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Embrace the Limitations.

I often wish the hours for our day care were a little better. Drop off is at 8:45 a.m., pick-up is at 3:45 p.m. There are days when I’m cramming five or six calls into that window, then driving right back to pick up Ben. (Lunch sometimes happens in the five minutes between calls. ) After that, I’m playing with Ben for a few hours, handling dinner and bedtime, and then going right back to my desk to work.

But this year, I finally got to a place where I realized:

1.) My son loves his day care teachers and his friends. He’s really happy there.

2.) We’re incredibly lucky to have such a good day care so close to our home.

3.) I have an excuse, five days a week, to cut my workday short and play with my son.

This schedule means I have to say “no” to certain projects — I don’t have time for everything. But it also means I can’t overload my days with calls or work. I have plenty of working hours during the normal business day, and I can always take care of writing or other stuff at night.

Is our schedule perfect? No. But it’s up to me to embrace the good that it brings into our lives.

Today, I got to spend an hour on the playground with my kid, and then eat dinner with him at home. We had a little conversation about the day. We laughed and played together.

Sure beats working.

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One favorite activity: Shopping at the supermarket together. Ben knows exactly where the good bread is, and he often sprints to the corner of the supermarket to grab a loaf.

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The Dream is Whatever You Want It to Be.

I was sitting on a hill yesterday in town, at a free concert in the park, with my son. He was eating a corndog — his very first. (He loved it.) The sky was blue, the air was cool. We’d biked up to the show together on the path behind our house.

And I was thinking about this line from Jon Batiste’s new album, “BIG MONEY”:

You can be living the life
But not living the dream

That means something different to everyone — certainly different to you than to me.

What I like about living up here is the pace. People aren’t in a rush, and if something doesn’t get done that day, it’s OK. There’s always tomorrow. The afternoons can be spent at the park, or on a bike, or at the golf course, or on the mountain. And I get to spend a lot of time with my family, and especially with my son.

I don’t know what “the dream” really means, but a summer afternoon splitting a corndog with my son in the park has to be pretty close to it.

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It Won’t Be This Way Forever.

Ben got sick last week and ended up in the hospital for two nights. Then we came home, and just as we thought things were getting better, he realized that he could climb out of the crib, which turned bedtime into a game of, ”Please, it’s time for sleep!” (We kept losing.)

And I had to remind Sally: Whatever we’re going through, it’s not forever. There are moments when you feel like you’re at your lowest; there are phases that don’t seem to end; there are weeks when you feel like you’ve absolutely been sucker punched by the universe.

And then there are stretches that feel perfect, that feel wonderful, that you wish would never end.

Nothing lasts, and I have to remind myself of that. The good, the bad, the in-between: It doesn’t last. It won’t be this way forever.

When you’re at a high, it can be tough to accept that things might not stay this way. But when you’re at a low? It’s nice to know that things can and will change.

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I took that photo of Ben at the airport a few weeks ago. He was so excited — he’s been reading a bunch of books about planes, trains, and automobiles, so he was just thrilled to see planes taking off in real life.

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I Don’t Always Have the Answer.

At least once a week, a reader asks me a question, and my reply is: “To be honest: This is one of those questions that’s so far outside my wheelhouse that I’m not sure my advice is worth listening to!”

People are sometimes surprised to hear me say that. I do run an entire business around giving advice for newsletter operators, and I’ve been working in this space for a dozen years.

But the most important thing I’ve learned through my consulting practice is that it’s OK to say, “I don’t know!” No need to pretend I have all the answers.

And if you’re the kind of person asking the question, you should also feel free to ignore my advice entirely! I am frequently wrong, even when I have strong convictions about my answers!

So much of building any newsletter or any business is knowing when to follow and when to find your own way. (And yes, the teams that tend to build the best stuff in the long run do a bit of the former but often more of the latter!)

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I couldn’t quite find the right art for this, so I had to draw something myself using the only art tool I’m qualified to use: MS Paint. (Or, in this case, a free online replica version of MS Paint.)

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Never Better Than Now.

I remember when my dad turned 40. They threw a big birthday party, and friends gifted him this giant inflatable cane. Everyone at the party signed it. It sat in his office for a long time, and I every time I visited dad at work, I remember reading the inscriptions and names on the cane. There were a lot of jokes about my dad officially reaching old age, and I couldn’t disagree.

To a kid, 40 felt like 100.

But I’m 38 now, and looking up at 40 feels strange. I certainly don’t feel 100; I feel a lot closer to the starting line than the finish.

I also know that I don’t know when the finish line arrives.

I’m trying to remind myself that there’s never a right time to do the big stuff. Sometimes I try to tell myself that the timing will be better just a few months down the road, even though I know that’s not true. If you want to do something, you should do it now. Next year, next month, next week — none of this is guaranteed.

There’s never been a better time than right now.

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I took that photo alongside the harbor in Copenhagen one morning a few weeks ago. I was sitting there, watching the sun rise on a beautiful morning, and thinking about the fact that I do something that lets me travel to such beautiful places and work with such interesting people. I know how lucky I am.

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It Never Stops Changing.

When my son was a few months old, he went through a stretch where his sleep started to change. He’d been pretty consistently up to that point, sleeping more and more through the night, but then suddenly, he was sleeping less and getting a lot more fussy than usual.

We mentioned it to a friend, who gave us great advice: “It’s just a phase. Give it a week or two, and he’ll get through it.” Sure enough, a few days later, he did.

