HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
6 Tips to Inspire and Motivate Your
Team
Here’s
how to turbocharge your business, build momentum, and take it to the next
level.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V
AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
Jun 24,
2025
In most of the
successful turnarounds I’ve led over the years, one of my first steps was to
distribute to the entire company a “manifesto” that outlined the fundamental
ideas and strategies around change management that I had developed and adopted
over several decades. Typically, it was 8-10 pages long and had around 20
sections addressing various issues and concerns. When you step into a new
leadership position, it’s absolutely critical that you communicate –
consistently and constantly – your approach, objectives, and philosophy to the
entire team.
While the comments and
concepts contained in my manifesto weren’t written in stone, I was always
amazed at how little change needed to be made in the basic document regardless
of the business or the industry I was dealing with at the time and regardless of
how much time had passed since that document was first written. I’ve also had
an opportunity over the last 12 years of writing my weekly Inc. column to
expand on and explore almost every one of these bullet points in more detail.
But I believe that you
never stop learning, especially if you pay attention; that you never know who’s
going to teach you something new and important; and that iteration with an eye
toward constant improvement (successive approximation rather than postponed
perfection) is the ultimate key to success in any endeavor. Getting a little
better every day is the goal. As Mark Cuban likes to say: Perfectionism is the
enemy of profitability.
I like to revisit one of
my earliest columns, “What I Learned from My Waitress,” once or twice a
year to help keep me honest. And I continue to recommend it to new business
builders and experienced entrepreneurs as well on a regular basis. Getting a
few important things right is the name of the game. Trying to do too many things
and spreading yourself a mile wide and an inch deep is a formula for failure.
So, I was interested and
intrigued when Anton Marchanka, the new CEO for Zing Coach, an AI-powered fitness app that’s been around since 2021
with about 200,000 paid subscribers, reached out to me to explain how he’s
planning to turbocharge his business, build new momentum, and take it to the
next level.
He says that great
startups don’t run like big businesses. They operate like swift pirate ships –
fast, fluid and flexible. And he offered his six most important tips for
talking to the team. Here’s what I took away from his list.
Start with a story
Forget the spreadsheets,
strategies and lengthy pitch decks. Tell a simple story that the whole team can
understand, buy into, and get aggressively behind. Fill the boat with
believers. Or, as he says, “turn strangers into shipmates.”
Startups are leaky
Make sure you’re honest
about the risks of the venture and the odds of success in fairness to the
people you’re asking to come aboard. There are no guarantees other than that
you and everyone else will be working their asses off to try to get it done or die
trying. You want people who commit to the journey and not simply to some
imagined and hoped-for destination.
Your story should sound
somewhat scary
You can’t steal second
base with one foot on first. It’s a big challenge – a big ask – and a leap of
faith to join a team that’s trying to disrupt the current ways of doing things
and invent the future. Not for the faint of heart. Big risks are the only things
that generate big rewards.
Your story should be
convincing, but not complete
No one has a crystal
ball or can predict the future, but the best entrepreneurs know that the main
job is to steer a steady course forward through rough seas, unforeseen
obstacles, and constant changes in the circumstances, the marketplace and the
competition. No battle plan ever survives the first contact with the
opposition. If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead
anywhere.
You’ve got to sell your
story to the team
Leaders are great
salesmen and storytellers and the first thing they’ve got to sell is
themselves. Let them know that you’ve been through this before and you know how
it ends. Every emotion in a startup is contagious – confidence, commitment and
also concern. You’ve got to convince the team that you’ve got what it takes to
get the job done. Keep your own head up at all times. Perpetual optimism is a
force multiplier.
The journey’s as
important as the end result
Anyone who knows how
hard, painful and uncertain it is to try to build a new business knows that no
one with any experience does it just for the promised pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow. It’s the shared experience, the endless blood, sweat and tears,
and the lifelong bonds and attachments you form along the way with your peers
that make the journey so important and worthwhile regardless of the outcome. As
you progress and face the uncertainty and the challenges together, you realize
that you need each other. It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it is
the journey that matters, in the end.
