Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Dominate Your Category: Category Creation with Ryan Alford and Guest Christopher Lochhead

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Welcome to this week's episode on The Radcast! Get ready for the ultimate guide for category creators with marketing legend Christopher Lochhead.In this episode on The Radcast, host Ryan Alford talks with guest Christopher Lochhead about the ways brands can be the kings and queens of their category. They also dissect what brands are currently doing well in the marketing space, and how brands can better create content for each platform. This is an amazing episode as  Chris opens up about the importance of category creation while also sharing great insights for exactly how to go about this.To learn more about Category Pirates, follow Christopher Lochhead on LinkedIn, or by visiting https://www.categorypirates.com/ If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, let us know by visiting our website www.theradcast.com or leave us a review on Apple Podcast. Be sure to keep up with all that's radical from @ryanalford @radical_results @the.rad.cast If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

you're listening to the radcast if it's radical we cover it here's your host ryan all hey guys what's up it's ryan allford welcome to the latest edition of the radcast coming to you live from the studios here in greenville, South Carolina, the home of the coolest, the baddest, the motherfucking greatest, in my own mind at least, agency that is radical. I'm here today with, I'll call it a marketing hero. I'm going to go there, Christopher. I'm just going to go straight at it.

I'm going to be honest. But marketing legend, number one Apple podcast host, best-selling author, and just an all-around category pirate that is Christopher Lockhead. What's up, brother? Nice to see you, Ryan. Thank you for that. Hey, man. Hyperbole is in my blood. Some of us in marketing come by it naturally. I know. It's all I've done for 20 years. So anyway, I really appreciate you coming on again, read the books or listen to them. I've definitely listened to the podcast and my head on marketing and a number of things.

You've been out there for a number of times and definitely looked up you and mentioned to you pre-episode that I quoted even one of your latest episodes from your podcast about zigging when everyone else is zagging, to use my terms and maybe not yours. But I think that was the gist of what you're getting at. And that's kind of been the foundation of a lot of your career, right? Yeah. I mean, most people don't challenge the way that it is. And the aha is, of course, the way that it is now is that way because somebody changed the way that it was. And most people accept the way that it is. And I'm just one of those people who've spent my entire adult life questioning the way that it is and saying, well, why isn't this some other way? Well, you've definitely done that. And, you know, let's start down that path a little bit.

You know, I know your stuff's out there. People can find you are probably already listening to you, especially a lot of the marketing junkies that are listeners of the Radcast. But let's just start down. Let's at least give the, I'm sure we could talk the entire episode about your past and all that, but I'd love to know what shaped that worldview through the lens of your background and all of those things in marketing. I think I got my start the way a lot of entrepreneurs do, Ryan, which is, you know, some people for who, some people entrepreneurship is really a way up in the world. And, you know, if you were lucky enough to go to Stanford or Harvard and write some awesome

algorithm or some, create some carbodigulator and roll on out to Sandhill Road in Silicon Valley and raise 200 million bucks and do that, then God bless you. Uh, some of us didn't start that way. I got thrown out of school at 18 for being stupid. And so really with very few options, um, I was working as a orderly in a hospital. Um, and so my options at 18, after I got thrown out of school were, uh, start a company and be an entrepreneur or shave guys balls for a living. And so, uh, I decided to start a company. Good path. I love it. Did that, did that alone, you know, did any of the pirates come from that that diversion at all maybe a little i will tell you one thing though when you walk into a guy's uh hospital

room and you say hey ryan my name's chris i'm your orderly and uh i'm here to give you a shave today and often i would hear this well you know i. I said, you probably didn't shave where I'm going to shave you. Holy shit. I love it. We're going right after here early on the Radcast joined by Christopher Lockhead, who is one of the marketing legends out there. You know, it's interesting. I thought about this, Christopher. You know, I learned, you know, I've come up on the ad agency side of the business, you know.

