Ever notice how much content is actually content-free-content?

Thanks for stopping by.  I’m a friend to the different and am  best known for Play Bigger, Category Pirates and being a Godfather of Category Design.
🏴‍☠️

I help startup founders, CEOs, marketers, creators, and ambitious professionals category design legendary markets and careers in a post-AI world.

**Why Category Design & Creator Capitalism?**

Category designers create markets, not competition, capturing **76% of the value** in the spaces they pioneer. 

Creator Capitalists unlock their different **superpower**—that unique edge only they bring—to build wealth and impact in an AI-driven economy. 

Whether you’re launching a company or redefining your career, I’ll show you how to own your niche and thrive.

**What I Do:**

With my partners at Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️ I empower you to:

*Design & dominate new markets through writing, courses, and community.

*Discover your superpower to become a Creator Capitalist, mastering your career in the AI era.

*Build legendary businesses & careers with strategies from our #1 Amazon-charting books.

Join us at **www.categorypirates.com** to start pirating.

**My Track Record:**

*Author: Co-authored 14 #1 bestsellers, including *Play Bigger* (the first book on category design), *Niche Down*, and *Snow Leopard*.

*Podcaster: Host of Follow Your Different* (“Best Business Podcast” – Podcast Magazine) and Lochhead on Marketing (#1 charting).

*Newsletter: Run Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️ Substack (top 0.5% paid business newsletter).

*Career: Former 3X Silicon Valley public company CMO, advisor, and VC limited partner.

**What People Say:**

*Play Bigger is required reading for entrepreneurs altering the landscape.” *Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce
*“A quasar of energy and ideas.” – Bill Walton, NBA Legend
*“Off-putting to some, but undeniably brilliant.” – The Economist

*The Future Needs You

If you’re ready to category design a market or unleash your superpower? 

Connect with me or visit **www.categorypirates.com**. 

Let’s build something legendary—together. 
🏴‍☠️

Christopher Lochhead🏴‍☠️

LinkedIn is drowning in content-free content.

Symptoms include:
• Sh!t you’ve heard 100 times
• Lists with no consequences
• Long posts that say nothing
• Frameworks that explain zero things
• Obvious "insights” your mom already knows

If your content can’t:
• piss someone off
• change a decision
• force a tradeoff

…it’s not content.
It’s LinkedIn oatmeal.

Say something dangerous.
Or stop posting.
🏴‍☠️

Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️

“A quasar, a godfather of category design” Bill Walton | “Off-putting to some” The Economist | 15X #1 author Play Bigger & Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️| #1 Charting Apple Business Podcast

I’m really glad I didn’t listen to them nine years ago. And neither should you. Nine years ago this month, I started podcasting.  

For three reasons:
1) I believe different is a superpower
2) Authentic dialogue is a force for good
3) The business world was already drowning in content-free content

So I decided to do something about it.
They told me it was too late.

They said:
•“You missed it.”
•“Podcasting is played out.”
•“You should’ve started five years ago.”
 (Which—ironically—was 14 years ago.)

They were wrong.
Very wrong.

What actually happened.

In nine years, the podcast has:
•Helped sell 500,000 books
•Reached the top 0.5% of podcasts worldwide
•Been downloaded millions and millions of times
•Won Best Business Podcast from Podcast Magazine
•Helped create Category Pirates, now a top business newsletter
•Helped launch the first Category Design Academy in the world
•Helped power the category design movement across 190 countries

And here’s the part most people miss:
The podcast didn’t just build an audience.
It helped create a movement.

Of category designers building different futures.
Of people who refuse to accept the status quo as inevitable.

Everything is the way it is because someone changed the way it was.
We serve the people who do that:
•The pirates
•The dreamers
•The innovators
•The legends, and the losers (who get knocked down and get back up)

The goal was simple:
1) Empower the different
2) Flip the bird to the status quo
3) Make the world actually different

The lesson.
If you’re waiting for permission, consensus, or perfect timing.
Don’t.

