NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Think Your Product or Service Has No Place to Grow? Think Again 

If you stay in your lane and try to hang on to your existing customers because you’re afraid to lose them, you’re doomed. 

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

JAN 30, 2026 GOOGLE

Photo: Getty Images

One of my earliest business ideas was to sell macho air fresheners at truck stops. The products were designed to look like very aggressive versions of the various animals of the Zodiac. Few people understand and appreciate the deep connection and affection long-haul truck drivers have for their rigs, how they decorate and embellish them, or how stinky their cabs can become. These are really their “homes away from home.” The gimmick was that each truck’s 17-digit vehicle identification number (VIN) would determine what month of the year their truck was “born” and that would determine which symbol they bought. Or they could simply choose one that matched their own sign. 
           

You’d be surprised how superstitious truckers are and just how many millions of tokens, four-leaf clovers, religious symbols, decals, bobbleheads and other tchotchkes they buy every year at shops, rest stops, and gas stations along the road. The animal designs came out great looking, the execution and distribution were fine, but even though they smelled great, the things never moved off the rack. Another lesson in the long line of the greatest products that never sold. 
Of course, it’s not an experiment if you know in advance that it’s gonna work.  
        

There should be a museum of product misfires that every new business builder and entrepreneur should be required to visit as an education and a warning. Actually, the top of my list would be some of the more insane brand extension attempts that we’ve all seen over the years.  I’d say that Cheetos Lip Balm, Colgate Kitchen Entrees and Clairol Yogurt Shampoo would be right up there among my would-be “winners” that went nowhere. Harley Davidson Perfume is another favorite example.  

Embarrassing as it may be, the truth is that you have to experiment in public if you want to expand and grow your business, because you simply can’t find all the answers by yourself. If you don’t keep trying and raising the bar, you’ll find yourself slowly slipping backwards. There are plenty of new opportunities in every direction if you take the time to look. If you simply stay in your lane and try to hang on to your existing customers because you’re afraid of changing and losing them, you’re doomed. 
You may think that some product categories have no place else to go or grow, but even the most mundane products can offer exciting and substantial expansion opportunities, especially when combined with new marketing partners, alternative distribution channels and attractive offerings. And, while we’re all terribly fixated on the digital realm, there are still great analog plays and hybrid strategies that combine online and offline channels.

It’s always cheapest to reach your target customers by riding someone else’s rails instead of trying to build your own. Habits, customs and rituals (along with superstitions) all represent shortcuts and reliable paths to consistent consumer behavior not unlike the way we have traditionally relied upon brands as promises for quality, consistency and integrity. Ask yourself who in the world doesn’t open a fortune cookie at the end of a nice meal at a Chinese restaurant?  

I was still surprised to learn about an amazing new partnership between MrBeast, one of the absolutely hottest players online—whose main YouTube channel now has over 460 million subscribers—and a Chicago-based company named OpenFortune which produces roughly ALL the fortune cookies in America and distributes them in 47,000 restaurants across the country. That’s about 3 billion cookies a year, which  OpenFortune has turned into a scalable, physical media marketing channel that millions of consumers interact with every day. And they did it by successively iterating their product and raising the bar. More of OpenFortune’s back story is available in a recent video. 

The progressive steps the company has taken have been pretty straightforward  starting with the basic cookie and the standard message which, of course, had a blank flip side. A mini-billboard to be sure and a perfect place for related CPG brands to put their own messages which could be positioned to be read first before flipping over to read the fortune. Capitol One was an early brand partner. And you might imagine, QR codes were only a short step beyond and, once the phones joined the celebration to trigger the codes, the whole sharing world of social media was available as well. Next came various versions of interactivity including experiential tours, videos squibs, etc. and of course, finally gamification of all kinds. Contests, collections, sweepstakes, and plenty of golden tickets taken right from the days of Willy Wonka.  

Each step in the iterative and expansive process exposed OpenFortune’s clients, partners, advertisers and customers to more traffic, revenue prospects, customer engagement, and provided essential tracking and measurement, along with awareness, reach and impact metrics. As part of the win-win promotion for Beast Games Season 2, 2.5 million fortune cookies are being distributed by OpenFortune to restaurants nationwide which will each contain a Beast Games-related message. 24,000 of those cookies will include limited-edition fortunes written by MrBeast himself which will be scarce, collectible and actively sought after by millions of his fans. Early results of this hybrid effort suggest improved recall versus simple digital exposures and a more extensive and direct customer engagement.  

