NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Why the Most Important Person in Your Company Probably Isn’t the CEO

We take far too many of the folks we work with and around for granted, and regularly fail to appreciate the contributions they make.

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

Mar 24, 2026

 

I’ve maintained for many years that until we outgrow the stigma that we’ve traditionally attached to vocational education—and unfortunately already passed on to the next several generations—we’ll be wasting the opportunity to direct millions of eager and energized young people into careers and opportunities that are appropriate for them and likely to offer them both job satisfaction and successful paths to a reasonable income and lifestyle. Four expensive years at a fancy liberal arts college and a mound of accumulated debt aren’t for everyone.

Jobs in the basic trades, such as plumber or an electrician, aren’t going away any time soon, offer union protection and benefits, and have established progress and advancement paths that plenty of “white collar jobs” no longer offer if they even still exist. I remind my friends all the time that my car mechanic works 9-to-5 with no after hours stress, makes more money than any recent liberal arts college grad, spends more time with a keyboard than a wrench, and—as the average age of cars on the road continues to lengthen—has pretty much locked-in employment for his lifetime because those millions of cars won’t fix themselves.

The average age of cars on the road in the U.S. has increased for the last eight years in a row and reached a record high in 2025 of 12.8 years, so the demand for skilled mechanics will only increase for the next decade or two. In addition, it looks like most of the major U.S. vehicle manufacturers are bailing on EVs, which were touted as easier and less expensive to maintain and repair, but which simply haven’t caught on with U.S. dealers, much less buyers.

But the facts alone won’t get the necessary changes made unless we change the attitudes of millions of snobs in this country who are giving our kids the wrong messages. We take far too many of the folks we work with and around for granted, and regularly fail to appreciate the contributions they make to our lives and businesses.

Anyone who’s worked in a busy restaurant knows that talented and professional waitresses can manage nut cases of all kinds just as well—if not better—than a shrink on a couch somewhere. And anyone who’s watched The Pitt knows that the nurses probably save at least as many lives as the doctors, and get little or no credit for it. It may be the only medical show where the main charge nurse plays a recurring and prominent role throughout each episode. This is the kind of messaging we need to have far more of in order to move the needle. No pun intended.

If you’ve ever walked into an office and found a receptionist who’s too “busy” to pay attention and acknowledge you while you cool your heels and feel like an imposition, it was probably a place that didn’t understand that receptionists are the face and front line of a business, and that you don’t get a second chance in this world to make a first impression. If you’re not eager to please, ready to help, on the case, and raring to go, you shouldn’t be at the desk.

All of which brings me to The Rhonda Rule. Years ago, in Chicago, I built and ran 1871, which was the Number 1 university-affiliated technology incubator in the world, with more than 500 startups under one massive roof. We hosted tech geniuses, hundreds of VCs and investors, foreign leaders, ambassadors, and other dignitaries, President Bill Clinton, many U.S. Senators and Congressmen (when those people still had working spines), and thousand of other visitors every month for a number of years. The place was huge, the energy and enthusiasm were through the roof, and the excitement was palpable. It was the best show in town, with Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel acting as a regular cheerleader. The receptionist at the front desk’s name was Rhonda.

Years later, as I travelled all over the world to meet with many of our diverse guests at their various venues and company sites, the first question they asked me was always the same. They asked if Rhoda was still there, and if so, they asked me to be sure to please say “hello” to her from them.

Rhonda was at 1871 for many years, and the impression she consistently made on these serious businessmen and women from around the world was the best sales tool for 1871 and the strongest single memory that these folks had of our entire institution. She never had less than a happy smile on her face. She never forgot a name. She treated everyone who came through that door exactly the same—as an honored guest who was welcome—and as a respected individual. What really came through the daily interactions was just how much she loved what she was doing. That warmth, openness and attention set the stage for everything at 1871 that might follow, and she did it with great style and made it always seem effortless.

Every job can be challenging and rewarding if you let your people make the job their own, encourage them to add themselves to the equation, and have them take control and ownership of the work. All work is creative if it’s done by someone thinking about what they’re doing instead of repeating a routine they learned from others in an uncritical stupor or following a set of rules and procedures that make no sense in the real world. Any job worth doing is worth doing well.

The real goal of every service business is to create the intangible but crucial feeling of being cared for and that’s the responsibility of everyone—top to bottom—working in the business. And sometimes, the measure of those feelings is not simply how you feel in someone’s presence, but how acutely you miss the person when they’re gone.

