How to become a category pirate | Christopher Lochhead (Author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, more)

1. 0:00 – 5:08

   Chris’s background

   1. CLChristopher Lochhead0:00

      ... the point being now is the greatest time in history to be a creator, to be an entrepreneur, to, to be a marketer. I've been a marketer for my entire adult life. It's never been greater than it is right now. And so here's the big thing that I would share. If you're somebody for whom you want to make an exponential difference, you want to innovate, you want to create new value where there wasn't, you want to have a legendary career where you can look back on your career and go, "You know what? I was part of this and that, and I was on this team." Now's the greatest time in history. And what I would say to you is, the future needs you. (instrumental music)

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:35

      Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Christopher Lochhead. Christopher is a 13-time number one best-selling co-author, including books like Play Bigger and Niche Down. He's also a popular podcaster, co-creator of the excellent Substack Category Pirates, and is best known as the godfather of category design. He's also an advisor to over 50 venture-backed start-ups and a former three-time public company CMO. In our conversation, we dig deep into all things category design, including what exactly is category design, why in order to build a legendary business it's so essential to build your own category versus trying to become the best in an existing category, also how to actually go about creating your own category, a ton of examples of companies that did this well and didn't do this well and what we can learn from them, plus a ton of practical frameworks, including something Chris calls the better trap, also why he thinks product-market fit is a very dangerous idea. Chris is such a character, and I had such a blast speaking with Chris. With that, I bring you Christopher Lochhead after a short word from our sponsors. (instrumental music) This episode is brought to you by Mixpanel. Get deep insights into what your users are doing at every stage of the funnel at a fair price that scales as you grow. Mixpanel gives you quick answers about your users from awareness to acquisition through retention. And by capturing website activity, ad data, and multi-touch attribution right in Mixpanel, you can improve every aspect of the full user funnel. Powered by first-party behavioral data instead of third-party cookies, Mixpanel is built to be more powerful and easier to use than Google Analytics. Explore plans for teams of every size and see what Mixpanel can do for you at mixpanel.com/friends/lenny. And while you're at it, they're also hiring, so check it out at mixpanel.com/friends/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Calm, Quora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks, not months. By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and many more, Vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build trust with external stakeholders. Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discounts. Get started today. (instrumental music) Christopher, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

   3. CLChristopher Lochhead3:41

      Lenny, it is my absolute joy, and let me say in case my ADHD brain forgets, I love all things Lenny. You're doing a great job, buddy. I'm honored to be here, and there's so many people in the entrepreneur, startup, marketing world who are scam artists, shysters, pieces of shit, idiotic porn s- hustle porn stars yelling stupidities. There's a lot of idiocy in the world in which you travel and I travel. And you, sir, stand out. You're making a difference. The conversations you're driving, the content you're creating, you're fucking awesome, Lenny, and I'm really stoked to be here with you.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky4:27

      Damn. What an intro to my own podcast. I'm bad at accepting compliments, so I'm just gonna accept that, and, uh, I appreciate that, man.

   5. CLChristopher Lochhead4:34

      No, you need to get it. You are a, you are a beacon in an ocean of crapola. You, you are incredible.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky4:41

      Well, enough about me. I really appreciate it. I was preparing for our conversation, and usually what I try to do when I prepare for conversations is I read everything the person has written, and, uh, it was very challenging with you. You have two podcasts. You have at least six books. There's probably more I missed. You have a newsletter. You tweet a lot. There's probably a lot of other stuff I didn't get to, and so you made my job very difficult preparing for this podcast, but also very worthwhile. So I'm excited to begin.

   7. CLChristopher Lochhead5:07

      I apologize for

2. 5:08 – 11:58

   Why Chris shares his negative criticism on his website

   1. CLChristopher Lochhead5:08

      that. (laughs)

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky5:08

      The other thing I noticed as I was browsing your website, and it was hilarious because you have all these testimonials of your book and podcast, and yet (laughs) a lot of negative reviews like, uh, "Off-putting," or, uh, "Very disappointing," or, uh, "Absolute crap." I'm curious why you chose to do that as your website testimonial wall.

   3. CLChristopher Lochhead5:29

      Well, and I believe, I, and I'd have to check with Steve Osler, the, the founder and publisher of Podcast Magazine, but I believe I'm the only podcaster in history to run a full-page ad in Podcast Magazine with just negative quotes in it. So a couple reasons. Number one, can we all just have a sense of humor about this stuff? Right? So it's, it's, it's my way, and you know, the name of our team, yeah, we're sort of a company but we're more of a band, is Category Pirates. I mean clearly if you're called Category Pirates you're probably trying to have a little bit of fun with this stuff.And so part of it is just- just ha- trying to have a sense of humor with people.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky6:09

      Yeah.

   5. CLChristopher Lochhead6:09

      Uh, the second piece of it is, for a lot of entrepreneurs, marketers, creators, innovators of any kind, we live in this fear that when we launch our thing, whatever our thing is, that we will be criticized by the world and that we'll, we will be made fun of. And if you've ever authored a book or done a podcast or done anything, built a product, a software product, built any kind of a product that, that you feel is part of you... And, and most innovators, creators, software developers, artists, of course entrepreneurs, feel that way, uh, 'cause they put themselves into this stuff. And when somebody criticizes us, you know, many of us are devastated. And, and I have been in the past too. I'm a person just like anybody else. And what I realized is, uh, fuck 'em. Anybody who's trying to do anything exponential, anybody who's trying to break and take new ground, anybody who's trying to radically innovate, anybody who's trying to, uh, design and dominate new categories of the way we live, work, and play gets criticized. Picasso was called stupid. The Beatles were called terrible. Elvis was called terrible. Uh, I just wrote recently, uh, a little bit about hip-hop. I was listening to Rick Rubin on, uh, Bari Weiss's podcast, excellent episode, excellent. She does a great job with him. And he was talking about how ridiculed hip h- hip-hop was in the beginning. And it got banned, and, and it's the number one category of music in America today. Anyway, so, so that's also part of it is to just sort of say, "Hey, look, this is some of the shit people have said about our work and my work, and I'm gonna p- just put it on display." 'Cause it's gonna happen to all of us. And then I guess, Lenny, the third reason is, in the creator world broadly, there's a lot of people who are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back. And look, I understand why we have to tell people about why they should pay attention to us, and so we use our credentials, or our awards, or our downloads, or our booksa- I, I understand that and I do a little bit of that too. However, come on, let's just not take ourselves so seriously.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky8:17

      Amazing. I could definitely use more of that skill of not taking negative feedback, uh, as seriously, and I love the idea of just embracing it (laughs) and showing people what people don't like.

   7. CLChristopher Lochhead8:27

      Why not? I mean, look, you're incredibly successful. And if somebody says something negative about you, okay, great. Fuck 'em. They're not your, they're not your people.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky8:38

      Fuck 'em. There we go.

   9. CLChristopher Lochhead8:40

      I didn't know who you were until Substack, and I saw your logo, the fiery logo, and there was something endearing about your logo. And the other thing th- that's great about you from a radical differentiation kind of marketing perspective is, you call yourself Lenny.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky8:57

       (laughs) Yeah.

   11. CLChristopher Lochhead8:57

       And when I talk about you, I, I, uh, I don't know your fucking last name. I mean, I sort of know it, but I don't really, you know what I mean?

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky9:03

       Yeah, it's hard to pronounce.

   13. CLChristopher Lochhead9:04

       I, I was actually, I was telling (laughs) I was at the gym this morning and I was telling my buddy that we were doing this and I said, "Oh yeah, I'm going on Lenny's podcast." And he says, "Lenny who?" And I said, "Eh, begins with an R. I don't know-"

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky9:13

       (laughs)

   15. CLChristopher Lochhead9:13

       "... everybody just calls him Lenny." And so the fact that you are yourself, you don't play a character, you're not a douchebag, you know, you're just a person being, trying to be successful in the world and help others, right?

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky9:27

       Yeah.

   17. CLChristopher Lochhead9:28

       That's a very powerful thing. And I think one of the things that is insidious about influencers, uh, hustle pornstars, part of the business model is creating the perception of superiority, right? The reason Grant Cardone and Tai Lopez and all these douchebags pose in front of planes and all this garbage, right? Is they want you... The Kardashians are the, the queens of this, right? They want you to look at them and go, "Oh, wow. Don't I wish that I was them?" And so these folks are in the create and monetize envy business. And you're the opposite of that. And I think the legendary educators in the native digital world are the opposite of that. Anybody who's creating separation, anybody who's putting themselves above, anybody for whom there must be, "I must be the leader and you must be the follower," you know, that's the business model of a massive amount of people in the native digital world, right? And, uh, we reject that and, and I know you do.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky10:34

       Absolutely. We've already gone way off track, but I love it. I'll just say one thing and then I will, we'll get back on track. Uh, the reason I called my newsletter Lenny's Newsletter is because that was the default recommendation Substack gave me when I signed up. They're just like, "Call it, call it this." And I'm like, "Okay," because I don't know, I didn't have no plans to actually be doing this long term. And then it just stuck, and then I brainstormed for weeks. I'm like, "I need a real name on this thing." And I just couldn't think of anything that I liked so I'm just like, "All right, l- just roll with it." And then when the podcast launched, I tried so many ways to call it something else so that it would push the whole naming in a different direction, wasn't about me, but I couldn't think of anything better so I'm just rolling with it at this point.

