HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS EXPERTS

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

New INC. Magazine column from Howard Tullman

 MONEY

How to Know If the Experts Advising You Are Still Qualified for Today’s Business Reality

God forbid they’re using ChatGPT for lawyers or accountants to help write your tax returns.

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

MAR 17, 2026

Photo: Getty Images

Entrepreneurs and small business owners of a certain age face an interesting dilemma regarding the various professionals they’ve employed and relied upon for decades as they’ve built their businesses, lived through countless ups and downs, paid their taxes, and presumably matured. The personal bonds that have been built over the years are far beyond transactional and more often are powerful friendships and loyalties that time and change can’t break. These connections offer stability, security and levels of comfort that are often missing elsewhere in many new business builders’ lives. Severing these relationships for whatever good and sufficient reason still often feels like something between abandonment and betrayal.
 
Sadly, even the best professionals – lawyers, consultants and accountants in particular – necessarily age out over the years. Time has a way of turning all of our most important assets into liabilities. Some of the members of your personal support team may even have the gall to retire and move to warmer climates. Doctors and other medical professionals are in a category all their own. All I can say is, if your doc is still using a flip phone and a fax machine, you may have waited too long to update your team. How these men and women can even attempt to keep up with the daily changes in medicine seems like an impossible task and a foolish expectation on the part of their patients.
 
Apart from simple age and ability issues, skill sets and current knowledge diminish ratably over time, regardless of diligent efforts. Constantly changing technology is also a major concern for these folks. As time passes, memory fades and adjusts to console us and conform to what we think we remember. And, if and when we’re being honest, we know in our hearts that we’re losing a step or two, and that we should begin to think about stepping away to be fair to all concerned. You start by lying about yourself. Eventually, you begin lying to yourself. But it’s a very hard decision and there’s a tremendous amount of identity tied into the mix as well.
 
If your professionals belong to a large firm or a group or boutique practice, they are likely to attempt to hand you off to a younger partner or another practitioner who may or may not be great but, for sure, the newbies will have no idea of your habits, quirks, shortcuts, record-keeping practices, or even what’s happening with your company or in your industry.  They may know a lot about many things, but they really don’t know you.
 
But even in these cases of uncomfortable and sometimes abrupt transitions, the much bigger question is what the new professionals actually know. And what are their strategies and processes for staying current in an environment of constantly changing rules and regulations? God forbid they’re using ChatGPT for lawyers or accountants to help write your tax returns.
 
As you might imagine, as tax time rolls around, these aren’t random or hypothetical questions. These days, the basic comprehensive Tax Code is somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 pages in length. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, when you add the related rules, rulings, regulations and case law, you’re looking at over 70,000 pages. And forget about asking anyone at the IRS about pretty much anything. You’ll be on hold for an eternity.
 
The DOGE kids – with Trump’s encouragement and blessing – got rid of more than 25 percent of the total IRS workforce and almost 38 percent of the groups that focused on large businesses, the internet and high-net-worthindividuals. Their ultimate goal before they were booted was to cut 40,000 to 50,000 jobs at the IRS. I realize that in some ways the reduction in auditors (around 3,600 experienced experts) is a mixed blessing for those who would just as soon never be audited, but smart and prudent businesspeople don’t relish rolling the dice and would like to be able to rely on proper advice and guidance in making certain choices and decisions. Suffice it to say, that won’t be coming any time soon from the government.
 
So, we’re back to trying to figure out what exactly the people sitting across the desk from you “know” and just exactly how they claim to know it. This is not an easy question to ask – especially when you’re dealing with new people and new relationships – but it’s an inquiry that every smart entrepreneur and owner needs to make before you put the fate of your business and your own assets at risk. And to be clear, age and experience cut both ways in this conversation. In medicine, we say we want relatively young surgeons trained on the latest procedures and mainly old, experienced psychiatrists because Freud will always be Freud.
 
But what criteria should you use and what questions should you ask of the new teams of accountants taking over your case? Have you even thought about this issue at all? Size, brand and reputation are all useful indicators and word-of-mouth recommendations from peers you respect are also helpful, but remember that no one ever admits that they were in the bottom quartile of their class at business, law or medical school. 
 
The circumstances and situations are so diverse and complicated in each case that I’m reluctant to try to even offer specific areas of inquiry, but I think that the best strategy is to simply have a conversation with the lead professional dealing with your case and ask him or her – somewhat naively and sympathetically – exactly how they can possibly keep up with the massive changes every year. Their answers and your reaction to them will be the best test of your comfort level.

