Ep 75: Designing my Own Finger with Nick Brookins

Everything about Nick is just incredible, y'all! From his job as VP of Walt Disney to his index finger. 

Nick is a cloud software architect by day, prosthetic finger architect by night. Nick's amazing story starts with a motorcycle accident and ends with him designing his own 3D-printed prosthetic finger, which he is sharing to the world.

This episode is not only about overcoming physical challenges but also battling Imposter Syndrome, which Nick confronts head-on with all honesty.

So, whether it's designing a cyborg finger, overcoming self-doubt, or fostering a culture of mutual growth, this episode is for you if you want a dose of big-hearted, big brained inspiration. 

What you'll learn in this episode:

• How Nick overcame adversity, including a motorcycle crash and losing a finger
• Coping with and overcoming imposter syndrome
• Nick's approach to servant leadership and leveraging neurodiversity
• How obstacles can turn to opportunities
• The concept of contribution-focused goals in fostering a supportive culture

Nick Brookin's Bio:

Nick Brookins is an inventor and media executive, serving as Senior Vice President of Media Engineering at The Walt Disney Company.  

Nick has worked a the intersection of Media and Technology throughout his career, with innovations ranging from 3d printed prosthetic fingers to technology behind the rise of streaming media. 

Mentioned in this episode: 

• Robert Greenleaf on Servant Leadership
• Stephen Covey
• Nick Brookins on LinkedIn
• Danger Creations
• Ep 01: You’re The One We Want

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Transcript

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Well, hello everybody and welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we have someone as a guest today that I have wanted to interview for a very long time. I was asking my friend, nick, who has an incredible story and is just such an incredible human being, years ago if I could write a blog about him, and then things shifted in my life and that blog post. 

I never ended up publishing that and I have it and I have the story and the things he wrote. And here we are today having this interview that I've wanted to have for so long because I want you all to hear Nick's story and hear from his incredible brain. So today we have Nick Brookins, who is senior vice president at Walt Disney right now, and he's here giving his time to us today. So, Nick, welcome. 

Nick

Thank you so much, Marie. I'm excited to be here. 

Marie

Me too, and, by the way, I've known Nick for many, many years. We'll get a little bit into that, but so excited to be here with you, let's have you start by just introducing yourself. Tell us a little bit about yourself, nick, so everybody gets to know you. 

Nick

Yeah, sure, I live in Oceanside, California, near San Diego. I'm a dad. I have a wonderful daughter who just turned 16. She's fantastic. I'm a media executive at the Walt Disney Company and sometimes an inventor. My day job is leading the media engineering group at Walt Disney, where my teams are responsible for the core streaming experience behind our products like Disney+, Hulu and ESPN, and I started my media tech career back in the mid-90s and ran a media tech startup in Michigan through the early 2000s. 

Marie

So really everybody Nick's in all of our living rooms, y'all he's there right. He's responsible for all those leisure hours where you get to finally kick up your feet and experience all your favorite shows. Nick is partially responsible for that, so also, we've known each other on a personal level. Maybe you can share your perspective on that. 

Nick

Yeah, I moved here about 15 years ago and almost immediately was fortunate to meet your older brother, clay. I just relocated from Michigan and then was invited to his tabletop role-playing game every week Dungeons and Dragons, pathfinder, fun games like that and so that's really how I met my core group of friends, initially here in San Diego, and then that led to meeting you and all of your wonderful extended family as well. 

Marie

Yeah, and my brother. I haven't talked about him too much specifically on the podcast, but he's an art professor and a tattoo artist in San Diego, such a and such a bright, big personality, hilarious person, brilliant person, and so it's been really fun to join my brother and my brother, clay, and Nick, and the types of adventures that I've had that Nick has led, include things like going out to the desert and having these really fun family experiences where we ride electric dirt bikes, which I'm like I keep telling Nick I might get one because they're so much fun. 

And then on Halloween, we took all of Nick's electric dirt bikes yes, he has multiple and at night, all the kids on this little parade, all of us to go see Halloween decorations. So, Nick is just like a fun master, I think, as well as all the other brilliant things that you'll hear about him, as well as being an inventor, what a cool title you get to say that. 

Nick

And you faced your fear about Halloween decorations too. 

Marie

Oh, yeah, not so much a fear but an aversion. 