   19. CLChristopher Lochhead11:12

       Well, and the interesting thing is even though the branded, the branding of the shit has your name in it, it's not about you. That's the irony, right? Meghan Markle gets canceled. Why? Because it's about her and it turns out she's infinitely uninteresting. Y- y- uh, I've consumed enough of your content to know that the, the cool thing is yeah, it's called Lenny, but it's actually, you know, you, you are not trying to impress all of us with how awesome you are in front of a fucking plane or a bunch of, you know, scantily clad people or, or I don't know what.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky11:54

       It's true. Well, I'm enjoying this podcast. You're very kind to me.

3. 11:58 – 18:00

   A simple explanation of category design

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky11:58

      Let's talk about the, kind of the meat of what I wanna chat about, which is your bread and butter, category creation. It goes without saying you're a big fan of creating your own category.... versus what most people try to do, which is try to compete in an existing category. So just, again, lay a little foundation, can you just explain what this actually means, this idea of category creation for people that have heard this idea and this term, but don't really know what it means?

   2. CLChristopher Lochhead12:23

      It turns out that in business, most people, and in life for that matter, make a unquestioned, unconsidered, undialogued, unthought of decision that they don't know they made. And the decision they make is, "What I'm going to do is I am going to compete in a market with demand with a better product slash service slash brand, maybe a better business model, maybe a, a, a better set of growth hacking ideas that I learned on the Lenny podcast."

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky13:05

      (laughs)

   4. CLChristopher Lochhead13:06

      "And when the world gets my better, the world will beat a path to my door." And if you go onto Amazon right now, Lenny, there's roughly 100,000, uh, marketing books, and I think... I'd have to double-check, but I think there's about 60,000 or 80,000 business strategy books. And of course, me and my collaborators, we haven't read all of 'em, but l- l- like you and like many of us in business, we've read many of the, kind of the, the tomes, the bibles out there. And there's an interesting thing about virtually all of 'em. That's what they're about. It's about how to compete and win. Well, here's the aha. Nobody legendary ever did that. Not a one. We all know who Bob Marley is. We don't know who the 17th greatest reggae musician or band in the world is. We all know who Pablo Picasso is. We don't know who the fifth greatest cubist artist is. And so, wherever you look in life, whether it's in the business world, people who, who, who drive social change, artists, creators of any kind, the people that we tend to admire the most are the people who broke and took new ground. And the aha here is, the category makes the product. The category makes the brand. The category makes the company. So, I'll give you the, the, the data and then I'll fully answer your question. So here's the data. We did an analysis for our first book where we studied every venture-backed tech company in the US from, uh, 2000 to 2015, and we asked a question that, to the best of our knowledge, was, had never been asked before, and we went to, uh, Stanford and we asked a bunch of professors this question, and they said, "We don't know this. You're gonna have to do it yourselves." So we did, and, uh, incidentally had it peer-reviewed and published in the HBR. And if you've ever gotten data published in the HBR, then you know what it's like to have a journalistic proctology exam. Anyway, here's the net of it. In tech market categories, on average, one company earns two thirds, 76% to be exact, of the total value created as measured by market cap and/or valuation. So not market share, which is important, market cap as measured by the value of all the companies in the category. So you take a category, you add all the companies' value together, and you say, "What percent goes to the leader, the category queen or king, and what percent goes to everybody else?" One company, two thirds of the economics. So, the aha here, Lenny, is when we make the unquestioned, unconsidered, undialogued decision that we didn't know that we made to compete, we have unwittingly said, "We're gonna fight for the 24%." And it's the distinction or delta between create demand and capture demand. So, we prefer the term category design, and I can explain why design instead of creation. We don't have anything against creation, but creation has a, uh, can... Creates a, a confusion in people's mind when, when people hear category creation, because most people in business, most people in tech are strongly oriented to product, what they think you said is first to ship a product that has X features. So when most people say category creation, that's what they think. They say, "Ah, Facebook didn't create the mo- the social media category. MySpace did." Or if you've been around for a little while longer, "GeoCities did."

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky17:21

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CLChristopher Lochhead17:22

      Right? And so category creation, category design does not equal first to ship a product with a set of features. Okay, so what does it equal? Here's the aha. Just like you can design a product, just like you can design a company culture or business model, you can actually design a market. And in so doing, you create a new distinction in value for people that didn't exist before. I'll give you a simple example.

4. 18:00 – 23:07

   How Purell mastered category design

   1. CLChristopher Lochhead18:00

      If I could own any product in the world right now, I think I'd probably wanna own PURELL.And there's a great thing about the company that makes Purell. The company's been around for a very, very long time and, uh, they're owned by the original family that created the company. And their original problem that they were solving is it was a husband and wife team, and they were working in a factory. This was 80 plus years ago. The company, by the way, is called GOJO INDUSTRIES. GOJO. And GOJO is a, uh, a portmanteau putting their two names together. I think it was... Maybe it was Gloria and Joseph or... I'd have to double check the husband and wife teams, Emile, excuse me. But the company's called GOJO INDUSTRIES and I think the granddaughter runs it today, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, so the gal, the, the wife said, "This bar soap is disgusting. It's full of crapola, it's hairy, it's full of man nastiness." So, the solution to washing your hands, called a bar of soap, was a disgusting, inappropriate, uh, solution for her. So she reimagined the problem not as how do I wash my hands, but as how do I wash my hands without a disgusting bar soap? And GOJO INDUSTRIES created a whole new category called liquid soap. And in most restaurants, most corporate bathrooms, most airport bathrooms, if you start paying attention, you'll see the GOJO logo on the squeezy thing that you pull when you go to get the soap.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky19:52

      Mm.

   3. CLChristopher Lochhead19:53

      So unlike most innovators and entrepreneurs who get obsessed with the solution, and I understand why. We all love our shit, we all love our product. If you want to talk to me about our shit, I wanna talk all about it. We could do a 12-hour, uh, deep dive on all your content and how you built the newsletter and the pot- uh, right? And then you'd love it. It'd be great.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky20:12

      Mm.

   5. CLChristopher Lochhead20:12

      Right? We all do. 'Cause if you're a creator of any kind, entrepreneur, innovator of any kind, you love the thing you're creating, of course. However, GOJO focus on the problem, not just the solution. So they stay obsessed with the problem and then an- they ask a different question, which is how do I wash, quote unquote, my hands in the absence of water? And of course, the answer to that question is a new category called hand sanitizer, and the dominant brand, of course, is Purell. And so the aha here is the company that designs the space and gets it to tip its scale, and when I say designs the space what I mean is specifically gets a meaningful percentage of the world to agree with their definition of a problem set which then leads to their definition of a solution set. The company that does that at any kind of scale wins. And so the number one question for any entrepreneur or any creator at all is do I want to compete for 24% of an existing market category or do I want to create my own where if I can execute, I will learn two thirds of the economics? That's the decision that most entrepreneurs make that they don't know that they made. And at its heart, category design is about the most radical kind of differentiation. So most companies actively seek comparison. If you go to mo- well, most, if you go to many software companies' website right now on their homepage, you'll see a Gartner Report or a Forrester Report on their homepage. You'll see ads and/or content that say, "Here are three competitors and a list of features," and there'll be 25 features. "And then there's us." And there'll be 125 features. And they're actively inviting comparison.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky22:30

      (laughs)

   7. CLChristopher Lochhead22:30

      You even hear it in ads. If you listen to what marketers say, Lenny, we say the stupidest shit. Don't take our word for it.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky22:38

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CLChristopher Lochhead22:39

      Anyway, and so the legendary innovators over time, they did not compare their innovation to the past. They broke and took new ground. They wanted to be, uh, irreplaceable. They w- there wanted to be, uh, so much value in the minds of customers that not only were the switching costs horrible, switch to what?

5. 23:07 – 29:01

   What Gong got right (and wrong)

   1. CLChristopher Lochhead23:07

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky23:07

      To kind of follow this thread a little bit, companies that you're pretty familiar with, maybe just, like, a rapid fire sharing of their category to give people kind of a concrete sense of what does it even mean to, like, have a category?

   3. CLChristopher Lochhead23:21

      Okay, let's go.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky23:22

      It's becoming obvious that they've basically all came up with a different category that they wanted to win in, so Gong comes up as an example. I don't know if you know about Gong. It's like a... I think they-

   5. CLChristopher Lochhead23:32

      I do.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky23:33

      So it's basically, like, sales analytics is what they pitch, is like this is the first thing you can ever do to understand how your sales team is doing. Is there anything you know more about their approach?