And marketing and advertising are actually a little different. Some people may not recognize that and they're not the industry, but you definitely, I think more on the overall marketing. Cause I mean, you're, I mean, you're, you're kind of came up through a different channel than the historical legends of advertising, correct? Yeah, for sure. I mean, my first real job in marketing was at 27 years old when I became the head of marketing for a publicly traded software company. And so now I had done a lot of marketing before that, but my first executive job in marketing was head of marketing for a publicly traded software company at a pretty young age. Marketing directly for software and software

specifically. Now, my mind gets so convoluted now thinking about software and marketing because it's so SaaS driven, so commerce driven now. performance marketing, you know, God, you know, you and I, I just want to like dab myself in the arm sometimes when we throw some of these terms around. And I look, I get it. It's like there's been so much pressure put on marketing and the CMO now is the first person to go at any company. But it's, you know, I don't know your perspective on where that's all landed. What, in terms of why CMOs get fired? No, just performance marketing and SaaS marketing and all that comparative to marketing when you were 27. I mean, so a lot of it, of course, technologies have changed and what you can do

is at a level of precision that you couldn't do it before and that's cool i'm a huge fan of new technology i you know i want to i want to know what's going on i want to experiment with all the new stuff i have lots of uh young people in my life who are great at that stuff uh one of my partners in category pirates nicholas cole he's 30 years old you You know, he's native digital. And so I love learning from these folks. The key principles of marketing, though, really have not changed, right? And so some of the tactics, some of the technologies, that's changed.

But the reality of how you design categories is still the same. The reality of how you create demand and capture categories is still the same. The reality of how you create demand and capture demand is still the same. The reality around how you build legendary breakthrough products is still the same. And some of the approaches of how we get there are very different, but at a principle level, a lot of the stuff's the same. And then in certain cases, you know, new technologies have opened up, if you will, new principles. And that's cool, too. But yes, shit has changed a lot in the last 30 years or so. What's the balance between, you know, when you think about category design and category development, the balance between because I almost my mind gets in this product space versus the brand space, you know, when category

developed because a brand is not necessarily the category, not necessarily the brand at all times. It can certainly live and breathe it. What are the balances in, you know, product, you know, like, because sometimes you don't intrinsically have a product that's developed the category. So what's the balance you feel like in how you help companies or have helped over time? So at a high level, the companies that really break through, the companies that change the future, the companies that are worth the most going forward, they really get three things

right at the same time. We call it prosec at the same time. We call it prosecute the magic triangle. And what that means is they get a company design, business model, culture, distribution, all of those things. They get product design. So do we have a truly breakthrough product that solves a unique problem in a completely differentiated way. And they get category design, right? So product, company, and category. And if you get all three of those right at the right moment in time, that's how you get Airbnb. That's how you get Zoom. That's how you get, you know, pick your breakthrough company.

And, you know, based on our research, based on our experience, based on my experience of doing this for over 30 years, it really is equal parts of those three. The one addition I'd put, I'd say there, Ryan, is of those three, there's one that is a single point of failure and that's category. Because if there's no market, there's no marketing that you can get a, you can build a legendary product. You can build a legendary company business model. But if you don't have a category, there is nobody that's going to buy it. So that's kind of problem one. Problem number two is if you look at most new, whether it's a startup or an innovative new product that is trying to pioneer an innovative new category from an existing company, the same dynamics are true.

If you get category right, once people see something, they can't unsee it. And, you know, so if you look at a company like Lululemon is a great example, right? Leggings had been around for zillions of years. They had the genius to they created a new category, athleisure, and then they built the dominant brand, if you will, the category queen in the category. If you look at the magic triangle, A, from a product perspective, well, there were some innovative things, no question, and some good design and they've done good product things, leggings, yoga, where workout, where, I mean, you know, Prana had been around forever. Nike had been around forever under armor. These companies existed, right? So really not that much from a innovation perspective on

