Tag: do the work

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How I Knew.

Here’s a story I’ve never told before.

In the spring of 2019, I was starting to think about leaving the New Yorker to start Inbox Collective. But I was still nervous about it. Was it the right time to leave? Was I ready to take on the responsibility of building a new business?

And that’s around the time a recruiter reached out to ask about a job.

It was a good job with a big title at a major news organization, making more money than I’d ever made it my life. I wasn’t looking for another job, but I interviewed anyway. It was the kind of offer I had to at least consider. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Within 20 minutes of the first interview, I knew what I wanted to do next.

I wasn’t excited about the idea of taking another job. I still loved my job at the New Yorker.

But more than anything else, I felt excited about the idea of starting my own consulting business — well, equal parts excited and nervous. Whenever I feel nervous, that’s usually a good thing. It’s a signal that I really care about something.

So I started to ask myself: Why, exactly, am I still doing the same old thing if I’m ready for what’s next?

By the end of the month, I told my bosses that I was leaving to start Inbox Collective.

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That’s a photo of me talking to a group of newsrooms in Sydney in fall 2019, a few months after starting Inbox Collective.

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The Work is Never Done.

The chambers of the Economic and Social Council, with its unfinished ceiling.

For the past decade, I’ve lived just a few blocks away from the United Nations. And yet, until this week, I’d never actually been inside.

If you’re visiting New York, the UN is worth a visit. It’s tough to visit the UN and not feel a little bit optimistic about the future of the world. Diplomacy is never easy, and yes, we’ve got massive global challenges ahead of us, but it’s amazing to visit a place where all the countries of the world have come together to try to solve big problems. World hunger, nuclear disarmament, climate change — the world gathers here, at a campus on 1st Avenue, to try to find the answers.

I was familiar with a lot of the places we saw on the tour. I’d seen the big Assembly Hall on the news. I’d seen photos of delegates sitting around the table of the Security Council Chamber. But there were a few rooms I’d never seen.

One was the chamber for the Economic and Social Council. The room was designed in 1952 from Swedish architect Svem Markelius.

It’s a beautiful room, featuring wood from Swedish forests. But there’s one particularly unique feature of the room: The ceiling is unfinished.

That’s on purpose, our tour guide informed us. It’s a subtle reminder: The ceiling is unfinished because the work of the UN will always be unfinished. There will always be more to do.

Here’s to whatever work and whatever challenges lie in the year ahead.

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I took that photo of the Economic and Social Council chamber on a visit to the UN.

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Try It For Yourself.

A purple pencil and yellow pencil on pink and yellow paper.

There’s this great piece of research out from the teams at Trusting News and the News Revenue Hub. They worked with five non-profit newsrooms that serve communities in five different states — Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin — to test messages around the work these newsrooms do and how they operate. All five tested out similar messages.

The results?

There was no clear trend across participants, which is to say that each newsroom had different messaging work best for them.


This tells us that each organization is unique and has a unique relationship with their audience. We plan to test this more in the future, but for now, this indicates… that every newsroom should assess their own data and audience feedback regularly and tailor their messaging accordingly.

It echoes something I advise my own clients: Don’t just assume that what worked for someone else will work for you. Use the work you’ve seen from others as a starting point — but then test out those ideas and see what actually works for you and your team.

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That photo of pencil and paper comes via Unsplash and Dev Asangbam.

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No Shortcuts.

a photo of the corner kick area of a soccer field

Everyone wants to go as fast as they can go. Everyone wants to find ways to move a little bit faster. Many are willing to cut corners.

But resist the urge to chase shortcuts.

The good stuff takes time: Building relationships, testing new ideas, talking to your audience. There are no shortcuts there — you’re going to have to do the work, and the work doesn’t always happen quickly.

Be patient, and embrace the work. It’s the way forward.

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That photo of the corner of a soccer field comes via Unsplash and David Pisnoy.

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Maximize What You Have.

I’ll often talk with newsletter operators who tell me they want to launch another new thing: Another course, another ebook, another product.

But the question I always have to ask is: Have you gotten everything you can out of the stuff that’s already out there?

I’ll see newsletters with great engagement that are missing obvious monetization opportunities, like running ads or affiliate content.

I’ll see operators with a paid membership who aren’t promoting it nearly as much as they could — even though with every new member they get, they’re getting more value out of a thing they’re already working on.

Forget about launching new stuff for a second. Look at what you’re already doing — is there an opportunity there to get more out of the work you’re already doing?

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That’s a random snippet of emails in my inbox at the moment. (I’m not trying to pick on any of these particular newsletter operators!)

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10,000 Tiny Puzzle Pieces.

a stack of hundreds of colorful puzzle pieces

I had a call with a client last week about their newsletter strategy. “I feel like we don’t have a complete picture of what our audience wants,” they told me. “What are we missing?”