   7. CLChristopher Lochhead23:42

      Yeah, I kn- I know the space very, very well.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky23:45

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CLChristopher Lochhead23:45

      And they did something incredibly smart.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky23:47

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CLChristopher Lochhead23:47

       So the- they were a little later in the space than some others and so there were a whole bunch of companies in today which you could broadly refer to as the revenue space, right? And, you know, in the spirit of full disclosure, I'm familiar with Clari, I'm good friends with Andy, I know the team, I've done some work with them, so you know all disclosure. Um, Clari and a handful of others in the beginning started to create the space that ultimately became, uh, rev ops-And the interesting thing that Gong did, very smart, was as, as rev ops started to emerge, they were smart enough to realize that revenue was going to be a big new important space, that CRM didn't actually do it, that ERP didn't actually do it, BI didn't actually do it. And so there was this sort of emerging set of thinking around, "We need a different approach to revenue." They were smart enough to realize that if they went for the whole enchilada, it's not credible for a startup that you're gonna go build, that you're gonna show up and say, "We have a suite that's equivalent to that of SAP, just for this other area." So they picked off a very tight part of a broader emerging carat- category, and they executed incredibly, and they dominated that part. But here's the mistake they made. In all new mega categories, they start like this. This is exactly what happened in CRM, I could walk you through the history if it matters, but there were companies in support, there were companies in help desk, there were companies in sales, there were companies in marketing, and there were a whole bunch of sub-niches underneath that. There was a point in time in the sales force automation category, when it, when that was a standalone category, that some of the hottest companies in that category were sales configurator companies, a further down niche. And so as these mega spaces emerge over time, no one company can fulfill the needs of a customer and so there's all these niches. The mistake that Gong made, as well as the vast majority of others in that space, is they stayed in their micro-niche. So the strategy in the beginning that was genius and exactly what you should do as a startup all of a sudden, when they didn't expand and set the agenda, the design for the big category, they got fucked. Because now they're niched. And, and there's a big learning in this, Lenny, which is if you're a company that's already up and, uh, and running and you're winning, and let's say you're becoming the category queen in your space, every entrepreneur, every CEO faces a fascinating moment if they become successful in the first five years or so, which is they realize their biggest barrier to growth going forward is their current category. Because you can only be as big and successful as your market category, and so you have to continuously expand the vision for the category and continuously build on that. And if you don't, and somebody else frames, claims, and names the bigger agenda, as has been the case, and look, I'm biased, as has been the case with Clari, Clari's crushing everybody (laughs) in this space right now. And the Gongs and all the other players are now in this horrible position, which is they basically only have two choices. One, they can stay in their niche, which is what most players do, and they argue best de breed. "Oh, well, we're the best, you know, revenue carbodingulator and you could go buy an end-to-end revenue platform but, but if you do that, you won't get the best functionality in the r- carbodingulator space, so buy our revenue carbodingulator." Th- that doesn't work. Microsoft proved it over 30 years ago when we could talk about that if you want. So you either stay in your niche and get diminished over time or you up-level and you go to play for the whole enchilada. The problem is for them and all the others in the space who didn't do that, if they were to do it today, wh- o- oh, well over a year after Clari did, they're just a Clari copycat. And so basically you either go compete with Clari for who can be the category king or you stay in your niche and get diminished over time. And if you're gonna go compete with the company that is laying down the category design that's picking up the most momentum for the overall market, you better know how to do, you know, uh, a, a, a, a, a sort of fifth dan blackbelt category wars.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky28:57

       Mm-hmm. Kind of following that thread, there's, like, a bunch of threads I'd love to follow but

6. 29:01 – 38:51

   The “better trap” and why it’s crucial to avoid it

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky29:01

      something I definitely wanted to touch on is this concept of the better trap, which is where most people go, where they try to be the better solution in an existing category. And just to kind of reinforce that point, what have you seen, what have you learned about just why that is often and maybe always the wrong approach?

   2. CLChristopher Lochhead29:19

      Okay, so let's take a very current example. Threads. We just wrote about this. When Threads came out, and I can show you all the headlines if you wanna see them, New York Times, nevermind, TechCrunch, you know, all these places, Twitter killer, Twitter killer, Twitter killer, Twitter killer, right?

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky29:38

      Yeah.

   4. CLChristopher Lochhead29:39

      And at the time, there's all this discussion of Musk and, and Zuck having a, uh, a, a UFC cage fight and da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right? So there's all this buildup into the launch of Threads, and there's all this supposed Twitter hate and every- oh, quote unquote, "Everybody's leaving Twitter." All right. So Threads comes out. What happens? Threads surpasses GPT as the fastest growing app ever. Oh, now the headlines, Lenny, are coming. "This is it! Zuck's a genius! It's incredible!" And oh, by the way, this sits inside one of the newer... stupid axioms in Silicon Valley. So this is a side note, but when somebody says something in Silicon Valley that enough people think, "Oh, yes, that's smart," they just parrot it. They don't actually think about it. So there's a, there's a current thinking in Silicon Valley and this was real loud as Threads was coming out. This was the reason why Threads was the Twitter killer. "What you need, Lenny, is brand and distribution. That's what you need. Especially distribution." Well, I would assert to you that Threads had the greatest distribution advantage of any new piece of software ever launched. If there's another one that has a greater distribution advantage, I'd like to know what it is.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky31:10

      No, that seems right. Seems right.

   6. CLChristopher Lochhead31:13

      Okay. So massive distribution, incredible. Easy up and on. Incredible. Free product. Not even freemium. Free. Awesome. And Facebook Meta, you tell me, one of the ten most powerful brands in tech?

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky31:31

      Absolutely.

   8. CLChristopher Lochhead31:32

      How many, how many users does Facebook have today, Lenny, do you know?

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky31:35

      Over a billion. Might be more. might be two.

   10. CLChristopher Lochhead31:37

       Okay. So how many billion person apps have there been in the history of apps?

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky31:42

       None.

   12. CLChristopher Lochhead31:43

       Right.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky31:43

       I think.

   14. CLChristopher Lochhead31:44

       Legendary brand. The greatest distribution advantage in history.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky31:49

       Yeah.

   16. CLChristopher Lochhead31:50

       What happened? It cratered. It's gone. I mean, it's still there, but nobody's there.

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky31:59

       They're launching their web client soon, so (laughs) they have another shot.

   18. CLChristopher Lochhead32:02

       Oh, yeah. Now, why? Why did that happen? Why did one of the richest people in the history of the world who's potentially one of the smartest people in the history of entrepreneurship and tech fail so miserably when the entire world said he was going to "kill" Twitter, and after the initial "success" of Threads, everybody said that's exactly what was gonna happen? And now all those experts are surprisingly quiet. So, the legendary Kevin Maney said that category design is a new lens on business. It's a different lens. It sits next to the product lens, it sits next to the competition lens, but it is equally important. So here's what happened with Threads. They attacked an existing, well-known, well-understood, incredibly well-defined problem with a direct copy. They even were, were, were, were celebrating that it was Twitter, just better. I mean, they said virtually those words. So, known existing problem with a known existing solution that was "better" and integrated with the rest of the Meta shit. Quote, everybody checked it out, and everybody went away. Why? Here's the a-ha. Problems create categories, and you either have to, A, solve a new problem, or B, reframe, name, and claim an existing problem in a, and I'm gonna use these words on purpose, very different way. And if you reframe the existing problem such that people see it in a different way, that's when they'll be open to a new solution. But the mistake is the emphasis is on the wrong , emphasis is on the product, because we live in a world where just like the availability of oxygen, we believe the best product wins. Zuckerberg is gonna blow in excess of a billion dollars on Threads, and it will fail. It already has failed, because you can't take an existing problem with an existing solution, launch exactly the same shit, s- tell the world it's better, and have the world embrace it. Because the problem makes the solution the other way around.

   19. LRLenny Rachitsky34:51

       So classic advice along these lines is if you're, say, ten times better than the existing product, you have a good chance at getting people to care and having success. Is there a line of just like it's the same thing but ten times better, or do you have to, in your experience, reframe it? And I want to talk about that, but-

   20. CLChristopher Lochhead35:07

       Let's just look at the evidence.

   21. LRLenny Rachitsky35:09

       Hmm.

   22. CLChristopher Lochhead35:10

       So we could agree that Jeff Bezos is not a dumb person, yes?

   23. LRLenny Rachitsky35:14

       Yes.

   24. CLChristopher Lochhead35:15

       So do you have an Amazon Fire phone?

   25. LRLenny Rachitsky35:19

       I don't.

   26. CLChristopher Lochhead35:20

       Neither do I. W- why not?

   27. LRLenny Rachitsky35:23

       I'm very happy with my iPhone.

   28. CLChristopher Lochhead35:26

       Right. And so, Bezos launched a better product and nobody bought it, and the reason nobody bought it is the problem, and therefore the solution that you think you're solving with your iPhone, is solved with your iPhone.

   29. LRLenny Rachitsky35:41

       Hmm.

   30. CLChristopher Lochhead35:44

       Uh, when was the last time you enjoyed a Red Bull Cola?
7. 38:51 – 44:45

   Reflective thinking vs. reflexive thinking

   1. CLChristopher Lochhead38:51

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky38:51

      Let's talk about how to actually go about designing a category. You've used this phrase a few times, and that may be the best lens to approach it. If not, we can go at it from a different direction. But this idea of framing, naming, and claiming. How do you do that? What's that process like?

