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.
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?
There’s a famous quote from golfer Arnold Palmer about the sport: “Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.” Arnie’s absolutely right about golf: It doesn’t seem all that complicated until you really start to get into the sport. There are how many different ways to swing a club? To chip? Even to grip a club? The objective is simple — get the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible — but the ways to achieve that goal are limitless.
The same is true with so much of the work we do. I had a conversation this week with one of my clients about the daily newsletter they want to launch. The goal with their newsletter is simple: Give readers a quick daily update to catch up on the day’s news. But the ways to deliver that to readers are endless. Do they want to have it come from a single writer or from a generic voice? Do they want to send it in the morning, afternoon, or evening? Should they focus on bringing readers stories in the inbox or requiring them to click out? How many stories should they include? What kinds of stories would make sense to include? I’d go on, but you get the idea: A single newsletter will end up being the result of dozens of different questions.
But what I’d tell you if you were learning to play golf or learning how to launch a newsletter: Keep it simple for as long as you can. It’s easy to overcomplicate things at the start. As you learn more, you’re going to want to try more advanced tactics. Save all of that for another day — and just focus on starting with the basics for now.
There’s a bagel place on my corner here in New York, and I’ve been going there for years. It’s a great spot with really good bagels, but there’s something that’s always bugged me about it.
On a weekday, this bagel place has about five employees behind the counter taking orders. On weekends, they might have eight or nine. And they always operate the same way: One of the employees takes your order, and then slices your bagel, and then makes your order, and then walks over the cash register, where he then takes off his gloves, and then throws them away, and then rings up your order, and then bags your bagels, and then puts back on a new set of gloves, and then, finally, walks back to the front of the line to take another order.
I know, it’s a bagel place — no one’s expecting them to operate with maximum efficiency. But the one thing that surprises me is that in all the years I’ve been going there, they’ve never added one thing to the line: A cashier. Adding a single dedicated cashier to the operation would speed up the entire operation. The cash register is always a chokepoint on their line — sometimes, it takes longer to ring up a customer than it does to make a bagel. Instead of being back at the start of the line serving another customer, the staff is waiting at the cash register for their turn to collect payment. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but every time I go in on a weekend, I see a handful of people who pop in, realize that the line’s too long, and decide to go elsewhere. If the line moved even a bit faster, many of them might wait around to buy.
Every time I go to this bagel shop, I think about what it’s like to manage a team. So much of being a good manager is freeing your team up to do their job. Sometimes, that means taking on responsibility for stuff that isn’t glamorous or exciting, or finding strategies to streamline the process so your team can do the work it needs to. Or it means paying attention to the obstacles in your team’s way, and looking for solutions to remove those hurdles.
Until you stop and really pay attention to what’s happening, you might not notice the little things — like how spending the money to hire a new cashier might actually make your business more money.
I’m a big fan of the show “Parks and Recreation.” It’s one of those shows that I loved when it first aired, and have kept watching over the years. It’s fun and silly and always leaves me in a good mood.
I’ve also been listening to the podcast “Parks and Recollection,” where Rob Lowe, an actor from the show, and Alan Yang, a writer from the show, revisit old episodes. On a recent podcast, they brought on Ben Schwartz, a frequent guest star from “Parks,” and got to talking about what it was like to be on set. Every TV show cast talks about how fun it was to work together, but the way Lowe, Schwartz, and Yang described things seemed a little different. What all three kept coming back to was a simple concept: The show worked because the cast and crew got along extraordinarily well. When you make something good with people you like, they said, you get a finished product that’s truly special.
It can be easy to overthink the elements of a great strategy — do you have the right tools, the right amount of funding, the right timing? But sometimes, the best work comes from a simple start: A great team, working together on something they care about. Let the rest come from there.
