NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

You Can Always Do More as a Business Owner, but Should You?

The best leaders understand that they have to deliver both consistency and intensity in varying degrees on a regular basis.

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

Sep 30, 2025

Recently, I was asked if I was interested in writing about a world-traveling CEO who prided himself on basically never being in the office but still had a successful, growing business. His representative suggested that he’d be happy to share the secrets to his “success” with me and also explain what a wonderful time he was having flying all around the globe to exotic and exciting places. To be clear, this was demonstrably not business travel.

I passed on the pitch, although the topic of in-office work isn’t one that’s likely to disappear any time soon. Amazon’s having a tough time forcing its workers back to the office. The new CEO of Starbucks is getting loads of grief from his own employees about his plan to “commute” to the office by company-owned jet from Newport Beach to Seattle. Work from home has always been a sub-rosa class issue since the pandemic began: essential, blue-collar, and no-collar workers never got a break during COVID, while many white collar workers worked from home and barely felt a thing.

But one issue about the proposal stuck in my mind. Without knowing the particulars of his situation or seeing his company’s actual financial records, I found myself asking this simple question: if his operations were really doing well—essentially in his absence—how much better could the business be doing if he was actually present and available to his team, paying attention every day to the nuts and bolts of the business, and concentrating on improving his margins and identifying new markets and opportunities instead of running up his frequent flyer miles? And frankly, what kind of lazy board and indifferent investors would tolerate this kind of selfish and lazy behavior. I’d say, “less showboat and more tugboat.” 

It felt to me like this guy was perfectly happy to settle for good enough, which I don’t think any real entrepreneur ever does. Anyone who has ever worked with me knows two things: (1) I’d never ask more of them than I ask and expect of myself; and (2) I believe that there’s always more in each of us than we even know (until we try). Once you see and realize that potential and prospect, then you’ll never be happy or willing to settle for less. It’s not about acceptance, it’s about expectations: people learning, growing and becoming. If I accept you as you are, I make you worse. If I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you reach that goal. 

I’ve called this approach obsessive iteration or the process of successive approximation—always getting a little bit better every day toward the unreachable and delusional goal of perfection. There’s really no quit in a true entrepreneur because there’s always another mountain to climb and there’s a constant internal drive which keeps pushing you forward, demanding what’s seems impossible, and sometimes even achieving it. You never sit still or stop. There’s no finish line and rarely any appropriate time to celebrate. More isn’t necessarily better, only better is better. But there’s always a lot more to do to be even better. Or, as we used to say, too much is not enough.  

I have a reputation for relentlessness and I’m proud of it, although I do concede that it’s not for everyone. It’s critical for new business builders to understand that not everyone shares your craziness or is quite as zealous and committed as you are. If you aren’t careful and learn to occasionally rein in your own drive and enthusiasm and spend some time making sure that there’s room for other people, attitudes and approaches, you’ll never build the kind of team or business you want. It’s a balancing act and it’s easy to intimidate or even scare off the exact kind of talented people you’re going to need to succeed if you’re not careful. Pushing your people too hard is a sure way to push them away. The best leaders understand that they have to deliver both consistency and intensity in varying degrees on a regular basis. This helps the team understand what to expect and appreciate what you expect. It’s not an easy task, but it’s essential. 

And to be clear, there’s also another vitally interested and important party to these considerations, and that’s your family. Your family will ultimately be a much more important extension of yourself than any work you do, although it often takes quite a while for young entrepreneurs to realize that. There’s always more work, but you only have one family. They share every bit as much as you do in the ups-and-downs of the business building and the sacrifices as well. Even more to the point, your inbox will always be there waiting for you, but your family might not be, so put them first. Family is more important than fame or fortune. Don’t try to tell yourself otherwise. 

It’s easy to think that you’re constantly working like a maniac for your family, but if you ask them, it’s very unlikely to be their view. They’d much rather have more of you. And please don’t make the stupid mistake of ever telling your spouse or your kids that you’re working for the money so you can afford to give them nice things, live in a lovely home, and take great vacations. This is the worst message in the world. It’s not about making money or a living—it’s about making a life you’re proud of and making something that makes a difference. If you don’t know why you’re working and doing what you’re doing, then maybe it’s time for a change. 

So, the next time you find yourself wondering whether it’s time to call it a day or whether you should maybe put in a few more hours at the office (and likely miss dinner or an important event with the family), ask yourself: I know I could do more, but should I?  
 

 

Why would the US Justice Department remove a study from its website last week that concluded that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terror group? .

