Tag: inspiration comes from strange places

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Go Big.

Paul Simon plays to the crowd at Newport Folk Festival in 2022

One more story from Newport Folk:

We’d been told that at Newport, special guests sometimes show up. And then on Saturday night, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats came out and played two Paul Simon songs in a row, and we realized: Paul Simon might be tonight’s surprise guest!

An hour later, after a half-dozen artists had played Simon’s music, Paul himself came out and played five songs with the band.

So we weren’t expecting much on Sunday night. How are you going to top a special guest appearance by Paul Simon? Brandi Carlile was expected to play with some friends. (The set was billed as “Brandi Carlile & Friends,” which made that a fair assumption.) We figured she’d bring out the usual group of indie musicians and colleagues. We didn’t realize one of them would be Joni Mitchell! And that a group of musicians would sit around in a circle and play for — and with — her.

What I loved wasn’t just that Newport brought out two icons. It’s that they found new ways to honor them. They’d clearly asked: How do we pay tribute to these legends? What formats can we try? How do we do something that’s never been done in the history of this festival?

Had a group of musicians played a tribute to Paul Simon, that would’ve been something. Had Brandi Carlile played “Blue” from start to finish, that would’ve been amazing. But instead, they somehow did something even more unexpected.

If you’re going to go big, go big.

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That was my view of the stage for Paul Simon’s set. Paul’s up there if you zoom in far enough.

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Everything Changes, and That’s OK. (Part II)

That's a photo I took of The Linda Lindas on stage at Newport Folk on July 24, 2022

57 years ago today, Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. Reports say the crowd shouted and booed at Dylan — “Like a Rolling Stone” had been released only days earlier, and the crowd at Newport Folk wasn’t prepared for an artist suddenly heading in a new direction.

Yesterday, I went to Newport Folk, and saw an all-girl teenage punk rock band, The Linda Lindas, absolutely rock the festival. Newport Folk is more than folk now — there are acoustic acts, and bluegrass, and country, and even rap. Watching The Linda Lindas reminded me of how much even established brands like Newport Folk can change. The festival that was once synonymous with Dylan and Joan Baez and James Taylor is now the kind of place where a teenage rock quartet can show up and command a stage for an hour. I’d bet that there were more than a handful of people at the festival yesterday who had parents or grandparents at that Dylan show in 1965, and yesterday, those in attendance roared for a band that wouldn’t have fit in fifty years ago at that festival.

It’s OK that Newport’s changed. It’s OK that one of the original American music festivals can now host Joni Mitchell and The Roots on the same stage in the same afternoon. The spirit and mission of Newport remain the same, but the sounds coming off those stages are as different as ever.

And not everything changes. At one point during yesterday’s show, one member of the The Linda Linda, guitarist Lucia de la Garza, pointed towards a voter registration tent just off stage. “Us kids can’t vote,” she said, “but you can!” Their sound didn’t sound like anything from the original version of Newport Folk, but at the moment, if you closed your eyes, their message sounded a lot to me like Newport in 1959.

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That’s a photo I took of The Linda Lindas on stage at Newport Folk. They’re amazing. If they come to your city, go see them!

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Everything Changes, and That’s OK.

people at work on a construction site

College athletics are in flux right now. Teams are changing conferences (Rutgers vs. UCLA and Oklahoma vs. Kentucky will soon be in-conference matchups), and Name, Image, and Likeness rules mean that some athletes are now (legally) collecting checks from sponsors. Greg Sankey, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, addressed all these changes this week at the conference’s annual media days for football. “It’s never going to be the same,” he said, “but it doesn’t have to be the way that it is”

The same could be said for many businesses. It’s certainly the case for the news world, where I come from. Are we going back to the days when local newspapers employed hundreds of journalists? Probably not. But it’s up to us to build something new moving forward. Just this week, I’ve talked with local news outlets investing in solutions journalism, digital outlets building out new models for revenue sharing with writers, and individual writers who are building an entire business through their own newsletters or podcasts.

Everything changes, and that’s OK. We can fight it, or we can accept it and try to figure out how to build the best possible future for ourselves. The choice is ours.

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That photo of a construction site comes via Shivendu Shukla and Unsplash.

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The People Who Help You Along the Way.

a photo I took from my seat as the sun set over Dulles Int'l

A few weeks ago, I had what might seem like the flight experience from hell.

We were flying to San Francisco for a wedding. The flight was at 7 a.m., which meant getting up well before 5 to get to the airport. Even if the flight had gone perfectly, the early wake up meant that I was going to be a little grumpy.