I would say aversion yeah, yeah, yeah, they always were like, nah, not my bag, but I'm learning to love them through my son and you, and definitely Clay, all right. So, as well as your professional work and electric dirt bikes and all of the amazing work that you do in the world, there's a story of yours that, when I heard it, it gave me this feeling of like chills, chills up and down my body, my heart, just warming just this wild, beautiful story of taking a challenging, really hard situation in life and turning it into something that's a gift to the world, which we focus on a lot in the Bloom Room, and so I would love for you to tell us a little bit about the story of one of your fingers. So, you were in an accident once. Are you comfortable telling us the story and introducing us to one of your fingers? 

Nick

Absolutely. Yep, I misplaced one of my fingers about 10 years ago in fact, 10 years ago next month, I believe I had a mishap on my motorcycle. I used to ride things much bigger than electric dirt bikes, and this was actually up in the mountains of Ramona, California, where you grew up. Yeah, and I dumped my bike around a mountain curve. Fortunately, your brother was right behind me and able to call an ambulance and so on, but my one permanent injury is that I lost my left index finger at the proximal knuckle after the first knuckle. 

Marie

So just hearing that, if everybody wants to look down and think about your index finger and so sort of like, how present that is in your life every day, all day long, all the time, right, so many of us are in situations in life or in work that really come out of nowhere, that are the last thing that we expect, that we weren't planning on, that come in to disrupt plans and that turn our personal worlds upside down, and it's I mean, when I hear this, it seems like this accident was like a very extreme version of that right, something just popping into your life that was like turns everything upside down to some degree and for many of us we stay stuck for a long period of time or we just never really come out of it and feel like ourselves again. We get lost in the surprise or the disappointment, but you didn't. Can you tell us the story of what you did next? 

Nick

Yeah sure, throughout the ambulance ride and the intake to the hospital they were telling me we know we can probably save your finger; you'll be fine. They put me under and then I woke up that morning with a big, bandaged hand and was told that it had to be removed. I don't think it really fully hit me yet. Like you were saying, your hands are so present, and I think it has something to do with hand-eye coordination. You know, you really internalize the look of your hands, so it hit me a lot worse. I think something to do with hand-eye coordination, you really internalize the look of your hands, so it hit me a lot worse, I think. Actually, when the bandages came off. 

But maybe that's fortunate, because that first month or so it was a little off to the side, I just had a big ball of bandages for a hand and couldn't really introspect it. So, my mind jumped to concern over will I be able to type? Well, I do that a lot at work. I'm a guitar player. Am I going to play guitar again? But then I also just kind of transitioned into the excitement around. Well, I could have a cyborg finger, I could be a robot, and so that that, I think you know, kept me going initially, but then the doctor-. 

Marie

That's a great thing to know about what happened to your brain at that moment. I'm so glad you shared that. 

Nick

The doctor came in like, okay, here we go, what do you get for me? And he pulls out some glossies of prosthetics and, at least at the time, all that were available were these silicone things that slipped over and looked plausibly like a finger, but they didn't do anything. They're just a chunk of rubber. And I'm thinking, boy, give me a set of Legos and I'll do something better than this. Let me at it. So, I did some research. I found some communities that were building prosthetic hands for, you know, for children in need, and so on, using 3D printers, and I thought, wow, that's maybe a good starting point. The finger will have to be a lot more intricate, but have you used 3D printers before? 

Marie

Were you familiar with that modality? 

Nick

Just being someone interested in all things tech, I had followed the 3D printing movement, which was still fairly new at the time this was in 2014, but I'd never actually used one before. So, I found an entry-level kit that was like laser cut wood and zip ties and just unreal that this thing actually worked. Once I got it done and then I thought, researching the challenge and thinking about how I would go about this started to really exercise that part of my brain and just keep me distracted from the day-to-day recovery. 

Marie

So, you didn't totally know how you just started with the possibility and the belief in yourself. 

Nick

Absolutely. 

Marie

Okay, okay, what was the hardest part of taking that little possibility into reality? 

Right, because, first of all, it seems like a lot of us are stopped at the how, which I actually talked in another interview with the CEO of Galileo about. That's coming out soon, but it's like we are taught sort of through traditional schooling systems, and a lot of our sort of societal learning or familial systems teach us that we have to get it all right, we have to know how we're going to do something before we start, and so a lot of us just stop at like well, I don't know how to do that. Right, Many, many people that come in the Bloom Room, for instance, have that. And we have to get over that piece, that where you think you have to know the whole story because it doesn't make sense anyways, like we never know what's going to come up along the way anyways, right, and so maybe you already said you got, you had your brain like kind of automatically went past that. But what? What was the hardest part for you in making it real, the idea real? 

