HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Thursday, July 31, 2014
1871 Announces First Winners of the Chicago College Startup Competition
1871 Announces First Winners of the Chicago College Startup Competition
Selected college startups will receive free membership, access to a
full range of 1871 programming and a unique support system
CHICAGO (July 31, 2014)— 1871 announced
the first winners of its inaugural Chicago College Startup Competition Thursday
morning, in conjunction with ThinkChicago. The competition provides one year of
free membership to 1871 for nine grand prize winners and three months of free
membership for two runners-up. This year’s winners were chosen from a talented
group of expanding businesses that were founded in colleges across the country.
“The
Chicago College Startup Competition is an important tool for attracting and
keeping the most talented digital entrepreneurs, designers and developers in
Chicago,” said 1871 CEO Howard A Tullman. “This year’s selected college
startups will benefit not only from 1871’s extensive range of programming, but
also from their extended immersion in the 1871 entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
CCSC
was launched by 1871 in conjunction with and in support of the efforts by Mayor
Emanuel and Governor Pat Quinn to attract and retain businesses in Chicago and
Illinois. Both the Mayor and the Governor have identified young business
owners, especially those from colleges around the nation, as a key group to
attract and retain in Chicago.
“Small businesses are the backbone of Chicago’s economy and these young entrepreneurs are creating the small businesses of tomorrow,” Mayor Emanuel said. “I congratulate the winners of the Chicago College Startup Competition on their accomplishment and expect to welcome them back soon, when they decide to grow their businesses here in Chicago.”
“We have been proud to assist 1871 as it
continues to bolster our economy by reaching out to young entrepreneurs,” Governor
Pat Quinn said. “We congratulate the winners of this competition and look
forward to their contributions to Illinois commerce as they advance in their
careers.”
In
addition to receiving free membership at 1871, chosen companies will have
access to the full range of 1871 membership benefits that include frequent
mentorship opportunities, specialized education programs, and access to
potential partners and investors. 1871
has also created a unique “Upper-Classmen” support system for the new college
startups, which is composed of current 1871 companies that began as college
startups.
Grand Prize Winners
Spectrom
- University of Wisconsin - Madison – Spectrom brings photorealism to 3D
printing by creating an add-on device that automates the production of full,
multicolor objects in a fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer.
Hutster
- Miami University, Ohio – Hutster is a student subletting marketplace that instantly
connects students to help guide them through the subletting process.
Timing and Racing Around the Clock LLC –
Northwestern University - T.R.A.C. seeks to simplify the running
experience through innovative radio frequency identification (RFID) timing
equipment.
Lumonik – University of Chicago –
Lumonik delivers extremely accurate human hydration monitoring devices to
the mass market. The initial product, the Hydraband, comes in the form of a
color changing bracelet that monitors human hydration levels in real-time,
thereby allowing users to actively prevent dehydration.
Hashtagr
– DePaul University – Hashtagr is a social search engine that aggregates
hashtag posts from Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, Facebook, Google+, and
other resources into a simple user interface.
Omicron – George Washington University
– Omicron uses mobile and online tools to help young people expand their access
to financial markets.
Fitness
Cubed – University of Chicago – Fitness Cubed is creating
"Cubii," an under-the-desk exercise device to address sedentary
behavior in the workplace. Cubii comes with a mobile app that allows users to
keep track of their exercise and connect to various fitness trackers. Fitness
Cubed recently completed a successful Kickstarter
campaign to help fund Cubii.
Share Transport – Northwestern
University – Share Transport is a cloud-based service for maximizing any
company’s transportation efficiency. Relying on analytics to optimize the
logistic operation, Share Transport uses its extensive database to find matches
for everyday transportation requirements.
Carbon Cash
– Michigan State University – Carbon Cash is a behavioral energy
efficiency app targeted towards renter-occupied housing, including college
students. Carbon Cash informs users how much electricity they consume, teaches
them how to use less with educational quizzes, and rewards them for saving
through both psychological competitions with peers and monetary incentives.
Runners-up
Monkey
Bars – Illinois Institute of Technology – MonkeyBars coordinates
crowdsourced innovation challenges (Hackathons) that help companies and
organizations improve the way they learn, think and grow. Their products range
from external crowdsourced consulting initiatives to internal culture of
innovation projects.
AnonyMonkey
– University of Chicago – AnonyMonkey's app offers a way for high school
and college students to share emotions semi-anonymously in groups that are
centralized around each user's campus.
