I’m Dan Oshinsky, and I run Inbox Collective, an email consultancy. I'm here to share what I've learned about doing great work and building amazing teams.
It’s easy this time of the year to get caught up in everything. There’s so much to do before the end of the year — last-minute projects, those to-dos you promised you’d handle before Dec. 31 — and you and your colleagues are probably going on vacation soon. The clock seems to tick faster and faster this time of year.
When you’ve got so much going on, it’s OK to take a beat to pause, reset, and refocus on the handful of things that actually need to get done. So often, we get caught up worrying about all the things we have to do instead of actually doing stuff.
Just take a minute for yourself to slow things down and reset. You’ll get the important stuff done; it’ll be OK.
A few weeks after Ben was born, we hired a photographer to take photos of our newly-expanded family. Midway through the photo shoot, Ben got hungry and started to fuss. I grabbed a bottle to feed him, and the photographer followed along to take a few shots of us together.
When it came time to burp Ben, I put him into the position I’d been shown at the hospital: His chest on my shoulder, with me gently patting his back. But I couldn’t get a burp out.
“Would you like me to show you how I do it with my kids?” the photographer asked. It turned out she had four young kids, so she’d had plenty of practice.
I immediately handed over Ben, and watched as she propped him up on her knee, tilted him gently forward, and placed her hand on his chest.
Before she could even pat his back, Ben let out a massive belch. Naturally, that position became my go-to any time I needed to burp my son.
It was a reminder that day: Good advice and ideas can come from anywhere. You just have to be willing to make space and listen.
There’s this great piece of research out from the teams at Trusting News and the News Revenue Hub. They worked with five non-profit newsrooms that serve communities in five different states — Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin — to test messages around the work these newsrooms do and how they operate. All five tested out similar messages.
There was no clear trend across participants, which is to say that each newsroom had different messaging work best for them.
This tells us that each organization is unique and has a unique relationship with their audience. We plan to test this more in the future, but for now, this indicates… that every newsroom should assess their own data and audience feedback regularly and tailor their messaging accordingly.
It echoes something I advise my own clients: Don’t just assume that what worked for someone else will work for you. Use the work you’ve seen from others as a starting point — but then test out those ideas and see what actually works for you and your team.
I’m 36 years old, and I wish I could be more like my son.
Ben is just a few months old, and I still can’t believe that he’s part of our lives. There was a long time when Sally and I wondered if we’d ever be parents. Maybe we were just waiting for a child as wonderful as Ben.
For a baby, it’s remarkable how much Ben seems to already know about how to live a good life. He spends a lot of time with family and friends. He takes time to savor his meals. He sleeps well, and often. He makes great eye contact, laughs a lot, and is curious about everything.
It’s amazing to watch the impact that Ben has on others. Every person who meets him leaves with a grin on their face.
Most of all, Ben lives in the moment. There have been times when he’s gotten upset — he’s hungry, he’s tired, he’s uncomfortable. He’ll start to whine or scream. I’ll worry that he’ll be in a terrible mood for the rest of the day.
But that’s never how it goes. Once Sally or I take a small step to correct the issue, all is forgotten. Whatever happened is in the past. Ben can be full of tears one minute and all smiles within seconds.
I wish I could be more like that. I can get caught up in a moment, replaying a misstep or a misspoken word for days. For Ben, those mistakes are easily forgotten. Whatever’s happening right now gets his full attention and can bring him joy beyond measure.
I see Ben and remind myself to laugh, to slow down, to be present. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to live quite like Ben, but I can try.
Over the past year, there are certain things I’ve come to believe hold true. I know that my beliefs will continue to change. I know that I will change.
But here, at 36, is what I believe:
You can’t do everything at once. You can’t be in five places at once. You will have to miss something you really want to be part of. It’s how it is, and it sucks, and it’s OK.
Try to do the right thing the first time. But if — or let’s be honest, when — you screw that up, do what you can to make things right.
Whatever happens today, you’ll get the chance to do better tomorrow.
Don’t try to work while you’re watching the baby. They will make you pay for it — they don’t care if you have unread emails or just a few slides left to finish. Give them 100 percent, and you’ll get the chance to give work your full attention later on.
Every parent is a world-class impersonator of their own child. I’m the Robin Williams of impersonating my own son. The only issue is that there’s only one other person in the world — my wife — who thinks the impersonations are funny.
Always write a thank you note. That person took the time to buy you something. You can take three whole minutes to write a note and put it in the mail.
There is no excuse that gets you out of more plans more easily than “My child is freaking out, sorry! Next time!”
Things don’t always get easier, but that doesn’t mean they’ll always get harder.
You have to be prepared in order to be spontaneous.
You always want to be on the first flight out during a bachelor or bachelorette party weekend. If you’re still there on Sunday afternoon, you’ve made a mistake.
