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.
My favorite place to watch the New York City Marathon is on 59th Street and 1st Avenue, right at the moment the runners are coming off the bridge from Queens and turning into Manhattan. When runners turn left on 1st Avenue to head north through the Upper East Side, they’re passing mile 16. They’ve already gone through three boroughs — just two remain.
It’s one thing to watch the pro runners, who even at this point in the race seem to be sprinting through the course, and have no doubt that they’ll reach the finish line. But it’s another to see the regular runners — our neighbors here in New York, or runners who’ve traveled from all over to take part in this race — making that turn. I love to see how people react when they reach that point in the race. They’ve already run 16 miles, a distance I don’t think I’ll ever run in a single day. They’ve been up all day, and they’re obviously tired. But when they see the crowds and hear the cheers, they look reenergized.
I know those runners must have moments of doubt along the way. 26.2 miles is forever, and reaching Manhattan still means they’ve only covered three-fifths of the day’s distance. But I also know that thousands of runners complete the marathon ever year, which means that thousands of ordinary people find the strength to keep moving forward. How do they do it? Maybe it’s because the crowd picks you up, or because they’ve spotted a certain landmark that reminds them how close they are to the finish line. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe there’s something inside all of us that gives us the courage to keep going.
Sometimes, when I watch runners make that turn at 59th and 1st, it seems like they’re picking up speed, even after 16 miles. How? I’m not sure. But I know that ever year, I watch runners do what seems impossible: Find a little left in the tank to take that next stride.
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I took that photo today, right at the moment runners are about to turn onto 1st Avenue.
Every Sunday, a recurring to-do pops up on my calendar: “Prep for this week’s meetings.” It’s the single most important thing I do all week.
Some weeks — and this is one of them — my week is packed with meetings. I always leave a little gap between calls, but sometimes it’s as short as 15 minutes. There are stretches where I’ll have up to five hours of calls in a row. It can be exhausting, and by the end of the week, I’m often amazed that I can even remember my own name.
That’s why that Sunday prep is so important. For every client, I have a Google Doc with notes from our previous calls for me to review. I go through every meeting and jot down notes for the upcoming call. I also send emails out to my clients, checking in about the agenda for the call. Sometimes, going through my prep takes 20 or 30 minutes. Sometimes, if I’ve got a particularly busy week, it might take two hours.
But it means that when I get to the end of the week, and I’m on hour four of a long stretch of calls, and I only have 15 minutes before the next call, I can open that Google Doc and quickly remind myself of what I need to know. My clients are depending on me, and they expect me to show up ready to talk about their issues. “Sorry, what were we supposed to talk about today?” isn’t an option when someone’s paying for time with me.
Sure, spending a chunk of my Sunday doing prep isn’t always fun. But it always pays off — and it means that I’m always ready to talk, no matter how busy the week might get.
Understanding that you’ll never have all the answers. The only way forward is to have an open mind and keep asking questions.
Whatever you’re working on, remember this: Curious people make the best teammates. Find people who are always curious, and you’ll build a team that builds a great strategy in the long run.
It’s our first night in Lisbon, and we’re hungry. Earlier in the day, we’d passed by a restaurant that looked great — and was busy at lunch, which is usually a good sign — and they’d recommended that if we wanted to come back for dinner, we should either come super early (5:30 p.m.) or late (8:30). We’d come late, but by the time we arrived, they said their dinner service was full for the night.
So we started walking. We passed on Italian food and Mexican food, and weren’t into the steak place on the corner. We stopped at a barbershop that also had a bar inside and got a drink. They recommended a Chinese place up the hill, and so we headed there — only to find that they didn’t serve Chinese food. (Only burgers and cocktails. I still don’t understand why.) We kept walking, and I wasn’t worried about finding a place. I studied abroad in Spain, and restaurants there were always open late, and this was a Friday night, when restaurants are typically open even later. But at about 9:45, restaurants started turning us away. Four or five places told us, “Sorry, we close at 10.” And suddenly, we realized:
We had no idea if we were going to find a place that was open for dinner, we’d walked nearly 10 miles that day up and down Lisbon’s hilly streets, and we were really, really hungry.