And ever since, I’ve started to notice the phases more clearly. Now that he’s two, the phases move a lot faster. One day, he’s taking baby steps up the stairs, and the next, he’s sprinting up them. One day, he’s just starting to learn his numbers, and the next, he’s counting to ten on his own. The progress, as a parent, is astonishing.

And it’s a reminder for me that whatever phases we’re going through in our life are just phases. Ben changes faster than most of us, but we can, too. We grow, we change. We’re all capable of continuing to change.

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That’s a photo I took of Ben and I reading a book together the other day.

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Little Wins for the Business.

Building a consulting business is a little weird, because it’s easy to end up in a situation where all your revenue comes from one place, and if something happens to that one revenue stream, you’re in trouble. It’s why, every year, one of my goals is to have at least five different five-figure revenue streams — ads, affiliate, coaching, live events, etc. — in the mix. Some streams are bigger than others, but diversifying means I can weather bumpy times.

The past three years, I’ve hit that goal — five different revenue streams of at least five figures — by the end of the year.

But this year is the first time I’ve ever hit it by July 1.

Celebrate the wins when you can.

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Events like The Newsletter Conference have been a big part of helping me hit that goal. (That’s a photo that I took at this year’s conference in New York.)

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Kick Over Rocks.

I stumbled upon this story the other day about the CEO of Pittsburgh’s airport, Christina Cassotis. I’ve got a soft spot for Pittsburgh — my wife’s from there, we got married there, and about once a year, we fly through there to visit my mother-in-law. The Pittsburgh airport’s a bit dated. It was built to be a hub for US Airways, but now that airline no longer exists, and the airport they have doesn’t really fit with what the city needs.

So I was fascinated to read this story in Pittsburgh Magazine about Cassotis, an executive who, by all accounts, is doing great things to rebuild and modernize the airport. (The rebuild of the airport will cost $1.7 billion, per one account.)

This was my favorite section from that Pittsburgh Magazine article:

“You don’t know how things work around here,” someone yelled after she instituted Uber pickup at the airport soon after she was hired. “Who do you think you are? You think you just come in here and change things?”

“Yeah, I actually do,” Cassotis replied. “That’s my job. My job is literally to kick over rocks. We have to do things differently if we’re going to get different results.”

I absolutely love that mentality. Sometimes, you need leaders who can guide you through a series of slow, steady changes. Sometimes, you need a leader who can recognize when things have been broken for a long time and really roll up their sleeves.

Never be afraid to kick over those rocks.

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That’s a photo I took at Pittsburgh International Airport back in 2019. When you’re walking to the train to take you to baggage claim, you used to have to walk past two statues of legendary figures in western Pennsylvania history. One is George Washington. The other is former Steeler Franco Harris. I always loved that in Pittsburgh, these two men were given statues right next to each other, and no one seemed to think it was odd that our nation’s first President and a guy who played fullback in the NFL were given equal weight.

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Three Tips for Networking at Conferences.

It’s funny to imagine now, since I’m often the guy who’s on stage, but it wasn’t all that long ago that I hated going to conferences. Meeting lots of new people? Lots of small talk? Breakfast in a hotel conference room? No, thanks!

But I have learned a few things about conferences along the way. Here are three that have made conferences about 1000x better for me.

1.) Literally always introduce yourself, even if it’s someone you’ve met a few times before, and even if you’re wearing a name tag. At these conferences, you meet so many people — half the time, I can barely remember my own name by the end! Introduce yourself and you’ll avoid that awkward moment in the conversation when you realize that the other person is making the “Where do I know this person from?” face.

2.) Have an icebreaker question ready for everyone. I was just talking with one of my public media clients about this — they’re going to a conference soon with lots of other small public media outlets. They could start each conversation with, “So where do you work?” or “How do you like living in Springfield?”, but honestly, how many great conversations have started with a question like that? Instead, they’re going in with a different icebreaker: “What’s the most successful fundraising drive you’ve done recently, and why do you think it worked so well?” If they ask a dozen people that, they’ll start a dozen interesting conversations — and probably walk away with at least 2-3 ideas they can try out for themselves!

3.) Always be the person who says hi to the speaker afterwards. Stop by, say thank you, and ask your one extra question. These speakers usually traveled a ways to be there — they’re happy to talk! (They just spent 45 minutes talking about that topic anyway!) Maybe you’re looking for an example or an idea. Ask them, and more often than not, they’ll be happy to send you one after the event is over. Just this morning, I got an email from someone I met after a session I hosted last week. I was delighted they actually followed up — more often than not, people don’t!

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That’s me on stage at Email Summit DK in Odense, Denmark, in January. It’s still funny to me that a guy who didn’t love conferences now speaks on stage at them.

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Small, Baby Goals.

I published this interview today with Alisha Ramos. She founded a newsletter called Girls’ Night In that grew to 180,000 subscribers and $2 million per year in revenue — and then she decided to downsize and start over as a one-person operation. I’ve been thinking a lot about her story — how she realized that what she’d built wasn’t working anymore for her and that she needed to start over. In an age where it feels like everyone is about being as big as possible, Alisha’s story is a reminder that it’s OK to build something that fits with your life — even if that’s something small.

And I especially loved this one thing Alisha told me at the end of our conversations:

I’m at this phase where I’m very content with where I’m at and what I have, and not having the drive or the desire to grow, grow, grow is actually nice. I have small, baby goals this year.

It’s such a wonderful way to think about things. Not everything has to be big. Sometimes, a few small, baby goals are all you really need.

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That’s a screenshot from Alisha’s wonderful newsletter, Downtime.

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