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What’s Your One Unique Thing?

I flew through Chicago a few weeks ago. I flew Delta, like I usually do, even though Chicago O’Hare is a hub for American and United. There aren’t that many flights on Delta out of O’Hare every day, and Delta’s flights have always operated out of some of the oldest gates at the airport.

But when I was there, the Delta staff mentioned something to me: They’d be moving to a brand-new terminal later in the month. That meant new gates, a new check-in area, and a new Delta SkyClub for their frequent fliers.

The SkyClub, in particular, was built with an interesting feature: For flights to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, passengers can board the plane directly from the SkyClub. They don’t need to exit the lounge and go to the gate.

Delta can’t compete with American or United when it comes to the number of flights or the connections they offer at O’Hare. But nobody else at that airport offers the ability for a business traveler to work from the lounge, then walk directly onto the plane. By building something like this, they’re hoping that frequent fliers from Chicago to New York might like the SkyClub enough to permanently change who they fly with.

This got me thinking about the things that make any person or any business stand out. For me, for the past few years, it’s been where I publish — people don’t easily forget the guy with a Google Doc. Many have asked me if I’d ever move Not a Newsletter over to a blog or another format, and the answer’s always been “no.” When you do something that stands out, you lean into it.

You still have to do more than just have a unique thing — if my Google Doc wasn’t very useful, it wouldn’t matter where I publish it. But having a unique thing might help you get noticed amongst the crowd.

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That photo is of the new Chicago SkyClub, and it comes via Delta’s own site.

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Be Yourself. (Aggressively So, If Necessary.)

Here's a photo of Jimmy, which was taken back in 2009.

I’ve lived in New York City for a decade, so I’ve gotten the chance to see some celebrities on the street. (Apologies to Matthew Broderick for the time I saw you on 21st Street and stared so much that you pretended to check your phone until I walked away. My bad.)

But one of my favorite recurring celebrity sightings was Jimmy McMillan — who you might remember as the Rent Is Too Damn High guy. He lived a block away from me in the East Village, and I regularly walked past him on the street. With such unique facial hair, he was easy to recognize. I often saw him wearing a T-shirt with his logo, which was a drawing of his own facial hair.

Thanks to “Saturday Night Live,” McMillan became a bit of a caricature in popular culture. Most saw him as a one-issue candidate with a memorable look.

But when I think of McMillan, I think of a guy who was unapologetically himself. (All these years later, he’s still pushing the issue of affordable housing forward, and as a New York City resident paying rent, I can’t help but agree with him.) He figured out who he was and what he cared about, and leaned into it.

Remember: It’s easy to blend in with the crowd. It’s easy to be afraid to stand out.

Every time I think about taking that easy route, I think about all those times I saw McMillan out in my old neighborhood, loudly and proudly himself. There’s only one of you; you might as well be whoever you are.

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That photo of Jimmy was taken back in 2009 by Matt Law, and is used here thanks to a Creative Commons license.

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Even The Experts Make Mistakes.

That’s what my authentication settings look like now. The big three — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — are at the bottom. There are only two options: PASS or FAIL. (You can probably figure out which is one you want.)

A few weeks ago, I did something stupid.

There are three big things that any email sender needs to set up to properly authenticate their emails: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These are the three things that an email client like Gmail looks for to make sure that the person or company sending that email really is who they say they are.

And one of my readers pointed out that there was a small issue with part of my authentication settings. Not great — especially for someone who professionally helps out his clients with email authentication!

It was late in the evening, and I’d already had a full day of calls and work. The smart move was to wait until the morning, then make the necessary changes.

Instead, I thought: I do this all the time! I’ve got expertise here — let’s just do it now! So I quickly made some changes, and of course, I made a small mistake.

But when it comes to email authentication, there are no small mistakes — only big ones. And so I woke up the next morning to find out that not only had I made a mistake with my email settings, but now all of my emails were going to spam. I’d taken a bad situation and made things far worse!

A few hours later, the mistake was fixed, but not after quite a bit of panic and a lot of me slamming my head against my desk, asking myself why I’d been too impatient to wait until the morning when I would have been rested and fully ready to take on this task.