the product side, on the company side, Lululemon is a shitty company. Its founder has said horrible, stupid things about women's bodies and women's behinds and all this stuff. I think it might be Business Insider. There's one of the publications that has like, I think his name is Chip something. I forget his last name. Anyway, they have a whole list of all the stupid things he ever said and did. And the company has historically missed its numbers and pissed off wall street. And so the reality is it's not a good company. It's not, it doesn't truly have a breakthrough product, but it did do legendary category design. And so, uh, once people see it,

they can't unsee it. And if, if, if when they see it, they want it, they want it and they will. And this is the difference between, um, uh, going to market and having the market come to you. And so they've continued to be the category queen in the category they created in spite of the fact that their founder says dumb shit about women. And their product is of questionable quality and innovation. Let me say it that way. Well, that brings up another question. I mean, so have you seen category designers fail then? Because what I'm hearing from you is almost like if long as you develop the triangle that you just said, and particularly the category design,

which can't fail, then the branding and the advertising with which gets that message out there may be inconsequential to whether it succeeds or not. I don't think that's totally what you're saying, but how do you balance that? I mean, are you saying amazing category designers can't fail? No, of course, everybody can fail. And look, let's not be stupid. Luck has a lot to do with this. People talk about timing. Timing matters and you can drive the timing. So you can make it your time. But luck's involved.

Here's the big difference. And once people get this, it changes how they think about building businesses and brands. Categories make brands, not the other way around. And so the entire entrepreneurial world, the entire marketing world, in my opinion, is massively over rotated, massively over invested in branding and here's the aha you can take a legendary brand and slap it on a category and fail miserably red bull cola they did an absolute frontal attack on coke and they had their ass handed to them. Google thought they could dominate in social networking and they launched a Me Too product, spent billions of dollars on this thing called Google Plus. Microsoft did exactly the same thing under Steve Ballmer. Ballmer said, hey, Apple's winning in retail. Go look at the Apple store and do exactly that. And have you ever seen a Microsoft store?

It looks exactly like an Apple store with one big difference. There's fucking nobody in there. And they just shut them not that long ago. And so my point is the biggest mistake in business is a frontal attack on an existing category, king or queen, in a category they designed with a we're better than them strategy. We're going to compete for existing demand, as opposed to what you might think of as a flank, which is we're not better than them. We're different.

And rather, category designers drive a choice, not a comparison. And so it's a very different way of thinking. It's about carving out a niche that you can own, that you can become known for. And category designers do not want to be compared. They want all others to be compared to them. And so designing your own category that you can ultimately dominate is the most radical differentiation strategy that exists. There's a term I love. Self-absorbed there with the name and what we try to live by. I don't know if, you know, it's a lot to live up to, but I will say it sounds to me like if you want to be,

nothing's bulletproof, but you sure do get a pretty damn good bulletproof vest when you're developing the category. Here's the other aha for brand marketers. Name me a brand that you admire that does not dominate its category. It's hard to come up with one because legends don't compete. They create. And there's a very big difference between marketing to capture demand versus marketing to create demand. And so the legends market the category, the legends market the problem because the more attention, the more understanding there is of the problem or the opportunity, the more people will be attracted to the category. And if you are the emerging category queen, then you stand to gain massively from that. For my first book, we did a whole bunch of primary research,

which we were lucky enough to get published in the Harvard Business Review. And what we discovered, Ryan, is that, oh, here's our dog Bean. Hi, buddy. Oh, I like this. He looks a lot like a cat, but he's actually a dog. He behaves exactly like a dog and he loves hanging out in the studio with me. His name's Bean?

His name's Bean. Here, let me put him in front of the camera. There's Bean. I love that. Yes. If you're just listening and not watching and this is a shameless plug for watching all that is the radcast being just christopher one of christopher's cats i did read enough to know the uh the uh the lay of the land there that uh he just joined us and

you know i wish you could like meow or something in the mic he's hanging out he likes to play fetch so he might bring over one of his mouse toys and he might start playing some fetch And, you know, I wish you could like meow or something in the mic. He's hanging out. He likes to play fetch. So he might bring over one of his mouse toys and might start playing some fetch. But I guess the big aha is, you know, here's a simple one that that I like that tends to resonate. If you want to sell Bibles, there's got to be Christians. And so what most people do is they shout, look how great my Bible is. Legends spread the religion. And in the HBR research that I mentioned, we discovered this incredible thing.

