Things That Comfort Me When Every Fucking Thing Goes Wrong: Donut-Related Wisdom.

Things tend to go wrong. This is a series of blog posts about the things I think about during those moments when the wrong things happen.

My sophomore year of college, I loaded up the Ford Explorer and headed to St. Louis to go watch a football game. I had a giant cooler filled with ice, beer and semi-refrigerated meats. I was wearing a yellow, pinstriped blazer. I left around rush hour.

And 10 minutes into the drive, I heard a noise under the hood that sounded distinctly like a small reserve of Roman candles going off all at once.

I pulled over in Kingdom City, this little town east of Columbia, Mo., that’s most famous for trying to secede from the Union back when that was still in fashion. They’ve got a few garages there, and I pulled into one where they serviced 18-wheelers. I kept the car running while the mechanics took a look under the hood. They didn’t look long before delivering a verdict:

My engine was about to explode.

So I won’t be driving this thing to St. Louis, I asked?

Not if you want to live, they said.

And suddenly, I found myself very much stranded in Kingdom City, Mo., population 128.

But then I started to think about contingency plans. Could I get a ride in the morning? Did I know anyone else driving through to St. Louis that night? Should I just cancel the whole trip?

And then I remembered: There’s this van company that shuttles travelers from Columbia, Mo., to the St. Louis airport. They make a few trips a day. Sometimes, they make a stop in Kingdom City at the local McDonald’s.

I didn’t have a smartphone, but I did happen to have the shuttle company’s number stored on my phone. I called and asked when the next shuttle might be coming through Kingdom City.

It was coming in seven minutes, they said. I asked if I could pay with credit card over the phone. They told me: Forget about the credit card. Start running towards the van.

So I started running, the yellow jacket on one arm, the cooler of beer and meats and ice wheeling behind me. The lid was duct taped shut.

I beat the shuttle to the McDonald’s parking lot by a minute or two, but I was still sucking air when they pulled up. I asked the driver if I could pay by credit card. He said no. Cash only.

The exact cost of the trip is lost to memory, but I do remember that it was a slightly unusual number. I think it was $42.

I opened my wallet. I had exactly $42 inside.

So that’s how I got to St. Louis that weekend.

Was I lucky? Absolutely. Everything was going wrong. My car was dying. I was screwed. But there just happened to be a garage that could help me when I needed help. There just happened to be a St. Louis-bound shuttle coming through town when I needed it. I just happened to have the to-the-decimal-point amount of cash I needed to pay for the shuttle.

But there’s more to this story than that. I’m thinking now about this breakfast place I love. They’ve got these words inscribed on the top of their menu, and I’m rather fond of them:

Keep your eye on the donut, and not on the hole.

I love that. When things go wrong, we lose focus on what’s important. We focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do have.

I didn’t have a working car at that moment, but I did have all the tools to get me to St. Louis that weekend. That was the goal: Get to St. Louis.

I kept my eye on the donut, even as everything was going wrong. I made it to St. Louis that night.

Words Of Advice From an “Overnight Success.”

My startup songwriter-in-residence, Todd Snider, has a line that I find myself quoting a lot. It’s from a brilliant little song, titled “Easy Money.” He sings:

Everyone wants the most they can possibly get
For the least they can possibly do

And he couldn’t be more spot on. I meet a lot of people who want to be an overnight success. Problem is, for most of us in the creative/entreprenurial spheres, there’s no such thing.

Don’t believe me? Listen to the Twitter guys.

And here’s more proof. Meet Dave McClure. Out there in Silicon Valley, he’s what Ron Burgundy would call kind of a big deal. He’s worked with startups, invested in startups, immersed himself in startups. His latest extravaganza is called 500 Startups, and they’re a startup accelerator. They bring in a ton of startups — this year, they’ve worked with north of 50 startups. They mentor them, they groom them, they fund them — and then they send them out into the world.

Naturally, people thought this was crazy.

But then I saw this Twitter exchange tonight between McClure and Jason Cohen, an entrepreneur and investor who runs a popular startup blog:

Amen, guys. They speak to a simple truth: Want to make change? It can happen — one day at a time, one relationship at a time.

Things happen slowly. Success has to be earned. Trust has to be earned.

It happens: One day at a time. One relationship at a time.

Start there.

Things That Comfort Me When Every Fucking Thing Goes Wrong: John Prine.

John Prine

Things tend to go wrong. This is the first in a series of blog posts about the things that I think about during those moments when the wrong things happen.

