Should You Work on That Idea?

Using Domainr, I can see if a domain name is available

Here’s a little trick I use to decide if I actually want to work on a project:

Let’s say I’ve got an idea, and I get really excited about it. I buy a domain for the website for the project, and start jotting down notes. I’m convinced that this is my next big idea!

The next step’s been a game changer for me: I go and add a note to my to-do list — one month in the future. I remind myself to revisit the idea then.

And then I do nothing — at least for 30 days.

Often, a month later, I look at the idea and go: Why was I so excited about this? That’s not a bad thing, I think — I’ve just saved myself a bunch of time and effort on an idea I wasn’t all that excited about!

But if I’m still excited about the idea a month later, that’s how I know it’s worth the investment, and that’s when I actually start to work on it.

———

I like to use Domainr to come up with domain names. But I don’t think yournextnewsletteridea.com is my next project!

How I Knew.

Here’s a story I’ve never told before.

In the spring of 2019, I was starting to think about leaving the New Yorker to start Inbox Collective. But I was still nervous about it. Was it the right time to leave? Was I ready to take on the responsibility of building a new business?

And that’s around the time a recruiter reached out to ask about a job.

It was a good job with a big title at a major news organization, making more money than I’d ever made it my life. I wasn’t looking for another job, but I interviewed anyway. It was the kind of offer I had to at least consider. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Within 20 minutes of the first interview, I knew what I wanted to do next.

I wasn’t excited about the idea of taking another job. I still loved my job at the New Yorker.

But more than anything else, I felt excited about the idea of starting my own consulting business — well, equal parts excited and nervous. Whenever I feel nervous, that’s usually a good thing. It’s a signal that I really care about something.

So I started to ask myself: Why, exactly, am I still doing the same old thing if I’m ready for what’s next?

By the end of the month, I told my bosses that I was leaving to start Inbox Collective.

———

That’s a photo of me talking to a group of newsrooms in Sydney in fall 2019, a few months after starting Inbox Collective.

I Figured One Thing Out Today.

I had a moment last night with my newsletter. I wasn’t sure what to do about the intro section — I knew there should be an intro, but I wasn’t sure what I should say. And I felt stupid for not knowing: People pay me every week to help them figure out stuff like this! Why couldn’t I figure it out on my own?

And then I thought about a conversation I’d had with a client earlier in the week. They were feeling a little down, so I gave them a pep talk. It seemed to help.

And I thought: Could that be the intro?

So I wrote it up last night, but didn’t schedule the email. I wanted to read it again this morning.

This morning, it still made sense. It gave the newsletter something it didn’t have before — a bit of life, a bit of personality. It made it sound more like me.

I think I figured this one piece of the puzzle out today. And I know there’s a lot more to figure out.

But just figuring that one thing out made me feel a little lighter — the weight of this one task, however small, has been lifted.

For today, that might be enough.

What Do You Need When You Start?

The first Inbox Collective website was six Google Slides, with a few details about my work and contact information.

Four years ago this week, I left The New Yorker to launch Inbox Collective. I kept things simple at the start.

I launched Not a Newsletter as a Google Doc so I wouldn’t have to build a website. It was enough to start.

I set up my email list with TinyLetter, not something more sophisticated, so I could launch faster. It was enough to start.

I set up my company’s website as a set of Google Slides, again so I could get something live as quickly as I could. It was enough to start.

I didn’t spend money on a logo or business cards. I realized: Why would I need those on Day 1? I just needed enough to start.

Four years later, a lot has changed. I’ve switched email platforms (twice, actually), built a real website, and brought on freelancers and contractors to help with some Inbox Collective work. I still don’t have a logo or business cards, though — maybe one day, but that day isn’t today.

The question for you is, and always should be: What do you need when you start? Figure out the stuff that’s worth spending time and money on right away. The rest can come later — or, as the work progresses, you may find you might never need it at all.

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Above, the original Inbox Collective “website” was just a public set of Google Slides.

You Can Make Time If You Want To.

