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.
In it are hundreds of stories of the day — stories, of course, told by the survivors of September 11th, 2001. So many of the stories are ones where a single decision may have saved a life: The chef who stopped in to get his glasses adjusted before heading up to his floor; the salesman who was told that his tie didn’t match his shirt, so he headed back to his desk to get a new one; the woman who was fired from her job on the afternoon of September 10th; the dad, who took the ferry to the office, and lived, while his son, who took the train, did not.
Stephen Blihar, an officer with the NYPD, described thinking back upon the day like this: “It was a day of lefts and rights.”
I can’t stop thinking about that phrase: A day of lefts and rights. There are so many choices we make — in a day, in a career, in a lifetime. We agonize over the big choices, when often the small ones — go left, or go right? — are the ones with the most impact. We make the best choices we have, with the best information we have, but who knows what will come of all of it?
Anyway, read the book. I can’t recommend it enough.
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I took that photo, in October 2018, of the view of New York, looking north from 1 World Trade Center after a thunderstorm.
So you’ve just graduated — congrats! — and you’re trying to get that first job in journalism. Or you’ve been working in the industry for a while, and you’re hoping to get that next job.
I’ve worked at startups (BuzzFeed), established newsrooms (The New Yorker), and launched two journalism businesses (Stry.us, Inbox Collective). I’ve been lucky enough to hire for my teams, so I’ve got perspective on both sides of the hiring process.
Recently, I got the chance to talk with a class of soon-to-be-grads about how they could think about getting their first job in the field. I shared five key rules for them. I hope these rules will help them — and might help you, too.
1.) Your side project is your ticket in — Launch something! At BuzzFeed, everyone had a side project, and I’ve been a believer in these ever since. It’s never been easier to launch a newsletter, a podcast, a blog, an Instagram, or even a print publication. Show hiring managers what you can do and how you work by launching something of your own.
2.) You don’t need to wait for the traditional gatekeepers. — So many early career journalists only apply to big, established newsrooms. But in some cases, applying to those types of newsrooms might be the wrong approach for you. You might get more experience and more opportunity at a smaller outlet. Project Oasis, for instance, maintains a list of more than 700 local newsrooms, many of which are actively hiring right now. Be willing to start small, and work at a place where you can really grow as a journalist. Don’t worry about the title or the size of the org — find a great team where you can learn a lot and do great work.
3.) Even if they’re not hiring, you can ask if there’s a way to help. — Reach out and see if there’s a way to get involved. Maybe there’s an opportunity to freelance or intern. Maybe they’d be open to bringing you on a role that isn’t listed. Maybe they need additional help on a specific project. Reach out — you never know when you might find an editor or a manager who’s willing to give you a shot.
4.) You’re as good as your ability to stay in touch. — If you do get a chance to chat with someone in a newsroom, even if it’s just for a coffee, follow up and say thank you. Buy stationary and send them an actual thank you note. And stay in touch over the coming years. When you see them publish a great story, shoot them a congratulatory note. So many people never follow up. Don’t be that person!
5.) Your next job might be one you create. — There’s never been a better time to create your own newsroom. There are amazing tools — for publishing (CMS), distribution (email, social media, audio), and monetization — to allow you to create a publication. Many of these tools didn’t exist even a few years ago, but they do now. Maybe your first job isn’t at a traditional newsroom — it’s you and a few friends building your own thing. The tools, training — and in many cases, the funding — is there, if you want to start something new.
Remember: We need people like you to tell these stories, and I hope you’ll pursue a career in journalism. Whatever you choose to do next, I wish you good luck.
Two small milestones happened this week: I turned 34 today, and yesterday, Inbox Collective reached $250,000 in revenue. I didn’t start this business to make a lot of money — I’ve tried to make decisions based on the impact of the work, not the revenue it brings in, and I hope that I always maintain that approach. But still, that revenue number represents something: The relationships I’ve built with clients and readers, and trust that they’ve placed in me to help them grow their businesses. That number represents dozens of projects, calls, conversations, and work over the previous two years.
