Billion Dollar Marketing Advice with Christopher Lochhead

 Hey guys, Ryan Alfred here at Host of the Radcast. Really looking forward to re-releasing
 this episode with Christopher Lockehead. Went back, there's so much value here, as our
 audience has grown, I couldn't wait to reshare this episode with a lot of the new people that
 may not be going back and listening. This is billion dollar marketing advice. This is really
 about creating categories, thinking about marketing and thinking about branding through the lens
 of really developing a new category. Think Netflix, think Uber, think when you're developing your
 business, when you're a startup or you're something, don't think about how to come into a market
 that's already dominated and trying to compete. That's a losing proposition. You need to come
 into the market as a new category, changing the game. That's how you become legendary and
 Christopher Lockehead is one of the legends in marketing. You need to listen this episode. He's
 actually going to be coming on next month with a fresh episode that I can't wait to share about
 digital natives. Super, super value here and so excited to re-release this. We'll see everybody
 soon. I will say it sounds to me like nothing's bulletproof, but you sure do get a pretty damn
 good bulletproof vest when you're developing the category. The minute I engage in a competition
 with you, I'm no longer the category king. Twenty-something year old me, I think was right in
 telling them to take the high road. Do something radical! Do something radical!
 You're listening to the radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alfred.
 Hey guys, what's up? It's Ryan Alfred. 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 the 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 a pretty 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 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 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 radcasts. 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, the lens of, you know, 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 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 diverse it at all?
 Maybe a little, I will tell you one thing though, when you walk into a guy's hospital room and you
 say, Hey, 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. Oh, shit. I love it. We're going right after here early on the
 Radcast, one 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 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 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 and 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 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, because 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 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 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 they're right. 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 Lululemon's 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'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, Lululemon's a shitty company.
 It's founder has said horrible stupid things about women's bodies and women's behinds and all this
 study there. 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 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 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 here from you is almost like
 in, if long as you develop 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. Yeah. 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 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 to 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
 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 were 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. So so absorbed there with the name
 and what we try to live by. I don't know if it's a lot to live up to. But I will say it sounds
 to me like if you want to be nothing's bullet proof, but you sure do get a pretty damn good bullet
 proof 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. From 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 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 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 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. Keep 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 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 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 is so when you're when you've worked with companies in the past or you know,
 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
 Convali 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 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.
 Hey, 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 a three year, three yard game. That's not what we're fucking doing. And that's not what
 your venture investors are trying to get, 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
 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, you're going to, you're really going to, you know, 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, which 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.
 Where you, if 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 added. So I think the fundamental question at a personal level is you've 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 added. 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 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 a 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 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, 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?
 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? But I'll tell you,
 marketers who captured 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 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 and doesn't do, you know, your body of work justice,
 but like, is that, has it 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, our
 self 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. 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, 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?
 I love it. And you know, bro, it brings, I think the best marketers and some of the smarts
 who 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,
 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, men's magazines like outside and
 men's health and so forth. Anyway, the books called the comfort crisis. And it's a fascinating book.
 I highly, highly, highly recommend it. Mike's a great guy, great educator. And the,
 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. 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, etc, etc. 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 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. 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 you know, it's a 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. 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 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 fluten people in the surf world.
 And he gets this call 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 sand, you know, etc. 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, my daughter and Lebron,
 I mean, 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'm just trying to encourage
 Al to get his freaking 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. 100% 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. Where is it? 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 dirty 30s. Well, the similarities between now and the
 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 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. 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 heavy on launches, they do a survey. Will you pay for
 bottled water? 10 out of 10 people say 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
 and 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 than 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
 the 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 inches. 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 theradcast.com. All of our content, all the videos, all of the knowledge
 job 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.