How Do You Stand Out in a Crowded Market? | Christopher Lochhead

PROFITABLE TALKS...

On this episode of The Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim sits down with Christopher Lochhead, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and co-creator of the Category Design movement. Christopher shares why legendary businesses don't compete for existing demand—they create entirely new categories. The conversation explores how language shapes markets, why most companies struggle to define the problem they solve, and how category designers create different futures instead of incremental improvements. Christopher also discusses his latest book, Creator Capitalist, and explains why AI is shifting value away from knowledge and execution toward creativity, judgment, and innovation. 

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

•  Category design creates markets instead of competing within them 
•  The problem you define determines the solution you become 
•  Language shapes thinking and influences demand 
•  Different beats better 
•  Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking 
•  Rejecting the premise unlocks innovation 
•  Most businesses cannot clearly articulate the problem they solve 
•  Word-of-mouth scales through a consistent point of view 
•  AI is making knowledge and execution increasingly accessible 
•  The future belongs to creator capitalists 

Join our community of creative entrepreneurs and get a free copy of our No-BS Guide To Making Your Creative Business Actually Profitable delivered straight to your inbox. We’ll share smart, simple tips to help you keep more of what you earn—no boring accountant talk, we promise.  
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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.934)
Welcome to another episode of the profitable creative the only place on the inner webs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. am your host Christian Brim special shout out to our one listener and upper Marlboro Maryland. I don't know if that's where they started making Marlboro cigarettes, but thank you for listening joining me today. The eponymous Christopher Lockhead. I'm very excited to have you to the show Chris welcome.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (00:31.374)
Christian, it is an absolute pleasure to be here.

Christian Brim (00:34.18)
Well, I was ashamed. Jamie, when I met with him before military creator con, he was like, yeah, Christopher lock is going to be there and he's going to run a workshop. And I'm like, who, you know, category design guy. And I'm like, I, don't know. And so I really felt ashamed after doing the research that I didn't know who you were, but I definitely jumped in and said, I got to go here. What he has to say. And you did not disappoint. So

If you were going to explain to our listeners what category design is all about, what is it?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (01:10.348)
Yeah, it's actually a very simple but powerful idea. Just like a product, just like a company can be designed, so can a market. Most people think markets just magically happen, like the weather. I would posit to you the Wall Street Journal doesn't understand how business works. Because when you read the results of Nvidia's latest quarter,

Christian Brim (01:20.006)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (01:29.669)
Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (01:35.884)
You will read things like Nvidia had a very strong quarter because there was increasing demand for GPUs. And they speak about demand in a market, like the person who gives you the weather forecast. And as if Jensen Huang was sitting in his base, his mother's basement, you know, smoking pot, drinking beer, and all of a sudden demand for GPUs just landed on it. Yeah. And so a market.

Christian Brim (01:43.589)
Right.

Christian Brim (02:01.956)
Just showed up. Yeah.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (02:05.93)
Everything about a market, customers or consumers view of what's valuable and what's important. What is the problem frame? How do you design a problem? Because if you are the person and or company that frames names and claims a problem, you will become the solution. so category design is the ability to make markets, is the ability to move markets.

And so just like a product, just like a company, you can design your market. And here's the aha. Most people, when they hear the term entrepreneur, when they hear the term creative, creator, when they hear the term marketing, the unspoken is louder than the spoken. And unspoken is what we're going to do is we're going to create something and we're going to launch that something into an existing market.

Christian Brim (03:04.164)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (03:04.192)
and we're going to compete for demand. And once the world sees how great our carbidinculator is, how much bigger, faster, smaller, cheaper, more expensive, whatever the comparison is to the existing stuff in the market, they will beat a path to our door. And what they don't understand is nobody legendary ever did that, and that doesn't work.

Christian Brim (03:06.682)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:27.502)
Okay. So you're, you're bonafide your CV. You have done a lot of marketing in your, in your life. Where, where did that switch flip for you that you realized like I'm playing the wrong game.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (03:44.3)
It happened very early for me. So I got thrown out of school when I was 18. I don't have a GED. Turns out I have five or six learning differences, but people didn't know about those things back then. So with very little choice, the choice I was staring down as a young man was a life of struggle and manual labor or start a company. So I started a company. And like all young people who start with nothing, no money, I come from a product of a single mother, working class background.

No money, no education, no relationships, no experience, no nothing. What do you do? Well, there's only three ways you can really learn. You learn by doing, of course. You learn by seeking out mentors and coaches, and you learn by reading. And when I was about 19 years old, I read a book by Al Reese and Jack Trout called Positioning. And that book changed everything for me. And in there, they talk about categories.

