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🏴‍☠️

The value of your value changed. And most people still think they’re worth what they were paid in November 2022 (when chatGPT came out). They’re not. Here’s why. For 30 years, you got paid to:

• know things
• manage process
• apply frameworks
• execute inside systems
• optimize what already exists

That was the Knowledge Worker economy.
Then AI showed up.

Research became instant.
Drafting became automated.
Analysis became on-demand.
 
Execution started racing toward cheap.
The value most careers were built on?
It’s compressing toward commodity.

This isn’t personal.
It’s economic.

When execution becomes abundant, value moves upstream.
Upstream to:

• framing the right problem
• making non-obvious tradeoffs
• naming what others can’t see
• designing new systems
• creating net new value

The Knowledge Worker sold effort inside the machine.
The Creator Capitalist builds the machine.

One gets paid for activity.
The other gets paid for leverage.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Working harder won’t save you.
(Read that three times.)

In a world where AI makes knowledge and execution closer to free every month, “outworking everyone” is not a moat.

Creation is.
• A new asset
• A new point of view
• A new category
• A new engine of value

So the question isn’t:
“What skill should I add?”

It’s:
“What doesn’t exist yet that I’m uniquely positioned to create?”

Because the value of your value changed.
And the people who understand that first.
Won’t just survive the shift.
They’ll design it.
🏴‍☠️

Ps. The shift from knowledge worker to creator capitalist is the biggest change in work since the industrial revolution.  It's happening in plain site. And yet most can't see it. I'd love to know why you think that is?

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

People say "This was written by AI"... like it's an insult. Writing without AI is like digging a ditch without a shovel.

Back in the day, I asked a CEO buddy his what the secret to his success was. I remember his answer like it was yesterday. "I out-work everyone".  Today. Hard work is no longer a moat.

It was a great strategy. Right up until AI made execution closer to free every day.

If your advantage is:
• longer hours
• more hustle
• out-working everyone

AI is dismantling you.
Here’s the Creator Capitalist shift 👇

•Stop working hard
•Stop doing the work
•Start creating new value.

Execution is cheap. 
AI can ship, test, write, and analyze faster than you.

1) Start choosing the work.
Judgment is now the bottleneck. 
What matters. What doesn’t. Why.

2) Stop optimizing effort.
Effort doesn’t compound. 
Leverage does.

3) Start framing better problems
Confusion is expensive. 
Naming the right problem creates value instantly.

4) Stop trading time
Time is rented. 
POVs, frameworks, and systems are owned.

5) Start building assets
If it doesn’t scale while you sleep, it’s not strategy. 
It’s labor.

AI didn’t kill hard work.
It killed hard work as an advantage.
Execution is cheap.

Creation is not.
Act accordingly. 
🏴‍☠️

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 tech.
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.
🏴‍☠️

Why Most Marketing Plans Are Wrong. Not slightly wrong. Fundamentally wrong. Because they ignore the most powerful force in marketing. 👇🏻👀

Not slightly wrong. Fundamentally wrong. Because they ignore the most powerful force in marketing. Word of mouth. WOM is, was, and always will be the 

Open article: Why Most Marketing Plans Are Wrong. by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 3 min read

What The New 2026 LinkedIn Career Report REALLY Says.
👇🏻👀

LinkedIn thinks it’s reporting on “jobs.” It’s actually reporting on the collapse of the Knowledge Worker economy. Here’s the non-obvious shift: Techn

Open article: What The New 2026 LinkedIn Career Report REALLY Says  by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 3 min read

What The New 2026 LinkedIn Career Report REALLY Says

Most career books are written to appeal to the largest audience possible. This is not one of them. Creator Capitalist is not for kids. It is exclusively for executives who (already) have the goods. 

•You don't need 101. 
•You don't need hustle porn. 
•You need to stop giving away what you've spent decades building.

Every career generates four forms of capital. Most executives hand all four to institutions for 20-30 years and walk away with (maybe) a Rolex.

That ends here.

1) Financial Capital: You need less runway than you think. And there's a version of this that's 10x more scalable than "I'll just do consulting."

2) Reputation Capital: You've spent two decades building credibility inside a system. It doesn't transfer automatically. But it can be repackaged to be worth more outside than it ever was inside.

3) Relationship Capital: You know decision-makers, operators, builders. Right now those relationships serve someone else's business. The question isn't whether you have them. It's whether you'll convert them before you leave. Or start from zero.