I feel so lucky to do this work, and to be able to do it at this point in my career. I know I have the chance to build something that can grow for a long time, and I’m so grateful for that opportunity. I hope this is just one of many milestones ahead — if I continue to strive, every day, to serve my clients and readers well, I think it can be.
The New Yorker did an interview with John Swartzwelder, one of the most prolific writers in the history of “The Simpsons,” and a man who is legendary for his privacy. (The New Yorker described him as “reclusive, mysterious, almost mythical.”) The interview’s fascinating and funny, but I particularly enjoyed this part:
How much time and attention did you spend on these scripts? Another “Simpsons” writer once compared your scripts to finely tuned machines—if the wrong person mucked with them, the whole thing could blow up.
All of my time and all of my attention. It’s the only way I know how to write, darn it. But I do have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.
That’s interesting. So create an imperfect world and then improve it?
That’s the way I do it.
I absolutely love this idea. And the most interesting thing for me is, it’s actually the second time I’ve heard this idea this month!
The other time? On the podcast “Two Writers Slinging Yang,” as shared by award-winning food writer Alan Richman. He told host Jeff Pearlman:
I would sit down with my notes in front of me and whatever’s in my head, and I would write a first draft, and I would make sure it was much longer than the story was going to be. I would write maybe three or four thousand words, just off the top of my head, just spewing it out and typing it, and I knew that was not going to be the story. But that gets everything out of my head. By doing that, I would say, “Oh, this is important.” I would start to see what I had in my head and what would make the story… I always wrote a first draft as fast as I could until I got everything out of my head and on paper. And then I would write the second draft, and that’s when I’d start to write.
Someone once said all writing is re-writing, and that’s what I believe in. I re-write and re-write.
Here are two very different writers: A comedy writer, and a writer of long food feature stories for GQ. But they both know their strengths — they’re good at re-writing! — and have built their creative process around that strength. When you’re a writer, you’re judged on your output, not your process. Who cares how you get there? All that matters is that you get there.
Whatever it is you do, play to your strengths. Figure out what you like doing most, and see if there’s a way to build your process around that.
It’s 11 p.m. on a Monday night, and there’s this one last work thing I have to do.
When I’m on calls with clients, I’m always taking notes. Through two years of Inbox Collective, I’ve filled up a few notebooks with bullet points and to-dos for clients.
When I first started, I didn’t do much with these notes. I’d write them down in the notebook, and that was that. That system worked fine at previous jobs, where I saw my colleagues every day, and where the projects I was working on were often things I had to deal with on a daily — or at least weekly — basis. I took notes, then got to work on whatever tasks I had to do.
But in my new job, I might go a month or more without talking to a client. My old notebook system didn’t work anymore, since I needed to be able to quickly — in those five or ten minutes between calls — refresh my memory of what we might have talked about last. For the money these clients pay, they deserve to talk with a partner who’s ready to dive in and use the time together well.
So I made a change: I created a Google Doc for every client, and at the end of every day, I type my notes from our call into the doc. That way, I’ve got a searchable database. Every Sunday night, I go through my notes to prep for that week’s meetings. I usually check back the morning of my calls, too — things get busy, and by Thursday or Friday, if I don’t write it down, I might forget my own name!
(I still do like taking the initial notes on actual paper — I find that if I’m typing and talking at the same time, I’m usually just transcribing the conversation, not actually paying attention and asking the right question. With the paper notebook, I stay more engaged throughout.)
I wasn’t always great about moving my notes over to the Google Doc. I remember one day, early on in 2019, when I’d gone a few days without typing up my notes. I’d gotten a little lazy about the whole thing. And when I finally got around to typing them up, I probably had 30 pages of notes to deal with. The task took me hours.