And it became very clear to me that competing in categories was dumb and creating them was really smart. And so I learned that very, very early in my career. And ever since then, I've spent 40 years in the tech startup world, category designing new markets for startup companies.

Christian Brim (05:06.15)
I'll tell you one of the things that I think the genius behind category design that I'd love to hear some more of your thoughts on is that that's the way our brains work, right? We try to classify it into a known category, right? That's how we understand things and how creating a novel category requires them to think differently.

I found it interesting. like when I was talking to Jamie before the, was explaining his company and, I, I'll probably butcher this, but he said, we, we solved the founder's dilemma. And as it was explaining to me what his company was, my brain automatically tried to say, he's a virtual assistant company. Right? Like I tried to read through and categories, even though he led with

something different. can you speak more about that psychology and what that practically looks like if you're trying to create something new?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (06:16.078)
Yeah, the reason category design works is because that's how the human brain works. So in order to accept information, we have to categorize it. We have to put it in a filing cabinet of some sort. for example, if I say to you transportation, you know what that is. That's a massive category. Today, this afternoon, I'm going to get on an airplane. Well, an airplane is a subcategory of transportation.

Christian Brim (06:33.743)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (06:44.954)
Right?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (06:45.632)
as is an automobile, as is a motorcycle. And if I say to you automobile, you know a transmission is a category of component that goes inside an automobile. And so in order to understand things, we have to categorize them and we have to put them in a context. That's what a category really is. The grocery store is organized by category. So if my wife, Carrie, says, hey, could you go to the grocery store and

Christian Brim (07:04.486)
Hmm?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (07:14.542)
pick up some mushrooms, I walk into the grocery store and what's the first thing I notice? The grocery store is organized by category and hierarchies of category. So I'm going to look for the produce section. That's a mega category underneath an even bigger category called food. And a grocery store is a subcategory of food. And then I go in and I look for the produce section and inside the produce section, it's

Christian Brim (07:27.366)
Hmm?

Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (07:35.268)
Right?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (07:44.047)
broken down into two other subcategories, vegetables and fruit. Well, the mushrooms are going to be where the vegetables are because they're a subcategory of a vegetable. And so this is the way the human brain works. And the part that a lot of people miss is there's also associated value with each of those categories. So most people are willing to pay more money for a diamond than they are for a pearl.

Christian Brim (08:13.956)
Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (08:14.168)
That's because we've been trained to value diamonds above pearls. One of the fascinating things we teach category designers, Christian, is there's no such thing as intrinsic value. Everything we value, we've been taught to value. In the 1930s, women wanted pearls on their rings for when they got married. Well, there's a category design development organization.

Christian Brim (08:26.874)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (08:43.704)
that's a conglomerate of diamond manufacturers called De Beers and their job, De Beers' job is to build and grow the category. And De Beers started a marketing campaign to, category design language, not compete, but damn the demand, to move the demand, like a dam moves water from pearls to diamonds.

And they did it by saying, just like your wedding, your marriage, lasts forever, diamonds last forever. Now for the record, diamonds are not forever. They don't last forever. But we were taught they are. Most people would tell you diamonds last forever. And De Beers even told us how much we should spend. Three months salary. They told us how to value their product.

Christian Brim (09:35.939)
Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (09:42.441)
All of that happened by design. It wasn't an accident. And most people think demand for jewelry is whatever demand for jewelry is and women and men have tastes about what they want for their wedding. And it just magically happened when in point of fact, just like everything else, it was designed. And the fact that you and I want to buy our wife a diamond is because we've been trained to.

Christian Brim (10:13.034)
Yes, and you you shared that story in the workshop and I'm like, those sneaky bastards. So so when you're creating a new category, if category is the way we understand something, we we we classify it, if you will. How do you move to something novel that that is distinct without being so far out there that there's no context to understand it at all?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (10:42.606)
Great question. So one of the things we teach in category design is this concept called languaging. And languaging is the strategic use of language to change thinking. And so you want to use language in a way that opens people up to new and different thinking, but at the same time isn't so foreign that they have no idea what you're talking about. And when the human brain hears something that they have no reference for, you and I as human beings go, must be bullshit. Because if it was important, we would know about it.

Christian Brim (11:12.346)
Right, right.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (11:13.198)
because the human brain is arrogant, right? So we have to meet people where they are in the present and pull them to the future. Category designers are people who create different futures. Right now, the future is a continuation of the past. And most people are in the better business. As a matter of fact, most people are in the incremental better business.