76% of the total value created as measured by market cap or valuation goes to the company that dominates the category. And so the aha here is categories make the brand. Google has a legendary brand because they dominate a category called search. When they take that legendary brand and they slap it on a category that they're not designing, aka social networking, they have their ass handed to them, in this case, by Facebook. And so most companies believe they can win by screaming their brand. Look at us, look at us. Aren't we awesome? Aren't we awesome? Brands are about us. Categories are about customers. And so legends actually market that category. And in so doing, there's this other interesting thing that happens. Prospects, customers, consumers, the only company they've

ever seen market the category is the category queen. So when you're the one evangelizing the category, the market, people in the market assume you're the leader because that's what leaders do. Non-leaders, that is to say followers, compare themselves to others. Take the Pepsi challenge. Pepsi tastes better than Coke, right? And when they do that, they're telling the market category, Coke's the leader. And so the only companies that consumers ever see attacking and comparing themselves are by definition, not the leaders, not the category queens and kings. And so if you want to be perceived as the company that's designing and dominating the market

category, evangelize the category. You are, uh, this is a master course. If anyone's not listening, you need to go read, play big or niche down a couple of Christopher Lockett's books. But this is another, we've had a couple of really just master courses in marketing and advertising the last couple, we've got yet another home run on this one already. It brings me back to this discussion. run on this one already. It brings me back to this discussion. I worked with Verizon Wireless for 13 years from 2001 to 2014, the glory years. And I sat in C-suite meetings when they would start to BDI and CDI discussions, brand and category. And Verizon was the leader, America's most reliable wireless network. Can you hear me now? Campaigns that we worked on. And they would sometimes creep into the feeling like they needed to play the game with the

T-Mobiles and the sprints and all of that when they were the leader of the pack. And this is just bringing me full, like 180 back to those memories of those same exact discussions and 20 something year old me i think was right in telling them to to take the high road keep promoting the category yes the other interesting thing is when a category king uh plays a comparison game does what they were talking about doing yep that's called's called punching down. Yep. Exactly. When you punch down, you do two things. A, you damage your brand because there's an unwritten rule in humanity that says, um, if you're five feet tall and a hundred pounds and I'm six feet tall at 200 pounds and I start beating you up. That makes me an asshole.

And that's true in business too. So a dominant company's dominant brands don't punch down. That's point A. Point B, probably more importantly, the minute I engage in a competition with you, I'm no longer the category king. Category kings don't compete. They create. And so they literally don't get involved with that discussion. What the discussion they do get involved with is evangelizing the category,

expanding the size of the category, expanding the definition of the category, moving into adjacent categories. They'll do acquisitions to accelerate their position in the category, but they never take the stupid bait of punching down. I love all of that. I love all of that. So when you've worked with companies in the past or, you know, whatever your role has been in companies you've been at, whether you've consulted, wherever you're at,

it's just, I know that it starts with that category design, but when, is it always you're either, cause I feel like there's happy meeting. Like some companies are never going to be the category leader, but they're very successful. Success happens at multiple levels. Obviously, the greatest success can happen. But if a company or someone you were working with just wasn't

either incapable or wasn't going to become a category new designer, but could be very successful, or is your firm belief just that the success is fleeting and will never last unless you get to the promised land? So those companies do exist and God bless them. I have no interest in those companies. And I don't think you should either. And there's a couple of key reasons. Number one, do you want to do incremental things or exponential things? You know, I was on a conversation, I was in a conversation the other day with a venture-backed tech company here in Silicon Valley, and they were describing their strategy and where they were and all that. And I said to them, hey guys, everything you've