   3. CLChristopher Lochhead39:07

      Great question. So it starts somewhere where most people don't wanna start. And that is the first law of category design is thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. So if you're gonna think about thinking, we have to sort of define thinking. Now, the minute I start down this path, there's a meaningful percentage of people whose eyes roll going, "Oh, here comes some bullshit," right? "Just te- tell, tell me how to do the SEO, Lenny. Where's the SEO?" Or where's the... Whatever the fucking tactical thing is, right? Okay. So the first thing we have to do is break down thinking. So Roger Martin is considered to be the greatest management thinker, or certainly one of them alive today. Uh, we were lucky enough to have him on the podcast when his last, most recent book came out, which I, if I'm remembering correctly is called The New Way To Think. People call him the new Peter Drucker. And here, he describes it as effectively as anyone I've ever heard. And he, at a high level... And this is me paraphrasing, so give me some license, but, um, he's the source. At a high level, there's two kinds of thinking, reflective and reflexive. And now this is my editorializing. What most people think is reflective thinking is actually reflexive thinking. So what's reflex versus reflective? Reflex is simple. You go for an annual checkup, yes?

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky40:40

      I should be.

   5. CLChristopher Lochhead40:43

      Well, have you ever had a doctor whack your knee with the little pink-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky40:46

      Oh, yeah.

   7. CLChristopher Lochhead40:46

      And your knee goes whoop?

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky40:48

      Mm-hmm. I do, yeah.

   9. CLChristopher Lochhead40:49

      And, and she's testing your reflexes.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky40:51

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CLChristopher Lochhead40:52

       And that's an involuntary thing. When you're sitting on the doctor's table and your legs are hanging like a little kid and she goes whack, your knee just, your leg just does this twitch, right? So that's a reflex. And reflexive thinking is very, very powerful. Uh, you have a driver's license, I'm guessing.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky41:10

       I do.

   13. CLChristopher Lochhead41:12

       And when was the last time you were in a vehicle driving?

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky41:15

       Uh, yesterday.

   15. CLChristopher Lochhead41:17

       And if you're out on the road driving and somebody cuts you off, what are you likely to do?

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky41:25

       I get a little, a little upset and then I, I keep driving.

   17. CLChristopher Lochhead41:29

       But I would assert, Lenny, you do something before you get upset.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky41:31

       Oh, I guess I try to avoid, uh, I try to avoid hitting this car.

   19. CLChristopher Lochhead41:34

       Yes. And maybe you swerve.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky41:36

       Yeah.

   21. CLChristopher Lochhead41:36

       Maybe you hit the brakes.

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky41:37

       Yeah.

   23. CLChristopher Lochhead41:37

       Maybe you do both.

   24. LRLenny Rachitsky41:38

       Yeah.

   25. CLChristopher Lochhead41:39

       My point is this. The car cuts you off and we instantly, no thinking, react in order to save our lives, not damage our vehicles, not hurt anybody else. We didn't think about that. We literally just reacted. Well, that's the way th- people think about most things. So I say to you, "Hey, Lenny, let's talk about guns and abortion and immigration rights in America."

   26. LRLenny Rachitsky42:14

       No, thanks.

   27. CLChristopher Lochhead42:14

       Now, you have opinions about those things, right?

   28. LRLenny Rachitsky42:17

       I do.

   29. CLChristopher Lochhead42:18

       As do I. Most people don't challenge their own thinking. Most people say, don't... They go, "Now, why do I only think what I think about abortion?"

   30. LRLenny Rachitsky42:28

       Exactly.
8. 44:45 – 48:50

   How Lomi created a revolutionary solution for food waste

   1. CLChristopher Lochhead44:45

      So can I tell you a story?

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky44:46

      Please.

   3. CLChristopher Lochhead44:49

      So, uh, we're friends and, and we've done some work with the, uh, guys who created Lomi. And Lomi is the first kitchen appliance in 20 years to earn a spot on the kitchen counter. So A, it's one of the fastest growing new consumer items in the last 20 years. And B, if you think about your kitchen counter, do you have a toaster?

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky45:19

      Yep.

   5. CLChristopher Lochhead45:21

      Coffee maker?

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky45:22

      Mm, yeah. I don't drink too much coffee, but we do have one.

   7. CLChristopher Lochhead45:25

      Any other devices on the kitchen counter?

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky45:27

      We got a, um, rice cooker.

   9. CLChristopher Lochhead45:30

      Okay.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky45:31

       And the rest is hidden, hidden away.

   11. CLChristopher Lochhead45:33

       Perfect. So what's Lomi? Lomi is the category designer of the smart home compost- composter. So imagine a device that's sort of one and a half or twice the size of a, o- of a good-sized toaster. And, uh, what Lomi does is you take your food scraps and it turns out that, uh, depending on whose numbers you wanna believe, in America we throw away somewhere between 40 to 60% of our food. And it turns out that food garbage, food waste is some of the most damaging to the environment. Okay, so what does Lomi do? You take your food scraps, you dump it into Mo- Lomi, you fill that shit up. Lomi's got a button on the front. You press that button. And what used to take three to six months to compost gets composted in three to six hours. Uh, and it even, I ... This is weird. It smells good to me. Okay, so Lomi did not say that we're better garbage, that we're different garbage, that we're better recycling. What they said was, "We are a different way of solving this huge problem." And they use both personal motivation, nobody likes throwing out garbage, nobody likes a big mess in their kitchen, uh, et cetera, and an altruistic vision, which is an, "Oh, by the way, if we do this, we will do something that governments heretofore have not been able to do, which is take a massive amount of, uh, environment-hurting, uh, gasses out of the atmosphere." And it turns out because of, uh, global climate change that we're creating more and more sand and we have a dirt crisis. Well, Lomi dirt has been shown to be, uh, amongst the most nutrient, uh, uh, rich dirt in the world. So here is a company with a breakthrough technology that truly makes a difference in the world, with a business model that allows 'em to build a highly profitable high growth business. And the way they got there was by designing a new category and showing the world why by ha- making room in your tight kitchen for this new device you'll make a difference for your family and the world. And if all they had done was what, by way of example, Dean Kamen did when he launched the Segway, which is, "Isn't this cool?" nothing would've happened. So my point is, the Lomi guys designed a product, a company, and a new market category. They created demand out of nothing for a, I think the average price is around 400 bucks. They're, the, the sum total of the market-... for smart home composters when they launched was fucking zero.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky48:42

       Hmm.

   13. CLChristopher Lochhead48:44

       And their vision for the new category was so compelling, Jay-Z was one of their first investors.

9. 48:50 – 49:08

   The “Frame It, Name It, Claim It” framework

   1. CLChristopher Lochhead48:50

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky48:51

      Wow. Okay, so th- I have their site up. So, thinking about this framework of frame it, name it, claim it, they framed the problem in this unique way of, like... Is it the, the framing of the problem or framing of a solution? How do you... That framing step. What's the s- best way to think about that?

10. 49:08 – 54:00

    The concept of “languaging”

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky49:08

    2. CLChristopher Lochhead49:08

       So, there's something in category design called languaging, which is the strategic use of language to change thinking. And a mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they use old language to describe their new thing.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky49:21

       Hmm.

    4. CLChristopher Lochhead49:23

       And we can't use so much new language that nobody knows what the fuck we're talking about, so we have to meet the category where it is and bring them forward. But we have to create new language. And, uh, here, uh, can I share with you one of my favorite, most recent favorite category design stories in this regard?

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky49:42

       Please.

    6. CLChristopher Lochhead49:44

       So you've been on an elevator, yes?

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky49:46

       Yes.

    8. CLChristopher Lochhead49:47

       Have you ever looked at the floor and seen a logo on the floor of the elevator?

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky49:51

       Hmm. I- I can't recall. I imagine it.

    10. CLChristopher Lochhead49:55

        Well, if you do, you will more than likely see the, this name, Otis.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky50:00

        Hmm. Yeah.

    12. CLChristopher Lochhead50:01

        Otis Elevator.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky50:02

        Yeah.

    14. CLChristopher Lochhead50:03

        Most people don't know why Otis is the category queen of elevators. Well, here's why. Elisha Otis invented the elevator. Now, pre-Elisha, there were no skyscrapers. Because how could you get to the top floor? How could you build a top floor? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So when he creates the elevator, there's no known problem for it to solve. So he demonstrates it, people think it's cool. He shows it at, like, fairs and shit, 'cause the big problem with prior elevators was they would crash. And so he built this safety system to catch them if the wiring would crash. And the category name he actually used, Lenny, he called it the safety elevator-

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky50:57

        Hmm.