4) Intellectual Capital: Your "obvious" thinking is someone else's breakthrough. If you don't put your best ideas out there in your name, someone else will.

You've been building someone else's category your entire career. 
The corporation's. The firm's. The military's.
They will replace you the moment the AI says so.

You already have the raw materials. 
Creator Capitalist is the framework how you finally capitalize on them.

Take the free self-assessment now. 
Find out where you stand across all four capitals.
And what your biggest leverage points are, right now.

L!nk in c0mments.
👇🏻👀
👇🏻👀

Social Media Influencers rent attention from platforms that can evict them anytime. Creator Capitalists build a category, own their intellectual capital, and turn different thinking into an economic engine that compounds whether the algorithm smiles or not. 

One is famous on the internet.
The other is dangerous in the market.
🏴‍☠️

The Worst Response To AI? Hunker Down. A lot of smart people are reacting to AI like this:

•“I’ll work harder.”
•“I’ll stack more skills.”
•“I’ll out-execute the machines.”

That instinct feels responsible.
It worked for decades.
It’s also wrong.

For 30 years, you were rewarded for:
• doing more
• knowing more
• executing better

Then AI showed up.

Knowledge became searchable. 
Execution became automatable. 
Frameworks became downloadable.

Execution is drifting toward free.
Doubling down on it now is like opening a video store in 2024.

When knowledge is abundant and execution is automated, value moves upstream. To:

• framing the right problem
• choosing what not to do
• designing new systems
• creating net-new value

Hunkering down is defensive.
Creation is offensive.

One protects yesterday.
The other builds tomorrow.

Please.
Choose wisely.
🏴‍☠️

Why the future work (in a post-AI world) is about going from execution to creation. 👇🏻👀

"...the future is about going from execution to creation," said Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ when I asked him about his keynote session on becoming a Creator Capitalist at the Dynamic Communities & Cloud Wars AI Agent & Copilot Summit March 17-19 at the Torrey Pines Hilton in San Diego.  Tune in to my favorite moment below, and join us at the event, skinny here: copilotsummitna.com

BREAKING: New Study Shows 1 in 3 Executives Want To Be Creator Capitalists 👇🏻👀

Around here, we often ask: are you building your career—or someone else's? Today, we want to show you something that puts that question in a different

Open article: The Silent Majority: 1 in 3 Executives Want To Be Creator Capitalists  by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 4 min read

The Silent Majority: 1 in 3 Executives Want To Be Creator Capitalists

Why are we so excited about Creator Capitalists? 

It is because there has never been a better time to be a creator, thanks to AI. And there has never been a better time to be a capitalist. 

Not in the Gordon Gecko, ‘greed is good,’ stereotype. 

But in the spirit of Norman Borlaug, who created the semi-dwarf wheat and saved a billion people from starvation. 

He decoupled land size from food output, increasing yields by 600% in Mexico and nearly doubling production in India and Pakistan in just five years. 

He represents the ultimate creator-capitalist.
A man who used a single technological breakthrough to generate a 9x economic return and solve a global crisis at scale.

You are living through one of the most exciting and significant moments in human history.

Right now, you have the opportunity to design the career of your dreams. 
To create a life of radical abundance and unparalleled freedom. 

To do work that genuinely matters, taps into your greatest strengths, and allows you to create exponential value in the world.

This isn’t a hustle porn cliché.
It’s a radical idea.

You can create your career. 
🏴‍☠️

"I spent the last 20+ years being told that knowledge is power. Collect credentials. Hoard expertise. Become the smartest person in the room. But AI just ate the Knowledge Worker's lunch." - Mary Callan, PhD 👇🏻👀

I still remember the moment it hit much-younger-and-less-jaded me.

I was early in my first real corporate job, surrounded by spreadsheets, strategy decks, and people who seemed to know exactly what they were doing, when a quiet epiphany stopped me mid-thought:

"Oh my gosh… I'm actually getting paid to think."

Not to lift. Not to harvest. To "think".

(Pretty novel, compared to the irrigation ditches I was digging the year before.)

That realization changed everything about how I showed up at work. I started treating my mind like the asset it was.

Fast forward a few decades, and Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ nails it better than I ever could:

"Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking."

Here's why that line hits not-so-young me different right now:

I spent the last 20+ years being told that knowledge is power. Collect credentials. Hoard expertise. Become the smartest person in the room.

But AI just ate the Knowledge Worker's lunch.

Anything you can Google, memorize, or regurgitate, a machine now does faster, cheaper, and without a coffee break. The era of getting paid to *know things* is closing. Fast. 

