Podcasts about human exclamation point

In this episode Derek Champagne, CEO of The Artist Evolution, talks with Christopher Lochhead. Christopher is the co-author of Harper Collins' “instant classic” Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets and he's the co-host of the Legends and Losers podcast.Christopher is a former three-time public company CMO and entrepreneur. Fast Company Magazine calls him a “Human Exclamation Point” and The Economist calls him “off-putting to some.” At 18 he got thrown out of school and withno other options he started a company. After 30 years in business he's mostly retired. From time to time he coaches a courageous CEO and exec team in category design and marketing. He can recite much of The Big Lebowski, but can't remember his wife's phone number. He's an butt-kicking speaker, surf and ski bum and proud advisor to non-profit 1 Life Fully Lived, living happily ever after in Santa Cruz California.Learn more at:www.PlayBigger.comwww.Lochhead.com

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's take a look on what the movie Barbie did to reach such an overwhelming success, and what Tech CEOs can learn about their approach to marketing. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Barbie's Approach to Marketing Christopher Lochhead opens up the dialogue with pointing out the things that the Barbie producers did that made it a blockbuster win, particularly with what they did on the marketing side. According to Christopher, Barbie pulled off the greatest “lightning strike” framework of any brand in 2023. One of the notable things that stood out was that Barbie spent $145M on producing the film, while spending almost $150M on marketing. Let that sink in: $145M to make it, $150M to build it up. Most companies would consider it outrageous to do such a thing, opting to focus their resources on building the product and spending what's left on marketing, if any. And this is why most of those companies fail to make a mark and carve out a market early on in their product's lifecycle. How about Barbie? Well, it spent a combined $295M, but that marketing approach resulted in $1B in sales. $145M to make it, $150M to build. $1B in revenue. Barbie's Missed Opportunity That said, Christopher did point out a few missed avenues that Barbie could've made to take advantage of their marketing strategy. For one thing, they left the digital space widely untapped, spawning newsletters and enticing new generations of girls to getting into collecting Barbies and other related merchandise. Another thing they could've done is get older fans together and start building out a community in the digital sphere and talk all things Barbie. Not only does it heavily hit people in their nostalgia, but it can also help expose those older generation's children into Barbie, and then you are back to point no. 1. The Recession that Never Came One of the things that Christopher also noticed with Barbie's approach is that people are still bracing for a recession that seemingly never came, or at least was not as full-blown as we were expecting it to be. While everyone else was still timidly testing the waters, Barbie decided it would make a big splash instead. So for Tech CEOs out there, it may not be the time to be holding down the fort. Rather, it should be a good time to try and hurl some lightning strikes in the market and see if you strike gold. To hear more about Christopher Lochhead's views on Barbie's success and how it can teach tech CEOS about marketing, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Don't forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche  A Marketer's Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

Apple announced some powerful new stuff at their Worldwide Developer Conference. And, as usual, many people in the business press, Twitter, and in Silicon Valley didn't see what happened in plain sight. So here we are again, explaining why this new category is different from the other virtual and reality augmentation devices out there, and why it is important. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Don't just launch products, launch categories Let me put it to you this way. Google launches products, aka Google Glass. Facebook, launches products, aka Oculus. Meanwhile, Apple does Category Design. It's fascinating to us that category design hides in plain sight. Because what most people got wrong is they think that Apple introduced a product called Vision Pro. And yes, of course, they did that. But they did not make the same mistake that Google and Facebook made, which is they just launch products; Apple designs categories. And they tell you that's exactly what they're doing. Press Release for Apple Vision Pro Here's the headline: introducing Apple Vision Pro, Apple's first spatial computer. And what you have is the new product and brand Apple vision Pro. And they tell you what it is. It's a spatial computer. It's not a VR/AR headset. It's not some kind of other variety – It's a spatial computer. And if you go on to read the press release, what you'll discover is that Tim Cook's quote sums the whole thing up. “Today marks the beginning of a new era for computing,” said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing, and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro introduces us to spatial computing. And that, my friends, is the difference between marketing a category and just a product. Creating a new computing platform And this is what most people miss. And the reason they did it at their worldwide developer conference, is because they want the vision pro spatial computer to become a new compute platform. Just like the iPhone became a new compute platform, the personal computer became a new compute platform. That's what they're doing here. The iPad, etc. became a new platform, a new category of technology, not just a product that they gave to people. Launching a product without a category is like a loose cannon When Google launched Google Glass, they launched a product, they never articulated a problem that that product solved. They never evangelized a different future with that product. What they did was show a bunch of features. And because they didn't provide the strategic context for understanding of what the product was, aka category, they left it up to customers and the media to decide. Google Glass Demo Well, what happened? If you don't control your own category narrative, somebody else will. And so what emerged about Google Glass? Well, number one, because they did the launch in Silicon Valley, the people who used it immediately got the nickname of “glass-holes”, because it was rich assholes using Google Glass and beta and early release driving around in their Tesla's and the like, that sort of drew the ire of much of the world. To hear more on what Apple did right with the launch of their new category, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006,

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, myself and Eddie Yun, co-founder & co-creator of Category Pirates, tackle what's going on with what Elon Musk is now doing at Twitter; specifically, the move to charging people for their Validation Verification– once coveted, now purchasable – Blue Checkmarks. This is part of a new thing we're doing with our Category Pirates newsletter called Pirate Perspectives. So if you are interested and haven't subscribed to Category Pirates yet, now's the best time to check it out. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Twitter removes the Blue Check. Kinda. The conversation starts with Christopher and Eddie Yoon discussing Twitter's recent decision to remove Legacy Blue Checkmarks and only allowing verified accounts for those who pay. Eddie argues that this move is a step towards aligning Twitter's incentives with its users by making them pay for the service rather than monetizing their data through an advertising model. However, he suggests that Twitter could offer a tiered pricing structure to accommodate different budgets. The two acknowledge that this move has caused a lot of controversy, with some users upset about losing their Legacy Blue checkmarks, while some are given Blue checkmarks even though they didn't ask for one. Christopher mentions that Elon Musk paid for verified accounts for Stephen King, LeBron James, and others, and they are angry about the change given their prior stance about it. Elon Musk and the missed opportunity with repurposing the blue checkmark Christopher and Eddie then talk about the recent decision by Twitter to remove the blue checkmark verification for some users. Christopher mentions that he appreciates the verification process before because it helps him identify real people on the platform. They also discuss the success of OpenAI's GPT chat and the importance of delivering a valuable user experience. Eddie agrees and mentions that incentivizing creators can improve the overall ecosystem by improving content and reducing fraud. They agree that Elon Musk and Twitter missed an opportunity to position the repurposing of blue checkmarks as an improvement to the user experience rather than a takeaway. To hear more about these category pirates' hot takes on what is happening to Twitter and the social media space, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Don't forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche  A Marketer's Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

This Lochhead on Marketing episode is a short one, almost like a bedtime story with Uncle Lochhead. I recently did a post on LinkedIn that blew up in a way that I didn't quite expect. It was meant to be a humorous post about Marketing, but it seems to have cut quite deep in some, and others found it relatable. I thought it would be fun to read to you so we could share a few chuckles about it. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Conversation CFO to CMO: “Our revenue is going down, so we must cut your marketing budget” CMO: "I'm confused, Marketing is how we drive revenue?” CFO: “The macro environment is tough and we need to cut costs.” CMO: “But, Marketing is how we drive revenue?” CFO: “Yes, but Marketing is the fastest and easiest way to cut costs!” CMO: “But, if we need revenue, don't we need Marketing more than ever?” CFO: “Not sure what they're teaching today at Marketing MBA school, but we're cutting your Marketing budget 30%.” CMO: “OK, so when revenue goes down, the best strategy is cut Marketing?” CFO: “YES! I believe you've got it!” To check out how people reacted and responded to this “conversation”, check out the post on LinkedIn. If you like this and are interested in joining different business and marketing conversations, join us at Category Pirates today! Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Pirate Lochhead is sailing the seven seas this week, so we're dropping a legendary conversation that he had recently with Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura on the Starting Greatness Podcast. They discuss the recent SVB bank run that lead to a variety of situations and accusations by “experts” on social media. They also discuss what lessons a Founder can learn by studying the cause and effect of such crisis and circumstances. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. How a crisis can make us better Mike opens up the discussion by stating that while crisis is something we do not wish to happen on anyone, it can be a valuable source of information and introspection on what Founders can improve upon within their own companies and organizations. No one saw it coming Ann Miura shares that the SVB bank run has caught her completely unawares, as did most of the companies in Silicon Valley. Even those who had their teams monitoring SVB activities only caught wind of the situation a day or two before it happened, and by then it was already too late even for them. The Difference between the Public and the Founders Ann also observed that while people on social media and the news media are shouting doomsday scenarios and blaming each other over the situation, the Founders that she was working with at Floodgate had their head down and was busy finding ways to mitigate the situation, and looking at possible scenarios to move forward, should the SVB run not get resolved in the near future. It showed a stark contrast on how the mind of a Founder operates in crisis situations, and it should be something that a lot of business leaders should emulate if they themselves suffer through a sudden situation that needed their immediate focus and levelheadedness. To hear more from Mike Maples Jr. Ann Miura, and the Pirate Lochhead himself, download and listen to this episode. Check out more Starting Greatness episodes! Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

There is a fundamental tectonic change happening in the way work gets done – White Collar knowledge work to be specific. This new technology is creating a new category of worker beyond what has been the sort of top of the pyramid, the Knowledge Workers. There's a new layer above the Knowledge Worker emerging called the Creator Capitalist – someone who gets paid not simply to apply knowledge, but to create it. And that's because the value of existing knowledge is dropping exponentially every day with the emergence of AI. Today, let's talk about how this is already becoming a radically different future right in front of our eyes, powered by chatGPT. What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT is the fastest growing application or website in the history of humanity by quite a lot. And while there are users that only see it as a minor amusement at the moment, people have been heavily using it for their jobs and businesses already. There are entrepreneurs, writers and other related enterprises that use it to write newsletters, blog posts, and even outlines for book ideas. Of course, you don't just put it the prompt and take the ChatGPT output as it is. While it is doing a pretty good job, even with niche-y things, there's still room for improvement, as well as giving it the old human touch. But the biggest thing here is, it saves people time. Time that could be better spent on improving other aspects of your business. How ChatGPT can innovate your craft In  terms of creating content, whether it be an blog article, newsletter, or marketing content, there is so many ways you can take advantage of this technology. As mentioned earlier, you can use it to write first drafts to flesh out an idea you have and refine it afterwards to make it more unique and correct stuff that seem off-point to what you had in mind. You can also use in something as simple as improving the readability and format of the thing you've already written beforehand. You can even use ChatGPT to learn new things before creating your content by providing it with sources and different templates on which to base the content you intend to create later. The AI is as smart as you make it to be While the AI has a lot of capabilities that it can do, it all still boils down to how we use it. An example would be the prompts that we give ChatGPT to execute. Being too vague or general with your prompts can yield confusing and subpar results, as multiple users have observed. So it is best to do some research from prompt engineers on how to maximize the results of your requests to the AI, so you'll get the best quality of content or feedback all the time. To learn more on how you can use ChatGPT and other AI technology to create content and code, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Don't forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books:  Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One  The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche  A Marketer's Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy

