religious symbols, decals, bobbleheads and other tchotchkes they buy every year at shops, rest stops, and gas stations along the road. The animal designs came out great looking, the execution and distribution were fine, but even though they smelled great, the things never moved off the rack. Another lesson in the long line of the greatest products that never sold.
Of course, it’s not an experiment if you know in advance that it’s gonna work.

However, I was comforted by the fact that I was far from alone. I honestly think that there should be a museum of product misfires that every new business builder and entrepreneur should be required to visit as an education and a warning. Actually, the top of my list would be some of the more insane brand extension attempts that we’ve all seen over the years. I’d say that Cheetos Lip Balm, Colgate Kitchen Entrees and Clairol Yogurt Shampoo would be right up there among my would-be “winners” that went nowhere although Legendary Harley Davidson Perfume was always a favorite example as well.

And, as embarrassing as it may be, the truth is that you have to experiment in public if you want to expand and grow your business because you simply can’t find all the answers by yourself. If you don’t keep trying and raising the bar, you’ll find yourself slowly slipping backwards. There are plenty of new opportunities in every direction if you take the time to look. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/five-reasons-your-market-is-bigger-than-you-think.html.) If you simply stay in your lane and try to hang on to your existing customers because you’re afraid of changing or offending and losing them, you’re doomed.

You may think that some product categories have no place else to go or grow, but even the most mundane products can offer exciting and substantial expansion opportunities, especially when combined with new marketing partners, alternative distribution channels and attractive offerings. And, while we’re all terribly fixated on the digital realm, there are still great analog plays and hybrid strategies that combine online and offline channels. It’s always cheapest to reach your target customers by riding someone else’s rails instead of trying to build your own. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/dont-slow-up-your-startup.html.)

But I was still surprised to learn about an amazing new partnership between MrBeast ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA.), one of the absolutely hottest players online whose main YouTube channel now has over 460 million subscribers, and a Chicago-based company named OpenFortune (www.openfortune.com) which produces roughly ALL the fortune cookies in America and distributes them in 100,000 restaurants across the country. That’s about 3 billion cookies a year which OpenFortune has turned into a scalable, physical media marketing channel that millions of consumers interact with every day. And they did it by successively iterating their product and raising the bar. More of OpenFortune’s back story is available in a recent video. (See

.)

The progressive steps the company has taken have been pretty straightforward starting with the basic cookie and the standard message which, of course, had a blank flip side. A mini-billboard to be sure and a perfect place for related CPG brands to put their own messages which could be positioned to be read first before flipping over to read the fortune. Pepsi (https://www.pepsi.com/) was an early brand partner. And you might imagine, QR codes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code.) were only a short step beyond and, once the phones joined the celebration to trigger the codes, the whole sharing world of social media was available as well. Next came various versions of interactivity including experiential tours, videos squibs, etc. and of course, finally gamification of all kinds. Contests, collections, sweepstakes, and plenty of golden tickets taken right from the days of Willy Wonka (See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/.)

Each step in the iterative and expansive process exposed OpenFortune’s clients, partners, advertisers and customers to more traffic, revenue prospects, customer engagement, and provided essential tracking and measurement, along with awareness, reach and impact metrics. As part of the win-win promotion for Beast Games Season 2 (See https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Beast-Games/0F8CR7S83CZ72C99M2PCENII4H.), 2.5 million fortune cookies are being distributed by OpenFortune to restaurants nationwide which will each contain a Beast Games-related message. 24,000 of those cookies will include limited-edition fortunes written by MrBeast himself which will be scarce, collectible and actively sought after by millions of his fans. Early results of this hybrid effort suggest improved recall versus simple digital exposures and a more extensive and direct customer engagement.

The bottom line is pretty simple: sitting around and waiting for the world to beat a path to your door is a poor bet. You’ve got to keep trying, experimenting, iterating and moving forward if you want to stay in the game. You get a little bit better every day and you carefully position yourself for the large chances and opportunities that may appear at any time. As an old Chinese proverb says: “Man stand for long time with mouth open before roast duck fly in.”

