THE EMPEROR'S NO CLOTHES

 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 College Costs More Than Ever. Too Many Graduates Still Arrive at Work Missing the Basics

Employers across the country report that they’re spending far too much time teaching their newest employees basic skills because their colleges didn’t.

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

Aug 31, 2026

As millions of incoming freshmen begin their college experiences, I was struck by how little confidence I—and likely most of their parents—have in the likelihood that their very costly four-year investment in their children’s further education will pay off down the road, in terms of better preparation for their post-college employment prospects and life in general. The only relief for many of these folks (which is a mixed blessing at best) is that their kids have less and less chance of getting into the “name” schools these days. That may not be all that bad a piece of news, because regardless of what’s being taught at those exotic places, the bottom line is that many of the kids aren’t learning the critical things they need.

Employers across the country report that they’re spending far too much time teaching their newest employees how to read, write, spell and otherwise communicate because their colleges didn’t. This is not to automatically say that there’s no clear benefit for millions of students to slogging through four years of the maturation process—it’s clearly supposed to be where you start to develop your people skills and work ethic, along with patience and perseverance. But most of those skills and qualities aren’t learned in the classroom anyway. And, just to be blunt, any thought that AI tools will address and resolve these newbie deficiencies is a foolish idea that has already been shown to be a growing problem rather than any kind of efficient supplement or solution to their astonishing lack of preparation.

In addition, these practical and operational problems are actually dwarfed by the attitudinal deficiencies which accompany these new arrivals after four years of browbeating, lecturing, and indoctrination by professors who think they’re exempt from and far above the daily fray of making a living.

By and large, the insulated and isolated professors who populate too many tenured positions in many of our most expensive and sought after universities regard themselves as too good to bother teaching the basic skill sets and tools that their students will actually need to succeed in the future. Note that I no longer say or believe that these are the “best” schools because—reputation value, branding, and networking connections aside—they simply aren’t getting the job of educating and equipping our next generation of scholars, researchers and leaders done. And the most expensive and elitist of them are among the worst. In addition, for millions of young Americans, two-year vocational schools offer a better, more practical and cost-effective, and quicker path into the real world than the four expensive years at most colleges.

But I’m seeing a glimmer of hope that some schools, some parents and some employers are all starting to take a few steps back and beginning to reemphasize such formerly verboten concepts as reliance on standardized test scores for admittance, resurrecting the traditional idea that math is objective and that there are right and wrong answers that are not subject to debate, and requiring students to stand and present their work to their peers. Smart parents can and need to take an active role in teaching their kids the most basic and important ideas all along the way as to what actually matters.

And, here again, the real bottom line and old-fashioned considerations that we need to teach our kids if the schools are dropping the ball are what I have forever called The Perspiration Principles. Passion (Care More than Others Think is Wise); Preparation (Study More than Others Think is Smart); Perspiration (Work Harder than Others Think is Possible); Perseverance (Stay in the Game When Others Give Up) and Principles (Stick to Your Values and Beliefs When Others Start to Wobble).

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS THE GRAMMYS AND BTS

 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

                                                              LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Brand Extensions Are Supposed to Create Value. The Grammys Show How They Can Destroy It.

BTS recently pulled its newest album from award considerations after the Grammys announced a new music category. It’s an important lesson for entrepreneurs about diluting your brand.

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

AUG 25, 2026

TS perform onstage during the 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 03, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo: Getty Images

I wrote some time ago about how BTS, one of the biggest bands in the world these days, was developing their own platform that would permit them to “own” a direct and persistent connection to their fans that was free of the many gatekeepers and parasites that have traditionally controlled the music industry. This would permit them to sell swag, special access, live podcasts, and eventually even tickets fee-free to their fans. Another upcoming artist, GiaNina Paolantonia, has similarly built her own platform and app in order to communicate with, connect to, and engage with her fans and followers.

