NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Walmart and McDonald’s Reveal the Real Risk of Letting an Agent Shop for You

Can a consumer’s AI agent navigate powerful price-setting agents on the other side of transactions?

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

Oct 6, 2026

As we enter the Agentic age, each and every day some tech vendor, social media site, or software provider is offering us free, simple and painless tools that will allow us to have more and more of our boring, repetitive and largely mindless day-to-day tasks and activities handled for us, without taking up more than a few minutes of our precious time.

Whether it’s Muse from Meta, dots from OpenAI or Instinct AI from some 23-year-old guy that no one’s ever heard of (with billions in funding), the onslaught of AI-infused assistants, agents and enablers has begun in earnest and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. I’m not in a position to offer any specific advice at this point or pick a favorite, because no one really knows what’s behind these officious and aggressive little operatives—or what exactly they’re doing with whatever data and other personal information you’re encouraged to turn over to them.

The sizeable lists of uses, consents and authorizations that you’re asked to agree to in order to get these things rolling is unclear, way too broad, and a little frightening, because very few of us even understand what we’d be signing up for. The terms and conditions are just as dense and unintelligible. But if you’re game to experiment, I would caution you not to turn more than one of these irritating, invasive and omnipresent creatures loose on your life unless you are a glutton for punishment and have nothing else to do with your time beyond constantly responding to inquiries, requests, updates, suggestions and demands from your new “time-saving” assistant.

This whole “trust me” approach sounds like a slippery slope and a strategy that ultimately depends on our own laziness, where we get battered down by the incessant flow of requests for permission and consents and we just bag it and say “do your best” or something equally perilous. Remember that improved speed, access, and convenience were the bad trades we made long ago in exchange for our privacy. This new wave of inquisitive helpers sounds even worse to me.

Letting an agent do your shopping for you is a whole new can of worms and reminds me of Jeff Bezos’s observation that consumers don’t want to negotiate the price of things every time they shop. The unstated predicate for that comment is that you’re supposed to trust Jeff’s algorithms to get you the best prices. But what if the prices are moving targets and, worse yet, are based upon some composite persona that various vendors have developed to describe you, your purchasing behaviors and your purchase history. How is your agent supposed to deal with powerful price-setting agents on the other side of transactions? Who’s going to decide who got the best deal?

All of which brings me to the latest face-off between Walmart and McDonald’s in regard to their respective real-time pricing strategies. Walmart takes the high road and says that the price for the product is the price and it’s the same price for all customers. McDonald’s is using AI to recommend personalized menu prices which I would call predatory since—by their own admission—these prices are based on transaction data and local willingness to pay. Let me know when you find those folks who are happily willing to pay more for the same product, because I have plenty of other things I’d love to sell to them.

And, just to add to the mess, you need to understand that non-human actors are already responsible for roughly 55 percent of all global web traffic. We’re talking about scripted agents, automated bots, machine-driven commercial transactions, and, of course, AI agents. Humans are already in the minority on the web and now we’re being invited to take another step back and let our helpers do the job for us. If you think that these tasks are getting easier or clearer, you haven’t been to the airport lately.

While gas prices may seem high, try paying $11 for a single copy of any of the glossy weekly magazines at the newsstand. Just to be clear, it’s not like any prices are immutable and fixed objects these days. Amazon’s systems change the prices of millions of items virtually minute-by-minute to react to competitors pricing changes. Even the publishers themselves don’t know what’s happening with their own pricing. Subscribing for a year to The New Yorker at a discount online site will allegedly save you $253 compared to what they say is an aggregate newsstand price of $422 (or $9 an issue), even when the cover of the magazine itself says $10.99. The actual subscription price you’ll be paying per issue for your 47 issues a year is $3.60.

I’ll leave it up to you to determine how your shopping agent is going to make sense of pricing schemes like these, in-store couponing and daily discounting, membership price cuts, and a host of other promotional offerings in every store and even more aggressively online.

The bottom line for the moment is probably a word or two of caution before you turn over the purse strings to any of your accounts. Saving time may generally be more valuable than saving a few bucks, but not if you have only the vaguest idea of how intelligently your cash is being spent.

