Build Momentum - Thought Leadership for Education, Global Workforce Edition

Are you a visionary thinker? | Jeremy Nulik

August 11, 2021 Season 1 Episode 39
Build Momentum - Thought Leadership for Education, Global Workforce Edition
Are you a visionary thinker? | Jeremy Nulik
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of Build Momentum, We are joined by Jeremy Nulik. Jeremy is a futurist at Big Wide Sky from St. Louis Missouri. 

In 2002, Jeremy completed his Bachelor or Arts degree majoring in English Literature at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Come 2018, Jeremy successfully completed  a compreensive certification course in Strategic Foresight at University of Houston in Houston, Texas.

Some Questions I Ask:

  • What is a Futurist? (1:30)
  • Are we all really on the same page with our future? (6:30)
  • How did you become a Futurist? (7:50)
  • Is there an actual program to be a futurist? (11:06)
  • How do you work with leaders to define and put meaning behind innovation? (13:33)
  • You want people to live in that transformational face when you're running through this with them? Or do you want them to go through all of these, all of them? (19:00)
  • How can we encourage our listeners and our leaders to really become more of a visionary thinker? And to try to get a couple paces ahead of me? Do you have any advice for us and us? (25:41)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • What a futurist is.  (1:38)
  • What is Strategic Foresight (2:42)
  • What a futurist does (3:56)
  • How and Where you can be a certified futurist (11:16)
  • Putting meaning behind innovation thru Foresight (13:40)
  • Future Archetypes framework (15:12)
  • Being a visionary thinker (25:54)

Quotes:

“Like it or not, those images, if you're not conscious of them, you still have and do have an impact on how you make decisions”

“The only thing you would need is curiosity.”

“You know, and so the thing that's beautiful about that kind of mental exercise, you know, going through growth, collapse, discipline, transformation, even something that simple, and it would only take you like 20 minutes, the thing that's beautiful about it is for that 20 minutes, you are emancipated from having to like be right about the future, you don't have to predict it. You don't have to even place any bets on it for a while. You just get to live in that future, and figure out how you would feel, who you would be and how you'd respond.”

“The images, like to your point that you cultivate that you go about building, have an impact on what it is you're actually going to decide to do.”

“We just use the future as the safe canvas on which you can sort of play out what it is your real intentions are.”


Connect with Jeremy Nulik:
Big Wide Sky Website
Jeremy Nulik’s LinkedIn


Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

Sarah Williamson  0:05  
Hello and welcome to build momentum where we make PR easy for education organizations. This show was created to help edtech startups, research institutes and schools learn how to develop simple, replicable PR strategies and how to execute on those strategies. I'm your host, Sarah Williamson. And I've spent the past 15 years working in PR, where I've been able to understand what works and what doesn't when it comes to making an impact. I will share my tips for success and interview others who have done the same to provide you with the framework that you can use within your own organization. Be sure to grab my free guide how to create a killer case study even if you don't have data at casestudy.swpr-group.com. That's casestudy.swpr-group.com And on today's episode, we have Jeremy newlook. With us, Jeremy is a futurist, Big Wide Sky from St. Louis, Missouri. Jeremy, it's so fun to have you on the show with us today. 

Jeremy Nulik  1:02  
Thank you for having me, Sarah, I'm honored to be on it. I took a deep dive and listen to a lot of your episodes. And it made me yet more honored to be on the show this really brilliant people and you do such a good job at getting really good insight, you know, in all the connective tissue between mindset and marketing and PR. It's really good stuff. Thank you. 

Sarah Williamson  1:24  
That is I really appreciate that especially coming from you. So thanks. 

Jeremy Nulik  1:28  
Sure, sure. 

Sarah Williamson  1:30  
 Okay, so I want to start off with the big question. We all want to know, what is the futurist? We'll help us understand what that means.

Jeremy Nulik  1:38  
Yeah, I completely understand that question. Especially like coming from the background I do. I grew up in a small town America, and a lot of my extended family in particular with folks who have, you know, hogs and cattle and other things. And you tell them like I'm working with futures now. And I think they have like a mental image of, you know, either someone who just like makes models out of clay or,  you know, spends their day just pontificating upon whatever new technology is coming along, whatever.   Yeah, I do. I do. I mean, not for the show. 

Sarah Williamson  2:09  
No, you sit in the backyard. 