The music industry is like a multi-headed hydra, however, and always has another card to play. The Grammys, an industry organ for decades, just announced a new music category specifically for Asian music in a transparent and expansive attempt to segregate BTS and all the other popular artists and bands from South Korea and elsewhere in Asia. Keeping these performers in their new and narrow vertical prevents these massively popular and emergent artists and rapidly growing music groups from dominating the main award categories which the “industry” prefers to reserve for their own in-house acts. As a reaction, BTS pulled its newest album from award consideration and urged others to do the same. Years ago, the same approach and treatment was used to keep Michael Jackson out of the Grammy Pop category even as he was declared the “King of Pop” and had some of the biggest and best-selling albums in history. And don’t get me started on the years-long shabby treatment accorded to everyone in the Hip hop world.

What really struck me about this latest move was the unbelievable proliferation of award categories that the Grammys have manufactured to continue to slice, dice, minimize and otherwise control the artists and the entire awards process along with all the acclaim, access, financial rewards and other benefits that accompany such recognition. In 1959, there were 28 award categories. Today, albeit more than half a century later, there are 100.

You can decide what real value or meaning any of the “minor” awards actually has, even assuming that the typical consumer actually understood what criteria went into each award and what behavior, achievements or results it recognized and acknowledged. The more tangential awards, of course, the less meaningful each becomes. Spread a mile wide and an inch deep, even the performers can barely bring themselves to sincerely express their gratitude for the Potemkin efforts. The brand and the bragging rights diminish in direct proportion to the number of categories and trophies much like childhood sporting events where virtually everyone’s a winner just for showing up.

Alas, the music biz isn’t alone in meaningless brand extrapolations. We’ve seen dozens of aborted attempts to spread a brand gloss over a grossly mismatched product. Colgate beef lasagna, vegetable-flavored Jell-O, Life Savers soda, Frito Lay lemonade, Cosmopolitan magazine yogurt and my personal favorite, Harley-Davidson perfume. There’s a lot to be said for sticking to your knitting. It may not be new and exciting, but it will likely keep you from falling flat on your face. Brands aren’t concrete and can stretch reasonably far, but not to excess.

There’s no one greater than JD Power at creating an award for every suitor in every automotive category and now expanding into virtually any and every imaginable area of products or services under the sun. You too can win a narrowly drawn JD Power award for the best of something accomplishment in your space—whatever it may be—and even if it’s only for your efforts on Sundays in months having 28 days. You get the idea. Winners galore and all willing to pay wonderful fees to use and promote that recognition in their advertising.

A close second in the race for exponential category growth and the clear winner in shamelessness are the fine folks at Guinness World Records, who invite the entire world to invent records of all types and sizes and then submit them to Guinness for a very costly validation process (Guinness is happy to provide paid consultants to advise applicants) along with judges and witnesses.

Once the months’ long confirmation process is concluded, Guinness provides a framed piece of paper with their brand and seal which recognizes the newly created and established record. They’ll also sell a framed “You Were There” Guinness certificate to every attendee at any Guinness record-setting event. Here again, the very DIY nature of this “record” creation process and the massive number of claimed records makes one wonder about the value of the end product and frankly what the Guinness name or brand even brings to the process. Nonetheless Guinness claims that it receives almost 1000 record proposals and applications per week and over 50,000 submissions a year. 

A pair of Chicago twin brothers who have taken and documented over 82,000 selfies since the Apple iPhone camera was front facing enabled in 2010 are the likely holders of the putative Guinness World Record for “selfies taken by twin brothers” and to date, as their application process proceeds, no one has come forward to dispute or contest this amazing achievement. Taking a page from Michael Jackson, they now call themselves the Selfie Kings. Apparently, in the world of world records, saying makes it so.

Criminal rapist and thief

 The most incompetent and corrupt President America has ever seen— Donald J. Trump:

97 Times Pleaded The Fifth

91 Criminal Charges

1 Million Mentions in Epstein Report

34 Felony Convictions

26 SA Allegations

6 Bankruptcies

5 Draft Deferments

4 Indictments

2 Impeachments

2 Convicted Companies

1 Fake University

1 Fake Charity

$25M Fraud Settlement

$5M SA Verdict

$2M Fake Charity Abuse Judgment

$93M SA Judgements

$400M+ Fraud Judgment

Fake Trump Phone Con

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS SELFIE

 LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE:

Howard Tullman: Updates on Selfie AI | WGN Radio 720 - Chicago's Very Own

Howard Tullman: Updates on Selfie AI | WGN Radio 720 - Chicago's Very Own

Move Over Social Media. The Age of Your AI Self Has Arrived.

