Showing results by author "Christopher Lochhead" in All Categories

Christmas is a lightning strike for Christianity (not unlike how Salesforce created Dreamforce, their yearly conference). It happens once per year, and introduces the masses to the POV of Christianity ("Jesus died for our sins") without requiring any real religious participation. If you want to go to Christmas Eve mass, churches are open. And if you just want to Amazon Prime a bunch of gifts for your nieces and nephews and get drunk on spiked eggnog, God bless you!

Short, sweet, and jam-packed with incredibly valuable insights, this “mini-book” shares unique insight into what it takes to become a thought leader and successfully build a unique and differentiated category.

A small start-up based in Chicago came up with a radically different idea to help small businesses generate buzz, awareness, and customer acquisition. These digital coupons were called Groupons. Ten years later, Groupon has become a thing of the past, with a market cap of less than $1 billion.

Business media “platforms” and social media platforms have a problem. The way content gets created, distributed, and monetized today is being radically transformed—and most people haven’t noticed yet. And up until now, creators have not been paid (fairly) for their work. Short, sweet, and jam-packed with incredibly valuable insights, this audiobook is the ultimate guide for creators who want to understand how to make the most of the changing media landscape.

The Magic Triangle is the combination of product design, company design, and category design that produces legendary outcomes in the world of business. All three elements—company design, product design, and category design—work together and balance each other to exert great force on a company’s success and value. And the legendary, enduring companies get these three elements of company design, product design, and category design in such a state of synchronicity that they reinforce each other.

From early in life, we’re taught to compete in a preexisting game of comparison designed by someone else (listen to this sentence three times). And in doing so, we unconsciously submit to someone else’s rules. In business, this seems smart. Buy Google Ads for the keywords that indicate someone is already shopping and yell, “Pick me! Pick me!” The unquestioned rationale is: Demand exists, and if our business can tap into that existing demand, we will find customers—and customers lead to profits.

The same way startups work hard to one day achieve a legendary liquidity moment and go public, the same can be said about individuals who achieve a certain level of autonomy and financial freedom in their personal lives. And in the wake of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear this desire for freedom is more desirable than ever.

In 2005, a little book called Blue Ocean Strategy grew into a global best seller. With over four million copies sold and industry recognition as “one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written”, Blue Ocean Strategy changed the way many people thought about business. We tip our hats to the title, and the framing of the idea, because it is a legendary example of languaging. More than 15 years later, you will still hear people in business meetings referencing “blue oceans” and “red oceans”. But...there are a few problems.

Category Pirates - Christopher Lochhead, Eddie Yoon, and Nicolas Cole - walk listeners through arguably the most important aspect of going public: writing the S-1. If there was ever a way to measure public company readiness, the S-1 document would be it. Within the first few lines of a company’s S-1, you can immediately tell whether they are positioning themselves in the context of the past, or are educating investors on a different (and exponentially more valuable) future.

Lochhead on Marketing™ is the award winning, chart topping podcast for entrepreneurs, marketers, and category designers with a different mind. Most people do not like it.