Pirate Lochhead is sailing the seven seas this week, so we're dropping a legendary conversation that he had recently with Anna Furmanov on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. They discuss creative marketing category design, guns, human composting and more. Yes, human composting. Just… listen, trust me. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. What does “Creative” mean to you? The conversation starts off with Anna asking for Christopher's definition on being a creative. Christopher shares that in order to consider something as being “creative”, it has to be something new. “Being creative is bringing into being something that did not exist. You can take an existing thing and innovate on top of it and create something new. But at the end of whatever the creative process is, it yields a new creation. And sometimes that's a doodle on a page. And sometimes it's a new piece of code. There's lots of different acts of creation that bring new things into the world. But fundamentally, I think creation is about exactly that.” – Christopher Lochhead On when you feel the most creative Continuing on the topic of creativity, Anna asks when Christopher felt the most creative, whether its on a specific project, a certain period of time, or something else entirely. “So for me, creativity, really at a high level, comes in two ways. One is just pure inspiration. Right – you're out on a walk, you're washing the dishes, you're in the shower, your whatever it is you're doing, an idea comes into your head. Because I'm a writer, I get sentences delivered to my head, and/or power ideas hiding in paragraphs. And then I'll have to immediately get to a piece of paper or my iPhone and write that shit down. That can happen anytime, all the time. My wife will see me running across the house to grab a pen or to grab my phone and start talking to it, so I don't forget the idea.” – Christopher Lochhead Thinking about thinking One of the things Christopher pointed about how people perceive thinking is that they misconstrue having thoughts as “thinking”. Having thoughts just means an idea or a thought that pops in your head, without much effort put into it, almost like a kneejerk reaction. Thinking, on the other hand, is actually taking that thought and processing it. It's the suspension of that immediate and reflexive thought that one can really get into deeper details of the topic, and even find out why it elicited that sort of reaction from you and other people around you. To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and his conversation with Anna Furmanov on the Modern Startup Marketing Podcast, download and listen to this episode. Check out more Modern Startup Marketing Podcast episodes! Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

It's been a crazy handful of days in Silicon Valley. But now that the federal government has made their announcements and has the ball rolling, I wanted to spend a few minutes with you just clarifying some things that seem to be creating confusion in the recent Silicon Valley Bank situation. There seems to be more confusion about what just happened with the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and what the federal government just did as there was about COVID. So let me see if I can break this down for all of you. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. There is no Bank Bailout for the Silicon Valley Bank Let me say that again: there was no bank bailout here. The executives got fired. None of the investors, creditors, nobody doing business with the bank, in that sense, are getting any of their money back, particularly the investors in the board. The Silicon Valley Bank is gone. The Effect on the US Finance The President has said that this will not cost taxpayers' money. You may choose to believe it or not, but that is the current position of the government on the matter. What they're saying is if there's any protection money required, it will come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC is an insurance company managed by the federal government, which is paid for by Wall Street and the banks. They pay insurance fees to the FDIC for drastic instances such as these. Making that point clear as soon as possible was a good move by the federal government, because if they have wavered in their decision to do so, twisted narratives about bank bailouts and conjuring the past instances of it happening would have been a bad blow to the US government's image. The Silicon Valley Bank Depositors will get their money back White there's no direct timetable for when the depositors can get their full funds back, the federal government, via the FDIC, came in and said that they will make sure that the people will get 100% of their money back. Here's where most of the confusion lie at the moment, because there are some who spin the narrative like this resembles the recent FTX crash. But unlike the FTX crash where the money is in large parts gone, the Silicon Valley Bank's money is still there. The main issue at the moment is that there were some horrendous mistakes in investing the money, which caused it to be stuck and become inaccessible at the moment. So when a bank run happened, they didn't have enough cash. And that's what caused this. But the money is still there, unless we learn otherwise after the ongoing investigations. To hear more updates and suggestions on how Silicon Valley, the federal government, and the FDIC can prevent such a crisis from happening again, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

It's been a crazy handful of days in Silicon Valley. But now that the federal government has made their announcements and has the ball rolling, I wanted to spend a few minutes with you just clarifying some things that seem to be creating confusion in the recent Silicon Valley Bank situation. There seems to be more confusion about what just happened with the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and what the federal government just did as there was about COVID. So let me see if I can break this down for all of you. There is no Bank Bailout for the Silicon Valley Bank Let me say that again: there was no bank bailout here. The executives got fired. None of the investors, creditors, nobody doing business with the bank, in that sense, are getting any of their money back, particularly the investors in the board. The Silicon Valley Bank is gone. The Effect on the US Finance The President has said that this will not cost taxpayers' money. You may choose to believe it or not, but that is the current position of the government on the matter. What they're saying is if there's any protection money required, it will come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC is an insurance company managed by the federal government, which is paid for by Wall Street and the banks. They pay insurance fees to the FDIC for drastic instances such as these. Making that point clear as soon as possible was a good move by the federal government, because if they have wavered in their decision to do so, twisted narratives about bank bailouts and conjuring the past instances of it happening would have been a bad blow to the US government's image. The Silicon Valley Bank Depositors will get their money back White there's no direct timetable for when the depositors can get their full funds back, the federal government, via the FDIC, came in and said that they will make sure that the people will get 100% of their money back. Here's where most of the confusion lie at the moment, because there are some who spin the narrative like this resembles the recent FTX crash. But unlike the FTX crash where the money is in large parts gone, the Silicon Valley Bank's money is still there. The main issue at the moment is that there were some horrendous mistakes in investing the money, which caused it to be stuck and become inaccessible at the moment. So when a bank run happened, they didn't have enough cash. And that's what caused this. But the money is still there, unless we learn otherwise after the ongoing investigations. To hear more updates and suggestions on how Silicon Valley, the federal government, and the FDIC can prevent such a crisis from happening again, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Silicon Valley Bank's collapse went off like a bomb on March 10th 2023. And I want to reach out to you and essentially share with you the conversations that I've been having with many friends, many entrepreneurs, many VCs, in the last 24 hours or so. That said, let's talk about what's really going on; specifically, what the media talking heads and idiot, ‘thought leaders' on the internet are getting very, very wrong. Second, we'll discuss a few ideas on what you can do immediately to shore up your situation if you are a Silicon Valley Bank customer, or even if you are working in the tech world. And then thirdly, let's talk about the crisis from the perspective of your company, and what you can do moving forward. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Silicon Valley Bank Collapse As of now, what is clear is that Silicon Valley Bank went down in part, because of some combination of getting caught in a cash crunch. It appears they made some bad long term bond decisions at low interest rates. And as you know, the US government has been raising interest rates from about 0.25% roughly a year ago, to about 4.75% now a year later. This has caught a lot of people off guard. This is not to say there wasn't a mistake on SVB's part, but what we do know is that there were some combination of over investing in long term bonds, and the interest rates going up that aggravated the problem. Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal article breaking all of what has happened so far. Media and Thought Leaders' “thoughts” on the matter First of all, there's a thread  growing around that says, “Oh, this is the billionaires in Silicon Valley doing corrupt things, and now they're getting their comeuppance.” This is not the case. If there was something incompetent or illegal that took place in the Silicon Valley Bank, we'll find out once the investigations are done. But for now, it is affecting a lot of people in the space, and not just those billionaires they are harping about. This is not some cash crunch hurting billionaires. It is hurting the people who didn't get paid on Friday, because their employer just froze their bank. This is the entrepreneur who DM me on Twitter yesterday saying they have their entire 20 million of VC funding at SVB, and asking what they can do now. These entrepreneurs and CEOs don't know how they're going to pay their people, don't know how they're going to pay their bills. It appears that the FDIC is saying that people will get their guaranteed 250,000 on Monday, but over 90% of the deposits in this bank are in excess of that. So it's really not much protection. And while it seems that much of this money will come back to its rightful owner, it's not clear what percentage and in what timeframe. Running a business with no money is fucking hard. And that's what's going on here. To learn more about the Silicon Valley Bank situation and how your business can cope with crisis of this magnitude, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™!

Silicon Valley Bank's collapse went off like a bomb on March 10th 2023. And I want to reach out to you and essentially share with you the conversations that I've been having with many friends, many entrepreneurs, many VCs, in the last 24 hours or so. That said, let's talk about what's really going on; specifically, what the media talking heads and idiot, ‘thought leaders' on the internet are getting very, very wrong. Second, we'll discuss a few ideas on what you can do immediately to shore up your situation if you are a Silicon Valley Bank customer, or even if you are working in the tech world. And then thirdly, let's talk about the crisis from the perspective of your company, and what you can do moving forward. The Silicon Valley Bank Collapse As of now, what is clear is that Silicon Valley Bank went down in part, because of some combination of getting caught in a cash crunch. It appears they made some bad long term bond decisions at low interest rates. And as you know, the US government has been raising interest rates from about 0.25% roughly a year ago, to about 4.75% now a year later. This has caught a lot of people off guard. This is not to say there wasn't a mistake on SVB's part, but what we do know is that there were some combination of over investing in long term bonds, and the interest rates going up that aggravated the problem. Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal article breaking all of what has happened so far. Media and Thought Leaders' “thoughts” on the matter First of all, there's a thread  growing around that says, “Oh, this is the billionaires in Silicon Valley doing corrupt things, and now they're getting their comeuppance.” This is not the case. If there was something incompetent or illegal that took place in the Silicon Valley Bank, we'll find out once the investigations are done. But for now, it is affecting a lot of people in the space, and not just those billionaires they are harping about. This is not some cash crunch hurting billionaires. It is hurting the people who didn't get paid on Friday, because their employer just froze their bank. This is the entrepreneur who DM me on Twitter yesterday saying they have their entire 20 million of VC funding at SVB, and asking what they can do now. These entrepreneurs and CEOs don't know how they're going to pay their people, don't know how they're going to pay their bills. It appears that the FDIC is saying that people will get their guaranteed 250,000 on Monday, but over 90% of the deposits in this bank are in excess of that. So it's really not much protection. And while it seems that much of this money will come back to its rightful owner, it's not clear what percentage and in what timeframe. Running a business with no money is fucking hard. And that's what's going on here. To learn more about the Silicon Valley Bank situation and how your business can cope with crisis of this magnitude, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about what most people are missing about the biggest category battle in a decade OpenAI & Microsoft vs. Google. Even some of the smartest people in business can't see what's happening here, as most people don't have a category design lens; they have a competition lens. The competition lens is about winning a comparison game with other companies, which at most leads to a small piece of the market share, and rarely leads to being the category leader of said field. So join us as we dig into how to view the new AI category battle through the category lens, beyond product brand, and business model. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Categories Matter Before we look into things through the category lens, we need to point out why categories matter so much. The simple answer is: categories matter because that's how human brains make sense of information. “Here's a simple example: If I say to you: ‘automobile', you know what that is. And then if I say to you muscle car, you know that a muscle car is a subcategory of automobile. Because the way the human mind works is that you and I ascertain information, and we need to put it somewhere in a file folder, because we need to sort that shit out and make sense of it.” – Christopher Lochhead The second piece of it is, each of these categories and subcategories, these folders in our mind are also a hierarchy of value. Whichever is valuable or not is how they are perceived by everyone, and we collectively give some things higher values than others, even if it sometimes doesn't make sense why some things are more expensive than things that are actually important. Remember, there was a point in time where nobody paid for water. And then Evian showed up and got people to pay a premium price for a free product they had in their tap. OpenAI vs Microsoft So we get to the meat of the dialogue, which is about Microsoft & OpenAI and their new product, ChatGPT. ChatGPT represents a new category called consumer AI. Though there have been previous AI technologies that have been launched it the web before, none are as well-defined and has had a impact as big as ChatGPT. This in turn got people thinking if Microsoft is muscling in on the Search War. Well, not exactly – because Microsoft already lost that battle with their Bing search engine. Google controls about 83% market share of searches online, compared to Microsoft Bing's  9.9%. So clearly, Google is the Category King in that regard. ChatGPT, however, is a whole other product and a different category altogether. ChatGPT does not search for the answer, it creates the answer based on the collective information that is available to it. It's not he old category of Search, but a new category called Answer. After the success of OpenAI & ChatGPT grew and garnered more positive feedback from the market, Google has decided to create its own version of it. Which is ironic, as they fell into the same trap that Microsoft found themselves in with Bing before. To learn more about the surge of new categories from AI, and how to treat these new categories from a category lens perspective, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about public relations/communications, and a very different point of view about that. In particular, why your content is your marketing. Towards the end, we'll talk about five easy steps to consider when building your own direct audience, and bypassing the legacy publications: the old-school, dusty gatekeepers. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Problem with Legacy Media This episode is inspired in part by a conversation I had with a CEO friend, which I then posted on LinkedIn. It reads: A CEO friend just asked me, if he should go to a PR/Marketing smooze event with the legacy business media. Here's my advice. (Warning: I'm biased. But for a reason) The bulk of legacy media is a waste of time. I used to write for many of the biggest legacy business media outlets. Stopped 5+ years ago, because a) (almost) no one reads it and b) it is mostly clickbait. No one reads Forbes fortune Fast Company, Inc, etc. anymore. Your best ROI will come from building your own media and thought leadership. And the AHA here is every company needs to be a media company. Playing Both Sides Another issue is that even as these legacy media have gone digital, they still rely on cookie cutter strategies and clickbait-y articles. They play the SEO game to keep their websites on top of searches, and then have companies pay to be featured as top so-and-so in a category. Some even go as far as charging subscription to access their media, which is a whole other reason why people don't read their stuff anymore. You pay to get the “information”, only to find out that it's something you can probably read 2 lines down the search results. Essentially, they are trying to get revenues from both sides of the process, which will eventually lead to burning both ends of the stick faster. They are still clinging to traditional ways, which shows even when they went digital. Go Direct to the Source So rather than subscribing to “publication lists” that doesn't really net you any traffic, it's best to do it in-house and go direct to the source by tapping into the digital market itself. You can start small with building up channels in various social media platforms, and promoting your content and linking back to your website if they are interested for more. At the very least, you now have a platform to actively engage your audience, and get a pulse of what works and what doesn't, and go from there. To find out the other steps in doing better PR and communications on your own, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