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO TALK ABOUT HIS NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN ON A.I. PLANNING

 LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN - AND A.I. ENGINE DEMOS

 

How to Start Smart With a Plug and Play AI Model

There is a better approach to AI for businesses that don’t want to shell out millions of dollars to Google or OpenAI to build their own custom version of ChatGPT.

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

Oct 7, 2025

It’s hard to say whether there are more columns arguing that, if you haven’t already infused your business processes with AI you may be too late and consequently doomed, or that the vast majority of corporate AI projects to date have been miserable and costly failures. The latter parade of horribles is led right now by recent M.I.T pronouncements asserting that something like 95 percent of the serious large organization efforts have failed.  

There are plenty of reasons offered for the failures of these initiatives, but they sound unsurprisingly similar to the explanations offered when the pace of adoption and implementation of any new tool or technology is slower than the hyped expectations—and when the promised payoffs in savings and enhanced productivity among others fail to materialize immediately. The real wonder is why resistance to change comes as any surprise to anyone at this late date.  

In the case of AI, there is another debilitating and discouraging aspect of the process, which is that even after all the time and analysis and reviews aimed at attempting to determine why some given project hasn’t worked, there’s almost nothing to be gathered or learned because the “black box” that you’re attempting to interrogate and explore is just that—a black box which performs its function in somewhat mysterious and unclear ways that no honest auditor would even pretend to fully understand. 

Needless to say, it’s hard to extract lessons or process improvements in order to achieve better future results when the underlying engine driving the outputs (a) has no memory, (b) doesn’t really “learn,” and (c) doesn’t accept or incorporate input, instructions, and corrections in any consistent or measurable fashion. It just is what it is and you’re offered the opportunity to take it or leave it. This isn’t the most appealing context or foundation to try to build the next phase of your business upon.  

To be clear, the opaqueness and obstinance of the primary AI foundational platforms aren’t even the most pressing concerns for most smaller companies and businesses which are trying to incorporate AI into their organizations. These firms — which is to say the vast majority of all the entities in the world except the mega-corporations — can’t afford to spend their scarce and critical resources on broad AI experiments which may or may not ever come to fruition. Even more importantly, they are facing a much more pressing set of risks and concerns within their own companies presented by the actions of their own people.  

Close to 60 percent of employees are using AI tools not approved by their employers, according to a recent Cybernews survey. Worse yet, more than half admit that their direct supervisors or managers know about their use and don’t object, while another sizeable group reports that their managers don’t care. In fact, the survey found that it was executives and senior managers who were the most likely to be using these tools. But the critical finding from the survey is that around 75 percent of the respondents using unauthorized tools admitted to sharing sensitive data with them. And the companies themselves have no control or even information about which team members are doing what. Once the data enters any of these AI platforms, the user has no control over whether the information is stored, reused or exposed to third parties. 

There is a much better and smarter approach for SMBs and, frankly, for just about any business not willing to shell out millions of dollars to Google or tens of millions of dollars to OpenAI to build their own custom version of ChatGPT. That’s what I call the “plug and play” solution. Simply stated, this is a “portable” query engine that any business can install on their own premises and in their own machines and networks.  

Typically, there is an initial fee for installation and implementation of the system—roughly $50,000 or less—and then a monthly or annual recurring cost which may vary with the volume of usage but which isn’t likely to be a major cost and can be cancelled at any time. This puts a known cap and realistic limitation on the entire cost of the experiment. 

The firm designates and assigns an underlying selection of data for the engine (the corpus) to operate on, interrogate, and extract answers from. All employees have access to the system and can simply ask whatever questions about the data which they need further information about, request analytics or compilations of segments or selections of the data, or request the creation of documents, reports, or presentations of parts of the data which are relevant to areas or questions they are dealing with. One key consideration is that by limiting the dataset to material relevant to the specific business and activities of each company, the fit of the engine to the likely inquiry scope is better and the overall costs of operation as well as response time are reduced since there is no need to “search worldwide” or attempt to “boil the ocean” in order to develop and respond with timely and accurate information.  