About
1871
1871 is
an entrepreneurial hub for digital startups. Located in The Merchandise Mart,
the soon-to-be 75,000-square-foot facility provides Chicago startups with
programming, access to mentors, educational resources, potential investors and
a community of like-minded entrepreneurs that help them on their path to
building successful businesses. 1871 is the flagship project of the Chicagoland
Entrepreneurial Center.
Good morning and welcome to Chicago and 1871. I’m Howard
Tullman the CEO here at 1871 and I’ll be telling you more about 1871 in a
little while. For now, I just want to tell you how excited we all are about
Think Chicago and especially about our CCSC competition and the great first
class of winners that we’re announcing today.
Apart from a good idea, a killer work ethic, a great team and
a lot of luck (some of which you make yourself), it takes 4 things for a new
business to grow and succeed:
(1) Cash – and today there’s tons around. We’ve had
more than $5 Billion worth of exits of Chicago-based businesses just in the
last year. So money’s no big deal.
(2) Customers – startups sometimes lose sight of the
fact that you’ve got to sell something to someone and those somebodies are
customers and there’s no better city for a diverse customer pool (large and
small) than Chicago. Here’s a dirty little secret – there are no B-2-B
customers on the coasts – they’re all here in the real world. Willie Sutton
said he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. People come to Chicago
to do business because this is where the customers are.
(3) Talent - that’s why we are here today. Attracting
and retaining the best and the brightest talent to 1871 to start and grow their
businesses (and to Chicago to start and grow their families) is our mission and
– so far in just 2 years – we’re killing it. But there’s nothing that you can’t
do harder, longer or better so we’re doing everything we can to create the best
platform in the country to launch your next great idea.
And finally, it takes a Mayor who gets it.
It’s my great pleasure to introduce my friend Rahm Emanuel.
I’ve been his supporter, his client, his landlord, and even an occasional
critic (and you can guess how that worked out) for over 20 years. An old movie
mogul (Samuel Goldwyn) used to say: “I want people to tell me the truth even if
it costs them their jobs.” Rahm wouldn’t go that far; he just likes me to think
of him as a friend who’s always right.
And remarkably, since he’s been running our City, things for
the tech community and for the 250 new businesses starting out here at 1871
simply couldn’t have been any better. So please join me in welcoming a GREAT
supporter of entrepreneurs and innovation, a tremendous leader, and a good
friend – our Mayor.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
WILAB LOVES: YOUR WORK IS NOT YOUR LIFE
WILAB LOVES: YOUR WORK IS NOT YOUR LIFE
Very few things in our lives are absolute
Everything is measured by degree, from our attention to our patience to the range and intensity of our emotions.
At the same time, some things are absolute: You can’t be all things to all people; you can’t dance every dance; and, throughout your life, you’ve got to make hard choices, sacrifices, and compromises, and then you’ve got to live with them through thick and thin for a very long time.
We become the sum of the choices we make over time; those choices determine the kind of person we end up being–and how the world sees and values us.
What we become isn’t a necessary result of fate or destiny. It’s certainly not foretold or pre-ordained. Throughout our lives we remain a work in progress. Iteration isn’t just a business process; it’s also a strategy for a life well-lived. We can bend and shape outcomes to match our desires if we consciously, actively, and continually apply ourselves. But the good things we all hope for don’t happen by themselves; you’ve got to pay attention and make them happen.
Purpose, perspective, proportion
One of the most critical choices you’ll need to make when you start out in your career is exactly what kind of person you want to be. I think it’s somewhat back in fashion these days to be a workaholic. For some of us it never went out of style. Almost everyone today wants to be an entrepreneur, build a business, and be a big honking overnight success. But that’s only part of the story. Ultimately it’s not about making money, it’s about making a difference. It’s also about more than making a living: It’s about making a life. And the “you” that you become is a big part of the life you build outside the office, as well as within your business.
In the frenzy of the work and the world it’s really important that you don’t lose your sense of purpose, perspective, and proportion–and risk losing yourself in the process. Your business and your work will always be what you do. These things are not who you are. And it’s critical right from the start that you not confuse or conflate the two.
This isn’t as easy to manage as you may think
Today too many of us worship our work, work at our play (fitness uber alles), and play at what little worship we make a part of our lives. Where are the soul and the value in that? And (assuming that we want to) how exactly do we get ourselves back on top of things before they veer entirely out of control?