The bottom line is,
there’s no magic set of words or phrases – no single solution for all
circumstances – but one thing’s absolutely certain: If you don’t make the
effort to tell your story to your people, your investors, and your customers,
your ship will be sunk shortly after you’ve set sail.
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.
You Need to
Reimagine How You Market Your Brand
Some of the big names in
consumer products are losing share because they can no longer demonstrate that
they deserve a price premium. Make sure you're doing the right things to
communicate your product's value.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL
MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1
Brands
just aren't bringing it and getting the job done any longer. They used to
represent a shorthand promise based on the simple premise that you could have
basic confidence that you were getting more value for your
spend even if you paid a premium for the privilege. That could be in the form
of quality, durability, safety, ingredients or efficacy -- but we all believed
for decades that something made a brand worth the additional investment. Brands
were also an efficient way to address decision fatigue given the virtually
unlimited shopping and product choices on the web today.
But
now it seems that only those people (entertainers, influencers, gangbangers)
who are utterly indifferent to price are still spending and sporting the top
few big-name brands for reasons having much more to do with reputation,
endorsement payouts and bragging rights than with any connection to reality.
The world's wearing Apple watches these days while the jocks and party people
are still sporting their diamond-encrusted Rolexes. We're never going to
entirely eliminate the ancillary
messaging and emotional considerations that accompany upscale brands that
have little or nothing to do with function or features, but the days of blindly
buying a premium brand for practical, prudent, and economic reasons are long gone
for most products.
When
you read investigative articles that suggest the private label brands at Costco
or Walmart are being manufactured on the sly by the same makers of the branded
goods, it's more than unsettling - it's a wake-up call. People aren't panting
any more to pay up for products that are functionally indistinguishable from
the private labels and even generics, which are being increasingly pushed by
the large retail chains. We're seeing this all over the place, but especially
with respect to the multi-billion-dollar marketplace for over-the-counter
medications.
Millions
of consumers don't believe in much of anything these days, and the MAGAts only
believe Trump, largely due to his eight-year assault on the truth. Brand names
are just one important casualty. The Trumpist war on truth and medicine
throughout the pandemic--which cost them tens of thousands of dead Red voters
-- has really diminished consumer confidence in doctors and drugs in general.
Drugs aren't the whole story, but they're a great early indicator of consumer
brand behavior. As more and more products become confusingly similar and make
identical claims regarding effectiveness, price rather than brand drives the
decision bus.
There
are several explanations for these new customer attitudes toward OTC
medications that will eventually impact the future viability of every major
brand. The players who react and adapt to the new environment and change their
brand messaging, product offerings and customer interactions will survive and
grow; those who choose to rest on their laurels and past performance will ride
their brands right into the ground. Kraft Heinz's lousy results, even with
higher prices, meant a newly-announced CEO. There's still time now - although
Big Pharma doesn't seem to get the picture - and soon there will be plenty of
blame for the losers and also-rans to spread around.
You
could put part of the blame on the pharma companies themselves for clear and
repeated price gouging, which the side-by-side comparative displays at
Walgreens or CVS make abundantly clear to even the most obtuse observer. Wanna
spend three bucks more for a bottle of Bayer aspirin or a tube of Neosporin for
absolutely no good reason? Be my guest.
Of
course, now that Walgreens has decided in its newest urban stores to hide virtually
everything in closed cages or back-of-house, and to use kiosks and
clerks to fill orders, maybe these awkward comparisons, which actually helped
to educate the consumer, will disappear. That would be unfortunate but at least
it won't kill the instant, internet-enabled, comparison pricing for virtually
anything that's going on in every store. This smartphone-based smart shopping
certainly hasn't made life
any easier for the big brands.
