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.
There’s a lot that’s frustrating about being human, but here’s one thing that’s annoyed me a lot lately: You’re not always at your best.
There are days you show up to do the work, and things feel a little off. It doesn’t matter what the work is — it could be a project, or a big piece of writing, or a day on the golf course. Some days, you show up and know you’re not quite right, even if things felt amazing the last time you showed up to do this work.
It’s hard to accept that your body feels a little different today, that your mind’s in a different place, that your energy’s different than usual. Maybe you know why, or maybe you don’t. But you know, because you know yourself:
Today will be less than perfect.
I like being at my best. I like how confident I feel when I know that I’m doing my best work.
But there’s something to be said for getting through those days when you’re at 70%, when it’s not all there. You make the most of what you can with what you have that day. You find a way.
Accept less-than-perfect for today. Better days will come.
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Naturally, that post was inspired by a morning on the golf course. The day before, I hit the ball so well and felt confident over every shot. The next day, it looked like I’d never hit a golf ball before. It happens.
Every year, I meet up with my buddy Aaron for what we call our corporate retreat. We both started indie consulting businesses in 2019 — Aaron works in PR and communications, and I work in email. We’ve both been figuring it out as we go. This trip is our opportunity to catch up, play a little golf, and talk about where we’re going with our businesses.
I feel so lucky to have someone like Aaron in my corner, someone who’s building a similar business and in a similar place in his career trajectory. When I have a question about bringing on freelance help for a specific project, I can call Aaron to hear what he’s learned about working with freelancers. When I have a question about setting the right price for a contract with a potential client, he can offer feedback. The relationship goes both ways: He often checks in with questions to get my thoughts. And when we hit certain milestones or have a big win, we’ll share those with one another and cheer each other on.
I’m running a one-person business, but I know that I can’t do this alone. I’m grateful to the people I have in my corner, like Aaron, who help keep me and this business moving forward.
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That’s me and Aaron, at right, (and our friend, Lou, who came along for the retreat weekend).
When you make a donation to a nonprofit, you’ll probably get this message afterward: Does your company match donations? Check and see if you can double your impact today!
Inbox Collective, sadly, is probably a long way away from being able to do that.
Still, it always feels good to find ways to give back. Here are three I’ve been doing a lot of during the pandemic:
1.) Find an organization to volunteer with — I’ve been volunteering with Invisible Hands, a nonprofit here in New York that delivers groceries to needy families. I have a car, so it’s easy to take a few hours on a Saturday, pick up groceries, and drop them off to families in need. (And, during the pandemic, it’s felt like a safe way to help out my neighbors.) If you’re looking for volunteer opportunities, check out Idealist — you’ll find organizations near you that are looking for volunteers.
2) Donate blood — Finding time to give back can be a challenge, but donating blood is one way to help that doesn’t require a ton of time, and there’s probably a Red Cross drive happening near you this week. Donating costs nothing, usually takes less than 30 minutes, and might save someone’s life.
3) Donate to causes you care about — During the pandemic, I was so moved by stories about food banks that helped millions of Americans put food on the table during a time of need. So I made donating to food banks one of my core causes. Every time we travel somewhere, I find a local food bank in that area, using Feeding America‘s site, and donate whatever I can to the cause.
Give what you can when you can. Everyone wants to be able to do more — but whatever you can do right now, it’s more than enough.
I was scrolling through LinkedIn last weekend, and in a span of two minutes, saw the same story — same copy, same three images — pop into my feed twice.
The story was about Joshua Bell, one of the most acclaimed violinists of our era. He’ll soon be playing live with orchestras in Portland, Oregon, Stockholm, Sweden, Yerevan, Armenia, and Paris, France — and that’s just in the next four weeks. He performs on a Gibson ex Huberman, crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1713, a violin twice-stolen and most recently purchased for a reported $3.5 million. And in January 2007, as part of an experiment with The Washington Post, during the morning rush hour at Washington’s L’Enfant Plaza, he performed six classical pieces over the course of 43 minutes, as workers hurried from the Metro station to their offices. The experiment, as the Post’s Gene Weingarten explained, was to answer a simple question: “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”
Now, you might already know the answer to that question — possibly because you remember the story, which won a Pulitzer Prize, or possibly because you’re smart enough to guess the answer (“no”), but most likely because you’ve seen a version of this story pop into one of your social media feeds over the past 15 years, just as I did over the weekend.
And that version of that story was almost certainly wrong.