I wasn’t happy with myself. But at least I learned a few things — most importantly, the right steps I should follow next time with a client to make sure we get things right.

Everyone makes mistakes — even the experts. You learn from them, you figure out processes to make sure they don’t happen again, and then you move on.

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That’s what my authentication settings look like now. The big three — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — are at the bottom. There are only two options: PASS or FAIL. (You can probably figure out which is one you want.)

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Are You Ready For the Work?

Bob Uecker’s a former baseball player, and longtime radio broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers. (You might also remember him as the announcer from the movie “Major League.”) Last week, on the final day of the season, with the Brewers eliminated from postseason contention, Uecker spent the final broadcast of the season telling baseball stories.

Here’s my favorite of his, as explained by Frank Schwab of Yahoo Sports:

Bob Uecker today talking about how he started with the Brewers scouting the Northern League. He didn’t know to have a stopwatch. “I’d cup my hands like I had a stopwatch, then ask the guy next to me, ‘What did you have him at?’ They’d say ‘3.4 seconds.’ I’d say ‘Yeah, me too.'”

It reminded me of something Adrienne Miller described in her book, “In the Land of Men,” about her first day at GQ:

“As [GQ editor David] Granger and I spoke, it became apparent that I did have one thing going for me: I was able to talk about past issues of GQ. Later, he said that I got the job because I was the one person he’d interviewed who’d actually even bothered to open the magazine.”

“ ‘Never underestimate how unprepared most people are,’ he would later observe, correctly.”

Don’t forget your stopwatch. Read the magazine in advance. And if you’re not sure what you need for the first day, ask. Otherwise, you might not be prepared to do the work.

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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!

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You Don’t Know How Good You’ve Got It.

Here's what the TV quality looked like. Not great!

Two decades ago, I flew British Airways for the first time. I was 13 years old, and it was the greatest flight I’d ever been on.

What made it so great? Two words: Personal TVs. Every seat had its own television, and each TV had a dozen channels. You could flip through and watch any movie or TV show playing on that channel. For a kid like me — especially one who didn’t have cable TV yet — this was heaven.

Tonight, I flew on British Airways for the first time since that flight. And I’m pretty sure it was the same plane I’d flown on 22 years earlier.

What makes me think that? Well, they still had the same TVs — and they still had that same lineup of channels.

In 2022, we’ve come to expect a little more from our in-flight entertainment. We expect there to be dozens, if not hundreds, of on-demand movies and TV shows.

This flight had two channels, showing two movies of their choice, and a picture quality that reminded me of the days of rabbit ears on our set-top box.

Look, I know this is a first-world problem. And it the end, it didn’t really matter at all. Instead of watching a movie, I read a book, did a little work, and took a nap.

But it was a nice reminder of how far things have come in the past few years. The next time I’m flying and I *only* have a few dozen options to choose from, I might be a little more grateful. Sometimes, you need a little reminder to remember how good you’ve got it.

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That’s a photo of the TV at my seat. The wavy lines aren’t the result of any weird pixelation caused when taking a photo of a screen — that’s just what the screen looked like.

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You Can’t Do It All.

Right now, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I’ve got a consulting business, some upcoming workshops, and I’m building out a publication at inboxcollective.com. Any one of these could be its own full-time job — I’m trying to find the right balance to do all three!

And still, I find myself getting excited about new projects.

On my to-do list, I have a big list of “Someday” projects. And true to the word, some days, I get especially excited about them. I’ll start to flesh out ideas for training more newsletter editors, or building out a digital course, or launching a magazine.

But I know I can’t do it all — there are only so many hours in the day, so I have to prioritize. My go-to tactic: I’ll add a note to my to-do list to revisit the idea about a month later. If I’m still excited about the idea after a month, then maybe that’s something I’ll actually start to work on. (Often, a month later, I’m less enthusiastic about it, which confirms that I made the right decision to wait off on that idea.)

It’s not easy to ignore an idea I’m excited about. But I know I’ll have more ideas, and I know I have plenty of work to tackle now. My challenge is staying focused and not letting the shiny new idea distract me from the work I need to do.