On September 15 2022, Adobe announced it was buying startup Figma for 20 billion US dollars. This is one of the largest private company purchases in Silicon Valley history. They paid approximately 50 times Figma's 2022 revenue, and Wall Street hated it. Skeptics are saying that Adobe paid an "astronomical price" for a company projected to book only 400 million in ARR annualized reoccurring revenue this year. And this is exactly what people who do not understand how categories work. The “experts” on Wall Street when deals like this go down, are almost always wrong. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Wall Street Mercenaries Let's start off with an interesting tidbit that I experienced by interacting with Wall Street. As I was doing a little bit of consulting and insulting back then, a group approached me about their matchmaking service. Simply put, they would match executives and experts to Wall Street folks, and they pay for your time so they could ask you questions and advise on certain things. The idea intrigued me, so I signed up for it. But it turns out, the Wall Street guys only wanted to ask for speculations and opinions on certain company's performance and how it would affect the market, what stocks were going to tank, etc. The AHA here is that most people (this is a generalization) in Wall Street are mercenaries. They're looking to make money in the now term, short term. They don't create a significant value in the economy. They just try to anticipate what might happen tomorrow, so that they can play a financialization game. While there are exceptions to this, it's generally the perception most people have of them. How to Confuse a Wall Street Folk As we've discussed before, there are two kinds of acquisition deals when you look at them from the high level. There are consolidation deals and acceleration deals. Consolidation deals happen when a certain company is not growing anymore, and their solution for it is to merge with another company to get a bigger share of the market and look like they have “growth”. Value investors like the Wall Street folks typically thrive and look out for such deals, as it fulfills their requirements for “growth” and revenue increase. Acceleration deals is when a company acquires another because they see value on it once they have developed it. They company or IP they purchased may not have a huge valuation at the moment, but it could be a gold mine for them once it is fully fleshed out. Acceleration deals tend to confuse Wall Street folk, as they are focused in the “now”, and could not fathom the significance of such a deal entails, unless it affects the current quarter. Hence, they do not understand what Adobe did, which is why they hate it. To hear more about the Adobe deal and why Wall Street folks hate it, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Welcome to a special episode of Lochhead on Marketing, where we dive further into our new book called Snow Leopard. On this episode, we discuss the Content Pyramid, and how one can become a legendary creator, writer, and thought leader. But before all that, we'd like to say thank you very much to all who took the time to read our new book and share it around. It's also caused a tremendous amount of conversation in the entrepreneur, marketing, and writer/creator world. Because today, more than ever, being able to change the world with words, matters. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Problem Everybody wants to be a thought leader. They want to be seen as forward thinking, they want to be celebrated as the Guru, the expert, the All Knowing one in their industry, they want to be the keynote speaker, the bestselling author, the person listed in the next 10, marketers to watch in 2002 by Forbes, most of which are paid placements. Because now that the world has gotten exposed to the power of digital attention, and everyone believes the most valuable thing you could possibly have is an audience. Well, everybody wants one for themselves. Unfortunately, as we wrote about in our mini book, The Me Disease, the vast majority of people who want to be a thought leader, or bestselling author in today's digital gamified world, don't have any leading thoughts. That is to say, they're not actually contributing new differentiated ideas. What they want is to be seen as a thought leader, to collect badges of approval, and amass followers, and social metrics that send the signal that lots of other people say they are important, without having to say anything unique or meaningful, or different. More importantly, they want the audience without having to take the time to think deeply about who they are creating for and why they want the outcome without the process. Content-Free Content Since this has become such a desirable goal, there are now strategies for shortcutting your way to instant status gratification. The key is to cater to the lowest common denominator. The way the business world has been educated on how to become an overnight thought leader is to create content that doesn't threaten, doesn't challenge, and doesn't require the audience to think, as loud and as often as possible. This strategy caters to lazy button smashing consumers. We call this Content-free Content. It gets likes and views, and it lands you some followers. But after you the consumer, eat it, you sort of feel like a box full of Oreos. Zero nutritional value full of empty calories, and left feeling stupid. The Content Pyramid Ask yourself: do you want acceptance, or do you want to make a difference? If you want to be a legendary writer, creator, entrepreneur, executive or industry thought leader, you need to be honest with yourself about a how you measure success and be what category you're going to play in. Also, when you create you are creating something for someone. Anyone who says “Yeah, well I just want to create for myself” is a beginner and hasn't gotten far enough down the road to realize they aren't who matter: the reader, the listener, the viewer is who matters. To hear the full chapter about the Content Pyramid and how to become a successful thought leader, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software jugge...