Weingarten, the writer of the original piece, tried to set the record straight in a 2014 column. After the piece was published, someone published a summary of the piece to the web. Weingarten found sixteen different errors in it — impressive when you consider that the summary was only 24 sentences long. As he explained:
“This piece — most people’s only direct knowledge of the stunt and its aftermath — was filled with errors significant and trivial, but relentless in their carelessness. I just re-read it, and it is almost incomprehensible how this could have happened, unless the writer read the original piece, forgot about it, and then, months later, tried to summarize it from memory, as though it were not available in original, checkable form just a few clicks away.”
That summary has since been copied and pasted thousands upon thousands of times, and has slowly gathered additional errors as it moves around the web. In the error-filled 2014 version, six people stopped to listen to Bell’s performance, and in total, he made $32. In the 2022 LinkedIn version, of which there are hundreds of posts with identical copy and identical images, four passerbys stopped, Bell made $20, and also, the entire thing took place in New York. (For the record: It took place in Washington, seven stopped, and he made a little more than $32, not including a larger bill dropped in by the one Washingtonian that day who happened to recognize him.)
People share this story for all sorts of reasons. I remember reading it in 2007 as a Ferris Bueller-esque reminder to stop and look around every once in a while. In 2014, Weingarten explained that many religious leaders liked to share the story as proof that beauty is everywhere. On LinkedIn, I saw the story being shared by recruiters as proof that you should look for a new job if your talents aren’t being appreciated at your current company. It’s a great story, and one that can apparently mean just about anything to anyone. It’s what might happen if Hermann Rorschach had written an Aesop’s Fable or two, and asked his patients to interpret that instead of an inkblot.
And I’m sharing this story with you for an entirely different reason. It’s as a warning and a reminder: Be careful about the data you cite when you tell stories like these.
Often, when I’m working with a new client, they’ll mention a tactic they want to try, but then mention a benchmark that’s wildly out of line with reality, and I have to work hard to help them readjust their expectations. A good example: A few years back, there was a story about a local newsletter that used paid acquisition to grow their list. The tactic is just fine — spending money on ads to grow your list is absolutely something certain publishers should try! — but this client kept quoting the cost to acquire an email address, not realizing that the publisher from the story was in a different country, and the amount quoted wasn’t in American dollars. They had the right idea, but somewhere along the way, the data had lost crucial context. (This meant that they were prepared to spend three times what they should have to acquire a single email address.) I’ve seen this sort of mistake happen with large publishers, with individual writers, and every type of newsletter creator in between.
So I’ll say it here again: Be careful about the data you cite when you tell stories like these — it might be wrong, and it might be leading you down the wrong path.
(And if you see someone sharing a story about a New York-based violist who made $20, do yourself a favor and don’t share it.)
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At top, that’s a screenshot of one of the LinkedIn posts. As of this writing, there are over 40 pages of LinkedIn results for the story, all of which are nearly identical. There are even a few in different languages, which appear to have been copied into Google Translate and then copied over from there.
Passover starts later this week, and there’s a song we’ll sing during the Passover service, which is known as a seder. The song is called “Dayenu,” which translates to, “It would have been enough.”
We sing that if God had merely found a way for the Israelites to exit Egypt, it would have been enough.
And if God had merely supplied the Israelites with food, it would have been enough.
And had God had merely brought us the Torah, it would’ve been enough.
And so on, and so on.
The idea is that even one of these acts would have been enough. (But in the telling of the story, God provides all of these things, and more.)
The song is one of gratitude, and it’s one I remind myself of whenever I think about the life that I have or the business I’ve built. Do I want more? Sure. I know there’s a lot more out there. But I look at what I have — an amazing family, wonderful friends, and a great job — and have to be grateful.
I’d like more — but this is already more than enough.
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That photo of matzah, a staple of Passover, was taken by Flickr user ohadby, and is used here thanks to a Creative Commons license.
So we’re at Punta Cana International Airport, waiting to fly home, when we see a sign for the airport lounge, and it mentions an unusual feature: It has a pool.
A pool? At the airport?
So we go upstairs to the lounge. If you have a particular credit card, you can get in for free, and we happen to have that card. And sure enough, outside, is an infinity pool — a decent-sized one, too, overlooking the tarmac. I tell Sally that I might put my toes in. Sally says, “I’m going in all the way. When’s the next time we’re going to get to swim at the airport?”
She makes a good point, so we both get in. We’re drinking a beer at a freaking pool at the airport, watching flights from the U.S. and Panama and even Poland roll into Punta Cana. Then we shower, put on pants, and head back to New York, where the weather’s in the 50s and gray.
Sally, as usual, was right. Sometimes, you’ve got to try something because, honestly, when are you going to get to do it again?