So we started getting a little desperate, asking every bar and restaurant we passed — regardless of cuisine — if they were still open for dinner. None were.
I tried to steer us to a local kebab place, since those usually don’t close until 2 or 3 in the morning.
Closed.
We kept walking, and then, finally, on the right, I spotted it: A sushi place with a few people eating outside. We ran in. “Are you still open?” I asked.
“For dinner? Yes, right this way,” the hostess said, and pointed us to a table.
We ordered an excessive amount of food that night — sushi and soups and noodles and beers, as the TV in the corner played ‘00s hits. (I’d never eaten sushi at 11 p.m. while listening to Kanye West’s “Late Registration.” Based on how fast we ate everything they placed in front of us, I think our server thought we’d never eaten before. We ate and laughed and drank and toasted to somehow finding the last restaurant in Lisbon that was still open for dinner.
It was a reminder: Getting lost in a new place can be fun! But maybe next time, we’ll remember to first ask the hotel front desk what time local restaurants close.
With that in mind, here are ten other rules I’ve learned about traveling:
1.) Do something cultural.
2.) Do something active.
3.) Eat a lot.
4.) Try something new.
5.) Meet new people.
6.) Ask locals for recommendations.
7.) Tip well.
8.) If you’re traveling with a friend or a spouse, spend a few hours doing something on your own.
9.) Get enough rest.
And remember: You don’t need to see it all. I love leaving a place thinking, “You know, there’s more to see here! I can’t wait to come back.”
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That’s a photo I took of the view from the Bairro Alto in Lisbon at sunset.
Things are busy these days on the work front: Lots of projects, lots of calls, lots of events. My schedule is always busy, and there’s always more work on the horizon, it seems.
So it’s been incredible this week to travel with Sally to Portugal. This was a trip we booked, on a whim, a few months back. Flights were cheap, and hotels were cheap. We booked those, and left the rest entirely unplanned. A few friends sent over recommendations, but truly, until we landed, we didn’t know that much about what we’d do this week.
When we travel, we always like to do a few things: Eat a lot, try a few new things, do something cultural, and try to get some rest. But otherwise, for a trip like this, the goal isn’t to overplan — our work days are full of structure, so a trip like this is the opportunity to about what I’ll call “unstructure”: The opportunity to leave things open-ended, to figure things out day by day.
Does it mean that we might miss out on something essential? Possibly! (Though the staff at the hotel or the taxi driver at the airport will probably point you towards those things anyway.) We’ve found that if you book your hotel and flights, that provides plenty of structure for your vacation. You know where you’ll be and when you’ll be there. Once you’re there, you can ask questions, be curious, explore, and figure out the rest.
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One of the hotels where we stayed had a hike up to a scenic overlook. It was one of those things that wasn’t in any guidebook or even on the hotel’s website — we noticed it on the drive in and asked if there was a path to go check it out. This photo is the view from the top.
So, yesterday morning, I got up early (as I often do) to write for this Bulletin column.
I took a break to make Raif some breakfast and take my morning meditative walk. When I was ready to return to my writing, I couldn’t seem to access the Facebook-owned site where I create my posts.
"Strange", I thought, but figured my internet was running slow so I decided not to fight with it. Instead, I helped Raif with some homework and cleaned up the kitchen.
When I tried to again connect to the site, about an hour later, it still didn’t work. That's when I started to get nervous. I tried joining from other browsers — No deal. I tried logging on to Bulletin.com where my articles actually get posted — Nothing. I even called my assistant to see if she was able to access the site – Nada.
That’s when I realized that all of Facebook’s platforms — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Bulletin and many others — were experiencing an outage. They were all down…Globally.
Whoa!!
The good news is that everything was back up within hours, but during the time it was down, I had some thoughts — the same type of thoughts that usually come up for me. Thoughts about my Personal Power.