What's opening? It's all good. The era of getting paid to "think differently."

To ask questions no one is asking. To frame problems no one sees yet. To create categories, not just fill roles.

This is the shift from Knowledge Worker to what the Category Pirates call the "Creator Capitalist." Someone who doesn't just use AI as a shortcut, but as a lever for thinking that didn't exist before.

The people who thrive in the next chapter won't be the ones with the most answers.

They'll be the ones with the most dangerous questions.

So ask yourself, as I'm asking myself now: Are you still getting paid to know, or are you getting paid to think?

Because one of those has an expiration date.

The Category Pirates' new book "Creator Capitalist" digs into this shift in a way that will rewire how you see your career. Look for how to get on the waitlist in the first comment. We'd better get on it before our industries move on without us.

The Agentic CEO, Southwest Crushed Its Category & Why It Matters To You, Pirate Snacks & More 👇🏻🏴‍☠️

Welcome to Different. Unnecessary musings for : entrepreneurs, marketing leaders, category designers and creator capitalists, With a different mind. W

Open article: The Agentic CEO, Southwest Crushed Its Category & Why It Matters To You, Pirate Snacks & More by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 7 min read

The Agentic CEO, Southwest Crushed Its Category & Why It Matters To You, Pirate Snacks & More

Today I’m giving you 20 reasons not to listen to the AI doomers. We just dropped a free mini-book:

"The Death of the Knowledge Worker: The 6-Step Shift to Become Irreplaceable and Stop Trading Time for Money."

Sure, the title sounds scary.
But here’s the punchline.
It’s actually wildly optimistic.

Because we studied 20 people who made the leap.
FROM Knowledge Worker TO Creator Capitalist.
And we tried to figure out what predicted success.

•Age.
•Gender.
•Net worth.
•Education.
•Privilege vs trauma.
•Whether they started at 14 or 40.

We looked at everything.
Nothing predicted it.

The data is… weird.
The pattern is there is no pattern.

• A 14-year-old in Singapore from a brutal family situation → two exits before 30
• An investment banker packing baby wipes at night → $300M+ retail company
• An esthetician rejected from her dream job → high-six-figure business and now owns the building

The old world said your trajectory was set by credentials.
The new world says something very different.

Agency beats pedigree.
(Pls read this three times) 

Which means something profound:
If people this different can make the leap…

You can too.
But only if you start.

The mini-book is free.
L!nk in the c0mments.
Creator Capitalist drops March 17, 2026. 🏴‍☠️

On October 6th. 2023 in Tehran and Gaza, there were evil men who believed history was theirs to take. 

They believed Israel (the “little Satan”) could be broken.
 They believed America (the “big Satan”) was a pxssy. 

They believed terror was the right strategy.

October 7th proved something else:
 -Terror can start a war. -It cannot control how it ends.

President Biden’s message to Iran was one word: “Don’t.”

Iran did. 
Thought the US was a paper tiger. 

What followed wasn’t the destruction of Israel.
 It wasn’t the collapse of American courage. 

It was a brutal reminder of a law as old as geopolitics:

When you attack a sovereign state backed by a superpower, you invite consequences.

In less than three years:
• Hamas’ is shattered • Hezbollah’s is disemboweled 
• Iran’s regional influence exposed, pressured, and destroyed 

The theory that violence plus fanaticism equals victory failed.

Deterrence isn’t a slogan.
It requires consequences. 

They thought they could brutalize their women and kill 30,000 of their people and we’d do nothing. 

The Middle East now stands at a seminal moment.
 Because the cost of terror has been made unmistakably clear.

Peace does not emerge from wishful thinking.
 It (only) happens when adversaries calculate that war is too expensive.

(Anyone who confronted a school yard bully knows this. It’s primordial)
 Pray for Iran.
Pray for Israel.  Pray for the United States. Pray for the peace loving, legendary people of the Middle East.

And understand this:
Peace (enduring peace) only comes through strength.

History will tell us if this attack of Iran was wise. 

No American wants a new forever war. 

And what we do know. 

-Bill Clinton
-George W. Bush
-Barack Obama

All said. 
Iran can not have a nuclear bomb. 

Now they don’t.

