Dominate Your Category: Category Creation with Ryan Alford and Guest Christopher Lochhead

 You're listening to the Redcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan
 Alford. Hey guys, what's up? It's Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the
 Redcast. Come to you live from the studios here in Greenville, South Carolina, the home
 with 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
 ledged number one Apple podcast host, bestselling 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 done for 20 years. Anyway, I really appreciate you coming on. Again,
 read the books or listen to them. I've definitely listened to the podcast and Lockhead 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, pretty episode that I quoted even one of your latest episodes
 from your podcast about zicking 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. 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 high 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, you've definitely done
 that. And you know, let's start down that path a little bit. You know, I know your stuff
 south 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, you know, what shaped that world view through the
 contour, the lens of, you know, your background and all of those things in marketing.
 Well, I think I got my start the way a lot of entrepreneurs do, Ryan, which is, you
 know, some people for whom, 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 carbidinculator and roll on out to Sand Hill Road and Silicon Valley
 and raise 200 million bucks and do that. Then God bless you. 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, I was working as a orderly in a hospital. And so my options at 18 after I
 got thrown out of school were start a company and be an entrepreneur or shave guys balls
 for a living. And so I decided to start a company. Good path. I love it. Did that alone,
 you know, did any of the pirates come from that, that diversed it all? Maybe a little,
 I will tell you one thing though, when you walk into a guy's hospital room and you say,
 Ryan, my name is Chris, I'm your orderly. And I'm here to give you a shave today. And
 often I would hear this, well, you know, I already shave and 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 one by Christopher Locke, 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, no, not
 the industry, but you definitely, I think more on the overall marketing because I mean,
 you're, I mean, you're, you 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 a head of marketing for a publicly traded software company at, you
 know, pretty young age marketing directly for software and, and software specifically.
 Now, my mind gets so convoluted now thinking about software and marketing because it's
 so sass driven, you know, so commerce driven now, performance marketing, you know, God,
 you know, you and I, I just wanted to like dab myself in the arms 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 as a 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 sass 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, 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 young people
 in my life who are great at that stuff. One of my partners in category pirates, Nicholas
 Cole, he's 30 years old. 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
 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, 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 my mind gets in this product space versus the
 brand space, you know, when category develop, because a brand is not necessarily the category
 of cash rate, not necessarily the brand at all times, it can certainly live and breathe
 it. What are the balances in, you know, product development, you know, like to sometimes
 you don't intrinsically have a product that's, you know, develop the category. So like,
 what's the balance you feel like in, 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 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 rights. 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 are, and 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 on Lulu Lemons, a great example, right,
 leggings had been around for zillions of years. They had the genius to call it a new category
 called ATHLEASURE. And this idea of you could wear something to yoga and then you could wear it to
 the grocery store was a breakthrough idea, even though those products had existed forever, right?
 So they created a category, ATHLEASURE. 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, you know,
 they've done good product things, leggings, yoga wear, workout wear. 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 an innovation perspective on the product side. On the company side,
 Lulu Lemons, 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's might be business insider. There's one
 of the publications that has like his name's, I think his name is chips 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 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 going to market and having the
 market come to you. And so they've continued to be the category queen and the category they created
 in spite of the fact that their founders has dumb shit about women. And you know, their product
 is 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 here from you is almost like
 in, if long as you develop the the 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 Lux 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 uh-huh. 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
 MeToo product, spent billions of dollars on this thing called Google Plus. Microsoft did exactly
 the same thing. Under Steve Bommer, Bommer 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 no one 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 word 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.
 As a term, I love. So absorbed there with the name and what we try to live by. I don't know.
 You know, it's 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. There's a lot 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're 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 being. Hi, buddy.
 Oh, he likes 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 his name. He's been. His name is being here.
 Let me put him in front of the camera. There is being. 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 the the lay of the land
 there that he just joined us. And you know, I wish you could like me out 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. But I guess the big high 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 evaluation 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 a K a 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 their 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 coax 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, this is a master course. If anyone's not listening, you need to go read,
 play big or niche down a couple of Christopher like his books. But this is another. We've had a
 couple really just master courses in marketing and advertising the last couple where you've got
 it yet another home 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 that 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 that, just those memories of those same exact discussions. And
 20 something year old me, I think, was right in telling them to take the high road,
 be promoting the category. Yes. The other interesting thing is when a category king plays a comparison
 game, does what they were talking about doing. Yep. That'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, if you're five feet tall and a hundred pounds and I'm six feet tall
 and two hundred 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 that 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 whatever your role has been and companies you've been at, whether
 you've consulted, whatever you're at, it's just I know that it starts with that category design.
 But when is it always you're either 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 and 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 does your firm believe just that this 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. It was in a conversation the other day with a venture back 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.
 Why are you playing so safe? You're a venture back tech startup, both 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 passes because I'm not interested in a medium outcome. Okay,
 that in the world that I grew up in in Silicon Valley, we are playing for multi-billion dollar outcomes.