    16. CLChristopher Lochhead50:57

        ... to address the current problem in the space, which is (laughs) I don't know. People still went, "Okay, that's interesting, but, like, why do I need a safety elevator?" It's a solution with no problem. So what does he do? Linguaging.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky51:17

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CLChristopher Lochhead51:17

        And in category design, one of the breakthroughs is this thing called a point of view, which helps you frame, claim, and name a problem, and educate the world on why they should move from the way it is to... We call them frotas, from, to, a new and different way. So Elisha has to make the market. There's zero demand. It's what, you know, many of our smart VC friends call a $0 billion market, right, which is what you want. So what does Elisha call it? The vertical railway.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky51:54

        Mm-hmm. Beautiful.

    20. CLChristopher Lochhead51:59

        And people understand what a railway does. It moves people and shit this way. And he said, "Well, great. We've now got a vertical elevator that moves people and shit this way." And if you have a vertical elevator...

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky52:11

        Vertical railway?

    22. CLChristopher Lochhead52:12

        A vertical railway. Thank you. (laughs)

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky52:14

        (laughs)

    24. CLChristopher Lochhead52:15

        You can have a new category of building. This is no different than anybody today, for example, in the technology space, who's building a new part of the technology stack for AI. So if you've got a new important l- security layer for AI that'll, enables a new kind of highly secure AI application, from a languaging perspective, if you just use existing languaging, you'll be like Elisha in the beginning where people go, "Ah, it's really cool, man. Fucking A, didn't think that was technically possible. Wow, it's like you're b- you've broken gravity, dude. Incredible." "Eh, don't know why I would ever need this. See ya," and then he goes, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. What if it was a vertical railway?" "Oh, well, what could we do with a vertical railway?" And so, this is why thinking matters. The way you think about the problem, the way you frame, claim, and name the problem, one of the core tenets, Lenny, in category design is listen to the words. Listen to the words. And when you listen to the words, you will hear things that you don't normally (laughs) , right? And so he created new languaging, what in category design is called a point of view, to frame, claim, and name a problem, which is how do I move shit up and down versus across land? And in so doing, opened people's, the aperture of people's minds, created what you could think of as new mental scaffolding for a whole new kind of innovation, and thanks to Elisha Otis, we have tall buildings.

    25. LRLenny Rachitsky53:59

        Mm-hmm.

11. 54:00 – 59:19

    Examples of languaging

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky54:01

       I really like this idea of languaging. Are there any other examples come to mind of awesome examples of languaging in action that worked out?

    2. CLChristopher Lochhead54:07

       I've got a bazillion of them. Okay, another one of my favorites. When Starbucks first starts, a coffee is 10 cents. So you sit there and you go, "Well, we, we can't make money at 10 cents. That doesn't make sense, right? Unit economics don't work for what we're trying to get done. If the ASP in the industry is 10 cents, we want to have an ASP of three bucks." Fuck. Well, here's the aha. It's very hard to charge three bucks for a thing that everybody currently, uh, pays a quarter for if you call it-...the same thing. So they create new languaging. They teach, they literally teach consumers new language. That's why you and I walk into Starbucks and say, "I'd like a double grande latte, please." Well, 25 years ago, that was not languaging that you and I used. And they use it as a, uh, uh, a mechanism for radical differentiation and radical value/price differentiation, and they made up the fucking word. It sounds kind of Italian, venti, you know? But the, the, the truth is, by the way, it's a milkshake, but that's a whole other conversation. Uh, they're the number one, uh, milk, uh, seller in the country. They're a milk company, not a coffee company. But that's, again, a whole other conversation. Uh, the point being, if you want to charge three bucks for something that heretofore has been 10 cents or a quarter, change the language. And you know it's Starbucks language if you... Like, where I live, there's a shit ton of new hipster independent coffee shop type places, where they, you know, paint, paint, paint a Mona Lisa in your latte before they give it to you and all that shit. If you walk into one of those hipster places and ask for a double grande latte, the super hipster gal or guy behind the counter with the nose ring and shit is gonna give you a bit of a drizzle, because you're using Starbucks languaging in their location, and that's the, the other breakthrough. And this is really important in technology industry. The company that creates the languaging for the category wins. Oh, you, you see that today. OpenAI, not that long ago, you did not hear the term large language model, correct?

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky56:51

       Correct.

    4. CLChristopher Lochhead56:52

       That was not a term we were talking about.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky56:53

       That's right.

    6. CLChristopher Lochhead56:56

       And today, the entire industry is ca- talking about LLMs.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky57:01

       Yeah.

    8. CLChristopher Lochhead57:01

       Here's another thing that they created, training data. Well, those of us who've been around for a long time, we understand what data is, we know what a database is, we know what data in motion is, we know what data at rest is, we know what structured data is, we know what unstructured data is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We know, uh, e- even if... I'm not a data expert by any stretch, but I've been in the industry for 37 years, I know some shit about data. We'd never heard the term training data, and I'm still frankly looking for a breakthrough in languaging to describe it to people, because I think when most people realize the difference between data/content and training data, there's a massive breakthrough that can occur there. The languaging is still not sufficient, but we're getting there. New languaging creates new thinking, and a demarcation point in language creates a demarcation point in thinking, which can create a demarcation point in perceived value. And she who changes and/or creates net new value perceptions wins.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky58:19

       This episode is brought to you by Round. Round is the private network built by tech leaders for tech leaders. Round combines the best of coaching, learning, and authentic relationships to help you identify where you want to go and accelerate your path to get there, which is why their wait list tops thousands of tech execs. Round is on a mission to shape the future of technology and its impact on society. Leading in tech is uniquely challenging, and doing it well is easiest when surrounded by leaders who understand your day-to-day experiences. When we're meeting and building relationships with the right people, we're more likely to learn, find new opportunities, be dynamic in our thinking, and achieve our goals. Building and managing your network doesn't have to feel like networking. Join Round to surround yourself with leaders from tech's most innovative companies. Build relationships, be inspired, take action. Visit round.tech/apply and use promo code Lenny for skip the wait list. That's round.tech/apply.

12. 59:19 – 1:01:37

    Spend more time on the problem than the solution

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky59:19

       I think you've made a very compelling case for why people should design a new category. To give people one more tactical, uh, tool for coming up with and figuring out the category they want to go after and framing it and even naming it, you mentioned this idea of having a point of view. Maybe that's the best way to approach this question, or maybe there's another framework of just, like, how can people best think through and spend time thinking about what this new category they should be creating ends up being?

    2. CLChristopher Lochhead59:51

       Great question, Lenny. So two things, uh, at least. So first-

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky59:55

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CLChristopher Lochhead59:56

       ... spend more time on the problem than the solution. So there's a very early stage, uh, uh, security startup I'm working with right now in the AI space that's doing absolutely mind-boggling things, and the founders have in- incredible backgrounds with large transaction systems and deep security and just, an, an incredible, uh, company. And, uh, I had a call yesterday with the founder and, and some folks on the product team, just getting an update on where they're at and this, that, and the other, and we're sort of starting to want to talk to people externally. We raised a, a, a seed round. VCs are coming, they're very interested. So anyway, we're, we're sort of slowly starting to want to come into the world and begin to have a conversation. So the founder or CEO sends me a text yesterday and says, "I'd like you to, if you, if you're open to it, have a call with so-and-so."... and he's a very important person, knows a lot about our space, blah, blah, known him for a long time, da-da-da-da-da. Right? And so I said, "Well, what's the purpose of my... It sounds wonderful, b- but w- why? What's the purpose of my conversation with so-and-so?" And the founder literally said to me, "I would love it if you would be willing to invest some time in listening to some of our customers to hear from their perspective what the problem is and what the solution could be, not just from me and our team." That is a founder who's obsessed with the problem. So that's the first piece.

13. 1:01:37 – 1:07:33

    The power of “backcasting”

    1. CLChristopher Lochhead1:01:37

       The second piece of advice, uh, I- I'll give you comes fr-... I mentioned Mike Maples. So he's got a very powerful way of, of kind of, uh, framing this. He calls it backcasting, as distinct from forecasting. You're nodding your head, you're familiar with this?

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:53

       Yeah, I've read this, and we'll link to it in the show notes. It's amazing.

    3. CLChristopher Lochhead1:01:56

       Yeah. So here's the idea. What most people do is... You and I are entrepreneurs. We have this idea for a product, this problem we can solve. We think we're gonna be bazillionaires. We think we're gonna help a lot of people. We think we're gonna have a lot of fun. And so, we have at it. And whether we realize it or not, the mental scaffolding we use goes like this. Lenny and Christopher sitting here now, we have these big dreams. We think, let's say, five years out into the future. "What do we want it to..." (mumbling) And we go through all the dreams, r- right? And then we ask ourselves... Most of this is subconscious, and then it shows up in business plans and other things, "What do we need to do to get from here to there?" Right? Have you ever done any back country hiking, Lenny?

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:51

       Yeah, I have.

    5. CLChristopher Lochhead1:02:52

       Yeah. So if you and I were gonna go on a four or five day trip in the Sierras, we would have a start point, right?

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:00

       Yeah, absolutely.

    7. CLChristopher Lochhead1:03:01

       And we'd know where we were coming out, right?

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:03

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CLChristopher Lochhead1:03:04

       And we'd have waypoints along the way, yes?

