Tag: lessons learned

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Make It Work For You.

That's a photo of a Brother typewriter, in teal and black.

I’ve been working with a few newsletter writers who are in a period of transition. For nearly two years, they’d been writing multiple newsletters per week. Now, they’re all trying to figure out what to do next. Should they write more, or less? Should they change the way they monetize?

And my advice, over and over, has been simple: Whatever you do choose to do next, make it work for you.

There isn’t a single way forward here. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.

Which means that the right answer, for now, is the one that works for each of these writers. It’s up to them to figure out what they want to build and how they want to build it. There’s no need to build around someone else’s constraints or rules — they’re free to do what’s best for them.

Maybe that means, as I told one writer, telling their readers that they’d be taking a month off in December so they can get ahead for 2023 and pre-write the first few months of newsletters. “I’m allowed to do that?” they asked me.

You are, I told them, because this is all about making it work for you.

Maybe it means changing up the way they monetize. One writer’s been trying to push forward with a paid subscription, but it isn’t working as well as they hoped. But they do have a fairly large, engaged audience. Advertising might be a better way forward for them.

“Can I just cancel the paid offering and switch businesses models?” they asked me.

You can, I said, because if you’re going to make this work, it first needs to work for you.

What’s the best route forward? Figure out what’s best for you , and work from there.

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That’s a photo of a Brother typewriter, in teal and black. It comes via photographer Laura Rivera and Unsplash.

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Don’t Overtinker.

That's my golf swing. I think I'm too hunched over, or maybe my right elbow is too high, or maybe I need to pick a new sport.

As I’ve played more golf over the past year, I’ve realized something: It’s easy to make too many changes.

Every time I check YouTube or Instagram, the algorithm serves me with another video promising a quick fix to my swing. Sure, you’re playing decently, Dan, but what if you adjusted your stance? What if you stood up taller? What if you had more bend in the knee at impact? What if you moved the ball back in your stance? What if you bowed your wrist at the top of the swing? What if you tried a lower follow-through? No, wait, what if you tried a higher follow-through!

And it’s easy for all these thoughts to get in my head and screw everything up. On a normal day, I’m a decent golfer. Not great, not terrible — but the more swing thoughts I have, the worse I play.

When I go to the driving range, sometimes I’ll try to implement a small tweak to my swing, but usually, I’m impatient. If it doesn’t work right away, I’ll drop it, or move on to the next tweak.

But if you keep changing stuff before you have time to see results, how will you know if it’s working?

No matter what it is you’re doing — improving a golf swing, running an A/B test, trying out a new strategy — you have to be willing to be patient. Find things you want to try, and commit to them for a certain length of time. Often, it’s not the tactics that are wrong — it’s just that you didn’t wait long enough to see the results.

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That’s me, hitting golf balls at Chelsea Piers in New York. Not a bad view for a driving range!

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What’s Your One Unique Thing?

I flew through Chicago a few weeks ago. I flew Delta, like I usually do, even though Chicago O’Hare is a hub for American and United. There aren’t that many flights on Delta out of O’Hare every day, and Delta’s flights have always operated out of some of the oldest gates at the airport.

But when I was there, the Delta staff mentioned something to me: They’d be moving to a brand-new terminal later in the month. That meant new gates, a new check-in area, and a new Delta SkyClub for their frequent fliers.

The SkyClub, in particular, was built with an interesting feature: For flights to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, passengers can board the plane directly from the SkyClub. They don’t need to exit the lounge and go to the gate.

Delta can’t compete with American or United when it comes to the number of flights or the connections they offer at O’Hare. But nobody else at that airport offers the ability for a business traveler to work from the lounge, then walk directly onto the plane. By building something like this, they’re hoping that frequent fliers from Chicago to New York might like the SkyClub enough to permanently change who they fly with.

This got me thinking about the things that make any person or any business stand out. For me, for the past few years, it’s been where I publish — people don’t easily forget the guy with a Google Doc. Many have asked me if I’d ever move Not a Newsletter over to a blog or another format, and the answer’s always been “no.” When you do something that stands out, you lean into it.