Note here that the system has two critically important guardrails in place which govern every query. First, it knows what it knows, so it’s designed to report back that it can’t answer certain questions. Second, it knows the scope and limitations of what queries are proper topics for inquiry and rejects irrelevant or immaterial prompts. For example, the system doesn’t know the meaning of life. In addition, the system creates a log file of every query and every answer which can be reviewed by management to track activity and also readily determine how often and how effectively the system is being used.  

Other crucial elements of these systems are that there are evaluation, review and edit functions which in essence let the system “learn” and improve its answers and responses on an ongoing basis as well as allowing for corrections and updates—all within the control of the company itself and without ever allowing any such proprietary information to leave the premises. Security and control as well as demonstrable growth in efficacy are all central to the system. Because the system also permits any user to evaluate and rank the value and accuracy of any answer, there is a real time feedback loop that encourages and rewards employee use and engagement. This prospect makes it far more likely that team members will adopt and regularly employ the system especially as they see their own input and roles in the process incorporated into the system.  

Bottom line: you can put a toe in the water at a reasonable cost and try to expose your people to the upsides of these next-generation tools without incurring substantial expenses, without exposing your proprietary data to the outside world in an uncontrolled and unaccountable manner, and without encouraging or permitting your own team members to go outside the walls and waste time and energy randomly exploring the large LLMs without any particular guidance, support or benefit to your firm.  

I have installed two sample systems on my own website in the lower right-hand corner. These are free to use and to experiment with for all readers. The white link has a corpus which consists solely of my hundreds of Inc. magazine columns published over the last decade. The black link is a much broader corpus of all my books, columns, speeches and presentations, etc. which will attempt to answer a far broader range of questions. Give it a try before you decide to buy. Test before you invest.

 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Why Now Is the Time to A.I. Audit Your Business

A.I. isn’t an optional add-on. It’s foundational and roughly equivalent to electricity or the internet.

 

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

Jun 17, 2025

 

In most of my conversations over the last year with new business owners and seasoned operators, all of whom are all concerned about ChatGPT’s impact on the economy, I’ve found an interesting contradiction in the way entrepreneurs are approaching the use and incorporation of A.I. I see a whole lot of wait and see.  Is it a genius or a clown?

While the novelty is starting to wear off, and the hiccups and hallucinations are certainly reasons for caution, the critical need to investigate, engage with and integrate these new technologies has yet to be fully appreciated and folded into the planning and operations of millions of businesses that really can’t afford to wait. They’re taking their time when the time to move is now and the timing couldn’t be more critical.

It’s not that hard to see why they’re conflicted. They’ve lived their entire business lives trying to be innovators, first movers and early adopters of new technologies in order to stay ahead of the competition. The “ready, fire, aim” attitude has mostly served them well over the years. But the truth is that smart entrepreneurs are far more careful and conservative than we’ve been led to believe. In fact, many are control freaks.

So, when they’re confronted with a pitch that basically says they should turn over some of their business processes to the “machine” because it will be good for their bottom line, they’re more than a little wary and reluctant to jump right in.  00:0001:49

Add to their basic mindset the fact that they understand almost nothing about how these black boxes really work, that they rarely have anyone presently onboard who can help them learn or who is up-to-speed on AI themselves, and that things seem to be moving ahead and changing at a ridiculously rapid pace. This makes for a perfect formula for angst and analysis paralysis. But, as is always the case, worrying never gets you anywhere and standing still is never the right solution.  A bad decision is often better than no decision at all. 

The good news is that there are simple and cost-effective steps forward –“toes in the water” if you will – that every company can take to get the ball rolling, and none are “bet the ranch” actions or expensive decisions. They’re simply smart ways to get smarter sooner.  

Every business today needs to conduct an AI audit if they don’t want to be left behind. AI isn’t an optional add-on at this point; it’s foundational and roughly equivalent to electricity or the internet. In the call center industry, for example, it’s now estimated that AI agents will handle 70 percent of all contacts by 2028. 

The first order of business doesn’t require technologists or AI experts. It’s simply a comprehensive review by your senior leaders of various areas of the business where AI may be able to help. Not, to be sure, by working immediate miracles (in spite of all the hype about eliminating hundreds of jobs overnight), but by helping you identify improvements, import better practices, and eliminate obstacles in your current operations.  

In my experience, this audit and review exercise also encourages your people to do some wishful thinking, to look forward to what could be, and to even think outside of their day-to-day, nose-to-the-grindstone activities and responsibilities. It’s a literal license to iterate and constantly improve.  

