6 Tips to Inspire and Motivate Your
Team
Here’s
how to turbocharge your business, build momentum, and take it to the next
level.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V
AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
Jun 24,
2025
In most of the
successful turnarounds I’ve led over the years, one of my first steps was to
distribute to the entire company a “manifesto” that outlined the fundamental
ideas and strategies around change management that I had developed and adopted
over several decades. Typically, it was 8-10 pages long and had around 20
sections addressing various issues and concerns. When you step into a new
leadership position, it’s absolutely critical that you communicate –
consistently and constantly – your approach, objectives, and philosophy to the
entire team.
While the comments and
concepts contained in my manifesto weren’t written in stone, I was always
amazed at how little change needed to be made in the basic document regardless
of the business or the industry I was dealing with at the time and regardless of
how much time had passed since that document was first written. I’ve also had
an opportunity over the last 12 years of writing my weekly Inc. column to
expand on and explore almost every one of these bullet points in more detail.
But I believe that you
never stop learning, especially if you pay attention; that you never know who’s
going to teach you something new and important; and that iteration with an eye
toward constant improvement (successive approximation rather than postponed
perfection) is the ultimate key to success in any endeavor. Getting a little
better every day is the goal. As Mark Cuban likes to say: Perfectionism is the
enemy of profitability.
I like to revisit one of
my earliest columns, “What I Learned from My Waitress,” once or twice a
year to help keep me honest. And I continue to recommend it to new business
builders and experienced entrepreneurs as well on a regular basis. Getting a
few important things right is the name of the game. Trying to do too many things
and spreading yourself a mile wide and an inch deep is a formula for failure.
So, I was interested and
intrigued when Anton Marchanka, the new CEO for Zing Coach, an AI-powered fitness app that’s been around since 2021
with about 200,000 paid subscribers, reached out to me to explain how he’s
planning to turbocharge his business, build new momentum, and take it to the
next level.
He says that great
startups don’t run like big businesses. They operate like swift pirate ships –
fast, fluid and flexible. And he offered his six most important tips for
talking to the team. Here’s what I took away from his list.
Start with a story
Forget the spreadsheets,
strategies and lengthy pitch decks. Tell a simple story that the whole team can
understand, buy into, and get aggressively behind. Fill the boat with
believers. Or, as he says, “turn strangers into shipmates.”
Startups are leaky
Make sure you’re honest
about the risks of the venture and the odds of success in fairness to the
people you’re asking to come aboard. There are no guarantees other than that
you and everyone else will be working their asses off to try to get it done or die
trying. You want people who commit to the journey and not simply to some
imagined and hoped-for destination.
Your story should sound
somewhat scary
You can’t steal second
base with one foot on first. It’s a big challenge – a big ask – and a leap of
faith to join a team that’s trying to disrupt the current ways of doing things
and invent the future. Not for the faint of heart. Big risks are the only things
that generate big rewards.
Your story should be
convincing, but not complete
No one has a crystal
ball or can predict the future, but the best entrepreneurs know that the main
job is to steer a steady course forward through rough seas, unforeseen
obstacles, and constant changes in the circumstances, the marketplace and the
competition. No battle plan ever survives the first contact with the
opposition. If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead
anywhere.
You’ve got to sell your
story to the team
Leaders are great
salesmen and storytellers and the first thing they’ve got to sell is
themselves. Let them know that you’ve been through this before and you know how
it ends. Every emotion in a startup is contagious – confidence, commitment and
also concern. You’ve got to convince the team that you’ve got what it takes to
get the job done. Keep your own head up at all times. Perpetual optimism is a
force multiplier.
The journey’s as
important as the end result
Anyone who knows how
hard, painful and uncertain it is to try to build a new business knows that no
one with any experience does it just for the promised pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow. It’s the shared experience, the endless blood, sweat and tears,
and the lifelong bonds and attachments you form along the way with your peers
that make the journey so important and worthwhile regardless of the outcome. As
you progress and face the uncertainty and the challenges together, you realize
that you need each other. It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it is
the journey that matters, in the end.
The bottom line is,
there’s no magic set of words or phrases – no single solution for all
circumstances – but one thing’s absolutely certain: If you don’t make the
effort to tell your story to your people, your investors, and your customers,
your ship will be sunk shortly after you’ve set sail.