This is a photo of a bookshelf, stacked with books on all three shelves.

It’s hard to make time for everything you want to do. I know I’ve got a big list of things I’d love to do one day — new projects, new adventures. I don’t have time for it all.

So it always comes back to this big question:

What is it you really want to do?

• Do you want to read more?
• Do you want to learn a new skill?
• Do you want to run that first 5k or 10k?
• Do you want to launch a new project?

You can’t do all of it. You can’t choose everything.

But you can make time for some of the stuff you want to do. Maybe it’s not as much time as you’d like — maybe it’s just 20 minutes a day. Maybe it’s an hour or two a week.

But it’s something. It’s enough for you to start.

Prioritize, and you may find that for something you truly care about, there may be more time in your schedule than you realized.

———

That’s a photo of a bookshelf, taken by Aneta Pawlik for Unsplash.

Be Proud of the Work You’ve Done.

A client had a question recently about something I’d worked on at BuzzFeed, so I went back into my email archives to try to find an answer. And what I found, unexpectedly, was this email:

That's an email I sent after the first year of work at BuzzFeed. That year, we launched 9 new newsletters, added more than 100,000 subscribers, and drove 600,000 more clicks than the year before

It’s from the end of year 1 of my work at BuzzFeed. It said:

Monday marks 1 year since we really launched the newsletter program here at BuzzFeed. Quick numbers for you:

January 2013
5 newsletters — all automated, with about 20,000 total subscribers
Newsletters drove 46,000 clicks to BuzzFeed
Newsletters were the 28th biggest referrer of traffic to the site

January 2014
14 newsletters — all hand-curated, with more than 125,000 total subscribers
Newsletters drove over 650,000 clicks to BuzzFeed
Newsletters are the 8th biggest referrer of traffic to the site

I’ll be honest: I knew I did a lot of work that year — I just didn’t remember how much work!

Looking back, I know I was motivated to prove that newsletters could be a great tool for BuzzFeed, and I remember working long hours to keep the newsletter strategy moving forward. I was making stuff up as I went along, and I didn’t really have many resources at my disposal. I was lucky to have a few wonderful supporters in my corner who helped me stay on track. But even now, looking back at this email — which I wrote — I’m stunned at those results from year 1.

Did I really do that?

I know I can be dismissive of some of the work I’ve done in the past. I know I’m better at this now than I was a decade ago. I don’t always want to talk about the mistakes or lessons I learned along the way.

But I don’t get the chance to build Inbox Collective without that work I put in ten years ago at BuzzFeed. I’m grateful for that work, and I’m proud of it.

Three Years Ago, He Replied to My Welcome Email. Here’s What Happened Next.

So here’s how a response to a welcome email led to one of the best things I’ve done in my three years of running Inbox Collective.

In October 2019, I get an email from Jan Birkemose, who runs the Danish media website Medietrends. He got my welcome email and wrote back, telling me a little about his business. We start trading notes back and forth. He tells me about these courses he’s running, including a two-day class all about email.

A few months later, Jan invites me to speak as part of that course. It goes well. He invites me back for another session later that year. 

And then two more in 2021.

In December 2021, I happen to find myself in Denmark after Mette Will invites me to speak at Email Summit DK. (Thanks again, Mette!) On my last night in town, Jan and I meet in person for the first time. He asks if I’d be interested in hosting an email workshop of my own in Denmark in 2022.

Yes, I most certainly would.

I’d been wanting to do one of these for a while. I’d built up a series of workshop session that I do with individual newsrooms, but I’d never done them with several different orgs in a single room. Only thing had stopped me: Planning the event itself. Booking a space, coordinating with all the different teams, scheduling lunches for a big group — that part seemed intimidating to me.

But Jan had done these sorts of workshops dozens of times already. If I was going to take the leap on something like this, I needed a partner like him.

Fast forward to mid-September. It’s the end of a beautiful fall week in Copenhagen, and we’ve got 20 participants from 16 organizations (who came from four different countries) in the room together. They’ve learned a lot of the past three days (and, thanks to Jan’s planning, been fed every day!), and are telling me about what they’re going to do next.