Peter Drucker is considered the father of modern business management. If there was a Mount Rushmore of business thinking, he'd be on it. Recently on Category Pirates, we've begun work on the evolution of Peter Drucker's concept of a knowledge worker, to what can today be called as the emergence of an intellectual capitalist. So I wanted to look back on Peter Drucker's ideas that had a huge impact on me, and see if we can apply more of them in our current endeavors. His book, The Effective Executive, helped me become an organized person and an effective executive of my own.  And when I read the foreword in the latest edition that was written by Jim Collins, it struck something profound, which I hope to share with you. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Effective Executive: Foreword Here's the foreword by Jim Collins: My first meeting with Drucker is one of the 10 most significant days of my life. Peter had dedicated himself to one huge question: how can we make society both more productive and more humane? His warmth, as when he grasped my hand in two of his upon opening his front door and said, “Mr. Collins, so very pleased to meet you please come inside”, bespoke his own humanity. But he was also incredibly productive. At one point, I asked him which of his 27 books he was most proud of, to which Drucker, then 86, replied, the next one. He wrote 10 more. At the end of the day, Peter hit me with a challenge. I was on the cusp of leaving my faculty spot at Stanford, betting on a self-created path. And I was scared. “It seems to me you spend a lot of time worrying about how you will survive”, said Peter. “You will probably survive”, he continued, “and you seem to spend a lot of energy on the question of how to be successful. But that is the wrong question”. He paused. Then, like the Zen master thwacking the table with a bamboo stick, “the question is, how to be useful.” A great teacher can change your life in 30 seconds. I know that there have been moments in my life where I wondered if I was going to survive or make it. And the interesting teaching here that Jim is sharing with us from Peter, is that when we turn our effort, our focus on being useful to others, ourselves become less important. So if you're somebody right now, who's wondering how to be successful or worried that maybe you won't survive, or maybe that your startup or your career is on the wrong path. I would just underscore the story, you'll probably survive. Like Peter said, the real question is, how can we all be useful? Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about how marketing can drive revenue with White Space Analysis. We talked about how to drive short-term revenue via category design a few episodes ago (LOM 151). Today, we provide you with more options to make that cash register sing as soon as possible. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. White Space Analysis & White Space Marketing Let's talk about White Space Analysis and White Space Marketing. Essentially, it is doing data science analysis on consumers and the product they purchased. From there, you can see what products or services they have not purchased, which is the “white space”, so to speak. Now that you know this information, you can then focus on existing customers that have purchased some of your products, and target them with marketing for your products and services that they have not availed of yet. This drives revenue quickly for your company, as you provide consumers with a “need” for something they don't have yet. How Mercury utilized White Space Marketing Back in my CMO days in Mercury, we had a team led by one of the most legendary executives in the industry, Sue Barsamian. Sue got quite complicated with White Space Analysis; she was able to utilize it in real-time during one of the Big Customer User Conferences. The team got the data on their big customers and found the products they do not use that go well with the ones they have purchased before from the company. Then, they made sure that the salespeople on the floor have this information, and subtly drove customers to product showcases and panels for the products they do not have. They made sure to precisely market into that customer's white space, thereby saving time and effort, while having a higher chance of a purchase afterward. The fastest way to earn revenue One could argue that doing White Space Marketing is the fastest way to earn revenue, as you are already marketing to existing customers. As we know, if they bought from us once, the likelihood they're gonna buy from us again is very, very high. So it's surprising that a lot of companies don't employ this strategy, opting to do spray-and-pray tactics rather than doing White Space Analysis and focusing their marketing there. Once you have this information with you, your company can do a lot of things to funnel revenue and market share to your business. To hear more about White Space Marketing, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about the three marketing metrics that matter. Because it appears as if there's still a lot of confusion out there about this. So I thought we could unpack the real metrics that matter for marketing. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.   The Three Marketing Metrics Now, let's talk about the three marketing metrics that matter, and break them down. Marketing that does not drive revenue is not marketing A lot of the counterarguments that I have received on this point is that marketing stuff people do can drive revenue. But the thing is, most of them do not drive long-term revenue. So if it doesn't make the cash register sing consistently, It ain't got that thing. But what about brand advertising or Awareness campaigns? Those things only matter if you already have revenue coming in over time. If you're trying to build up awareness and brand before putting up a good product and making good revenue out of it, that's like putting the cart in front of the horse. Marketing that does not drive category potential is not marketing Related to creating revenue, is building up category potential. It's important, as it helps build demand for your product, whether you are creating a new category, or revolutionizing one with your product. Because when you have the ability to create demand, it will convert to revenue over time, which circles back to the first metric. Marketing that does drive increases in the market cap or valuation is not marketing Here's the AHA for the third metric: investors in growth companies and stocks buy potential, not performance. What drives our market cap is the investor's perception of the size and growth rate of the category that we're designing. Be their belief about our ability to prosecute the magic triangle, product, company, and category and earn 76% of the economics in the category that we are designing, because that's the average number that the average category cleaner can get. The other metrics like revenue growth, customer growth, margin growth, etc. are all metrics that validate that this company has massive potential.   How Legendary Marketing Executives do it The most legendary marketing executives, CEOs and entrepreneurs, when they talk to investors, the first thing they say is that we are designing a legendary new market category that has massive growth potential. And let me tell you why. So they start with the potential and marketing creates that perception and then helps the company turn perception into reality. Those are the metrics that matter: marketing needs to drive revenue, marketing needs to drive category potential, and then marketing needs to convert category potential in the eyes of investors into market cap. Because the company with the biggest market cap that is sustainable, I'm not talking about some kind of bullshit magic trick here. I'm talking about building enduring value over time. as measured by market cap, the number one market cap company in the category, always wins. Revenue, of course, is a critical metric for driving market cap. But it's not the only one. The perception of the future is actually more important from a market cap perspective. And so marketing drives revenue, short-term, medium-term, and long-term marketing drives market potential. To listen to a more detailed explanation of the three marketing metrics, download and listen to this episode.   Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about the three stages of a legendary career. Let's also talk about the lessons we can learn about it from a source you wouldn't think about at first, Star Wars. Yes, that Star Wars. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Three Stages of Legendary Career: Star Wars Style So how do we discuss legendary careers using Star Wars? Well, if you look at it on a higher level, the three stages of having a legendary career follow a Jedi's progression. There's being a Luke / Lucy Skywalker stage, where you are just starting out. If you're lucky and successful, there's the Obi-Wan stage. And if you are even more successful, and legendary at that, there's the Yoda stage. Jedi Breakdown Let us explain even further. When you're first coming up, and if you are somebody who is gravitating towards the exponential different as opposed to the incremental better, or want to create, design, and dominate new future market categories, as opposed to just somebody who wants to kind of maintain the status quo, you get identified pretty quickly as being high potential. Much like Luke was as a padawan. If this person is lucky and successful, and becomes a mentor or teacher for other upcoming high potential individuals, they enter their Obi-Wan stage. And if you end up being a legend in your chosen career, much like Yoda, you will have the authority and success that befits the position. The True Reward When I myself was a Luke, I thought that the rewards for being a person with high potential who excels and produces great results was that you get the recognition and fame, as well as the riches that come along with it. But as you progress through the different levels of your career, you realize that while those rewards are worth pursuing, it is not the biggest reward out there. The real reward is you get to a place in your 40s or 50s, where the world acknowledges you, as a champion, as a legendary Luke / Lucy Skywalker, and you graduate. Now, the world grants you the Obi-Wan status. To hear more about the different legendary career and Star Wars, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about how to use category design thinking to drive short term revenue. We talked a lot about what to do in a recession on our last episode, and on this episode, we're going deep on a very specific topic, about how to make the cash register sing immediately. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Short Term Category Design One of the things that we hear about category design is category design is too expensive. Only big companies can design categories, or it takes too long it takes six to 10 years to build a category, we need revenue now. But the truth is that category design can drive revenue for you in the next immediate term days or weeks if you take a category science approach. As we talked about on the last episode, most companies in a downturn compete harder and harder for demand existing demand that is falling. And it's like fighting for the falling demand knife and cutting yourself into shreds. Category design is distinct from Legacy approaches to marketing is actually the cheapest, fastest way to make the cash register sing. Things to Consider What I'm about to share with you is work that call Eddie and I are currently in the process of helping a legendary b2c tech company who is scaling at over 100% a year. In spite of that, they wanted to get really focused, particularly with the economy doing what it's doing on how to continue their triple digit plus growth. First, it starts with an understanding of super consumers. The general idea is that a very small number of consumers, customers, clients, readers, you know, consumers of any kind customers of any kind, typically 10% or less are the ones that are on the bleeding edge of what makes a category go. They're super influential. They're super committed to the category and typically to the brand leader in that category. They also tend to drive a lot of innovation; they also tend to be the ones that evangelize the loudest. So the first step is knowing your super consumers, and observing them. This leads to the second point, which is a genius insight from Eddie, is that a super of one is a super of nine. That is to say, people who are passionate about something, tend to be passionate about several things. So what are the adjacencies that the Supers might also love? There's a whole bunch of categories that they might be interested in. To learn more about how to drive short term revenue through category design, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about the big startup downturn marketing mistakes and what to do about it. We also talk about why people who create demand are in massive demand. Lastly, there is the topic about your career, and what to do when the economy goes sideways, both in your business and in your career. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Startup Downturn Marketing Mistake The reality is, it's not just startups who make this mistake. But before that, let's go through the top 10 list of what happens when the recession hits. Number one, the recession hits. The immediate impact of that, of course, is number two, demand falls. So what do most companies do? Number three, they market hard in an effort to catch demand. Remember, when most people say marketing, what they mean is compete in an existing market category for existing demand. So when they do marketing, what they're really doing is demand capture. So when the recession hits to demand falls, three, they market hard to catch, falling demand or some people say catch a falling knife. As a result, number four, customer acquisition costs aka CAC goes up. Number six to nine is just running around in circles, repeating numbers two to four. Until you reach number ten, where they finally run out of time and money. Here's the big learning: He who competes for demand loses, she who creates demand wins. It also happens to be why category design is the most powerful underground skill in business. Most people don't understand that just like you can create and design a product and accompany you could also create and design a market category. Recession through a Different Lens I get into trouble for saying this, but most people immediately assume a negative defensive position in a recession or a downturn. However, approximately 10% of companies get stronger during the recession. In the last week, I have had many conversations with entrepreneurs and CEOs about how to take advantage of the coming downturn. I know that sounds crazy to a lot of people, but you can't be in the 10%, that gets stronger, and you can't be in the elite companies that actually are able to take advantage of a downturn unless you at least ask the questions. So I'm asking you to consider a different way. Choosing a Different Way So here's the different way and specific as it relates to shrinking demand. So there's three kinds of demand. Number one, as we talked about demand capture. Number two, demand creation. That's why some people call it category creation. One of the stupid arguments we hear all the time is, “well, category design is dumb, because why would we go to a market where there's zero demand, and we have to create it all, when we can just catch demand? Okay? She who creates the demand wins. That's why. Now in a downturn, here's the problem. It can take some time to create demand. People say, “well, we don't have time our revenues falling, we need to generate revenue now.” This is where the third type of approach, wherein we dam the demand. By doing so, you redirect demand from an existing market to a new solution that your product or services provides. To hear more about how to deal with Startup Downturn Marketing Mistake, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive.

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about a critical question: Who are you going to be when the shit hits the fan? As we have talked about in previous episodes, it is starting to look like the business environment could get very hard here. Some people in Silicon Valley are even saying that it could be like back in 2008. Sequoia Capital wrote their seminal “RIP, Good Times” presentation, and its final slide says, “Get real, or go home”. No matter what's going to happen next in the economy, or frankly, the world, it's probably time for all of us to get real or go home. So on this episode, let's dig into why some people step up, and others melt down in times of crisis. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Signs When I was in my late 20s, and into my early 30s, I was the founding CMO of a company called Scient. We were a leader in the we called E-business Innovation Space, we were one of the very first consulting firms to focus on building E-businesses or Digital Businesses. We did incredibly well, as a matter of fact, the company was founded, I believe, in 98, maybe late 97. By 2000, we had grown to almost 3000 people, which is incredible for a consulting startup, essentially. We were public and had a market cap of about $9 billion. Now, if you were around back then, you've done your homework, and you know the.com bust happened. Like all bad things, they happen over time. It built starting by about February, March, we could feel things starting to get bad. Shortly thereafter, we could feel the rumblings our pipeline wasn't starting to look very good. There was weird shit happening with our customers. And there was a slow takedown that happened from about March, slowly, slowly, slowly, building over the summer, and by the fall, we were in a freefall. Sh*t Hits the Fan Due to all that, we had to do the first ever layoff in the history of the company. It was insanely painful. So when we announced the miss in the projected stocks, we do the layoff. The people we laid off are amazing. They were cheering the company on saying please go forward and be successful sign had an incredible culture. So as painful as it was, the exiting people were, were incredible warriors and supporters. And the people who stayed really wanted to make a go of it. However, people at management seemed to be focusing on the wrong things, rather than discussing how to move forward, given the resources we still had at the moment. This continued until I left the company, and from there the company continued on its freefall rather than picking itself up and starting anew. How People React to Disruption So why do I share that with you? It's a great example of the shit hitting the fan for a company. In my opinion, an executive team unwilling to deal with the reality of the situation, and unwilling to deal with it with any kind of speed is a bad way to go at it. That's why I got so mad and took off, and that's why the CEO of the company fired me. After that, the company vaporized. To hear more how legendary people react when disruption happens in the market, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting fi...

Welcome to the Conscious Millionaire Show for entrepreneurs,  who want to create an abundant future for themselves and humanity. Heard by millions in 190 countries.  Do you want to put more money in the bank, create a powerful impact, and enjoy a purposeful life? This is the podcast for you! Join host, JV Crum III, as he goes inside the minds of Millionaire Entrepreneurs and World-Class Business Experts. Today's featured episode... Christopher Lochhead: Category Design and Marketing Differentiation Christopher Lochhead is the co-author of Harper Collins' instant classic" Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets and co-host of the Legends and Losers podcast. He is a former three-time public company CMO and entrepreneur. Fast Company Magazine calls him a "Human Exclamation Point and The Economist calls him "off-putting to some. Like this Podcast? Get every episode delivered to you free!  Subscribe in iTunes Download Your Free Money-Making Gift Now... "Born to Make Millions" Hypnotic Audio - Click Here Now! Please help spread the word. Subscribing and leaving a review helps others find our podcast. Thanks so much! Inc Magazine "Top 13 Business Podcasts." Conscious Millionaire Network has over 3,000 episodes and millions of listeners in 190 countries. Join us as a regular listener to get money-making secrets on how you can grow your business and profits faster! 

Welcome to the Conscious Millionaire Show for entrepreneurs,  who want to create an abundant future for themselves and humanity. Heard by millions in 190 countries.  Do you want to put more money in the bank, create a powerful impact, and enjoy a purposeful life? This is the podcast for you! Join host, JV Crum III, as he goes inside the minds of Millionaire Entrepreneurs and World-Class Business Experts. Today's featured episode... Christopher Lochhead: Category Design and Marketing Differentiation Christopher Lochhead is the co-author of Harper Collins' instant classic" Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets and co-host of the Legends and Losers podcast. He is a former three-time public company CMO and entrepreneur. Fast Company Magazine calls him a "Human Exclamation Point and The Economist calls him "off-putting to some. Like this Podcast? Get every episode delivered to you free!  Subscribe in iTunes Download Your Free Money-Making Gift Now... "Born to Make Millions" Hypnotic Audio - Click Here Now! Please help spread the word. Subscribing and leaving a review helps others find our podcast. Thanks so much! Inc Magazine "Top 13 Business Podcasts." Conscious Millionaire Network has over 3,000 episodes and millions of listeners in 190 countries. Join us as a regular listener to get money-making secrets on how you can grow your business and profits faster! 

On this episode, let's talk about one of the things that drives me the craziest and more importantly, ruins marketing results and careers on a regular basis. That is, why marketing's job is NOT serving internal customers. Speaking of which, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making our new books into bestsellers at Amazon Books. You can check the whole list Category Pirates mini-books at Amazon Books, and expect more in the near future! Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Concept of Internal Customers is Dumb The idea of an Internal Customer is dumb. Listen to it: Internal Customer. First of all, what does a customer do that an internal department or “internal customer” doesn't? That's right, customers actually pay you money. Companies who are so internally focused and direct marketing inwardly, that they are confused as to what it should be targeting is a company destined for disaster. So point number one is this: “There is only one customer, and those are your actual customers.” – Christopher Lochhead You can put whatever modifier in front of customer you want, but customers or consumers and putting a stupid modifier in front of them is well, frankly stupid. What Marketing should be doing That said, what really is marketing? Firstly, Marketing is a leadership function. Its job is to lead the company, lead the category and ultimately design and dominate a legendary category that matters around solving problems or creating opportunities for customers. Second, marketing organizations often get trapped in this feeling of being an internal service bureau. That's ridiculous. Marketing is no is no more of a internal service function than finance than engineering or products. d in this being of being an internal service bureau. HR is not a service function either. It's a leadership function. So the first thing to understand is marketing is a leadership function, whose job is to partner with the rest of the organization in creating, designing, and dominating a market category that makes a giant difference for customers who pay us money. How Marketing works within the Organization Now, what does that mean for how marketing works within the organization? You do it as leaders, as you partner with other leaders. So is Sales Enablement important? Yes, of course it's important. As a marketing leader, we want the sales organization to love us. Are there a certain set of things that we want to deliver to sales to help them be successful in their job? Of course, there are. But we're not order takers, we're leaders. And we're partners. We're in a co creation relationship. You're in the business of co-creating a legendary relationship. Are there some service elements of that? Sure, there are. But that is not the primary paradigm, the primary paradigm is a co-creation relationship. That's the relationship marketing wants to have with sales, that is to say, both of which should get together and say, what are our objectives for the year for the quarter for the month? How do we partner together to produce legendary revenue with the exact kind of customers that we want? So in that regard, marketing and sales work together, hand in glove. To hear more on how Marketing should be done in your business, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactiv...