You are not too late.
You are not too late.
You are not too late.

The people who say “it’s too late” are (almost) never the ones building anything legendary.

So if you’re thinking about starting:
•a book
•a podcast
•a category
•a business
•a movement

Ignore "them".
Go for it.
 
Hit record.
Make the thing.
Follow your different.

Let time do the rest.

Nine years in.
Just getting started. 
💪🏻🏴‍☠️

Ps. Massive thank you to: Jason DeFillippo & Jaime Jay 💥 for making it all happen. Love you boys. 🙏 🏴‍☠️

MLK said: “Judge not by the color of skin but by the content of character.”

That not a kindness quote. It’s a challenge.

•Skin color is a shortcut
•So is political party •So is ideology •So is title •So is tribe
•So is sex

It is time to end proxy judgment.

I don’t care what group you’re part of. 

I do care (a lot) about what quality of person you are. 

Character can’t be assumed. It must be observed. 
Over time. Under pressure.

Character is about actions. 
(Not words.)

We don’t want less judgment.
We want different judgment.

Based on 100% on character.

No alternative text description for this image

Yesterday, evil showed up in San Jose. A violent, armed madman turned a city into a crime scene. A carjacking. A chase. Gunfire. Chaos. Fear. And when that moment came..... 👇🏻🚔

Yesterday, evil showed up in San Jose. A violent, armed madman turned a city into a crime scene. A carjacking. A chase. Gunfire. Chaos. Fear. And when

Open article: Yesterday In San Jose. by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 2 min read

Different is the only advantage that still matters. 

1) Not better. 
Better is table stakes. 

2) Not faster. 
AI is already faster than you.

3) Not cheaper.
That’s a race to the bottom with AI agents who don’t get tired.

Different is the only thing AI can’t from humans.

Different is:
• What you frame, name and claim. 
• What you notice that others don’t.
• What you reject while others chase.
• What you believe that others won’t say.
• What problems you believe must be solved.

AI can generate answers.
It cannot decide which questions are worth asking.

AI can optimize inside a frame.
It cannot choose which frame should exist.

That’s a human job.
And not a comfortable one.

Here’s the shift nobody is prepared for:
•In the old world, value came from knowing more.
•In the new world, value comes from seeing differently.

Taste beats tools.
Point of view beats process.
Judgment beats intelligence.

Today, the market doesn’t reward effort.
It rewards clarity.

This is why most AI-generated content feels like LinkedIn oatmeal.
Technically correct.
Emotionally dead.

Designed to offend no one, and (therefore) matter to no one.

If your thinking sounds like everyone else’s.
AI won't replace you. You will let yourself be replaced.

The future doesn’t belong to the best executors.
Execution is becoming free.
It belongs to the people who:
• see earlier
• decide faster
• commit harder
• and create radical new value

Because in a world where everyone can execute at the speed of AI.

People who are different.
Make the biggest difference.
🏴‍☠️

Few people tell the CFO how to do accounting. Or R&D how to do build. But everyone tells the CMO how to do marketing. So marketing gets a lot of “help.”

Sales: “Make it sexier.”
Finance: “Where’s the ROI?”
Product: “Just talk about the features.”

And marketing lets it happen.
It bought the lie that marketing can’t be tied to revenue.

That it’s “too hard to measure.”
That it’s "more art than economics."

That’s how marketing ended up at the kids table.  
Time to flip the damn table.

Not with decks or dashboards.
With revenue that shows up uninvited.

Because the only way to reject the premise.
Is to show them the money.

Marketing isn’t a cost center.
It’s a profit engine: if you design it that way.

Companies like Tesla don’t pay for attention.
They get paid for experience.
That’s the shift.

At the bottom, marketing shouts.
At the top, customers do.

Once you see it, there’s no neutral position left.

You’re either fighting gravity.
Or deliberately climbing.

So ask yourself.
"How can our marketing generate revenue?"