Nick

What you just said made me think of a quote. I love you. Know what is the most important step? The most important step is the next step. It's not the first step, it's not the last step, it's just. What do you do next? Just make some movement, and you'll learn from there what the next right step might be. 

Marie

Oh, really quickly, just before you answer that, I just want to pull out. I love the next right step as it applies to anything in our lives, whether that's parenting or designing a prosthetic finger, or surviving an emergency or cooking. It's like always all you can know is the next right step. 

Nick

So, I touched on the emotional aspect of it of just not knowing what my recovery would look like, what I'd be able to still do, and that internal shock of just seeing your body different than you've expected to see it your whole life. And so, it was a struggle to stay out of that swamp, but the excitement about creating something, I think, helped with that. Technically, there were definitely challenges of figuring out the right set of technologies to apply so that I had a foundation to work from and wasn't doing this completely from scratch, while also refining it into something that I actually wanted to wear and felt proud to wear when I went out. But then that kind of moved into a bigger picture challenge which was how do I scale this, how do I support other people in potentially using the same thing, which introduced me to many more challenges along the way. 

Marie

Which is amazing right to even have it expand. That's another thing that I think sometimes for many of us we get stopped there, which is just the assumption that we can be helpful to others, which I think sometimes we think that's ego or that you know, we get afraid to share our creations with others. But I think one thing that resonates in your story that I see working a lot for people is just the desire to be of service as a motivator to share really helps us get out of our heads about what will people think. Is this going to be good enough? Will they like it? It's like that doesn't really matter if it helps somebody. Were there failures and iterations?

Nick

Oh, for sure. Yeah, I definitely gave up a couple times. It was probably only for a few hours at most, and I'd go, you know, wallow in a room somewhere and this is never going to work, and then, oh, let me try one more thing, and then I'd learn something from that. 

Marie

Was it intentional? Was it like, stop wallowing, nick, like? Or was it just organic? Oh, let me try one more thing. An idea would pop in, and you'd start following it. How hard did you have to work at that? 

Nick

I think since then I've internalized some of that process and I've gotten better about recognizing and saying pull yourself out, come on, this is doing no good whatsoever. But at the time I think it was more incidental, where I couldn't do a lot of the things I wanted to do, so I felt a little bit locked in. My brain was a little locked in. I couldn't go for a run, I couldn't play guitar, I couldn't type fast, and so my brain would just start spinning on. Well, how do I solve this thing? And then pretty soon I've forgotten all of the negative emotions because I'm just in the zone, fixated on how to solve this problem. 

Marie

Yep right, there was something about the immediacy of the need that really helped motivate you through those things. Yeah, for sure. 

Nick

But then there were lots of other little, you know little failures and stumbling blocks. Like most, 3d printing is with a hard plastic, but hard plastic isn't a good interface against a squishy human part. Do I find you know some material that works with it? I started by printing a plastic socket that would go over my finger remnant and then putting silicone caulk or something in it to make it more comfortable. But then found new materials I could print with and ways that I needed to modify my printer so that they would work well, so that I could print with a squishy rubber. And so just one thing after another, probably a hundred little setbacks or a thousand little setbacks, but managed to get through them, find something that I really like that. 

Marie

Have you read the “Obstacle Is The Way”? Are you familiar with stoicism at all? 

Nick

I'm at a high level, but I've not read it. 

Marie

That just reminds me so much of that is like every challenge becomes an opportunity that leads you to the next thing you never would have found if the opportunity wasn't present. Right now, you're just describing this like series of events like that, so beautiful, and you never know what you're going to find. You just have to grapple with your mind to see it as a question, not a stop sign, right? 

How do you think this experience changed you? How's the Nick before the motorcycle ride different than the Nick that's in front of me and that everyone's listening to right now? 

Nick

Yeah, like a lot of folks I've learned recently. I suffered from imposter syndrome throughout a lot of my early career and getting through to the other side of this really amped up my self-confidence. Being able to see kind of the place I was and what I made out of it gave me more faith that whatever random, weird bad thing comes along, well you know, buckle down and figure out a way through it. I'd also I'd lost my mom just a couple years prior, which helped put things into perspective and keep me you know that much more grateful to have the functions and the capability and the life that I do. What it's also done is it gave me a way to keep scratching an itch that I had to be deeply technical and write code and directly create things kind of with my mind or my hands, and that was at a time when my day job didn't really allow me to go that deep anymore with a large team. Then finally very, very gratifying to get to the point where I could contribute back to a larger community. 