They’ve got ideas: For surveys to run, and growth tactics they want to implement, and newsletters they want to launch. There’s a lot of excitement in the room, and a lot more work to do, but this group is ready to take it on.

Now that it’s all over, I’m feeling grateful for the opportunity to share what I’ve learned, and grateful for partners like Jan, who believed in this workshop idea and gave me the chance to lead it.

(And thanks for writing back to that welcome email, Jan! It’s amazing to think about the doors that a single email reply can open.)

———

That’s me with the group at the end of the workshop. What a week!

Everything Changes, and That’s OK.

people at work on a construction site

College athletics are in flux right now. Teams are changing conferences (Rutgers vs. UCLA and Oklahoma vs. Kentucky will soon be in-conference matchups), and Name, Image, and Likeness rules mean that some athletes are now (legally) collecting checks from sponsors. Greg Sankey, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, addressed all these changes this week at the conference’s annual media days for football. “It’s never going to be the same,” he said, “but it doesn’t have to be the way that it is”

The same could be said for many businesses. It’s certainly the case for the news world, where I come from. Are we going back to the days when local newspapers employed hundreds of journalists? Probably not. But it’s up to us to build something new moving forward. Just this week, I’ve talked with local news outlets investing in solutions journalism, digital outlets building out new models for revenue sharing with writers, and individual writers who are building an entire business through their own newsletters or podcasts.

Everything changes, and that’s OK. We can fight it, or we can accept it and try to figure out how to build the best possible future for ourselves. The choice is ours.

———

That photo of a construction site comes via Shivendu Shukla and Unsplash.

When Will You Get To Do This Again?

that's me at the pool in Punta Cana

So we’re at Punta Cana International Airport, waiting to fly home, when we see a sign for the airport lounge, and it mentions an unusual feature: It has a pool.

A pool? At the airport?

So we go upstairs to the lounge. If you have a particular credit card, you can get in for free, and we happen to have that card. And sure enough, outside, is an infinity pool — a decent-sized one, too, overlooking the tarmac. I tell Sally that I might put my toes in. Sally says, “I’m going in all the way. When’s the next time we’re going to get to swim at the airport?”

She makes a good point, so we both get in. We’re drinking a beer at a freaking pool at the airport, watching flights from the U.S. and Panama and even Poland roll into Punta Cana. Then we shower, put on pants, and head back to New York, where the weather’s in the 50s and gray.

Sally, as usual, was right. Sometimes, you’ve got to try something because, honestly, when are you going to get to do it again?

———

That is the first (and probably only) bathing suit photo I’ll ever post on danoshinsky.com.

Keep It Simple For As Long As You Can.

Here's a photo of a golfer. Not to overcomplicate things, but he could probably use a little more rotation here in the backswing.

There’s a famous quote from golfer Arnold Palmer about the sport: “Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.” Arnie’s absolutely right about golf: It doesn’t seem all that complicated until you really start to get into the sport. There are how many different ways to swing a club? To chip? Even to grip a club? The objective is simple — get the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible — but the ways to achieve that goal are limitless.

The same is true with so much of the work we do. I had a conversation this week with one of my clients about the daily newsletter they want to launch. The goal with their newsletter is simple: Give readers a quick daily update to catch up on the day’s news. But the ways to deliver that to readers are endless. Do they want to have it come from a single writer or from a generic voice? Do they want to send it in the morning, afternoon, or evening? Should they focus on bringing readers stories in the inbox or requiring them to click out? How many stories should they include? What kinds of stories would make sense to include? I’d go on, but you get the idea: A single newsletter will end up being the result of dozens of different questions.

But what I’d tell you if you were learning to play golf or learning how to launch a newsletter: Keep it simple for as long as you can. It’s easy to overcomplicate things at the start. As you learn more, you’re going to want to try more advanced tactics. Save all of that for another day — and just focus on starting with the basics for now.

———

That photo of a golfer comes via Matt Aylward and Unsplash.