How Sandwich Video founder Adam Lisagor uses email (yes, email) to unlock creativity

The contrarian founder of Sandwich Video dives into his favorite creative tools, early ’80s television shows, fear of writing, and more.

Walk me through a typical day in your life.

I get up, and usually because there are two kids in my bed with my partner and I—and a dog—my 3-year-old is usually jamming a limb into my leg or my nose. I go downstairs, and I make breakfast for my little boy, and coffee, of course, and then I drop him off at school, which is on the way to the office. I open Slack, and email, and then I just react. That’s what most of the day is: reacting.

I actually love email, and I’m really proficient at it. We’re an office full of introverted nerds, so we don’t have a strong meeting culture — we meet as a company maybe once a week — and it’s better to try to maintain our private headspace as much as possible, so the more we can get done in front of a screen, the better.

I think the reason people are so bad at email is because they’re fundamentally afraid of communicating in writing. Those people that have inboxes in the quadruple digits? I think they just can’t face the idea of having to write something back. And that’s too bad for them, because it comes across as them being a bad communicator.

Besides Slack and email, what does your toolbox look like?

I use an app called Simplenote a lot. You can take notes on your phone, and it syncs to your desktop, and it’s just really… simple.

As the company has grown, more and more people have come in and filled roles that I used to fill like writing scripts, editing, visual effects. That frees me up to mostly be involved in the higher-level stuff like creative strategy and trying to keep our culture healthy and the team happy. And focusing on side projects outside of tech.

Airtable has been super helpful for us, for managing projects and productions. We have an internal web app we had a developer build for us that’s like a dashboard — it’s called Sandwich Board, of course — that lets us pull in the high-level information from Airtable and see at a glance the most important information about all the projects that are currently in progress.

What are some of the biggest mistakes that people who are new to your industry make?

Trying to replicate something that’s already been done and thinking that will be a success. To me, if it’s already been done before, it’s not creative. It’s mediocrity. And I think mediocrity is actually the opposite of creativity. At best, doing something that’s been done before is practice—it’s useful, but it’s not creative.

Who are you inspired by?

Donald Glover. With Atlanta, and his music, and everything — you can tell this is someone who’s trying to do something that’s never been done before. And he’s also just a hell of a nice guy. And then a guy named Jonathan Krisel. He’s behind a bunch of shows — Baskets, and Portlandia, and Tim and Eric Awesome Show — but nobody really knows who he is. He’s this amazing creative force in TV comedy, and he’s this unassuming family guy, but everything he does is so great.

What’s the first film or video you remember loving?

There was this local access show called Whitney and the Robot, and it was about these two guys who live together in an apartment with a robot — you can look it up on YouTube. And I couldn’t remember what it was for years, and then last year I found it on YouTube. The theme song started playing — it’s this early ’80s theme song, with like, laser sounds — and it was like a warm blanket washing over me.

What advice do you have for people who want to be better writers?

This is cliche, but just read a whole lot. Read until you find yourself noticing turns of phrase. You probably want to write because you want to tell stories, but if writing isn’t your thing — don’t put yourself in a position to fail. Don’t torture yourself trying to write emails; get on the phone or something.

What’s one weird niche thing you know way too much about?

As a kid, I was a huge comedy nerd. I used to be really into Monty Python. When I was in the shower, or had time to kill, I would sit there repeating the names of the different performers to myself: Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Michael Palin... I wasn’t exactly encyclopedic — I’ve never been that person, with like, encyclopedic knowledge of something — and actually, I think that’s probably why I’ve been successful at what I do. I tend to know exactly enough about something to be able to get by and explain it well.

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