Over the last 50 years, I’ve given hundreds of speeches to ambitious students, eager educators, anxious graduates, new business builders, experienced entrepreneurs, seasoned executives and owners/operators of large and small companies. And, notwithstanding the perils of repeating myself, I have always offered a few basic “perspiration” principles which I believe have more than stood the test of time at least until recently with the arrival of Trump 2.0. where anything goes, everyone’s out for themselves, honor, sacrifice and loyalty are all regarded as foolish notions, and all that matters is who you can blame and abuse, who you can buy or bribe, what you can make your own and what you can get away with taking while you’re at it. None of this bodes well for the next several generations and there’s really no near-term relief or solution in sight. But we owe it to ourselves, our kids, and our employees to say something. It’s not enough to simply note that the fastest rat who wins the race is still a rodent. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/leadership-employees-president-trump-communication/91250512.)

My primary pitches and premises for decades were simple: have a realistic goal, work hard toward it every day, pay attention to your customers and the people around you, focus on what’s important and what matters, sweat the details and pay your dues, tell the truth even when it hurts, have each other’s backs, and try hard to treat everyone fairly. The basics never really change, but these days the ways they’re regarded and valued - like the skill sets of millions of older workers - are constantly shifting in the wrong direction. Everyone today needs a trick or a gimmick; there are sneaky shortcuts and cheap cheats for everything – shame on you if you can’t find them – and only the little people still need to work hard for a living.

I used to argue that the ultimate goal for anyone trying to grow and move ahead in an organization was to be the “go-to guy” – the one that everyone else could count on, rely upon, and know that he or she would go the extra mile to get the job done. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/to-succedd-be-the-one-everyone-can-count-on.html.) Five simple guidelines for getting things done: Stay up (perspiration), Step up (passion and commitment), Study up (preparation), Stand up (principles and morals), and Buck up (perseverance). The world was never really fair, but we believed back in the day that it leaned toward the ones who worked hardest and cared the most and bent toward justice. These days it’s all about dodging the bullets, dirty dealing, avoiding the blame and staying in the shadows so the “boss” gets all the glory.

Today, even as I write these traditional concepts, I’m overcome by the feeling that they’re sorely out of date, naïve, and sadly pollyannaish. In the Trump world, where grifting is a religion, trust is a distant and much disparaged idea, and scams and schemes stain every part of the government, the entire feckless and grossly unqualified administration is filled with robotically obedient and fearful fools constantly looking over their shoulders to see who’s most likely to stab them in the back. They don’t even understand that Trump prefers to humiliate people, tell them to their faces that they’re worthless, and stab them squarely in their guts. Even if you please this corrupt and venal pig, your days are still numbered because he cares about no one but himself.

This is what our kids, employees, customers and clients see every day on their phones and screens where none of these criminals and perverts make even the slightest attempt to hide what’s going on – they preen and gloat instead - or how they feel that the old laws and moral behaviors simply don’t apply to them. This is the message and the permission that the Orange Monster has given them and all the MAGAts with the cooperation and connivance of the Supreme Court and the ultimate submission and cowardice of the Congress.

As a result, we’re all finding it harder and harder with a straight face and any degree of confidence to tell a young man or woman what the new ground rules are for success, why it still makes sense to act honorably and honestly, and how they should prepare themselves to function in a world that seems like a Washington Wonderland. A time and place where the rules, the laws and even the facts are fluid and change regularly at the whims of someone who rarely remembers (or flatly denies) whatever he spewed the day before. Dementia Don is putting the whole country and our democracy in peril as we watch helplessly and listen to his lies.

As Humpty Dumpty declared: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” When Trump speaks these days and lies out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, it’s pretty clear that not even he understands what’s he’s saying or what he means. He’s ignorant and unwilling to learn, he’s arrogant and utterly amoral, and he’s a demented sociopath. His enabling sycophants and sorry suck-ups like Noem, Hegseth and Leavitt are even worse. They stupidly lie to our collective faces more fervently every day with spurious suggestions claiming that we are fools to believe what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears. Their arrogance knows no bounds and they’re shameless and eager to rub it in our faces.