Marie

Yes, I want to hear more about that really quickly, though. Well, I just want to pull out one thing that Nick said is that it gave him an opportunity to scratch an itch that his day job wasn't giving him in that moment, and I hear this so often. It's true for me as well, but oftentimes, when we can listen to those voices in ourselves, in ourselves, for what isn't like, what self-expression, what part of ours, of ourselves and what I'm talking about here is like what do we want to be doing? What do we want to be creating? Who do we want to be, that, whatever that driving desire is, that isn't getting any stage time in our lives right, can really help be a compass to new projects, new opportunities, relationships, whatever that gives that stage time to a part of us that really wants to come out. 

And I hear so often, similar to Nick's story, that then, following that allows that part of us that's so hungry for more space in our lives to expand and expand and expand, because you never know where it goes right. You have to get started. And I think in our culture and as parents those of us that are parents and as women those of us that are women, and just everybody. We're often taught to stamp it down and like show up and do all the things and be all the things. So, it really takes some work. There's nothing wrong with you If it takes work to hear the little whispers and the pings that are like what's lighting you up, what's like that's right Turning you on what are you passionate about, and I think of it how. 

Nick

You know, the most modern definition I've heard of introversion and extroversion is like where do you recharge? You know, I'm very much an introvert that loves to be social, but it's draining, and I need to take a break. Some people are the opposite and I kind of see this as a variation of that of like what other activities like. For me, it's not just being alone that recharges me. It's being alone and using my creative energy in a way is what gives me that recharge. That then allows me to go back out into the world. 

Marie

Oh, that's fun too. Not just what do you want, but what recharges you, yeah, and how can you give it more space instead of just saying yes to all the needs? And how can you give it more space instead of just saying yes to all the needs? One of the things Glenn was saying is how that Galileo really worked on is how can you be an actor in the world instead of a recipient of what the world gives you, right? 

You also talked about imposter syndrome, which I just keep hearing from my clients and from folks just how debilitating it is and how you know this everyday anxiety about being seen, right, being seen and being enough. And will they see something in me that then will you know, lower the wizard of Oz curtain Right, and they'll know. It's just a guy back here with the levers right, like will they, will I be fraudulent, and everyone will find out? So, without having to go through what you went through, what's your advice to people that are experiencing imposter syndrome? And maybe you just answer that or maybe, as an additional sort of prompt for your brain, you can think about, like, what are the things that you learned from it, that people can try to learn? I know adversity makes us stronger, but is there anything specific that they can try to learn? I know adversity makes us stronger, but is there anything specific that they can try? 

Nick

I think one part of it is just looking back a little bit farther and looking at how far you've come. So many people that have imposter syndrome that I see are incredibly successful, but they're only looking at this little time slice that maybe includes a stumble, instead of taking a longer period into account. What also was the final, I think, nail in the coffin of my imposter syndrome was my previous job. 

I had a boss who had every credential you could think of. He had a PhD in physics, he had a PhD or a master's in computer science, he'd been CTO of several big public companies, and we were out to lunch one day and I mentioned that sometimes I struggle with that a little bit. In my case, I didn't follow through. I didn't complete college, I ended up joining a startup in my early days and then always felt like I was behind because I didn't have that experience and didn't have that accomplishment. And he just looked at me and said everybody has that. I deal with that every time I wake up and I thought how could that possibly be for you? And in that moment, mine went away completely, like if you're struggling with it and have no reason to, then who the hell am I to think that I should worry about something like this? 

And so now I try to tell the same to my team. 

Marie

Oh, so good, you might be able to relate to this. I once had a CEO that was a super successful CEO. Say to me you know, what really bothers me is that everybody that comes to me now, so many of the people that come to me, you know, what really bothers me is that everybody that comes to me now, so many of the people that come to me to talk to me, they feel so nervous and deferential and I'm like all of us are like, still feel like we're 20, you know, like, no matter how successful you are, we're all still people. I still feel like I'm 20, I'm 55 or 60 or you know whatever. I just wish they could treat me like that, like, of course, with respect, but I'm just a person, dude, you know that really put the nail in the coffin of my some of my most of my imposter syndrome. 