Michael Pedersen

Revenue Growth | Emotion-Based Brand Messaging To 3x Your Revenues | Bridging the gap between sales and marketing

High call-volume teams don’t fail from lack of skill.They lose performance across the shift when rough calls stack and recovery lags the next dial.Morning numbers are strong.Afternoons drift.DecideFast™ runs in the seconds after a call so performance holds from first block to last.No integration.No coaching.No training.No workflow changes.No IT involvement.Training happens before the shift.Coaching happens after the shift.Dashboards explain the drop once it already hit the numbers.Nothing protects the transition between one call and the next.That is the gap DecideFast™ fills.DecideFast™ shortens after-call transition so the day doesn’t slide as it progresses.Used in seconds.No management overhead.See after-call recovery live.No slides. No pitch.

CEO & Founder

Does your website convert? When was the last time you gave it a refresh? How does it compare to your competitors?

Your company website is your brand on the Internet. An under-performing and outdated website will cost you revenues. 

Let’s jump on a discovery call to see if we are good fit to work together 

Visit: www.AZNetmarketing.com or 
Email: mike@aznetmarketing.com

Most phone sales “burnout” isn’t burnout.

It’s compounding.

A rough call ends.
The rep logs it.
The dialer fires the next one in seconds.

➡️ Nothing clears what just happened.

By the third or fourth tough call in a row, tone tightens. Close attempts lose edge. Response speed slows just enough to matter.

Morning block looks strong.
Afternoon block drops.
Same script. Same leads. Same rep.

What changed?

Not energy.
Not motivation.
How fast they bounce back after a rough call.

If it takes 3-4 calls to get back to normal, the afternoon is gone.
If it takes 1, the day holds.

➡️ Training builds skill.
➡️ Coaching fixes patterns.
➡️ Dashboards show the drop.

But the real break point lives between calls, or more specifically after a rough one.

That’s where the afternoon is won or lost.

The gap is the 5-8 seconds after a rough call when the next dial starts and they're still carrying the last one. 

You don't need to make them better salespeople. You need to help them start the next call without dragging the last one into it.

➡️ 14-day, 25 rep contained pilot. 
➡️  Does afternoon output hold.
➡️  Email me: mike@decidefastbusiness.com

#insidesales #phonesales #salesmanagement

Mike Pedersen

High-Volume Phone Teams See Afternoon Performance Drop | Between-Calls Reset Software Prevents It | No Training. No IT. No Workflow Changes.

If your sales reps make 60 to 100 calls a day, read this. ⬇️ 

If you run a phone sales team, you already know this.

Mornings feel steady.
By mid-afternoon, you are pulling reps aside, calming people down, resetting tone.

You are not coaching skill.
You are managing carryover.

You've already invested in training and coaching. That's not the gap.

The gap is the 5-8 seconds after a rough call when the next dial starts and they're still carrying the last one. 

You don't need to make them better salespeople. You need to help them start the next call without dragging the last one into it.

➡️ 14-day, 25 rep contained pilot. 
➡️  Does afternoon output hold.
➡️  Email me: mike@decidefastbusiness.com

30–45% annual attrition in phone sales. 20–40% afternoon output decline.

Every year. Every floor. Industry-wide.

If a manufacturing plant lost 35% of its operators annually and produced 25% less output after lunch, the operation would be shut down.

In phone sales, it gets a line item in the budget.

Detection would follow measurement. If afternoon throughput consistently runs 20 percent below morning throughput, that pattern would be identified, named, and quantified. Not absorbed. Not averaged away. Named as a recurring condition with a measurable cost. 

Nobody caused this. Nobody's proud of it. But everybody normalized it.

The question worth asking isn't who's responsible. It's why the industry stopped looking for a solution.

I wrote something every phone sales leader should read — and pass to their CFO.

Read it here: https://lnkd.in/gT8ssJaE

What is rough call carryover.

Most leaders call it burnout.

Morning block looks sharp.
Afternoon block widens.
Same reps. Same leads. Same scripts.

What changed?

After a stretch of tough calls, hesitation between dials stretches.
Five seconds becomes eight.
Eight becomes twelve.
Across a team, that compounds fast.

That’s not exhaustion.
It’s rough calls accumulating.

Definition of Rough Call Recovery: The ability of a phone sales rep to return to normal pace and tone before the next dial after a rough call.

I wrote a breakdown on what it is and how to spot it in your numbers.
https://lnkd.in/gycdm6eq

If you are a phone sales leader and you want to stop your afternoons from crashing, there is a way. And it's not in your current tech stack.

➡️ 14-day, 25 rep contained pilot. 
➡️  Measure: Does afternoon output hold.
➡️  Email me: mike@decidefastbusiness.com

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Christopher Lochhead🏴‍☠️

Michael Pedersen

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