What happens when the thing I depend on goes away?
Facebook aside — we do this in many places in our lives. We build our lives (and base our value) on our job title, our salary, our marital status, the car we drive, the vacation we take, the neighborhood we live in, the size of our home, the beauty of our body, the success of our children, and on and on and on.
All of these things can disappear in an instant.
My Process:
I think a lot about who I am without all the other "stuff" added in. I do my best to find my value in the things that are internally mine. My integrity, my generosity, my joy — things that I, alone, have the power over.
I ask myself what my intrinsic value is. Where can I approve of myself instead of depending upon the approval of others?
Try this:
Make a list of what external things you depend upon to give you value. Your home, your partner, your child, your job, your income etc.
List the things about them that you believe add to your value.
For example, it could be "I am a respected doctor" or "my partner is a respected doctor". Then ask yourself what would happen if that goes away tomorrow.
Nothing else changes. Your integrity stays the same, your work ethic etc, but just suddenly out of blue, you are no longer respected.
What would it take from you? Would you still be you? Would you still have value?
Do this with everything on your list.
Now make a list of the internal traits that you possess that would remain unaltered if the winds of change begin to blow — if your job or your salary or your marital status etc. changes.
Now hold onto those — honor those — build upon those. This is how you start taking your power back.
Let me know in the comments below the traits that you discover. I can't wait to read them!
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Until then…
May THE FORCE WITHIN be with you!
Rhonda Ross is a singer-songwriter, an Emmy-nominated actress, and a Personal Power Practitioner. For musical, speaking or workshop bookings: email info@TheRhondaRoss.com
Sports writer Joe Posnanski went on the “Two Writers Slinging Yang” podcast with Jeff Pearlman last week, and he told an amazing story. It’s a story about the time Posnanski, then a young sportswriter covering minor league baseball, had the courage to ask a dumb question of Billy Williams, a Hall of Fame outfielder who was then a minor league baseball coach.
As Posnanski recalls:
So I was sitting next to him, and we were talking a little bit. I don’t even know exactly what pushed me to do this, but I had been dying to know something. I turned to him, and said, “Mr. Williams, can I ask you a question?” And he said, “Yes.” And I said, “What is the difference between a curveball and a slider?”
And as I asked the question — I was probably 19 years old, 20 years old — there were some snickers in the press box, as you might imagine, from people who had overheard. And Billy Williams took my notepad — I had a skinny reporter’s notepad — he took my notepad and took my pen and started to draw the difference between a slider and curveball. And for the next 10 or 15 minutes, he just gave me this masterclass on the difference, how the curveball breaks this way, and the slider breaks this way, but there are different kinds of sliders: This is [Bob] Gibson’s slider, and this is Steve Carlton’s slider, and he would draw that, and this is Tom Seaver’s. He would go through all of that for different players. It was awe inspiring to be getting this lesson about something so basic from one of the best to have ever played the game.
And at the end of it, he said, “And by the way, don’t let these guys get you, the ones that were laughing. They don’t know the difference either.”
It’s a wonderful reminder: There are things that all of don’t know, but might be too afraid to ask. Why? Because simply asking the question might make us feel like we don’t belong in the room.
But it’s OK to ask! Be curious, and be willing to ask the questions you need to ask to get smarter. Often, you’ll find that others are more than willing to share what they’ve learned. You just have to be willing to ask the right question first, even if it feels a little foolish.
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That’s a photo I took of then-University of Missouri pitcher Ryan Clubb. I have no idea what pitch he was throwing in this photo.
In the year or so since I’ve started playing golf again, there have been good rounds (I shot in the mid-80s last week — a fantastic round for me!) and lousy rounds. Sometimes, I’ll feel super confident with a particular part of my game (hitting shots from inside 100 yards, for instance), and then play again a week later and be unable to hit the same shots. This sort of fluctuation with golf, I realize, is normal. It’s a remarkably difficult sport, one that requires a combination of strategy, strength, speed, skill, and luck. Even great golfers can be inconsistent with their play.
