In a couple hours from now, I will be setting off for the “Real Stockholm Tour.”
I’ve been in Stockholm for a day and a half so far. I have seen the posh and pretty center… the cute and cobbly old town… and, thanks to a boat ride I took with lots of tall and blonde Swedes, an island named Vaxholm, one of over 24,000 that form the Stockholm archipelago, which starts in the city and stretches for over 60km. I never knew that Sweden was basically Earthsea.
I’m here for the next week with a large fraction of my lifelong friends — a flatmate I lived with for 6 years, 10+ years ago in Budapest; a “daygame wing” I’ve known for 12+ years and have spent hundreds of hours with on the street; and a college friend and former housemate I’ve known for close to 25 years, since our time at UCSC, who I’m living with again after all that time.
Somehow we all assembled here, in part by luck and in part by strategy.
Today, like I said, it’s time for the real Stockholm tour.
Unlike the pretty, posh, or pristine that we’ve seen so far, the real Stockholm tour will consist of getting a burek — a Balkan pastry — somewhere in the suburbs and then seeing other and realer parts of this enormous though not tremendously populated city.
I’m telling you all this because frankly I don’t have a lot of time or mental space to write a different kind of email this morning. Which ironically, is my takeaway for you today.
If you write dailyish emails, but you find yourself without a lot of time or brain power, you can always simply tell people where you are right now, what’s going on, why you are either braindead or pressed for time, and then lead into your offer.
In my experience, readers enjoy those kinds of emails a lot. And such emails serve their purpose of keeping people reading to your offer and beyond.
Speaking of:
I will be traveling for a while still, even after Stockholm. I will have interesting things to promote and possibly interesting ideas to share during that time. But I expect I will also find myself again in situations like I am in today, without a lot of time or creativity.
Email marketing side tip:
Another good kind of email to write in a time or brain crunch is a Q&A email.
To help me do that, would you send me your questions?
It can be questions about anything I am qualified to talk about, including email marketing, copywriting, or online businesses.
It can also be questions about things I am eminently not qualified to talk about, such as climate change, weight loss, or raising children.
Or if there are things that you always wanted to know about me personally, but were afraid to ask, now’s your chance.
I don’t promise to answer all questions in a future email, but I do promise to read and honestly consider them.
And who knows, if you write me, you might find your name under the bright lights of this newsletter in a few days’ time, along with my best or most entertaining answer to what you ask.
The only way to have that happen is to hit reply right now, think what you most want to know from me, and then send me a email carrier pigeon, straight to my hotel room in Archipelago Central. Thanks in advance.