Broadly speaking, I’d break the critical categories down into four major buckets: automation of various internal processes, automation of various external processes, cleaning up and streamlining basic operations, and all your employee issues from augmentation, robotics, and realignment to concerns around recruitment and retention.

Once you’ve built a hit list and a wish list, you can bring in some professional help, a prompt engineer or two, and other AI resources to start building some solutions. Here are four examples.

Internal processes 

The long-term dream of a paperless digital world remains a remote and ambitious fantasy for millions of companies still drowning in reams of paper reports, receipts, requisitions, and records of all kinds. From the accounting department to the shipping center and personnel department, AI tools will create massive improvements in the traditional systems and antiquated procedures used in virtually every business, government agency and regulatory authority. Automation, digital records and AI-enabled identification processes will improve diagnostics in medical facilities, security in all of our transportation hubs and public areas, and in the entire finance world. 

External processes 

As the world becomes increasingly comfortable with ATMs, self-service checkout counters, and other forms of automation, AI systems can speed up, simplify, enhance and scale all of your front-of-house interactions with customers, clients and consumers including sales, service, and support. Millions of bank customers already acknowledge that they would rather not deal with a teller if efficient alternatives were available. AI tools can also streamline, simplify and optimize websites which, in many instances, companies haven’t reviewed or updated in years to improve customer experience and speed up the process.   

Basic operations 

Real-time review, ongoing support and enhancement, and timely intervention to avoid problems, breakdowns and other system interruptions are already being implemented in manufacturing firms around the world. The ability to project needs, demands and resource requirements will build even further upon the economic success of many just-in-time supply and warehousing chains and save huge amounts of time and money. Having AI systems review months or years of prior actions and activities and generate detailed analytics on the fly will provide insights, new directions, and even concrete suggestions for process improvements and better use of personnel and other materials and resources.  

People  

AI and related intelligent agentic devices and robotics can augment and supplement the work done by your employees to improve accuracy, capacity and safety as well as avoiding burnout, repetitive behavior injuries, and human errors. Systems are already being designed to identify, evaluate and categorize job applicants on a variety of criteria, to assist in scaling and speeding their documentation, onboarding and training, and to outline and create multi-year individualized career paths for each team member which serve as great recruiting tools and help to manage education, expectations and attitudes as well as improving retention. MIT and Nvidia Research have already developed a new algorithm that enables a robot to “think ahead” in a planning process and evaluate thousands of alternative paths in seconds. 

The bottom line is, you don’t know what you don’t know about your own business until you ask. Now’s the time to start asking. There’s no better, more cost-effective system than an AI system built for and based upon your own data as well as employing comparable data and other information drawn from the industry, your competitors’ reports and activities, and all manner of other external information and data sources. An AI audit is step number one.  

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Why Small Businesses Should Celebrate Genericide

Patent and trademark enforcement has become an important economic tool for entrepreneurs.

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

Jun 10, 2025

 

Nabisco’s Nilla Wafers have been a reliable staple in cookie jars since 1898, but the brand name is only 58 years old. In 1967, Nabisco rebranded the product from Vanilla Wafers to Nilla Wafers. Unlike “Nilla,” a protectable name that could be trademarked, “Vanilla Wafers” had become a victim of genericide—when a brand name loses its identity thanks to consumers using it to refer to all products in its category. Like Zipper, Aspirin, Cellophane, and Escalator—whose owners had failed to preserve their legal and proprietary status—the sweet treats had become so common and popular that the name came to be regarded as generic.

Today, Genericide is one of the only “-cides” that small businesses should cheer for. Patent and trademark enforcement has become an important economic tool for all manner of merchants. Last month, Mondelez International, which now owns and manufactures Wheat Thins, filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago to stop the multinational supermarket chain Aldi from selling store-brand products that blatantly copy and infringe on its trademarks. The crafty and innovative marketers at Aldi have been selling crackers called Thin Wheat, which Mondelez argues could be confused with Wheat Thins.

The classic examples of aggressive and successful litigants are Kleenex and Xerox (still protected) and, more recently, Google. It will be interesting to see what happens with ChatGPT and Ozempic. With millions of dollars in sales and huge investments made by large companies in building brand equity, you can be sure that the rip-offs, the hairsplitting, and the lawsuits are coming.