Selfie launches the world's first platform that lets anyone create an articulate and authentic digital version of themselves in minutes.

CHICAGO, IL — 8/4/26 — For the past two decades, the internet has been about sharing content. Selfie believes the next era will be about effortlessly sharing yourself.

Today, Selfie.com officially launched a first-of-its-kind platform that allows anyone to create an intelligent, interactive AI version of themselves—a digital twin that can answer questions, engage followers, and represent its creator online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Whether you're an athlete, artist, entrepreneur, educator, executive, influencer, or simply someone with a story to tell and share, a Selfie transforms your existing content into an AI-powered version of you that never sleeps.

"The next billion AI users won't build software—they'll build themselves," said Howard Tullman, one of the co-founders of Selfie. "Every major technology wave has changed how people connect. Social media let us broadcast outbound and wait for comments. Selfie lets people have immediate, interactive and responsive conversations with us—even when we're otherwise occupied."

Unlike traditional AI tools that require technical expertise or hours of setup, Selfie automatically builds each digital twin using existing content from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, podcasts, Substack, websites, documents, videos, and more. In just minutes, users can launch an AI-infused version of themselves that reflects their personality, knowledge, tone and communication style, and which can even speak in their own voice.

The result is an always-on digital presence capable of engaging audiences, answering questions, promoting events, recommending products, supporting customers, and creating deeper relationships with followers around the world. Selfie also provides creators with multiple earning opportunities while freeing them up to concentrate on the day-to-day work that they love doing.

From Social Profiles to AI Personalities

Selfie isn't another chatbot. It represents a new generation of personal AI—one where every individual owns a digital version of themselves that grows smarter as new content is created and their Selfie seamlessly interacts with fans, followers, clients and customers.

Instead of static profiles, creators gain dynamic AI companions that continue conversations long after an initial post is published.

Instead of FAQ pages, organizations can deploy constantly updated interactive experts.

Instead of waiting for replies, fans can chat digitally with the people they admire.

Selfie also announced a new referral program designed to accelerate adoption by rewarding creators for introducing their audiences to the Selfie app and platform while generating recurring revenue opportunities.

As AI rapidly becomes part of everyday life, Selfie believes every creator, professional, business, school, nonprofit, and public figure will eventually have an intelligent digital counterpart.

The company aims to make building one as simple as creating a social media account.

"We're not trying to replace social media," Tullman said. "We're building what comes next."

Launched in Chicago around Lollapalooza with more than 1200 initial Selfies up and operating by Andrew and Jon Landan a/k/a “The Landan Twins” who head up Selfie’s marketing team, “what comes next” is already here to stay.

Consumers can create their own free Selfie today at Selfie.com

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

HOW TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

One of the reasons that the failure rate of new restaurants is so high is because - even in cases where new operators are moving into existing locations - so much of the necessary capital investment is required upfront for renovations and/or new construction. You’ve got to build out the entire business before you know if the “dogs” are going to eat the dog food, say nice things to their friends, and keep coming back. A rule of thumb is that a successful restaurant needs to convert about 15%-20% of its customers into regulars if it’s going to make it through the first full year of operations. These required retention numbers may have even increased now because fewer diners are drinking as much as they did in the past so each customer is likely to be less profitable. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/60-40-restaurant-rule-food-beverage-glp-1-ozempic-wegovy-mounjaro-alcohol/91323202 .)

And, as we all know from the media’s obsession with opening weekend box office results, it’s pretty much the same front-end loaded situation with film studios making expensive motion pictures and then hoping that the crowds show up at the theatres so that the players don’t lose millions of production costs and marketing dollars essentially on Day One. Of course, there are occasional attempts with early screenings and test audience previews to get a reading on viewers’ likely reactions and, in some very costly cases, to actually attempt to shoot additional or alternative scenes and re-edit sections of the films. But as noted writer, playwright, and filmmaker David Mamet once said about fixing others’ failed efforts: “it’s
hard to polish a turd”. Once a movie is in the can, it’s a crapshoot at best as to whether it’s gonna be a triumph or a tragedy. But at least it takes a while for the ultimate reckoning in the film business because movies take years to finance, approve, and actually get made.