just shared with me sounds really fucking incremental, but why are you playing so safe? You're a venture-backed tech startup with some of the best investors in the world. If I'm on your board, if I'm a VC on your board, here's what I'm saying to you. Hey, listen, throw 50 yard. Because I'm not interested in a medium outcome. In the world that I grew up in, in Silicon Valley, we are playing for multi-billion dollar outcomes. And so if you're playing that game, don't play the short game. I said to him, if you use the football analogy, I'm not interested in passing the ball for a three-yard gain. That's not what we're fucking doing. And that's not what your venture investors are trying to get. The best venture firms have funds that return 10x, 15x, 20x the investment. And so the truth is the legendary VCs, they want their investments to turn into a massive multi-billion dollar publicly traded successful category King that designs and

dominates a company, a category that matters, or they want a crater in the ground in between is not that interesting. So look, I know most people don't want to play that way. I understand and appreciate that Ryan, but I I'm not interested in the incremental. So that's point A. Point B, if you put it in a very personal term, you say, let's make the math really simple. Let's say you get your first real job at 25. And let's say you're really going to work till you're 65 to keep the math really simple. Right?

So 25, 35, 45, 55, 65, right? That's 40 years. Now, let's say you're in the average job five years just to keep the math simple. So you're going to have, uh, eight jobs have eight jobs, which you could think of as eight attempts. Now here's what we know. Less than 1% of startups are ever successful. So you've got eight tries at this. I think where you invest your life matters. And so we're all going to get to the end of our career. What do we want to have been a part of? And do we or don't we want to invest a disproportionate number of those eight shots in trying to do something radical,

trying to do something breakthrough, trying to do something breakthrough, trying to move the world forward. Ultimately, there's two kinds of people in business, those who bet on the future being the same and those who bet on it being different. I'm not interested in the same. I'm not interested in fighting for market share about the past. I'm not interested in playing a game designed by somebody else. It's not interesting to me. And I don't think it's interesting to a lot of people. To some people, have at it. So I think the fundamental question at a personal level is, you got eight shots. What do you want to do in those eight shots? And if the answer to the question is, hey, you know what? I want to compete by building a

brand with a better product and fight for market share. Great. Have at it. That's not interesting to me. They say search things is leading the witness, and I'm glad I led because you just got on the soapbox and I fucking loved it. I had a feeling you were going to go there. As someone that lives a life of on the edge, personally, as a grown man of 43 and four boys at home, I don't follow many rules myself. And yes, yes. Preach, brother. Preach. Preach. Don't give me average. I want to play bigger. Play bigger. That's the key, right? What do you want to do with your career?

Look, here's the other thing I'll tell you. You know, somebody started at 18, I'm 53. It goes by fucking fast. It does. And, um, if you're not doing legendary work, work that you say is legendary, then what are you doing and why are you doing it? You know, the interesting thing, then what are you doing and why are you doing it? You know, the interesting thing, Ryan, with COVID and so forth, collectively as humanity, a huge percentage of us are saying, hey, wait a minute, why am I doing what I'm doing? Why am I living with who I'm living with?

Why am I living where I'm living? Why am I spending two hours a day in the car commuting? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? And so COVID has driven on the positive side, a sort of existential discussion. What's a company? Does a company need a headquarters, right? And what's a career. And so there's a massive, massive transformation going on right now in what you could call life design and career design. And so as we all think about that, I think it behooves us to say, why are we doing what we're doing? Why are we working where we're working? Is this legendary work or not?

Is this work when I'm 65 years old, I'll look back on with pride. And listen, from an economic point of view, how can I monetize me? And I'll tell you, marketers who capture demand by building brand get paid one way. Marketers who create demand by designing categories get paid a whole other way. Absolutely. So true. Have you always, I mean, has it just been, you you know back to that story of you know working and shaving body parts you no one on earth should be uh thinking about of someone else uh was it ingrained in you then i mean have you always been the the contrary and doesn't do

you know your body of work justice but like, is that, have you always been that way? Yeah. I think, Ryan, that even as a young man, I remember being five years old. My Uncle Jimmy is a political science teacher. And I remember being about five years old and saying to him, hey, Uncle Jimmy, how do you change a law?

