Just Do It

4th of July is quietly one of my favorite holidays on the calendar.

I hope nobody is reading this week’s edition of the Diary and preparing their bodies to celebrate America’s birthday the right way.

If you have any questions on how to celebrate July 4th “the right way”, reply to this email and I will put together an itinerary for you, pro bono.

As my friends over at Friday Beers would say, “commence suckdown“!

Now for the people that actually want to read, let’s dive into today’s topic…

The Key

Of the hundreds of college kids or new graduates I’ve talked too on networking calls over the past several years, I make sure they leave every call with one solid message.

This advice isn’t just for a 20-something year old trying to figure out how to be an adult and follow their passion. It can also be for your old ass too. I’ll let you define “old”.

The advice… JUST DO IT!

Super original thought, I feel like a major American athleisure brand, that maybe specializes in sneakers should use it for like a marketing campaign or something.

Jokes asides, Phil Knight and Nike were up to something.

More specifically… the most common question I get asked is, “How do I get started in sports media?”.

I’m not arrogantly saying the answer is “just do it, you fricken’ loser!”.

My real answer to the question is start something from scratch within media that falls within your passion.

It could be a newsletter/blog, a social media account you post content to, a Twitter account, a podcast and so on.

JUST DOING IT and starting the process of figuring it will teach you more than you could ever imagine.

And I’m not saying go create a media project that is going to be the next Barstool Sports. Simply start something that you send to your boys in a group chat. Or even just keep it private or anonymous.

This applies to way beyond just “media”, but I’ve lived it in media and know for a fact this thinking will lead you to your goals. BUT if you have an idea of a side hustle you want to test out in any industry… JUST DO IT!

It’s okay to fail, but the value in saying yes to a project that aligns with your passion is something you will be forever grateful for.

Solely by trying will give you one MAJOR outcome…

EXPERIENCE

You cannot beat experience.

Experience cannot be taught.

Experience is gained from doing and putting in the hard work.

Although the word “experience” is broad and kinda of making me feel like an old timer, so let’s break it down.

The actual definition is “practical contact with and observation of facts”.

Experience can do a whole lot for you but here’s a few key points…

The experience of creating something on your own allows you to speak to the experience in a job interview as part of your resume.

The process of starting something from scratch will teach you what you like and don’t like about media or whatever it may be that you're doing. It will also teach you what you’re good at and not good at.

That’s what I mean when I say “just doing something” will provide you the most valuable experience of your life.

“Just doing” the Morning Blitz newsletter led me to some incredible opportunities, but only cause I had the experience. Here’s how it worked…

Lessons from Starting Morning Blitz

As I’ve written before, the Morning Blitz is the only reason I was able to land a job at The Worldwide Leader in Sports. ESPN never would have even given me an interview if Morning Blitz, a sports newsletter, wasn’t on my resume and I was solely coming from the insurance world.

Blitz was the perfect experience to pull from to answer interview questions and gave me credibility for working in the media industry.

Starting something from scratch also makes you touch every single little part of the process. I truly learned what I was good at, and I was awful at. As well as what I loved, and what I had no interest in doing.

When it came to the Blitz early on, I was great at the content side of things. I realized I understand very clearly what consumers wanted to see and was able to curate that in a very engaging way through the newsletter and social media.

From this experience, I learned I wanted to continue to be a part of the general content strategy and execution on the Blitz and now new projects in my career moving forward.

I was terrible at business operations early on. Think legal docs, invoicing, bank account stuff, and any other admin needs.

I sucked at it, I knew it was an area I need to get back at to be successful in a start-up and I’d like to think in the 5+ years since that, biz ops are actually now a strength of mine.

Brand sales was another aspect of the business I just didn’t like, mainly because of how challenging it was, but was another area I knew I needed to grow in.

Today, media sales kinda fires me up and is one of my core focuses day-to-day at Shadow Lion. At the end of the day, brand deals are how typically media companies survive!

I also had a team of guys who helped in those areas of weakness, and we were able to learn from each other.

Also, from “just doing something”, you never know what it will grow into!

The side project of Morning Blitz turned into a full-time business opportunity with over 50K active subscribers! Not to mention the love of my life.

Running Morning Blitz was pretty much like going to business school.

I learned more than I could ever have imagined about the sports media industry and business.

I am very happy my younger, party-hungry self mustered up the strength to dive in and start doing the necessary things to get Morning Blitz going while sacrificing some beers with friends. Because it opened it so many opportunities for my future self that I never would have predicted.

There’s a whole lot more to how the experiences of Morning Blitz helped set me up for my future life in sports media, which I know I link a lot, but you can read about in my farewell note to the Morning Blitz, if you haven’t yet!

Last time I’m gonna tell you about one of my favorite newsletters…

Money Machine Newsletter

Market Beating Stocks in 5 min. Elite traders narrow down the universe of stocks to their best ideas, delivered weekly to your inbox pre-market. Join Money Machine Newsletter today for free.

Shoutout Nike for the “Just Do It” phrase.

Shoutout to you reading today’s post.

Shoutout Brad Stevens for re-signing every part of the Celtics core roster.

Shoutout to America and let’s go have an epic July 4th celebration!

Love,

Danny Healey