To handle the constant barrage of useful information, occasional insights, and useless chatter that increasingly assaults our senses and impedes our ability to get successfully through the day we need a new plan. You can drown in many ways today – in data, in documents, in deliberations, and in endless discussions. We all need to develop new skills for managing both the data and the people in our lives. It’s similar to the radical and rapid choices that drive the triage process in an emergency room. But there are many different kinds of choices in the mix.
At work, we tend automatically to focus on the fiercest fires and the highest flames
We let our attention be directed toward the newest crisis rather than remaining in some kind of control and attending to the critical things that really matter. Attention is as slippery as mercury, and as easily redirected. If no one is paying attention to the things that count, people just stop caring. Once you stop paying attention to the people in your business who are important, and they stop caring about you and your business, they’ll go someplace else, to someone who does pay attention and who does care. It’s just a matter of time.
But that’s on the business side of the equation. As the number of physical, mental, and emotional inputs we absorb each day continues to increase it becomes all too easy to apply the same systems, formulae, and checklists we use at work to our friends and families. This is where things can go very wrong very quickly.
That’s because some of the people decisions we confront every day aren’t mathematical or subject to standard rules and procedures–they’re choices about other people, about feelings, and about our relationships. These concerns are fundamentally different, non-mechanical, and far more complex. People aren’t products, positions, or policies–they’re our co-workers, friends, and family. There’s no fixed formula for getting these things right.
So it’s equally incumbent upon us to decide what’s truly important in these interpersonal situations, both in the moment and in the long run, and to devote to them the same passion and energy we apply to our business problems and concerns. It’s a given that there’s never enough time in the day (and that’s never going to change); there’s never enough of any one of us to go around (cloning may help, someday); and it’s way too easy to find an excuse rather than finding the time to deal with these issues.
But here’s the bottom line
Your family (when you have one) will be a much more important extension of yourself than any work you do. There’s always more work, but you only have one family. And, believe me, good friends are also few and far between. Friends are the family that you get to choose–they’re hard to find, even harder to leave, and impossible to forget. So, as you make ‘em, make a plan to hang on to them. They’re as important an investment over time as anything else.
Take a little time now to decide how you’d like things to turn out when you look back in 50 years at your accomplishments, your family, and what you’ve built. It’s all right there before you. Everything is possible; ultimately, it’s all about what you make of it.
SOURCE: Inc.com, Your Work Is Not Your Life, July 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HOWARD TULLMAN | Inc.com ColumnistHoward A. Tullman is the CEO of 1871 ? Where Digital Startups Get Their Start and the General Managing Partner of G2T3V, LLC and of Chicago High Tech Investment Partners. He is a member of the Chicago NEXT & Cultural Affairs Councils and the Illinois Innovation & Arts Councils; an adjunct professor at Kellogg; and an advisor to many start-ups. He is the former Chairman and CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy. Over the last 45 years, he has successfully founded more than a dozen high-tech companies. @tullman
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Krauthammer: Kerry 'Undermined' Israel-Hamas Peace Efforts
Krauthammer: Kerry 'Undermined' Israel-Hamas Peace Efforts
PM
Speaking on "Special Report with Bret Baier" on Fox News, Krauthammer blasted Kerry, saying he crashed the negotiations uninvited and "undermined" Egypt's attempts to settle the war in Gaza.
"The Israelis did not invite him," Krauthammer told Fox. "The Egyptians did not want him and he still says he advanced a peace plan that was sort of building on the Egyptian one. It didn't at all. It undermined it."
"Egypt wanted a cease-fire in place, which means no reward for Hamas starting this war by attacking civilians, which is a war crime," Krauthammer told Fox. "And that was proposed before the ground incursion. The casualties would have been infinitely lower. Israel accepted — Hamas said no.
"Kerry goes over and then he negotiates in Paris with who? Qatar and Turkey, and returns essentially as the lawyer for Hamas and hands Israel a proposition that is so outrageous that the Cabinet votes 19-0 against it.
"Israeli Cabinets have never voted 19-0 on whether the sun rises in the east. It was unbelievable. It would have given Hamas all of its demands," Krauthammer told Fox News.
Or worse, said Danny Danon, former Israeli deputy defense minister, who told CNN'sWolf Blitzer, "Secretary Kerry's proposal was an insult for us."