Okay, so you ended up turning this design into something that was open source. What gave you the idea to do it and what motivated you? And did you know again, did you know exactly how you're going to get there? Or, again, was it this, like you know, obstacles coming up and you figuring it out and not knowing how when you started out? 

Nick

A little bit of all of the above. The easy part for me was contributing to an open-source software project. That's something I've been doing for decades at that point, so I knew the general process. But how to take what my design that was built bespoke for me and make that something that anybody out there with different sizes or shapes or needs or capabilities could use was really the core challenge. 

When I first designed my finger, the first few iterations were sculpted, so I used tools people might be familiar with, like SketchUp or Blender, that allow you to shape digital objects like they're clay, and that worked well. 

It took me hundreds of hours of sculpting, but I made something I liked and then realized that the next person that came along would need another hundred hours of sculpting to make something uniquely for them and that just was never going to scale. So, finding you know different ways to you know bring that scale and automation to it, which is where I went back again to my software development background and decided to try writing my finger in code. So, as of today, my finger is 5,000 lines of code that I iterate on and change, and what that allows it to do is you can take your measurements and your preferences and plug them into a web form, submit it and in the backend it'll, it'll recompile a finger with all of your needs, generate the model that then you can take to your 3d printer and print just like it's an off the shelf 3d printable model like it's an off the shelf 3d printable model. 

Marie

That's so, so amazing. 

I often hear individuals that are working on, they envision something that is going to make the world better, people's humanity better, life easier for people, and I often I would love. 

One of the things I love about that story is I often hear people get stuck in the real attachment to an individualized approach which feels loving right. I definitely have felt that in coaching, like my one-on-one coaching. I love to just spend all this time with people, and it keeps me from helping more people right when I see these incredible things happening on a one-on-one level. If I can go to a group setting, there are all of these reasons why that's actually more advantageous for people, which I now understand, because there are so many things they get to connect to one another, many brains, all these things. But also I hear other people really struggling with that letting go of that, the harder work and the more individualized attention, and I love how you this is such an illustration of how you had to let go of that in order to get to the thing that would feel individualized for everyone and would impact infinitely more, not like so many more lives and people that needed the help, right?

Nick

Yeah, I think of this at work as well the sunk cost fallacy, where you might have an engineering project that you've been working on for a year with a dozen engineers and you put so much into it, and then a better way emerges. That's going to take a whole lot less time, but you're like but I put so much into this, yeah, it doesn't matter. You might've put so much into that, but you've got a year left to go and this new approach is only going to take a month and you're done. Yes, you threw away that previous work, but it's something that taught you the better way from today forward. 

Marie

Which is so like capital version of what we were about like to get into here, which is iteration, right? So how does this experience show up in your life and your work? And how does the iteration piece show up? Is the need to build things iteratively and also to balance the needs of the short term with the long term.

Nick

Like I want to make this the scalable thing that everybody can enjoy, but I need to make it something that I want to wear day to day first, and then I need to take that next step. 

It, I think, also just gave me a lot more compassion for the less visible things that others might be dealing with. Anytime you interact with them. If you had asked me before this like, how big of a deal would it be to lose a finger? How would that affect your self-confidence or the way that you went around the world? It'd be like, oh, no big deal, guy with nine fingers. But then the reality setting in it makes you feel different. It makes you feel lesser than in some way, and so appreciating that people are going through that struggle and also realizing that sometimes small actions can bring that confidence back and help you reframe the situation. 

Marie

Can you give me an example of a small action? What do you mean by that? 

Nick

Well, even something like wearing a very early prototype and then going to the grocery store and having people ask me about it and say, oh wow, what's that? It immediately changed the script where, instead of it being something that can only be a sob story, like, oh wow, what's that? It immediately changed the script where, instead of it being something that can only be a sob story, like, oh, I lost my finger and they're like, oh, I'm so sorry and it's nice of them, but it comes away as this kind of pitying or sad experience, versus like, oh cool, you made yourself a robot finger and then you walk away all excited and energized, and so that just changed every interaction for me once I started to bring it into the world. 