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:06

        Yeah.

    11. CLChristopher Lochhead1:03:07

        And we'd-

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:07

        Probably.

    13. CLChristopher Lochhead1:03:08

        ... we'd... 'Cause we knew we were gonna be out four days or six days or whatever, we would try to plan our food appropriately.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:14

        Absolutely.

    15. CLChristopher Lochhead1:03:14

        And the whole plan would be predicated on, "We're gonna start here, and we're gonna end here, and what do we need to do to get from where we start to where we end?" Yes?

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:25

        Mm-hmm.

    17. CLChristopher Lochhead1:03:26

        Now, when going on a back country hike, that's a very smart fucking thing to do. Because if you've ever been on a back country hike and you're four days in only to realize you don't have enough food, that's an experience you don't want to recreate.

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:38

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CLChristopher Lochhead1:03:38

        Okay. Turns out that while that's highly effective for a hike, it is intergalactic disaster for a startup. Here's why. Your point of reference is everything. Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. So when we do it that way, mentally, we are standing in the present, which is e- an extension of the past, and we're saying, "What do we need to do to go from this present to the different future we want? And what are the obstacles in the way?" Here's the mental scaffolding. So that's forecasting. Here's backcasting. We do an exercise. We abandon everything. In category design, you get taught to what's called reject the premise. So I reject everything about the way that it is. All of it. You and I now envision this future five years out, and everything's gone incredibly. It's exceeded our expectations. We make that true in our minds. We write out, we brainstorm out, "What's it gonna be like? What kind of technology will we sell? What are we doing for customers? How big's our company? How many people?" Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then we say, "Okay, standing in that future five years out, looking back to the present, what did we do to make this different future happen?" That's category design. That's how you unshackle yourself from the past. See, one of the biggest disservices in our industry is this word disrupt. "Oh, let's, we're gonna go disrupt the insurance industry." No. Well, if you're disrupting something, by definition your reference point is the something. And when your reference point is an existing thing, your reference point is the past. If we want to be able to think in unconstrained ways about a radically different future, the more we drag the past forward, the worse off we are. So what reject the premise teaches us is, let's forget everything we know and start fresh. My friend, the legendary designer, John Bielenberg, does this course on innovation and design with kids in, in university. And it's a... He does this multi-week exercise. And the objective of the exercise, Lenny, is, design a bicycle. That's the objective. And there's only one design point. It cannot be rideable. And the reason John makes them do that, his philosophy, he calls it thinking wrong. That's his sort of version, if you will, of, of reject the premise. The reason for it is, when you take away the premise, it must be rideable, you open up the aperture for legendary new thinking, radically different possibilities, radically different futures, right? And so this is the mistake that many, many entrepreneurs make, is they, whether they realize it or not, what they're doing is incremental better-... and they're fighting for market share, fighting for existing demand with something that's incrementally better. And the reality is that's why most entrepreneurs fail. Now, you could fail doing the exponentially different. It sounds medically insane to say what you want is a $0 billion market. However, as crazy as it sounds, it's the only thing that leads to meaningful success, and the proof is in the data.

14. 1:07:33 – 1:10:39

    The truth behind building legendary brands

    1. CLChristopher Lochhead1:07:33

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:34

       Yeah, you talk about this in your writing, that on the surface it feels very hard and expensive to design a category, build a category, convince everyone this is a new problem. But your point is there's no other option really if you want to build a large business. Is that right?

    3. CLChristopher Lochhead1:07:49

       Correct. And the other thing is people say, "Oh, it's really expensive and it takes a lot of time." As compared to what? So you've lived a lot of your life in the product world, yes?

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:01

       Yeah.

    5. CLChristopher Lochhead1:08:01

       As have I. Well, if you ask smart VCs, if you ask Brian Roberts at Venrock, the number one healthcare tech investor in the world, I believe he says it's eight to 10 years for a product to really ha- have some maturity and be really stable and da-da-da-da-da. I don't know whether he's right or not, but he's a super smart guy, right? We know how long does it take to create a legendary culture? How long does it take to get a legendary innovative business model to really hum? You know, so, so, "Ah, it's really hard." Well, so is building a product. So is building a company. So is raising va- VC. So is doing sales. So is doing marketing. So is doing HR. So... Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Like, w- well, i- if you want it to be easy, go work at the fucking DMV. That's kind of point A. Point B is, the reality, Lenny, when you look at it, the r- the vast majority of innovation comes from startups. So people say, "Only big companies can do this." Listen, my, my collaborator, partner, Eddie Yun is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of category design in the, uh, global 2000, uh, arena, and particularly on the consumer side. And he will tell you that most of these major comp... And he's worked for, you name a big food company, you name a big beverage com- he's worked for many of them. They fail miserably. And so the reality is six people with, eh, a small investment from a rich uncle can stand something up that has the potential to be worth $3 trillion, 'cause that's what Apple is. And I sat there with Don Valentine and asked him about why he signed the check to Steve and Steve. And he said it was the stupidest use case he ever saw. The use case was a stay-at-home mom keeping track of her recipes on the Apple personal computer. He says, "The stupidest use case ever." However, Don could see the potential in the category and in the guy's willingness to go get after it.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:21

       Hmm.

    7. CLChristopher Lochhead1:10:23

       And so for a VC, if you're gonna raise money, the VCs who invest in early stage mass potential companies are the ones who see your different future.

15. 1:10:39 – 1:16:11

    The problem with product-market fit

    1. CLChristopher Lochhead1:10:39

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:40

       Kind of along those lines, I had this note that you had this, uh, quote around product market fit, and it's kind of this hot take that product market fit is a, is a very dangerous idea. I'd love for you to speak to that, because I think most people are in the opposite camp, that it's the only thing that matters. Why do you think it's such a dangerous idea?

    3. CLChristopher Lochhead1:11:00

       So... And there's a bunch of these product myths. Uh, product-led growth is another one.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:04

       Hmm.

    5. CLChristopher Lochhead1:11:06

       But let's go to product market fit. And God bless Marc Andreessen. He's the guy that framed it. And Kevin just wrote a really super thoughtful piece on, uh, why it's backwards, and I'm happy to send that to you if you want. Kevin Maney, genius. Here's the aha. Again, category design principles. Listen to the words. Product, market, fit. Product, market, fit. Now, let's think. Okay, so what there is for me to do is find a way to fit my product into a market. Pretty simple way to determine or to d- distill product market fit, right? And what product market fit has come to mean is we're gonna... We're a brew pub. You and I wanna start a craft beer place like everybody else on the West Coast, and we're gonna make a bunch of samples and shit, and we're gonna feed those samples to our friends and to our ideal customer profile that I learned from Lenny.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:17

       (laughs)

    7. CLChristopher Lochhead1:12:18

       Right? And if enough people amongst my friend group and I, my ideal customer group say, "That's a yummy IPA, I like it," then we're going to build it. And then if people start buying that IPA, we have, quote-unquote, and these are turn- these are the words people use, "Achieved product market fit." Okay, well, Threads achieved product market fit faster than any product in the history of the world. Here's the aha. Categories make products, not the other way around. And so what you want is you want to design-...a market category for your product, not fit your product into a market category. And the problem is, our industry, like many others, but o- the tech industry, is full of product bigots. Because they really, really, really, really, really believe, like they believe in the availability of oxygen, the best product wins. They really believe it. And they believe what marketing's job is, is, "Could you go put a demo on our website? Let's get a demo. Can we get a viral video that's a demo?" Right? Because once people see how much better, faster, cheaper, smaller, bigger, whatever our thing is, they're going to buy it, and they don't. What they buy is a new insight around a problem/opportunity that requires a different solution. That's what they buy. H- here's another simple example, because this is one I hear right now a lot. "What, what we need now is a story. We need a story brand. We need a, oh, we need a, we need... The number one thing you can do in marketing as a startup founder is to share your startup founder journey. Share your journey." Right? This is all the shit we're hearing, right? We've been hearing this bullshit for a while. Well, guess what? No one gives a fuck about your journey. They really don't. You know what they care about? Themselves. Their problems, their needs, their opportunities. For our book, Snow Leopard, we did the first ever, uh, comprehensive data science research, uh, ever done, using Nielsen data to study, uh, non-fiction books. And we know that 'cause that's what Nielsen told us. And we had to sign an NDA that, will cho- would shake, uh, choke a horse in terms of what we can say and can't say about the data. But one of the things we wanted to understand is what categories of business books sold, and which categories didn't, and why. We can get into all that if you want, but here's the aha. Guess what the number one category of business books, non-fiction books is, by a mile?

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:12

       Hmm. Oh my God. Sales? Uh, marketing. Marketing, sales. No. Um-

    9. CLChristopher Lochhead1:15:18

       Personal growth.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:20

        Okay. That makes sense. Self-help.

    11. CLChristopher Lochhead1:15:21

        And, self-help. And number two? Personal finance.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:25

        Hmm.

