Tag: do the work

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It Takes Longer Than You Think.

Last night, we went down to Sundance to see a few singer-songwriters from Nashville — Trannie Anderson, Josh Jenkins, and Matt Jenkins — perform on stage as part of a series of concerts with Nashville’s famed Bluebird Cafe. Together, the three of them have written songs played by some of the biggest artists in country music: Lainey Wilson, Walker Hayes, Keith Urban.

But as they told stories about their work, one thing came up over and over again: It takes an awful lot of writing songs just to get one song on an album. The Jenkins brothers told a story about writing a song for an artist, who passed on it — before deciding to record it several years later. Anderson told a story about working a job as a dog walker for a famous country musician who ended up recording one of her songs almost a decade later. All of the artists on stage said that they might have to write a 100 or more songs just get one that’s worthy of being recorded. (And there’s still no guarantee that the song will end up on an album!)

Sure, there are overnight success stories out there, but to me, the night was a reminder that it usually takes a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a lot of rejection to get to where you want to go.

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I took that photo during the show. The stage at Sundance is absolutely spectacular — it’s built into the hill, with just a little backlight against the dark night sky. If you get a chance to go there for a concert, you should.

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Keep Coming Back to Your Lists.

I have all sorts of to-do lists. I’ve got a list of ideas — “somedays,” I call them — that I want to try. I’ve got notes written down on yellow legal pads and in various Google Docs. I know I won’t act on many of these ideas.

I never worry about running out of ideas, but I know that sometimes, I forget about a really good idea. So it’s helpful to keep coming back to these lists to look through things. What am I still excited about? What could I work on as part of another project? Often, I find a chestnut in one of these docs — but I have to make sure to make time to review and give each of the ideas some thought. I don’t want to let anything slip through the cracks.

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That photo of a small notepad and wooden pencil on top of a wood table, was taken by Michaela St for Unsplash.

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That’s Probably Normal.

On a call today, a client asked me an interesting question. “A few people unsubscribe every time we send an email,” they said. “Is that normal, or is that something that happens just to us?”

The good news, I told them, is that it happens to everyone. I used to write a newsletter called This Week in Cats, which had a 60%+ open rate — at a time in which being above 40% was rare — and we saw unsubscribes every week. (I still have no idea what those readers thought they were getting into.) If that newsletter lost readers every week, then every newsletter will lose readers.

But the bigger thing: I’m glad they had the courage to ask the question. Building something new can be a lonely business. It takes guts to be willing to ask: Is this normal? Or am I going through something that nobody else goes through?

Be brave enough to ask. You might find that what you’re going through is a lot more common than you think.

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That’s a photo of an early edition of This Week in Cats, featuring that week’s cat of the week — a cat, with a white belly and brown and black striped fur, sitting upright and looking surprisingly sad.

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Make Time to Review.

Jon Stewart did this great interview the other day with Matthew Belloni on “The Town” podcast, and this part really stuck with me:

Jon Stewart: Post-mortem is the gift to the gods in terms of improving content and really anything.

Matthew Belloni: So Tuesday morning, it’s, “What did we do right? What did we do wrong? Did this land? Did this not?”

Jon Stewart: It‘s Monday night, and it has to be an agnostic process. It’s not a blame process. It’s always a constructive, like, “How do you feel that worked out?” You always have to be self-examining, reflective of the process, little things, because it’s the only thing that keeps you on top of it.

It’s a lesson I think more of us could apply to our work.

Running an end-of-the-year campaign? Make sure you put time on the calendar the week after the campaign ends to review everything and document lessons for next time.

Launching a new newsletter? Set up check-ins on the calendar every few months to make sure you’re meeting your goals and want to continue investing in that newsletter.

Building a new business? Make sure you hold quarterly reviews to track what’s what working, what isn’t, and what you want to do next.

It’s not enough to put the work out into the world. You also have to make space to review, reflect, and iterate.

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That photo of Jon Stewart accepting a Peabody Award on stage in 2005 — he’s in a black suit with a dark tie and is behind a podium with a gold replica of the award — comes via the Peabody Awards and a Creative Commons license.

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Ask For Advice. Be Willing to Listen to the Answers — Good or Bad.

Every year, I spend a few days with friends who also have their own solo businesses. The offsite, as I’ve come to know it, started with just one friend. It’s grown to a group of four — each of us with our own unique perspective on how to build a great business.

Last night, I gave a presentation to the group, where I walked through a few ideas for the future of Inbox Collective. Some were small ideas that I wanted suggestions about; one was a major moonshot for the business, something that would radically change the course of the business. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to do something so big, something that might take Inbox Collective from a one-person operation into a pretty sizable business. But I wanted to know what they thought.

And I loved that the group had a unified response to that last idea: We love the idea as a business — but we’re not sure we love it for you.