 

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS HIS LATEST INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN

 LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

AI Is Coming for This Age-Old Industry

Many business leaders don’t yet appreciate the speed at which AI is progressing—and how rapidly it’s moving both downstream and upstream in the labor task stack.

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

Jan 5, 2026

 

I spoke recently at an annual meeting for owners and managers of large commercial construction firms and, of course, a great deal of the conversation was about the impacts of automation, robotics and AI on their industry. I came away from the meeting and the many side conversations with one overwhelming impression—these folks think that their industry will be one of the very last to be adversely impacted by AI because, as one guy put it, “software can’t swing a sledgehammer.” The necessity for large quantities of manual labor in all of their projects would be their salvation for the foreseeable future.

They had all seen charts projecting the relative degrees of exposure that various industries had to new technologies, and typically construction was at or near the bottom of the lists. They admitted that every few months they were seeing new tools, equipment, and computer-driven machines being introduced which augmented the abilities of their workers and took over certain manual functions, but they didn’t envision a time any time soon when those folks would actually be entirely replaced. Watching a mobile robot with an extendable arm equipped with a nail gun handle an entire ceiling of precise installations instead of some poor guy with a ladder, bursitis and a sore shoulder trying to do the same overhead job, but taking five times as long, tells you everything you need to know about where we’re ultimately headed.

My audience members were actually far more concerned about the fact that—in order to keep up with the growing national demand—and given the fact that their workforce was rapidly aging out, the construction industry will need more than 500,000 additional workers each year. I’ve repeatedly stressed the need for massive increases in vocational training starting in high school and, in many cases, entirely in lieu of an expensive, debt-infused and time-consuming traditional four-year college education.

It’s possible that the industry leaders are finally waking up to the fact that they can’t simply leave this issue up to the educators or frankly the government if they want something substantial and timely to be done about the labor shortages. Education is a business that’s too important and too valuable to be left in the hands of educators. Of course, because almost everything Trump does largely screws his own supporters, thousands of skilled “foreign” workers are being seized, arrested, deported or simply scared off these very job sites across the country by the masked ICE clowns, so the current labor shortages are getting worse every day.

I think the unfortunate aspect of this situation is that the target industries and operators don’t yet appreciate the speed at which the level of AI understanding and intelligence is progressing and how rapidly it’s moving both downstream and upstream in the labor task stack. I have some particular expertise and experience in this process because I watched a very similar progression in the auto insurance industry starting decades ago where computer-created estimates quickly replaced the manual work product of thousands of experienced adjusters.

The computers knew in minutes the work typically required for a given repair, the parts needed, the time required to perform the operations, and, of course, exactly what the total costs of the entire claim should be. If the damage was severe and the car was a total loss, the computers could calculate and make a settlement offer instantly. Veteran adjusters with years and years of field work were reduced to glorified picture takers of the wrecked vehicles involved. With the advent of the cell phone and the ability of computers to now read and interpret images, the claimants and insured themselves can submit photos and save everyone the time and costs of having adjusters travel to physically inspect the cars. When you add to this situation, the cumulative experience which all the computers and AI systems now have of thousands of prior wrecks and repairs based on similar, if not identical, vehicles, it’s possible for the systems to generate claim settlement offers on the fly and thereby save all of the parties weeks of costs and delays in resolving accident and theft claims.   

As I watch the costing processes on construction sites these days, the job cost “estimators” whose expertise is doing take-offs and other calculations to arrive at multi-million dollar cost estimates for entire construction projects, it’s clear that their days are also numbered, and the precision guesswork that they do will quite rapidly be supplemented and eventually entirely replaced by AI systems. This is another situation where their considerable and hard-earned knowledge and abilities will quickly be devalued in two respects: first, the nature of the work that they are charged with estimating will be quickly and radically changed; and second, the AI systems will have better and more immediate access to all of the costs of the components, materials, labor, etc. in real time as compared to the old-time estimators’ seat-of-the-pants guesses.

Here again, a simple example is the programmable robotic painting machine which can now tape and paint an entire room in a fraction of the prior time required with sufficient directions from the construction plans to move around doors, windows and other openings and precisely apply the exact amount of paint required. While an old-time estimator might know what time it took Joe, the painter, and his assistant to get the room done, the AI system already knows what it will cost for the robots to paint the entire building and how long it will take. This isn’t science fiction or some distant future vision; this is what’s happening on the ground every day right now. And finally, it takes one or two guys to watch the robots rather than a dozen guys to paint the place.

As the farmer said to his horse: “You won’t lose your job to a tractor, but to a horse who learns to drive a tractor.”