Set a backup alarm when you travel. It might be the reason you make your early-morning flight.
Be willing to throw away your assumptions. Be wrong more often.
A kid is a 10,000-piece puzzle — every month, you get a few new pieces and try to figure out the full thing. But you’ve just got a few pieces! Be patient for the rest to reveal itself. It will in time.
There are days when I give big presentations or lead huge strategy efforts — and yet, the most important thing I do all day is help get a burp out of my son before bedtime. And it’s the most important thing by a mile.
Prepare for the worst. If you don’t, you will definitely get peed on.
And finally: You won’t know everything at the start. But surround yourself with smart people, get all the help you can, and ask lots of questions. Every day, you’ll learn a little more. You’ll never learn it all, but one day, you’ll find yourself in a new situation and realize that you know enough to find your way to the right answer.
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That’s a photo of the three of us, taken just a few weeks after Ben was born.
Everyone wants to go as fast as they can go. Everyone wants to find ways to move a little bit faster. Many are willing to cut corners.
But resist the urge to chase shortcuts.
The good stuff takes time: Building relationships, testing new ideas, talking to your audience. There are no shortcuts there — you’re going to have to do the work, and the work doesn’t always happen quickly.
Be patient, and embrace the work. It’s the way forward.
There are a lot of great places to watch the New York City Marathon, but for my money, nothing beats the corner of 59th and 1st.
Runners are coming off the quiet of the bridge and on to 1st Avenue, where crowds gather four or five deep to cheer family, friends, and total strangers on.
It’s also mile 16 of the race. Runners still have 10 miles to go.
And every year, I go to that corner and watch thousands of runners hit mile 16, with so many more miles to go — and they keep going.
And every year I think: It’s amazing what truly determined humans can do.
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I took that photo at 59th and 1st today during the 52nd running of the Marathon.
Couldn’t I sell courses? Couldn’t I write a book? Couldn’t I give more talks? Couldn’t I charge more for each speaking engagement?
And then I have to take a few steps back to acknowledge what I’ve actually done.
I’ve built an audience, I’ve built a business. I’ve created, from nothing, the best paying and most flexible job I’ve ever had. I’ll take more time off this year than I’ve taken since college. I’m in a position where I get to pick and choose what projects I take on and who I work with.
I’m proud of the success I’ve had. Success should be enough — do I need to be excessively successful? Do I really need to do more?
I know the answer to those questions, but it’s hard to quiet the voice that wants to do more. I have to remind myself: I don’t need to do everything. This is more than enough.
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That’s from a talk I gave in Denver in September. It went well — but yes, I still do wonder if I could’ve done better for those who attended.
I’ll often talk with newsletter operators who tell me they want to launch another new thing: Another course, another ebook, another product.
But the question I always have to ask is: Have you gotten everything you can out of the stuff that’s already out there?
I’ll see newsletters with great engagement that are missing obvious monetization opportunities, like running ads or affiliate content.
I’ll see operators with a paid membership who aren’t promoting it nearly as much as they could — even though with every new member they get, they’re getting more value out of a thing they’re already working on.
Forget about launching new stuff for a second. Look at what you’re already doing — is there an opportunity there to get more out of the work you’re already doing?
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That’s a random snippet of emails in my inbox at the moment. (I’m not trying to pick on any of these particular newsletter operators!)
There are things you know. These are things you’re certain of — you’ve got data, you’ve got proof. These are things that are absolutely true.
And then there are things you think you know.
Assumptions are dangerous. They start out as ideas that your team kicks around, maybe based on something you heard at a conference or something you read online. They’re based on casual conversations or hearsay. With time, those assumptions can easily turn into things you believe. And if you don’t take the time to prove them out, they will quickly turn into universal truths.
These assumptions might be right or wrong — you don’t know yet — but you can’t let them guide your thinking. You can’t let these untruths or half-truths or maybe-truths influence your long-term decision-making process. You can’t confuse them with things that are actually, provably true.
One bad assumption can lead to a whole slew of bad decisions.
So be willing to challenge your assumptions. Prove them out. See what’s actually true and what’s not. Then you can make the best decisions for you, moving forward, with the proof you need.
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That photo of math homework comes via Unsplash and photographer Chris Liverani.
I had a call with a client last week about their newsletter strategy. “I feel like we don’t have a complete picture of what our audience wants,” they told me. “What are we missing?”
I’ll tell you what I told them: Building a strategy is like putting together a 10,000-piece puzzle. Every time you do something — like sending an email, running a survey, or talking to readers — you collect a few more puzzle pieces. But you’ve got to be patient — it takes time to collect enough pieces so you can start to see the full picture.
Your goal is to do something every day that helps you discover a few key pieces of your puzzle.
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That photo of a puzzle comes via Unsplash and Hans-Peter Gauster.