Jeremy Nulik  2:11  
Exactly. I have to wear the proper accoutrement, I have to get on my smoking jacket and make sure  we really do it. Right. Yeah, you know, so what is a futurist? I think that unpack some of that is necessary to talk about, you know, like, where does that title come from? What kinds of people are attracted to this kind of work? The work that futurists do, you know, at least the ones that I hold in high regard, when people call themselves that, It's actually it's based on the work of academia of something called strategic foresight, and all this strategic foresight is it's a discipline to deal in a systematic way with how do we interpret and digest change? And how do we understand it in such a way that we can move toward the kinds of futures that we want, and away from the ones that maybe we want to avoid? So, to back up even more, I suppose it's worthwhile to say that nearly every human being at least the one studied in the Western world, we have this kind of cognitive predisposition, that the future is a single point out toward which we're headed. So we have this linear continuation of the present moment towards something, at least it's kind of like our default setting. You know, an FMRI scans even back this up, right, when people are asked to think about the future, they're often calling upon their images of the past. And they're just projecting a linear sort of image out into the future. And so the reason that that's important to point out is, it's often then married to what I would consider to be one of the bigger misconceptions around what a futurist is, which is, oh, you're going to tell me what that point is like, this is a way to predict the future. It's like, you know, Rasputin, or something, right, you're going to tell me where we're going. And oddly, and the work that we do, you know, as futurists, as a community of futurists, is really on cultivating what are the images of the future that live inside of the minds of people who are working to deal with any level of change, or crisis, or even just in their personal lives? You know, what are those images? What are their contours? What do they look like? And what influence are they having on present day decision, because like it or not, those images, if you're not conscious of them, you still have and do have an impact on how you make decisions. You know, if you've ever been a part of any group where you've had to make a big strategic decision, you've seen this show up, it's just not always overtly called out as such, right. So we want to do our new strategic plan, you know, so we're going to take what we did last year, move some things up by 5%, maybe reprioritize, shuffle some things around, and everybody around the table seems to agree. Everybody around the table is using very similar language, and then you get in the middle of the year, and a whole bunch of passive aggressive stuff is going on, where people aren't really on board with this. They're not marching to the same beat seems like I thought we agreed we talked about this was the prayer, what is the deal? You know, they can't seem to get on board. A lot of that might seem like, Oh, it's just a personality issue, when in fact, what we found in the work we've done around foresight is often it's just it's competing images of the future, people have images of a kind of future in their minds. They're different. They're not always easy to access. They're not always easily articulated. But even if you think about, you know, where it is, you'd like the future of education to be, for instance, you know, and I know a lot of the listeners to your show care very deeply about that, you know, if you project that 10 years, you start creating images in your mind almost immediately, different colors, contours, shapes, influencers, people who are impacted the most deeply by those futures. So you carry them around with you. And the impact is understood on your present day decisions, long answer, but essentially, a futurist, I'm hoping it really just increases the aperture that you use, when you go to make a strategic decision. So let us consider what could be, let's consider an entire possibility space, before we decide what the and let's get really honest about the kind of future we want to create.

Sarah Williamson  6:18  
Oh, that's fantastic. I love the idea of actually doing that instead of just regurgitating the same plan year after year, because we all get into that habit. And, yeah, I mean, are we all really on the same page with our future? 

Jeremy Nulik  6:33  
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think so many of us, especially if you are, you know, have any form of talent and accomplishment, you have just so many tasks, you have so many short term, urgent and important sort of things to which to attend that getting deeply immersed in what could be, or, you know, thinking about possibility space, will feel sometimes like navel gazing, and it might feel kind of like, oh, gosh, I just don't have time to do that. So it's no wonder that we would champion like literally shortcuts to this, we could just say that we're still headed and marching in the same direction. And then the manifestations of, you know, the build up of those decisions is the kinds of things I was talking about, you know, that's usually what it is you will have misalignment. You know, you'll have, like, we keep we feel like we're stuck, we're spinning our wheels, we keep investing in particular kind of program, and we're not getting the results from that program. We'd like, you know, instead, that's usually when people be honest, you know, in the work that we do a big wide sky is usually when they're more open to fringy weirdos coming in and talking to them about the future, because you're sort of forced into it, you know, by like we have, we must think differently about what it is we're doing. 

