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.

NEW COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

THE FASTEST RAT IN THE RACE IS STILL A RODENT

            Over the last 50 years, I’ve given hundreds of speeches to ambitious students, eager educators, anxious graduates, new business builders, experienced entrepreneurs, seasoned executives and owners/operators of large and small companies. And, notwithstanding the perils of repeating myself, I have always offered a few basic “perspiration” principles which I believe have more than stood the test of time at least until recently with the arrival of Trump 2.0. where anything goes, everyone’s out for themselves, honor, sacrifice and loyalty are all regarded as foolish notions, and all that matters is who you can blame and abuse, who you can buy or bribe, what you can make your own and what you can get away with taking while you’re at it. None of this bodes well for the next several generations and there’s really no near-term relief or solution in sight. But we owe it to ourselves, our kids, and our employees to say something. It’s not enough to simply note that the fastest rat who wins the race is still a rodent. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/leadership-employees-president-trump-communication/91250512.)

            My primary pitches and premises for decades were simple: have a realistic goal, work hard toward it every day, pay attention to your customers and the people around you, focus on what’s important and what matters, sweat the details and pay your dues, tell the truth even when it hurts, have each other’s backs, and try hard to treat everyone fairly. The basics never really change, but these days the ways they’re regarded and valued - like the skill sets of millions of older workers - are constantly shifting in the wrong direction. Everyone today needs a trick or a gimmick; there are sneaky shortcuts and cheap cheats for everything – shame on you if you can’t find them – and only the little people still need to work hard for a living.

I used to argue that the ultimate goal for anyone trying to grow and move ahead in an organization was to be the “go-to guy” – the one that everyone else could count on, rely upon, and know that he or she would go the extra mile to get the job done. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/to-succedd-be-the-one-everyone-can-count-on.html.) Five simple guidelines for getting things done: Stay up (perspiration), Step up (passion and commitment), Study up (preparation), Stand up (principles and morals), and Buck up (perseverance). The world was never really fair, but we believed back in the day that it leaned toward the ones who worked hardest and cared the most and bent toward justice. These days it’s all about dodging the bullets, dirty dealing, avoiding the blame and staying in the shadows so the “boss” gets all the glory.

Today, even as I write these traditional concepts, I’m overcome by the feeling that they’re sorely out of date, naïve, and sadly pollyannaish. In the Trump world, where grifting is a religion, trust is a distant and much disparaged idea, and scams and schemes stain every part of the government, the entire feckless and grossly unqualified administration is filled with robotically obedient and fearful fools constantly looking over their shoulders to see who’s most likely to stab them in the back. They don’t even understand that Trump prefers to humiliate people, tell them to their faces that they’re worthless, and stab them squarely in their guts. Even if you please this corrupt and venal pig, your days are still numbered because he cares about no one but himself.

This is what our kids, employees, customers and clients see every day on their phones and screens where none of these criminals and perverts make even the slightest attempt to hide what’s going on – they preen and gloat instead - or how they feel that the old laws and moral behaviors simply don’t apply to them. This is the message and the permission that the Orange Monster has given them and all the MAGAts with the cooperation and connivance of the Supreme Court and the ultimate submission and cowardice of the Congress.

As a result, we’re all finding it harder and harder with a straight face and any degree of confidence to tell a young man or woman what the new ground rules are for success, why it still makes sense to act honorably and honestly, and how they should prepare themselves to function in a world that seems like a Washington Wonderland. A time and place where the rules, the laws and even the facts are fluid and change regularly at the whims of someone who rarely remembers (or flatly denies) whatever he spewed the day before. Dementia Don is putting the whole country and our democracy in peril as we watch helplessly and listen to his lies.

As Humpty Dumpty declared: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” When Trump speaks these days and lies out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, it’s pretty clear that not even he understands what’s he’s saying or what he means. He’s ignorant and unwilling to learn, he’s arrogant and utterly amoral, and he’s a demented sociopath. His enabling sycophants and sorry suck-ups like Noem, Hegseth and Leavitt are even worse. They stupidly lie to our collective faces more fervently every day with spurious suggestions claiming that we are fools to believe what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears. Their arrogance knows no bounds and they’re shameless and eager to rub it in our faces.