In the advertising world, where social media commentators and trolls lurk every day around every corner of the web, expensive new ad campaigns which suck, offend some segment’s tender sensibilities, or have the “wrong” spokesperson are condemned, roasted and rejected the same day they are released and sometimes (in the case of Super Bowl ads in particular) even before they are widely distributed and shown to the general public.

Millions of production dollars are flushed down the toilet, media buys and expensive marketing commitments are wasted, and – in some especially problematic cases – as  PepsiCo (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_for_Now ), Kendall Jenner, and many others have learned   - even more dollars are spent trying to make amends, repair wrecked brands, resurrect reputations, and apologize to millions of people who may not have even seen the offensive material in the first place.

While there are no guarantees or crystal balls in the ad biz, I wrote many years ago about a company called Dumbstruck (www.Dumbstruck.com), an emotion analytics company founded in 2018, that had developed some crucial technology which reviewed, evaluated and analyzed both proposed videos and actually produced ads in order to determine how that content would be received by the target populations and how they would respond to it. (See   
 https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/catch-me-if-you-can.html). The basic idea was to keep offensive and ineffective materials from ever reaching the marketplace. As I said at the time, it’s much smarter to avoid the potholes than to get a great deal on the cost of the tow truck that pulls you out of the ditch.

But in too many cases, while Dumbstruck’s impressive tools (which measure emotional, behavioral and cognitive reactions to displayed material) could highlight the prospective issues and shortcomings of completed videos, actually making those improvements could require costly edits or reshoots that campaign timelines and budgets simply didn't permit. The insights could still inform media decisions and future creative development, but improving the finished asset itself wasn't always practical. The horse had already left the barn. So, the tech worked, but the insights it provided often came too late in the creative process to provide its clients with the ability to cost-effectively fix the problems that its software had identified.

The good news for the clients – but another unfortunate blow for the traditional creative business – is that through a new technology partnership between Dumbstruck and Luma, which operates a multi-modal general intelligence platform based in California, there may finally be a fast, cost-effective and readily available approach the companies are calling Creative Intelligence which combines Dumbstruck powerful insights and observations about which elements of a given ad will work and connect with viewers and which other parts need to be revised, eliminated or enhanced with the AI-infused tools called Luma Agents that Luma has built which permit editors to: (a) implement the Dumbstruck recommendations and changes in real time into the existing video materials without extensive delays or costly reshooting of scenes and (b) even more importantly - and somewhat frighteningly at the same time – to digitally create and add elements, props, environmental effects and even new actors to the video on the fly and in the moment. The new system combines AI rendering abilities with human response data and applies all of this to the content being developed and enhanced. When the content is revised, updated, and improved, it is retested by Dumbstruck to confirm its value, impact, and effectiveness.

It’s actually hard to imagine a more enormous and disruptive offering which is entirely likely to upset the entire ad creation and production industry in short order. If you can write it and envision it, it’s becoming very clear that the actual video materials including all the personnel and props can now be digitally generated in 4K quality in a matter of hours rather than weeks with all of the obvious cost and time savings which that kind of technological advancement offers. What’s more, specific variations of the content can be made at little or no incremental cost to be directed to slices and segments of the overall audience. But the cost-effective abundance of content and the ease of production isn’t really the critical question, which is whether Dumbstruck’s technology determines that the finalized content will get the job done and resonate with the consumers. After all, at the end of the day, the ultimate goal is to sell something.

If the traditional ad biz wasn’t already plagued by the same basic time crunches, talent costs, and production issues that many other industries are facing as well as also being under new serious pressure from the rise of inexpensive and ubiquitous user generated content (UGC) as well as A.I. slop that are swamping all of the available channels (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/ai-trend-traditional-ad-agencies-creators-influencers/91366965.), the Luma-Dumbstruck technology partnership may be one of the final blows to the old leisurely days of Madison Avenue when who you knew was much more important than what you knew and could do. A long-past time when how a particular ad did for a client was a matter of good fortune rather than careful planning, precise execution, and after-the-fact analysis and accountability.

Today, thanks largely to Dumbstruck and Luma, advertisers can now “know before they go” exactly how their ads are likely to resonate with their target audiences and also have the immediate ability to improve their ads before significant media dollars are spent.