Frankly, I never thought I’d write a piece like I did a couple of weeks ago where I expressed my sincere hope that Netflix had found and employed its own “fixers” and “guys who knew guys” so that it would have a serious prospect of overcoming the efforts of the rotten government regulators, crooked administration flunkies, and even the overt and public pronouncements of the Crook-in-Chief himself as they combined to interfere with, interrupt and otherwise influence the outcome and determine the winning buyer in Warner Bros Discovery deal. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/netflix-warner-bros-discovery-trump/91282958.)

But these are the sick, corrupt and demented times that we live in today and this is the business world that every upcoming entrepreneur, business owner, manager and operator needs to work in. And it’s on us to tell them something. I’ve already told businesses that in the fragile, confused and shaky post-pandemic world with elections right around the corner the smartest thing you can do is hunker down and take it slow. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/four-rules-for-the-next-six-months.html.)

But now I’ve also had to alter and temper my advice to the up-and-comers. Here’s what I’d tell your team, your peers and your kids today.

1. No one wants to be average or just do a “decent” job.

Now is simply not the time to take giant leaps or make waves. It’s frankly a time to be grateful for the job that you have and to concentrate on doing that job as well as you possibly can. No one enjoys playing for a tie, but for the moment good enough may be plenty. It’s OK to have big dreams for down the line, but for now patience and solid performance are the priorities. Remember that you’re not working solely for yourself – plenty of others are depending on you as well – inside and outside of the office.

2. Having low expectations is the key to happiness these days.

Everyone wants to set the world on fire in a good way except, of course, Trump who’s happy to burn the whole place down and run off with the billions he and his family and chums have stolen. But for us working stiffs, at the moment, it’s an entirely different calculation. I used to say that, if you settle for less than you deserve, you’ll eventually get even less than you settled for, but now I think that it’s most important to accept gratefully what you’ve earned, focus on your family, save and protect what you have, hunker down, and remember that there are unfortunately millions in o0ur country who have far less to be thankful for than you do. It’s not everything, but it’s far better than nothing.

3. Get used to disappointment in our “leaders” – it’s par for the course.

At the circus, the crooked carnies at least know that they are carnies. They don’t try to kid themselves like our corrupt politicians and grifting leaders who like to pretend that they’re statesmen and serious professionals when the fact is that they’re all on the take and all bending over to placate and avoid Trump’s wrath even as they watch him mentally fall apart and circle the drain. They are all just praying that they don’t also get sucked in when the toilet is finally flushed.

4. If you want to succeed, keep things simple, small and specific.

No one’s saving the world these days and sadly too many of the standard charitable activities are too broad, too random, too vaguely impactful and often spending their funds in the wrong ways and places. Arbitrary empathy is largely an empty gesture for all concerned. If you want to make a difference and actually have some connection to and satisfaction from your efforts, stay simple, small, and specific. Help one person, one family, or one business to start.

Maybe things will get better in a few years. The further away the future is, the better it looks. Right now, it still looks pretty bleak.

With the arrival of the New Year has come the inevitable onslaught of renewal requests, demands, entreaties and, of course, the slippery automated extensions designed to slip under the radar, rely on our inherent laziness, convert low-ball promotional offers into full-bore subscriptions, and escape discussion, scrutiny or any kind of inquiry/evaluation of the actual usage and need for any particular service, protection or publication. Along with these ploys, and arguably as a product of them, come the seductive ads from subscription clean-up companies like Rocket Money (www.rocketmoney.com) which promise to quickly display on a single screen all your subscriptions – many of which they suggest with good reason that you didn’t even know you still had – and which their system will magically cancel at your direction and thereby save you grief, effort and hundreds of dollars as well. You can decide for yourself how valuable and effective services like these are (Rocket claims to have saved its members over $2.5 billion) and do the cost-benefit calculation for yourself as well, but to be clear, they’ve clearly identified a serious problem which afflicts millions of us every year. And, needless to say, the magazine and service vendors themselves are the last businesses likely to or interested in informing you about your wastes of money.