    13. CLChristopher Lochhead1:15:27

        Biographies are, like, way down on the list. So the point being, no one cares about our product. No one cares that it's 25 mega flips faster, cheaper, whatever, than the ne- they don't care. You know what they care about? Them. Their needs, their wants, their problems. And categories are about customers and their wants, needs, problems, and opportunities. Branding and marketing is about our product. And the greatest innovators in the world don't stop at innovating a product or technology. They design a new innovative market category where they stand alone.

16. 1:16:11 – 1:19:20

    Chris’s spicy take on positioning

    1. CLChristopher Lochhead1:16:11

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:16:11

       We're definitely going long, which I expected, and we've actually gone through most of the questions I had, but I have just a few more to kind of close out the conversation. One is positioning. That's something you hear a lot about. How do you think about positioning versus category? Are they essentially the same thing? Is positioning just a way to phrase and describe your category? How should people think about that?

    3. CLChristopher Lochhead1:16:32

       What positioning today is, or has become, is essentially, how do I tell a story about my shit in a unique way, in a compelling way? That's really what people mean when they say positioning. The part they s- never stop to consider, again, listen to the words. Positioning, as it relates to what? 'Cause you, quote unquote, again, listen to the words and fucking think. You position against competitors, right? How do we position against the competitors? Th- that's a phrase people use. So the th- the question is, what are you positioning against? And the answer to that question, almost all of the time, is competition. And so if you're doing positioning, in that context, you just decided you're fighting for 24% of the demand designed by somebody else. And we think, in the tech space where one company earns two cer- thirds of the economics, if that's your starting point, you fucked yourself from the start. And so to put it simply, positioning in the modern context, is for losers. That is to say, people who are fighting over the 24%. So that's positioning.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:18:15

       I love it. Getting spicy over here.

    5. CLChristopher Lochhead1:18:17

       Well, it's factually correct. You know, i- it, people go, "Oh," (babbles) .

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:18:20

       (laughs)

    7. CLChristopher Lochhead1:18:21

       It's like o- o- okay. So are, you mean to tell me that in tech, one company doesn't take two thirds of the economics? Okay, believe that. A- a- a- and you can believe gravity doesn't exist. It does. But you can believe whatever. You can believe that i- m- bigfoots are installing misters on 5G towers to make us all sick, if you want. You can believe anything you want. Doesn't make it true. Right? What's true is one company wins and everybody else gets fucked. That's what's true. Look in a- look at any space you want. You wanna go back to your list? We can go through the list, right? And so positioning has become sort of category design for the cowards.... right? It's like, "Well, I don't know that we could really be as s- radical as to create our own space, so let's just see if we can carve off our little, little niche over here." Okay, great.

17. 1:19:20 – 1:24:49

    “Damming the demand”

    1. CLChristopher Lochhead1:19:20

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:19:20

       A big part of positioning, just to kind of expand on this a little bit, is differentiation, differentiating yourself. People always talk about the importance of differentiation. Do you see that as the same kind of potential pitfall or is that also is... or how do you think about differentiation?

    3. CLChristopher Lochhead1:19:33

       Okay, so this is really, really powerful.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:19:35

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CLChristopher Lochhead1:19:36

       So in category design, we don't compete, period, full stop, at the brand to brand or product to product level. Category designers do compete, but not against a product, not against a company, not against a brand. Category designers compete against the status quo.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:19:59

       Mm-hmm.

    7. CLChristopher Lochhead1:20:00

       So here, let me be specific. There's a category called cycling. You look like you might be a biker, Lenny. Are you?

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:20:09

       Very, very casually with an-

    9. CLChristopher Lochhead1:20:10

       Yeah.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:20:11

        ... mostly an e-bike.

    11. CLChristopher Lochhead1:20:12

        W- those are really fun, aren't they?

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:20:14

        They're so fun. Mountain bike, yeah.

    13. CLChristopher Lochhead1:20:15

        So, but you've been on a mountain bike, you've been on a road bike.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky1:20:18

        Mm-hmm.

    15. CLChristopher Lochhead1:20:18

        You've gone out with friends, done this, right?

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky1:20:20

        Yeah.

    17. CLChristopher Lochhead1:20:21

        Anybody who bikes on any kind of a regular basis has been in an accident. And if you bike on a real regular basis, you've been in an accident with a vehicle that was not caused by you. That's true for every person I know that rides a bike on any kind of regu- regular basis, myself included. So all of a sudden, a new category shows up, and that new category is called indoor biking classes. And the category designer is a company called Spinning. And they say, "Hey, biking's great. It's an incredible source of exercise, but you don't want to get killed doing it, so come take a class." And what they're doing when they do that, they're competing category to category, not brand or product to brand. And that's a strategy that's called damming the demand. So what does a dam do? There's a bunch of water running in a direction, a dam takes that water, stops it, and moves it, does something to it, interrupts it, and changes it. So here's what Spinning does. They say, "Why risk your life on a bike when you can take a wonderful class and not have to worry about it and get your exercise?" So, what dam the demand, Lenny, is, is you thought you wanted this, but what you really need is that. Then what happens, the next iteration in that space comes from Peloton. Again, when Peloton launches, they don't say, "Hey, our bikes are better than Spinning bikes. Our bikes are 12 mega flips faster, cheaper, . They don't do any of that shit. They don't shit on Spinning, they don't attack Spinning, they don't attack road biking, mountain biking, they don't do any of that stuff. They say, "Why drive to the gym when you could do it at home?" They dam the demand for Spinning, they don't compete against it, and they reframe the problem called, "How do I get a great workout in a group environment without getting killed?" And they achieved that massive success. And I can give you many other examples. The mistake is competing directly product to product. The enemy is the status quo. That is to say the way it is now. So if you go back to Lomi, the enemy, the way it is now, the status quo is A, nasty garbage in your kitchen that stinks and smells and gets all over the floor that you have to drag to the green bin and then, and then, and then the squirrels and the fucking raccoons eat it. That's the personal upset. And the environmental one is we're destroying the planet and oh, by the way, rather than destroy the planet, why not create this super awesome compost dirt, right? And that's, in category design we call that a from to-

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky1:23:20

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CLChristopher Lochhead1:23:20

        ... a FRODO. And so category designers are leading the world from the way it is to a new and different way. They're not saying, "My carbondiculator is better than their carbondiculator." Here's a simple example. This is another reason the word disrupt doesn't work. So Les Paul is the innovator of the electric guitar. Today, most guitar players have an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar. As a matter of fact, most guitar players have more than one. Very few guitar players, some but very few said, "Oh, now that the electric guitar is invented, fuck the acoustic guitar." Very, very rare. So the net new category called electric guitar, as opposed to the prior category acoustic guitar, actually increases the overall guitar TAM, doesn't disrupt shit. So in that case, you're actually creating net new demand. In the Peloton example, you're both creating net new demand and you're getting your start. And this is where I think a lot of the discussion that you have in a lot of your work, Lenny, around growth is really powerful, because what's really going on when growth works is effective digital damming of demand. That's what's really going on, when it works.

    20. LRLenny Rachitsky1:24:41

        I think somewhere maybe you wrote this, dam the TAM. That's an awesome phrase. If you haven't, that's a, you should use that. Damming the TAM, adding, increasing the TAM.

18. 1:24:49 – 1:29:46

    Laws from Chris’s book The 22 Laws of Category Design

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:24:49

       So you have a number of books you put out. I will link to all these. Play Bigger I think was your first, Niche Down is the other, and your newest book, I believe is your newest book, is The Law, The 22 Laws of Category Design. So maybe just as a last question, can you just share a few of these laws, maybe two or three of your favorite laws from the book, just to give people a sense of the book?