Marie

It is wild to think about this process turning something that literally went from an insecurity that can be a thousand tiny cuts in all and so throughout the day, into turning you into a superhero, literally. Like you know, like, when I hear the story, I'm like you designed your own. I'm the person in the grocery store Like, how, what? Like, how did you even start? Right? It's just such an amazing thing. And again, like you know, the first episode of this whole podcast I started with this philosopher, Kaja Silverman, and just this idea of like you are the one unique you, and, like Nick, I don't know anybody else that I can put together in my mind right now that could do what you did. It had to be you. You know what I mean. So just knowing that your unique strengths can contribute something to the world that the world needs and that nobody else really can. Nobody could do it in the way that you did, right? 

Nick

Yeah, that makes me think back again to the iterative process. Iterative process because that's really about having a feedback loop. You make some changes, you learn from it, you loop that back around into your design process and you make another iteration. And it's really taught me that the tighter you can make that loop, you can move so much faster. If you need to release a product out to the world and then wait months for customer reviews to come back and then go back to the drawing board and then retool your assembly line, that could be a feedback loop of months or years. 

In my case, I was the designer, and I was also patient zero. And so, by the time I had one assembled and, on my hand, I'm thinking, oh boy, this could be better. And so, then I've already got one on the printer, waiting a few hours for it to print with the next iteration. And before that one's done, I've thought of something else that I've put into version 1.13. And I've brought that into my work life as well. Anytime I can shorten that feedback loop, it just allows us to move much, much more quickly. 

Marie

So good you didn't have to worry about sample size or anything, because it was huge. Yeah, so beautiful. 

Nick

I didn't have a control set, but other than my right hand, I guess. 

Marie

Yeah, right, that's amazing and you were talking about sort of like the process of earlier on. You know your emotion and your own specific like passion following the passion, processing through emotion as you're going through this iteration. Talk a little bit about how that changed, maybe how it helped you pay attention to what you're going through. 

Nick

Yeah, I think this, among other experiences, have given me so much more insight into the subtle signals that my brain is putting off, and I kind of think of it as what mode is my brain switched into? You know new cars have an eco and a normal and a sport mode, but you don't have a big switch on the side of your head so it's not necessarily obvious. It could be very subtle what mode your brain is in, and the more I can recognize that. You know I'm not really anxious. I've just got this creative energy I need to put somewhere, or I'm right now I'm exhausted from too much decision overload or socialization, or, you know, I'm feeling introspective. Be that day to change my schedule around, to try to apply my brain to the things it wants to do when it wants to do them, instead of always forcing it into a different mode than it wants to be. It's just made things so much easier and gratifying by the end of the day. 

Marie

God, that's so helpful to hear. I coach so many people on burnout and, like I, always, our first focus is being a human in a body. You know, like that's not going away and in a late stage. Capitalist society like that is a thing that we can't beat ourselves up for having a hard time remembering, as we're so productive and multitasking right it? Of course it takes a shift, of course it takes attention, and I love how you just described that. What's your advice for those of us here listening that are going through times that we didn't expect in the Bloom Room? One of the biggest hurdles for my, for my people is that they have a goal, they're so excited about it, and then life comes up along the way or they hit a stumbling block. And it's the greatest teacher always, because it shows us what's in the way and what we need to work through in order to get to where we're going, but also, like you know, what's your shortcut or what's your advice to getting through those things? 

Nick

Yeah, I like to think of it more as a lazy road trip instead of a direct flight. 

You know, it's a journey and if you're in the right mindset, you're delighted by that weird motel that popped up on Route 66 or that funky diner with a menu you've never seen, instead of saying, oh man, I really was hoping for, you know, chipotle, what the heck. 

You know just being open to the experience and delighted by the surprises as much as possible. And of course, there are the very negative surprises and it's easy to dwell on them, so I always let myself wallow for a minute, five or 10 minutes, you know, really soak that up and get in there, but then, as quickly as possible, just find somewhere to focus your energy whatever kind of energy that is and, like how we started the conversation, you will not be able to see the whole vision of where you're going to take it. Or if you do see that vision, it's probably going to change and there are going to be ways that that North Star moves a little bit. But if you just start, get one thing done, get that little dose of endorphins from accomplishing something, and then look at the landscape again and decide you know what direction the next step is going to be. 

Marie

Yeah, just keep going, absolutely, absolutely. I. I think I just can't reiterate that enough is one of the things that really supports people in doing that is keeping your goal for what you're trying to do. It doesn't have to be big and audacious, right, but it can just be what your hope is and why. What does it mean to you? Just keeping that at the forefront of every day, over and over, when I'm coaching people to turn their ideas into real things, I have this success. Keystone for the people that actually get there or find momentum is I read my what I'm trying to do. Every day. I orient myself around my vision for what I'm trying to create and why it's important to me every single day, and so if you do that, it's just like okay, what's the next step on our lazy road trip where we're finally going to end up at that vision? I love that. 