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN

 

3 Tips for Long-Term Success in an Instant Gratification World

A transactional mindset that focuses on immediate success rather than patience is leaking into every aspect of our lives.

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

Feb 17, 2026

 

These days, we’re all afflicted with what I call hurry sickness, where everyone wants everything right now. Amazon’s not entirely to blame for this, although no single enterprise has done more to enable and encourage the demands of the world’s consumers for instant gratification. And one of the clearest messages  from Amazon’s aggressive actions and the continual raising of the delivery bar is that no other retailer (large or small) is immune from the pressure and necessity to respond and try to compete if they want to hang on to their 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.” He went on to make this theory 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, 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 into every aspect of our lives.  

The most shameless advocate of this selfish and self-serving philosophy is the Great Grifter himself, for whom everything in life is about illegal shortcuts, cutting corners, reneging on promises and running one grift after another by taking advantage of someone. Trump is too corrupt to be salvageable, but thousands of student athletes whose lives are being turned upside down by the financial insanity of the NIL (name, image and likeness) market aren’t. Neither are the millions of young prospective entrepreneurs and new business builders who are being told that learning your craft, paying your dues, and waiting your turn are stupid strategies in today’s high-speed and hyper-competitive world.  

You don’t need to know much of the NIL details (which change every six 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.  

Even more material changes in the ability of players to jump from school to school every year through the transfer portal 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 learning 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. 

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 succeed in the long run by relying on your talent alone, even if it’s extraordinary. Great competitors in any field will tell you that failing along the way (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 that you face in the early years builds 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, 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 that you didn’t know what you didn’t know. 

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. Temptations are everywhere. 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. 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. 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

3 Tips for Long-Term Success in an Instant Gratification World

A transactional mindset that focuses on immediate success rather than patience is leaking into every aspect of our lives.

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

Feb 17, 2026

 

These days, we’re all afflicted with what I call hurry sickness, where everyone wants everything right now. Amazon’s not entirely to blame for this, although no single enterprise has done more to enable and encourage the demands of the world’s consumers for instant gratification. And one of the clearest messages  from Amazon’s aggressive actions and the continual raising of the delivery bar is that no other retailer (large or small) is immune from the pressure and necessity to respond and try to compete if they want to hang on to their 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.” He went on to make this theory 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, 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 into every aspect of our lives.  

The most shameless advocate of this selfish and self-serving philosophy is the Great Grifter himself, for whom everything in life is about illegal shortcuts, cutting corners, reneging on promises and running one grift after another by taking advantage of someone. Trump is too corrupt to be salvageable, but thousands of student athletes whose lives are being turned upside down by the financial insanity of the NIL (name, image and likeness) market aren’t. Neither are the millions of young prospective entrepreneurs and new business builders who are being told that learning your craft, paying your dues, and waiting your turn are stupid strategies in today’s high-speed and hyper-competitive world.  

You don’t need to know much of the NIL details (which change every six 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.  

Even more material changes in the ability of players to jump from school to school every year through the transfer portal 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 learning 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. 

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 succeed in the long run by relying on your talent alone, even if it’s extraordinary. Great competitors in any field will tell you that failing along the way (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 that you face in the early years builds 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, 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 that you didn’t know what you didn’t know. 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. Temptations are everywhere. 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. 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. 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Learn How to Be a Better Reader 

The major newspapers have failed in their mission. We need a new format that does everything they once did–curate, inform, educate–without the baggage.

 

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

APR 1, 2025

The major newspapers simply aren’t getting the job done any longer. Apart from the fact that the printed paper is outdated before the press run is even finished, they aren’t telling us what we actually need to know in an effective manner. Smaller local papers continue to disappear, and the three leading national papers cower, cave and collaborate with the demands of the Orange Monster and their own corporate masters – joined these past few weeks by several of the largest law firms and major universities.

We are largely left to our own devices to find alternative sources of substantive news, serious thought, and opposition to the onrushing autocracy.

Newspapers today – even with unlimited online space – are opting for fluff, filler, and a lot of nice-to-know nonsense instead of substantive coverage of pressing national affairs. Many local papers are now dropping editorial pages entirely. And, as they shrink in size and shirk their obligations, they look like unfortunate jugglers trying to catch the wrong end of a bunch of plummeting knives – painful, pathetic, and painted red with the blood, sweat and tears of departed staffers.