Christian Brim (11:31.91)
Mmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (11:36.215)
And so the future in most ways will be incrementally better over the next year than it is today, hopefully. And category designers don't make things incrementally better. They make them exponentially different. And so category design fundamentally is about creating different futures. And the way you create different futures is with language. So for example, when Henry Ford invents his new category and his new product,

Christian Brim (11:53.05)
Hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (12:07.296)
If he says, tada, the automobile, nothing happens. We don't know what that is. No context. We don't know what that is. So what does he do? He meets people where they are and he points the way to a different future. And so he calls his new category the horseless carriage.

Christian Brim (12:12.452)
No context there. don't know what, right.

Christian Brim (12:30.768)
So ties it into what they already know, but it's different.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (12:35.854)
Correct, you can always tell a category is new when it is named for what it's not. So for example, in my hand I'm holding a device that today we call a smartphone. But when the predecessor to this device came out, invented by my buddy Marty Mobile, this was called a wireless phone. Right now we're talking about

Christian Brim (12:41.402)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (12:49.755)
Yes.

Christian Brim (13:03.236)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (13:05.792)
driverless cars. And you start to hear the term autonomous cars. Well, that's speaking to what it is versus what it's not. But often when a new category emerges, it's what it's not. In software development, people talk about no code software. What it's not. And then it morphs over time into being called what it is. But when you call it

Christian Brim (13:08.827)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (13:13.22)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (13:25.645)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (13:34.478)
Excuse me, when you call it what it's not, what you're doing is you're putting it in an existing category context for people in a way that makes them stop and go, huh, what do mean a driverless car? What do you mean a wireless phone? What do you mean no code software?

Christian Brim (13:48.154)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (13:53.542)
I had been, had on this show, I've talked about many times the universal problem that I saw, not just with creatives, but businesses, small businesses in general was they didn't have a clear understanding of the problem that they were solving. And I'd also read 10X is greater, easier than 2X and

Like I have these thoughts running in my mind, but it wasn't until I went to your workshop that it just kind of shifted the focus and it all, it all became clear what, what I'd been thinking. and I think one of the challenges for people that are already in business is they, they gravitate to what they know or what they think they know. And their perspective is.

from their point of view, not the customers. So how do you, how do you coach or counsel people that have existing businesses to make that shift to category design?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (15:03.054)
Yeah, great question. So a while back we wrote a book called The 22 Laws of Category Design. And the first law of category design is thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.

Christian Brim (15:18.212)
I've quoted you several times on that in the last few weeks.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (15:21.966)
Well, great. It's yours, please. And here's the aha. And this sounds upsetting to some people, but if you stop and think about it, you'll discover something. Most of us, myself included, of course, don't think. What we call thinking is the mental retweeting of a thing we heard that we like, that sounds good, that sounds smart, but we don't really think about it. I'll give you an example. I'll give you a controversial example on purpose.

Christian Brim (15:43.142)
Mmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (15:51.663)
People say to me, what's your position on abortion? Well, I've thought about this. I know women who've had abortions, women I love. So my position on abortion goes like this, Christian. I'm pro-life. I'm radically pro-life. I'd like there to be no abortions whatsoever. It's terrible. You're ending a life. I don't care what anybody says, duh, that's what you're doing.

And it's horrible for the woman too. It's very horrible for the woman. It's a tough decision. It can lead to complications and all sorts of things. There's nothing fun about this at all. If we could have zero, we'd be all better off. And certainly, obviously, the women we love would be better off. And I don't believe the government can tell a woman what to do, so I believe in her right to choose.

No, I believe in being responsible about that. There's got to be some cutoff point. I don't know if it's 15 weeks or 20 weeks. I have no idea. I'm not an expert. Whatever it is. And so on the topic, on the issue of abortion, I am pro-life and pro-choice up to a certain point. That's my position. Now.

Christian Brim (17:05.082)
that doesn't that doesn't fit into the paradigm because it's an either or right.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (17:09.88)
Correct. Which leads you to the second piece of the first law, the 22 laws, which is if you're going to think, there's only one way a human can think. They get presented with something. So you and I get presented that abortion is a binary choice. You're either pro-life or you're pro-choice. That's what we're told. And people scream at each other over these sides.

Christian Brim (17:30.427)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (17:38.796)
Well, if you want to actually think about a topic, what you have to do is this concept called reject the premise.

Christian Brim (17:48.24)
Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (17:49.027)
Now, if after thinking about something, you come back to the premise and decide it's a premise that works or it's a premise that's right or it's a premise you believe in, fine. But you can't do that until you really think about it. And so when we reject the premise, we free ourselves, we unshackle ourselves from the past and allow ourselves to think freely.