 Why would the US Justice Department remove a study from its website last week that concluded that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terror group? .

The now-archived report, titled "What National Institute of Justice Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism," was reportedly removed from the DOJ's website between September 11 and 12, according to Jason Paladino, an independent investigative reporter. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed on September 10 while speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, President Trump and others in the administration have repeatedly claimed that “the radical left causes tremendous violence” and that they “seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right. This study, based on research spanning three decades, represented one of the most comprehensive government assessments ever of domestic terrorism patterns. It found that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States” and that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism”.

 

The DOJ Has Dug A Deep Hole

Trump’s weaponization of the judicial system is hitting some snags

Jay Kuo Sep 25

The politicization we’re seeing with the Justice Department and the FBI should come as no surprise. After all, Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of retribution, promising to deploy the federal government’s vast investigative and prosecutorial powers to go after his political enemies.

What shape this weaponization would ultimately take has now begun to crystalize. As was his practice during his first term, where he sought to sully his opponents with charges that had zero basis in fact, Trump has used his bully pulpit in his second term to blame the “radical left” for recent political violence. He’s insisted upon this connection even though shooters appear to have acted alone, and there are no known ties between them and liberal or leftist organizations. But Trump isn’t interested in facts. He is now leveraging this false connection as a justification to crack down on liberal organizations and, for example, go after their non-profit status or bring criminal charges against them.

Further, and quite publicly, Trump recently ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring cases against his political enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Former FBI Director James Comey. He did this via a social media post addressed directly to Bondi. With that instruction, Trump dissolved any remaining illusion of Justice Department independence.

But there are at least three big problems Trump has run into on his retribution tour. And they are substantial enough to threaten to defang his threats long before he’s even taken a solid bite at the vengeance apple.

Incompetents in charge

The first problem is fairly obvious: Trump put incompetents in charge of the Justice Department, valued for their loyalty over their skills. While Pam Bondi did run the state AG office in Florida, she has never worked as a federal prosecutor and came into the job with little direct experience overseeing an agency of this size. Her second in command, Todd Blanche, was Trump’s personal attorney, as was Emil Bove, whom Trump put in charge of weaponization at the Department. Neither has any prior DOJ experience.

Over at the FBI, things are no better. Director Kash Patel and his number two Dan Bongino have no experience in law enforcement whatsoever, with both coming instead from the world of right-wing podcasting.

The result is that no one appears to be advising Trump competently about the limits of his own legal authority. Instead, lawyers have had to fan out across the nation to defend indefensible positions, apparently under orders from Bove to ignore the courts where needed.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the Justice Department has lost significant credibility—and the vast majority of its cases—in federal court. After eight months of this, federal district and appellate courts have grown more scathing in their assessment of Trump’s legal arguments and have begun to admonish and even begin sanction proceedings against White House attorneys and officials for misconduct and contempt.

The only reason the entire Trump agenda hasn’t been largely shut down by the courts is because of the feckless conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which barely ever rules on the merits. Instead, it simply dissolves injunctions, without comment, via its “shadow docket.” This has allowed some of Trump’s policies to continue while the cases make their way to trial, handing the regime a few de facto victories even if the merits have yet to be addressed squarely.

But lately the federal district courts are on to SCOTUS’s game. They have begun to push back, criticizing the lack of transparency from the High Court and finding workarounds to stall or enjoin some of the worst policies that the conservative majority allowed to move forward.

Shut up already, Kash

The second problem is readily apparent to both courts and the public. The Justice Department now regularly violates its own rules against speaking publicly about evidence and active investigations. Kash Patel’s high profile bumbling of the case during the initial investigation of the Charlie Kirk murder comes to mind, where he announced not once but twice that authorities had suspects in custody, only to let them go later.

He still hasn’t learned his lesson. Just yesterday, Patel tweeted about physical evidence allegedly found near the site of a fatal shooting at an ICE facility in Texas. Patel leveraged the evidence to irresponsibly speculate about the killer’s motive:

While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an idealogical [sic] motive behind this attack (see photo below). One of the unspent shell casings recovered was engraved with the phrase “ANTI ICE.” More updates will be forthcoming.

Here is the photo he attached:

Patel further politicized the shooting by adding,

These despicable, politically motivated attacks against law enforcement are not a one-off. We are only miles from Prarieland, Texas where just two months ago an individual ambushed a separate ICE facility targeting their officers. It has to end and the FBI and our partners will lead these investigative efforts to see to it that those who target our law enforcement are pursued and brought to the fullest extent of justice.