The most immediate result of layoffs, buyouts, and bizarre dictates by billionaire owners like Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times and Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post is the continued flight of major talent. Readership is disappearing, too.  Many of the best writers, editors, and reporters have abandoned the major rags to set out on their own to tell their stories and honor their callings through social media, YouTube videos, podcasts and new digital forums. But it’s an enormously difficult task to find an audience and make a living while you’re at it.

The Best Journalists Are Leaving Newspapers Behind 

Online digital channels like Substack, which provide a forum for opinions, reports and longer articles, are the prime beneficiaries of the writers’ exodus, for example, Jennifer Rubin of the Post. I also like Joyce Vance, Heather Cox Richardson, Shelly Palmer, Charlie Sykes, and Frank Bruni. Other new services like Bluesky and Threads — which unfortunately followed the constricted Twitter model best suited to short slander, right-wing hate, and trolling — haven’t really offered much of a viable alternative, despite building substantial audiences.

You can’t really say much of value if your message needs to be truncated into a dozen little squibs. And literally millions of new users signed up for these services without a clue as to what they were likely to find, or which other users and contributors might be on any given channel.

But these new forums, channels and writers face a much bigger obstacle that is likely to financially doom many new authors seeking a viable audience. What you say or how well you’ve said it doesn’t matter if (a) no one can find your work and (b) if, as a result, no one is reading or listening to it. Even if you think you know what you’re looking for, without a specific name in mind, there’s virtually no way to find anything of value among the thousands of returns that a typical Google search might generate. There are no editors, curators or guideposts to manage the constant stream of new material.

How Substack Hurts Its Own Users

Substack makes life even more challenging for its authors to build a sustainable audience by the utterly stupid step of automatically unsubscribing anyone suspected of forwarding a post to a mailing list. In other words, while their own offers litter every column with pitches to subscribe at various fee levels (including free), Substack punishes anyone for aggressively sharing a particular piece with a larger audience of potential subscribers by kicking them off the author’s page. This even includes articles which have been served for free by writers trying to get their message shared as widely as possible.

As if finding new materials and writers wasn’t tough enough, the Substack idiots penalize people for providing free marketing for their authors.

With Trump and his flunkies now threatening to effectively limit access to Social Security and privatize the United States Postal Service, online services may soon be the only effective channels that remain for most of our population. As they envision their brave new, tech-first world, the MAGAts never bother to mention the millions of older, rural and poor people, including their own supporters, who still lack access to online internet services or cellphones.

There are still important and critical nuggets of information regularly buried among the gross amount of garbage we get online. Today we all live in various degrees of fear of missing something critical from a friend, family, bank, litigant, government agency or other correspondent. And we regularly do miss messages directed to us at infrequently visited sites.

How To Be a Better Reader

Given this cluttered context, the scarcity of our time, and the fractionalizing of our attention, you need to selectively invest the energy in finding valuable new information sources, intelligent and informed writers, and news feeds that anticipate important events and prepare you to respond.  That’s in contrast to those that merely regurgitate the same tired factoids we see in dozens of different posts across the web.

You can start by finding out where some of your favorite columnists moved and follow them. But this process is too often frustrating. Medium does a decent job of collecting your interests (very generically) and then provides a long list of suggested writers who might be relevant. But it feels like a complete crapshoot, and you’re required to subscribe and pay a fee to proceed. Plus, much like those of us who presently subscribe to too many streaming services for no good reason, it quickly becomes a fairly expensive proposition to spend $50 a pop to support a dozen of the newspaper columnists you used to follow in one or two places.

Interestingly enough, this process of aggregation, validation and assembly of select writers, educators, scientists and other professionals used to be one of the primary functions of major newspapers. Your favorite paper was basically a one-stop shop, a convenient, well-organized and edited, and relatively painless delivery system especially when compared with the absolute drudgery that discovery on the web today represents. Those were the good old days.

Bottom line: we need a trusted online aggregator, or maybe a linking service more tailored than Apple News, where users can find and designate the content, authors, commentary and topics that interest them and have those delivered in a single, morning submission. Sorta like the newspaper you used to find on your doorstep.  