When patent and trademark enforcement is abused, as it has been for decades in the drug business, with the continued blessing of bribed Congressmen, it ends up costing consumers millions of dollars in inflated pharmaceutical prices. It also prevents important and widely used drugs that have been around for decades from becoming generic and subject to lower-cost production, duplication, and distribution of generic versions by other manufacturers.

Trademark or patent expiration is the worst nightmare of biopharmaceutical companies like AbbVie, AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers. Low-cost competition is a close second. Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs might well be in third place. And to be very clear, this isn’t something trivial. There are thousands of lives hanging in the balance, even as MAGA enabler and Iowa Senator Joni Ernst snidely notes that “we all are going to die” eventually. High prices make it harder for millions of consumers who need the drugs to access and afford to pay for them.

One of the main ploys of the pharma frauds is to artificially extend expiring patents and trademarks (which would open the market to generics) to continue to suppress and exclude competition and keep prices as high as possible. This approach, often called “evergreening,” consists of reformulating the same drug into extended-release versions, creating new delivery methods, changing dosages, and seeking broader and additional uses for the drugs. All of these strategies are accompanied by massive ad campaigns and direct attacks on the efficacy of substitutes and any generic alternatives.

AbbVie, for example, was able to secure and maintain exclusivity in the U.S. market for Humira for over 20 years after initial approval. AstraZeneca built Nexium into a $5 billion annual product line by rebranding an older drug, claiming it was a new and improved version, and limiting distribution. Bristol-Myers litigated for years with various generics and conducted repeated lengthy trials to prop up and build Abilify into a $9 billion product line.

There’s some modest good news on the horizon, although much of it will need to await the departure of the Orange Monster and his flunkies, who are comfortably in the pocket of Big Pharma.

Increasingly, and especially after the pandemic, which effectively democratized and dissipated much of the mystery of medicine, millions of consumers are wising up and moving from the expensive brands to store brands, OTC products, and generics. Much more needs to be done to break through the ongoing consolidation of drug manufacturers; to break down the price-gouging medical oligopolies; and to reform, improve, and actively enforce all of the available legal and administrative regulations and limitations.

We can live with bands like the Eagles and Led Zeppelin extending their shelf lives and livelihoods by replacing dead band members with their somewhat talented sons, but our medicine is life-changing and lifesaving. We shouldn’t tolerate or accept parasitical pharmaceutical companies that delay and defer the availability of critically important drugs for years to maximize their profits.

 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

The Age Wave is a Better Bet for Entrepreneurs Than A.I. 

Money may be pouring into A.I., but if you’re looking to start a business, there’s a huge market in more mundane areas, such as serving the rapidly growing number of seniors.

 

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

MAY 6, 2025

It seems that every young entrepreneur these days is racing to imagine, build and deploy new AI-infused products and services to meet expected and often wished-for demands for solutions to unknown problems and cures for unknown diseases. They speed ahead whether or not it makes even the slightest sense to incorporate AI as a critical component of what they’re hoping to build. 

It’s also unclear that they even understand exactly what they’re pitching when pressed to explain the technology beyond the superficial buzzwords that ChatGPT will happily supply for them. But nobody wants to miss the parade. And equally anxious investors are chasing similar dreams and throwing money at these stories with reckless abandon, as long as the pitches contain those magic words. 

This frantic approach is costly, risky, uncertain, and the playing field is already grossly overpopulated with well-funded participants of all sizes. Yet because the underlying platforms that drive all these efforts are already largely controlled by a few tech giants, the ultimate economics of even the most successful efforts will be questionable.  

While all the challenges and obstacles are clear, no one honestly knows what the demand for any of these offerings will be, and how any startup will be able to differentiate itself, reach critical scale, and avoid being crushed or obviated by the big guys. This is going to be a heavy lift and a long haul for rewards that are speculative at best. 

The opportunities in our aging population

Forget the shiny objects: there are huge unmet opportunities to create simple, inexpensive and effective offerings for the immediate problems of millions of older consumers in our rapidly aging population. Businesses that represent attractive investments at considerably lower risk. Where entry and minimum viable product (MVP) costs are low, milestones and success metrics are easy to define and measure, and it should be clear in a relatively short time whether the dogs are interested in eating the dog food.