"I think what Secretary Kerry did last week was a mistake. It put Israel and Hamas on the same level. It is like, I would tell you that the U.S. and al-Qaida are on the same level."
In an interview with Israeli Radio, the Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said she told Kerry his proposal was "completely unacceptable" and "would strengthen extremists in the region."
Krauthammer told Fox, "Look at the wreckage Kerry has done in intervening in the Israeli-Gaza fighting. A left-wing Israeli paper said Kerry had dug a tunnel under the Egyptian peace plan.
"When you see what happens when America engages, you wonder if we shouldn't have more disengagement."
1871, Burson-Marsteller to work with startups on public relations strategies
1871, Burson-Marsteller to work with startups on public relations strategies
Howard Tullman, CEO of Chicago tech hub 1871, wants his startups to become more public relations savvy.
Howard Tullman, the executive with the drill sergeant frame of mind who took the reins in late 2013 at Chicago tech incubator 1871 has decided his recruits need to be more PR savvy, even as Tullman begins to shut down as many as 20 underperforming startups at the tech hub.
Today 1871 CEO Tullman said he has inked a partnership with the Chicago office of the global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to create and host a series of workshops to help entrepreneurs develop communications and PR strategies.
Noted Tullman of the new partnership: "1871's primary focus is on helping entrepreneurs develop successful businesses. We are excited for Burson-Marsteller to bring its public relations expertise to the 1871 community."
The training programs will be handled through B-M's Burson Lift unit, which provides communications counsel for emerging and growth companies. The training designed for 1871 startups will focus on message development, challenging marketplace assumptions, storytelling and communication tactics for an evolving media landscape.
Added Erica Swerdlow, B-M's executive vice president in Chicago: "Determining a communications strategy is a necessary part of any company's business plan, but it is critical to ensure it happens at the right time in the development lifecycle."
The partnership with B-M is one of the first examples of Tullman's and 1871's new strategy to provide so-called sequential education programming to the 1871 community that will extend over a period of time and build from session to session.
In 2013, 1871 provided more than 4,500 hours of one-on-one mentoring to its members and produced over 650 events, workshops and working educational sessions.
Separately, in an interview Tullman said he has begun the process of identifying the startups at 1871 that aren't performing up to 1871's expectations.
The 1871 CEO said he expects about 20 of the 270 startups now in residence at 1871 to be dismantled in the coming months.
But the staff involved in those shuttered companies won't necessarily leave 1871, Tullman indicated. Rather, they may join other startups for whom the future looks more promising.
Still, with the expanded space 1871 will occupy in coming weeks at the Merchandise Mart, Tullman said he expects more startups to join the tech hub fold soon, with some 400 total startups in residence by the end of the year, Tullman predicted.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Kerry v. Israel: Why It Gets Personal
Kerry v. Israel: Why It Gets Personal
Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary
07.28.2014 - 4:40 PM
07.28.2014 - 4:40 PM
After delivering demands to Israel that amounted to an American surrender to Hamas, in a speech delivered this morning Kerry said that “demilitarization” of Gaza was a necessary element of hopes for peace. He’s right about that, but after seeking to hamstring Israeli efforts to halt Hamas rocket fire and to eliminate the tunnel network they use to store their arsenal and to launch cross-border attacks on Israeli targets, the umbrage that administration figures are expressing about the reaction to the secretary’s behavior is unjustified.
The fact that it has become personal between Kerry and Israel does neither country any good and that is why even though the anger in the Jewish state at the secretary was universal, Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., rightly sought to disassociate his government from any personal attacks on Kerry today. But as with previous tiffs in which the administration expressed anger about criticism of the secretary, the focus on defending Kerry’s honor or good intentions is beside the point. Though he continues to pose as the tireless worker for peace that is being unfairly targeted for his even-handed approach, it’s time to realize that Kerry actually deserves a not inconsiderable share of the blame for the situation.
Even if we are to credit Kerry, as Dermer suggests, for his good intentions, the secretary deserves every bit of the opprobrium that has been leveled at him by Israelis from the right to the left.
Kerry’s disastrous intervention in the current fighting demonstrated the utter and complete incoherence of the position that he has carved out for the United States. On the one hand, Kerry has prioritized the effort to create a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But by seeking to save Hamas by granting it concessions in the form of open borders rather than forcing the demilitarization that he belatedly endorsed, Kerry is making such a peace deal impossible.