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN

 

A Tip From Jeff Bezos: No Doesn't Always Mean No

There are a lot of ways to get to yes. Make sure you explore as many of them as needed to reach the right decision. 

 

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS

@TULLMAN

For many years in my various businesses, I heard a recurring complaint about one particular aspect of my leadership style that regularly frustrated a number of my team members.  I'm sure there were many other complaints over the years as well, but this one was so common that I spent more time explaining my peculiar approach in this instance than I did addressing just about anything else -- except possibly my reluctance to get regular haircuts.

The "problem" was my custom of occasionally assigning the same task to several people simultaneously. People would be pissed, or disappointed and think all kinds of things -- I didn't trust them, I was wasting their time, etc.

I'm sure there were some downsides to this approach since it's apparently so very important for everyone to stay in their own lane, but from my perspective it had at least two critical benefits: (a) duplication dramatically increased the likelihood that the thing would get done and done on time or sooner; and (b) it often resulted in solutions that were novel, unexpected and better thought out than the more typical and/or traditional answers.

As things happened, two heads were often better than one even if they didn't realize that they were dealing with the same concern and even if, very infrequently, they might step on each other's toes. The smartest thing you can ever do in decision making is to make sure that you have considered as many options and different choices as possible.

Not that I ever felt bad about my strategy (which I thought of as the CEO's prerogative) or that I regretted using additional and sometimes redundant or scarce company talent and resources to run some of these things to ground. But it's always good from time to time to have some confirmation that you're not headed completely in the wrong direction and, of course, when the "word" comes from Jeff Bezos of Amazon, it feels especially good.

The Jeffism in question states that "there are multiple paths to yes." Not only is he happy to have multiple people at Amazon chasing the same rabbit, but he goes even further and violates the cardinal Mom versus Dad rule that we all learned growing up by suggesting that a team member who gets turned down by one manager should feel free to go try the same request on another and another who might be smarter, more favorably inclined, in possession of better information, or just more flexible. When I was a kid, this was the oldest ruse in the book - if Mom or Dad said "No", you'd just go ask your other parent about the same thing praying for a more favorable result.

When I was a trial lawyer, we used to call this "forum shopping," which means looking for a friendly or sympathetic judge's courtroom in which to bring your lawsuit, hoping that you'd get a better ruling. Today, if you're a gun nut, you file all your lawsuits before hyper-conservative district court judges in California or elsewhere in the South to get the initial outcomes you want. Class action lawyers all know that Texas and Alabama judges hate insurance companies, so that's where they file all their nationwide complaints along with their "spilled super-hot coffee in my lap" and "found a body part in my peanuts" tort claims. 

According to Jeff, not only isn't there anything wrong with looking for a better answer when your pitch got turned down but carrying on and looking elsewhere is also often likely to lead to much better end results. My experience was the same. Things got done more quickly, there were more paths forward in front of me, and the ongoing competition between the various choices sharpened everyone's focus.

Of course, before you drive yourself over the cliff, or spend too much time chasing too many rabbits, you do need to think carefully about why you're getting a negative response in the first place. It's good to really know why the response has been a "No".

Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place or asking the wrong people.  Other times, it's just a matter of bad timing-- a "No for now," which means your salespeople need to keep pushing forward and asking for the order. And finally, there are even times (perish the thought!) when your product or service just isn't the right fit, and you just have to do yourself and the customer a favor and take your ball and head home.  

But before you bail, or bag the whole thing, remember these three critically important rules:

(1)  To succeed at anything important in life, you're gonna have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince or princess-- so be patient, get used to some rejection as you're pushing the envelope, but keep pressing ahead.

(2)  Never accept a "No" from anyone who can't say "Yes," or write the check.  Get thyself, by hook or by crook, in front of the actual decision maker.

(3)  Don't ever be reluctant to widen the lens, to ask for more ideas, to look outside and all around the box, and to be willing to occasionally appear foolish or stupid - as we all have - because some of the very best ideas are those that start out sounding crazy and only look smart and obvious in retrospect.   

JUN 29, 2021