Frankly, I never thought I’d write a piece like I did a couple of weeks ago where I expressed my sincere hope that Netflix had found and employed its own “fixers” and “guys who knew guys” so that it would have a serious prospect of overcoming the efforts of the rotten government regulators, crooked administration flunkies, and even the overt and public pronouncements of the Crook-in-Chief himself as they combined to interfere with, interrupt and otherwise influence the outcome and determine the winning buyer in Warner Bros Discovery deal. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/netflix-warner-bros-discovery-trump/91282958.)  

But these are the sick, corrupt and demented times that we live in today and this is the business world that every upcoming entrepreneur, business owner, manager and operator needs to work in. And it’s on us to tell them something. I’ve already told businesses that in the fragile, confused and shaky post-pandemic world with elections right around the corner the smartest thing you can do is hunker down and take it slow. (See  https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/four-rules-for-the-next-six-months.html.)

But now I’ve also had to alter and temper my advice to the up-and-comers. Here’s what I’d tell your team, your peers and your kids today.

1.     No one wants to be average or just do a “decent” job.

Now is simply not the time to take giant leaps or make waves. It’s frankly a time to be grateful for the job that you have and to concentrate on doing that job as well as you possibly can. No one enjoys playing for a tie, but for the moment good enough may be plenty. It’s OK to have big dreams for down the line, but for now patience and solid performance are the priorities. Remember that you’re not working solely for yourself – plenty of others are depending on you as well – inside and outside of the office.

2.     Having low expectations is the key to happiness these days.

Everyone wants to set the world on fire in a good way except, of course, Trump who’s happy to burn the whole place down and run off with the billions he and his family and chums have stolen. But for us working stiffs, at the moment, it’s an entirely different calculation. I used to say that, if you settle for less than you deserve, you’ll eventually get even less than you settled for, but now I think that it’s most important to accept gratefully what you’ve earned, focus on your family, save and protect what you have, hunker down, and remember that there are unfortunately millions in our country who have far less to be thankful for than you do. It’s not everything, but it’s far better than nothing.

3.     Get used to disappointment in our “leaders” – it’s par for the course.

At the circus, the crooked carnies at least know that they are carnies. They don’t try to kid themselves like our corrupt politicians and grifting leaders who like to pretend that they’re statesmen and serious professionals when the fact is that they’re all on the take and all bending over to placate and avoid Trump’s wrath even as they watch him mentally fall apart and circle the drain. They are all just praying that they don’t also get sucked in when the toilet is finally flushed.

4.     If you want to succeed, keep things simple, small and specific.

No one’s saving the world these days and sadly too many of the standard charitable activities are too broad, too random, too vaguely impactful and often spending their funds in the wrong ways and places. Arbitrary empathy is largely an empty gesture for all concerned. If you want to make a difference and actually have some connection to and satisfaction from your efforts, stay simple, small, and specific. Help one person, one family, or one business to start.

Maybe things will get better in a few years. The further away the future is, the better it looks. Right now, it still looks pretty bleak.

 

 

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.”

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

I Hope Netflix Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy

How do we get business leaders to act in their own best interests, even as their greed and indifference keeps them from doing anything?

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

Dec 29, 2025

 

I’ve pretty much abandoned any hope that you can have an intelligent talk with any of your former business associates about the merits of any of the programs, policies or orders flying out of the Oval Office, or even be certain who is authoring and issuing these diktats in the name of a demonstrably illiterate emperor. The sad truth is that so many formerly rational and reasonable people are now MAGA folk who are still trying to defend the cruelty, wretched excesses, despicable slanders of the dead, flagrant thefts and grifting, narcissistic branding and destruction of historic buildings for its own sake that are the hallmarks of the second Trump regime.

I’m just praying that some day soon it’s going to dawn on a critical mass of them that it’s only a matter of time before it’s their own butts and businesses in the sling, because what comes around goes around, and everyone knows that no one is safe from the greed, jealousy and hate that thrives these days in our nation’s capital.

I hope that these entrepreneurs, owners and operators know a guy who knows a guy or that, like Netflix at the moment, they’re running around furiously looking for such a person who’s happily connected, corrupt and complicit. Because that’s what doing business in the U.S. for any large, regulated company has come down to–it’s a mob and gangster mentality. You need a fixer with a checkbook and access to Trump or you’re just as likely to be the next item on the menu. When you get in a cage with a tiger, you’re not a visitor, you’re eventually lunch. It’s media and entertainment right now, and paid-for pardons galore of course, but don’t think any industry is safe or isolated from these crooks and creeps. After all, they’ve watched Putin, Orban and their acolytes run this program over and over again. You can’t reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.