Sarah Williamson  7:43  
Yeah, that makes sense. That means, okay, so how do you become a fringy-weirdo? What set you on this path? Jeremy, tell me about how you became a futurist, I want to know.

Jeremy Nulik  7:54  
 Sure. I like to describe myself as a recovered communications person. So it came from the world of public relations and journalism, storytelling, I'm still passionate about it, I still do it. So maybe I'm not fully recovered, I should say, I'm in recovery. But like, what I did, what that opened me to, which I didn't necessarily intend, was actually just audience with so many visionary fringy weirdos, but they were in the form of, you know, a chef that was doing something just amazing, with food or thinking completely differently in an innovative way. And how did that happen? I had the fortune to meet Tony Shea from Zappos did a feature on him, you know, before he passed away, and he was just incredible, you know, just the way he could boil down. And then also, it seemed like he was thinking like two or three mountains ahead of everyone else, you know, and I just became extremely curious about what makes these people like that, like, why is it that some people can achieve that level? And it didn't seem like it had any bearing like, there wasn't a I couldn't find a variable, like, Oh, you studied at this school, or you had, you know, the following, you know, sort of set of pedigrees or experiences. This was across the board all over the place. There. It seemed like there was a nature of the type of people to which I was drawn when I would work on features or even when I was trying to find clients as a public relations professional. I wanted to find weirdos, I wanted to find people who just thought extremely differently about the world and how did they get there. So it was actually when I was featuring one of those weirdos one day, and he actually turned me on. He's a complete autodidact. And by the way, spoiler alert, he's the founder of big wide sky. I was actually doing a feature on Elliott Frick, and he turned me on to this pile of textbooks of people, you know, all the way back from the RAND Corporation back in the 50s when we were fighting the Cold War and these models they created for how to think differently about the future. Because he said I think you would really dig this you know the way that you want to tell stories and Immerse people in a completely different world has ties to what the kinds, the nature of the experiences that these people were trying to create that they worked to create that they cultivated. And I think you would really dig, you know, what is the application of immersive storytelling, immersive experience, as it relates to foresight as it relates to the analysis of things that could be a potential trend? Well, what if we just ran through the scenario of the thing actually happened and move ourselves 10 years into the future? and assume it did? What kind of world is that? And how can you immerse people in that have the means of complexity in that world. And so that's how it happened. It was really that I was doing a feature on someone who just took the time to save my curiosity about why people think the way they do and it led me down this rabbit hole, I studied futures with Andy Hines at the University of Houston as a result of just become, you know, immersed now in the world of imagination and foresight as a tool for helping people to interpret and make sense of and make decisions in the midst of change. 

Sarah Williamson  11:06  
I love that. That's pretty fascinating, because you don't need a lot of futurists. So did you say there's an actual program? 

Jeremy Nulik  11:12  
There's multiple Yeah.

Sarah Williamson  11:13  
 Okay. So I'm not savvy on this. Tell me about it.

Jeremy Nulik  11:16  
Yeah, it's relatively new in the academia space. But it's an actually what's interesting is different universities put foresight in different programs. Like sometimes it's like, they don't know where to put it, right. It's like, Is this an engineering thing? Is this design? Is this business analysis? Is this what is this? Yeah. And so I think, I don't even know, to be honest, I went there, and I never, but University of Houston, I think it's in their College of Technology, but not for any. We didn't really talk about technology. And that's another I think, misunderstanding. I swear to God, I'll answer your question. But you know, I think there's a misapprehension that thinking like a futurist means that you're only fascinated with new tech. And what's been shown in any form of analysis is on top of, you know, new technology, and certainly has an ability to impact mental models, the way people interpret the world, etc, has a deep impact on that. But what really has an impact are actually attitudes, beliefs, social systems, lack of social systems, you know, think about things like, you know, a pandemic. So those kinds of things generally have a deep impact on the way people behave. But there's the University of Hawaii probably has the most sort of storied academic set of, you know, courses you can take to become a futurist. But also, there's multiple programs now, just showing up all the time, there's another group called kedge. It's actually a private business, like they have a certification program. And you can take a number of courses, the Institute for the future, if you just go to the Institute for the future iftf.org, you can learn everything you need to know about foresight. Additionally, iftf, has sponsored a Coursera class that you can take. It's amazing. It's hosted, facilitated by Jane McGonnagal, who's a game designer and futurist and is an incredible teacher, you know, so that all of it's out there. And yeah, the tools are completely accessible. You know, the only thing you would need is curiosity. Otherwise, you don't need any sort of pedigree, like I said, 

Sarah Williamson  13:17  
Yeah. Okay, so you touched on technology. I want to talk about that for a minute. So in our space, we talked a lot about edtech. A lot. I mean, that's really a lot of our clients are a tech clients. So they talk about innovation. And I know you question the way to that word. So I want to get into that. How do you work with leaders to define and put meaning behind innovation? Because it can become empty after a while you continue to hear it over and over?