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That is the first (and probably only) bathing suit photo I’ll ever post on danoshinsky.com.
There’s a clip going around with Jon Stewart, who recently sat in on Howard Stern’s show. Stewart’s success in show business is incredible — he won, roughly, a billion Emmys as host of “The Daily Show,” and gave dozens of comedians and writers a huge boost in their careers. Just look at the page of “Daily Show” alums for a moment. It’s a who’s who of current comedy legends.
So Stern wanted to know how Stewart felt about seeing some of the biggest names from his show — comedians like Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Samantha Bee — go on to success after leaving “The Daily Show.” Did he ever feel envious of their success?
His answer was so wonderful:
“I never had that sense that someone else’s success was to the detriment of mine. I think it leads to such bitterness when you look at the world as finite and resource-guarded. It leads to such bitterness, and it’s destructive as an emotion. I’ve always felt that everybody’s success expands opportunity.”
I love that quote, and have been thinking about it in relation to the work that I do now. In the newsletter space, it’s easy to look at the success that others are having and think: That should be me! But the truth is: Every time someone launches a great new newsletter, it opens up doors for so many new writers. Those success stories show us all what’s possible with email, what can be done. And when someone succeeds in the industry, it gets so many new writers and creators excited about trying to replicate that success.
There are so many more opportunities in the newsletter space now than there were a decade ago, or even three years ago. Those success stories have expanded opportunities for all of us.
Every year, we travel to South Florida to visit family. The trips are always a good time, but sometimes, they can feel a little repetitive. We go to the same restaurants, the same beach, the same hotel. We realized a few years ago that we needed to shake things up a little — otherwise, making the trip might start feeling like a checklist of things to do, instead of a true vacation.
So last year, Sally had a brilliant idea: She booked us on a fanboat trip through the Everglades. It was an absolute blast — driving through swampland at high speeds was the highlight of our trip. And afterwards, we agreed: Every year, we’d try something new when we came down to Florida to visit.
This year, that meant a trip to Spring Training to watch baseball, and then an afternoon on a water cruise. Next year, I’m thinking we might rent a speedboat or book a few nights at a fancy new hotel.
Whatever you’re doing — whether it’s going about your day-to-day work or going on a trip to visit family — it can be easy to get stuck in a rut. The easiest way to break out of that is to add something new to the mix. Maybe you change up your commute, or do a pre-work workout to give you a boost. Maybe it means getting away from the office to work out of a different location. Maybe it means shifting your hours, or taking on a new project with different colleagues.
Whatever it is, don’t be afraid to break your routine and try something new. Sometimes, trying something new is exactly what you need to find that spark and help you enjoy things again.
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That’s a photo of us on the fanboat last year. We had a freaking blast on that thing.
When I was 16 years old, I had a news story published in The Boston Globe. I wish I could tell you it was because of hard work or talent, but it wasn’t. I was interning at a news service in Washington, D.C., and one day, thousands of protestors in yellow shirts marched past our office. I asked my boss if I could go outside and ask them a few questions. Turns out they were protesting against the Chinese government — they were from Falun Gong, and one of their members had been detained in China. They’d rallied to try to pressure China into letting him go. The man detained was from Boston. The news service I worked for had a relationship with The Boston Globe. I got some quotes, wrote up the story, and the next day, read my piece in the paper. Right place, right time, right story — that’s how I ended up in The Boston Globe.
When I was 24 years old, I got a job at BuzzFeed. I wish I could tell you it was because I truly believed that BuzzFeed was about to become one of most influential publishers in the world, but it wasn’t. They were launching a section for feature stories, and I’d been doing a lot of that sort of thing with Stry.us. I was curious about what the were doing, so I reached out to chat. I wasn’t the right person for that role, but they invited me to pitch them on a new role within the company. I’d had some success with my newsletter, Tools for Reporters, and thought email might be a good fit there. They agreed. Right place, right time, right background — that’s how I ended up at BuzzFeed.
When I was 32, I left my job at The New Yorker to start Inbox Collective. I wish I could tell you it was because I knew that email was about to become one of the hottest channels in the digital space, but it wasn’t. I’d been working in this space for several years and had learned a lot. I’d launched Not a Newsletter to share some of the things I’d learned. My readers started reaching out to ask if I could consult for them, and at the same time, I started getting invited to travel both in the U.S. and abroad to speak about newsletters. It seemed like a good moment to take the leap. Right place, right time, right strategy — that’s how I started Inbox Collective.
There are so many things that can make or break an opportunity. Do you have the right skills? Do you have the right team? Do you have the right funding?