I remember the very first time that everything went wrong for me. I think I was in first or second grade. My family was up in Pennsylvania at Sesame Place, a Sesame Street-themed water park. My dad and sister and I were going down a water slide. I went down first, and waited for them to come down after me. But they never came. So I waited and waited, and then I got upset, and then first-or-second grade me started to cry, and then I got hysterical, and then I started to think I’d lost my family forever, and then dad found me and everything was fine. The whole scene — from me thinking my family had abandoned me to me finding my dad, going back on a water slide and completely forgetting about it — took five or 10 minutes in real time, and several hours in elementary school time. In the moment, it was terribly scarring, and it seemed to take forever to find my dad, and then I was over it before I’d even gotten all the way down the next slide.

Since then, I’ve been through more a few more situations where Every. Fucking. Thing went wrong. There was the time I almost got deported by the Chinese. The time I did a mile-long sprint through Houston Intercontinental in sandals. The time my mother nearly dropped the Torah during my Bar Mitzvah.

You get the idea.

But not everything is a full-on disaster. What I’m learning is, when everything goes wrong, it’s usually never as terrible as it seems in the moment. I’m learning how to put things into perspective.

This one song by John Prine helps. It’s one of my favorites, called, “That’s The Way The World Goes Round.” And the chorus goes:

That’s the way that the world goes ’round
You’re up one day and the next you’re down
It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown
That’s the way that the world goes ’round

It’s that third line that I love the most: “It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown.” Isn’t it almost always? I find that the worst mistakes, the biggest fuck-ups… well, they’re really not that bad at all.

It’s just that in the moment, every other thing in my mind gets blocked out, and all I can think of is how everything is going wrong. I lose all perspective.

And then I remind myself that it’s just a half an inch of water, and the moment tends to pass.

Life Lessons Learned From Three Chicks in an RV.

Every once in a while, I get to meet someone who just knocks me over. Someone doing something inspiring and risky and ambitious and epic. Someone who’s doing something incredible.

And last night, I met three ladies who are traveling America in an RV, doing good deeds and inspiring others to chase big dreams. I couldn’t help but be bowled over by the Girls Gone Moto. They started talking about their stories — how they embraced the fear, how they found a dream to chase — and I started thinking of my own story.

See, I remember when I was leaving San Antonio and headed to Biloxi to start Stry. I remember how terrified I was. I remember thinking that there were a million steps ahead of me. I remember thinking, What if it all works? What if it succeeds? What if it turns into a real business? What if I hire employees? What if people start depending on me? What then?

I’d never done any of that, and it all seemed overwhelming. The thought of success seemed overwhelming. So I let the fear in a little bit, and then the questions started changing. I stopped thinking about all the baby steps ahead of me, and started thinking, Well, what if I can’t do this? What if I shouldn’t?

But I know now: There’s a part of the brain that loves to sabotage dreams. It’s the naysayer within your subconscious. And I know now: Sometimes, you have to embrace that fear and blow right past it.

I did, and I can’t begin to describe the sensation of knocking fear back on its ass. It’s an amazing feeling.

And no, the fear doesn’t ever just go away. But once you’ve conquered it once, you’ll always know that you can conquer it again.

Treetop Flyers Wanted.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the kinds of people I’d like to hire for Stry. I’ve been asking myself, Who’s going to join me on this startup adventure? Where am I going to find reporters willing to chase stories and travel and venture forth into a world where the only structure is the one we define for ourselves?

And lately, I’ve been thinking that I’ve got to find some treetop flyers.

See, back in Vietnam, the American military trained pilots to fly low-altitude, high-risk flights. But when those pilots returned from war, there wasn’t much need for someone with such a skill set.

So, the story goes, these pilots became treetop flyers: Smugglers, drug-runners, danger-seekers. They took risks that other pilots wouldn’t take; they flew places that other pilots wouldn’t fly.

They were outlaw pilots, and they were much in demand.

I’ve used a lot of words for the type of reporters I’ll need for Stry. I’ve referred to them as hobo journalists, as backpack journalists, as reporter vagabonds.

But what I’m really looking for are treetop flyers: Reporters with skills that no one else really values, reporters who aren’t afraid to fly a bit too close to the ground, reporters willing to go at it without a safety net, reporters for whom adventure is just something that happens when they show up at the office. Working for Stry isn’t going to be a glamorous job. It’s going to be a lot of work, and it’s going to require a hefty amount of improvisation. My reporters at Stry are going to have to deal with stress, strain and general chaos without spontaneously wigging out.

