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I’m 1583 miles away from Madison Avenue in New York City, but I’m only 9 minutes from Madison Avenue in Hurst, Texas. If I were closer to NYC I’d have handled up on this rebranding long ago. But that’s not how I roll.
I’m a street fighter and hustler. Sometimes more the former than the later. So this rebranding has taken longer.
There’s no excuse really. It’s not like I had some major heavy lifting to rebrand. Bula Network, LLC has never really had much of a brand. It’s been more of a word game I suppose…all based on falling in love with a Fiji term that entered my life through who-knows-where many years ago. One thing led to another and bam, I needed a company name so why not? I’m keeping the company, but changing the brand.
Higher Human Performance
Sit down in front of me, throw me your business challenge and I promise you it won’t take me 10 minutes to come up with some insightful ideas. More than a few people have told me, “You’re a good strategic thinker.” It’s a gift. 😀
Except when I need to help myself. I can wrestle with the seemingly smallest challenge in my own business and feel like I’m trying to bench press three times my body weight. Just impossible to lift.
Such was the case when I challenged myself to rebrand the podcast. I asked all the right questions. Or thought so.
But no answers came back. It was just the sound of crickets. (I bet you don’t have a single YouTube video with over 144K views)
I wanted the new name to more properly tell people what the podcast was about. That presented me with my first challenge. I had to actually narrow down to a focus and have a subject. What a novel idea for a podcast.
Listen, I have freely admitted that I didn’t start this podcast with you in mind. Shoot, I didn’t have myself in mind. Well, not directly. I only had two people in mind back years ago when I started all this (no, this podcast wasn’t the first online audio I did; that was back in 1999 when it was really hard to do). My son. And my daughter. Nobody else was on my radar. Because it never dawned on me that anybody else would ever discover what I was up to.
Truthfully, I didn’t think my kids would even figure it out until I was dead. That was then. This is now. And I’m still alive. Barely.
To this day I couldn’t tell you if either of my kids has ever listened to a single episode of anything I’ve recorded. And I’m cool with that because I know one day they will. Which was precisely the plan all along. To lay down some audio tracks of stuff – that’s right, STUFF – to pass onto my kids. And now that they’re here, maybe my grandkids. My son and daughter weren’t even married when I started all this years ago.
Over time things have changed mightily. Along the way I made a major career change. My professional identity – wait a minute, I went through a period without much of an identity – was a meandering mess. I’d head in one direction, then get bored and change direction a bit. But it was all okay with me because again, I was hitting record basically with 2 people in mind.
The podcast grew one listener at a time. At a snail’s pace. But that was okay ’cause I never expected ANYBODY to listen. Not during my lifetime.
Then I connected with a few key people years ago. Some through Skype calls. Others through email. A few in person. Many of them have been loitering the Interwebs with me for years. Probably better said, I’ve been loitering it with them.
- Bruce Brodeen, a like-minded spirit up in Colorado who runs PopGeekHeaven.com
- Daniel M. Clark who runs QAQN.com (or as he pronounces it, “quacken dot com”)
- Todd Farmer of Affiliate Marketing Plan
- James Dalman of JamesDalman.com
- Jennifer Way of WaySolutions.com (and her upcoming exciting enterprise, CaffeinateYourCareer.com)
- Jeanne Valois of JeanneValois.com (she’s a health nut…and I mean that in a good way; she’ll try to change your life)
- Melanie Kissell of MelanieKissell.com
- Keith Davis who is a renaissance man much like myself…he does web design and other stuff
- Jon Buscall of Jontus Media
- Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion (he was just starting out and has blown up in a big way)
- Cliff Ravenscraft of The Podcast Answerman (I was listening as he was leaving the insurance game)
These are just a few of the people who have been part of the online journey…some of them going back almost 10 years, but almost all of them going back at least 4 years. Knowing that I was making connections with real people was a happy surprise. I said I was a strategic thinker. I never said I was smart. I certainly wasn’t smart enough to figure out the power of online connections…and the impact knowing other people were listening in, if only occasionally, might have.
I’d tell you that it instantly changed everything, but it didn’t. Again, I was slow on the uptake. But over time it began to dawn on me that no matter how many were listening – and I was NEVER working to build a community or an audience – I really had to get focused. Well, maybe I didn’t have to, but I knew I needed to. I knew the podcast deserved that. After all, if the content was going to be good enough for my now grown kids, then why wouldn’t it be good enough for others, too? It could be. I just needed to do some things to improve it.
I confess that this epiphany hit me a few years ago, but I didn’t act on it. I was too busy chasing my tail. I kept delaying it. Putting it off for another day.
I was devoted to the craft of podcasting. I was taking an oddball approach. Jon Buscall even wanted to talk to me about it for his podcast. Keith Davis even asked me to do a video for his public speaking site. Across the pond I was a freak of nature. Here in Texas, I was simply another freak. 😉
My responsibilities to other people was growing. Internally I was feeling it. I needed to morph. I needed to provide more value. I needed to provide a more predictable resource. After all, one of my biggest skill sets is helping businesses deliver more predictable success. It was high time to apply that to an art that was near to my heart, podcasting. This podcast.
Erik K. Johnson is the Podcast Talent Coach. About a month ago he did an episode on 3 Steps To Create Your Avatar. Erik’s objective with that episode – and he done a few others like it before – is to help podcasters figure out who their ideal listener is. Or who they’d like it to be.
As a seasoned business guy with oodles of marketing experience, I’ve spent lots of time figuring out ideal customers and how to attract them. The problem was, I never viewed my podcast like a business. That was probably a mistake. Not because the podcast was a business and I was being neglectful, but because I never viewed the podcast “like” a business! As a result, I never much thought about an ideal listener…because I already knew my ideal or target listener, my adult kids. It’s all reminiscent of the movie, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Except I wasn’t on my way to the Forum, or anywhere else really. I was just doing what I was doing for reasons all my own, until I realized I wasn’t alone. Not entirely.
But that’s not the only reason. In fact, it’s not even the real reason. Sorry. I wanted to get more targeted in the content and in trying to connect with more people.
My career has involved pretty much every aspect of business building. It started in sales, but quickly migrated to management. Marketing, operations, inventory, purchasing, merchandising and anything else you care to name…they were all part of my career. Building an organization was always a central focal point in the past few decades. That meant developing and leading people. Sitting alone one day, writing notes, doodling and thinking I wrote down, “higher human performance.”
Higher human performance.
That’s precisely where my focus has been for years. Because business involves people serving people. Because our businesses hinge on higher human performance. But it’s not about having super humans working for us. It’s not about us being super human. It’s about ordinary people consistently doing extraordinary things. Sure, it’s about systems, processes and workflows. But it’s also about skills, habits and expectations. It’s all the stuff that business building demands.
So today begins a new chapter. Along with a new name, Higher Human Performance. It’s not about sports. It’s not about running faster, or further. It’s about people. It’s about you, but it’s bigger than that. It’s about US. All of us out here working hard to launch a project. Or working to gain traction for an idea. Or trying to get our endeavor to soar a little bit higher. Or a lot higher.
I need your feedback. Use the contact page or just use your built in microphone on your computer and click that “send voicemail” button to the side.