Justice Department practices stress that the release of certain types of information could unduly prejudice the proceedings and should therefore be avoided. Justice Manual Rule 1-7.610 expressly advises that “DOJ personnel should refrain from disclosing” a number of things, “except as appropriate in the proceeding or in an announcement after a finding of guilt.” These include “[s]tatements concerning anticipated evidence” which presumably would include bullet casings allegedly found near a murder site.

Patel’s rush to judgment, like Trump’s, is already coming back to bite him. Setting aside the very on-the-nose feel of the words “Anti-ICE”—scrawled on a yet another set of bullet casings found near yet another deadly shooting—interviews of the shooter’s friends already indicate that the killer was not some crazed leftist member of antifa, but rather yet another young white terminally on-line male gamer without strong or easily categorizable political views.

Professional investigators understand that there are sound reasons underlying the rules against sharing evidence publicly, especially so early in a case. For example, if there are any as yet unknown co-conspirators, the public announcement that bullets with markings were found at the scene could provide advance warning of the state of the investigation and how close it might be to finding them.

Further, even though the prime suspect is now deceased, such disclosures could taint the jury pool against any others who might later be charged in the case.

There is also simply no good reason for Patel to rush to share such evidence, including his personal opinion about a possible motive, other than to spin a political narrative. Here, the shooter fired at and killed detainees inside of a van. No ICE agents were harmed, and there is no evidence that the killer actually intended to target them.

Yet Patel is determined to push a version of events that permits the White House to rail against the “demonizing” of ICE agents by Democrats in the wake of the attack, suggesting that it was a direct cause of the violence.

Public skepticism of FBI investigations already runs high, given how Patel consistently reveals himself as a partisan hack uninterested in the truth but willing to exploit a tragedy to score political points. That erodes public trust in the cases the Department later brings, making indictments and convictions by juries harder to obtain. It also sets off internal struggles as agents still committed to doing their jobs professionally take issue with Patel’s leadership and push back within the agency.

Judges are also taking note of the Justice Department’s lack of professionalism and discretion. Yesterday, a federal judge admonished the Justice Department over its public statements in the Luigi Mangione case, which may have violated local rules guaranteeing him a fair trial. The notably perturbed judge ordered the government to file a response next week and to advise the Deputy AG, for dissemination within the Department as appropriate, that future violations could include personal financial penalties, contempt of court findings or relief specific to the Mangione matter.

Everyone’s leaving, but not without some fine parting gifts

It’s been a long running trend at the Justice Department: The competent and ethircal attorneys are leaving. They are either resigning after refusing to go along with unlawful or sketchy orders, or they are being pushed out for failing to deliver Trump’s enemies’ heads on a golden platter.

Trump recently forced out U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert for failing to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the civil suit against Trump for financial fraud, and James Comey, the former FBI Director whom Trump fired as part of his alleged obstruction of the Russian collusion investigation.

Trump replaced Siebert with Lindsey Halligan, an insurance claims attorney with no prosecutorial experience. She got the job because looks the part to Trump’s eye and is loyal to him. Sure enough, Halligan has already begun the process of charging Comey, likely with some kind of perjury allegation where the statute of limitations would otherwise run out in a matter of days.

But Siebert’s colleagues may have the last word. On Halligan’s first day on the job, they handed her a memo explaining how they had concluded there was no probable cause to charge Comey. That could make it far harder to get a grand jury to indict.

If Halligan presses forward anyway, a judge could also wind up throwing out the case due to prosecutorial misconduct. That is admittedly a very rare occurrence. But if ever there were a basis to grant such a dismissal, this case would be it, especially given the timeline:

1. Siebert and his office investigate and find no probable cause to indict Comey;

2. Trump pushes Siebert out;

3. Trump sends a public message to Pam Bondi to make sure Comey and others face charges; and

4. Trump appoints Halligan, who presses forward with charges despite receipt of the staff memo finding no probable cause to charge.

The Justice Department is now playing with fire. As discussed above, it is already in a deep credibility and ethical hole with the judiciary and with skeptical grand juries who have begun to refuse to indict. Yet the White House seems intent on pouring gasoline down that very hole so it can light the whole system up.

Time for judges and grand jurors to stand ready with extinguishers.

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Why Small Business Owners Should Adopt a Back to School Mindset at All Times

The best students are self-directed and develop their own learning tools and resources. Founders should take note.

