Tag: inspiration comes from strange places

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Be Willing to Prove It.

The Jim Bridger billboard, as seen roadside in Salt Lake City.

A few months ago, I started noticing billboards around town with a photo of a guy who looked kind of like Davy Crockett and a message: “Jim Bridger discovered the Great Salt Lake.“ I didn’t think much of it.

But I kept seeing them — you can’t drive five minutes in town without seeing a billboard with Jim Bridger’s face on it.

So then I got curious: Who was spending all this money to promote an explorer who died almost 150 years ago?

Turns out: It’s actually an experiment in proving that advertising works.

There’s a company, Reagan Outdoor Advertising, that owns all these billboards. They had a challenge: How do you prove the ROI, or return on investment, on a billboard to an advertiser?

So they came up with their own experiment.

They told the Salt Lake Tribune that they surveyed locals about Jim Bridger before the billboards went up, and they’ll do so after the campaign is over. Then they’ll have data to share, showing that locals went from knowing nothing about Bridger before to knowing at least a little bit about him after. A lot of locals are going to say, “Yeah, isn’t he the guy who discovered the Great Salt Lake?“

And then they’ll make the pitch to local businesses: If these billboards could have that kind of impact about a previously-anonymous 19th century explorer, then they could surely have similar impact for a modern brand.

It’s a great reminder: If you’re going to make the claim, you need the data and the story to prove it first. And if you don’t have the data, well: You might need to get creative to dig it up.

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I took that photo of the Jim Bridger billboard in Salt Lake. It’s the same billboard everywhere — same copy, same yellow background, same drawing of Bridger.

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Make It As Hard As You Want To.

I was driving home last weekend, through Emigration Canyon. On a weekend, there are tons of cyclists and runners on that road — people literally biking and running up a mountain. It’s impressive to see.

But then I saw something I’d never seen before: Two men, on unicycles, riding up the mountain.

Going up that road — it involves more than 1,000 feet of elevation change — is hard enough on a bike or on two feet. But on a unicycle?

And so I got home and went to YouTube, and there were all sorts of videos of people doing even more incredible things on unicycles there. They’re doing on two wheels what I wouldn’t dare do on one.

It was a reminder for me: You get to decide what challenges you take on. And with those challenges, you get to decide if you want to do things on easy mode or hard mode.

What’s right for someone else isn’t what right for you.

(And heck, I know mountain unicycling isn’t right for me!)

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Great Ideas Come From Weird Places.

I’m reading Susan Morrison’s wonderful biography of Lorne Michaels, called “Lorne,” and this little story about Michaels and Paul Simon immediately caught my eye:

Michaels’s few off-hours that summer were spent in the studio where Simon was recording Still Crazy After All These Years, and he added, to his growing trove of showbiz stories, the one about how his friend Paul took the title of his song “Mother and Child Reunion” from the name of a chicken-and-egg dish on a Chinese menu.

An iconic song, titled thanks to the name of a menu item at a Chinese restaurant?

Yeah, great ideas can truly come from anywhere.

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Showing Your Work.

Catci, trees, and other plans grow alongside a walking path.

We took a visit to St. George, Utah, last weekend. And up on the hills above the city, there’s this little desert oasis called Red Hills Desert Garden.

Inside, there are walking paths and a little stream. You can cross over the stream on these beautiful red rocks, and walk along red clay paths to see spots where dinosaurs once roamed. You can see all sorts of desert landscaping, too. It’s quite beautiful, really.

And most interestingly: The entire thing is run not by the local parks department but by the Washington County Water Conservancy District.

Once I realized that, I started to notice that there were little signs everywhere talking about how to save water. In St. George, the average annual rainfall is about eight inches, and the county has made a push to encourage people to replace their lawns with desert landscaping. And as part of that push, they created this garden where locals can see just how beautiful their homes could be if they planted cacti or desert-friendly plants instead of grass in their yards.

They even host regular events and classes there, highlighting ways to conserve water and create a beautiful desert landscape on a budget.

Instead of just telling people that they should plant things that don’t use up lots of water, they created an entire garden as a showcase for this type of landscaping. It’s part-garden, part-showroom.

I love that they showed their work — and know that once you see what you can do with desert landscaping, others will choose to bring those ideas back to their own homes.

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I took that photo at Red Hills Desert Garden. Even on a cloudy day, the garden was still lovely to walk through.

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Did You Ask the Right Question?

We just finished watching the second season of “Nobody Wants This.” The first season was great, and I didn’t think the second season quite lived up to the first. I love the cast, and there were a lot of great moments. So what was missing from season two?

To me, the first season worked because the story arc was built off of a big question: Can these two characters (played by Kristen Bell and Adam Brody) make it? It worked as a hook and kept us interested throughout the season. I wanted to know how they’d answer that question.

But the second season’s question (“Will Kristen Bell’s character convert to Judaism?”) didn’t resonate with me in the same way — I just didn’t really care either way — and it affected the rest of the season. Without the big arc, it’s tough to stay invested in a show in the long run.

Had they been asking a different question, my reaction to the season is probably a lot different. (Weirdly, rewatching the trailer, I think they got the big question right there! It just didn’t quite come through in the actual show.)

I see versions of this in my work. I’ll talk with people who’ve built what looks to be a great newsletter — the design is good, they’ve put a lot of work into the content — but they’re not asking the right question. They don’t really understand what their audience wants — or maybe even who their audience is — and as a result, the newsletter doesn’t have clear value.

So when something falls flat, I try to steer back to those big questions. Who is this for? What do we do to serve them? And how do we clearly explain this value to them?