On this episode, let's talk about why most marketing fails, and what we can do about it. Speaking of marketing, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making our new books into bestsellers at Amazon Books. You can check the whole list Category Pirates mini-books at Amazon Books, and expect more in the near future! Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Marketing Folklore When most people say marketing, they usually have a preconceived notion to what it is. That is, to compete for an existing demand with a better product and a better brand in an existing market category. The reason most people think like this is that it is what is taught in business schools and MBAs. That's what is said a lot in marketing books and the like. So it has become a belief, almost a folklore, that things should be done as such. Competing for Leftovers The problem with this line of thinking is that it's a very bad idea. We did a data science project published in the HBr, as well as in our newsletter Category Pirates, and discovered something fascinating. We found that in tech categories, on average, the category king or queen wins 76% of the total value created, as measured by market cap in the entire category. This means, if you're not doing category design, you're playing in someone else's category. When somebody says marketing, what they're really saying is, we are going to fight for the remaining 24% of the value. The issue now is that most companies don't realize that they're only fighting for a small piece of the pie. “Because the vast majority of marketers don't know that that's what they're doing. When they hear the word marketing, they make an unconscious, undiscussed unanalyzed choice to compete in a category designed by somebody else, which only allows for 24% of the value. And that is why most marketing fails.” – Christopher Lochhead Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

On this episode, let's talk about how to inspire legendary creative marketing people to do their legendary creative marketing work. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Letting Legendary Creative Marketing People Do Legendary Creative Marketing Work Years ago, I was the head of marketing for a red-hot internet company called Scient. We had engaged with a group of creative marketers, designers, and copywriters led by the legend himself, John Bielenberg. At the beginning of the project, this is what I said to him: “Look, I know you guys are standalone, in terms of the incredible legendary marketing creative you guys create. So what I'm asking you to do is go away, and design the most legendary piece of work you've ever done.” In this case, it was a brochure that will serve as “grenade”: it was the kind of piece that when you got it, you knew you got it, and you never forgot getting it. They did just that. So when they came back a week or two to present their work, I asked the question that I always ask, “Do you think what you're about to show us is legendary work?” John smiled and looked at me and said, “Yes, we do,” and he showed us this most legendary brochure that he created. Acknowledge Your Legendary Creative Marketing Team's Efforts Another thing to address is to let your creatives know that you are aware that their best works don't usually see the light of day. This is either due to poor follow-through by the higher-ups, or poor feedback from people who weren't involved in the project, but higher up the food chain. So acknowledge this and then tell them, that once they deliver a legendary creative marketing piece that will blow away everyone, you will fight tooth-and-nail for it to see the light of day. Once they do so, remind them to remind you to not fuck it up. The Takeaway So what's the lesson here? One, when you're talking to creative people about doing creative work, let them know you want them to do their most legendary work. Second, let them know that you also know that most of their most legendary work has never seen the light of day. This is because most of the companies they worked for or the clients that they had didn't have the courage to execute their legendary work. They didn't have the courage to say to them, once they presented truly legendary work, “Don't let us fuck this up.” Now, here's the other AHA about this. If you as a marketing leader/CEO/CMO get a reputation with the creative people in your company for A) inspiring it and asking them to do legendary work, and then B) with very few modifications, actually execute the legendary work, guess what happens the next time they have to do something creative. They know that you want their most legendary work. Also, they know that if they put the thinking and their heart and their soul and their blood, sweat, tears and whiskey into that work, that you are not going to be the leader who takes that legendary work and lets it get crushed and watered down so that it never sees the light of day. And when legendary creative people know that you want them to do their legendary work and that you're actually going to implement it, guess what? They're going to keep giving you legendary work. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

In this episode, let's talk about Sales Kick Off. Since it's that time of the year where most sales, marketing, and executive teams are working on sales kickoff events for the new year and/or a company kickoff event. While most people work on the practical and tactical aspect of things, there's a strategic question that we need to address. If we get the answer right, it can lead to a very successful sales kickoff and a successful year. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Sales Kick Off Events Like most companies, you are also probably working on this as early as the 4th quarter of the year. If you're in a well-established company, you probably have all the basics down, in terms of systems, workflows, and all related processes. While those parts are also important, the focus in these kinds of kickoffs is the context that it operates in. Why are you doing this sales kickoff? Is it for something new, or maybe an important change in your company that will affect how you interact with your clients and customers? Why Should I Stay? That said, we have a very unique context going into 2022. You have probably heard about the “Great Resignation”. People have been quitting their jobs to find better work or pursue other careers. Those who stayed are probably getting recruitment emails from competition due to this sudden lack of high-value individuals in certain industries. So heading into 2022, the context of your sales kickoff needs to answer the question, “Why should I stay?” In order to answer that question, you should look on what truly motivates people. The first point is, people who are invested in the company are motivated by a mission. They want to feel like they're a part of something greater than themselves. That what they do for the company makes a difference. The second point is that they want to feel connected to their colleagues. Granted, this is harder nowadays due to COVID and social distancing. So instead of being physically around people, find a way to align people's goals, so that they get to interact with each other while having the same mission. This ties to the first point as well. If your company is still on a full remote capacity right now, you can also be creative with technology. Instead of socializing in the pantry like before, set up zoom meetings for your team where you can just talk about the recent activities you have done outside of work. Or maybe share what you have been doing lately, so that other people in the team are aware of your contributions and could help with your struggles. In the situation where we're primarily using a digital first native digital way to do that, think about using the technology and creative ways to bond people to each other into the mission and point of view. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

In this special solo episode of Christopher Lochhead - Follow Your Different, I just want to share with you an element of conversation around the most recent Kyle Rittenhouse case. What I wanted to talk about is America's biggest problem when it comes to situations like this. That is, the lack of any authentic dialogue about the matter. Too Much Yelling, Not Enough Listening Regardless on where you come out of the issue, there are some things that wasn't properly address or we didn't hear from at all. What I hoped we'd hear more was thoughtful, nuanced dialogue and conversation. Instead, what we got is what we've been getting a lot of in the United States of late, which is yelling and hardened positions. You're only pro or anti-something. As part of that, whatever one side does, if you're on that side, everything they do is right, and everything the other side does is wrong, and vice versa. I think that's really sad. Because thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. And it's only through dialogue, where human beings can achieve greater levels of understanding. There was no dialogue sparked by this horrible circumstance, horrible situation around what do we as Americans want to do about protests and riots? There wasn't a discussion about that. Nor was there a discussion about self-defense, what do we mean by self-defense? Who decides where there's a line where we can no longer defend ourselves or not? “What I do know is we're not having conversation. We're not having dialogue. There's a lot of yelling, and not a lot of listening.” – Christopher Lochhead Bring Back the Willingness to Listen If you're a long-time listener of this podcast, you know that our mission has always been to celebrate real, authentic dialogue. In our case, dialogue around what it takes to design legendary business and legendary life. In hopes that we can bring back curiosity, we can bring back a willingness to listen, a willingness to co create our lives and ultimately, our culture and country together. I got to tell you: sometimes, particularly of late, it feels like we're losing that war. We might even have lost it completely, and we might never get it back. But I do know that a conversation about authentic dialogue, and why we don't have it, and how we can have more is an important thing to do, even if very few people want to participate in that. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

On this episode, let's talk about what might be the most important equation in business and in marketing. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing, the number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Maybe The Most Important Equation Ever I want to share with you a little bit of math that I learned very early in my career. It was incredibly eye-opening, and has been a bedrock that I have tried to stand on ever since. And the equation goes like this: Results do not equal No Results plus an Excuse. Now, this might seem obvious, but if you look around, you'll find the contrary to that. You might also think, what's the harm of having a great excuse when you can't achieve the results you want? Well, here's the interesting thing: That mindset can perpetuate. Over time, you'll start thinking that it's perfectly okay to not reach the result you want, as long as there was a valid excuse not to do so. Who You Are in Business Here's the AHA moment in business, entrepreneurship, and in category design: Who you are is based on your results. It may sound harsh, but think about the people that you work with, particularly those who you admire. Chances are, you respect and admire them the most because they can be counted on to produce results. If we use sales as an example, it's easy to see one's value for the business. That is, if they hit their target numbers or not. If they do hit their numbers and beyond, they are recognized and rewarded for it. You also gain the reputation as someone who achieves their goals, or if you already have said reputation, it is further reinforced. The reason this matter is, in marketing and category design, there are winners and losers. In every category, there tends to be one category king or queen who gets roughly 70% of the market, and everybody else are fighting for roughly a quarter of it. So train yourself. The excuse doesn't matter when it's on the line. The most legendary people produce results no matter what. That's the mindset. Don't be Afraid to Ask If you're a product manager, developer, or engineer, it can be easy to measure goals and objectives. You either meet the requirements, or you don't. Though for marketing, the goal or objective might not be as clear. If you're not sure about the goal of your marketing is, don't be afraid to ask. After that, make sure the rest of your team is clear to that goal. That beats running around doing things that might not even be related to your goal, which wastes time and resources. So to recap: Results do not equal No Results plus an Excuse. Results equal Reputation. Which means you are your results and your results drive your reputation. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about why thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. Context Matters More Than Content This might be obvious, but it bears repeating: context matters more than content. In any strategy discussion, the context of which is what leads to some kind of outcome or content. Most people, particularly those who are entrepreneurial, have a strong bias to action, which can be healthy and powerful. However, it does have it downsides sometimes. “A strong bias to action means that sometimes, and I know I've been guilty of this more times than I will ever know, we spring to action without doing enough thinking. More importantly, without doing enough thinking and dialoguing around what the context is for whatever it is we're talking about.” – Christopher Lochhead Accept or Reject the Premise The next piece to think of when discussing the context, is that whether you accept or reject the premise of said context? It could be a product, a service, or and prevalent idea. Here's what I know. “Legendary category designers, legendary entrepreneurs, creators, and marketers reject the premise. They start by rejecting the premise. So somebody says something and you go, that's interesting. And in our mind, we go, I reject the whole thing.” – Christopher Lochhead Now, you may end up circling back to that premise and either accepting it entirely, or just part of it. Though the reason why starting by rejecting the premise is so powerful, is that all premise, context, and established thinking is based on past experience, insight, or research. Of course, there are many cases where accepting the premise is the wise thing to do. Yet here's the rub: how do you create a different future, if the premise or context you start with is tied to the past? So we reject the premise, we reject the rules of the past and open ourselves up to a whole new kind of thinking. Listen to the Words In business and marketing, almost every sentence that somebody says to us use “accept the premise” language. Part of rejecting the premise is listening to the words they say. One example is “go to market”. You might ask, what's wrong with that premise? If you think about it, that premise suggests that there is a market out there, and we need to go and grab it. Which means that you are competing for other businesses that are also going to the same market. Yet wouldn't it be better to create your own market? That way, you get the lion's share of it outright, and you don't have to compete for it. Moreover, the customers/users then come to you, and not the other way around. To hear more about how thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about how to spot a legendary startup / new category idea. It turns out there are a few secret hiding places where these ideas hide, but they're in plain sight. One of these ideas was shared by Avram Miller in a recent episode of Follow Your Different (FYD 234) when we were discussing his new book, titled The Flight of a Wild Duck. It is a simple, powerful, yet under-used idea for discovering massive ideas for new companies, products or categories, so we are going to talk about it in detail here. As a bonus, I'll share one of my own as well! So stay tuned to this episode, and enjoy. Avram Miller on Being a Legendary Startup When we talked to Avram Miller in Follow Your Different, we got into the discussions of why a lot of startups seemed to fail. These startups had, on paper, great ideas for products, services, and categories that should have dominated the market. Yet looking back, most of them did not achieve that potential. So what was the culprit? It was time. Specifically, they were too early or ahead of their time. Whether it was due to being technologically early or there's no demand for that particular idea yet, it was just too early. One of the examples was WebVan.com. It was a startup designed to deliver groceries to your home, and it was launched in the late 1990s. If you think about it nowadays, it makes sense that it would be a successful business. Yet WebVan.com shut its business down in 2001, while the same model today made Amazon a household brand. So if you have a legendary startup idea, one of the things you need to consider is this: is it too early, or just the right time to launch it to the world? Never Stop Innovating Idea no. 2 comes from me, and what I have observed upon past and existing category leaders in their respective markets. As I have discussed here in Lochhead on Marketing, and also at our Category Pirates newsletter, sometimes these Category Kings settle with fighting for a share of the market, rather than innovating and creating new markets for their own. One of the most known examples of this was Kodak and the physical media category, which tried to adapt too little, and too late. Surprisingly, Avram Miller shares in our conversation that Intel's CEO Andy Grove was also resistant to innovating things early on in Intel's history, which almost led them to miss out in getting into the chipset business for personal computers. As for a great example in the opposite direction, Victoria's Secret got left in the dust by Rihanna's line of lingerie called Savage. This was because it moved away from the POV of "be like these supermodels", to more inclusive and being comfortable with their own body. This radically different POV redesigned the category. As most native digitals see exclusivity as elitist and not welcoming, it was also embraced by the market almost overnight. So at the end of it all, would you rather be fighting to stay on top of your current market, or be the King of the Hill in a category that you have created or innovated? To hear more ideas on how to become a legendary startup or innovate your current business, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient,