The bottom line is pretty simple: sitting around and waiting for the world to beat a path to your door is a poor bet. You’ve got to keep trying, experimenting, iterating and moving forward if you want to stay in the game. You get a little bit better every day and you carefully position yourself for the large chances and opportunities that may appear at any time. As an old Chinese proverb says: “Man stand for long time with mouth open before roast duck fly in.”

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

    SUCCEEDING ON SUBSTACK IS TOUGHER THAN IT LOOKS

            Many years ago (and more recently again in the midst and aftermath of the pandemic) I warned the thousands of smart, middle-aged, corporate executives who had been fired and had decided to embark upon an entrepreneurial adventure (which would be seeded by their severance pay and/or their savings and retirement funds) that it was much, much harder to launch and sustain any startup venture than they imagined and that the vast majority of them were utterly unsuited for the task. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/should-you-start-a-businss-now.html.)

            Not only were so many of these folks temperamentally unfit for the constant ups and downs of the process and completely unaware of the many operational and cultural differences in the DIY startup world, but their past experience would also not only weigh them down and be wholly discounted, but it would also make them even more unlikely to succeed. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/so-your-kid-wants-to-be-an-entrepreneur.html.) Many of these people couldn’t even run their own bath. Not everyone is cut out to be a diva, a prophet, a speed demon, or a huckster.

            Unfortunately, between the massive federal layoffs initiated by the Orange Monster, the cutbacks and staff reductions driven by threats to reduce or eliminate grant and public media funding, and the accelerating demise in general of so many parts of the media business, as Yogi Berra used to say: “it’s déjà vu all over again”.  

            Worse yet, no one seems to recall the debacles of the dot com years, the implosions of the real estate and financial markets, or the fact that these days the “gig” economy and the world of wunderkind “influencers” look more and more like a “share the scraps” cesspool – lots of noise, no signal, and no money – inhabited by a miniscule number of winners and millions of losers.

            So, with specific reference to opinion writers, talking heads and news readers, and former network journalists, it’s been very hard for me to watch the daily departures of mature, experienced, and well-respected media mavens and mentors who are all intent on jumping with both feet into the new highly uncertain world of blogs, newsletters, podcasts, and videos. They’ll all be Substackers soon - whatever that may eventually mean and whether or not they end up liking it. I hope they learn to like it because there’s no going back for them even if there’s still a glimmer of the great news businesses that used to be.

            And, as hard as their lives had arguably become in an environment where the truth took a consistent and humiliating backseat to corporate and financial considerations as well as outright fear of Trump’s threats and lawsuits, they’re about to go from repeatedly pushing a stone painfully up a hill like Sisyphus to racing rapidly down the other side while hanging on for dear life with both hands. And, just as you learn in racing, in the insane hurry up economy, nobody waits for you. 

            They’ll learn quite quickly that other people don’t always dream your dream and that their allegedly “built-in audiences” are frugal, fickle and lazy to boot. They’ll basically love you ‘til they don’t and the Patreon model (https://www.patreon.com/login ) that they’ll pay because they love you or want to support your crusade is a financial fantasy. They’re most likely not to follow you anywhere, even for free, because free isn’t cheap enough. Brand extensions aren’t automatic or givens: Cheetos Lipstick, Harley-Davidson Cologne and Colgate Beef Lasagna were just a few attempts that bit the bullet in no time at all. 

            As someone who’s seen and written about these kinds of radical transitions for more than 50 years, I feel an obligation as well as the need to revisit my earlier cautions and to offer a few important observations that are likely to have been overlooked in the frenzy to move forward.

You Can’t “Ape” Your Way to Success.

            In this noisy and cluttered new media world where everyone is competing for a small slice of a finite and shrinking pool of attention, the primary key to success is differentiation at a time and in a context where thousands of others are trying to do the same thing. You need to start from the premise that no one’s interested in the old models or the tired formats of the past. And honestly, older white-bread white guys aren’t in such great demand either.

            The “news”, such as it is these days, is already everywhere, stale by the time you see it, and free. Regurgitating the same old stories – even in an ultra-timely fashion – simply won’t get the job done and no one wants to pay for it. You’ve got to have a new take, have a hook to set yourself apart, figure out how to attract a viable portion of the world’s attention at least for a moment, and then deliver consistent and valuable content every day in order to hold your audience. It’s a “what have I heard from you lately” world with a million alternatives just a click away.