So now, no matter what else is happening in my day, I make time at the end of the day to type up my notes. It takes a few minutes, and it’s sometimes a pain, but it gets done — and I know that in a few weeks, when I need to refresh my memory, those notes will be there to make sure I can pick up exactly where I left off with a client.
There was a fascinating story in The Washington Post this week about men’s gymnastics, and how the University of Minnesota — which has had a men’s gymnastics team for 118 years — has decided to cut that sport at year’s end. The move will save the university $750,000 per year.
Minnesota’s decision — combined with Iowa’s plan to drop men’s gymnastics and two other sports — is the latest blow to the dwindling ranks of Division I programs, leaving just five Big Ten schools with men’s teams and 12 in the nation. And it’s part of a larger pattern at Division I colleges and universities across the country, where “nonrevenue” sports are being dropped in the name of fiscal responsibility.
At a university like Minnesota, there are only two sports that make money: Football and men’s basketball. Those sports fund the rest: Softball, hockey, and so on.
What the University of Minnesota — and so many other universities that have cut sports — is doing is making all of their decisions around a single metric: Profit or loss. Sports that make money can stay. Sports that lose money, even a small amount, are expendable.
But there are other ways to measure success for a college athletics program. You can look at the obvious metrics of success: Wins or losses, championships won, or Olympians produced. You could look at the engagement of the community with these sports: Attendance, or tickets sold. You even could look at less obvious downstream metrics of success: How much of an economic impact will these scholarship athletes have on their state over the course of their careers? (A study of previous athletes might help a university understand the long-term return on their investment.)
There’s a lesson here for all of us: If profit is the only goal, then you’re only going to work on things that make money. But there are other ways to measure success. Make sure you have a few metrics in mind so you can optimize for the things that matter — and not just that which produces the highest immediate return.
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That photo of a gymnast participating at the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games comes via Flickr and is used via a Creative Commons license.
If it’s alright, I’d love to tell you about one of my favorite random things on the internet.
It’s a video of Eric Clapton playing his hit, “Cocaine,” at the Royal Albert Hall, in 2015. It starts with that legendary riff, in E, and you can see the crowd recognize it immediately. But here’s the thing that amazes me the most: You’ve got one of greatest guitarists of all time, in one of the most famous concert halls in the world, and people are just… sitting there. They’re not, up they’re not dancing. Eric Clapton is playing freaking “Cocaine,” and people are sitting on their butts like they’re watching someone perform at an open mic night.
And then comes one of my favorite random things on the internet.
It happens at about 2:19 in the video. Clapton’s in a guitar solo, and the camera pans across the crowd: 5,000 people, lots of butts in seats.
But there, in the bottom corner, at the edge of the stage to Clapton’s left, is this one couple.
They’ve snuck up to the front, and they’re dancing like — excuse the cliche, but it’s accurate here — no one’s watching.
They shimmy. They shake. They twirl.
They — and I mean this in the best possible away — do not appear to give even the slightest shit about the fact that no one else is dancing.
The camera cuts to the band, and they’re loving it. They cut back to the couple: Now jumping up and down, cheering wildly for Clapton.
And then something happens: People notice that couple, and seem to snap out of their stupor. They remember: They’re watching Eric Clapton! One of the great rock and roll musicians of all time! And he’s playing one of the most famous rock and roll songs of all time! People start to get out of their seats. Some folks rush to the stage to cheer. The crowd gets loud.
Sometimes, it takes two people, getting up and showing everyone else the way. Sometimes, you have to be the one to give everyone else permission to get up and do something — to dance, to experiment, to try something bold.
We’re moving into this next phase of the pandemic, and I don’t know what happens next. But here’s your permission: Don’t stay seated. Don’t idle. Get up and dance, even if you feel like you might look a little silly. You never know who might be right behind you on the dancefloor.
