Naming the Sunday Newsletter

Mostly I name things what they are. When I started writing a daily blog post, I named it thesalesblog.com because I knew it would help build traffic from people who searched for sales blogs. When I started the podcast, I wanted to give it a more meaningful name, so I went with President Richard Nixon’s favorite quote from a speech given by another President, Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I named the podcast In the Arena, now number 13 in Business on iTunes, and now you know why.

I started publishing the Sunday newsletter five years ago, following Chris Brogan, who started sending his on Sunday mornings. Chris had much improved open rates by sending his newsletter on a day when no one else sent one. A lot of people adopted this approach.

I named the Sunday Newsletter because it is a newsletter that I publish on Sunday. The name is factual and accurate, but as a name goes, doesn’t do much more. To give it a little more oomph, I have decided to provide it a real name. From now on, this newsletter will be called: While You Were Sleeping.

The idea here is, as the kids would say, is being “woke.” (proper tense, be damned). It’s the opposite of being asleep.

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. – Carl Jung