I’m not talking simply about the cultists who buy every sick word out of the mouths of these crooked cabinet members, vengeful regulatory heads, and other pathetic and punitive agency executives. Unfortunately, the venom and poison spewed daily by the Orange Monster and his band of enablers, sycophants and flunkies has spread so broadly across the entire political spectrum that there’s virtually no one left in the business world who still calls themselves Republicans and who are willing to have any honest discussion at all about what’s going on right before our eyes in Washington. But they all know in the back of their heads that Trump’s favorite fable has always been about the tender-hearted woman who invites the snake home and ends up being bitten. That’s why all the tech CEOs prancing around the White House with blank stares and fake smiles actually look like they’re walking on eggshells. They’re just waiting for the next shoe to drop and hoping that it’s not a boot on their respective throats.

Of course, this continued pattern of delusion, studied ignorance and abject avoidance is largely because these makers and mavens foolishly continue to believe that their own lives and businesses won’t be impacted or harmed by the demented craziness, the TACO tariffs, the wanton destruction and hollowing out of entire government agencies—not to mention the constant din of the drums of war. They must be able to see that no one has the slightest idea from day to day of what insanity to expect next from Trump.

They also know that stability and predictability have always been essential attributes of our economy, stock market, and trade policies. But as long as a dozen or so tech and AI-centric story stocks keep driving the stock indices to new heights, they’ll keep on ignoring the underlying fragility of our economy and think that everything will be business as usual—if they just keep their heads down and mouths shut. After all, it’s the nail that’s sticking up which always gets pounded into the floor.

But my real concern is two-fold. First, can we do anything to wake these folks up and explain to them that they don’t have to be patriots or liberals to understand that the continued damage and destruction of our laws, institutions, fundamental beliefs, and actual economy are no longer simply debatable “political” issues; they’re existential concerns for all of us, regardless of our political leanings. As my friend Bill McGowan said long ago, “These guys have great loyalty to their businesses, but their number one loyalty is to their own tush.” How do we get them to act in their own best interests even as their greed and indifference keeps them from doing anything?

And second, what do we say to teach the new business builders and the next generations of entrepreneurs about how the world works when honesty, effort, commitment, integrity, the laws and truth simply no longer matter, when winning by any means is all that counts, and when any issue or problem you may encounter along the way that can be solved with a check or a timely donation isn’t a problem at all? No longer do you work your butt off and build your business to success; you bribe and buy your way there through crooked politicians, rotten regulators, and agencies governing and ruling according to the latest threats, demands and flatulent formulations from D.C. A material part of every business calculation will now have to be the cost of paying fixers, agents and middlemen to keep the intrusive and venal government off your back or to sic these fake regulators on your competition.

Netflix’s owners and managers must be sweating bullets right now and looking desperately for help and leverage as they try to complete their acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery in the face of looming and corrupt opposition and promised interference from the Trump administration and Trump himself, as well as competition from the Ellison family who have contributed millions of dollars to Trump over many years and who have already assured Trump that their successful acquisition of WBD and its “independent” subsidiary CNN will quickly and completely shut down one of the last viable media vehicles for criticizing him, just as they have already done with CBS.

It’s increasingly difficult as the new year looms to be hopeful and optimistic that things will improve any time soon but there is one thing we can rely upon in watching all of these greed heads circle around each other and constantly fight over the spoils: if you count on self-interest, not self-sacrifice, from these people, you will never be disappointed.

Feeding the insatiable monsters heading our country at the moment is an exponentially more difficult task. Hopefully, they will eventually turn on and consume each other as we’ve seen with the regularly disappearing Russian oligarchs who are apparently the world’s most accident-prone individuals. Those who foolishly seek power by riding the back of the tiger often end up inside.

 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

4 Keys to Making a Deal That’s a Keeper

These simple steps to take early on in any negotiation will save time and money and increase the likelihood that the arrangement will be one you can live with.

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

Nov 4, 2025

 

 

One of the first things they teach young corporate lawyers is to leave the ugly and difficult stuff to the very end of negotiations, when the parties are weak, tired and sick of the entire proceedings. In fact, the most experienced M&A attorneys will admit that an even better idea is to paper over the present and future problems, push the tough questions down the line, and leave the heartaches and the lawsuits to the next group of bloodsuckers. They tell you that your litigation partners will thank you in advance for their future fees.