 Right. And so if you're playing that game, don't play the short game. If you, you know,
 I said to him, if you use the football analogy, right, I'm not interested in passing the ball for
 three-year, three-yard gain. That's not what we're fucking doing. And that's not what your venture
 investors are trying to get you, right? The best venture firms have funds that return 10X,
 15X, 20X, the investment. And so what 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 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'm not interested in the incremental. So that's point A, point B,
 if you put it in a very personal term, you say it's make the math really simple. Let's say you get
 your first real job at 25. And let's say you're 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 eight jobs,
 what you what 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 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. I say search things as leading the witness. And I'm glad I led because you just got on the
 soapbox and I fucking loved it. I do. I had a feeling you're going to go there as someone that
 lives a life of on the edge, personally, is 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. Well, I'm asking you, 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 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, 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,
 right? And so there 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, it's just been, you know, back to that story of,
 you know, working in shaving body parts, you know, one on earth should be thinking about if someone
 else, was it ingrained in you then? I mean, if you always been the contrary, it doesn't do,
 you know, your body of work justice. But like, is that, is it, 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, 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 can
 I can't press a button on my phone and rent somebody's couch? That turns into Airbnb.
 And you know, when my friend Brittany says, geez, I'm having a whole bunch of health problems.
 I'm a pretty young 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 asked the question, why is it the way that it is?
 Who every market category 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 ones 300 bucks and which ones by 150 bucks. If you didn't know any better,
 you'd I'd say for sure it's the thing that talks to the satellites. What 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 businesses 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, bro, it brings, I think the best marketers and some of the smarts to go,
 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 to I think one of your favorite book is at illusions.
 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. Who wants to do that? Right. And it's interesting what you said
 about comfort. We just dropped an episode of my dialogue podcast with Michael Easter,
 who is a professor and a writer, a journalist for 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. 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 14X 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 up 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 isn't we all love it. I myself included. However, you learn something about yourself. When you go
 on a multi day back country camping trip that you can't learn sitting there having Netflix
 deliver what you want and door dash deliver what you want and Amazon deliver what you want
 et cetera, et cetera. Comfort creates apathy. And, you know, it's still different. I mean,
 I'm big in a 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 it. 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 in a lack of doing exactly what you said to 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, the scary it's a 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 at good grades, go to a good school, become a villain, 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 Ramadhan, 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 of us, you know, the high flutin people in the surf world. And he gets
 this call and says, Hey, look, we got a few guys were organizing this trip. You got to be able to
 make it tomorrow, bring your boards, being sent, you know, 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's
 later. Holy shit. And, you know, as you know, he's the Babe Ruth, Mike, Jennifer, LeBron,
 I mean, he's, 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 one, I believe it's 11 championships. Anyway, so he gets this magical
 couple day surf trip with Kelly in a couple of the world's most elite surfers. And as they're
 getting to know each other, I'll told me every time he takes off on a wave, Kelly starts screaming
 out of, Hey, do something radical. Do something radical. Right. I just trying to encourage
 Al to get his break on and try new shit. Right. And so most of us are most alive. And 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 there's a lot more radical. But if we start to look
 at our lives, where we experience, this is the, this is the Ohio Michaels book, where we experience
 the most joy is not one where 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 watch
 Netflix. I love that shit too. It's not where we grow. It's not where we create as human beings.
 One hundred percent. Talking with Christopher Lockead, one of the legends in marketing,
 category pirates, the newsletter author, niche down, play bigger. Christopher is we're kind of
 winding down here. What's the future hold for you? I know you're never going to deal. We're not
 no fucking retirement around here. We're not using any of those terms. What's on the periphery?
 Yes. I think the future for me is actually mostly about you. Here's the aha that me and my
 partners have come to over the last six months or so. 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 20, the roaring 20s and then the 3030s.
 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
 human body is 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,
 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 at 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
 marketing we've been taught that says, people aren't open to change. People are addicted 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. 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 heavy on 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 innovations never been higher.
 And humanities need for different and change has never been higher. And our receptivity
 as human beings has never been higher. And so I would posit to you that never in our lifetimes
 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 in a time where we did a big breakdown of this recently
 we're having a breakthrough in the economy. We might be having we might be on the verge of the
 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. It coming from the South, the old Bible South. This has been
 anyone listening. They know this is coming. My amen. Hallelujah. Soundboard button is going off
 right now. You're been to a Southern Baptist 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 and insight. I mean, about life in general. I mean, if you can't
 take everything we talked about, everything, all the knowledge, Christopher job brought. It transcends
 marketing and business. It's about life. You got one life to live. Make it radical. Go bigger.
 Play bigger. Knees down. Working everybody. Keep up with you, Christopher. Where can everyone
 follow the the path forward? All of it hangs off lockhead.com. Two Hs. No, okay.
 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 job today from Christopher
 will be there. You know, find me at Ryan offered on Instagram, the dot radcast. We'll see you next time
 on the radcast. Yo, guys, what's up, Ryan offered here. Thanks so much for listening. Really
 appreciative. Do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the radcast, you need to share the word to
 the friend or anyone else. We really appreciate it and go leave us a review at Apple or Spotify.
 Do us a solid. Tell more people, leave us some reviews. And hey, here's the best news of all.
 If you want to work with me directly, if you want to get your business kicking ass,
 then you want radical or myself involved, you can text me directly at 864. 729-3680. Don't wait
 another minute. Let's get your business going. 864-729-3680. We'll see you next time.