Posts

Posted on

A Few Memories of Jacques.

Jacques Doucet, the longtime voice of the Montreal Expos, died this week, and I wanted to say a few words about him.

I interviewed him 20 years ago this summer. I was an intern at a small daily paper in Washington, D.C., and I was covering a lot of Washington Nationals games that summer. During a week off between games, a few friends and I decided to visit a friend who was living in Montreal. While I was there, I decided to see if I could interview some people who had been connected to the Expos. It had been two years since the Expos left for D.C. The players had moved to D.C., but the fans, staff, and media stayed in Canada. I was curious: What happened to the people who the Expos left behind?

I’m not sure how, but I got connected with Jacques Doucet, and he agreed to an interview. He was the former French language radio voice of the Expos. He’d been the lead broadcaster for 33 seasons. For the two years before that, he covered the team as a newspaper reporter. As he told me, he was the guy who’d seen the team from the very start to the very end. When they left Canada, they left him without a job.

There was no real reason for him to make time for me. He had nothing to gain from the conversation, and all the reason in the world to be angry at anyone even remotely connected to the Nationals. And I was a 19-year-old summer intern. It would’ve been easy to have declined an interview request.

And yet: He invited me to his home, and we chatted for more than an hour. I wish I’d kept the tapes — this was long enough ago that the entire conversation was recorded on tiny cassettes in a tape recorder I’d purchased at RadioShack, and those tapes are long gone — but I remember how generous he was with his time and patient he was with my questions.

I only spent a bit of time with him, but it was so clear that he loved broadcasting, loved baseball, and loved bringing joy into the homes of so many people across Quebec. (In the years after the Expos left, he continued to broadcast baseball, even calling minor league games.)

When I think back upon that conversation, what I know now is that it’s not every day you get to talk with someone who truly loves what they do. Some people like their jobs, but I’ve only met a handful of people who truly loved theirs. That’s a rare thing in this world.

Thanks for making time for me, Jacques. I know you’ll be missed.

Posted on

Keep Learning.

a bunch of business books stacked in a pile

I read a fascinating obit of Victor Niederhoffer, a Wall Street trader, and these last few sentences of the obit really stood out:

His daughter, Katie Niederhoffer, said that until the last days of his life, she kept him stocked with books, everything from textbooks and biographies to books on trees and resilience.

“Every single conversation I ever had with him, he would say: Are you learning anything new?” she said. “He said it in a way that was, like: That’s the joy in life, that is the pressure of life, that is what’s expected, that is what you can hope for, is constantly learning something new.”

It’s such a wonderful sentiment. Ask questions, read books on all sorts of topics, go on new adventures — and always be on the lookout for new ideas. No matter what: Never stop learning. That’s something to aspire to.

———

That photo of a stack of books comes via Shiromani Kant and Unsplash.

Posted on

Imperfect, Then Done.

The new Inbox Collective website went live the other day. We’d been working with the amazing team at CamelCase for months on this, and to be honest, the day the website went live, it wasn’t really done. There were things to fix, content to add, entire pages still to build. The site’s been live for a few weeks, and we’ll be adding more to it for weeks to come.

So why launch the website when it wasn’t fully done?

Because I know myself, and I knew that if I waited until everything was perfect, I’d be waiting forever to launch. But the sooner the website was out in the world, the more pressure there was on me to start making it better right away. It’s one thing to tinker and tweak in the background, and it’s another to do it when my entire audience can see the holes in the website that need to get fixed right away.

On a project like this, it’s not the deadline that drives me — it’s that little bit of public pressure and scrutiny.

Plus: Readers can help spot some of the mistakes for us! Just today, a reader noticed an issue on our About Us page. (The same contributing writer was listed not once — but four times.) It happens, but those extra sets of eyes mean that we can catch mistakes a bit faster.

(Btw, the CamelCase guys did a fantastic job. Any mistakes or flaws with the website are on me — they did everything they needed to in order to make this new site a success!)

Posted on

Be Bored.

That’s a very large moose in the wild on a hike here in Park City, Utah.

My son is curious about everything, and there are times when his curiosity lasts a lot longer than mine. We’ll be on a walk in the park, and he’ll spot an interesting plant. I’ll want to move on; he’ll want to linger.

And I have to remind myself that for Ben, time doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t have appointments to keep or errands to take care of. He doesn’t know what day of the week it is. (He doesn’t even know the names of all of the days of the week!) He’s got his curiosity, and he’ll chase it for as long as it lingers. If it means that we’re doing nothing at all — literally, just sitting next to a plant for 15 minutes and looking at how prickly it is — that’s OK! We don’t need to fill every moment with activities.

I’m not great at this — weirdly, doing nothing makes me feel a little anxious. I keep asking myself: Couldn’t we be using this time more productively? But then I remember that Ben doesn’t care about productivity. At the end of the day, he knows if he had fun, not if he got a lot done.

So I’m trying to get better at it, too, just sitting with my thoughts (and Ben’s questions), and being bored. What’s fun for Ben can be fun for me, too.

———

My wife and I went on a hike the other day and spotted a moose. Seeing a moose in the wild hasn’t gotten old yet. (I hope it never does.)

Posted on

Get It Out Into the World.

In 1990, a Canadian TV channel called Citytv launched an unusual little experiment: They created a video booth in which anyone from the public could enter and record a message. The best of the recorded messages would air on a weekly TV show, called “Speakers Corner.”

A year later, a band called the Barenaked Ladies popped into the booth. “Hi, we’re Barenaked Ladies, and we’re a little too cheap to make our own video,” said Steven Page, one of the lead singers of the band. “So here you go.” Then the band, smushed into the booth, broke into the song “Be My Yoko Ono.”