But from the start, everything that day went a little screwy. There was a ton of traffic getting to the airport. The trip from the parking lot to the terminal took forever. We got to check-in exactly one minute late, which meant that we couldn’t check one of our bags, and had to try to sneak a giant bag through security. Our flight had mechanical issues, so we had to make an emergency landing in DC. We got stuck there for 9 hours. The delay took so long, Delta had to fly in a new crew from several different cities just to staff the flight. We didn’t get to San Francisco until nearly midnight — 12 hours after our expected arrival.

And yet, as I think back on that day, all I can think of are the people who helped us along the way.

There was the Delta agent at check-in at JFK, who calmly talked us through what to do even though we were late for check-in.

There was the pilot, who kept us updated about everything happening with the plane.

There was the crew in DC, who ordered pizza for hungry passengers and delivered news, good or bad, whenever they had it.

There was the employee at the airport lounge in DC, who kindly let us bring in a friend from the flight, even though we were only allowed two guests.

There was the TSA agent at Dulles, who let us back through security after we stepped out (unwisely, we later realized) to get some air, even though he had every right to tell us, “Sorry, you have a boarding pass for a different airport. You can’t enter.”

There was the friend on the flight who texted us to come back to the gate after we’d started to seriously consider leaving and staying the night in DC.

There was the crew — based in four different cities — who volunteered to fly to DC to make sure we got to California.

There were a half-dozen different times when the day could have absolutely gone wrong. Instead, at every key moment, we found people willing to help us, even on a day when nothing seemed to go right.

It’s easy to be pessimistic. It’s easy to feel like the world’s fighting against you.

But look around. You might find a few kind people, going well out of their way to help — even on those tough days.

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That’s a photo I took from the runway at Dulles International Airport. That day, I saw the sun rise and the sun set from my seat in coach — on the same plane.

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Don’t Overthink The Name.

that's a photo of the first store, in Sonoma, CA

When I have conversations with writers in advance of the launch of their newsletter, they often worry about the name of the product. They’ll worry that it’s not clever enough, or that it might be too simple, or that they need to spend more time coming up with the perfect name. (I’m guilty of doing this myself.)

So here’s a story for you, if you’re thinking that the name of your next product launch isn’t quite right:

I was in Sonoma, California, a few weeks ago, walking through their downtown, when I passed a store I’ve seen many times before: Williams-Sonoma. If you’ve bought cookware at any point in your life, there’s a decent chance you thought about buying it from Williams-Sonoma.

I’d never thought much about their name before. But walking past the store, I had that moment. Not an “aha!” moment, but an, “Oh, duh!” moment.

The Sonoma in Williams-Sonoma must mean… they were founded here.

So what about the Williams part? There was a small sign right by the door about Chuck Williams — the man who bought a hardware shop in Sonoma, California, in 1956, and turned it into a store for home cooks.

Chuck Williams. Sonoma, California.

Often, keeping things simple is just the easiest decision — it’s also the right decision.

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That’s a photo of the original Williams-Sonoma. That photo was published on their website, and I’m hoping they won’t mind me re-using it here.

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This Is Enough.

matzah at the Passover table

Passover starts later this week, and there’s a song we’ll sing during the Passover service, which is known as a seder. The song is called “Dayenu,” which translates to, “It would have been enough.”

We sing that if God had merely found a way for the Israelites to exit Egypt, it would have been enough.

And if God had merely supplied the Israelites with food, it would have been enough.

And had God had merely brought us the Torah, it would’ve been enough.

And so on, and so on.

The idea is that even one of these acts would have been enough. (But in the telling of the story, God provides all of these things, and more.)

The song is one of gratitude, and it’s one I remind myself of whenever I think about the life that I have or the business I’ve built. Do I want more? Sure. I know there’s a lot more out there. But I look at what I have — an amazing family, wonderful friends, and a great job — and have to be grateful.

I’d like more — but this is already more than enough.

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That photo of matzah, a staple of Passover, was taken by Flickr user ohadby, and is used here thanks to a Creative Commons license.

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Everyone’s Success Expands Opportunity.

There’s a clip going around with Jon Stewart, who recently sat in on Howard Stern’s show. Stewart’s success in show business is incredible — he won, roughly, a billion Emmys as host of “The Daily Show,” and gave dozens of comedians and writers a huge boost in their careers. Just look at the page of “Daily Show” alums for a moment. It’s a who’s who of current comedy legends.

So Stern wanted to know how Stewart felt about seeing some of the biggest names from his show — comedians like Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Samantha Bee — go on to success after leaving “The Daily Show.” Did he ever feel envious of their success?

His answer was so wonderful:

“I never had that sense that someone else’s success was to the detriment of mine. I think it leads to such bitterness when you look at the world as finite and resource-guarded. It leads to such bitterness, and it’s destructive as an emotion. I’ve always felt that everybody’s success expands opportunity.”