“In business you need to be professional, not emotional.” That one sentence has killed more companies than bad strategy ever will.

Let’s call it what it is.
That advice isn’t wisdom.
It’s fear disguised as maturity.

Humans don’t buy, build, follow, or believe because of spreadsheets.
They do it because of emotion.

•Love.
•Hope.
•Identity.
•Ambition.
•Belonging.
•Fear of being left behind.
•Desire to make a difference.

Emotion is not the enemy of business.
Emotion is THE engine.

Every legendary company was started by someone who gave a sh!t.
Loudly.

Apple wasn’t born from “professional restraint.”
It was born from obsession.

Tesla wasn’t built by calm consensus.
It was built by conviction.

Nike didn’t say “Just Be Reasonable.”
They said Just Do It.

Here’s the dirty secret the donkeys won’t tell you. 
“Don’t be emotional” usually means:

• Don’t care too much
• Don’t risk being wrong
• Don’t challenge the status quo
• Don’t make others uncomfortable
That’s not professionalism.
That’s corporate anesthesia.

Emotion is how humans signal commitment.
Emotion is how leaders create belief.
Emotion is how movements are born.

Want a room full of emotionless executives?
Passion isn’t sloppy.
Apathy is.

Caring isn’t weakness.
Indifference is.

Vision is emotional.
Purpose is emotional.
Category design is emotional.

If you’re not emotional about what you’re building, why should anyone care?
So here’s the non-obvious advice:

•Be clear, not cold.
•Be convicted, not cautious.
•Be emotional with intent, not emotional by accident.

Wear your passion on your sleeve.
Wear your beliefs on your chest.
Wear your dreams like a badge.

Because the leaders who create different futures don’t hide what they feel.
They leverage it.

And the people telling you to “be professional, not emotional”?
They’re not leaders.
They’re spectators.

Build with emotion.
Lead with conviction.
And let the donkeys bray from the sidelines. 
🏴‍☠️

Most people are taught WHAT to think. Almost nobody is taught HOW to think. That’s why so many people are great at consuming ideas. And terrible at creating them.

Thinker’s High is the dopamine hit you only get when you actually think.
•Not scrolling. 
•Not summarizing. 
•Not asking for the hack.

Real thinking.
The moment you stop absorbing ideas and start generating them then turning them into something that changes lives, careers, or companies.

We’ve built a world optimized for instant relief:

• “Just tell me.”
• “Summarize it.”
• “Give me the shortcut.”
• “DoorDash everything.”

Thinking became optional.
And uncomfortable.

Until you ask the dangerous question:
“Why do I think what I think?”

That question breaks the spell.
And once it does, you realize something powerful:
You can take a raw idea in your head and build something that didn’t exist yesterday.

That feeling? That surge of clarity, courage, and momentum?
That’s Thinker’s High.
It’s unlimited.
Unstealable.

And the fuel you need to design your future instead of reacting to it.
Which is why we released our newest book, Thinker’s High and didn’t put it on Amazon.

We wanted a book that felt legendary.
One you return to.
Not speed-read and forget.

Inside: 50+ Category Pirates proverbs. 
Designed for repetition.
Read one quote a week.
Sit with it.

Jam with the AI prompts.
Let the thinking compound.
This isn’t a business book.

It’s a coffee-table dojo for people who want to think clearly, act boldly, and build what doesn’t exist yet.
•52 weeks.
•52 quotes.

One year of training your brain to think like a Category Designer.

That’s not a book.
That’s a transformation system. 
(L!nk in c0mments)
🏴‍☠️

You're (probably ) a creator capitalist. And don't know it.  A Creator Capitalist doesn’t apply knowledge. They create net new value. That’s the line.

Legacy knowledge workers get paid to execute inside existing systems.
Creator Capitalists get paid to invent what didn’t exist before.

One maintains the machine.
The other builds the next one.