What happened next? The video became their first music video, and the song became their first charting hit up in Canada.

And they did it all on a song recorded in a tiny booth in an office building in Toronto.

When you have an idea, you can wait and try to make something perfect — or you can try to get it out into the world as soon as you can.

Always, always do the latter.

Posted on

No Need to Rush.

I went to see Alabama Shakes last night in Salt Lake City, and just after the gates were supposed to open, a massive thunderstorm came through town. We all had to shelter in place. The opener didn’t come on until 9, Alabama Shakes went on at 9:45, and most concerts at this venue are over by 10.

I wasn’t sure how long they’d actually play. I thought they might rush through a few of their hits and get off stage quickly.

But they weren’t in any real rush on stage. They played their songs, had a few jams. There was a little banter with the crowd. The set was shorter than usual — they played for an hour, and most of their sets on this tour have been far longer than that. They didn’t play an encore.

But I was so impressed at how unhurried they were on stage. They’ve played plenty of outdoor shows over the years, and clearly, they’d been in this situation before. Aside from the shorter set, you wouldn’t have known they were walking onto the stage way later than expected, and with a curfew to meet. They played like they had all the time in the world.

I’ve been in that situation before at conferences, where an hour-long talk suddenly becomes a 40-minute session, and I wish I could say I’ve been that calm. In those situations, my strategy‘s been to talk at 2x/speed, which doesn’t really work.

But maybe the move is just to acknowledge the situation, cut some material live on stage, and move on as normal. No need to rush — you do what you can with the time you have.

Let’s call it the “What Would Brittany Howard Do?” strategy.

———

I took that photo at Red Butte Gardens last night.

Posted on

What’s That Thing? And Why?

We’ve hit the age where Ben asks a million questions.

Where’s the moon right now, dada? Is it going to come up later? Is it night yet? Why is the moon bigger than yesterday? Can we visit the moon?

(Sometimes, Ben even asks questions about things other than the moon.)

There are days, I’ll admit, where I get tired of answering a thousand questions. But mostly, I love that he’s so curious. He wants to know how everything works, and often, he asks questions that I don’t have the answers to, so I get to go looking for answers. When you live with a toddler, you learn new things every day.

I want to be more like Ben: Curious and eager to learn. I don’t know it all — and I shouldn’t be afraid to ask more questions.

———

We visited Bluey’s house at the CAMP store in NYC a few weeks ago. It was the perfect spot for a curious kid — Ben wanted to open every drawer to find out if there was something inside.

Posted on

Stay Curious.

Chris Miquel had me on his podcast the other day, and he asked me: There’s so much that the newsletter community is excited (and nervous!) about when it comes to AI — but is there one thing you think we shouldn’t hand over to AI?

And I thought for a moment. Probably seemed like longer on the podcast.

And then I said: Our curiosity.

AI can handle so many things: It can write, edit, create, brainstorm. It can analyze data. It can turn tedious processes into one-click actions.

But I hope that as we integrate AI into our lives, we don’t lose that sense of curiosity. So many of the best things that have happened in the newsletter space — and in the world, of course — have come because of our curiosity.

What happens if I try ______ ? What happens if I experiment with ______ ? What happens if I ask my readers to do ______ ?

Nearly every week, a client asks me something I’ve never been asked before, and that I’ve never seen before, and I say: “I’m not sure, but let’s try it and see what happens.”

These tools are endlessly powerful, but I don’t think they can see the world quite the way we can. Use them — but stay curious.

The curious are the ones who break through.

Posted on

Predicting the Future is Hard.

the ESPN article that predicted the future team.

Here’s a little reminder that humans are really, really bad at predicting the medium- to long-term future.

A friend sent me a list of soccer players who might play for the US men’s national team in the 2030 World Cup. It was exciting — look at all these future stars who’ll sure guide the USA to greatness!

And I was a true bummer and sent back ESPN’s predictions from 2022 for the 2026 roster. That list mentioned 31 names for new players who might make the team — players who weren’t on the 2022 squad.

Exactly one 1 out of 31 made the 2026 squad.

And look, that’s soccer. That’s a list that looked at players, all who were playing professional soccer at the time, some for major clubs in Europe, and saying, “Hey, I bet these guys will be even better in four years.” We’re talking about something that should be decently predictable.

And it got 1 out of 31 right.

I’m not trying to pick on the writer from ESPN. (He’s excellent, and a fellow Mizzou grad to boot!) Predicting the future is really, really hard.

It’s a reminder: Don’t get too caught up with what’s happening way down the road. Focus on the immediate future: Next week, next month, next quarter. Keep your eyes on the next steps and you’ve got a better chance to keep moving forward.

Posted on

Know What’s Around You.

I’m watching the World Cup today, and there’s a moment in the Argentina-Austria match. Argentina crosses the ball into the box. Thiago Almada is there, inside the box, with a clear chance to shoot on goal, but instead lets the ball pass through to Lionel Messi, who neatly finishes into the back of the net.

And as I’m watching, I’m wondering: How did Almada know that Messi was there?

It took a few replays for me to figure it out.

Just before he entered the box, Almada takes a split-second glance back and sees what’s around him. He’s there, in the image above, on the left. Messi is steps behind him. He doesn’t know yet that the ball is coming to him, but he knows that if it does, he has the choice to shoot or fake out the defender, leaving Messi wide open.

Watch #16 in the middle of the screen. It’s nothing more than a glance.

Some players would have taken the shot right away, not even realizing that their teammate was behind him. Almada, instead, made sure he was seeing the entire field — and by doing so, he set up a history-making goal.

Proudly powered by WordPress