I don't know if I shared this example when we were together. My friend John Beelenburg is one of the greatest corporate designers of all time. And John teaches mostly today. And he teaches innovation and design at universities and such. And when he's teaching one of his courses, one of his more in-depth courses, he gives his students an exercise. And the exercise is you have to design a bicycle. And there's only one design criteria for the bicycle.

Christian Brim (18:43.694)
Hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (18:47.562)
It cannot be rideable. Go. The minute John removes the premise that a bike must be rideable, he unshackles their thinking. And that's where innovation lives.

Christian Brim (19:02.799)
Yes.

Christian Brim (19:06.564)
Yes, because that forces the question of what is the bicycle for? Right? Like if you're going to design a bicycle that you're not going to ride, what are its potential uses?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (19:17.694)
Exactly. And what might you do that would be fun, cool, interesting, whatever value creating beyond using a bike for transportation. But you're not going to think that because when you're primarily focused on the use case of it has to be rideable, then that's going to be your primary design point. When you remove the primary design point, you reject the premise of what a bicycle is.

To your point, Christian, now you can think about, maybe what could a bicycle be?

Christian Brim (19:53.07)
Yeah, I was sharing with my team, you since your workshop, I honestly sat there and thought, I don't think I've thought about the problem that we're trying to solve as much as I've thought about anything in 29 years worth of business. I think I'd have to go back to university to really

have thought this hard about something right like something that really rejecting the premise really digging in and understanding and it even got to the point where it was like almost circular thinking and I realized the problem was my perspective of my experience like that in some ways it is it is of great value this experience and perspective.

But ultimately, because I'm trying to create a new category, it's largely a hindrance, right? And so what we've done is we've scheduled these conversations. We came up with a premise. We said, we think this is the problem that we solve. Kind of like you used the example of Gojo Industries and clean hands was the problem that they solved.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (21:00.44)
Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (21:18.616)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (21:20.048)
So we were trying to find our clean hands and we settled on something that we thought we would agree on. And then the next step is go out and prove it. And almost immediately, I'm like, now we got it wrong. We weren't even trying to get the words right. It was just something that we understood all collectively. This means this, right? I said, but I think we're on the right track. And so what we what we've done, we had a couple this morning, we've got 10

conversations scheduled with people in our target market that have no, they're not customers, they've never hired us, no association with us. And asking the questions around money and finance, like what are the pain points? Tell me what's working, what's not working, where, you know,

Do you see something missing for you? What have you built for yourself because you can't find a solution out there? You know these type of open-ended questions and then We're just listening I had I had Delana lead these conversations because this is the thing I realized as a professional My job is to diagnose. So when you tell me I'm presenting with these symptoms. I diagnosed the problem

The problem with that though is in diagnosing, I automatically put it into a category, right? So my perspective is limiting. And so it was like, okay, let's let the creative have these conversations with these creatives. I'm just going to sit and listen and see what I hear. And then we get together and compare notes. And we've just had two, but it's already been like, hmm, we've had some confirmation. Then we've also had someone, I hadn't really thought about that. So.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (23:01.997)
Yes.

Christian Brim (23:15.814)
Going back to this observation that I've had that business owners don't have a clear idea of what problem they solve, you would agree with that statement, yeah?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (23:31.01)
Absolutely, because I ask them all the time, what problem do you solve? They have a very hard time answering that question. And it gets worse.

If you have a five person company or a 5,000 person company or a 500,000 person company, this is always true. Ask multiple people in the company what problem you solved.

Christian Brim (23:51.206)
Hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (23:53.049)
Good luck. And so, there's a, you can't scale with that. It doesn't scale. And here's what I mean specifically. I like the Rolling Stones. I think they're awesome. I think they're the most legendary rock band in the history of rock bands.

Christian Brim (23:54.755)
Right.

Christian Brim (24:00.826)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (24:11.174)
See, I would even say that they're a blues band, but go ahead.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (24:14.454)
I wouldn't argue with you about that. And I've seen them live. And here's what I know. The Rolling Stones can sell out an 80,000 seat arena in every city in the world. mean, there's virtually nowhere they can't do that. And when they do that, they will play Jumping Jack Flash. And when they do that,

Christian Brim (24:29.435)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (24:39.206)
Hmm?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (24:42.818)
the opening line that Mick sings will be, I was born in a crossfire hurricane. The chorus will have the phrase, and it's a gas, gas, gas. That's gonna happen. And 80,000 people are going to sing it with him in every city in the world. Now, there's no free-form jazz band that can do that.