It’s exactly what I’d been thinking, so to hear three friends immediately come to the same conclusion was heartening. Their hesitancy gave me confidence that I was already on the right track. Some ideas, even if they’re interesting, are worth saying “no” to.

Today, one of my friends here on the offsite tried to offer an apology. “I hope we weren’t too harsh about that last idea,” he said. I waved him off. I told him: I presented the idea because I wanted to know what you three honestly thought about it, and the fact that you all were so skeptical of the idea — and skeptical because you felt it didn’t line up with my current priorities and needs — told me everything I needed to know.

I wanted the feedback, good or bad. I’m glad I’ve got a group in my corner who can point me away from the ideas that don’t make sense for me.

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That’s a slide from my presentation to the group.

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Try It. Then Figure Out What You Want to Keep.

A few years ago, I saw Adam Sandler perform live. He was recording what would become his first comedy special in decades, and honestly, I wasn’t sure what I was in for.

What I was in for, it turned out, was something both funny and unpolished.

Sandler’s set, which he’d trim down to about 70 minutes for TV, ran nearly two hours. He performed original songs and some stand-up material. Some bits worked; others didn’t. The cameras rolled the whole time.

What I discovered later was that this was Sandler’s creative process. He does the same thing with movies: He records lots of takes, lots of different ways, and then figures out which is the funniest once he gets to the editing bay. The goal when he’s recording is to capture all sorts of options — he’ll figure out what works later on.

That’s not a bad way to approach your work. Some things become hits, and others flop. You don’t really know which is which when you’re making it. You can’t always see around corners.

So instead of hoping that your first idea will be the right one, try doing a bit more than you expect. Leave yourself some alternatives. If something doesn’t work, that’s OK. You’ll have a Plan B already waiting for you.

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Should You Work on That Idea?

Using Domainr, I can see if a domain name is available

Here’s a little trick I use to decide if I actually want to work on a project:

Let’s say I’ve got an idea, and I get really excited about it. I buy a domain for the website for the project, and start jotting down notes. I’m convinced that this is my next big idea!

The next step’s been a game changer for me: I go and add a note to my to-do list — one month in the future. I remind myself to revisit the idea then.

And then I do nothing — at least for 30 days.

Often, a month later, I look at the idea and go: Why was I so excited about this? That’s not a bad thing, I think — I’ve just saved myself a bunch of time and effort on an idea I wasn’t all that excited about!

But if I’m still excited about the idea a month later, that’s how I know it’s worth the investment, and that’s when I actually start to work on it.

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I like to use Domainr to come up with domain names. But I don’t think yournextnewsletteridea.com is my next project!

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Find What Works For You.

I talked with a group of publishers a few weeks ago, and they told me they’d just come back from a conference where a speaker told them that the right number of links to include in email was 15. They wanted to know: Did I agree?

And I told them what I know to be true: There is no “right” strategy for email.

There is no right topic.

There is no right format.

There is no right number of links.

There is no right number of emails to send per week.

It’s up to you to figure out what works for you and your audience.

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That’s my first BuzzFeed newsletter. It had just five links. We tested it — and figured out that we could add a lot more!

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Your Imperfect Next Step.

I was on a call with a client a few weeks ago, and they told me they wanted to build the best possible email strategy in 2024.

“That’s great,” I told them. “But I don’t want you to be thinking about what’s best. I want you to be thinking about what’s next.”

Thinking “best” can lead to magical thinking, to dreaming of blue sky situations where you’ve got all the budget and resources you need. It can lead to planning for a day that may not come.

Instead, take a look at what you’re doing right now and ask yourself: What’s the next thing we can do to make our newsletter strategy better?

It might be a small step, and that’s OK. Some of the best newsletters out there were built thanks to a lot of small steps forward.

The next step may not be perfect. It may just be… what’s next.

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I took that photo, more than 15 years ago, while walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

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I Am Not The Wolf.

I was rewatching “Pulp Fiction” on a flight the other day. My favorite chapter of that movie is the scene with Winston Wolf, the fixer. Vincent Vega and Jules Winfield get themselves into hot water, and The Wolf gets them out of it.

And I was struck by a thought, rewatching it, that a lot of people think that my job at Inbox Collective is basically that of The Wolf.

Some teams come to me thinking that I’ve got all the answers or magic fixes. I often do not.

What do I actually do? A good advisor isn’t there to have all the answers. My job is to help you ask the right questions — and figure out how to find the answers together.

I’ll admit, it’d be fun to be The Wolf, to be able to come in, survey the situation, and identify a quick fix.

But my job, if I do it well, is to do more than fix the glaring short-term issues. I’m here to help teams build the right strategy in the long term.

All of that starts, not by having all the answers, but by figuring out the right questions.

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