I love that quote, and have been thinking about it in relation to the work that I do now. In the newsletter space, it’s easy to look at the success that others are having and think: That should be me! But the truth is: Every time someone launches a great new newsletter, it opens up doors for so many new writers. Those success stories show us all what’s possible with email, what can be done. And when someone succeeds in the industry, it gets so many new writers and creators excited about trying to replicate that success.

There are so many more opportunities in the newsletter space now than there were a decade ago, or even three years ago. Those success stories have expanded opportunities for all of us.

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Put Your Team In Position to Do The Right Work.

That's a photo of bagels, though weirdly, the Unsplash alt text describes this as "brown donuts on gray tray photo." No idea what's going on there.

There’s a bagel place on my corner here in New York, and I’ve been going there for years. It’s a great spot with really good bagels, but there’s something that’s always bugged me about it.

On a weekday, this bagel place has about five employees behind the counter taking orders. On weekends, they might have eight or nine. And they always operate the same way: One of the employees takes your order, and then slices your bagel, and then makes your order, and then walks over the cash register, where he then takes off his gloves, and then throws them away, and then rings up your order, and then bags your bagels, and then puts back on a new set of gloves, and then, finally, walks back to the front of the line to take another order.

I know, it’s a bagel place — no one’s expecting them to operate with maximum efficiency. But the one thing that surprises me is that in all the years I’ve been going there, they’ve never added one thing to the line: A cashier. Adding a single dedicated cashier to the operation would speed up the entire operation. The cash register is always a chokepoint on their line — sometimes, it takes longer to ring up a customer than it does to make a bagel. Instead of being back at the start of the line serving another customer, the staff is waiting at the cash register for their turn to collect payment. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but every time I go in on a weekend, I see a handful of people who pop in, realize that the line’s too long, and decide to go elsewhere. If the line moved even a bit faster, many of them might wait around to buy.

Every time I go to this bagel shop, I think about what it’s like to manage a team. So much of being a good manager is freeing your team up to do their job. Sometimes, that means taking on responsibility for stuff that isn’t glamorous or exciting, or finding strategies to streamline the process so your team can do the work it needs to. Or it means paying attention to the obstacles in your team’s way, and looking for solutions to remove those hurdles.

Until you stop and really pay attention to what’s happening, you might not notice the little things — like how spending the money to hire a new cashier might actually make your business more money.

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That photo of bagels comes via Vicky Ng and Unsplash.

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Try Something Unexpected.

the swings in Waterfront Park in Burlington

I spent a few days last week up in Burlington, Vermont, and one day, with temperatures a bit warmer than usual, took a walk down to Burlington’s waterfront park. (It’s called, accurately enough, Waterfront Park.) It’s a beautiful park, with a bike path and a science museum and gorgeous views of Lake Champlain. But the thing that stood out to me most were the swings.

Alongside the water, where you’d expect benches to be, Burlington’s placed these swings, maybe a dozen of them alongside a quarter-mile stretch of waterfront. On a warm day, you can sit there, watching the water slowly move towards shore, as you swing back and forth back towards the water.

A swing instead of a bench isn’t a huge change — at the end of the day, they’re still a place to sit and look at the water — but because I didn’t expect it, I stopped and spent a few extra minutes in that park. It was something different, something unexpected. I found those swings absolutely delightful.

All of us could try to bring the same spirit to our work. Try something small, new, and unexpected. It might lead to the creation of something special.

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That’s a photo I took of the swings in Burlington’s Waterfront Park.

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Trust Your Turns.

the view from the charlift at Breckenridge, Colorado, in 2021

I’m a pretty good skier on a sunny day. When the light is good on the mountain and I can clearly see the next few turns, I ski with a lot of confidence.

But it’s another thing to ski on a wintry day, when the clouds and the mountain seem to merge into one. When the light is flat, seeing the path ahead gets tricky. On those days, I find myself struggling to maintain control — it feels a little like skiing through fog. A bad turn or two and I lose confidence quickly.

So on those days, I try to adopt a mantra: Trust your turns. I’ve been skiing since I was a kid, and I can get down just about anything. (It won’t always be pretty! But I’ll get down.) And when I tell myself, “Trust your turns,” I’m saying: You know the motion — trust your ability to string turns together, even in low light. Ski just like you would on a blue-sky day.

We all want to be able to clearly see the path ahead. But we can’t always see the next turn — or whatever’s around the next corner. And in times of uncertainty, we can’t just stop and wait for things to clear up. Trust the work you’ve already put in, and the processes you have in place.

Trust your turns, and keep going.

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That’s a photo I took on a sunny day at Breckenridge in 2021.

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