But aside from the dollars saved, the real benefit (if these services work as represented) is that you avoid the pain, brain damage, wasted time, and harrowing hurdles of trying yourself to wend your way through the chutes and ladders, hoops and mazes, chatbots, and flat-out dead-ends – not to mention mysteriously dropped calls – frighteningly long estimated wait times (accompanied by empty offers to call you back) – and multiple undecipherable screens in order to attempt to cancel these things on your own. And even if and when your journey finally delivers you to a human being or a chat window manned by a real person on the other end, you discover that you’re actually far from home free unless you have a very thick skin and the ability to be unbelievably rude to some poor fool who’s tasked with making you a series of increasingly desperate financial offers to retain and/or extend your subscription. It’s pretty clear that these sad people who are actually paid to not take “No” for an answer have an entire set of scripts that they employ, and the tactics they use rarely vary much between companies. The standard ploys include guilt tripping or otherwise shaming the subscriber, intentionally misunderstanding or misinterpreting the customer’s statements and desire; understating or concealing costs or terms, and dishonestly explaining the associated consequences and difficulties which may arise from a cancellation.

The only good news is that the Federal Trade Commission (largely pre-Trump II and his flunkies) has addressed many of these actions and operations in the traditional paid subscription and boiler room world which has always been largely an analog operation and remains so today. The bad news is that there’s been a substantial gap in terms of acknowledgment of the similar concerns and in any enforcement in the new digital world of social networks (which are frankly far more addictive than any print magazine) where even the idea of “subscriptions” isn’t exactly applicable. And the matter is made even worse when there’s no payment involved. Regulators and legislators have had difficulty understanding the nature of the harms associated with the intended and manufactured difficulty that exists in cancelling “free” memberships or voluntary participation in social networks and in other especially addictive services like TikTok.

Of course, we’ve all learned by now that the reason you’re not asked to pay for your Facebook or Instagram or Messenger memberships or services like TikTok is that it’s your attention and mindshare that’s being sold by the tech companies to marketers, advertisers, politicians and plenty of perverts. The price doesn’t matter when you’re the product. This is the precise reason why it’s not simply been in the economic interests of Facebook and the other social networks to make it hard to quit; it’s a conscious, intentional and pernicious part of the underlying design and economic model of these businesses. And frankly, it’s far harder to drop these services or cancel your memberships than anyone would imagine until you’ve tried.

On a good day, if you’re lucky, it will take you between 8 and 10 discrete steps and the ability to ignore suggestions, blandishments, warnings about losing friends and other functionality and services, etc. to finally reach the final stage where you can actually cancel your Facebook profile. The government has begun to take steps along with some of the states to get a handle on this situation, but it’s slow going and nothing regulatory is likely to move rapidly over the next 3 years of Trump’s rule.

This may all seem like a relatively minor concern apart from the continuing damage all these services are doing to our kids, but that’s not the main reason I’m raising the issue. As many times as new technologies have bitten us in the collective ass because we launch and implement them before we fully understand their impact or consequences, we never seem to learn the lessons. This is just further evidence that humans can ruin the spirit of just about anything, if given the time and technology. Right now, when nothing in our lives is more omnipresent and potentially threatening than A.I., we’re learning that the tech guys have done it to us again. The future for entrepreneurs and other business operators and managers is going to be one full of triage and trade-offs which will only be partially within their control.

Facebook has built its A.I. chatbot into Instagram and WhatsApp, and there is no option to turn it off. Google searches result initially in an A.I.-generated result, and the stats already make it clear that the vast majority of all searchers never go beyond that first level quasi-generic answer to their queries. Even more problematic, Google has massively updated Gmail (3 billion users worldwide) and embedded its Gemini AI across the entire platform so the AI system will be reading all your emails whether you like it or not or, more importantly, whether you even know that it’s happening. Of course, if you are aware of this change and a complete gearhead, there’s an onerous 7 or 8 step process to shut the service off but, here again, you’ve got to know about it, find and implement it, and recognize that in doing so you will lose some other desirable and longstanding Gmail functionality.

The bottom line is that more and more of these new technologies are not being offered to new business builders as choices or options but instead are imposed on them whether they like it or not. Only two industries call their customers “users” – tech software vendors and drug dealers.