And so for whatever reason, I've always been somebody who goes, well, why is it the way that it is? And could it be a different way? And so I've always asked that. The other thing that's interesting in the context of our world today, Ryan, is what most people today call thinking is not thinking. What most people are doing when they say they're thinking is they're replaying somebody else's thoughts. So we are curators and aggregators of thinking today we don't give our time ourself time to

actually think and so i think thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking and so when somebody says something i believe it's important to say, okay, well, why? And there's an old sort of theory that says, ask why five to seven times. And when you ask why five to seven times, you start to get some pretty interesting answers. And the questions matter a lot. So when you ask the question, how come I can't press a button on my phone and rent somebody's couch that turns into Airbnb. Um, and you know, when my friend Brittany says, geez, I'm having a whole bunch of health problems. I'm a pretty young, uh, healthy woman. Why is this? And she discovers that she's got her diet is causing inflammation

and various other problems. And she discovers the magic of flax. So she starts creating her own flax milk at home. And then before you know it, she has an idea to go talk to Whole Foods about this. And now she's the founder of Malibu Milk, and she's the pioneer of an emerging category of flax milk because she asked the question. And so I think legendary innovators in business, legendary innovators in marketing ask the question, why is it the way that it is? is designed. There's a reason that we can go to Costco and buy a relatively good quality high-end TV for 150 bucks. And there's a reason a pair of high-end sunglasses cost 300 bucks. Now, on the face of it, you go, well, one of these products is a piece of highly advanced technology that talks to satellites in space. And another of them is something that, you know, keeps UV rays out of your eyes, which one's 300 bucks and which one's by 150 bucks.

If you didn't know any better, you I'd say for sure. It's the thing that talks to the satellites when in point of fact, it's not. And so everything we value, we value it because we were taught to value it. I think a seminal question in business is who taught us to think that way? And more importantly, once you understand how new ideas break through and become massive new radical categories, then you say, well, how do I become somebody that helps to make those breakthroughs happen? Love it. And, you know, it brings, I think the best marketers

and some of the smartest people I know are naturally curious. You know, the world and the creature comforts that we have, we're creating a world of people that don't have to be curious because they're very comfortable. And I think a lot of what you're describing is that natural curiosity. You probably are now, you have to be naturally curious, you know, with your history background to be asking all those questions, number one. And then I also think too, I think one of your

favorite book is that illusions, uh, it's very much playing down this path that, you know, it's kind of like if you create a box, you'll live in it. Right. Yeah. And who wants to do that? Right. And it's interesting what you said about comfort. We just dropped, uh, uh, an episode of my dialogue podcast, um, uh, with Michael Easter, who is a professor and a writer, a journalist, uh, for men's men's magazines, like outside and men's health and so forth. Anyway, the book's called the comfort crisis and it's a fascinating book. I highly, highly, highly recommend it. Uh, Mike's a great guy, great educator and, and the aha in the book, you know, there's some incredible stats that he points to. We are 14 X less active than we used to be. We don't, Americans don't go outside.

Most Americans are inside the four walls of something 95% of the time. And so his whole theory, and he lays it out beautifully in the book, is we do have a comfort crisis. Yes. Is it awesome? We can press a button on our phone and the greatest food from the greatest restaurants in our neighborhood just magically shows up at our front door. Of course it is. And we all love it. Myself included. However, you learn something about yourself when you go on a multi-day backcountry camping trip that you can't learn sitting there having Netflix deliver what you want and DoorDash deliver what you want and Amazon deliver what you want, et cetera, et cetera. Comfort creates apathy. And, you know, it's no different. I mean, I'm big into personal fitness and things like that