Jeremy Nulik  13:40  
Sure I mean, and I don't everybody has the best intention. I mean, knowing I always assume anyway, that that sort of thing. But you know, when I think innovation, as a term, as a concept has risen to the level as the ubiquity, I guess, of the term, where you have, you know, accounting firms saying that they're focused on innovation. I think that's when you're kind of like, Are we really though, and I suppose that if there is a challenge I would throw to listeners is that if you do, you know, position yourself, especially in edtech, as someone or as an organization, or just a group of people who value innovation, you know, foresight, and the sort of frameworks that are offered via foresight gives you an opportunity to do innovation, as opposed to talk innovation. So it gives people an opportunity to make good on that promise of we're going to think in a novel way. So you know, for instance, one of the common frameworks that can be used sometimes just as a more of an intervention, sometimes that futurists will use with a group that just feels stuck is they will use what are called the futures archetypes. They're also referred to as Jim Daters visions of the future. And so after decades of studying the way that people typically will characterize or visualize a future, it turns out that there are about four common ways or sort of arcs that people will use to describe the story when they tell you the story from 10 years, 20 years, 30 years in the future, and you can use those as a way to really think about what the future of your technology or your organization or your community could be. The first archetype is called growth. And essentially, that just assumes that everything that you thought was going to grow, or everything you thought was going to develop continues to develop. So if you are an edtech, startup, all of the things you're responding to in the world right now, all of them turn out to be true. And you just blow it up, right? So 10 years in the future, what does that future look like? If everything was a growth scenario for you? What does it look like? Who's impacted? What kind of organization are you now? What kind of influence do you have in your space? What experience are you providing your students or anybody who would be you know, using your software, your edtech, all of that, right? You'd kind of think about all that, then you go to the next archetype, which is called collapse. And it's relatively self explanatory, this means everything that you assumed would happen, actually is completely reversed. What kind of future Do you find yourself in now, so what kind of, you know, to spend five minutes in that future, and think about what kind of organization you'd these, everything you assumed would grow actually completely reversed. So the users you thought would be attracted, we're not, you know, whatever it would be. The next one is actually a bit tricky. But interestingly, it's the most common one that people use when they think about their future. It's called discipline. And so that's the kind of future in which you try to keep things from going into collapse. So if you assume that maybe some of the collapse, things started to happen over the course of 10 years, and you built in some kind of new system, or some response to it, or some way to keep things from going off the rails, that is a discipline or sometimes called a new equilibrium scenario. So in 10 years from now, what kind of systems or procedures? Or how would you go about keeping things from going into collapse, the final one is a completely transformational division. So the final one is that the basis of reality is completely shifted. So this means it's a completely different paradigm of the future. So, you know, if, especially if you're a startup, or if you're a versioning, you know, technology company, you're likely making some assumptions, you're making some bets on the future. And so let's say that, you know, maybe some of those assumptions you make turn out to be completely wrong. But maybe something else happens that you kind of understand could be, but might not be likely. And you think that maybe, well, what if that were to happen? What kind of future would we be in? You know, and so the thing that's beautiful about that kind of mental exercise, you know, going through growth, collapse, discipline, transformation, even something that simple, and it would only take you like 20 minutes, the thing that's beautiful about it is for that 20 minutes, you are emancipated from having to like be right about the future, you don't have to predict it. You don't have to even place any bets on it for a while. You just get to live in that future, and figure out how you would feel who you would be and how you'd respond. And odd things happen. It's all I can tell you, because what starts coming out when you do it well enough, is suddenly you're like, I could consider futures that maybe I didn't think I wanted. And you know what, I changed my mind. And you know what kind of a miracle that is like, think about like the last time you changed your mind about something, right. And so the kind of things that are possible for you, when you can begin to think in a liminal way, and be like sort of released from your political and circumstantial inscriptions, you no longer have to be right about anything, you can just live into multiple futures, and find out who you would be in those futures. It will reveal more information about what you really value. 