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1

Mar 11, 2025

More than 50 years ago, the Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell warned us in Big Yellow Taxi about the risks of taking so much of what Americans have for granted. She sang: “Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

Every day feels like we’re increasingly on the very cusp of seeing so many safeguards disappear. All the guardrails, rules and regulations, and other protections that we’ve relied upon for decades as individuals and businesses are being illegally and abruptly ripped away and discarded. The culprits are a bunch of kids led by a billionaire turned loose by a president emboldened and enabled by sycophants, spineless politicians, and a radically conservative Supreme Court.

Thousands of our peers, neighbors and veterans are being thrown out of their jobs, turned out on the streets, and left without healthcare after giving years of their lives in the service of our country.

The Road to Recession

Any business owner or manager who thinks that their operations, employees and customers aren’t going to be adversely affected by these ill-considered and heartless actions is both foolish and blissfully unaware of what’s coming. Thousands of middle-aged professionals are now unemployed and facing difficult future prospects.

Go ahead and dismiss them as bureaucrats if you want to pile on, but their loss will have dire consequences for the economy and immediate ripple impacts in real estate and retail as well. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model is predicting a negative 2.5 percent growth in the first quarter. Not exactly the direction that anyone hoped we’ve be moving.

We can also expect more performative theatrics and threats to shut down the government from the MAGA clowns as the newest funding and budget deadline fast approaches on March 14. The uncertainty and chaos that are the hallmarks of this administration mean that business is far more likely to be a complete bust this year than a bonanza for anyone but the wealthiest Trumpists.

When Deregulation Becomes Damaging

As Elon Musk and his minions continue their rampage to destroy as many of the federal regulatory agencies as possible in the shortest possible time, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that the thousands of honest, hard-working, middle class people who used to work in these entities actually attempted, in good faith every day, to protect our health, to free us from scams and financial frauds, to save our children from fatal diseases, and to assure that the air we breathe and the water we drink every day isn’t toxic.

Did they sometimes overstep, or get us stuck in a regulatory quagmire? Absolutely. But you can bet that we’re going to miss them a bunch now that they’re gone. The completely unnecessary Texas measles outbreak — a gift from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that has already killed two people – is just the tiniest tip of the oncoming iceberg as the Trump Titanic and the Musk Massacre lurch on.

The defunding and destruction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Weather Service as hurricane season approaches is criminal. Entire states are still flooded in the South, another sad and sickening sign of the decay and devastation that Trump has wrought. People will die, but hey, we’ll save a few bucks.

Here Come the Crypto Scammers

And, because nature abhors a vacuum, we can soon enough expect, as the federal regulatory oversight diminishes, that we’ll see a newly energized and enabled band of crooks, crypto scammers and lowlifes taking center stage. They’ll be launching constant waves of illegal schemes and scams, unsafe or useless products, and a multitude of other mendacious atrocities aimed at an ill-informed, under-educated, and unprotected population. And, of course, they’ll be following the examples of the president, who will no doubt get a piece of the action.

Our companies and our commerce depend on trust, the rule of law, consistency and the predictability that the very much maligned rules and regulations which are being ignored or breached provide for us. And, as we’ve already experienced with Trump’s timid tariff retreats last week, an inconsistent policy execution is an anathema to the markets and to our allies worldwide. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, and everyone else abroad now understand that Trump is a feckless bully, that he backs down wherever anyone stands up to him.

It’s too bad that the Democrats and the shabby remnants of what used to be the Republican party haven’t got the same willingness or ability to resist this boorish blowhard and pop his boastful bubble.

If the messaging about what’s to come isn’t clear enough, Trump’s minions and Cabinet flunkies have already aborted some 100 investigations and enforcement actions against criminal corporations that were underway at the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies. In the name of deregulation, it’s now open season for corporate crooks.

Consider the most recent executive order launching the latest crypto fraud feast. In this instance, massive, leveraged purchases of key cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple were exquisitely timed and closed mere hours before Trump’s announcement about creating a U.S. Strategic Crypto Reserve. World Liberty Financial, a project directly linked to Trump’s family, bought more than $20 million in digital assets just days before the announcement. This was another example of flagrant in-our-faces insider trading.

If the crypto reserve scam wasn’t an obvious and blatant bailout for Trump’s kids and their crypto cronies, the announcement also specifically called out the names of struggling minor crypto offerings like ADA and SOL which 99 percent of the world’s population have never heard of, nor could Trump himself most likely name.