and like same thing with training like if you get comfortable in the gym i can go work out and be comfortable but then nothing changes you're comfortable like you're not you know growing or getting better in shape you're just going through the motions and i haven't never heard of that book but we'll definitely read it because i was having that thought the other day it just came out it's called the comfort crisis you'll love it yeah it's i i i understand the premise but i just was thinking like that same exact thing like our own comforts while wonderful on some levels is creating potentially a lack of innovation you know and because you and a lack of doing exactly what you said category development and curiosity because if you're comfortable what do you have to be

curious about now i think i'm wired differently i know you're wired differently but i you know it's a scary it's a it slippery slope. Look, it's interesting. We as human beings have been taught to fit in. We've been taught the way to succeed is to compete. Get good grades, go to a good school, become a fill in the blank, doctor, lawyer, nurse, whatever, and then compete as a candidate for a job, get a good job. And so this is just this whole paradigm that we've been taught. Well, when you study the legends, that's not what any of them

did. Not fucking one of them. All of them are legends. The reason we love them is because they broke and took new ground. I told you I got a funny story for you. My buddy Al Ramadan, who's one of the co-authors of Play Bigger, he's a great surfer. He actually taught me to surf. And years ago, he got invited on this very special Super Ding Dong surf trip down to Mexico. Because he knows all this, you know, the highfalutin people in the surf world. And he gets this call, uh, and says, Hey, look, we got a few guys. We're organizing this trip. You got to be able to make it tomorrow. Bring your boards, be in

San Diego, et cetera. And he's like, all right, I'm going. Right. So they go to this very remote spot with this tiny little biplane. Anyway, he shows up to do this and there's three other surfers on the trip with him. And one of them is Kelly Slater. Holy shit. And, you know, as you know, he's the Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, LeBron. I mean, matter of fact, there's some people who say he's the most dominant athlete of all time in terms of he's won, I believe it's 11 championships. Anyway, so he gets this magical couple day surf trip with uh kelly and a couple of the world's most elite surfers and as they're getting to know each other uh al told me every time he

takes off on a wave kelly starts screaming at him hey do something radical do something radical right just trying to encourage al to get his freak on and try new shit. Right? And so most of us are most alive when we're pushing ourselves. When we are trying to be, you know, sometimes it's a little radical. You know, maybe it's doing a couple extra reps in the gym. Sometimes it's a lot more radical. little radical, you know, maybe it's doing a couple extra reps in the gym. Sometimes there's a lot more radical, but, um, if we start to look at our lives where we experience, this is the,

this is the aha Michael's book where we experience the most joy is not when we're the most comfortable. It's when we push ourselves and we learn and we grow and we stretch and we discover something about ourselves. Well, it's fun to sit there and we stretch and we discover something about ourselves. While it's fun to sit there and watch Netflix, I love that shit too. It's not where we grow. It's not where we create as human beings. 100%. Talking with Christopher Lockhead, one of the legends in marketing category pirates, the newsletter author niche down play bigger christopher's we're kind of winding down here what's what's the future hold for you i know

you're never gonna still we're not no fucking retirement around here we're not using any of those terms what where where's it what's what's on the periphery yeah so i think the future for me is actually uh mostly about you um here's the aha that me and my partners have come to over the last six months or so um we are at an extraordinarily unique moment in history ryan And if you go back and study history, in particular, we spent a lot of time studying the last major pandemic and how that led to the roaring 20s and then the dirty 30s. Well, the similarities between now and the late teens and the early 20s of the last century are eerie. Massive pandemic, big shutdown, and then a massive amount of innovation. We went from, for example, electricity being not very prevalent in the United States

to by the end of the 20s, 70% of American homes had electricity. So there was a huge category breakthrough in electricity. There was a huge category breakthrough in food. And there was a huge category breakthrough in transportation. That's when Henry Ford's new category, the horseless carriage, started to take off. Well, isn't it interesting today that we have a huge category breakthrough happening in the electric everything. We have big category breakthroughs in food and in lots of other areas. So as you start to look around, what you see is new categories create new categories. And when breakthroughs happen,