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let us talk about something that I get asked about all the time. That is, can service firms do Category Design? Simple answer, Yes. I would even say that the most legendary services companies are almost always created or led by a legendary Category Design. Long answer? Well, listen to this episode to find out. The Management Consulting Category Design There was a point in time where there was no such thing called Management Consulting. Remember, everything is the way that it is because somebody changed the way that it was. So, McKinsey and Company is the firm that created and designed the Management Consulting category. The interesting thing is the guy that built McKinsey into what it is today is a guy named Marvin Bower. McKinsey started out as a group of bean counters and accountants doing accounting stuff, and nothing like what McKinsey is today. The Aha moment that Bower had is that he noticed that while clients were paying for accounting services with accountants, and legal services with lawyers, what they often wanted and valued more from their accountant was actually business advice from a trusted source. With that idea, Marvin became the category designer of a new services category called Management Consulting. Marvin Bower as a Language Master Marvin is an incredible kind of master at Languaging. He intuitively understood that in order to create a new category of Services Firm, he had to language it differently. That is to say, you can't talk about a new thing with old language. Under his leadership, projects were not called jobs, they were called engagements. It's a word that is much more relational than it is transactional. Internal groups within McKinsey with specific industry or functional expertise were not called groups, they were called practices. Bower borrowed a term from doctors to demonstrate a level of professionalism to elevate these “groups”, or now practices within McKinsey. Finally, he made sure that nobody ever referred to McKinsey as a business: McKinsey was a firm. He highlighted the core values that held the company together. Today, there are very few firms who are rigorously committed, some might say consciously committed to the original language that Marvin Bower put into place. All of these distinctions, all of these differences, help McKinsey thrive. It also help to position McKinsey in a new category: not a law firm, not an accounting firm, but this new thing called a Management Consulting Firm. To hear more on how Service Firms do Category Design, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

Welcome to a very special episode of Lochhead on Marketing. This episode is based on a recent Category Pirates newsletter that we wrote, which was about Big Brand Marketing and why it doesn't work. Think of this episode as more of an audiobook than a podcast, as I will be reading the article for you. Without further ado, let's get to reading. The Brand Cult A meaningful percentage of marketers, entrepreneurs, and executives are in what we like to call “The Brand Cult.” They've been taught the best (aka: “the most well known”) brand wins. Even though the data shows this is not true. Ford spends $2.5 billion per year on brand advertising, with a market cap of $50 billion. General Motors spends $3 billion, with a market cap of $70 billion. Meanwhile, Tesla spends $0, but has a market cap of $700 billion. In 2011, Google spent almost $600 million building and launching a social network to compete with Facebook and Twitter called Google+. If “the best brand wins,” how come Google+ failed? After all, Forbes named Google the 2nd “most valuable brand in the world” in 2020. Comcast spends more than $5 billion on branding and advertising each year. And yet, Comcast has long been considered “America's Most Hated Company.” There's even a Wikipedia page dedicated to the company's inadequacies, titled “Criticism of Comcast.” (United Airlines is a close second, if you ask us.) So if branding and “shouting from the rooftops” is the key to winning the game, how come $5 billion per year can't solve Comcast's problems? Maybe they need $10 billion? Though sharing data with a cult member is about the worst thing you can do. That's because facts are upsetting to feelings—particularly facts that disprove everything you've been taught to believe. Well, here's a fact: Categories make brands. Not the other way around. How The Brand Cult Began In 2011, The Atlantic published a piece titled, “How Brands Were Born: A Brief History of Modern Marketing.” “In the 1950s, consumer packaged goods companies like Procter and Gamble, General Foods and Unilever developed the discipline of brand management, or marketing as we know it today, when they noticed the quality levels of products being offered by competitors around them improve. A brand manager would be responsible for giving a product an identity that distinguished it from nearly indistinguishable competitors.” Note that last sentence. From our perspective, the obvious response and clear “no brainer” solution to being “nearly indistinguishable” is to get different: design a new space, come up with something new, and make others play a game you created. But that's not what most “marketing & branding experts” decided. Instead, they said, “Let's ignore the fact there is nothing unique about us, our product, or what we do for the world. Instead, let's do some branding.” As if sprinkling some kind of magic dust on your “brand” (changing the colors, the font, the logo design, etc.) is going to drive a breakthrough in growth. Or, even worse, “Let's call ourselves a community. Let's use big, all-encompassing, undifferentiated language to make ourselves appeal to everyone. Something like, ‘We are an authentic, purpose-driven brand.'” Thus, “the brand cult” was formed—and The Big Brand Lie began. If you'd like to hear the rest of the article, download and listen to this episode. You can also check it out at Category Pirates. Who knows, you might find that you have a little pirate in you as well.

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about the two categories of Problems and Opportunities that we face, and the questions that we need to ask to figure out what we're dealing with when an issue or an opportunity arrives. Know the Category of Problems / Opportunities First If you're a business leader or marketing leader, you're an entrepreneur. Of course, your job is to deal with problems and opportunities as they arise. So when any new problem or opportunity arises first, let's think about what is the context of it? What type of problem or opportunity is it? It turns out there's really only two big problems that we face. One, knowing what to do and two, doing it. So when an issue, opportunity, or a problem comes up, it is critical that we ask the questions that we need to ask to understand: “Is this a ‘knowing what to do' problem, or is this a ‘doing it' problem?” Most people just jump to problem solving before they know what category of problem they're solving. Of course, solving a ‘knowing what to do' problem a.k.a. strategy is very different from solving a ‘doing it' problem a.k.a. execution. So the next time something pops up, ask yourself and your colleagues, is this a ‘knowing what to do' problem or ‘doing it' problem? Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let us talk about the 14 reasons why you should not create a category. You believe in hustling – If you are one of those hustle porn believers, then you believe it's all about hard work and more hard work. Hamsters in wheels hustle, but they never get anywhere. You Believe that the best brand wins – Microsoft spent billions of dollars putting their brand on retail stores, and had their ass handed to them. Google tried to compete head-on with Facebook with Google Plus, and got their ass handed to them. So if you believe the best brand wins, don't create a category. You believe the best product wins – This mindset means you're aiming for market share instead of creating one. If you like to change “strategy” often, you should not create a category. If you're a mercenary, not a missionary – That is to say, you're only in it for the money. You think “re-branding” will drive growth – When a new CMO comes on board, I always look: is there a rebrand that comes out in the next six months? Because nine times out of ten, when a new CMO immediately rebranded the company, they have their head on backwards or up their ass, You believe in achieving “product/market fit” – There are a few phrases that have done the damage that that one has done because it tricks legendary marketers and entrepreneurs to thinking they should fit their product into a market. There's no legend that ever did that. “Go-to-market” sounds like a smart thing to do – In many ways, category design is about making the market come to you. You think category design is a marketing exercise – If you just want to do a marketing exercise, hire some marketing people to reshuffle some words in your website and call it the day. Category designers are expensive and hard to find – That's true, because they're in massive demand. You think you can win on quality, features, and price – Again, aiming for market share. If you believe that marketing products is smarter than marketing problems – Do you believe that you want to market your products, and not the problems? You probably shouldn't create a category. You think asking customers what they want is the best strategy – There are a lot of people who say that business is really not that hard. Just ask me what they want and give it to them.Well, in a blind taste test, 10 out of 10 people said that bottled water was bottled water, and before Évian, 10 out of 10 people said they wouldn't pay for it. So remember the sage words of Henry Ford: “If I'd ask people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.” You should not create a category because creating demand takes a lot more thinking than capturing demand. – It's easy to try and run some Google ads and try to capture demand. But the question is, or the issue is she who creates the demand wins. That's it, folks. Please stay safe. Stay legendary. And the quote I'll leave you with today says, “If you don't think you should create a category, then you probably shouldn't.” Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners.

This episode is based on the Category Pirates  Newsletter.  In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we continue our discussion on Native Digitals and the impact they are having on the way we live, work, and play. You might find this episode confusing if you haven't checked out the last two episodes (LOM 116 & LOM 117). You should definitely check them out to be informed of what exactly are Native Digitals and their relevance. As for this episode, I will try and re-create some of my conversations with entrepreneurs, CEOs & VCs lately about the biggest sea-change in a very long time that is hiding in plain sight. Though for some reason, most people are not talking about it. Native Digitals vs Native Analogs Best I can tell Native Analogs (people who are over 35 years old) are pretty much asleep to a massive transformation. The fact that Native Digitals are the first generation of humans ever to grow up integrated with technology and have a digital life experience is lost to them. The problem with this is the disconnect between a company trying to move into the digital age, but still have Native Analogs for their CEO. Take for instance the WSJ article about working from home. Now that restrictions are lessening, most Native Analog bosses want their employees to be back in the office. Though Native Digitals think otherwise. “Many CEOs say their companies function best when employees can interact in person. (Though) Workers have indicated in surveys that they want greater flexibility about where and how they work.” – Wall Street Journal So Native Analog CEOs are saying you've got to come back to work. Though a lot of employees, a meaningful percentage of them, are millennials who want to continue working digitally from their homes. Native Digitals are even saying that they'd rather quit than go back to the old office system. So if you're a company looking to hire after this new normal, working remote could very well be the signing bonus you can offer to these Native Digitals. On Digital Creation vs Digital Transformation The big AHA moment for me here is that this new category of humans are creating a new category of work. They're not just being transformed digitally. It's being created anew in the digital space. It's not just creating an imitation of the office remotely, the remote digital space is their office. So this Native Digital versus Native Analog conversation has been coming up a lot with entrepreneurs and marketers. The reason behind this is it has profound implications for how we build companies, products, categories, and brands. “I think the first thing it means is if you're a Native Analog is that you got to start off by realizing you don't get it and you got to build a bridge to the Native Digitals. It's sort of like if you're a woman, you can empathize about what it might be like to be a man, but you will never truly get it. And of course, the opposite is true as well. ” – Christopher Lochhead In order to work together, we need to build bridges of understanding to really get some powerful things done. Because as somebody who is Native Analog who works with other Native Analogs and a lot of Native Digitals, there's something magical here when the two generations could come together. To hear more on how you can transform yourself to become more digital, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006,

