One Note Song

Have you been following me in some for or another for several months? Have you learned by now that I’m a bit of a rapid thinker, switcher, changer, prototyper?

People hate this in life, don’t they?

I think people want you to be known for one thing and call it good. If I say Sting, you think Police. You don’t think clothing lines, nonprofit organizations, etc. At least not right away. Ditto if I mention Lance Armstrong, Sean Connery, Al Gore (oh wait- he’s on his second note).

Where does that leave someone with far too many thoughts, ideas, actionable material for a single life? Heidi Miller, who has a wonderful practice doing professional trade shows for people, mentions me in episode 56 of Diary of a Shameless Self Promoter. She mentions that I’ve got lots of ideas, and that I like to execute on them right away. She’s right.

But is that “good?”

When I decided to do a podcast, I was mental. Podcasts are niche conversation tools. They don’t really work well in the “general ideas” arena. So, what did I start with? My first podcast was Fat Guy Gets Fit. I think fitness and nutrition and self-esteem are important, and they’re great. But would I want to talk about that forever and ever? No, not really.

I launched the Life Hack Podcast for Lifehack.org, and that’s been fun. I get to stretch out and do lots of things there, though that’s all about organization and productivity, etc.

Grasshopper New Media is a network of audio and video podcasts because I am a network of ideas. I’m a big fan of the ENTIRE magazine rack, not just a single magazine.

But boy, that’s hard to package, isn’t it? What does Richard Branson say he does? Is he Virgin Mobile, Virgin Atlantic airlines, Virgin records? He’s the brand. He’s the weird dude on top that fitfarts around all over the place.

Grasshopper= that bald kid on Kung Fu.
Grasshopper= the opposite of an ant (corporate person)
Grasshopper= green/new/fresh
Grasshopper= hops all over the place

It’s a good brand for me. I think. But it’s a tricky brand. People don’t like hoppers. They don’t like bugs. They want things that look like them, act like them, smell like them. “You don’t SMELL like the Queen,” Hopper says to the Princess in “A Bug’s Life.”

I think I know how I’ll re-launch Grasshopper Factory. I think it’ll be the catch-all for my crazy ideas, and I think I’ll do it mostly in a podcast format. Audio. Video. Who cares? I’ll eat the dogfood, and give you portable ideas in your head. Though we did a lot of hard work on the layout (thanks a million times over, Roger), I’ll probably reskin it something cleaner, maybe even one column, something white as Apple.

A million times a day, I wish I were a one-note song.