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That’s a screenshot of a recent week on my to-do list. Lots to do — even without new ideas!

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You’re Going to Make Your Own Choices.

When a reader signs up for Not a Newsletter, they immediately get a welcome email from me, in which I ask two things: Do you have a newsletter, and what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing with it?

Sometimes, the replies will be small and easy to reply to. Struggling with growth? Here are a few slides. Need help with a survey? Here are a few examples.

But other times, the replies involve a weightier topic — writers at major crossroads. I used to send back long responses to these readers, making the argument for why I thought they might want to head in a certain direction. What I discovered is that often, despite a thoughtful and well-sourced reply, they’d go in an entirely different direction.

These readers, I realized, weren’t looking for advice — they just wanted a place to vent.

It didn’t matter if my advice was good or bad. They weren’t looking for advice, and it wasn’t my place to give it.

So I’ve started changing how I reply to those messages. When I think I’ve got one of those emails in my inbox, I try to validate their reply (“That’s such an interesting challenge! I’ve had a few other readers struggle with this — it’s not easy!”) before asking a question or two in reply. I don’t share as many links as I do with other readers. Again, they’re venting, so my job is to listen. The right reply isn’t a solution — it’s a question.

These readers are going to make their own choices. All I can do is listen, ask, and hope that whatever choices they make are the right ones for them.

———

That’s the email they reply to when someone signs up for my newsletter, which, by the way, you can do here.

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There’s Always More Work to Do.

the practice courts at the US Open are on right, with more courts on the left. You can see the Grandstand, one of the biggest courts at the facility, on the far left.

So we’re at the US Open last week. We’ve seen some great tennis already, but there’s one star we really want to see: Serena Williams. She’s playing in the night match at Arthur Ashe Stadium, the venue’s biggest court, but we don’t have tickets for the night session. So we do the next best thing: We find out when she’s practicing, and wait on the practice courts for her to arrive.

While we’re waiting, we’re hearing the roars from Ashe, where Coco Gauff, the 12 seed, is playing her second round match. She wins the first set, but trails 5-3 in the second set. The match seems destined for a third set. But then Gauff turns things around. She wins her serve, then breaks her opponent. The match goes to a tiebreak. We hear the roars as Gauff wins the tiebreak, the set, and the match.

And a few minutes later, we hear another round of applause from one end of the practice courts. We look up. It’s not Serena — it’s Gauff, walking out from Ashe directly onto the courts. “Her serve was off today,“ whispers someone behind us. I check the stats: Gauff finished the match with more double faults than aces. Not great.

So there she is, on Practice Court #5, mere minutes after winning a big match on center court, and she’s back out with her coach, working on her serve. For a lot of players, making the third round of a major would be a career highlight. But for Gauff, who made the finals of the US Open last year, there are clearly bigger goals in mind.

It reminded me that even the best in their field have an off day. And what do the greats do after an off day? They get right back to work.

Even when you’re at the top of your game, there’s always more work to do.

———

That’s a photo I took of the practice courts, there on the right, at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens.

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It’ll Be OK.

That was the view from my cabin porch

I just spent a week up in New England in a cabin, on a lake, in the woods. We didn’t have electricity or internet or cell service. My clients were excited about it: “You deserve a full week off,” they told me. My wife was excited about it: “You’ve earned this!” she said.

I was terrified.

I was terrified of the emails I’d get while I was gone. I was worried that I’d return to find 400 urgent requests that I was a week late on. I was worried that something terrible would happen to a client while I was gone and I wouldn’t be able to help.

And I logged back on yesterday to find… well, about 70 emails that actually required a personal reply. Not a single one was urgent. My website was still functioning. The Google Doc was still live. Nothing broke or went terribly wrong.

And in the week I was gone, I truly got the chance to unplug. I read three books, I swam, I napped, I did a whole lot of nothing.

Today, I’ll reply to all those emails, and tomorrow, I’ll get back to work. But I’m glad I got the chance to unplug.

Turned out that for all my fears, everyone else was right: It was OK to take a week off, and it was worth it.

———

That was the view from my cabin. I kept my phone off most of the week, but did turn it on once or twice to take photos.

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