Trying to reward the crypto bros, tech funders and Wall Streeters who helped put him in office by bolstering these bogus “currencies” and threatening to use our federal Treasury funds to purchase vast quantities of these risky, digital assets is only the latest amazingly overt Trump effort to line his own pockets at our expense.

The biggest losers, though, are his deluded followers who’ve been victimized by rug pulls and already lost millions of dollars on his previous crypto schemes. Watching the parade of supplicants, schemers, and scammers streaming to Mar-a-Lago to pay millions for meals with Trump couldn’t be a more obvious demonstration of the pay-to-play world we now inhabit.

If We Do Nothing, Our Businesses Will Suffer

Unfortunately, so much of our typical human behavior is driven by indifference, avoidance and denial that millions of otherwise well-intentioned business owners are doing nothing. They are sitting on the sidelines, at a loss as to what they can do to effectively change the course of so many of these actions. The result is frustrating inaction and paralysis, which only further enables the bad actors.

Until it happens directly to you or to those you know and care about, all of this insanity and destruction of plans, positions, people and potential seems remote. We’re unsure who, exactly, is being hurt or when the harm is expected in part because we’re constantly flooded by lies and misinformation from the MAGAs and right-wing media about the wonderful financial results and savings being secured.

But know this: If at this late date you do nothing and say that “it’s not my business,” you might not have much of a business left when the dust finally settles.

Start by telling them what it takes to be a real leader.

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1

Oct 14, 2025

We have a liar as our president, and we’re stuck with him for the next three-plus years. Whether you’re a business owner, parent, or both, we consistently need to say something to our kids and everyone else in our lives who’s trying to make sense of this cynical charade. As numb as we all are at the moment, it’s dumb to stay quiet any longer.

We have a leader who lies the way most people breathe. It’s beyond second nature to him. He doesn’t merely lie to secure a certain objective or interest (apart from his desire to be a king); he lies because he enjoys it, because he can’t help himself, and because it’s a central part of his deeply-flawed character. And because he intuitively believes what Thomas Jefferson said so many years ago: “A continual circulation of lies among those who are not much in the way of hearing them contradicted will in time pass for the truth.” If Trump has a credo, this is it: A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.

We used to joke that the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman was that the car salesmen knew he was lying to you while the computer guy barely understood what it was that he was selling. Trump knows he’s lying and knows exactly what he’s trying to accomplish. To scare us, to turn us against each other, to always blame the “other,” and to incessantly aggrandize himself. It actually seems to be getting worse. His continued attempts to declare himself king aren’t very different from the claims in ancient France of Louis XIV that “l’État c’est moi.” Trump thinks saying something makes it so and claims that “when somebody’s the president of the United States, his authority is total.” The slime ball Stephen Miller blurts out that Trump’s power is plenary and then instantly regrets saying it on live TV.

What to say

So how do we fairly describe for our employees and our families just what is happening to our government and our country, and why we can no longer in good conscience believe anything said by its clearly deranged and dishonest leader?   Start by telling them what it takes to be a real leader.

1. Leaders can cast shadow or light. Everything about Trump is dark and divisive.

2. Leaders must understand that they’re part of something greater than themselves. Trump actually believes that he’s the king of the world.

3. You’re not a leader until others believe that you are putting them first. Trump is about nothing but Trump.

4. A leader never blames their people for their own failings. Trump is utterly incapable of accepting either blame or responsibility. He blames everyone but himself.

5. Leaders can either swell or grow. We can only hope, as the swelling and bloat continue, that Trump bursts one of these days.

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The embarrassing, baseless, and arrogant assertions will continue as long as the mainstream media refuse to challenge or confront Trump. When tin-pot dictators lose the people’s trust, confidence, and belief, they seize upon authority as their final claim of support.

The truth is that no one ever believed in Trump—he was a cartoon and a joke from the start—but unfortunately too many people acting in their own self-interest saw him as a weapon and a vehicle to secure their own aims. They held their collective noses, looked elsewhere, and let the clown run wild. There’s only one source of blame for this mess and that’s each other.