The depth of the contradictions here are hard to comprehend. On the one hand, following President Obama’s lead, Kerry has praised Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas endlessly as a true partner for peace even though the PA chief has repeatedly turned down chances to negotiate seriously. But by seeking to place constraints on Israeli military actions directed at degrading Hamas’s capability to launch terror attacks, Kerry is actually undermining Abbas. His cease-fire proposal wasn’t so much an insult to Israel as it was to the PA. Though publicly condemning Israeli actions, it’s no secret that Abbas is hoping that the Jewish state will remove his on-again-off-again rival/partner in the Palestinian government from the scene. By endorsing the proposal for a cease-fire that came from Hamas allies Qatar and Turkey, Kerry stabbed Abbas in the back.
But the incompetence didn’t begin with one ill-considered piece of diplomatic ineptitude. It must be understood that nothing that is going on today—including the grievous casualty toll inside Gaza—would have happened had not Kerry single-handedly forced both Abbas and the Israelis into a negotiation that both knew would only lead to disaster. Throughout the nine months during which the secretary orchestrated a new round of peace talks between Israel and the PA, the administration was warned that the problem wasn’t just that the effort couldn’t succeed so long as the Palestinians were divided between Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas. It was that once the failure occurred, it would provide a justification for a new round of violence in the same manner that past such efforts had done. Kerry not only ignored those warnings but raised the stakes by personally speaking about a third intifada happening if the two sides didn’t do as he bid. Those who pointed out that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy were denounced as insufficiently supportive of peace. But the reality is that Kerry not only set the stage for this new outbreak, he more or less gave Hamas a green light to go ahead and start shooting.
The only common threads in Kerry’s diplomatic endeavors have been his enormous self-regard and a clear animus for the Netanyahu government. Either of these foibles would be forgivable if Kerry were focused on actions that would advance a two-state solution. But by pushing for a settlement when Abbas was unable to comply and then disingenuously blaming his failure on Israel, Kerry hurt the PA and set back any chance for peace. Once Hamas escalated the current fighting, he again took his eye off the ball and focused entirely on pushing for a cease-fire that would enhance the Islamists’ prestige and marginalize the Palestinians that he had championed.
Israelis who are forced to seek refuge in bomb shelters from Hamas missiles or await terror attacks from Gaza tunnels may be forgiven for losing patience with Kerry’s self-righteous lectures about casualties and human rights. But the attention given the anger he has generated there ought not to divert us from his record of failure. On Iran, Syria, and Russia, Kerry has done little to advance U.S. interests or to protect human rights. But with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has done worse than that. Having set the region up for conflict, he is now doing everything possible to ensure that the violence will continue at some point in the future by allowing Hamas to survive and even claim victory. Seen from that perspective, his good intentions and the insults being thrown his way from Israelis are mere footnotes to a historic legacy of failure.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
NEW ART FOR TULLMAN COLLECTION - MAYHEW, WALKER, CRONIN
REFLECT REFLECT
(MAYS MAYHEW)
HAPPY FACE
(JOHN WALKER)
CAVITY
(JESSICA CRONIN)
Friday, July 25, 2014
First Things First: Family and Friends
First Things First:
Family and Friends
First Things First: Family and Friends
By Howard Tullman
By Howard Tullman
There are degrees of everything – very few things in our world today are absolute. The amount of regular attention we pay to various matters and things; the extent of our patience for our loved ones, peers and others; and the wide range and intensity of the up-and-down feelings we experience at home and at work every day are all highly variable and emotionally-charged elements of our lives. If variety is the spice of life; it’s equally an unsettling, challenging and countervailing offset to the security and stability that we all also relish.
At the same time, some things are for sure. You can’t be all things to all people; you can’t dance every dance; and throughout your life, you’ve got to make some hard choices, lots of sacrifices, more than a few compromises, and then you’ve got to live with them through thick or thin for a very long time. The truth is that you can’t really hedge your bets when it’s your life and the really important parts of it are on the line. We become the sum of our choices over time and those choices determine the kind of person we end up being and how the world sees and values us.What we become isn’t a necessarily a result of fate or destiny. It’s certainly not foretold or preordained in any sense, just as there are no guarantees when you start a business. And I don’t believe that it’s beyond our control and our ability to bend and shape the outcomes to match our desires if we consciously, actively and continually apply ourselves to the task. Throughout our lives, we remain a work in progress. Iteration isn’t just a business process; it’s a strategy for a life well lived. And the good things that we all hope for don’t happen by themselves; you’ve got to pay attention and make them happen.