Whatever
your budget constraints may be, no one wants to look foolish or feel that
they're being gouged. Mark Cuban's amazing new initiative - Cost Plus Drugs continues
to gain traction and Amazon is jumping aggressively into the pharmacy business
as well, which will clearly help drive drug prices down. It's no accident that
Blue Shield California has announced plans to work with Amazon, Cuban and CVS
on a new distribution system. President Biden's action in locking down the
price of insulin for millions of patients is another amazing step forward.
You
could say that the panache of pharma brands has been hard to polish and promote
when there's so much noise in traditional broadcast channels, where every other
ad is for some disease like TED, RVS or AMD that no one's ever heard of. These
voluminous ads are clearly targeted to the few ancient and infirm people still
watching the tube. Ever since the success of the "purple pill"
promotion, you no longer see the long-recognizable corporate names in their TV
ads. The message is all about some made-up catchy name extracted by an overpaid
ad agency from the drug's technical designation. Doctors now constantly
complain that their patients no longer want diagnoses, they just want the pill
with the cute name or the one that makes the fat go away.
And
while cable subscriptions are largely a function of consumer inertia, the
streamers are spending millions to try to move subscribers upstream to more
expensive, ad-free tiers. They're telling the whole world that ads are
worthless interruptions and an utter waste of time. In many ways, the bipolar
ad industry is eating its own lunch and making its future prospects even more
uncertain.
The
clear implication in all this anti-ad messaging is that only morons and the
poor have to suffer through dozens of ads every day in order to watch reruns,
repetitive ad flights, and pitches for old people. Someone recently said that -
given the average age of its audience - CBS now stands for "Could Be
Sleeping." And that it's really no harm, no foul if you should
happen to nod off because in the online, all the time, connected world there's
really nothing new about the nightly news.
The
message being sent to new generations of prospective viewers (and, obviously,
consumers) is that all of the ads on traditional broadcast channels, cable
stations, and even on much of the new and inexpensive offerings by the
streamers are worthless wastes of their time and attention. As we enter the
2024 election ad cycle and suffer through the noise and clutter and the
indiscriminate spray-and-pray ugliness, the situation will only worsen for the
next 14 months, along with the ability of even the biggest brands to break
through.
The
bottom line for every business is that - while building and sustaining your
brand will be important and challenging - it's even more critical to give your
customers (past, present, and prospective) concrete reasons
to continue to purchase, use and support your products and services.
Two
key things to keep in mind:
(1)
Your team members will be essential to this process because people increasingly
will be more likely to trust your employees, their interactions with them, and
their suggestions and recommendations than anything else. Successful sales
will always be a people business.
(2)
Businesses and their brands in the future are going to have to have and
successfully communicate to the world a purpose beyond
profit in order to connect to tomorrow's consumers.
Howard generously took us under his wing as a team of 23-year-old founders trying to find our way. He got in the trenches with us (you'll see him in action alongside Mark Cuban if you read the chapter called "Cage Match of the Giants") and never pulled any punches.
It's no secret that Howard Tullman is tough, and you'll see that come through in the stories of the book. As such, being around Tullman toughened me up in a variety of necessary ways, showed me an example of a champion at the intersection of Art & Business, and he was instrumental in helping us crack into the arena of entrepreneurship back at 1871.
As an early reader of Sweaty Equity: A Ball Boy, A Billionaire, and the Bonkers Startup Tale You've Never Heard, Howard dove in cover to cover and gave me some of the most detailed, thoughtful notes I'd received in the process of writing.
Now, it's an honor to receive The Wizard's testimonial as a reader. Thanks for this, and for everything, Howard!
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From HAT:
“There’s no shortage of startup stories out there, but very few add actual value in return for the investment of your time. Mike Shannon’s Sweaty Equity, a personal recollection of a rough, but ultimately rewarding journey, doesn’t try to glorify the gauntlet, gild the lily, or please all the participants — it digs into the actual mess, the missed turns, the crucial pivots, and the moments that mattered most to him and to his team. This is a straightforward study of how you assemble a team, hold it together during the toughest of times, and come to understand that you only really become a team when you learn to trust and rely on each other. And it reminds us all that you never know who's going to bring you your future."