Legacy knowledge workers get paid to apply what’s already known:

•Software engineers developing software they didn't design
•Marketers optimizing campaigns they didn’t design
•Product managers shipping roadmap items
•Analysts producing decks and dashboards
•Consultants implementing best practices
•Lawyers interpreting precedent
•Accountants closing the books
•Operators “driving efficiency”

Now. Are executives managing someone else’s strategy Useful? Yes. And replaceable? Also yes.

Creator Capitalists get paid to create net new things of value:

•New points of view
•New frameworks
•New categories
•New language
•New products
•New revenue
•New demand
•New assets

They don’t ask, “How do I do this better?”

They ask, “What shouldn’t exist anymore, and what replaces it?”

Legacy workers sell execution.
Creator Capitalists build equity in ideas.

They don’t climb ladders.
They build new buildings. 

They don’t wait for permission.
They design the game, and charge admission.

In an AI world, applying existing knowledge is collapsing to zero.
Creating net new meaning, direction, and value?

That’s where the money is 💰.
That’s a Creator Capitalist.

Let’s be candid. If your 2026 career plan still depends on:
 • a boss saying yes
 • an algorithm behaving
 • a company “seeing your value”

That’s not a dream career.
That’s a lease. With a termination clause.

Creator Capitalists don’t chase roles.
They build (net new) value.

Here’s the shift:
•Employees think in ladders.
•Creator Capitalists think in assets.

Not just money. Four kinds:
 1) Intellectual → how you see the world
 2) Audience → people who trust your POV
 3) Product → things you build once, sell many times
 4) Financial → cash flow + optionality

Posts don’t compound.
Assets do.

Using AI to “create more content” is table stakes.
Using AI to turn experience into owned assets is the game.

•Apps
•Agents. 
•Courses. 
•Mini-books. 
•Frameworks. 
•Communities.
 
Build once. Sell forever. Update occasionally.
And one rule that decides everything:
If you don’t own the relationship, you don’t own the career.

The flex in 2026 isn’t virality or titles.
It’s the ability to walk away.

Stop asking:
“Who will hire me?”

Start asking:
“What do I own?”

That question is how dream careers are built. 
🏴‍☠️

The most important promotion is realizing the ladder you’re on goes nowhere.

Just recorded and dropped an explosive podcast with Sharren Haskel, Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. We sat down on Tuesday, January 13, 2026. As the world watches Iran descend into chaos.

For over a month, brave Iranians have flooded the streets in massive protests demanding an end to the oppressive regime. In response, the IRGC has unleashed deadly violence.

Killing and capturing their own people, with reports of hundreds to thousands dead in the crackdown. 

They've imposed a near-total internet blackout to hide the atrocities and silence the uprising.

US President Donald Trump declared to the Iranian people: “Help is on the way”. And he's clearly signaling potential use of force if the slaughter continues.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel stands with the Iranian people's struggle for freedom, liberty, and justice.

And that this could be the moment when Iranians finally “take their fate into their own hands.”

In this raw, unfiltered conversation with Deputy Minister Haskel, we dive deep:

•The escalating crisis in Iran 
•The shifting balance of power in the Middle East
•Her direct message to the Iranian people amid the bloodshed
•Her vision for a freer, more stable future in the region
•The lasting scars and transformations from October 7, 2023
•The current reality on the ground in Gaza
•How dramatically the Middle East (and the entire world) is changing right now, in real time

This isn't just talk.

It's frontline insight from one of Israel's most outspoken leaders on the regime change possibilities, the threats from Tehran, and what comes next for global security.

If you're tracking the biggest geopolitical shifts of our era, this episode is must-listen. 

Drop a comment: What do you think happens in Iran next?
L!nk in comments to listen now.

#IranProtests #MiddleEast #Israel #Geopolitics #RegimeChange #Freedom

Can We Have A Thoughtful Conversation About Immigration On LinkedIn? 🤔

I’d love your thoughts on this. I’m attempting a thoughtful conversation about immigration in the digital world. Let’s see if that’s possible in 2026 

Open article: Can We Have A Thoughtful Conversation About Immigration In The Digital World? by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 2 min read

Can We Have A Thoughtful Conversation About Immigration In The Digital World?

