Category: Life Nudges

Kids Sports

I was going to sell my old triathlon wetsuit. It’s not worth a ton, but it’s worth something. I had the posting up on Craigslist, but in the interest of trying to provide Life Nudges wherever I could, I had the following text:

This is my old sleeveless wetsuit. It’s a solid starter suit, and it’s a very inexpensive option for a novice triathlete. I am willing to let it go to a parent of a racer under 18, or a racer under 18, for FREE (i.e. $0), as a way to encourage more youth triathlon participation.

About a day after I posted this, I realized the answer was in my own backyard. The family that runs the local youth tri club team on which my daughter participates has a 12 year old boy who appears to love the sport, and is quite talented. I wish it had occurred to me to offer it up to him before I posted, but perhaps it was the act of posting, combined with the language used, that got me thinking about how to fulfill the destiny of this wetsuit to be used by an aspiring young athlete. I can’t want to see him racing in it.

Kids Sports

My kids were in camp this past week. Boulder being Boulder, they were in a rock gym camp. They loved it. There were a bunch of kids there who didn’t have the same high opinion.

One kid in particular was eyeballing the wall and kept saying to the counselor that he was afraid to fall. They were bouldering.

As I had just dropped of my kids, I was walking the gym to make sure they were good. My son was right next to this kid. I didn’t want to interrupt the counselor, who was explaining to the kid that he didn’t have to worry about falling.

So I climbed the wall. And fell. On my back. It was a nice cushion floor after all.

I turned to my son, said “that was fun, have a great time today,” and left.

I didn’t stick around to see what happened with the kid, but I hope he got the right message from that and had a great time.

Starting a Business

Surprising that the theme this week would again be around starting a business. Not super surprising, given my background and the things my brain likes to jump to, but here we are.

A friend has a good idea for a company he wants to go start. He’s even spoken to seed investors who have agreed to give him the money. It’s not the best deal, and that’s caused him some hesitation.

I could tell he was excited about the idea, but he’s being held back by fear that he won’t have enough money, and also fear related to leaving his very well paying job.

As we talked about the idea, however, it wasn’t clear to me that he needed to leave his job to build a testable product. Most of what he wanted to do could be accomplished with a spreadsheet and a phone. He was massively overthinking the problem.

In this specific case, he was so wedded to his solution, he was missing the macro problem. Yes, the way he wanted to solve the problem would matter, and be a competitive advantage, in the future, but he didn’t need it today.

I’m looking forward to seeing some forward progress from him in the coming weeks. It’s a very interesting new spin on an old idea, but I like it. It really resonated with me.

Summary: A week ago, I posted about my own experiences with Life Nudges. As part of my time off to design the life I want, I am going to be intentional about chronicling a few things. One of them is my weekly gratitude. Another is tracking Life Nudges (either mine, or recounting stories that I have seen).

Starting a Business

I have a good friend who is looking for something new to do with his time. He’s been working jobs he doesn’t particularly care for, and really wants a change. Recently, we were talking over a meal and he was describing for me one of his ideas which we had discussed before. I asked a few thoughtful questions (i.e. Do you understand who you target customer is? How will you sell this? Why is this different than the alternatives?) and he had some good answers and some not so good answers. However, the thing that really struck me was that there was something holding back his enthusiasm.

He didn’t know how to start.

He’s been running this idea through his mind for a few years. He has a great name for the product. He has a pretty good idea how to make the product. He just hasn’t taken the most scary of steps. The first one of making it real.

So I asked him if I could help. He wasn’t sure.

I wanted to give him a nudge to get him going in the right direction to make progress. I pulled out my phone, and looked up the full intended name of his product to see if the URL was available. It was. I bought it right there while we spoke. Then I looked at him and said:

“Well, now you have a URL. It’s real. Get moving. What one thing can you do between now and next week to make forward progress on this product idea?”

I also made sure to let him know that I would be following up every two weeks to be his accountability buddy. The idea is extremely low risk from a capital outlay perspective. His own worst enemy is his mind, demanding perfection. The product can be adjusted as he goes. The most important thing he can do right now is get a working prototype ready, walk it into a few target customers (retail store fronts) and ask them to try it. What’s the worst that could happen? They laugh at him. Big deal. Best thing they can do is say “this is great - how can I buy some?”

It doesn’t take much to help someone on their path while they are pursuing their own success. In this case, my nudge was a small purchase of a domain name, and listening. What can you do this week to provide a Life Nudge to someone?