Nick

Yeah, it's like two ends of a string that really matter. There's the end close to you of what am I going to do with this part that I can touch, and then where do I want to position that other end that I want to get to as my vision? You're not going to know the steps in between. You've got to crawl your way along that, yeah and crawl your way along that. 

Marie

Yeah, and crawling your way around along that string is the playground, right, a string that's reaching out behind you. That's the measuring stick, which is when you were saying about imposter syndrome is during yourself, by how far you've come, like, look at all the things you've done, not by how far the string is in front of you. Right, that's the play, that's the fun, that's the curiosity. We don't even know how long that string is, because what's going to happen? You know, love it. Okay. So, you also talked about something that's so near and dear to my heart, which is service, and I you know what I love too. 

When I heard this story, too, about the open sourcing for the, for the designs of your prosthetic finger, was just like when I met Nick, when I met him, and when I am with him, hanging out with him, he is just, you are just such a heart forward person. 

It's like shining out of you. You can just feel that you're just very loving and grounded and just y'all. If you ever stand in front of someone and just like, this person cares, this person cares about me, they care about what I'm saying, they care about the world, the place we're standing in and the people around us. This is how Nick feels when you're talking to him, and then, of course, that like confirmation bias for me of like you designing this finger and then putting all this effort into making it available to all these people in need, you know, and all the time and energy that you put into that. So maybe you could share a little bit about your philosophy on service or contribution. For me, contribution is always in my top set of my values for myself, and I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on that. 

Nick

Yeah, absolutely. It started with one of my early jobs in retail. There are often not the best retail managers out there. Sometimes they don't have all of the ideal skills to really nurture a team, so I had a few bad bosses along the way, yeah, you've met those, I've met them, yeah. 

Yep. And then I had a boss. I was working at Circuit City in the early 90s, if anybody remembers that place and someone who just exemplified servant leadership and especially in that kind of environment, to have someone that walked in the door and was asking everyone like, how can we make this day better? What's in your way, what can I do for you? Was, as a recipient of that, just you know, turn my mind upside down Like, wow, this is, this is incredible. 

And then you know, in science and in technology, there's a really common saying that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Everyone is building off of the work of someone else, and so as I got into technology, it was, it was obvious that I was doing that, and that just helped me develop this gratitude for those people that had come before and had shared their work, had published a paper, had released something that then I could use as a building block for what I was doing. And so the idea of being able to be one of those people who someone could stand on my shoulders in some small way to reach even higher than they could, have just felt incredible. I never thought I would get there, but that's something that kept me going. 

Marie

That is so cool. Okay, so one hallmark of innovation is building on the ideas of others, right, and not having this over-attachment to the idea of being our own, which can be tricky, right, but building on the ideas of others and bantering things back and forth, rather than that super attachment to authorship. And what's so cool about what you just said about having people stand on your shoulders is it actually reminds me of the visual that I always think of with servant leadership, which is an upside down triangle where, for instance, in an organization, the CEO is at the point of the triangle, on the bottom, holding everybody up right, and the front line is at the top of the triangle. So, if you're interested in this concept of servant leadership, it's beautiful. 

Robert Greenleaf, I think, was the person that wrote the original book. I could be wrong there, but that's the book that I think learned servant leadership from. I think Stephen Covey wrote an intro to an updated version of that. So, if you're interested, check that out. But there's like just Google servant leadership and there's all kinds of books written about it. Now I don't know if you learned it from a book, nick, or if you were just like learning the concept in general, but you know it was. 

Nick

It wasn't until probably 2015. Much, much later, 20 years later, that someone said oh, you seem to really enjoy the philosophy of servant leadership. I said oh, neat, what's that? They gave me a book and as I'm reading through it, I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. So, I think I was taught it and incorporated it before I knew the term. 

Marie

Right, right, yeah, as so many wonderful things are, they're just like confirming right and are in articulating something that you know to be true in your heart. And then again, the I just want to reiterate this thing that I just wish I could just download into all of us, which is when you have a servant leadership or contribution goal that's motivating your future action or your forward action, you're taking the next step. Always it really hot wires your brain to get over ego to get over. Do they like me? Will they like me? Am I good enough? Is this good enough? Because it doesn't. It's not about us, it's about how we can help. I love that. Is there anything else that you want us all to know before we kind of wrap up? 