Most people are taught what to think. Not how to think. That one sentence explains why so much modern work feels hollow.

We train people to repeat answers.
•To memorize frameworks.
•To sound smart instead of see clearly.

Then we act surprised when:
•Creativity dries up
•Strategy turns into slide theater
•Everyone has opinions, no insight
•AI just scales average thinking faster

Thinker’s High exists because thinking is a skill.
(and most people stopped practicing it.)

This isn’t about being smarter.
Plenty of smart people are stuck.

It’s about permission.
Permission to:
•Follow curiosity over consensus
•Trust your own pattern recognition
•Sit in confusion without rushing to resolution
•Question the premise instead of optimizing inside it

A Thinker’s High moment is quiet.
•The noise drops.
•The obvious answer collapses.
•A different question appears.

That’s the drug.
Once you feel it, you can’t unsee how rare real thinking is.

You start noticing how many people are:
•Mistaking speed for depth
•Performing intelligence instead of practicing it
•Borrowing language instead of forming thoughts

This is why Thinker’s High isn’t for everyone.

It’s for founders, builders, and creators who feel the friction.
People who don’t want to win by copying.
People who want to see first.

Because the future doesn’t belong to better executors.
(AI took that job.)

It belongs to people who can:
•Frame the right problems
•Think independently under pressure
•Create non-obvious solutions

That isn’t taught.
It’s trained.

Thinker’s High is the reminder.
The practice.
The reset.

A love letter to thinking as an act of courage.
And now the line in the sand:
If this resonated, stop scrolling.

📘 Thinker’s High isn’t a book you consume.
It’s a book you work with.
It won’t give you answers.
It will take away the wrong ones.

Buy the book.
Train your thinking.
And stop letting the world decide your thoughts for you.

Once you experience a real Thinker’s High,
there’s no going back.

Welcome to the crew. 
L!nk in comments
👇🏻🏴‍☠️

If your income depends on:
• one boss
• one platform
• one company
• one algorithm

You don’t have a career.
You have a dependency.

And dependencies break fastest when the world changes.
Which is exactly what’s happening now.

Trust in institutions collapses.
Platforms change the rules.
Jobs get automated.
Org charts flatten.

Most people panic.
They cling to titles.
They wait for clarity.
They hope stability returns.

Creator Capitalists do something else.
They harvest the chaos.

Here’s the non-obvious shift:
•Entrepreneurs optimize for risk.
•Employees optimize for stability.
•Creator Capitalists are optimized for change itself.

They don’t “create content.”
They don’t “grow a following.”
They don’t “monetize attention.”

(That's what hustle porn-donkeys do.)

Creator Capitalists turn thinking, framing, taste, and judgment into digital economic engines.

A Creator Capitalist doesn’t ask:
“What should I post?”

They ask:
“What confusion is getting expensive right now?”

Then they:
 • name it
 • frame it
 • package it
 • productize it
 • compound it

Confusion → Clarity → Cash → Digital Asset → Leverage.

This is the line that matters:
Creator Capitalists don’t build audiences.
They build clarity people will pay to reuse.

That’s why:
 • IC beats influence
 • podcasts beat interviews
 • newsletters beat résumés
 • books beat business blogs

Old career advice belongs to a slower era:
Climb. 
Specialize. 
Wait.

Creator Capitalists live in a faster one:
Move early.
Sell before consensus.
Publish before permission.

They don’t wait for demand signals.
They create them.

Creator Capitalism is how you turn what you notice.
Into what you own.
🏴‍☠️

The Agentic CEO:  Execution used to be expensive.

•Process. 
•Headcount.
•Meetings about meetings.

That era is ending.

Every day, AI agents are making the ability to execute closer to free.mAnd here’s the shift most leaders haven’t internalized yet:

📈Soon, companies will have 10× more agents than people.