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's have a very different conversation about your career. Here's how you can take the plunge and achieve your “Personal IPO”. This episode is based on the Category Pirates

Welcome to a special two-part series of Lochhead on Marketing, where I answer two of the most important questions in my life and career. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, give it a listen here: 2 Legendary Questions (Part 1). Go on, we'll wait. Now that you're all set, here's part two. Let's go! The Legendary Question at the End of a Conversation If you are an avid listener of Follow Your Different, you have heard me ask this question multiple times. An old friend and mentor of mine named George Brown got me into asking the same question. It goes like this: “Is there anything else?” Now, why is that a powerful question, you might ask? First of all, if you went to Sales School, you know that there are two kinds of questions if you look at things on a higher level. There's open probes and closed probes. A closed probe is a question designed to get a specific answer, while an open probe sort of leaves it to the one that was questioned. If you listen to me on Follow Your Different, I tend to ask more open questions. Those are all open probes and they're designed to elicit a lot of information. So generally, when you ask an open probe, hopefully you'll get more information from the person you're in communication with. Is There Anything Else? Now, as to why this particular question is so powerful in a conversation, particularly at the end, it's like this: Often in any conversation, you get the most powerful information at the end. So when you ask someone if there is anything else, what you're really saying to them is, “Hey, anything else on your mind?” This can elicit a feeling that they might not have given enough information before, and so it opens them up to share more, which you can then follow up with some close probing questions specific to the new information. You will notice how often that question blows something wide open and when it does. It's also a good way to keep the conversation focused on a topic you might be interested in continuing the conversation on, rather than getting sidetracked by another topic. Particularly when the person turns the table and tries to turn the tables on you. All right. That's our two-part series on Legendary Questions, starting with “Is this legendary work?”/ “Do you think this is legendary work”, and finishing with “Is there anything else?” I hope you put these two legendary questions to good use. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

Welcome to a special two-part series of Lochhead on Marketing, where I answer two of the most important questions in my life and career. Are you curious as to what those questions are? Stay tuned to find out. My Favorite Question to Ask You need a bit of back story for the first question. In 2006, I was the head of marketing for a software company called Mercury Interactive. By June of that year, we sold the company for Hewlett-Packard for 4.5 billion dollars, which was a sizeable amount back then. So as part of the transition to HP, our team met with the team in charge of marketing for the announcement of the acquisition. The marketing strategy was being handled by a famous ad agency; one you'd probably recognize if I describe one of their projects. After we made our introductions, the head of HP marketing asked me if I had any questions before they start with the presentation. So I asked them a question: “Do you think what you are about to show us is legendary work?” That question made them pause for a bit, and the head of said ad agency looked at the head of HP marketing and said, “Can we have two more days?” Good on them for realizing that they could do better, but it would've been better if they gave it their 100% in the first place. Setting the Bar High So one of my favorite questions to ask at the beginning of any meeting where somebody is about to show you something. On this case, it was ad creative, but it could be anything. It could be a product prototype, a marketing plan, or a category design. It could even be the justification for why we should buy Company X. Whatever the thing is that they're about to present, my favorite question to ask before that is, do you think this work? That is to say, the work they're about to show is legendary. What I learned over time is if you want to set a high bar for excellence in your organization, it's interesting to find out where other people's bar for excellence is. Because if they don't bother to show you their best or legendary self, then why would you want to see it? Now, it's a different situation when you have something that is a work in progress, and need help in making it legendary. In which case, I ask this question instead: “Do you think we're off to a legendary start?” Though if you are presenting something that you think is final or close to the final work, you'll always get the same question from me: “Do you think this is legendary work?” If you want to learn more about my two legendary questions, listen to this episode and check out part two coming soon! Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

These days, we hear a non-stop barrage of career advice. Some of them is good, but a lot of them are not. In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about what might be the only career advice that matters. Relationships, Marriages, and Divorce By now, you may have heard of Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a divorce, and that Jeff Bezos and McKenzie Scott got divorced a couple of years ago. You might be wondering why we brought this up. You see, these people are some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs and biggest philanthropists ever. According to hustle porn stars and business advice gurus, these are the people we should aspire to be. Yet for whatever reason, their marriage didn't work out. While there is merit to saying that sometimes divorcing doesn't mean it failed, but just ran its likely course, it does make you wonder. “The reality is if your personal life isn't working, all the money in the world can't save you.” – Christopher Lochhead Living a Legendary Life Which brings us to the second point: the decision about who your significant other or partner is going to be is arguably the biggest decision that you will make. Because when it works, it is the foundation for designing a legendary life. If it doesn't work, everything just seems out of place. So we should ask ourselves: are we designing our life around our work or our work around our life? While this is not necessarily a binary decision, most people would want to live a legendary life. “I think what most of us want is we want to have a legendary life. And whether we're working or in our marriage, our primary relationship or with our family and friends, we want to have what you might think of as a 360-degree life.” – Christopher Lochhead   Getting Things Right Herein lies the question: is it possible to get everything right all the time? Of course not. Though in general, it is what most of us are trying to do. In that context, our work sits inside of our non-work life. So if you're somebody who's been working too hard, work 80 to 100 hours a week and travel two to four hundred thousand miles a year on a plane, here's a career advice. Ask yourself: what am I working for? We're living at a time of massive personal self-examination that has been brought on by the pandemic. We recently wrote a Category Pirates about this, how people are going YOLO, YOLO being an expression for you only live once. Now is a time for consideration. And I think what these high-profile divorces tell us as somebody who's been divorced myself, is that it's time to consider our work in the context of our lives. Links A Very “Different” Approach To A Legendary Career: YOLO And Achieve Your Personal IPO Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

With Category Design or Category Creation strategy, we often talk about the distinction between capturing existing demand, and creating new demand. In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about an in-between strategy that category designers use as a powerful tool in creating demand. That is to dam existing demand and redirect it in their own way, like the way a dam redirects water. Damming the Demand Marc Benioff, found of Salesforce.com, used this approach when marketing his new category. Bear in mind that when he launched Salesforce Automation as a CRM, CRM was already an established category. What made Benioff legendary is how he redirected the CRM traffic to Salesforce. All it took was an idea: Sure, you want CRM, but you don’t want one that’s only available on-premise. Cloud CRM is where it’s at. By adding a modifier to CRM, he dammed the demand for the old category and redirected it to his own. He’s creating a difference that did not exist in the minds of the market. Most importantly, he creates a new choice for them. Expanding Your Reach Much like Salesforce, Peloton did the exact same thing and ran away with it. They offered an alternative to boutique fitness in the form of home fitness. Yet again, it’s a choice that the market did not anticipate would have a demand. Peloton harnessed that demand and redirected it to their new category. From there, they expanded it from Spin classes to treads. Eventually, they added home classes for Yoga, Pilates, and other activities usually reserved for group boutique fitness. The use of the term Home Fitness created a demand that wasn't there before. It's like creating the void yourself and filling it up with your own category creation. Tried and Tested in Category Creation It turns out damming demand has been around for a long time. Henry Ford did the same thing with his new category back then. He dammed the demand for a horse and buggy with his new category name. His new innovative category? It was the horseless carriage. The same could be said for Marty Cooper and his wireless phone, which lead to the mobile phone category. “Sometimes, new categories are named by what they are not. And when a category is named by what it is not, the category designer is purposely trying to dam demand.” – Christopher Lochhead While Microsoft did not follow this model, they nonetheless created a new demand from existing categories. They did so by combining their word processor, presentation, and spreadsheet application into a bigger category that is Microsoft Office. Now, you don’t have to buy each software separately, and most consumers expect other companies that offer the same services to also have everything in one whole bundle. So when you’re designing a new category, ask yourself: Where is existing demand that we can dam to drive revenue in the near term? Afterwards, how do we leverage the demand in the existing category to expand the demand of our own category design? Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about how to stand out. In many ways, if you want to do legendary marketing, you need to do what the opposite of what most people do.   Doing the Opposite As part of the mega category people refer to as Creators, there was something that we’ve noticed: People spend a lot of time telling other people how awesome they are. When you start looking at creator marketing, what you’ll see is a lot of creators just touting their best achievements and how great they are. Ergo, you should consume the content they create so you can share in his glory, or something. So what did we do? First of all, we do very little paid advertising. Recently, our friends at Podcast Magazine ran their annual edition that has a directory of all the top podcasts. What we did was buy a full-page ad in it. Though rather than your usual positive reviews and highlights, we ran it featuring negative reviews. “We ran an ad featuring negative reviews: “Off-putting to some” from The Economist and The Fall. “Annoying host uses profanity needlessly”, and “Very disappointing”. So imagine a photo of myself with those big headlines next to me.” – Christopher Lochhead   Follow Your Different You might be asking: Why do this? John Bielenberg talks about how he’s always looking for the dog with the red hat. In other words, he’s looking for ways in order to stand out. At a time where people are bombarded with information from all sides, people have learned to tune things out. So if they see something that’s pretty much the same as any other information they’ve seen before, they pay less attention to it. Yet if something different suddenly comes along, say a dog with a red hat, you’d immediately notice it. Because it’s new and it’s not something you see every day. So I would encourage people to do the opposite of everyone else and stand out amongst the crowd. “In our case here with this ad, the creator industry is stuffed with what I would call self-congratulatory influencers and hustle porn stars. They are all very busy breaking their arms, patting themselves on the back. So we said, what's the opposite? Well, the opposite is running an ad with negative reviews in it.” – Christopher Lochhead   Things that Drive Us If you’re not convinced or still wondering why we did all this, here are seven key things that were driving us… sort of. It was Funny It’s Different It's Provocative This is a first in #podcasting Category designers force a choice, not a comparison Knowing who is NOT your customer, is more important than know who IS your customer I want to empower all creators to say "fuck the haters!" We share that story with you to encourage you to think in broad and unconventional ways before you're going to take on any marketing or advertising. Ask yourself: “what's the opposite of what everyone else would do here? What's provocative? What's funny?”  You ask yourself, “what is everybody in our industry doing? What is the exact opposite of that?” You don't have to do exactly the opposite. Just map it out and see what others are not doing, and eventually new ideas will probably emerge. As you're looking for those new ideas, start with what's the opposite. Do what John Bielenberg suggests, and go find your dog with a red hat.   Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the foun...