Nick

Yeah, something that I don't mind sharing in case it resonates with some of your listeners out. There is also that I'm on the autism spectrum. I think that contributed to my imposter syndrome. I had a very difficult time in early life understanding what humans were at all about. Computers made much more sense, which allowed me to get into my field of study. 

But I feel like throughout a lot of this journey, I'm fortunate to have found the ways to recognize and tap into my neurodivergent superpowers. In my case, focus and compartmentalization are two really key skills while also trying to increasingly train myself how humans work and how to relate to them, which has been so critical to getting where I am in my day job, where I lead a large group of people, and I feel like I've come at that in a different way, where I see people that are just so natural at relating to people, but then I also think it's so subconscious and automatic that they don't necessarily process it as consciously. I think I've come at it a little bit different way, where I've learned those lessons very explicitly, and so I've got a part of my brain spinning that's saying oh wait, look at her eyebrows. Oh, just touching her face, okay, that might mean this and I'm having to try to keep up with it and analyze it, but then that, I think, gives unique insights because of the way that I process those interactions. 

Marie

Amazing. I love, in this whole sort of like narrative that you've given us and the gift of your story and your experiences, how often the theme has popped up where something that was a struggle for you at some point then ends up through perseverance and wrapping your heart and mind around it and accepting it and take, like, just loving this part of you or this challenge, or the imposter syndrome or the, the experience of having the accident and losing your index finger, or, uh, the experience of having to learn a different language through having, um, an autism diagnosis, just all of these things becoming superpowers for you, where you're like on stages and, yes, public speaking to a whole bunch of humans, that you've learned to understand what physical cues mean Right, and leading big teams and designing you know. Just amazing. I'm just so grateful, so grateful that you came on the show, nick. Oh, just make my dreams real, sharing this story and just sharing. Thank you so much, oh thank you so much, Marie. 

Nick

This has been really, really fun. 

Marie

Yep, I have got one more question for you. We always love to end with, what's an idea that you're working on making real right now? 

Nick

Yeah, I've, I've always got lots and I, I, I jump between them again depending on what my brain wants to do. So, I have less time these days to work on my finger with how busy I am in the day job. But I've been working on finalizing version five, which improves some of the linkages, makes it a little easier for someone else to print and make, and also just making it look cooler because I want it to look cool, and also just making it look cooler because I want it to look cool. And I'm also starting to get back into the music I mentioned. 

I never thought that I'd play guitar again. I lost one of my fretting fingers. How am I going to make that work? I can't play an F chord anymore, but after a lot of effort I found ways to make that work and it impresses me to no end how adaptable the human body can be. And it's all relative. I'm not a great guitar player, but I think I'm better than I was 10 years ago before I lost a finger. So, putting more energy into that and then also building a custom guitar that's got built-in effects and weird electronic gadgets, because that just seems fun. 

And then the last thing I've been doing a little bit more of at least what I would call art. It took me a while to get over the hump, to think of myself as a potential artist. I always had this feeling that an artist is someone who is bestowed with a title and you know now they are the ones that can make the art and, like you, have to pass the bar or something like that. But I think you know, in a large part, encountering you and your family, who are all amazing artists, sometimes as a primary profession or sometimes because it's just what you love to do in downtime that's given me a lot of inspiration and helped me realize that anyone can be an artist at any point in their life if they have something to create. So, I've got some fun art, media, media tech, kind of interactive art things that I'm working on that I hope to introduce in the future. 

Marie

Oh, that's so cool. I can't wait to put together a show with you. All right, y'all. If you want to check out Nick's bio, it's in the show notes and, Nick, we'll see if there's any kind of link, we want to put in there for LinkedIn or anything else that you'd love. If people want to connect with you, is that okay for them? Absolutely Okay, great. So, we'll put those in the show notes and just thank you from the bottom of my heart for this time with you. You're such a special person and I'm so glad more people got to hear about who you are in the world. 

Nick

Thank you so much, Marie. I am a steadfast listener of your show. I absolutely love it and it is such an honor. 

Marie

So, thank you, thank you. All right, that's what we've got for you this week and I will see you next week.  

Thanks for hanging out with me, friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.