Beyond embarrassing

Lies often reveal who and what the liar wishes he could be, and Trump has desperately sought the approval of the powerful and the media since his earliest days. He was, by his own account, always the biggest, the best, and the loudest, but back then he was never taken seriously. He has always been a farcical caricature, and, as he berates the press to their faces in the White House (and forever soils the place with his venom), we see just how bent and bitter he truly is. It’s pathetic and beyond embarrassing to see this out-of-control reality show character singling out and slandering the press and, by extension, the public’s interests, which they attempt to represent. The press may deserve a fair amount of criticism and contempt for its own shortcomings and failings, but these actions are simply beyond the pale.  

Now the Cheerleader-in-Chief, with the help of the feckless Speaker Mike Johnson—who does whatever Trump demands—thinks he can adjourn Congress for as long as he pleases to keep the Epstein files hidden from the public. This stupid ploy is doomed, but it’s also very reminiscent of an old Hollywood quote attributed to Samuel Goldwyn about his employees, which couldn’t be more fitting and timelier for our current circumstances: “I’ll take 50-percent efficiency to get 100-percent loyalty.” And boy, don’t we know that and see it every day in action. Lying may be an essential part of politics, but lying to yourself (as Trump does every day) and believing your own lies is pathological.

To make things worse, Trump’s ego is so fragile and sensitive—and so easily bruised—that, for the tiniest perceived slights, he pummels the press and even his own people and rubs things in their faces on a daily basis right before our eyes. He’s an overbearing bully, a mini-martinet, and a retweeting weasel to boot. Samuel Goldwyn’s most famous observation fits here too: “I want everybody to tell me the truth, even if it costs them their job.”

Speaking the truth is no easy task when you’re talking with people (young or old) who have been raised to respect the office of the president (and, sadly, this applies to the courts as well), to give any occupant the benefit of the doubt in terrible circumstances, and to believe that anyone in such a position of trust and responsibility would act not in his own selfish interest and for favored special interests, but for the good of the country as a whole.

What Do You Tell Your Kids When the Leader’s a Liar?

Everyone Else (Spouses, Parents and Peers) Wants Answers Too.

By Howard Tullman

General managing partner, G2T3V and Chicago High Tech Investors

WWW.HOWARDTULLMAN.COM

The old laugh lines and Catskills zingers aren’t that funny any longer because these days the joke’s on us and it’s a situation that’s beyond sad. We have a liar for a leader and there’s just no other way to put it. In the face of such horror, humor is impossibly hard. But we need to say something to our kids and everyone else in our lives who are trying to make sense out of this cynical charade. As numb as we all are at the moment, it’s dumb to stay quiet any longer.

We once said that you could tell when a politician was lying to you because his or her lips were moving. Today we have a leader who lies the way (and just as easily) as most people breathe. It’s beyond second nature to him; it’s in his very DNA. He doesn’t merely lie to secure a certain objective or interest (apart from his reelection); he lies because he enjoys it, because he can’t help himself, and because it’s a central part of his deeply-flawed character - whatever that may be. And because he intuitively believes what Thomas Jefferson said so many years ago: “A continual circulation of lies among those who are not much in the way of hearing them contradicted will in time pass for the truth”. If Trump has a credo, this is it: A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.

We laughed that the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman was that the car salesmen knew he was lying to you. The computer guy barely understood what it was that he was selling. Trump knows he’s lying and knows as well exactly what he’s trying to accomplish. To scare us, to turn us against each other, to always blame the “other”, and to incessantly aggrandize himself. It actually seems to be getting worse. His brief and quickly aborted attempt to declare himself King wasn’t very different from the claims in ancient France of Louis XIV that “l’etat c’est moi”. Trump thinks saying makes it so and claimed that: “when somebody’s the president of the United States, his authority is total”.

This embarrassing, baseless, and arrogant assertion couldn’t even survive a single news cycle before the petty braggart had to back it down. When tin-pot dictators (and wanna-bes) lose the people’s trust, confidence and belief, they seize upon authority as their final claim of support. The truth is that no one ever believed in Trump – he was a cartoon and a joke from the get-go – but unfortunately too many people – each acting in their own self-interest – saw him a weapon and a vehicle to secure their own aims. They held their collective noses, looked elsewhere, and let the clown run wild. We have only one person to blame for this mess and that’s each other.