In 2025, more than 11,000 Americans will turn 65 every single day, or about four million folks a year, driven by the Baby Boomer generation, (born between 1946-1964). New and important products and services for boomers don’t require the capital, compute, natural resources, or technical expertise associated with chatbots, LLMs or next-gen AI models. These people have problems, plenty of cash, are still inexpensively reachable through traditional media channels and membership organizations, and they acknowledge both their needs and the need for solutions. They don’t require convincing as much as they simply need to be informed, educated and encouraged to act in their own best interests.

Apart from bragging rights, shiny object syndrome, and peer pressure, you have to wonder why more new business builders aren’t focused on meeting these massive, albeit mundane, needs.  They could make a great living while they’re at it. I realize that good, solid businesses might sound boring to certain people looking for the next moon shot, but it’s hard to miss some of these substantial market gaps when they’re staring you right in the face.

You can call this strategy “catching the next age wave” and it reminds me of a great Warren Buffett quote. He said: “I don’t look to jump over seven-foot bars; I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over.”

Three considerations about the market

Broadly speaking, especially if you’re an involuntarily unemployed grown-up looking for a new challenge, I’d suggest investigating three critical areas of non-medical, elder assistance where there are immediate openings to set up shop without even leaving your home or neighborhood. A little planning, some modest preparation, and a little research will save you a lot of time, money and shoe leather. Your friends, family and neighbors will readily support leads, suggestions and recommendations as well as introductions to more prospects and target customers and consumers than you can imagine.

Why? Mainly because there are no communities in this entire country without thousands of individuals in need of these kinds of services and support. Three initial observations to provide some context.

First, many of these services may exist for high-end, well-banked and connected individuals, but they are virtually non-existent for middle-class consumers of any advanced age.

Second, to the extent that any of the vendors purport to offer any in-person services along these lines for technology products or mobile devices as opposed to tele-support, the delivery personnel are universally abrupt, impatient and unempathetic kids who no one wants to deal with, or welcome into their homes and private matters, and who are typically somewhere on the behavioral spectrum. There’s a reason Best Buy’s guys are called the Geek Squad.

Finally, and more generally, the ideal entrepreneurs and operators of new service providers in these areas will not be young people. They are mature individuals, disciplined and hardworking, coming from prior careers in the corporate world, insurance, banking, and even government, and who are organized, well-groomed, seasoned and presentable.

Three services the market needs now

The key areas where I see very few players, but lots of potential, are assisted access, assisted giving, and assisted relocation.

Assisted Access Businesses are those primarily addressing the needs of seniors who have been left behind by the rapid advances in technology. Services can include simplified tech support and user education; hands-on, hand holding and in-person training; application installations and regular updates and upgrades of equipment.  Seniors need all manner of confidentiality protection, device security and storage, as well as recording, retention and retrieval of critical information regarding their finances, passwords, bank and service accounts, and other verification procedures and scam warnings.

Assisted Giving Businesses address a different area in which seniors and homeowners in particular are uninformed, unsupported and largely incapable of acting efficiently and intelligently. While there are zillions of criminal and fraudulent schemes targeting seniors that purport to be serving charitable and philanthropic causes, here again my focus is on some much more mundane, but no less important, services. Boomers have needs and concerns regarding the timely, pre-death disposition of personal property, artwork, family heirlooms, and jewelry, for example, which may be generically addressed in formal wills and estate documents, but which typically are much better and efficiently addressed while the owners are still living.

Unfortunately, here again, with the exception of a tiny percentage of precious objects and works by well-known artists (which are still difficult to have appraised or sold, even at auction), there are simply no organizations, services or other providers to help seniors plan, inventory and then rationally and prudently dispose of these objects. Of course, some portion of the property and other possessions may be desired by family or heirs, but in most cases – even if nearby family members have some modest interest in assisting – the burden of all the effort ultimately falls on the seniors.   

Assisted Relocation Businesses help seniors quickly and efficiently sell their homes at realistic prices and also simultaneously provide guidance and support for these individuals to move into smaller owned or rented properties or into assisted living facilities. Moving Station is one of the smart early players in this space. This is a very complex area and, in most cases, requires close coordination to ensure smooth transitions. One other difficult and emotional part of these transactions is how painful and agonizing they can be for all of the parties concerned and especially other younger family members. Having objective, independent and supportive intermediaries is a crucial component for closing these kinds of deals in a timely fashion.

Ultimately, what the most successful operators of these new businesses will be selling are themselves as well as comfort, reassurance, and attention to detail. No one’s gonna care how much you know until they know how much you care….about them, their affairs and their future.