there's the power of the breakthrough itself, but then there's the sort of level of consciousness or thinking that it creates. I'll give you an example. We just wrote about this. When Roger Bannister breaks the four-minute mile, there are people who say the human body's not even capable of it. And then the experts say, well, if it's going to happen, it's going to be under these certain very special circumstances. Well, Roger blows all that up. Interestingly enough,

shortly thereafter, an Australian guy beats his record. And then the year after that, multiple runners in a race all hit four minute miles. And now today, of course, in a race all hit four minute miles. And now today, of course, what was a breakthrough in legendary is commonplace for distance runners. And so there's the breakthrough itself and it creates more breakthroughs, but then there's the other sort of meta breakthrough, which is, Hey, you know what? For the entirety of humanity, we thought running the four-minute mile was impossible. If that's not impossible, what else is not impossible? We are living in a time today, Ryan, where the number of breakthrough innovations and categories being delivered has never been this high. And of course, at a high level, we all know what some of the big ones are. It used to take 15 years to bring a drug to market.

Now we know we can do it in nine months, right? Companies were never going to do this work from home thing. They did it in days. We've been talking about telemedicine forever. Wasn't happening. Bam. Now we've all seen our doctor over Zoom and on and on and on. There's many others. And so my point is we are living now at the time of the most amount of innovation and therefore category breakthrough in history.

As a result, human beings receptivity to the new has never been higher. And there's this bullshit in marketing we've been taught that says people aren't open to change. People are resistant to change. Really? Go fuck yourself. 15 years ago, nobody wanted a smartphone. Last year, nobody was doing zoom school and nobody was buying flax milk. Human beings love change. You know, in 1999, there was a survey done of chief information officers and 10 out of 10 of them said they'd never buy a cloud app, right? The week before Evian launches, they do a survey. Will you pay for bottled water? 10 out of 10 people saying no. And so my point is now's the time. The level of innovation has never been higher. And humanity's need for different and change has never been higher. And our receptivity as humanimes has there been a moment where there is a receptivity to new innovation like there is right now. And those of us in marketing, those of us who are entrepreneurial, those of us who want to create the new as opposed to compete over the old.

This is the greatest time in history. And so I would just leave you with now's the time for radical. Now's the time to heed the words of Kelly Slater and try something radical. It's also happening at a time where, and we did a big breakdown of this recently, we're having greatest economy in American history. What we do know is corporations have literally never had more cash and the American consumer has never had more cash than right now. So all these things come together. Now's the time for the exponential. Now's the time for the legendary. Now's the time to design new categories. And if there was ever a time to get radical in our businesses, in our marketing, it's right now. Amen. Coming from the South, the old Bible South. This has been, uh, anyone listening, they know this is coming. My amen, hallelujah soundboard button is going off

right now. You've been to a Southern Baptist, uh, preacher event. The deacons from behind. Amen. Hallelujah. Yes. Christopher Lockhead, man. I really appreciate it, brother. You've been awesome. This has been jam-packed with radical insight about life in general. Everything we talked about, all the knowledge Christopher dropped, it transcends marketing and business. It's about life. You got one life to live. Make it radical. Go bigger.

Play bigger. Niche down. Where can everybody keep up with you, Christopher? Where can everyone follow the path forward? All of it hangs off Lockhead.com. Two H's, no K. They can find you. lockhead.com two h's no k they can find you lockhead.com l-o-c-h-h-e-a-d the marketing legend christopher lockhead really appreciate christopher for coming on you know where to keep up with the radcast we're at the radcast.com all of our content all the videos, all of the knowledge

dropped today from Christopher will be there. You know where to find me, at Ryan Offord on Instagram, the.rad.cast. We'll see you next time on the Radcast. Yo, guys, what's up? Ryan Offord here. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the Radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it. And go leave us a review at Apple or Spotify. Do us a solid. Tell more people.

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