I need reporters willing to go to the Biloxis of the world, willing to dig where others aren’t digging, willing to crash and burn and get back out there the very next day to do it all over again. I’m looking for a new kind of a reporter.

I’m looking for treetop flyers.

Apply within.

The Secret to Networking. (Hint: It’s not really so secret).

Phone Me

Up front, I should say: I am not a great networker. Not yet. This goes back a long way, but the short version is: Sometime around the 6th grade, I realized that I was terrifyingly shy. Calling a friend to ask, “Hey, you wanna play basketball up at school?” was a Herculean ordeal. I remember riding the bus to school and hoping that it’d be late. It wasn’t that I wanted to miss class; I was more afraid of standing around before school with my own friends and trying to contribute to the conversation.

I was really, really shy, and people who know me now find it tough to believe that Dan Oshinsky — the guy who won’t shut up, the guy who won’t use four words where forty will do — was once quiet.

I eventually grew out of my shyness. I learned how to talk to people on the phone. I learned how to shake somebody’s hand and look them in the eye. I learned how to hide my awkwardness in awkward situations.

And the networking skills are coming along. But I’m discovering here at Missouri that the young j-schoolers on campus aren’t master networkers yet. In fact, some of them are rather worried about their networking skills.

They’re convinced that networking is some special skill that some people have and some people don’t. And they’re worried that they don’t have it.

That’s just not true. Everyone can be a great networker. Here’s the problem: Nobody’s ever given these students permission to be great networkers. And they’ve been waiting for permission.

So here’s what I know, guys. It’s four simple steps. Here’s your permission:

1. Show up.

Yes, this is a ‘duh’ kind of thing to say. But here at Mizzou, there are infinite networking opportunities: Meetups, speeches, brown bag lunches, even office hours. The first step is showing up.

The dirty secret is, most students don’t take advantage of opportunities like these. And they’re missing out.

Showing up is half the battle, the idiom goes. It was also, as Aaron Sorkin once wrote, Napoleon’s battle plan:

Casey: Technically, I have a plan.
Dan: What’s the plan?
Casey: It’s Napoleon’s plan.
Dan: Who’s Napoleon?
Casey: A 19th century French emperor.
Dan: You’re cracking wise with me now?
Casey: Yes.
Dan: Thanks.
Casey: He had a two-part plan.
Dan: What was it?
Casey: First we show up, then we see what happens.
Dan: That was his plan?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: Against the Russian army?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: First we show up, then we see what happens.
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: Almost hard to believe he lost.

And yeah, it didn’t work for Napoleon. But he was trying to defeat the Russians.

You’re just trying to make some new contacts in the journalism world.

So show up.

2. Get business cards. Get numbers. Hustle.
If you’re at a busy event — say, a conference — you might get a lot of cards. So on the back of a card, write down something about the person. Something you want to remember about him/her, something you want to follow up on.

And if you’re not comfortable with business cards, use a cool mobile tool like Bump to exchange contact information.

3. Follow up. Buy them coffee. Lunch. No one turns down free food.
I’m not kidding. If a student emails me and asks if they can buy me coffee, I will say yes. If they offer to buy me lunch, I will say yes. I will cancel important meetings and say yes. I have a journalism degree, and people with journalism degrees will do almost anything for free food.

Want access to smart, powerful people? Ask to buy them coffee. Ask to buy them lunch.

They will say yes.

(And here’s a take from an experienced networker: If they’re really busy, offer to bring coffee to their office.)

4. Keep following up.
Send your contacts links. Friend them on Facebook and like their posts from time to time. Tweet at them every few weeks. It doesn’t have to be often. A little thing every so often is just enough to keep you top of mind.

Modern relationships are built one click at a time.

Start clicking.

Todd Snider, The Struggling Entrepreneur’s Kind of Songwriter.

Robert Earl Keen , Bruce Robison , Todd Snider @ Ramshead Annapolis, 10-23-09

I cannot get Todd Snider out my head.

This isn’t a new experience for me. I’m not sure I believe that certain generations are defined by certain songwriters — Do my parents belong to Dylan? To John and Paul and George and Ringo? To Jimi? To Janis? To the Stones? — but I know that certain moments demand a voice. There are weeks when the right song hits me at the right time. I’ve lost months to Joe Purdy’s woes, to Steve Poltz’s quirks, to James McMurtry’s tales of Texas.

Right now, I cannot get Todd Snider out my head.

I fell in love with Snider for his stories. I’ve seen him live, twice. He gets up on stage, sings a song or two, and then he starts in with these stories. They’re all just a YouTube search away. Here’s one about meeting Slash. Here’s one about hallucinogenic mushrooms and high school football. Here’s one about a tour manager named Spike.