            While John Chancellor once said that the function of good journalism is to take information and add value to it, the truth is that the media business today is far more about entertainment than education. It’s about looking, listening and laughing rather than leisurely learning. About fear and anger rather than fashion or foresight. Enragement, not engagement. The key seems to be pithy, bite-sized, observations and outsized opinions rather than painstaking analysis, careful commentary, or attempts to prove anything. People aren’t looking for proof – they already know what they believe – they’re looking for confirmation and reassurance. The truth has as much to do with this process as mustard does with ice cream.

You Don’t Get Paid Until You Pay Your Dues.

            Ignoring the wisdom and lessons of decades urging folks to try before they buy, whoever is advising these newcomers to put out a few interesting paragraphs and then slam up a subscription paywall to interrupt the initial experience is a moron. This strategy is a slight cut above pure clickbait, but to any serious person and interested reader, it’s just an offensive turnoff and utterly counterproductive because instead of introducing the prospect to compelling samples of the author’s work, it shuts the door without a single example and generally results in a swift click away. Email subscriptions, after some introductory exposure, make sense especially because you build a direct connection to your reader, but paywalls are a complete waste.

            You’ve got to be willing to invest your time and effort for a while at least without expecting any financial return regardless of your experience, talent, brand or prior reputation. The best players under-promise and over-deliver, which makes for a strong connection, a lasting relationship, and even a willingness to pay. All smart business is ultimately based on patiently building relationships. If you’re in it just to make a quick buck, you might just as well be selling shoes. You don’t want to be splitting up the loot before you rob the train.

            As much as it can appear to be a frantic race and a contest, in the long run, the people who survive will have built a small, but passionate community of followers who are willing to support their work financially because they trust the authors and because they find real value in the work. The authors, in turn, will be authentically connected to their followers and able, at the same time, to create content that is meaningful and satisfying both to themselves and to their fans. It’s not about beating the others; it’s about building a valuable business for yourself that you can be proud of. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not smashing it.

You Might Not Have the Stomach to Do What It Takes.

            One of the reasons I retired from practicing law was that, as corporate litigation became increasingly expensive and lengthy, the clients eventually lost their appetite for the battle and their willingness to pay the required costs for doing the necessary work correctly and completely. Doing a halfway job wasn’t my style just as discouraged and disappointed doctors every day are told by indifferent clerks and flunkies working for insurance companies that they don’t care to pay for certain medical tests which the professionals feel are essential to properly diagnose and treat their patients. Even apart from the desire to take pride in the work you do, no one gets into these professions to do a crappy job.

            In the same fashion, experienced journalism professionals who’ve spent their lives and done their work according to long-established standards of honesty, fairness and objectivity - supported by talented staff and plenty of resources - may simply not have the stomach or willingness to take things of importance, depth and substance on the fly without the time to properly investigate or prepare and then proceed to simplify and hollow them out so that they can be swallowed by their audience without chewing or thinking.  Patience, prudence, modesty and humility have no real place in the attention economy. It’s a war zone with no bottom.

You Might Not Have the Stamina to Stick It Out.

            It’s hard, if not impossible, for a man or woman in their 40s or 50s with a full life, a family, a home and various other financial commitments, to compete effectively and flat-out every day on a 24/7 basis with kids in their teens and young adults who have absolutely nothing else in their lives, no reputation or integrity to preserve and protect, no moral inhibitions, incomparable levels of shamelessness, and few ethical constraints. The new adult entrants talk about freedom and independence without recalling Janis Joplin’s note that: “Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose”. They’re putting their whole lives and careers on the line to compete with kids having their latest lark and living on their parents’ dime.

            Outsiders and grown-ups rarely understand the daily grind of feeding the content beast along with the physical pressures, mental stress and difficulty of getting on the non-stop creation treadmill. You’ve got to fill the void with something every day. When you add in the responsibilities of developing, marketing, managing and operating the other aspects of building a new business in an impossibly competitive industry with thousands of players all chasing a shrinking and cluttered pool of interested readers, listeners and viewers, it’s easy to see why it’s not a business for the faint-hearted or for those who are already fatigued and burnt out.

You Might Have Already Missed the Boat.

            Finally, and unfortunately, you can’t turn back the hands of time and you might just be too late to the party to make a go of it. These spaces are already crowded, and they already demonstrate the same “winner take all” tendencies of the tech world. A few big names will emerge, a few platforms will dominate and deliver, and the costs of entry and participation - which once formed significant moats - have already become trivial and are about to be totally obliterated by A.I.

You’ll know in relatively short order the answers to some of the critical questions above. If it’s not working or working for you, don’t kid yourself and continue. It’s never too soon to turn back if you’re on the wrong road.