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

Sep 23, 2025

 

I recently assisted in the delivery and installation of two of my granddaughters at their respective universities, and it occurred to me that their next year of college comes at a time when few things in our lives and at their school could be more uncertain, imperiled, confused and discouraging. But, to their credit—and due to the hard work and careful planning of the school’s staff and administration — the overall atmosphere, attitudes of the participants, and willingness of the new and returning students to roll up their collective sleeves and dive into the whole upcoming adventure was consistently positive and upbeat.

Watching the frantic hustle and bustle of beating the clock, jamming far too much material into clearly too small a space, and racing back and forth to stores for scarce supplies reminded me of the same experience watching and assisting literally hundreds of startups as they launched their attempts to turn their early concepts, grand dreams and sometimes outright fantasies into viable businesses. We called this process “turning ideas into invoices,” and it had exactly the same components that I witnessed last week as the students invaded their dorms.

Boundless enthusiasm was one obvious and essential element. Unfortunately, too many of our schools are still organized around the old factory model (compliance and conformity) and the educational methodology seems to be designed to suck all the diversity, variance and creativity out of our young pupils and turn them into good worker bees. The old adage still largely applies that teachers concern themselves almost exclusively with what they are teaching and rarely focus on the far more important consideration of whether their students are listening and learning. The best and most successful students at college these days are self-directed, developing and constructing their own learning tools and resources, learning from and sharing ideas and information with their peers, and largely gaining essential knowledge and wisdom in spite of their professors. To survive in environments like these, enthusiasm is crucial, as is persistent perseverance.

Of course, absolutely none of this should come as a surprise to any entrepreneur. These are exactly the same kinds of early challenges and obstacles that every new business builder faces. Everyone has a million reasons why your ideas won’t work, and they’re happy to share them with you—all from the sidelines and not in the fray alongside you. Investors string you along, have a million questions and concerns, take their sweet time and eventually disappoint you and disappear. It takes a thick skin, the same kind of excessive enthusiasm, and a tremendous amount of energy and resilience to stay the course and keep moving forward.

The second sentiment that I saw all around the school was unbridled optimism. Not especially from the crowds of parents facing ridiculous six-figure tuition costs along with an awareness of just how horribly misdirected, dangerous and destructive things were going with the Orange Monster in charge of our country who was attempting every day to destroy our basic institutions (including colleges and universities) as well as the basic doctrines of democracy like free speech. But the students had a different view (maybe unfortunately misinformed) of the state of the times and the future prospects for themselves and the country. They have high hopes for the world ahead, not simply fears of and for it. They weren’t going to let their folks or their faculty dampen their excitement or diminish their belief in a better world to come. And they believed that the changes needed were in their own hands, that by eventually working together they could accomplish far more than any of them could working alone, and that making positive changes were ultimately their responsibility and their burden.

Here again, the students all sounded like mini-makers. We used to tell our entrepreneurs that, if you didn’t believe fiercely and absolutely in your business, not only would that negativity show and spread to your team, but it would be almost impossible to convince anyone else to invest or believe in it. Entrepreneurs need to be leaders and merchants of hope and dreams. Optimism is completely contagious, and your people need to have a realistic sense of possibility. You’ve got to show them a future vision and a viable path to get there if you want them to follow you forward. A leader without a team fervently following him is just a guy taking a walk.

Finally, I was grateful to see but slightly depressed that—just like young entrepreneurs—all these future doctors, lawyers, and game changers had absolutely no idea of just how long, hard and painful their journeys were going to be and how so many of them might end in failure and disappointment. Entrepreneurs are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.

My sadness came from the realization that we, as parents, mentors, and educators, have done a pretty poor job of preparing our kids for the bumpy and often unfair road that they’ll be taking. Too many strokes, too much false encouragement, too much emphasis on “talent” and too many participation trophies don’t make things better. Nor does a lot of wishful thinking as we constantly try to smooth, streamline and prepare the path for our offspring rather than prepare children for the path ahead of them. These are all setups for heartbreaks down the line and actually a disservice to them.

We need to get back to telling them the truth—that all the talent and hope in the world won’t beat hard work and persistence—and that in this world: “you don’t get what you wish for, you get what you work for” and, even at that, not every time. Not every heroic effort has a happy ending. This isn’t bursting anyone’s bubble, it’s simply telling it like it is.

JOE KLEIN

 The Funeral

MAGA Confronts a Turning Point

Joe Klein Sep 22

 

"My husband Charlie he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life...On the cross, our savior said, 'Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.' That young man. I forgive him. I forgive him, because it was what Christ did. It’s what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer — we know from the Gospel — is love and always love. Love for our enemies, and love for those who persecute us.”