You still have to do more than just have a unique thing — if my Google Doc wasn’t very useful, it wouldn’t matter where I publish it. But having a unique thing might help you get noticed amongst the crowd.

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That photo is of the new Chicago SkyClub, and it comes via Delta’s own site.

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Even The Experts Make Mistakes.

That’s what my authentication settings look like now. The big three — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — are at the bottom. There are only two options: PASS or FAIL. (You can probably figure out which is one you want.)

A few weeks ago, I did something stupid.

There are three big things that any email sender needs to set up to properly authenticate their emails: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These are the three things that an email client like Gmail looks for to make sure that the person or company sending that email really is who they say they are.

And one of my readers pointed out that there was a small issue with part of my authentication settings. Not great — especially for someone who professionally helps out his clients with email authentication!

It was late in the evening, and I’d already had a full day of calls and work. The smart move was to wait until the morning, then make the necessary changes.

Instead, I thought: I do this all the time! I’ve got expertise here — let’s just do it now! So I quickly made some changes, and of course, I made a small mistake.

But when it comes to email authentication, there are no small mistakes — only big ones. And so I woke up the next morning to find out that not only had I made a mistake with my email settings, but now all of my emails were going to spam. I’d taken a bad situation and made things far worse!

A few hours later, the mistake was fixed, but not after quite a bit of panic and a lot of me slamming my head against my desk, asking myself why I’d been too impatient to wait until the morning when I would have been rested and fully ready to take on this task.

I wasn’t happy with myself. But at least I learned a few things — most importantly, the right steps I should follow next time with a client to make sure we get things right.

Everyone makes mistakes — even the experts. You learn from them, you figure out processes to make sure they don’t happen again, and then you move on.

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That’s what my authentication settings look like now. The big three — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — are at the bottom. There are only two options: PASS or FAIL. (You can probably figure out which is one you want.)

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Are You Ready For the Work?

Bob Uecker’s a former baseball player, and longtime radio broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers. (You might also remember him as the announcer from the movie “Major League.”) Last week, on the final day of the season, with the Brewers eliminated from postseason contention, Uecker spent the final broadcast of the season telling baseball stories.

Here’s my favorite of his, as explained by Frank Schwab of Yahoo Sports:

Bob Uecker today talking about how he started with the Brewers scouting the Northern League. He didn’t know to have a stopwatch. “I’d cup my hands like I had a stopwatch, then ask the guy next to me, ‘What did you have him at?’ They’d say ‘3.4 seconds.’ I’d say ‘Yeah, me too.'”

It reminded me of something Adrienne Miller described in her book, “In the Land of Men,” about her first day at GQ:

“As [GQ editor David] Granger and I spoke, it became apparent that I did have one thing going for me: I was able to talk about past issues of GQ. Later, he said that I got the job because I was the one person he’d interviewed who’d actually even bothered to open the magazine.”

“ ‘Never underestimate how unprepared most people are,’ he would later observe, correctly.”

Don’t forget your stopwatch. Read the magazine in advance. And if you’re not sure what you need for the first day, ask. Otherwise, you might not be prepared to do the work.

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You Don’t Know How Good You’ve Got It.

Here's what the TV quality looked like. Not great!

Two decades ago, I flew British Airways for the first time. I was 13 years old, and it was the greatest flight I’d ever been on.

What made it so great? Two words: Personal TVs. Every seat had its own television, and each TV had a dozen channels. You could flip through and watch any movie or TV show playing on that channel. For a kid like me — especially one who didn’t have cable TV yet — this was heaven.

Tonight, I flew on British Airways for the first time since that flight. And I’m pretty sure it was the same plane I’d flown on 22 years earlier.

What makes me think that? Well, they still had the same TVs — and they still had that same lineup of channels.

In 2022, we’ve come to expect a little more from our in-flight entertainment. We expect there to be dozens, if not hundreds, of on-demand movies and TV shows.

This flight had two channels, showing two movies of their choice, and a picture quality that reminded me of the days of rabbit ears on our set-top box.