This concept is also a critical part of the ground rules and gospel of all divorce lawyers, regardless of which side of the argument they happen to be on. No one who’s ever been there believes for a moment that these avaricious advocates can serve anyone’s interest but their own. The basic idea—after creating every delay possible in the proceedings and wringing all the fees possible out of their victims—is to get some closure so they can get on to their next case and never look back.

For the perspective of any poor entrepreneur sucked into one of these seemingly endless negotiation sessions, there really isn’t any simple or foolproof way to avoid the mess. There is, however, one rule to absolutely keep top of mind throughout the entire process. The easier the deal is to get done, the harder it will be to implement. This is why it’s your basic job to be difficult when it matters, regardless of what your own attorneys argue or caution and notwithstanding all the pressure from everyone else in the room to just get things done. This is a difficult position to put yourself in and it takes a while and a few different attempts and contexts to develop the thick skin, blank stare, and willingness to ask the same questions over and over until you get a solid and clear answer to them. You need to forsake peace for truth telling. The price you pay for momentary peace is always too high.

All of which is presently and painfully on display as the world watches Trump’s latest deluded lie about bringing peace to the Middle East fall apart in just days after it was touted and paraded everywhere. It was foolish, naïve and embarrassing for experienced negotiators and the public at large to think for a moment that an agreement with dozens of deferred terms and concessions including disarmament of Hamas and its expulsion from Gaza would ever come to pass in the absence of further military intervention. Once again, the Trump art of the deal turns out to be a fraud on us all. It appears that Putin’s not the only one to make a fool repeatedly of the Orange Monster. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, also just made Trump look like a clueless clown by giving back a small fraction of what China took away in exchange for major further concessions by Trump trying to save face as he backs away from a tariff battle that he stupidly started.

But even this miserable example provides simple negotiating lessons for entrepreneurs in their own business dealings. There are a few simple steps to take early on in any negotiation in order to save time and money and significantly increase the likelihood that the ultimate arrangement will be one that you can live with.

1. Start at the end, not the beginning.

Make it clear that certain basics are non-negotiable and that they are absolute requirements for getting any deal done. Don’t let these be deferred or glossed over.  You should never deny your firmest convictions for the sake of peace and quiet. There is zero chance that Hamas will ever give up its weapons and only a fool would believe otherwise. They’ve said it before the ceasefire and now they’ve said it after the ceasefire—even going so far on TV as admitting that it’s only a “hudna” which means a pause. On the other hand, Mamdani campaigned for Mayor in the NYC primary on some very risky propositions and made some over-the-top promises and, to his credit, he has maintained those stances, for better or worse, and even doubled down on some which has made his position abundantly clear to all.

2. Stick to your guns and stand alone if necessary.

Everyone in any meeting will have their own agenda, including the folks on your side and the professionals working for you. It’s rare that all these will be aligned. Open declarations and consistent clarity on your part will save everyone time. It’s far better to be an asshole in the moment and even risk the deal than to suffer years later with an agreement, terms, and conditions that you knew wouldn’t get the job done but settled for in order to keep the peace. Seeking consensus on aggressively contested points is more likely to lead to a mediocre outcome than to a happy ending.

3. Acknowledge that some deals just can never get done.

Wishing, hoping and beating a dead horse aren’t ways to get where you want to go. Sometimes, you just can’t get there from here and it’s smart and prudent to acknowledge that as soon as it’s clear. If you sit there long enough, all that happens is that you get subjected to a constant stream of asks for compromises, small concessions, deferments or flat out give-ups—all in the name of good faith, false hopes and sharing the pain. It’s like being slowly pecked to death by a flock of angry geese.

4. Remember the rule of the slippery slope.

Every negotiation contains a number of detours, rabbit holes, and slippery slopes which all need to be avoided. Detours and rabbit holes merely waste your time. Slippery slopes are outright dangerous because they’re inducements and invitations to settle various matters for everyone’s sake except your own. But even worse is the end result. You need to always remember the rule: the minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

How to Talk to Your Employees About Trump

Start by telling them what it takes to be a real leader. 

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

Oct 14, 2025

We have a liar as our President, and we’re stuck with him for the next three-plus years. Whether you’re a business owner, parent, or both, we consistently need to say something to our kids and everyone else in our lives who’s trying to make sense of this cynical charade. As numb as we all are at the moment, it’s dumb to stay quiet any longer. 