A lesser songwriter would lose his audience with stories like those. Not Snider’s crowds. They come for the stories.

That’s why I came.

But lately, I’ve been listening to Snider’s records. And I’m finding that Snider’s got the voice that speaks to what I’m going through now with Stry.

It’s been 15 months since I left my job to start Stry. Things keep changing. I keep learning.

But what has stayed constant is this: I am always on the verge of being completely, totally screwed. Stry is not making money. It does not have any other employees. The only thing keeping the Great and Good and Honorable Dream That Is Stry alive is me.

Mine is not the story of business success — not yet. So this moment demands a songwriter who’s been out there, trying, struggling, failing, laughing, scratching at the edges of success. Someone who’s taken risks. Someone who’s been both the next big thing and the has-been. Someone who’s been out there long enough to have perspective on how life goes, especially when it goes places you never wanted it to go.

Snider’s the songwriter who can explain all those stages: The empowerment, the discovery, the struggle, the success — and the failure. Oh, the failure.

Start here. I am sitting in my cubicle in San Antonio, thinking about something more, thinking about changing the world — couldn’t be that hard, right? — and there’s Todd Snider, singing:

You can’t talk to me like that boss
I don’t care who you are
If you don’t want to have to hang your own dry wall
Don’t push me too far

Suddenly, I’ve left my job. I’m in an apartment in Biloxi, Miss., drafting up a mission statement for Stry. And I’m thinking:

Life ain’t easy getting through
Everybody’s gonna make things tough on you
But I can tell you right now
If you dig what you do
They will never get you down

And that’s keeping me going for a while.

And then Stry’s getting off the ground. I’m thinking a bit too ambitious. I’m thinking that selling this thing is going to be easier than I’d previously thought. I’m getting a bit greedy. And Snider’s singing:

Everybody wants the most they can possibly get
For the least they could possibly do

I’m back in D.C. Selling it isn’t easy at all. I’m clueless. I’m learning. I’m trying. I’m failing. I’m floundering. I’m trying to find myself. And Snider’s singing:

Sometimes you rise above it
Sometimes you sink below
Somewhere in between believing in heaven
And facing the devil you know

I start to find a way forward. I settle down a little bit. Maybe I start to settle for something a bit less than changing the world. I start to find myself. I start to wonder whether I’m ever going to get moving again. I start to doubt myself. And Snider sings:

A little out of place
A little out of tune
Sorta lost in space
Racing the moon
Climbing the walls
Of this hurricane
Still overall
I can’t complain

Then the complication comes back around. More failing. More setbacks. More struggling. And Snider’s singing:

Some of this trouble just finds me
No matter where I turn
How do you know when it’s too late to learn?

And now it’s the present day. I’m thinking about the fact that a year ago today — Oct. 3, 2010 — at about this very hour, I was pulling into my driveway in D.C., my whole year ahead of me. No plan, no idea of the road before me. Just a dream and a website. And Snider’s singing:

Lookin’ back on where I was
One year ago today
Laughing at the shape I’m in now

And Mr. Snider: I know you’re right. I am looking back, and I cannot help but laugh. Oh, how little I knew then.

How little I know now.

I know haven’t gotten that far in the entrepreneurial process. No, I don’t know what lies ahead.

But I suspect that when I get there, I’ll find there’s a Todd Snider song that explains it perfectly.

I hope there is.

Today, On This Rosh Hashanah, In What Is Apparently The Year 5772, I Would Like to Give Thanks.

apples

Today is Rosh Hashanah, and I am in Columbia, Mo. The last time I was in Columbia for Rosh Hashanah, Barack Obama was just a Senator from Illinois, my Missouri Tigers were about to head to Lincoln, Neb., to play a conference game, and I was still a month away from signing up for something called Twitter. Now I’m back at Missouri as an RJI Fellow, and I dress decently and show up to work at 8 or 9 and leave at 5 or 6 or 7, and I have a corner office, and a staff that is on call to help me, and when I leave a voicemail for someone, that someone calls me back.

For the longest time, I’ve joked to my parents about being “a professional,” but for the first time in my adult life, I actually feel like one.

There is still much work to do, but it is hard not to take this moment to think back on all that has already happened this year. I am most grateful for the journey so far, and I look with wonder towards the journey that lies ahead.

There continue to be an incredible number of people who believe in me and believe in what I am doing, and it never ceases to amaze me how much that knowledge helps me through each day.