—Erika Kirk

“I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them…I'm sorry, Erika — now Erika can talk to me and the whole group and maybe they can convince me that that's not right — but I can't stand my opponent.”

—Donald Trump

Well, that clears things up. I was fearing a Nuremberg rally on Sunday in Arizona, a transformation of Charlie Kirk into Horst Wessel, the Nazi martyr. But it was a lot more complicated, and moving, than that. Because Christians aren’t Nazis. They are conflicted humans, writhing in anguish between what Jesus taught…and what, too often, the church has practiced. There were terrifying vengeance-is-mine moments in Arizona, but there were also moments of faith and forgiveness, none more than Erika Kirk’s, a moment that reflected and reified the time, ten years ago, when the black congregants of Mother Emanuel Church forgave Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who assassinated nine of their members.

Too often the essence of humanity is compromised by ideology. It is a natural tendency. It has been the eternal struggle of the Christian church and the Muslim Ummah; the Old Testament Jehovah, whom Jews worship, came equipped with fire and brimstone, armor and a sword. Jesus walked barefoot, in rags; he instructed his followers to do the same. He “hung out,” as Charlie Kirk said, with the poor. He would have been entirely uncomfortable in the riches of the Vatican and Joel Osteen’s gospel of prosperity. He did not preach from the pulpit of a mega-church; his was, as an evangelical once told me, a church without walls.

Charlie Kirk had elements of both grace and vengeance. He lived for debate—though it was a sound-byte truncated sort of a debate, in which his cleverness destroyed the myopic weakness of campus lefties. He came with a sword. He tried to live the teachings of Jesus, but lapsed too easily into the abyss of hatred. I would have liked to see how he would have fared in a debate with fellow believers, those who found piety through intellectual struggle like Jerry Brown and Abraham Joshua Heschel. Which side would he be on?

That was the struggle that played out at his funeral. There were moments of high moral vision. Some of the speakers—J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, even Tucker Carlson—seemed aware of who Jesus was and what he taught. It was easy to admire the rhetoric but hard to listen to. The divide between what they said and how they roll is blatant, the stuff of monumental hypocrisy. But at least they tried. They aspired toward grace. And then there was Stephen Miller, who was terrifying. He said to his imagined enemies

“You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save this civilization, to save the West, to save the republic…”

He said:

“You have nothing, you are nothing, you are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred… you can build nothing, you can produce nothing”

He said:

“Erica is the storm. We are the storm and our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion"

He said:

“You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal. You have immortalized Charlie Kirk. And now millions will carry on his legacy… You cannot defeat us. You cannot slow us. You cannot stop us. You cannot deter us”.

Let us not put too fine a point on it: this is the voice of pure evil, of retribution. One wonders what indignities were visited upon Miller in the corridors of Santa Monica High School. He remains a child, who has taken on the gratuitous viciousness of the cool kids. Vengeance is his. And Trump’s…

Ahh, Donald. The widow smoked you. She was a tough act to follow; she should have been the last act. But you always go last as President, and you have never seemed more empty and pathetic, trying to be gracious—interspersing a eulogy with various imagined political triumphs and vows to cancel your enemies. A day later, Trump’s people figured out that God was a Player, a fantasy source of succor for his cult. Here was Monday’s blast email:

 

Since the day I returned to the White House, I have felt the mighty hand of God guiding this movement. His Word reminds us: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

 

Actually, that was the Apostle Paul, a converted Pharisee, a tortured vessel involved in the Church’s first internecine battle—in Jerusalem, against the Jewish followers of Jesus, led by Jesus’s brother James, and Simon Peter. James is a problem for many Christians. If Mary was a Virgin, where did he come from? Turns out, The Greatest Story Ever Told is a glorious myth, filled with great metaphoric truth—with the teachings, which were mostly about giving everything to the poor, the impossible standard imparted to his followers. The literal truth of the Bible is aspirational. Jesus didn’t have to raise the dead; he tried to raise the living. His was a scapegoat sacrifice, the most powerful and sacred religious ritual in the ancient world. The scapegoat always carried with him (or, more often, her) the sins of society.

 

Did Charlie Kirk rise to the level of being MAGA’s scapegoat sacrifice?

There have always been two roads: the path of vengeance and the less-traveled path of forgiveness and grace. I have never seen the dichotomy laid so bare as it was in a football stadium in Arizona on Sunday, which makes this—whether we like it or not—a moment of the utmost significance.