We have a leader who lies the way most people breathe. It’s beyond second nature to him. He doesn’t merely lie to secure a certain objective or interest (apart from his desire to be a King); he lies because he enjoys it, because he can’t help himself, and because it’s a central part of his deeply-flawed character. And because he intuitively believes what Thomas Jefferson said so many years ago: “A continual circulation of lies among those who are not much in the way of hearing them contradicted will in time pass for the truth”.  If Trump has a credo, this is it: A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. 

We laughed that the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman was that the car salesmen knew he was lying to you. The computer guy barely understood what it was that he was selling. Trump knows he’s lying and knows exactly what he’s trying to accomplish. To scare us, to turn us against each other, to always blame the “other,” and to incessantly aggrandize himself. It actually seems to be getting worse. His continued attempts to declare himself King aren’t very different from the claims in ancient France of Louis XIV that “l’etat c’est moi.” Trump thinks saying makes it so and claims that “when somebody’s the president of the United States, his authority is total.” The slime ball Stephen Miller blurts out that Trump’s power is plenary and then instantly regrets on live TV accidentally speaking the truth.  

So how do we fairly describe for our employees and our families just what is happening to our government and our country and why we can no longer in good conscience believe anything said by its clearly deranged and dishonest, leader?    Start by telling them what it takes to be a real leader. 
 
1. Leaders can cast shadow or light. Everything about Trump is dark and divisive. 
 
2. Leaders must understand that they’re part of something greater than themselves. Trump actually believes that he’s the king of the world. 
 
3. You’re not a leader until others believe that you are putting them first. Trump is about nothing but Trump. 
 
4. A leader never blames his people for his failings. Trump is utterly incapable of accepting either blame or responsibility. He blames everyone but himself. 
 
5. Leaders can either swell or grow. We can only hope, as the swelling and bloat continue, that Trump bursts one of these days.

The embarrassing, baseless, and arrogant assertions will continue as long as the mainstream media refuse to challenge or confront Trump. When tin-pot dictators lose the people’s trust, confidence, and belief, they seize upon authority as their final claim of support. The truth is that no one ever believed in Trump—he was a cartoon and a joke from the start—but unfortunately too many people acting in their own self-interest saw him as a weapon and a vehicle to secure their own aims. They held their collective noses, looked elsewhere, and let the clown run wild. We have only one person to blame for this mess and that’s each other.

Lies often reveal who and what the liar wishes he could be, and Trump has desperately sought the approval of the powerful and the media since his earliest days. He was by his own account always the biggest, the best, and the loudest, but he was never taken seriously. He has been a farcical caricature and, as he berates the press to their faces in the White House (and forever soils the place with his venom), we see just how bent and bitter he truly is. It’s pathetic and beyond embarrassing to see this out-of-control reality show character singling out and slandering the press and, by extension, the public’s interests, which they attempt to represent. The press may deserve a fair amount of criticism and contempt for its own shortcomings and failings, but his actions are simply beyond the pale.   

Now the Cheerleader-in-Chief, with the help of the feckless Speaker Mike Johnson—who does whatever Trump demands—thinks he can adjourn Congress for as long as he pleases to keep the Epstein files hidden from the public. This stupid ploy is doomed, but it’s also very reminiscent of an old Hollywood quote from Samuel Goldwyn about his employees, which couldn’t be more fitting and timelier for our current circumstances. He said: “I’ll take 50 percent efficiency to get 100 percent loyalty.” And boy, don’t we know that and see it every day in action. Lying may be an essential part of politics, but lying to yourself (as Trump does every day) and believing your own lies is pathological. 

To make things worse, Trump’s ego is so fragile and sensitive—and so easily offended—that, for the slightest perceived slights, he pummels the press and even his own people and rubs things in their faces on a daily basis right before our eyes. He’s an overbearing bully, a mini-martinet, and a retweeting weasel to boot. Samuel Goldwyn’s most famous observation fits here too.  He famously said: “I want everybody to tell me the truth, even if it costs them their job.”

Speaking the truth is no easy task with people (young or old) who have been raised to respect the office of the president and, sadly, the courts as well, to err on the side of goodness and give any occupant the benefit of the doubt in terrible circumstances, and to believe that anyone in such a position of trust and responsibility would act—not in his own selfish interest and for favored special interests—but for the good of the country as a whole.