Lies often reveal who and what the liar wishes he could be, and Trump has desperately sought the approval of the powerful and the media since his earliest days. He was by his own account always the biggest, the best, the loudest, but he was never taken seriously. He has been a farcical caricature and, as he berates the press to their faces in the White House (and forever soils the place with his venom), we see just how bent and bitter he truly is. It’s pathetic and beyond embarrassing to see this out-of-control reality show character singling out and slandering the press and, by extension, the public’s interests which they attempt to represent. The press may deserve a fair amount of criticism and contempt for its own shortcomings and failings, but his actions are simply beyond the pale.

Now the Cheerleader in Chief thinks he’s gonna unilaterally adjourn Congress so he can jam through a further bunch of mediocre nominees and know-nothings using recess appointments. This stupid ploy is equally doomed - even head Senate flunky Mitch McConnell already rejected it - but it’s also very reminiscent of an old Hollywood quote from Samuel Goldwyn about his employees which couldn’t be more fitting and timelier for our current circumstances. He said: “I’ll take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty”. And boy, don’t we know that and see it every day in action. Lying may be an essential part of politics but lying to yourself (as Trump does every day) and believing your own lies is pathological.

To make things worse, Trump’s ego’s so fragile and sensitive and so easily offended that, for the slightest perceived slights, he pummels the press and even his own people and rubs things in their faces (especially the medical professionals) on a daily basis right before our eyes. He’s an overbearing bully, a mini-martinet, and a Twitter-retweeting weasel to boot. Samuel Goldwyn’s most famous observation fits here too. He famously said: “I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job”. Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

The humorous definition of a “gaffe” once was when a politician accidentally told the truth. President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he subscribes to that great rhetorical line from the War Dogs movie: “When does telling the truth ever help anybody?” Inconveniently for him, the truth is confusing, detailed, messy and ill-suited for sound bites and storytelling. It’s especially challenging for someone with an infant’s attention span, not a drop of patience, no desire to learn, and no interest in detail or accuracy. Trump’s a lazy man who hides from the truth, hears only what he wants to hear, and ignores/disregards the rest.

So we’re left in this ongoing and immoral morass with the question of what explanation, what excuse, what rationalization, or even what justification can there be for tolerating the daily circus we’re subjected to on TV by this narcissist who believes that the sole truth lies within him (in his infinite wisdom and fact less judgment) and who, at best, pays only fleeting lip service to the data, the experts, the professionals and to anyone with a view other than his. And, more to the point, how do we fairly describe for our families just what is happening to our government and our country and why we can no longer in good conscience believe its duly elected, but clearly deranged and dishonest, leader.

This is no easy task or conversation to have with people (young or old) who have been raised (as we all have) to respect the office of the president, to err on the side of goodness and give any occupant the benefit of the doubt in terrible circumstances, and to believe that anyone in such a position of trust and responsibility would act – not in his own selfish interest and for favored special interests - but for the good of the country as a whole.

But it’s just not happening as anyone would expect (because this character has no soul and no shame) and it couldn’t be a more critical and timely topic when the facts, the relevant timeframes, and the gross and inappropriate behaviors are fresh in mind, when the most critical choices and decisions still remain to be made, and before the history is rewritten to create and promote the success stories and the celebrations of Trump’s “triumphs” which are sure to occupy far more of his time and attention going forward than the continually mounting numbers of sick and dying people across the country.

So, what do you tell your kids today? Start by telling them what it takes to be a real leader.

(1) Leaders can cast shadow or light. Everything about Trump is dark and divisive.

(2) Leaders must understand that they’re part of something greater than themselves. Trump actually believes that he’s the king of the world.

(3) You’re not a leader until others believe that you are putting them first. Trump is about nothing but Trump.

(4) A leader never blames his people for his failings. Trump is utterly incapable of accepting either blame or responsibility. He blames everyone but himself.

(5) Leaders can either swell or grow. We can only hope, as the swelling and bloat continue, that Trump bursts one of these days.