Getting back to those answers can help get the work back on track.

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Find Your One Liner.

Pete Carroll signs a USC football helmet in 2010.

There was a wonderful story the other day from Ben Malcolmson, right-hand man for NFL head coach Pete Carroll, in which he wrote about finding your true identity. He told a story about a talk that Pete once gave:

During his talk that day, Pete asked the room: “How many people here have a philosophy for life or for work?”

Probably three-quarters of the room raised their hands. Then he asked: “How many people could tell me that philosophy in one line?” All but three or four arms bashfully went down. Pete called on one of the people who had kept their hand raised and had them share their philosophy in front of the whole room.

For the longest time, I’ve had a simple one: “Find the things you love and the people you love and make time for both.” Whenever I feel a little lost or uncertain, that one liner helps remind what I need to do to get back to a good place.

Malcolmson has some suggestions on how to find your one liner. It’s worth taking the time to try to find yours.

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That photo of Carroll was taken in 2010, when he was the head coach at USC. It was taken by Warwick’s Books, published on Flickr, and used here thanks to a Creative Commons license.

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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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Roll With It.

It’s Wednesday morning, about 7:20 a.m. Central time. I’m in row 13 of a flight from Chicago back home to Salt Lake City. I don’t love flying that early in the morning, but I’ve got calls later that morning and then a kiddo to pick up in the afternoon. The early flight makes the most sense. I’ve checked the stats, too — in the past 60 days, this flight’s been early or on time nearly 90% of the time. We’re all set for an on-time departure, and my flight tracker app says we’ll arrive 20 minutes early, with plenty of time to make it home for the first call.

Which is exactly what does not happen.

There’s a plane stuck behind us at O’Hare, and it doesn’t move for about 40 minutes. Instead of an on-time departure, we end up with a very-not-on-time departure. I land in Salt Lake with just enough time to know that I won’t have enough time to make it home for the calls.

There would’ve been a moment when this would’ve really upset me and probably screwed up my day. But I’ve been through stuff like this before.

So I find a gate where the plane is just about to depart — it’ll be empty for an hour or two — and set up there. I take my calls. I apologize to my clients for talking to them from an unusual spot. No one really seems to mind. When the calls are over, I get a Lyft to take me home.

Things happen. It’s up to you to roll with the changes.

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I took that selfie at the gate just before my flight. Was I tired? Sure. Would I have been happier taking the call at home? Absolutely. But things happen.

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Enjoy Where You Are.

Lots of white snow — and mountainous peaks behind — at Alta Ski Resort.

We went skiing at Alta today. Alta is a special place. You’re up in the mountains, a 20-minute drive away from anywhere. From the top, you won’t see homes or hotels or any sort of city — just snow and trees and mountains — and the skiing is fantastic.

We rode up one chair with someone from Pittsburgh, and we asked him if he did a lot of skiing back east. “Oh, tons,” he said, before listing off the mountains he’ll ski within a few hours of his home. Some of the mountains he mentioned are tiny, one-chairlift kind of mountains. But he said he loved skiing them just as much as he enjoyed skiing out west.

“Any day I have my ski boots on is a good day,” he said.

It’s such a wonderful sentiment, and it really stuck with me throughout the day. I grew up skiing tiny mountains in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and now I’m lucky to live just minutes from world-class ski resorts. I’m not going to try to convince anyone that the quality of skiing is as good at Whitetail as it is at Deer Valley — it isn’t.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy those mountains. I’ve had amazing days skiing at tiny resorts. 

The conversation on the chairlift today was a reminder that no matter what you’re doing, you can make the most of the experience. It’s up to you to stay in the moment and to find the little things that make that experience special.

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I took that photo while riding up the Sugarloaf chair at Alta today. Tough to complain about blue skies and plenty of snow — in April!

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You Ain’t Hamlet.

This interview with Jason Alexander, of “Seinfeld” fame, popped up in my feed the other day, and I think it’s worth watching in full. In it, he says:

I went to Boston University as a theater major, and because William Shatner was my muse, I wanted a dramatic career. I really thought I was going to play some of the great classical roles and be a dramatic actor. Sure, I hadn’t done much comedy. I’d done some musicals, so there was that, but I hadn’t done much comedy. And the summer second semester of my sophomore year, I had a professor named James Spruill at Boston. He was the only black member of the faculty. He was a guy who had come up in the ‘60s with street theater — theater is to change the minds of the masses, affect change. He brought me into his office for my my semester consultation, and he had this great basso kind of James Earl Jones voice, and he sat back, and he just kind of nodded his head and looked at me for a minute. He went, “I know that your heart and soul is Hamlet, and you would be a profound Hamlet. You will never play Hamlet, so you best get good at Falstaff.”

And he basically said, look, look in the mirror. You are 5’6’’. You are 20 to 25 pounds overweight, and you are losing your hair. You have a large performing persona. If you want a a commercially successful career, you’re going to be a comedian, and you’re not embracing it, you’re not looking at it, you’re not doing it.

Had he not said to me, “You ain’t Hamlet, man,” I would have finished that school and gone into the professional world thinking, ”Here’s Jason Alexander and the Iceman cometh. It’s what everybody is waiting for.”

And I would have been wrong.

It’s such a wonderful reminder: We all need someone in our lives who’ll be truly honest with us. Sometimes, we need that person to lift us up. Sometimes, we need them to keep on the right path. But all we need those voices we can trust, and if you find someone who can do that, you owe it to yourself to listen to them. They’ve got something worth hearing, even if it’s not what you want to hear at that moment.

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