Sarah Williamson  18:53  
Yeah, 

Jeremy Nulik  18:54  
Reveals, you know, more information about what matters to you right now. 

Well, I have a question for you about that.  So You want people to live in that transformational face when you're running through this with them? Or do you want them to go through all of these?

 all of them.

Sarah Williamson  19:09  
This is my I have a beef. Let me tell you what it is 

Jeremy Nulik  19:12  
bring it, bring it 

Sarah Williamson  19:13  
Okay. If you were focusing on the collapse, then you're actually living in that and you're going to manifest whatever that is.  

Jeremy Nulik  19:22  
you make a good point. 

Sarah Williamson  19:24  
Why would you even touch that? I mean, why wouldn't you want to focus in the transformational phase? Because then you're really living in that space where anything is possible. 

Jeremy Nulik  19:30  
Oh, man, you make a really good point. Here's why. And it's backed up by science, you know, part of what you're saying because and this is the work of Fred Pollack, back in the 70s. He wrote a book called The image of the future, amazing book, if you believe his family survived the Holocaust, like he's had these amazingly, I mean, just a life story that is truly inspiring. But Fred Pollack back in the 70s, wrote a book called The image of the future, and he came to the conclusion and I'll get this I'll get the verbatim quote wrong, but it's essentially something like the cultivated images of the future of a group of people open and close the blast furnace of that culture. So what he meant was, you know, like the images, like to your point that you cultivate that you go about building, they have an impact on what it is you're actually going to decide to do. And so you do make a good point where it's like, if you're just mired in collapse, well, you will essentially like use your retirement, you will manifest collapse, right? totally valid. Understood. And so it's interesting to sorry, another sidebar is, did this work with a group of chief information security officers, I did this very exercise, when you asked a group of people who are security officers like, what can go wrong, like in an infosec, right, they're like, uh, what could go wrong? Oh, I'm glad you asked, right, like, oh, everything can go wrong. Here's everything, right. And that's part of why they exist, you know. But here's what's interesting. And what does typically happen as well, I vow, I think completely valid, the concern, there are two things that I think are a bar against manifesting negativity. The first is you're going to acknowledge the fact overtly that you are for a moment, just putting on the collapse scenario, and that you're going to, you're going to take everything you want, the positivity you want to create, and everything you hope to do in the future, and put it here just for a moment. And we're going to play in that scenario, because it could happen, right? But things could happen. So we might as well just sort of increase our resilience in the present day to the fact that that could be a and b, what's really interesting is that even when people do a collapse scenario, particularly if they have a mindset, that they're entrepreneurial, they will find a way to still have some kind of relevant or interesting future, even if everything they thought was going to go well doesn't. Right. And so it really is a there's a friend of mine named Jake dunnigan, who's also a futurist he studies with Jane McGonnagal, who I've referenced, he has this really pithy saying that he says that you'd rather be surprised in a simulation than blindsided by reality,

rather than a sort of like, oh, wow, that's not an outcome that we really thought of, maybe we should think about that. I'd rather that happen than when it hits you in reality, think about this pandemic, the Future Shock that occurred with people, when they had to interpret all the change that was coming at them was they felt blindsided, like we didn't see this coming at all right? I mean, for decades, a bunch of fringy, weirdo futurists have been running pandemic scenarios. Now, I mean, the validity of them, whatever, but it just hadn't made its way into our communications culture, it hadn't become a thing that we thought would be valuable to really embrace fully. And maybe for some of the reasons you're saying, which again, feel completely valid. But for a moment, if you just consider even futures you don't like, it's amazing what you can learn about yourself. It's amazing what you can learn about the people you work with. And we did this work, you know, with the group that was focused on economic development. And we actually created a scenario for them in which they got everything they wanted, like, we gave them essentially a growth scenario. So it was a different frame. This was just a different stage in the process. When it comes to you know, the work we do with foresight. So this wasn't necessarily like an archetype framework exercise, we gave them everything they wanted, we actually said that Apple was relocating to like the opening an h2 in their city, here's the story of where it opens. Here's who's working there, we actually create immersive experiences. So here's what it looks like on the campus. Here's where it's located. Here is a newsreel from the future of that particular scenario. So immerse yourself in that future. Now, tell me stories about what happens after that. Almost all their stories were collapse scenario. 