Look, I know this is a first-world problem. And it the end, it didn’t really matter at all. Instead of watching a movie, I read a book, did a little work, and took a nap.

But it was a nice reminder of how far things have come in the past few years. The next time I’m flying and I *only* have a few dozen options to choose from, I might be a little more grateful. Sometimes, you need a little reminder to remember how good you’ve got it.

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That’s a photo of the TV at my seat. The wavy lines aren’t the result of any weird pixelation caused when taking a photo of a screen — that’s just what the screen looked like.

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You’re Going to Make Your Own Choices.

When a reader signs up for Not a Newsletter, they immediately get a welcome email from me, in which I ask two things: Do you have a newsletter, and what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing with it?

Sometimes, the replies will be small and easy to reply to. Struggling with growth? Here are a few slides. Need help with a survey? Here are a few examples.

But other times, the replies involve a weightier topic — writers at major crossroads. I used to send back long responses to these readers, making the argument for why I thought they might want to head in a certain direction. What I discovered is that often, despite a thoughtful and well-sourced reply, they’d go in an entirely different direction.

These readers, I realized, weren’t looking for advice — they just wanted a place to vent.

It didn’t matter if my advice was good or bad. They weren’t looking for advice, and it wasn’t my place to give it.

So I’ve started changing how I reply to those messages. When I think I’ve got one of those emails in my inbox, I try to validate their reply (“That’s such an interesting challenge! I’ve had a few other readers struggle with this — it’s not easy!”) before asking a question or two in reply. I don’t share as many links as I do with other readers. Again, they’re venting, so my job is to listen. The right reply isn’t a solution — it’s a question.

These readers are going to make their own choices. All I can do is listen, ask, and hope that whatever choices they make are the right ones for them.

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That’s the email they reply to when someone signs up for my newsletter, which, by the way, you can do here.

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It’ll Be OK.

That was the view from my cabin porch

I just spent a week up in New England in a cabin, on a lake, in the woods. We didn’t have electricity or internet or cell service. My clients were excited about it: “You deserve a full week off,” they told me. My wife was excited about it: “You’ve earned this!” she said.

I was terrified.

I was terrified of the emails I’d get while I was gone. I was worried that I’d return to find 400 urgent requests that I was a week late on. I was worried that something terrible would happen to a client while I was gone and I wouldn’t be able to help.

And I logged back on yesterday to find… well, about 70 emails that actually required a personal reply. Not a single one was urgent. My website was still functioning. The Google Doc was still live. Nothing broke or went terribly wrong.

And in the week I was gone, I truly got the chance to unplug. I read three books, I swam, I napped, I did a whole lot of nothing.

Today, I’ll reply to all those emails, and tomorrow, I’ll get back to work. But I’m glad I got the chance to unplug.

Turned out that for all my fears, everyone else was right: It was OK to take a week off, and it was worth it.

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That was the view from my cabin. I kept my phone off most of the week, but did turn it on once or twice to take photos.

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When Will You Get To Do This Again? (Part II)

That's a photo my friend, Ian, took at the show. Ian had better seats than we did.

A few months ago, I wrote about living in the moment. “Sometimes,” I wrote, “you’ve got to try something because, honestly, when are you going to get to do it again?”

Sunday was one of those days.

A few months ago, Paul McCartney announced that he was going on tour. One of the dates on a Sunday night in Baltimore. A few childhood friends texted me: Was I in for the show?

Sally and I were — but there was one complication. We’d be coming from a wedding in Connecticut, six states and 300 miles away. It’s a 6-hour drive in normal traffic, but on a summer weekend on I-95, six hours becomes 10 quickly.

We said yes anyway.

Was it a lot of driving? Yes. Did we somehow make it on time? Yes. Were we exhausted by the end of the night? Yes.

Was it worth it to see freaking Paul McCartney play a three-hour, 37-song set? Oh, absolutely.

Sometimes, you have to do something just because you might never get the chance to do it again.

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That’s a photo of Paul on stage in Baltimore. My buddy Ian took the photo. (We had pretty good seats, but Ian had amazing seats.)

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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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