Episode 112 – Stealth Nudgers

This is Rebecca Clark Episode 112 Stealth Nudger’s This podcast is for anyone that knows they haven’t yet found and offered up their best work but are compelled to seek it out and do it. Are you ready to move your desk? Mhm mm hmm. About 10 years ago I set up a Facebook group and a website called Nudge village and I set this up so that I could promote my friends and co workers that were pursuing entrepreneurial activities in some way. And I use the term entrepreneurial very broadly for anyone who steps out of a job situation and pursues an idea for a product service or just to change something in another’s behavior in some way through influencing. And I highlighted a lot of people during that time because I knew a lot of people that were out of work and they were going out on their own trying to make a living for themselves and I thought that I could be part of promoting them. And of course I still keep in contact with a lot of people that were associated with this Nudge Village group and I took down the website, absorbed all the blog posts and to move your desk and I’ve changed the facebook group to move your desk up level your work. And in that group there are people that have influenced me along the way that have been stealth nudger’s that have been behind the scenes influencing my thoughts and my choices with or without knowledge of that. And I wanted to read a quote that is very famous from steve jobs and then I want to talk about it for a minute before I specifically highlight a few people that have come to my mind recently as I continue to embark on the path or the journey to offer up my best work. So here’s the quote from steve jobs. Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, you can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things, They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do steve jobs. Most of you listening to this today will be people who have heard a quote or two from steve jobs. I love the quote because I am surrounded by people like this and they aren’t in the news and even if they do have an online presence, they don’t have thousands following them. But they do have individuals that are influenced by them behind the scenes. They do have individuals that they’re helping directly. And even though those numbers may be small right now, I believe that that quality of nudging that quality of genius, that quality of persistence and wanting to improve and change things will actually have a much broader influence than they realize at this time. Some of us have a lot of people and our human orbit, some of us have few, but I think one of the fascinating parts of life is to decide as we’re going through it that we can show up the best we can in our human orbit no matter how large or small it may be. And as it varies through our lives, being okay with that, it’s okay if you only influence your household or your neighborhood or your school or your online community, it’s okay if you don’t influence the entire world. In fact, it may be more powerful if you don’t because that also means that you will be able to create space for those closest to you to have deeper and stronger relationships because the more our human orbit expands, the more contributions or the more expectations or the more time commitment may be associated with that. Not always, but often as I’ve gone about my week, I have had immense gratitude in small moments where I have wondered simple things like I was in a certain technology tool the other day and I thought I wonder how I first discovered this because I’ve played with so many tools over the years and I thought who is the person that first introduced me to this particular tool? And it was interesting to reflect and be able to go wait a second. I know who told me about this tool and very specifically I know that robert Kennedy the third has used and shared certain tools over the years that I have tried and have enjoyed and have used. Isn’t that crazy that I can name the person? I also distinctly remember a stray conversation I had with daisy where she mentioned Patreon and I was like, what’s that like? Well that’s a place where artists and different people producing things can go put their stuff up and people can sign up to pay them for it and I now have scott clark and Renee Wimmer as subscribers. This pays for my podcast service for one year. Isn’t that crazy how we’re connected to people through different tools? I wanted to shout out a few people that consistently like my posts, and it’s very clear because sometimes there’s only one or two people that will like a post on facebook or on linked in. But I see Karen status name come up and Raelyn Whitmer and Rene Wimmer and jim palmer and robert, parrot and Harry Palace and Tina Larson. There’s people that consistently give you a little like and for me, those are like a little nudge and keep going Rebecca, I like this, it’s kind of cool. They’re not telling me whether it’s amazing or not most the time, but just those little Acknowledgments that come from people along the way. I love that. I keep experiencing books that I’d love over and over and quotes from those books. And I wanted to point out that Deborah moore and Anthony Rotello have nudged me towards Seth Godin and Jensen chiro and Brooke Castillo. I can remember distinct conversations where each of them told me about a book or a person that I needed to look into and read from. And now I’ve been a fan of Seth Godin’s for over 10 years and it took me a while to be a fan of Jensen Zero until I finally read her books, some of them. Mhm. And Brooke Castillo, I learned from in the life coach school. These experiences came from nudges when my brother chris and craig kept talking about Jordan Peterson, I thought well I gotta look into the sky and Jordan Peterson is a very interesting guy, You don’t have to agree with everything he says to follow him, follow him. It’s very interesting because he twists your mind and bends it in different ways if you so choose. But I’m thankful