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let us talk about some advice for 30 year old marketers. I have been asked this question a bunch of times, so I just put together my response as a LinkedIn post. A lot of people though it was a great list, so I thought I’d share it with you. Making the List As said earlier, this list was originally a LinkedIn post, and it’s a list of practical advice for 30 year old marketers. There were some who asked if it was in a certain order, and one outright challenged me to do so. I did not want to do that because I wanted to present them as ideas. Because what might be important for me might not be for others. Sure enough in the comments, different things on the list resonated with different people. Though there is an argument to be made about creating lists in certain order, so as to elicit something close to a call to action. “It seems we live in a world of prescriptions, where people want to do lists and more and more inane sort of business and marketing advice. You know, the seven things Elon Musk does before breakfast. And we've gotten to a place where a lot of content about business, about self-help, about marketing is very pablumatic and sort of at a prescription level, do this, do that, etc.” – Christopher Lochhead While we do create prescription type articles, mostly on what you should and shouldn’t do, that’s not how we work most of the time. Our job is to give people ideas, and with those ideas, they can come up with different combinations or new ways to approach things. We feel that having something close to a to-do list hinders that process. The Advice for 30 Year Old Marketers That said, here’s the list of Advice for 30 Year Old Marketers, in no particular order: Do legendary work Position yourself or be positioned You're not too young to be a CMO, or start a company Stop giving a shit about what other people think of you, it’s a trap Thinking about thinking is the most important thinking Most marketers have been recruited into the cult of the brand Categories make brands, not the other way around Marketers who create new demand, are most in demand They are called category designers Nobody legendary is working on their “personal brand” The most influential people in the world are not “influencers” Only work on legendary teams If your company is not going to be a category queen, quit Be very careful who’s content you consume 90% of what we get taught about marketing is BS Learn to write Make friends with other Superstar 30 year old’s One day, you might rule the world together It goes by fast, soak up every second Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

Christopher Lochhead is a leader in the category of “dialogue podcasts”. He's a #1 Bestselling Amazon Author, Top 50 Apple Podcaster, startup advisor, and venture capital limited partner. He has advised over 50 Silicon Valley tech startups and is former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and entrepreneur. He's been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. Lochhead is a host of podcast, “Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different” and co-author of #1 best seller “Niche Down: How to become legendary by being different” and Harper Collins' bestseller, “Play Bigger: How pirates, dreamers and innovators create and dominate markets”. He served as chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion, co-founded marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD, was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at Vantive, a CRM software firm. He's a dyslexic paperboy from Montreal with Scottish roots who got thrown out of school at 18 and started his first company.  In over thirty years in business he has designed and dominated market categories, IPO'd, bought and sold over 30 companies, made a lot of friends, a handful of enemies, drank a lot of whiskey, traveled over 6 million air miles, experienced the bliss of winning, the pain of failure and learned how to laugh about the whole thing. He loves his family and friends, having amazing conversations and thinks The Ramones are legendary, Tom Waits is a genius, “The Big Lebowski” is a philosophy, George Carlin was right, and loves riding mountains and waves. Watch the full episode here: https://projectegg.co/christopher-lochhead About The Project EGG Show: The Project EGG Show is a video talk show that introduces you to entrepreneurs from around the world. It is broadcast from studios in Metairie, Louisiana to online platforms including YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Stitcher, and hosted by Ben Gothard. Our goal is to give you a fresh, unscripted and unedited look into the lives of real entrepreneurs from around the globe. From billionaires to New York Times best selling authors to Emmy Award winners to Forbes 30 Under 30 recipients to TEDx speakers – we present their real stories – uncensored and uncut. Subscribe To The Show: https://projectegg.co/podcast/ Get Access To: 1. Resources: https://projectegg.co/resources/ 2. Financing Solutions: https://projectegg.co/epoch/ 3. Payment Solutions: https://projectegg.co/sempr/ 4. Services: https://projectegg.co/resources#services 5. Courses: https://projectegg.co/resources#courses 6. Software: https://projectegg.co/resources#software 7. Book: https://projectegg.co/resources#books --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/projectegg/support

In this very special Interview. We are bringing to you a very special webinar episode of The Rich Life Academy Millionaire Mentor of The Month, Mr. Christopher Lochhead! His wins and fails in his life have shaped him to be the amazing entrepreneur he is today. He is RAW and unfiltered, calls it as it is and in simple, why fit in? when you can stand out! Tune in to this awesome episode. Let's dive in!   The episode provided by: The Rich Life Academy For more information please visit TheRichLifeAcademy.com   Christopher Lochhead is a rockstar in business, an entrepreneur, advisor/investor to over 50 venture-backed startups, is a venture capital limited partner and a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO, owns the Legends and Losers Podcast which is one of the top business podcasts in the world right now, and is a “Top 30” rated Podcaster.   He's also a #1 Best Selling Amazon Author, and co-author of two bestsellers: Niche Down: How To Become Legendary By Being Different, and Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets. He's been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “Off-putting to some” by The Economist. In this episode of Millionaire Mindcast Podcast, a powerful guest, Christopher Lochhead who shares things that he executed in order to reach and live a rich life that you can pick and applies to yours. Christopher grew up in a family where a lack of money was always present. At 17-years-old, he decided to do something meaningful with his life. Inspired by what he called the ‘angel of his life' his Grandfather, who truly believed him, supports, inspires and motivates him that he can do anything and be anything. He decided to be successful, decided to be smart, and really wanted to do legendary things. Chris put himself in those positions to be successful and let himself learned, grew, and took a massive risk. As a result, Chris and his brother Jack started their company with no money, no experience, no education, no relationships of any kind. There's been a lot of losses along the way. His whole career was just about trying to build companies and categories, in some cases loss and some cases win. He had been in those places of humiliation many times, lost money, been fired for so many times, but learned from those losses and moved forward. On the other side, he gained the most important things, the joy, experiences, memories, relationships, and the network. In 10 years, he got a tremendous amount of accomplishment. At 28-years-old, he became a millionaire. He does great things and wins with over $400 billion exits. Now, end up with having a life that's fun, and interesting. He's in the fun part of life that he never really thought about which is helping other people getting their goals and learning at the same time with his podcast. Chris focused on having a good time and hopefully make a very big difference. He's an entrepreneur trying to do something exponentially different as opposed to incrementally better. To Chris, it's important to set goals, it doesn't matter if you achieved them, it's about who you become in the process. He trained himself to be a better person, a person that you can count on, somebody who produce results. He chose to be that guy because we have that option in everything. Also, work hard and believe in yourself. When you fail, get up and try again. Confidence comes from training yourself to produce legendary results. It doesn't come from the people's encouragement but proving to yourself that you can do it. Some Questions I Ask: Who is Christopher Lochhead and share us your journey on your personal and professional career. (11:37) How did you get on the path to following your different and what motivates you to go on? (19:03) How did you handle all of the lows throughout the years? (27:35) How did you make your plans and vision? (36:15) What's pacing looks like to you? (39:00) Do you believe in this idea of process & goal-setting so you can make decisions that align with your purpose? (45:16) How did you develop such amazing relationships with people? (51:07) Austin: How much do you care about being professional? (01:05:22) How do you approach your health? (01:10:40) Chris' advice for young aspiring entrepreneurs. (01:16:10) In This Episode, You Will Learn: How he fulfilled his dream of making it to Silicon Valley. (22:34) Things that made his life worth it and fuel happiness despite all the failures. (35:27) The hustle pornstars. (37:46) The good thing of being strategically flexible or agile and being opportunistic. (47:10) How to drive yourself forward. (49:07) The likability factors. (01:00:29) How to be yourself? (01:08:30) Quotes: “Entrepreneurship was a way out.” “I felt like there was something more for me.” “Have a good time and hopefully make a very big difference.” “In life, you have to position yourself for who you become position.” “It's all goes back to a set of decisions and commitments.” “There are things that happen to us that are beyond our control.” “To execute that design we can make a big shit happen.” “Nobody willing to bet on me, I bet on myself.” “I live a life that I really wanted to live.” “You trained yourself to be a warrior in life and in business.” “To do legendary shit is going to require work.” “Life takes you in twists and turns.” “Opportunities show up that you never thought would show up.” “The universe will rewards you from generating legendary.” “Life presents you with opportunities.” “We all have that choice.” “Confidence comes from results.” “Confidence comes from training.” “Confidence comes from training yourself to produce legendary results and then producing those results.” “Confidence is attractive.” “You are what you eat.” “This word different is so powerful.” Resources Mentioned: 038 Kerri Walsh Jennings Volleyball Legend: An Inspired Life The Miracle Equation book by Hal Elrod Connect with Christopher Lochhead: Website LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Instagram

Christopher Lochhead hosts the Legends and Losers podcast and is co-author of Harper Collins' “instant classic” "Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets" and "Niche Down: How to become legendary by being different".  Christopher is a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO (Mercury Interactive, Scient, Vantive) and entrepreneur. He's been an advisor/investor in over 50 Silicon Valley startups. Fast Company Magazine calls him a “Human Exclamation Point,” The Marketing Journal says he's one of “The Best Minds in Marketing” and The Economist calls him “off-putting to some.”

Christopher Lochhead hosts the Legends and Losers podcast and is co-author of Harper Collins' “instant classic” "Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets" and "Niche Down: How to become legendary by being different". Christopher is a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO (Mercury Interactive, Scient, Vantive) and entrepreneur. He's been an advisor/investor in over 50 Silicon Valley startups. Fast Company Magazine calls him a “Human Exclamation Point,” The Marketing Journal says he's one of “The Best Minds in Marketing” and The Economist calls him “off-putting to some.” At 18 he got thrown out of school and with no other options he started a company. He can recite much of The Big Lebowski, but can't remember his wife's phone number. He's an ass kicking speaker, surf and ski bum and proud advisor to non-profit 1 Life Fully Lived, living happily ever after in Santa Cruz California.

Christopher Lochhead is the host of “The Podcast Silicon Valley Needs” — Legends & Losers, and the co-author of Harper Collins' “instant classic,” Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets. Christopher is a former three-time, Silicon Valley public company CMO and entrepreneur. The Marketing Journal calls him one of “The Best Minds in Marketing,” Fast Company Magazine calls him a “Human Exclamation Point,” The Economist calls him “off -putting to some,” and Newsweek calls him, “The Howard Stern of Entrepreneurialism.” At 18 he got thrown out of school, and with no other options he started a company. After 30 years in business he retired. Christopher can recite much of The Big Lebowski, but can't remember his wife's phone number. He's a proud advisor to non-profit 1Life Fully Lived, a surf and ski bum who gives the occasional ass-kicking talk. He's living happily ever after with an amazing woman, a great tribe and six little dinosaurs in Santa Cruz California.  Follow Christopher on Twitter at @lochhead. He can also be found on LinkedIn and https://www.legendsandlosers.com/disenchanted.   You'll Learn: How Christopher overcame humble beginnings and dyslexia to grow a legendary career in Silicon Valley. How he failed in his first business, despite having growing revenue. How he bounced back with his second business, which was acquired by a CRM company, catapulting him to his first stint as CMO of a publicly traded company. Why category kings take 2/3's of the economics in any category. Why it's not enough to be good at what you do, you also have to understand the game you're playing.   3 Key Points: We're living in an increasingly winner-take all world. Legendary companies prosecute the “magic triangle” of product, company & category. Some of the greatest category kings in history have no clue how they became category kings.   Resources Mention: Superconsumers: A Simple, Speedy, and Sustainable Path to Superior Growth by Eddie Yoon Eddie Yoon on Legends & Losers: Growth Hacking Market Categories Brent Jones on Legends & Losers: From Super Bowl Champion 49er to Venture Capital Legend w/Brent Jones   Get New Show Alters in Facebook Messenger!  Go to http://bit.ly/mdshowbot to sign up. It's a #chatbot and it's pretty cool!   Killer Resources: Ready to go pro but aren't sure if College is the right choice for you? Get my Ultimate Digital Marketing College Guide. Like the podcast? Then you'll love the book! Grab Beyond Buzzwords on Amazon. In the last three months of the 2016 Presidential election fake news outperformed real news on Facebook. DON'T be taken advantage of. Our Digital Discernment course teaches you how to call B.S. online.   Support this podcast: Like what you hear? Consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/MarketingDisenchanted. I'm a small, independent podcaster so your support goes a long way in making sure I have the funds to keep the podcast going. Go to Patreon.com and check out my awesome pledge levels. You're doing a good deed and will be rewarded handsomely for it! Thanks in advance.   Like what you hear? Book me to speak! While podcasting is a personal joy of mine, nothing beats connecting with like-minded people in person. Go to ConsultTemi.com to book me for your next conference, meeting or event.   Let's Connect!  Follow me on Twitter Connect on LinkedIn Shoot me an email: Temi at ConsultTemi.com (Sorry, had to break the email link to stymie the bots… damned bots.)