One of the most critical choices you’ll need to make when you start out in your career is exactly what kind of person you want to be. I think it’s somewhat back in fashion these days to be a workaholic. For some of us, it never went out of style. Almost everyone today wants to be an entrepreneur; build a business; and be a big honking overnight success. But that’s only part of the story. Just as we say at 1871 that ultimately it’s not about making money, it’s about making a difference; it’s also about more than making a living – it’s about making a life. And the “you” you become is a big part of the life you build outside the office right alongside your business.
It’s really important – in the frenzy of the work and the world – that you don’t lose your sense of purpose, perspective and proportion and risk losing yourself in the process. Your business and your work will always be what you do. These things are not who you are. And it’s critical right from the start that you not confuse or conflate the two. This isn’t as easy to manage as you may think. Today, too many of us worship our work; we work at our play (fitness uber alles); and we play at what little worship we make a part of our lives. Where’s the soul and the value in that? And – assuming that we want to – how exactly do we get ourselves back on top of things before they veer entirely out of control?
To handle the constant barrage of useful information, occasional insights and useless chatter as well as the increasing assault on all of our senses and, in fact, just to get successfully through the day; we need a new plan. You can drown in many ways today – in data, in documents, in deliberations and in endless discussions. So, the fact is that we each need to develop new skills (for managing both the data and the people in our lives) which probably most resemble the triage process in any emergency room. It’s all about radical and rapid choices – as always – but there are many different kinds of choices in the mix.
At work, we tend automatically to focus on the fiercest fires and the highest flames. We let a great deal of how we spend our days and how our attention is directed be driven by the newest crisis rather than remaining in some kind of control and attending to the critical things that really matter. Attention is a slippery substance (a lot like mercury); easily and quickly redirected and readily dissipated. If no one is paying attention to the right things and the things that count, people just stop caring. Once you stop paying attention to the people in your business that are important and they stop caring about you and your business; they’ll go someplace else to find someone else who does pay attention and who does care. It’s just a matter of time. But that’s mainly the business side of the equation.
As the number of physical, mental and emotional inputs we absorb each day continues to increase; our attention spans are shrinking and it’s easy to fall back on systems and formulas and – before you know it – just by force of habit and circumstance, we’re applying the same approaches and mental checklists that work so well at the firm or in the factory to our friends and families. This is where things can go very wrong very quickly. Because some of the people decisions we’re confronted with every day aren’t mathematical or subject to standard rules and procedures – they’re choices about others, about feelings, and about our relationships. These concerns are fundamentally different, non-mechanical, and far more complex and they defy easy explanation. People aren’t products, positions or policies – they’re our co-workers, friends, and family. There’s no fixed formula for getting these things right.
But it’s just as much our job and equally incumbent upon us to decide all day long what’s truly important in these interpersonal instances – both in the moment and in the long run – and to spend the time and direct the required attention to making sense of these situations with the same passion and energy that we apply to our business problems and concerns. It’s a given that there’s never enough time in the day (and that’s never going to change); there’s never enough of any one of us to go around (cloning may help this someday); and it’s way too easy to find an excuse rather than finding the time to deal with these issues.
But here’s the bottom line: your family (when you have one) will be a much more important extension of yourself than any work you do. There’s always more work – you only have one family. And, believe me; good friends are also few and far between. Friends are the family that you get to choose – they are hard to find; even harder to leave; and impossible to forget. So as you make them; make a plan to hang on to them. They’re as important an investment over time as anything else.
Take a little time now to decide how you’d like things to turn out when you look back in 50 years at your accomplishments, your family, and what you’ve built. It’s all right there before you; it’s all possible at the moment; and ultimately it’s all about what you’re going to make of it.
Howard A. Tullman serves as the CEO of 1871 and the General Managing Partner for G2T3V, LLC and for the Chicago High Tech Investors, LLC; he is Executive Chairman and a Director of Music Dealers and a Director of SnapSheet, PackBack Books, VEHCON, and BCV Evolve. He is a Board Advisor to Hightower Advisors, The Starter School, Built in Chicago and many other start-ups in Chicago. He was previously a Trustee of WTTW in Chicago and the New York Academy of Art in New York. He serves as the Chairman of the Endowment Committee of Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, and an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston and at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.
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