for those nudges that have led me toward them. I’m grateful from friends from the past like Brenda Christiansen who has recently started to participate in some of my online coaching sessions and to give insightful comments and nudge me to check into other areas of marketing. I look at scott clark, another brother who nudged me to put all my stuff on Youtube. He didn’t know I had been using Youtube for years in different capacities, but he suggested I repurposed my podcast for it and the beauty is in the process of repurposing my podcast for Youtube. I also learned about some new settings that I didn’t realize we’re super easy to integrate in Youtube where I could easily show other videos of interest at the end of each video, it seems like a simple thing, but if you don’t know how to do it, it sounds like rocket science. But as I was uploading all the videos, I started playing with different settings like wait a second here, here’s where people are doing this, I can just click this button and it will put up a little subscribe screen. How awesome is that In the process of uploading, I also decided on an approach to name everything right. I decided I would put the number first and then a dash and then the title of the podcast and then a dash and then the move your desk podcast After that these patterns matter. But the way you figure them out most of the time is not sitting around planning it. It’s diving in and doing the work and then going, oh wait, it would sure be easier if I made a taxonomy for this, an approach that’s easier to maintain. And I dove into it because someone nudged me and I trusted their nudge. Now scott gave me a nudge recently about marketing and I find it fascinating because I had just taken a course on marketing last year, I spent hundreds of hours learning about marketing. I’ve just helped some clients with marketing. I just reached out to Amber Clark to say, hey, I need your help with some marketing in the future and to have someone come to me and say, yeah, you should do. This was just another witness to me that it’s time, it is time for me to take the next step, stop the learning, get to work right, prepare what you’re actually going to be doing. I also have a stealth *** that coaches me, we trade off coaching, but she keeps me thinking and challenging me and my thoughts and helping me be open to possibilities. She has a touch of toughness, which I need, but she includes a bit of humor and it’s all couched and wisdom from her past and for constant and relentless desire to learn and change. M J Walsh is my coach and I’m so grateful she is my coach because I’m going through tough stuff called life and work. Mhm. Right. Just like you, I have not shared everyone today that not just me, but I wanted to share a few that came to mind because they have specifically been in my thoughts this week and I’m learning to get out my thoughts and insights in the week that I have them because there’s a power to it, right? And when I don’t do that, I forget and it’s not good to forget my friends because the process of remembering does something to our thoughts and emotions and it helps us along the journey. It helps us keep going and keep trying. I’m in a very interesting situation this week in the last month. Some of the key people that I have coached over this last year are going through major job decisions and changes all at once. And so I’ve had more conversations with them and I’ve had more thinking going on in my brain about how we choose our work and what are the trade offs and what risks are we willing to take and to realize how important it is for me not to cast a lot of judgment on any of their decisions because they are the ones that will be doing the work. They are the ones that know their own desires. They know far more desires than those they’re sharing with me. There’s certain parts of ourselves that we don’t even think to share with people sometimes and those parts matter because those are part of what drives us and what don’t drive us. I am grateful for the opportunity to be open to continuous nudging from others. And I want to keep being better at it because there are clues from those around us and those clues can make us have certain responses, can’t they? We choose to be angry about it. We choose to be uncomfortable. We choose to like what they’re telling us, but I hope that we take it all and just go this is information that’s helpful for me to guide me on my next step in my work this week. Pay attention to how you do your work, how you interact with others and stop for a minute when you see yourself doing something and say who originally was part of leading me on this path? Who helped me get into this work, Who helped me decide to use this tool, Who helped me decide to buy this car and pull the string. And often that’s a sequence of nudges that led to it. So it can be multiple people I’ve talked about sequence of nudges before, there’s a whole episode on it, so take a listen to that too. But there are so many people in our lives and they are the behind the scenes geniuses that aren’t accepting the status quo, they’re seeking different, they’re seeking better, they’re seeking personal development and improvement, and they’ve included you on your journey and you are part of theirs. It reminds me of a quote I received when I was a young teenager and a church class for girls. You are the piece to the puzzle of someone else’s life. You may never know where you fit, but the holes in others lives will be filled with pieces of you. These people are pieces to the puzzle of my life and I hope that I take the time to honor them more and continue to grow in my work because then I can offer a piece of myself to you have a great week. Be grateful. Remember who the stealth nudger’s are in your life? They just may change your world. Talk to you soon. Mm Thanks for listening to the show today. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d write a review and share the show with your friends, sign up for a weekly nudge at move your desk dot com.