Tag: do the work

A few weeks at the PGA Championship, I watched as Garrick Higgo — a 22-year-old South African — teed off on Sunday at 7:40 a.m. That’s what happens when you’re eleven shots over par, as Higgo was after three rounds. (For the non-golfers out there: The pros typically shoot several shots under par.) He’d had a tough tournament, and I was mostly watching because, well, it was something to do while eating breakfast on a Sunday. I watched Higgo for a little while, and it was clear that he could play — it just hadn’t been his week. He hit several shots close to the flag, and seemed to play freely without the pressure of having to worry about winning the tournament. The announcers mentioned that Gary Player, a retired South African golfer and winner of nine major championships, was a mentor of his. (Not bad when your mentor’s in the Hall of Fame.) That Sunday was Higgo’s best round of the entire event: He shot a 69, good for three shots under par. The PGA Championship was his first-ever PGA Tour event.

I remember watching and thinking: Here’s a pro golfer — he’d never played on the PGA Tour, but he’d won several events in Europe — who clearly could play. In his previous four pro events, he’d finished in the top ten all four times, and won two of them. But even a pro sometimes can’t seem to find his swing.

Anyone can have a bad day, or a bad weekend, even if you work hard and have all the talent in the world. As a friend from the midwest once put it, folksily: “One day chicken, next day feathers.” Bad days happen.

Still, you keep moving forward. The PGA Championship was Higgo’s first-ever PGA Tour event. But I imagine Gary Player told him after the tournament: Pick up your head, kid. If you do the work, and keep competing, you never know when you’ll break through.

Turns out he didn’t have to wait long. A month ago, in his first PGA Tour event, he finished in 64th place, fourteen shots behind the champion. Today, in his second PGA Tour event, Higgo won the whole thing — and the $1.3 million grand prize that came with it.

I suppose there’s another fowl-friendly quote that my midwestern friend would’ve used for an occasion like this: Winner winner, chicken dinner.

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.

———

That’s a photo of me giving a talk at an event in Sydney in 2019.

Time’s moved in a strange way during the pandemic. In the early days, the weeks seemed to draw out for ages. But an odd thing’s been happening lately: Time’s seemed to be moving much more quickly. It’s like I’ve accidentally sped up a podcast — from 1x speed to 1.2x speed, a change small enough that I didn’t really notice it at first. Over the past few weeks, though, it became pretty clear that something had changed. On Tuesdays or Wednesdays, I’d start thinking, “The week’s almost over, and I haven’t accomplished enough!” The time between certain monthly tasks seemed to shrink. Everything just seemed to be moving a little faster.

I’ve got a thought as to why this might be happening. I’m reading Tom Vanderbilt’s “Beginners,” in which he talks about why it’s so important to keep learning, especially as we get older. In one chapter, he learns how to juggle, and writes:

The more things you have to pay attention to, the faster time seems to move. But as you get better, you learn what to pay attention to. You have a better sense of what to expect. Suddenly, you’re not thinking about the balls at all. You’re just tracking a pattern in the air. You have all sorts of spare attention. You can carry on a conversation while you juggle. Time seems more unoccupied, and thus slower.

As I started to think back on the past few weeks, it hit me: Something actually has changed this spring. I’m working on a few big projects unlike any I’ve tackled before. I’m — apologies, but it’s the right phrase here — juggling also sorts of new work and tasks, and with so many new things to keep track of, I’m much more aware of everything that needs to get done.

I know that over time, as I get better at these tasks, things will slow down. But I’m also trying to do what I can to slow time down on my own. I’m building breaks into my day to do more reading. I’m trying to find excuses during the week to step away from the work — after I finish this post, I’ll take a long walk down to the farmer’s market in my neighborhood. These moments are an opportunity to pause, to reset, and to prepare to jump back into the work.

———

That photo of a turtle comes via Unsplash and photographer Patti Black.

When I sit down with a potential client, the first thing I do is start asking a few questions.

Often, I’ll be excited to interject a few suggestions or ideas. (“Oh, I love that you’ve tried that! You know, I’ve got a client who tried something like that last year…”) I know that if I start talking, I might ramble on for a while. So I’m always working to quiet that urge. When I give the client space to open up, I typically get the best answers from them.

Whenever possible, I try to keep my questions as simple as possible. I start with the big questions:

∙ Where do you see opportunities to improve?

∙ What do you hope to achieve with this project?

∙ What does success look like for you?

And then I start to drill down further. A question about success, for instance, might lead to other specific questions:

∙ What metrics matter to you?

∙ Where are you tracking those metrics?

∙ How much do those metrics influence the choices your team makes?

If I can ask a question in a single sentence, I do. Be direct, and give them room to reply. After that, it’s up to you to listen — and when they’re ready, ask another.

———

That photo of people raising their hands comes via photographer Edwin Andrade and Unsplash.

How do you build a great brand? It’s simple, at least in theory: By establishing trust over time.

Trust is about relationships. It’s about setting expectations for your reader, your user, or your customer, and then exceeding them. It’s about being there when they need help. It’s about doing good work that serves them well. It’s about asking questions, and listening to their answers. It’s about doing the right thing for them, and being transparent about your choices. It’s about offering them good value for their money. Trust is hard to win and easy to lose, so you have to treat your audience with respect, and hope they keep placing their trust in you.

Some might disagree, but trust can’t really be bought. It’s something that must be earned, through thousands of tiny actions, over the course of months and years. There is no shortcut to establishing trust. You can hire a spokesperson to recommend your product, ask your clients to refer their friends, or spend big on marketing. But those merely accelerate the process — they put you in position to build relationships faster. You still need to do the hard work of establishing trust with that audience, and that’s only going to be done over time.

Trust and time, trust and time. To build a brand, it’s the only way forward.

———

Those clocks come via Heather Zabriskie for Unsplash.

There’s a project I’m working on right now, and I’m pretty excited about it. Sometimes, I’ll spend a few minutes thinking about the positive outcomes: What might come of the work, how others might want to get involved with it, too. I’ll daydream a little about where it might lead a few months or a few years down the road, thinking of what happens if this and that and the other thing all go right. If I really get lost in my own head, I’ll start wondering about how I’d publicize the project — the interviews I might do, the outlets that might want to cover the work.

And then I remember that every hour I waste thinking about the work instead of doing it is an hour I can’t get back. None of this can happen until I start doing the work first, and who knows where the work will actually lead me.

So: I forget about the next steps and the what ifs, and I get back to work.

———

That photo by Victor Lozano for Unsplash is a reminder: There’s a long way to go to the top.