Re-brand.

I hate pushing that sled when I work-out twice a week, or maybe I just love to hate it.

But I noticed a funny thing. On days where I pushed it – about a half an hour after the workout I would have some pretty good ideas. Sometimes about business, sometimes about life, sometimes about silly blog posts that I may or may not write in the future.

So I re-branded it.

It wasn’t the pushing sled, it was the “idea sled.” Want some good ideas for the rest of the day? Go push the sled.

I did this once recently with a cafe around the corner from the office. It was some amazing Trinidad-ian food, basically a chicken burrito that tasted like it was made with Jamaican seasoning and oils from heaven.  I would go there often, especially when I was hungover, and have business meetings there too where I would introduce other people to the deliciousness. And then I noticed a funny thing as well. My weight really noticed when I went to the Trinidad Cafe.

So I renamed it … it was now to be know as the “failure cafe.”

Not because it was bad, but because it was too damn good. And every time I went in there, I failed on my weight goals for the week.

And I never wen’t in the failure cafe ever again.

I am fascinated in business how companies with a cult like following can be renamed and re-branded and gain wide appeal. Especially in situations where the name just stunk. Fireball whiskey I think is one of the best examples I have heard of lately, since it used to be a small niche’ whiskey called Dr. Mcgulicutty’s Magic Elixir or something like that – I have heard the story told differently many times. But someone came along and re-named it and boom… there it wen’t.

I think the same could be said for powerful ideas. Sometime great idea just have lousy names. The “Marshmellow Test” seems to have reached critical mass lately. But only because 20 to 30 years later someone renamed it to the marshmellow test instead of its previous long sounding scientific name which I will have to go look up. History is rife with such examples.

But I am more interested in renaming the the bad things. The bad things I need to do more of … like pushing that sled. Or the bad things I need to stop doing all-together … like eating lunch at the failure cafe.  Or eating “smart-food” popcorn, which does not make me smarter and just makes me fatter because the cheese popcorn they make is delicious.  Maybe I should call it Not-So-Smart food ….

Surely some brilliant scientist can test this out. Find a sports team or a workout class where people still run “suicides” as sprints. Get two groups and have one run “suicides” and have the second run “dream achievers” or “Happiness enhancers” or “good sprints.” Then publish the results and become even more popular than the folks that did the Milgram Experiment or the Marshmellow test. Also please send me a check for the idea, assuming it hasn’t been done already.

In the mean time I will keep pushing my “idea sled” and I will let you know what I come up with next …

SDM