I’ve been watching The Masters this week, and there’s a golfer I’ve never heard of who’s really impressed me. His name’s Will Zalatoris, and he’s currently tied for second, heading into the final round. He’s 24, and he’s not yet on the PGA Tour — he’s in the field thanks to an exemption. He has five top 10 finishes this year, and has made over $1.7 million golfing in 2021, so it’s not like this is a Tin Cup type of story — but still, it’s impressive for a 24-year-old in his first Masters.
But the thing I like most about Zalatoris is that he doesn’t seem afraid of the moment. He got asked about it at a press conference earlier this week: Did he feel nervous? Was he scared of the spotlight?
“There’s no reason to feel intimidated now,” he told reporters. “I made it to here.”
It’s a wonderful thing to be able to perform without pressure. Watching some of the other golfers today — guys who’ve been here before, and who have real weight on their shoulders — you can see how tough it is to hit shots on such a big stage. But Zalatoris seems free of that burden, able to play as though he’s playing a practice round.
He made it to here. He belongs on this stage. And it’s OK to believe that tomorrow, he just might win the whole thing.
One of my absolute favorite things is getting the chance to connect two people who don’t know each other — but who I know are immediately going to hit it off. In a typical week, I’ll make a handful of these intros, so I’ve had quite a bit of practice in getting it right. Here’s what I’ve learned about making an introduction that leads to impact.
Step 1 — Reach out to both parties and make sure there’s mutual interest
You’d be surprised how often an intro shows up in your inbox with no previous warning! When those arrive, you often feel like someone is imposing on you, even if that’s not their intent.
But there’s a simple fix: First reach out to make sure each person is interested, understands the nature of the intro, and has the time do so. Is the person you’re being connected to looking for professional help? For a a 20-minute call? For a reference or advice? You’re setting up a blind date here, so it’s up to you to make sure each party is interested and excited to come to the table.
Step 2 — Follow a simple formula for the intro
Here’s what every one of my intros looks like:
Keep it brief, be positive, and make sure each party leaves feeling like you’ve presented them in the best possible light. If there’s a small point of connection that might spark a conversation — say, there’s a mutual friend in common, or they both have a shared interest — mention that to help them kick off the conversation.
One more thing: Make sure you’re introducing them at the right email address. Maybe this person wants to be connected via their personal email, or maybe this is for business and they want an intro at their work email. Double check to make sure you’re introducing them in the correct space.
Step 3 — If you’re the one being introduced, bcc the person who introduced you!
Here’s how I typically reply to an intro: “Thanks, Person Who Introduced Us, for making the intro! I’m moving you to bcc to spare your inbox.” It lets them know you’ve taken the reins here, but also keeps them from having to witness two people make plans on a lengthy email thread. This person’s taken the time to make an intro for you — the least you can do is keep them from receiving a dozen extra emails in the process.
And that’s it! Connect with both parties, make the intros, and make sure you get moved to bcc. Do that, and you’ve just made a proper digital introduction.
Last week, a friend was giving a presentation for work, and asked if she could include a slide with a few email tips she’d learned from me. At the top of the slide was an explanation of who I was.
“Here’s some advice from Dan Oshinsky,” she’d written, ”newsletter guru.”
I cringed.
The truth is, I’m not a guru, or an expert, or any of the other titles that people throw around. I’ve seen a lot in my time in this space, and shared a lot with others. But the thing I like most about my job isn’t that I get to share what I’ve learned with my clients.
It’s that I get to keep learning.
Often, as I get to work with a client, we’ll realize that there are things they want to try that I don’t have the answers for. And to me, that’s the most exciting part of the job — the chance to learn something completely new!
So we’ll start asking a few questions. We’ll dig into the issue. I might even reach out to others who’ve tried something similar, just to get their perspective.
And then we’ll start to test and learn. We’ll keep asking questions until we get some answers — even if they’re not the answers we expected.
I know that I don’t have all the answers. But I have a lot of the questions to help me figure out how to get the answers that me and my clients need.
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That’s a photo of me giving a talk at an event in Sydney in 2019.