I’ll tell you what I told them: Building a strategy is like putting together a 10,000-piece puzzle. Every time you do something — like sending an email, running a survey, or talking to readers — you collect a few more puzzle pieces. But you’ve got to be patient — it takes time to collect enough pieces so you can start to see the full picture.

Your goal is to do something every day that helps you discover a few key pieces of your puzzle.

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That photo of a puzzle comes via Unsplash and Hans-Peter Gauster.

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Be Brave Enough to Ask For Help.

a bright sky over the Sixth & I synagogue in Washington, D.C.

There’s a great story in the New York Times this week about Michele Lowe, a former advertising executive, who now coaches rabbis on their public speaking skills and helps them improve their sermons.

I’ll quote this section directly:

Some of Ms. Lowe’s clients are confidential, concerned to be seen as needing a crutch. At first, Dara Frimmer, a rabbi at Temple Isaiah on Los Angeles’s Westside, was reluctant to share that she had sought help on a sermon.

“There is a fear that rabbis have to be wholly original and brilliant and poised and always have the right words,” Rabbi Frimmer said. But she came to realize that turning to community in a time of need was a profoundly Jewish ideal. “With great pride I wrote at the bottom: ‘Thank you to Michele Lowe.’”

Everyone needs a little help sometimes — even people like rabbis, who spend their careers speaking publicly. Rabbis lead public services and private services. They stand before their congregations at bar and bat mitzvahs and at weddings. They spend time with their congregants during moments of joy and sorrow.

And yet: They still need help! It takes courage to be willing to ask — and to truly listen to the advice being given.

No one has all the answers. Everyone — even the pros — has questions.

Always be willing to ask.

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That’s the outside of Sixth & I, a synagogue in Washington, D.C. The photo was taken by Ted Eytan and is used here thanks to a Creative Commons license.

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Test, Don’t Copy.

silver scissors on a pink background

Every few years in the email space, someone will put out a big piece of research that says something like this:

“After extensive testing across thousands of newsletters, we’ve discovered that purple call-to-action buttons drive nearly 2.3% more clicks than blue and red buttons, leading to significant improvements in long-term conversion rates.”

And for months after, though most users won’t notice it, suddenly it seems like every ecommerce email has changed their CTA buttons to purple, even in cases where purple isn’t one of the brand’s primary or secondary colors.

I’m worried the same thing may happen after this interview I did with Hanna Raskin, publisher of The Food Section newsletter. As I wrote in the intro to that Q&A:

In May 2022, [Raskin] told readers that she’d randomly remove 15% of her free list, but readers who chose to pay for a subscription would “avoid the axe.” It worked — she saw an immediate bump in subscriptions, and that growth has steadily continued for over a year.

I’m nervous that some newsletter operators will read this and make it the new purple button. They’ll think: The lesson here is that random acts of aggression against my list are a great way to convert readers to a paying subscription!

But the next time you see a story like this, don’t simply copy and paste.

Use it as the starting place for a test.

The best teams see stories like this and think: I wonder if we should change the way we present our CTAs? Or: I wonder if we could try alternate marketing messages that would work for our audience?

They look at their data. They talk to their audience. They work on honing their voice.

And then they go out and test different tactics to see if they can create something that resonates with their unique audience.

Don’t just plug purple buttons into your newsletter. Test, don’t copy.

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That photo of scissors comes via Edz Norton for Unsplash.

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Things Always Change.

a photo of a green stoplight next to a red left turn arrow at dusk

Sometimes, change happens slowly. You start to feel the changes coming, but they’re not coming all that quickly. You can see the transition period happening. You can prepare for the change.

And sometimes, it just happens.

You’re looking around and notice that everything’s suddenly changed. No warning, no advance notice — it’s all different.

But no matter what changes, or how fast it changes, remember: Things will always change.

Change is inevitable. Be prepared.

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Life is full of mixed signals. That photo of stoplights comes via Ian Anderson and Unsplash.

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It Never Gets Easier.

There’s this lie I’ve been telling myself for the past decade: Once I get through this next stretch, things will get easier.

But I know what’s going to happen. After this stretch of work, after this stretch of travel, after this stretch of busyness, things aren’t going to slow down. Things aren’t going to stop.

There’s always going to be more.

Things don’t magically get easier at the end of these stretches. There will be new challenges, new problems.

There’s always more.

But the good news is: Even though it doesn’t get easier, that doesn’t mean it’ll get harder. You’re always learning and figuring out new ways to solve problems. New obstacles appear, but you’re also learning more about how to get past them.

No, it never gets easier. But you’ve gotten through hard things before. You’ll get through these, too.

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That photo of a boulder comes via Callum Parker for Unsplash.

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