Sarah Williamson  23:45  
Really? 

Jeremy Nulik  23:46  
That's right. So what does that tell you? Like? Right, exactly. So you can begin to start, what you can do is something like that, as you can see, what what are the threads? Like? Where are things moving? What are we identifying that maybe we aren't seeing? Because everybody ostensibly who came into that room before we did this scenario was like, if h2 for Apple came here, that would be a win for everyone. So where's it going  wrong? Right? What's the thread? What are we missing? When we're sitting down in those strategic planning sessions and making assumptions about what we want? What do we really want? It's a present day conversation. We just use the future as the safe canvas on which you can sort of play out what it is your real intentions are. 

Sarah Williamson  24:24  
Okay That's pretty cool. Alright. You sold me if that makes sense. I'll have less of it.

Jeremy Nulik  24:31  
Okay, no, no, I like that. I mean, because what you said is totally true. Like, you've worked with people, right? I mean, if every day you just cultivate, it's probably you know, things are probably aren't gonna go well, gosh. Right. Like, yeah, I mean our biases and assumptionsare amazingly powerful. And if anything, what I also like about foresight is, again, it's just sort of an emancipation. You don't have to completely give them up. You can take all of those assumptions you have all those biases, the things you know are important about what you want to do. You don't have to lose them to do foresight work, you can still keep them, you just put them aside for a little while and for a minute you try on different futures. And it's amazing what you can learn about yourself.

Sarah Williamson  25:15  
I think that sounds like we should all do it as people, as companies as leaders, right? Think about the benefits if we would all just take the time to think about right.

Jeremy Nulik  25:26  
I'm obviously sold on the one who's, you know, touting it, but yeah, Agreed. Agreed. Absolutely. Yes. 

Sarah Williamson  25:33  
Okay, so for our particular audience, I just want to ask you one final question about when you talk to the beginning, you talked about seeing visionaries. How can we encourage our listeners and our leaders to really become more of a visionary thinker? And to try to get a couple paces ahead of me? Do you have any advice for us and us? 

Jeremy Nulik  25:54  
Yeah, I mean, I think it would just start with the fact that there isn't some class, it turns out, and this is backed up by science as well, of people who are these benighted visionary, we have images in our mind, and we've send to celebrate our culture, a bunch of people, right, like, they go up to the mountain, and they have their vision, and then they come back. But it turns out, what they've really done is they've cultivated the kind of thinking, you know, that goes into foresight, they've cultivated a sense that the future First of all, is as a space of possibility. It isn't, it's futures, plural, it's not fixed. And if it's not fixed, then that means I have agency, I can make choices. And the choices I make can have an impact on on the kinds of futures I want to find myself in, you know, as simple if you want like a daily thing you wake up with and do to start cultivating a mindset of like a visionary type of mindset. There are a good number of them, of course, and some of them borrow from psychology and, and foresight and combinations of them. And friends of mine who are therapists, I know use tools that are similar to this. But if you want to cultivate a sense that have that kind of mindset, like a futurist, what you can do is, you know, in the morning, when you when you wake up or even during the day, like actually, like you and I right now, okay, Sarah, think about, think about a place that you really love. Don't think too hard. Just you've probably got one immediately. Think about someone that matters a great deal to you. And now I want you to construct a memory for yourself in the past, not the future, I want you to construct a memory of a time that you went to that place with that person that you love that you love, or you care about very, very much, five minutes of a memory, something like that. Right? So what's the scenario you just created in your head about a memory from the past? How long ago? Was it that you went to that place?

Sarah Williamson  27:47  
Six years ago. 

Jeremy Nulik  27:49  
Where did you go? 

Sarah Williamson  27:49  
Sun Valley is one of my favorite places. Ketchum, 

Jeremy Nulik  27:53  
who did you go with? 

Sarah Williamson  27:54  
You know my husband and my kids 

Jeremy Nulik 27:56
What did you guys do when you were there? 

Sarah Williamson  27:58
Well, we rode our bikes into town and back to town and went to dinner. And it's just I love this place. It's magical to me. We just enjoy motorbikes around enjoy the beautiful scenery. Spectacular 

Jeremy Nulik  28:11 
Did actually happen precisely six years ago.