LOOP NORTH NEWS - HOWARD TULLMAN - DON'T SEND YOUR KIDS TO COLLEGE

 

Don’t send your kids to college

In our emerging economy, learning how to do something, like carpentry, may have more value than going to a university for four expensive years.

By Howard Tullman

21-Oct-24 – Want your kids to still love you when they’re in their 30s, when they’ve started work at a real job, busted their butts for a few years, maybe had a child or two of their own, and hopefully come to appreciate how hard you had to work – at whatever you did – to provide them with viable options and serious opportunities for a strong and secure future?

If so, then now’s a great time to do your offspring a real favor, wherever they are on the education and employment treadmill. Tell them that, for the next decade or so, the smart money is on vocational training, OJT, and concrete careers rather than investing four or more years on college and grad school followed by a fruitless search for employment in areas of the economy that are disappearing. Today, I’d rather be a longshoreman than a lawyer, a builder rather than a banker and, for sure, a plumber rather than a political science major.

The ugly alternative for millions of students whose parents, like so many lemmings, followed the traditional route and fumbled their kids’ future, is to condemn them after college to a few years of wishful thinking, lots of numbing networking, go-nowhere gigs, and endless pleading emails to family and friends. All of that accompanied by a challenging clump of college debt that will likely be an albatross around their necks for decades.

(Left) Welders working on a caisson form on the Chicago River west of Dearborn Street.

In addition to the unavoidable loan repayment load, these graduates suffer from the deluded and misleading indoctrination offered by the faculties of most colleges and universities. These Ph.D. fantasy factories do a miserable job of setting realistic expectations and goals for their graduates.

A-range grades at Harvard and Yale represent almost 80 percent of all grades “earned” by students at these two schools. You might ask yourself how those participation awards compare with the typical distribution of team members’ performances in your company and how this kind of “everyone’s a star and a winner” crap is helpful in preparing students for the vagaries and vicissitudes of the working world. Inflated grading on a curve doesn’t help anyone outside of these institutions although it keeps the campers and their parents happy.

The reason we’re seeing so many employers unhappy with the newest crop of employees has a lot more to do with attitude problems, unreal expectations, and accelerated entitlement than with actual aptitude. That’s because in the real world of work, you learn a cruel lesson early on: that the amount of education you allegedly need to get a job has risen much faster than the amount of education you actually need to do a job.

There are three main reasons for this disparity:

First, the present job occupants don’t want new, younger threats to their own positions, so they raise the bar, expand the requirements, and effectively pull up the drawbridge. But much to their dismay, the inbound tide is unstoppable. By 2025, there will be more Gen Zs in the workforce than boomers – and the Gen Zs are coming for those very jobs.

Second, there are fewer and fewer available jobs in certain “soft skill” sectors like banking, finance, and publishing, because the mid-level positions in every organization are being compressed or eliminated. So, the competition for scarcer slots is fiercer than ever and the paper credentials required are more substantial, even though they may have little bearing on the candidate’s actual ability to do the job in question.

In the long haul, preparation, perspiration, and passion ultimately win out over diplomas from even the fanciest schools.

The third reason is the growth and expansion of disruptive technologies, which are changing the work requirements in many of these fields. There’s no doubt that automation, robotics, and AI are job killers, but the nasty little secret is that the expected devastation is highly targeted and primarily aimed at middle management, administrators, editors, and bean counters.

Jobs are on the front lines

But the good news is that the front-line folks – the ones who need to deal with and deliver the goods and services to the ultimate customers, the ones who work with their hands and their heads – will always have secure positions. This is true across the board, whether it’s construction, maintenance, early education, nursing and elder care, or anything in hospitality and retail. You’re always going to need a meat sack at the end of the production line if you care at all about customer satisfaction and results.

Columnist George Will says that we don’t have enough trained workers to build our nuclear subs, and those vessels are the most formidable tools we have to defend our shores and discourage our enemies on multiple fronts. We’re going to need millions of new team members to support our most fundamental industries and they’re not going to be coming exclusively from traditional colleges and universities.

I’m increasingly convinced that vocational education, industry apprenticeships, and union labor may save our kids as well as our ships. We all learn by doing, not just by watching or listening. It’s a “put up or shut up” world today. When you’re working side-by-side with others who’ve been there and done it, the ongoing “education” isn’t limited to specific physical skills; you learn a lot about cooperation, connection, community, and work ethic. Unlike college, it’s never just about you.

The bottom line: I’d rather be a welder than a writer, a mechanic not a mathematician, and a nurse rather than a naturalist.

