Think about this for a moment: What’s something you’re working on right now that, a year or two ago, wasn’t even on your radar?
I remember at BuzzFeed when we launched our Royal Baby newsletter. There wasn’t a Royal Baby section at BuzzFeed, and we didn’t have many tools we could use to grow that newsletter. So that led to one big question: We tools do we actually have? What are we good at when it comes to newsletter growth?
Once we learned a few things, it led to another question: What could we get better at? So we tried a half-dozen new ways to grow our lists, and a handful worked well. We doubled down on those.
Once we had that set of tools, we had a new question: Which of these promotional levers could we automate? Was there anything we could do to save our team time to keep testing new things? So that led us down a new road with our product team.
Over time, these answers consistently led to brand new questions, and we kept searching for answers. Every time we asked a new question, we discovered there was even more to learn — often things we didn’t even realize we didn’t know until we’d reached that point!
One new door often opens another. The thing you’re going to be excited on in a year or two might not be what you’re working on today. But by being curious, by asking really good questions, and by seeking new answers, you might be able to open up that next door — and open yourself up to all sorts of new possibilities.
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That photo comes via Christian Stahl for Unsplash.