Sarah Williamson  28:19  
Okay. But the truth is, I wanted to have every year, so and 

Jeremy Nulik  28:23  
It's a place, you return to  

Sarah Williamson  28:24  
Yeah. And I do go back there. But we have a bed for a couple of years. And I want to go

Jeremy Nulik  28:27  
A place, you return to in here, please you return to in your mind, that image you carry with yourself often. Yeah. And sometimes when you're having interactions with your children, you will sometimes remember that place, you'll remember the time you had there some memories you shared, your honor a song that was on the radio, or something like this will happen, right? So the idea with this is to cultivate a sense that you can simulate a new reality, that at any point that is possible for you. And sometimes what we'll use when we do this with folks who are new to thinking like futurists are new to the idea of cultivating possibility is you can use the past if you need to, it's equally uncertain, in some ways. So you can basically cultivate, you know, in like Total Recall style, just make a memory for yourself and go to that place and think about who you interacted with and what you did. And you can create all these new memories for yourself. And what you'll be doing in that moment is simulating a completely separate alternative reality. important question for you is, what about that is the kind of memory reliving whatever that is, what you're trying to cultivate? What about those images or the things that are important to you? It's essentially the same kind of mindset that you would use to let's say, perform analysis on a set of data and create signals of the future and then create a 10 year horizon with this new technology, whatever. What you're doing when you do that is you are cultivating an image of the future. You're cultivating an alternate reality, those kinds of games, you can play with your mind. Again, they don't require Any pedigree, everyone can do this. This is not the something that only a benighted class of people do. This is human beings have the ability to shape images beyond and detached from your circumstances. And the more that you can do that, the more you can do innovation, the more you can do visionary, as opposed to talk innovation. Talk visionary. Yeah. And you can lead other people to do the same.

Sarah Williamson  30:24  
I really firmly believe that whatever you want, if you already put yourself in that place, if you already have it, and you've already feel smell, taste, it's you're living that reality. There's no doubt you will achieve it. Because it's already happening.

Jeremy Nulik  30:41  
Yeah, it's happening to you. Exactly. And yeah, and so the only wrinkle that's added when you do more formalized foresight is as opposed to maybe the things you want to cultivate for a moment you start thinking about, what are the things maybe I wouldn't like, let's really confront and build some resilience for ourselves around those kinds of scenarios. 

Sarah Williamson  31:01  
You really want me to think about the bad stuff. Okay, Jeremy, 

Jeremy Nulik  31:08  
You can go back to Ketchum. You can go you can go back to Idaho. It's okay. 

Sarah Williamson  31:13  
Okay, now, love this. This is so fun. I bet we could talk for a long time.

Jeremy Nulik  31:18  
Yeah, this is really fun. I love your show, oh, this is really important work you're doing I you know, if any space, you know, just really needs an injection of some new mindset. But it's also just ripe for it. Because so many people want to make a difference. So many new avenues were created as a result of the, you know, the crises that we faced together through a global pandemic, and are still in the midst of So, so many opportunities. I'm really glad you're doing this. Thank you. 

Sarah Williamson  31:47  
Thank you. I appreciate it. And how can people find out about you and trying to work with you? Because I bet you can reach out?

Jeremy Nulik  31:53  
Oh, yeah, you can go to bigwidesky.com, B-I-G W-I-D-E , sky. Some people refer to it as the bigwidesky. But in fact, it is three words, it's big, wide sky. You know, I'm also on LinkedIn, easy to find the only Jeremy Nulik, N-U-L-I-K that you will find at least according to ancestry.com. So I'm relatively easy to locate on there. And so, you know, those are probably the two easiest places to find me.

Sarah Williamson  32:21  
Okay, awesome. Well, thank you. I definitely want to have you back soon. So let's go

Jeremy Nulik  32:26  
I will come back.We could just do foresight, you know, mental work together, this will be totally read. Thank you. 

Sarah Williamson  32:32  
Okay, thanks, Jeremy. Yes, and build momentum listeners. Don't forget to grab my free guide to creating a killer case study even if you don't have data. Again, that's available at casestudy.swpr-group.com casestudy.swpr-group.com. Thanks so much for tuning in today. And if you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and write us a review on iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you choose to listen. We will be back with another episode of build momentum next week. Thanks so much and have a fantastic day.