A lot of golf is about feel. I’ve played enough now that I have a decent golf swing, one that I can repeat on a regular basis. But some days, the feel for a certain shot isn’t there. Often, I can feel what’s off, and make an adjustment. But sometimes, I’ve got absolutely no idea what might be wrong, and feel tempted to try to fix things on the course.
That’s always a mistake. Trying to make major changes on the course — where you don’t have the freedom for trial and error — usually leads to more frustration.
Practice is where I have the chance to test and learn. On the driving range, I can experiment with different concepts. What happens if I move my hands forward, or the ball further back in my stance? What happens if tee the ball higher up? What if I try a shorter backswing, or a longer follow-through, on short iron shots? Practice is where I can see what works, with the intent of putting those strategies into play on the course.
When I’m playing a round, that’s where I’m expecting to perform the shots that I’ve practiced. Some days, I don’t have a certain shot, and I’m learning how to adjust on the fly. If my driver’s not feeling right that day, I’ll keep it in the bag and use something else off the tee. There’s a part of me that can feel too proud to do that, a part of me that tries to force a shot that isn’t there that day. That’s when I usually find myself hitting my second shot from somewhere deep in the woods.
When you’re doing the work, there are times to practice, and times to perform. Recognizing which is which gives you the chance to focus on what’s most important for that specific moment, and the best chance to succeed that day.
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That’s a photo I took during a round with my dad, a few weeks ago in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
A year ago, I realized that clients were asking me, over and over again, for examples of certain things:
Dan, do you have any examples of great pop-ups to convert readers from our website to our newsletter?
Have you seen any good examples of promotions on Instagram?
Do you have any examples you can share of amazing welcome emails?
So I started compiling examples into a big Google Drive file, and shared it with clients. But then I made another choice: I added a weekly note to my calendar to keep adding to the Drive. I created a folder on my laptop where I could store examples that I’d noticed over the course of the week, and then, every Friday, I’d upload them to Drive.
Sometimes I only have an example or two to upload on Friday, and sometimes, I’ll have dozens. But over the course of a year, I’ve uploaded hundreds of examples that I can refer clients to. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this one project has changed the way I work with clients. It’s one thing for me to be tell them about the concept, but it’s another to be able to show them a handful of great examples from their peers.
And had I decided to, say, update the file every month or every quarter, I’m not sure I would’ve stuck with it. (It took a lot of work to upload that first, giant batch of examples!) Instead, by focusing on a small, weekly habit, it feels so much more manageable — and the long-term result has been so much more than I ever could’ve expected.
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That’s a screenshot of the pop-ups folder. There are now more than 30 examples of pop-ups I love that I can share with clients.
I saw Willie Nelson perform on Sunday, and here’s something I didn’t realize about Willie until he walked out on stage: He’s 88 years old.
88! And still performing live, currently on a 14-stop tour over two months in 10 states!
Now, at that age, nobody’s expecting Willie Nelson to go out and play a marathon set. But I was impressed by the way Willie still found a way to put on a great show:
• He limited the set list to an hour — he’s played about 11 songs per night on the 2021 tour so far, instead of what had been 17 song sets pre-pandemic, per data on Setlist.fm.
• He loaded the lineup with not one but three openers, stretching what would be a normal concert into a six-hour-long festival.
• He toured with his son, J. Micah Nelson, and let him take lead on a few songs. (Willie’s kids can really play, so fans didn’t mind Willie taking a step out of the spotlight for a few minutes.)
• He didn’t waste much time with banter, saying a few words between songs — or just moving right into the next number.
All in all, it meant a set with a lot of hits and very little filler. I’m sure Willie would love to have the energy of a younger artist, able to go out and play for 2+ hours as a headliner. But he’s 88, and he’s got some limitations — and he still found a way to make it work.
As Willie sang that night: He’s still not dead, and still on the road. Impressive stuff.
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That’s a photo I took of Willie and his band on September 12, 2021, in Saratoga Springs, New York.