Christian Brim (24:49.412)
Yes.

Christian Brim (24:54.266)
Yes.

Christian Brim (25:00.9)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (25:11.032)
So the reason it scales is because the words scale. And we learn the words in the melody. That's category design. There's this thing in category design called a POV, a point of view. And the way you scale is by having a consistent point of view. And a point of view is just a very fancy word for a story that A, frames names and claims a problem, B, presents a solution, and C,

Christian Brim (25:17.521)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (25:40.694)
shows you how you bridge the gap from problem to solution. Although C normally just sort of writes itself.

Christian Brim (25:47.268)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (25:49.559)
And when the world agrees with you about your problem design, your problem definition, you win at scale. And so if you and your folks don't all say the same thing when asked what problem do we solve, nobody can sing your lyrics. If you don't know what you do, no one else does either. And it's even worse. They'll make shit up.

Christian Brim (26:06.51)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Christian Brim (26:13.316)
Wait, he-

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (26:16.654)
They'll go, well, you know, they're sort of this and had do some of that and la la la la la la. And then the next person will make up their version of that. And the next customer will make up their version of that. And so nobody really knows what you do. And so when you don't have a consistent category design with a clear point of view that frames, claims, names a problem, you're ripping yourself off from the number one source of marketing ever. Word of mouth, word of mouth was, is, and always will be.

Christian Brim (26:16.739)
Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (26:46.348)
the greatest form of marketing, but you've got to put the right words in the right mouths.

Christian Brim (26:51.052)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. And what I see with an existing business is it's very tempting to use words from your perspective rather than the words that the customer uses. Because that's what matters. You might get away with using words that you use.

But they may not be the if they're not the words that the customer uses, then you have a translation problem. You've got to explain why we're talking about the same thing.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (27:25.88)
Sure, which you can do, but you gotta be ready to have that conversation. The problem is almost everybody says the same thing, and most of what we say is dumb.

Christian Brim (27:38.822)
You

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (27:40.472)
I'll give you one of my favorite examples. We're a full service plumber.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (27:48.448)
Okay. Is there any plumber in the world that says they're a half service plumber?

Christian Brim (27:55.107)
Yeah, and what does full service mean? Like, yeah.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (27:57.441)
Nothing is literally a throw away line. And if you start looking at your own marketing, you'll see there's throw away bullshit all over the place. It's literally filler. I was watching this hysterical, comedic routine yesterday from this. He's, he's a Finnish comedian name. think his name is Ismo and he performs in English. He's here in America, but he's Finnish.

Christian Brim (28:02.628)
Yes.

Christian Brim (28:09.869)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (28:25.28)
And his sort of his niche, his category is making fun of the English language because when you're not a native speak, exactly. And when you're not a native speaker, you're confronted with it. And so the bit I was listening to him talk about yesterday, he has a whole riff on the word ass. he said, I thought I knew the word ass. I thought it was your behind, it your ass. And then he goes on and on about all the different uses of ass.

Christian Brim (28:32.486)
There's a lot of material there.

Christian Brim (28:39.174)
Mm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (28:55.02)
And what he describes is you can add ass to any sentence just to make it sound cool. So you could say that was a long ass flight, which means that was a long flight. The sentence means the same thing with or without the word, right? I have a lazy ass husband means I have a lazy husband.

Christian Brim (29:07.312)
Yes.

Yes, the ass doesn't mean nothing. Yes. Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (29:24.458)
Anyway, it's a funny bit. His point though is an interesting one, right? Because it's true about marketing, it's true about business. We have all these words in there like lazy ass husband, you could just say lazy husband, that are meaningless throwaway words and they're even, they're dangerous, they're damaging insofar as the more we sound the same, the harder it is to buy from us. Let me say that again.

Christian Brim (29:36.132)
Right. Right.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (29:54.383)
The more we sound the same, the harder it is to buy from us because of the following. When you're playing a better game, which is the game most people play, most people are stuck inside of an existing category, an existing market, and they're playing a better game. That requires a comparison. And companies say stupid things all the time. You see it all the time. Don't take it from me. You don't have to take my word for it.

Christian Brim (30:15.888)
Mmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (30:24.034)
What? What do mean I don't have to take your word? Trust is the number one thing in business. You just told me I don't have to take your word for it. It's crazy. We say crazy things all the time, right? And so listen to the words. What are we actually saying? And what's better versus what's different? Better invites a comparison. Different forces a choice.

Christian Brim (30:49.722)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (30:53.974)
And you want to force a choice. If I say to you, Hey Christian, you feel like Italian or sushi? That's a choice.