    2. CLChristopher Lochhead1:25:09

       I think we talked about law number one, which in a lot of ways is, you know, probably the most important. Another one to think about is something we call the magic triangle, which we've touched on but maybe not explicitly, which is in order to build a legendary company, you gotta get product, company, and category right at the right time. Mm-hmm. And so some people hear the category design discussion and they think it's, like, somehow, uh, pejorative to product as if product doesn't matter. The reason for category design is 'cause we love the products. Products fail because they don't get category designed. And so I think the aha of the magic triangle is product, company, and category are equal in importance, and so getting that right, I think, is very powerful. A- another exam- and I'm just riffing off the top of my head. Ano- and I don't have it in front of me. Ano- another example is lightning strikes versus peanut butter, right? So what most marketers do is they take their marketing budget for the year, they quarterize it, and you know, maybe there's slight variance in the quarters, but essentially it's a similar amount of spend. And they do campaigns, and they do, quote unquote, "keep the lights on." And maybe they launch a product and maybe they have a big push around the product, and- and they're trying to drive the funnel and they're trying to, you know, deliver sales or deliver leads or what, you know, B2B or B2C, doesn't matter. And that's what they do. And what they don't realize, Lenny, is that approach, that peanut butter approach, is predicated on a almost 100 year old mental scaffolding in marketing called reach and frequency. Hmm. And what reach and frequency was about, which it was, "I wanna get my shit in front of the most amount of people the most often possible." And if you listen to sort of a lot of the shysters and hustle pornstars, the Gary Vee-dees and this is the one, "Ah, you gotta release 400 pieces of content a day on every platform," and (laughing) all this stupidity, right? That's just a reswizzle of reach and frequency from over 50 years ago in the new medium, right? Well, it turns out reach and frequency doesn't work. And so because the number of marketing messages we get is massive, there's- there are experts who say we get up to 60,000 a day whether it's, you know, logos on coffee cups or ads on the internet and everything in between. And so it's virtually impossible to stand out in a rea- reach and frequency mode. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't be doing keep the lights on marketing. Of course you need to do keep the lights on marketing. But here's what the lightning strike model and category design teaches us. I'd rather matter for one week a year than be irrelevant for the rest of the year. And so what we did, candidly, Lenny, was we ripped off Hollywood's model for launching movies. We said, "Hmm, what if you did that as a software company?" What if you launched a thing, be it a product or something else, the way Hollywood launches a movie? And so what a lightning strike is about is getting very, very clear, if you go back to your IPC thing, or ICP thing, who's our ideal customer? Where is that customer? Where does she hang out? Ideally in the digital wor- world first. One of your recent episodes, I was listening to your, uh, the growth hacker gal, how- how she went onto Reddit and stuff, you know, th- that's a well-known strategy and I love that strategy. Go hang out where they are, put something provocative and engaging in front of 'em, and matter in that moment. So the idea of a lightning strike is if you're in our target audience, for that day or that two days, we are gonna be all over you. We're gonna be undeniable. And so we- we put a disproportionate amount of our effort, if we're in B2B, probably one to two lightning strikes a year, if we're in B2C, two to three. One a quarter if you're like a really big company. It's- it's hard to pull off one a quarter if you're a smaller company, and much more than that, it's not a lightning strike. It starts to blur back into peanut butter. But that is a very powerful concept, uh, o- on the execution side for marketers that's different. The other thing I'd say, and probably should've started here,

19. 1:29:46 – 1:34:05

    Word of mouth: the most powerful form of marketing

    1. CLChristopher Lochhead1:29:46

       so I'm a three-time public company CMO. I've advised over 50 venture backed companies in- in category design and marketing. Guess what I have never seen in a marketing plan, ever? Hmm. What's that? Word of mouth. Mm-hmm. This boggles our minds, those of us in category design, because WOM is, was, and always will be the most powerful form of marketing. And in the native digital world, WOM can spread in a way that was never possible on the analog world, for all the reasons we all understand. So if you take the concept of a lightning strike, then you take the concept of a category point of view that is all about frame naming and claiming a problem, and then there's one other concept I'll introduce. It sits next to your ideal customer profile. It's what, uh, in category design we call super consumers. So it turns out that in most categories, roughly 8 to 10% of the buyers are responsible for the vast majority of the profits. And more importantly, they are the zeitgeist. They are the thought leaders in the industry. They are the customers, the users, the purveyors of whatever the thing is that others look up to as sort of being the ones to admire, the ones to aspire to, the best practices, et cetera, et cetera. That's a super consumer. Okay, so in category design, when you understand who your supers are, ID- uh, I.E. your ideal customer profile-... you understand where they are, primarily in the native digital world. How do we go hang out? And r- remind me what that gal's name was. I thought she was awesome.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:31:22

       Meltem, Meltem Koran, uh, Berkowitz.

    3. CLChristopher Lochhead1:31:25

       Mel- Melsum?

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:31:26

       Meltem. M-E-L-T-E-M.

    5. CLChristopher Lochhead1:31:29

       What a name.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:31:29

       What a name.

    7. CLChristopher Lochhead1:31:29

       That's a great name. Anyway, I thought Meltem was awesome. She's absolutely on s- on, o- on point. So, when you know who our ideal customer, AKA super consumers are, we know where they hang out in the native digital world, we have a radically compelling different point of view about framing, claiming, and naming a problem that if we do effectively, will resonate with them, that's why we spent time crafting that POV, right? So we evangelize the problem, we participate in a native digital community where they already are, and we do it from the perspective of not a marketer, not a seller, an educator. We're teaching people about a new and different way to think about an existing problem or a problem they hadn't thought of, that when they have an aha moment because we articulate it well with our point of view, they go, "Oh, tell me more about that problem." Right? As they do that, we take an education standpoint, a m- mental kind of, uh, uh, framework to it, we open them up, we participate, and sooner or later somebody says, "Huh. Tell me again what you do." And bam, away that we go. And here's the aha. When you understand supers, you understand the targeting, you understand a radically different point of view reframing the problem, presenting a radically different solution, well guess what? It's the ultimate growth engine. And you can grow for a very small amount of money. You could send email to 300 people and drive a breakthrough in sales. Why? Because it, when you take this approach, you're not just driving near-term revenue, very, very important, you're driving WAM. A big part of why you want to have a point of view that can be articulated very quickly is marketing's job is to put the right words in the right mouths, and to get that WAM to scale. And so when we have a category POV that's about them, not us... Remember, brands are about us. Categories are about customers, right? We care about what they care about. And so when you have a powerful category POV, that drives WAM. And when you do that in the native digital world, you get a tremendous amount of uplift from native digital viral WAM. And category design is the only business strategy whose primary execution focus starts with WAM.

20. 1:34:05 – 1:39:01

    Chris’s closing message to listeners

    1. CLChristopher Lochhead1:34:05

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:34:06

       What an awesome way to wrap up our conversation. It's basically a very, uh, tight go-to-market strategy, is what kinda what you just shared. For folks that wanna dig further, I'll just share a few of the places they could learn more and then, then you'll, at the end I'll ask you where to point people. But you have an awesome Substack, categorypirates.substack.com. You have, you have your books which I think may be the best way to, I guess you tell me, is to find them, is go to your last name.com, lochhead.com, L-O-C-H head.com. Is that, is that right?

    3. CLChristopher Lochhead1:34:34

       Yeah, and of course you can go to categorypirates.com.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:34:36

       Okay. (laughs) Even easier. Amazing. Uh, so we have the lightning round coming up. Is there anything else you want to share as closing words or advice before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

    5. CLChristopher Lochhead1:34:47

       Yes, I do.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:34:48

       Okay. Let's do it.

    7. CLChristopher Lochhead1:34:51

       So I'm 55 years old, Lenny. I started my first company when I was 18. I got thrown out of school. Uh, I don't have a GED. And I've been in the tech industry the whole time. And the first thing I would share is anything's possible. Don't, don't listen to anybody who shits on you. I've, I've had shit on as much as you could possibly imagine. I have four or five different learning differences, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, I, I was told I couldn't read. I was certainly told I couldn't write. I've written 14 number one fucking bestsellers, uh, et cetera, et cetera. And so my, my point is, if you're somebody for whom you want to spend your professional time working on the exponential different as opposed to the incremental better, which I, I gotta believe is a meaningful percentage of the people who consume your shit, if you wanna work on the incremental better, incremental better's important. I, I want the Boeing engineers working on the incremental better. I don't want the air traffic control system that's the exponential different. Mm-mm, no. And a lot of incremental improvement over time can be exponential. So I don't... You know, if you're, if you're a product manager and you're running a highly successful product with a massive install base and you're looking at your next rev and you're trying to figure out of the 472 features that you could build, you know, what are the 26 that really matter? And you want to go talk to your customers to find out what those incremental improvements are and to stack rank them and do all that good, you know, P- PRD, MRD, IUD, all that shit, there's a big place in the world for all of that. It's incredibly important. That's not category design. So with that said, I think, Lenny, we are at the greatest time in history for our industry. I think all the indicators show that the amount of innovation that is gonna happen in the next five years will eclipse the amount of inf- i- i- innovation that happened in the last 20 years. It's accelerating. AI is insanely exciting, dangerous, concerning. Do we need to focus on the downside? Do we need to be smart? Do we need to be thoughtful? Do we need to learn? Do we need to l- work with, uh, regulators and legisla- absolutely. Could it go horribly w- uh, sure. But that's always true.AI feels a little bit different, but it's always true, and for the record, the Luddites are always wrong. The point being, now is the greatest time in history to be a creator, to be an entrepreneur, to, to be a marketer. I've been a marketer for my entire adult life. It's never been greater than it is right now. And so here's sort of the big thing that I would share. If you're somebody for whom you want to make an exponential difference, you want to innovate, you want to create new value where there wasn't, you want to have a legendary career where you can look back on your career and go, "You know what? I was part of this and that, and I was on this team," now is the greatest time in history. And what I would say to you is, the future needs you. Most people are not working on the exponential different. And so the future of our world requires that the innovative people, that the entrepreneurial people stand up, take advantage of these incredible technologies. And, and a lot of people, particularly in my a- age group, Lenny, shit on Millennials, Gen Z, what are lovingly referred to as native digitals. Absolutely not. I'm inspired by them, and I think the next generation of our entrepreneurs will be our greatest generation of entrepreneurs. So my point is, now's the time. The future needs you. Don't listen to any of the bullshit. I don't care what the bluebirds say. Absolutely go for it, because there has never been a greater time to design and dominate new categories of in- innovation than right now.

21. 1:39:01 – 1:39:02

    Lightning round

    1. CLChristopher Lochhead1:39:02

Episode duration: 1:48:34