Onward I go, for them.

#BergChat: The Pivot!

Four weeks ago today, I went in front of a group of students here at the University of Missouri and told them I wanted to buy them a beer and talk about journalism. And then I went in front of another class. And another. And another.

And told them, a few hundred in all: I wanted to buy them beer and talk about journalism.

The first thing that happened was, a whole bunch of students tweeted at me to tell me how excited they were about the idea.

The second thing that happened was, nobody came to drink with me.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve offered three so-called #BergChat sessions to students so far on Twitter. One student has taken me up on the offer.

So it’s time, I think, for a pivot.

What’s a pivot, you ask? Take it from Eric Ries, author of the soon-to-be-bestelling book, “The Lean Startup.” Says Ries, a pivot is:

“The idea that successful startups change directions but stay grounded in what they’ve learned. They keep one foot in the past and place one foot in a new possible future. “

And, okay, the #BergChat isn’t a startup; it’s just office hours at a bar. Still, the spirit of the pivot works here.

Now, the way I’ve been organizing these #BergChats is by sending out a tweet or three to my followers — among them, a multitude of j-schoolers. I’ve named the day/time for that week’s chat. And I’ve asked students to tweet back at me if they’d like to join me for a drink and conversation.

Except that I’ve forgotten a simple rule: College kids don’t operate on the same time schedule that I do. And that means I’m pitching this to an audience that isn’t actually listening at the moment I’m talking.

Hence the need for a pivot.

So here’s the new plan: The #BergChat is always open and available to you, the students. All you have to do is tweet at me something like:

Hey, @danoshinsky, got time for a #BergChat this week?

And assuming I’m in town, I’ll say yes, and we’ll set a time.

To recap: You tweet at me. We agree upon a time. And then said Beer/Shirley Temple is purchased, and we talk about whatever you want to talk about.

That’s my pivot, and I’m sticking to it.

At least for this week.

Why I’m Doing What I’m Doing.

This was originally published over at the RJI blog. But I really liked what I’d written. So I’m republishing it here:

❡❡❡

This is not a motivational blog post. I am not writing this to inspire you. I do not want you to read this and quit your job.

Is that clear?

Are you sure?

Positive?

Because I go to Mach 1 pretty quickly on these things. I get wound up and start running like Lombardi before the Ice Bowl, like a guy who’s got an Espresso drip running in one arm and the soundtrack to ‘The Natural’ blasting in the earbuds. I get wound up, and sometimes, the fortune cookie quotes start leaking out.

It’s all this one girl’s fault. I was having a beer with an MU student on Wednesday. J-school senior here on campus. Ambitious, talented, overworked. She wanted to know about me and my startup. And like any student worth her journalism degree, she had a good question for me:

Why are you doing what you’re doing?

And I didn’t answer it well enough. Lately, all the questions have been forward leaning: What are you doing now? What are you doing next?

But it’s been a while since someone asked me, straight up: Why are you doing what you’re doing?

I didn’t give her the full answer yesterday. So right now, I’d like to tell her, for starters:

I’m doing this because I can. Because there’s opportunity for something like Stry. Because it’s risky. Because I want to learn. Because I don’t have 2.5 kids and a wife and a job and a mortgage. Because I had the money to get it started, and maybe I’ll find the money to keep it going. Because I hated life in a cubicle. Because I’m too naive to know that failure is all but certain for a startup like this. Because I made it this far, and yeah, Red, maybe I can go a little farther. Because I think the phrase “You can be whatever you want to be” needs another case study. Because I want to do the work. Because I like doing the work. Because I like being busy, and not TPS Report busy or Conference Call With the Head of Whatchamacallit busy. Because this is the time I have, and this is what I have to work with, and because I’ve got people behind me who seem to think I can pull this off, and because so do I, and mostly:

Because I can.

There are not a lot of things I believe in completely — I’m not Crash Davis, alright? — but I believe this: In this life, you find things you love and people you love, and make room for both.

Right now, with Stry, I’ve got something I love. I wake up in the morning excited to get up. I know that sounds like some “Jerry Maguire” BS, but it’s true. I love coming to work. This company sinks or swims based on what I do. It’s on me. This thing goes as far as I can take it.

That’s terrifying and empowering and thrilling, and it’s my day-to-day existence. I love that.

And, yeah, the fortune cookie quotes start leaking out sometimes. But I don’t mind that. I had a yoga teacher in San Antonio who told me once, “Trying is doing.”

So why am I doing what I’m doing?

Maybe it’s because I just had to try.