Christian Brim (30:54.372)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (31:03.131)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (31:04.622)
If I say to you, you feel like sushi or sashimi, that's a comparison.

Christian Brim (31:10.63)
I love you. I listened to Rush Limbaugh a long time ago and one of the things that he said that I just really loved was he said words mean things and you know when you 100 % because when you when you. Right.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (31:29.314)
Yeah, I agree with Rush. Not on everything, but for sure on that.

Christian Brim (31:35.014)
But his observation was you know just what yours was was you listen to the words like because they they do mean things and if you change the words you change the meaning and And you know you go to you know not to get to you know philosophical here, but you look at like 1984 and George Orwell, you know that that was the whole thing was we we made up new words To to create a new reality and that's exactly what

what you're talking about.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (32:05.804)
Exactly. And most people don't listen to the words. They don't pay attention. I'll give you a social hot button.

Christian Brim (32:10.639)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (32:18.506)
Equity. Equality.

Christian Brim (32:23.684)
Mmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (32:23.852)
Well, for many people when they hear the word equity, what they think is being said is equality. It's not. Equity means equal outcomes for all. Equality means equal opportunity for all. It's a very different idea. I think equity is dangerous and I think equality is legendary.

Christian Brim (32:31.514)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

Christian Brim (32:39.524)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (32:44.111)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (32:47.588)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (32:52.578)
Absolutely. No, but you're right. They don't they don't think about the words and we don't that's the more thinking about the thinking thing because you know, I think your other statement at the workshop was because reason why people don't think is it's hard and and that is true. I mean like our brains want to follow the patterns they want to follow the categories but to your example, what if someone showed up and said I'm a half service plumber. Well, you'd stop just because right like wait a second.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (33:22.7)
Right. One of the other things Ismo says is he talks about the expression half-assed.

Right? Which is doing something improperly or lazily or sort of, you know, not well, just kind of phoning it in kind of, right? But of course, never in our life has anybody walked in the room and said, hey, Christian, we're going to get to work on this thing and we're going to do it full ass.

Christian Brim (33:48.772)
No, that would have a different meaning.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (33:51.245)
Right. They say, don't have, don't half-ass it, Christian. But nobody says, hey, Christian, let's full-ass that. Right? So listen to the words, because the words do have meaning and they have incredible impact. so our category designers are deliberate users of language. They're not lazy users of

Christian Brim (33:57.734)
Uhhh...

Christian Brim (34:03.768)
Mm-hmm, very powerful.

Christian Brim (34:11.226)
Mm-hmm.

You've written a bunch of books. I have your most recent on my on my table to read. have not started. I started with Damp House's book because it was shorter. I'm sorry. I mean, that's just the reality, right? I figured I would I would get bored reading yours, but it's next on my list. So conscious.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (34:26.176)
Okay. It's a great book too.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (34:34.722)
I'd be curious to find out if that's your actual experience.

Christian Brim (34:38.5)
It probably won't be. It probably won't be. I mean, if you've written 15 books that are best sellers, then you know how to write. So I I'm trusting it. Tell us tell us about that book and where we can find it.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (34:48.664)
Thank you.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (34:53.932)
Yeah, so it's a very powerful idea. And it's really about the biggest change happening in work. And I would argue the change in the definition.

biggest change in the definition of what a human being is is happening right now. So the book's called Creator Capitalist.

Christian Brim (35:12.558)
Hmm. That's a bold claim.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (35:17.634)
The premise that it rejects is that there's the creative type and there's the capitalist type. It's a false premise. It's another false choice. Here's what most people don't know. If you'd ask most people in the English language who's the greatest writer in the English language history, they'd say Bill Shakespeare. And if you ask most people, particularly writers, AKA creatives, why is Bill Shakespeare the greatest writer in the history of the English language? They would say because he wrote the greatest shit.

Christian Brim (35:23.864)
Hmm. I agree. 100%.

Christian Brim (35:36.154)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (35:47.779)
That's what they'd say. And that's where they'd be wrong. That's subject to interpretation. When they say it's because he wrote the greatest shit, what they're really trying to say is his product was so outstanding, it just stood out compared to everyone else.

Christian Brim (36:05.99)
ideas.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (36:07.16)
That's not what happened. Bill was a creator capitalist. So writers got paid shit back then too. What did he do? He saved up his money. He invested. And then he bought an ownership stake in the theater company that put on his plays. And then he got involved with the marketing of his plays and his work. And then he made more money.