Howard Tullman is General Managing Partner for G2T3V, LLC – Investors in Disruptive Innovators, and for Chicago High Tech Investors, LLC. He is also the author of Words of Wisdom: A 60-year compilation.

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

Don’t Send Your Kids to College 

In our emerging economy, learning how to do something, like carpentry, may have more value than going to a university for four expensive years. 

 

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

OCT 15, 2024

Want your kids to still love you when they’re in their 30s, when they’ve started work at a real job, busted their butts for a few years, maybe had a child or two of their own, and hopefully come to appreciate how hard you had to work – at whatever you did – to provide them with viable options and serious opportunities for a strong and secure future?

If so, then now’s a great time to do your offspring a real favor, wherever they are on the education and employment treadmill.  Tell them that, for the next decade or so, the smart money is on vocational training, OJT and concrete careers rather than investing four or more years on college and grad school followed by a fruitless search for employment in areas of the economy that are disappearing. Today, I’d rather be a longshoreman than a lawyer, a builder rather than a banker and, for sure, a plumber rather than a political science major.

The ugly alternative for millions of students whose parents, like so many lemmings, followed the traditional route and fumbled their kids’ future, is to condemn them after college to a few years of wishful thinking, lots of numbing networking, go-nowhere gigs, and endless pleading emails to family and friends. All of that accompanied by a challenging clump of college debt that will likely be an albatross around their necks for decades. In addition to the unavoidable loan repayment load, these graduates suffer from the deluded and misleading indoctrination offered by the faculties of most colleges and universities. These Ph.D. fantasy factories do a miserable job of setting realistic expectations and goals for their graduates.

A-range grades at Harvard and Yale represent almost 80% of all grades “earned” by students at these two schools. You might ask yourself how those participation awards compare with the typical distribution of team members’ performances in your company and how this kind of  “everyone’s a star and a winner” crap is helpful in preparing students for the vagaries and vicissitudes of the working world. Inflated grading on a curve doesn’t help anyone outside of these institutions although it keeps the campers and their parents very happy.  

The reason we’re seeing so many employers unhappy with the newest crop of employees has a lot more to do with attitude problems, unreal expectations, and accelerated entitlement than with actual aptitude. That’s because in the real world of work, you learn a cruel lesson early on: that the amount of education you allegedly need to get a job has risen much faster than the amount of education you actually need to do a job.

DON’T FIGHT THE TREND

There are three main reasons for this disparity:

First, the present job occupants don’t want  new, younger threats to their own positions, so they raise the bar, expand the requirements, and effectively pull up the drawbridge. But much to their dismay, the inbound tide is unstoppable. By 2025, there will be more Gen Z’s in the workforce than boomers– and the Gen Z’s are coming for those very jobs.

Second, there are fewer and fewer available jobs in certain “soft skill” sectors like banking, finance, and publishing, because the mid-level positions in every organization are being compressed or eliminated. So, the competition for scarcer slots is fiercer than ever and the paper credentials required are more substantial, even though they may have little bearing on the candidate’s actual ability to do the job in question. In the long haul, preparation, perspiration and passion ultimately win out over diplomas from even the fanciest schools.

The third reason is the growth and expansion of disruptive technologies, which are changing the work requirements in many of these fields. There’s no doubt that automation, robotics and AI are job killers, but the nasty little secret is that the expected devastation is highly targeted and primarily aimed at middle management, administrators, editors, and bean counters.

WHERE THE JOBS ARE

But the good news is that the front-line folks — the ones who need to deal with and deliver the goods and services to the ultimate customers, the ones who work with their hands and their heads — will always have secure positions. This is true across the board, whether it’s construction, maintenance, early education, nursing and elder care, or anything in hospitality and retail. You’re always going to need a meat sack at the end of the production line if you care at all about customer satisfaction and results.

Columnist George Will says that we don’t have enough trained workers to build our nuclear subs and those vessels are the most formidable tools we have to defend our shores and discourage our enemies on multiple fronts. We’re going to need millions of new team members to support our most fundamental industries and they’re not going to be coming exclusively from traditional colleges and universities.

I’m increasingly convinced that vocational education, industry apprenticeships, and union labor may save our kids as well as our ships. We all learn by doing, not just by watching or listening. It’s a “put up or shut up” world today. When you’re working side-by-side with others who’ve been there and done it, the ongoing “education” isn’t limited to specific physical skills; you learn a lot about cooperation, connection, community and work ethic. Unlike college, it’s never just about you.

The bottom line: I’d rather be a welder than a writer, a mechanic not a mathematician, and a nurse rather than a naturalist.