Creating, deploying, and managing agents is becoming a core company capability. Right next to finance, product, marketing and sales.

Not an innovation lab.
Not an AI project.
A foundation.

When execution is abundant, the constraint changes.
The scarce resource is no longer labor or tools.
It’s clarity.

•What matters?
•What outcome do we want?
•What problems are worth solving?

The Agentic CEO doesn’t manage people to do tasks.
They design systems of agents to produce outcomes.

The winners won’t have better prompts.
They’ll have different agent architecture.
2026 won’t be the year of AI.

It’ll be the year execution stopped being the excuse.
Choose accordingly.
🏴‍☠️

There is another consequence to the California asset seizure tax. That few are discussing.

Every billionaire that leaves.
Takes jobs and tax payers with them.
(I’ve heard rumors 50% of billionaire wealth has already left)

It stands to reason. That when a billionaire leaves California, they will (likely) stop building new products, companies and categories in California.

Historically California got 50% of all startup investment in the US.

Expect that number to much lower going forward.
Expect job creation in California to fall off a cliff.

Most people don’t lose their careers. They slowly abandon them.

It's fascinating how many people do not know the basics of our laws. Let’s break it down. It is illegal to try to stop any LE (law enforcement) action of any kind. 

If you don't like what LE is doing, you can do a lot of things. 

(Like vote, call your mayor, congressperson, organize a lawful protest, etc) 

But you cannot. 
Legally. 
Interfere with LE. 
Period.

If you do. 
You'll be arrested. 
Or worse.

The male nurse in MN who got shot, was standing in the middle of the street. Blowing a whistle. Interfering with LE. 

The female in the car who got shot, was doing similar things. 
Then she resisted arrest. 

ALL of that is illegal. 
That’s not a political statement.
It’s long-standing US law.

If you’re convicted of crimes/ misdemeanors of LE interference you’ll face fines and the potential of prison time.

Lethal force is lawful only if ALL of the following are true. The officer reasonably believes the person (law-breaker) right now poses a threat of:

* Death, or
* Serious bodily injury to the officer, or
* Another person

This is also true for citizens when using self defense.

You can debate IF the conditions for lethal force were present in the two MN cases. (And we should)

But there is zero debate about the law. 
Or the fact that both people who got shot were breaking laws.

As a matter of fact, stopping ICE was exactly what they were doing, when they lost their lives.

These are objective facts.

The only debate.
Were the conditions for self-defense / lethal force present in these two MN shootings. 

The reality is. 
NONE of us know all the facts about these two shootings. 

There needs to be investigations / evidence before these killings are ruled legal, or not.

I spent about 13 weeks last yr, in three murder trials, (three out of the four killers of a man I love. )

In EVERY trial (same killing) different evidence, facts and arguments were presented and made.

And in all three cases. 
The killers were found guilty on all counts and got life w/o parole sentences. 
(The fourth trial starts soon)

Politically you might agree or disagree with what our governments do. 
But the laws in this domain are very clear.
You can not interfere with LE.

Ps. If you want to test these laws. 

Next time you see cops pull someone over for speeding. 
Get out of your car. And start screaming at the cops. 

Stand between the cops and the person they are ticketing. 
And see what happens to you.

This is Chicago police chief Larry B. Snelling.
He makes it very clear 👇🏻

I own 5 diverse companies and host Right About Now - the #1 Marketing and Business show on Apple Podcasts. 

Building out The Radcast Network adding shows and talent that want to leverage our systems to grow and leave a legacy while driving true outcomes for themselves and for partners. 

My agency The RAD Collective is helping brands in the hobby generate Omni-channel success leveraging new media strategies and helping adjacent brands take advantage of the incredible opportunities within the category through strategic guidance and unique partnerships. 


Clients/Partner Experience: Verizon, Lexus, Samsung, Motorola, The NFL, and many other global companies. 

Connect with me on Instagram @RyanAlford or TikTok @Ryan.Alford

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Ryan Alford

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