Christian Brim (36:32.875)
Mmm. Mmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (36:35.916)
And he spent more money marketing and then he put money into real estate. And when Bill Shakespeare died, unlike most of his contemporaries, he was not a poor writer. He was a wealthy creator capitalist. And he made sure because he created his own place for himself, his own category. He became a category of one and he did it because he rejected the premise that there, well, there's the creative types.

and the business types. There's the talent in the suits. There's the software developers and the CFOs and the sales folks. That's all we reject that premise. The most powerful people of all time are both creator and capitalist. Okay. Now, let me go back to my first statement about this. About 70 years ago, Peter Drucker wrote a book called The Land of Tomorrow. I think it's called The Land of Tomorrow.

Christian Brim (37:10.416)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (37:23.756)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (37:34.913)
That's the book where he introduces the category of worker called knowledge worker. And if you look up the definition of knowledge worker today, what you'll see is a knowledge worker is somebody who gets paid to acquire high valuable existing knowledge and apply that knowledge within an existing system to produce a known outcome. That's what a knowledge worker is. That's why our parents wanted us to be doctors and lawyers and accountants and nurses and such because

Those are high value knowledge worker jobs that do what I just described. So, um, in November of 2022, a new category emerged called generative AI with the shipment of a product called chat GPT. And ever since then, Jen AI has been making existing knowledge closer and closer to free every day.

Christian Brim (38:32.101)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (38:33.442)
Then last year was the year that AI agents emerged at scale. Well, what's an agent? An agent is an automation. It's a small software program. But here's the crazy thing. You can talk to AI, you can write with AI in English, and it'll go build you agent or agents. And so agents can be created by anybody who can write English to an AI.

Christian Brim (38:37.488)
Yes.

Christian Brim (38:44.176)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (38:54.318)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (39:03.096)
You don't have to know anything about code and they'll create multiple agents to go do any task you want. So what does that mean? Last year was the beginning of execution being closer and closer to free every day because of agents. Now you and I grew up in a world where we were told two things. One, knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. And number two.

Christian Brim (39:18.662)
Yes.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (39:32.815)
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Everybody has ideas. Any idiot can have an idea. It's all about execution. Can you execute? Knowledge is power and it's all about execution. Well, now AI does both of those things and it makes it closer to free, closer and closer to free every day. So if you're a knowledge worker, roughly 70 % of your time is applying existing knowledge within an existing system to execute a known outcome.

Now the machines do that. What do you do?

Well, what you do is, this is the part that almost nobody gets Christian, technology has never taken one job ever. What technology does do is it moves where the value is.

So it took 300 years after the invention of the wheel for somebody to pop open a bottle of bourbon, have a couple of sips, and look at it and go, huh. Instead of using that thing for pottery, what if we tilted it, put two of them together, and used it for transportation?

Well, back then people said, well, shit, if you do that, all the people who haul shit around on their back are going to be out of work because now we're going to be able to move shit. We're going to be able to move five times the shit with the wheel. They're all going to be out of work. This is terrible.

Christian Brim (41:00.58)
Right.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (41:07.362)
What happened? People didn't get out of work. They stopped wasting their time carrying buckets of water because now we could have a wheelbarrow. So it moves where the value is. And so here's the aha. And this is the beauty for everybody listening to your podcast, Christian. The value now is in creation.

Christian Brim (41:19.366)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (41:33.382)
Mmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (41:34.893)
The value now is in which problem should we solve? How should we think about solving those problems? How do we make a bigger difference? Biggest difference possible. How do we connect our different superpower to making the biggest difference possible? What judgment do we want to bring to the table? What experience do we bring to the table? What taste do we bring to the table? How do we set priorities? What should our strategy be? And so,

It's so exciting, right? Anybody today can create and execute anything with AI at scale.

Christian Brim (42:16.6)
Yeah, I mean, I, the, the, the subtitle of my book, profit first for creatives is redefining the, the, the creative creativity money paradigm, because I saw that false paradigm among creatives is that, you know, creativity and money were somehow opposed. And I'm like, no, absolutely not. Every entrepreneur is creative. And to, your point, you're, you're, you're giving.

entrepreneurs, a massive tool to augment that creativity and shorten that execution gap. And, you know, one of the best books I read on AI was written at least 10 years ago by a couple of economists called Prediction Machines. And they were just viewing it through an economic paradigm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (42:53.144)
Yes.

Christian Brim (43:15.91)
And they said as predictions become essentially free, that the demand for the corollaries is going to increase. And so they postited that the corollaries are exactly what you talked about. The judgment, the context, the perceived value. These are the things like knowledge is everywhere and it's free. And now...

the execution on that knowledge is everywhere and free. But if it's free, then you're going to have a whole bunch of people going like, well, what do I do with this?

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (43:54.733)
Yes. And what should we focus on? We can't focus on all this stuff, right? And what most people are doing, they're trying to out knowledge and out execute the AIs. They're doubling down on the past as opposed to creating different futures. And so what creator capitalist is about is exactly how you do that and how you break down what you could think of as the four capitals. Most people over rotate on financial capital and they forget what

Christian Brim (43:58.992)
Right.

Christian Brim (44:07.642)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (44:24.398)
causes financial capital to happen. And that is intellectual capital, relationship capital, and reputation capital. And when people do an inventory of their true net worth, which is all four capitals, financial, relationship, reputation, and intellectual, they realize they're a lot more wealthy than they thought they were. And on the intellectual capital front,

Christian Brim (44:26.662)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (44:34.214)
Mm.

Christian Brim (44:49.567)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (44:53.762)
what AI allows all of us to do. I've been in business for 40 years. It allows me to take 40 years of experience, of knowledge, of research, of primary research, of learning, and put it in one place and utilize it a thousand different ways to create value for other people. Well, that's fucking legendary.

Christian Brim (45:02.932)
Mm. Mm.

Christian Brim (45:16.568)
Absolutely. And here's the reality that you know, the knowledge that you have is is largely the knowledge, not the experience, the knowledge that you have for the most part already exists out there for anybody to have. Right. And that that's the false. That's the false understanding is that that knowledge is is worth something without any context. It's not like, know, something you know,

of all the knowledge you have, you know what the most important are, right? But if I just brain dump you,

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (45:49.839)
Well, yes and no, I don't know what the most important to you is. So for example, and I would encourage your listeners to do this, not having a bot of yourself today is like not having a website.

Christian Brim (46:04.654)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (46:06.036)
So the primary driver of our creator business is our substack. And when we sell our substack as a subscription, like everybody does, and for those who subscribe at the quote unquote founding level, they get access to the pirate Eddie Bot, Eddie Younes, my partner, and the pirate Christopher Bot. Those are the two most successful products we've ever launched.

Christian Brim (46:07.215)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (46:35.662)
Why? They know everything we know. They don't get tired. They're available 24, 7, 365. And you know what? They know more about category design than I do. I've forgotten a whole bunch of shit. They haven't.

Christian Brim (46:52.134)
Well, you know, I'm glad you said that because as I was working through this and I'm like, man, it'd be great if Mike and Chris would create a bot for this because it would be great to have a conversation with it. And you just answered my question.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (47:07.842)
We did. Yeah. And if you are in the intellectual capital business in any way, or form, you must have this. You must have this. It is an incredible lead gen source for people. It is an incredible education technology for people. This is the future of education because

We use it in our academy to teach our students. So there's a course, a curriculum, and there's exercises, and there's videos, and there's things to read, just as you would expect there to be. But the entire way, there's a bot to talk to.

Christian Brim (47:48.773)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (47:52.514)
So you always have a teacher there and that teacher is going to work with you on whatever you want to work with.

Christian Brim (47:59.781)
Mm-hmm.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (48:00.898)
So if you're building a marketing plan with our bot, then you can build a marketing plan with our bot. As opposed to, you know, we've written 15 books and we have, God only knows how much content, and there's just no way anybody would consume all of it, although some have it. I don't know. But anyway. But if you have a specific use case, you're doing a marketing plan. You are thinking about what's next in your career.

Christian Brim (48:19.238)
you

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (48:28.972)
You're trying to map your four capitals in detail so that you can build your own creator capitalist plan for yourself, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, guess what? It's one thing to read a book. It's another thing even to take a course. Those are great things to do. But when you have a bot that has all of that knowledge that can jam with you on any of it at any time in very specific ways that are pertinent to what you are trying to achieve right now, that's very different than listening to any podcast or reading any book or taking any course.

Christian Brim (48:56.602)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (49:00.518)
Chris, this has been awesome. Thank you very much for your time. You didn't say where we can get your book, so.

@lochhead 🏴‍☠️ (49:06.978)
CategoryPirates.com. Everything's off CategoryPirates.com. If you go to CategoryPirates.com, you can get the Substack, although you can find us on Substack, but everything hangs off of there.

Christian Brim (49:09.017)
or your sub stack.

Christian Brim (49:18.192)
Perfect. Listeners, we'll have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard and I don't know why you didn't, shoot us a message, tell us what you'd like to hear and I'll get rid of Chris. Until next time, ta ta for now.