How to become a category pirate | Christopher Lochhead (author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, Category Pirates, more)

**Christopher Lochhead** (0:00)
The point being, now is the greatest time in history to be a creator, to be an entrepreneur, to be a marketer. I've been a marketer for my entire adult life. It's never been greater than it is right now.
And so here's the big thing that I would share. If you're somebody for whom, you wanna make an exponential difference, you want to innovate, you wanna create new value where there wasn't, you wanna have a legendary career where you could look back on your career and go, you know what, I was part of this and that, and I was on this team, and now is the greatest time in history. And what I would say to you is the future needs you.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:35)
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Christopher Lochhead. Christopher is a 13-time number one bestselling co-author, including books like Play Bigger and Niche Down. He's also a popular podcaster, co-creator of the excellence up stack category Pirates, and is best known as the godfather of category design. He's also an advisor to over 50 venture-back startups and a former three-time public company CMO.
In our conversation, we dig deep into all things category design, including what exactly is category design, why in order to build a legendary business, it's so essential to build your own category versus trying to become the best in an existing category, also how to actually go about creating your own category, a ton of examples of companies that did this well and didn't do this well, what we could learn from them, plus a ton of practical frameworks, including something Chris calls the better trap, also why he thinks product market fit is a very dangerous idea.
Chris is such a character and had such a blast speaking with Chris. With that, I bring you Christopher Lochhead after a short word from our sponsors.
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Christopher, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Christopher Lochhead** (3:41)
Lenny, it is my absolute joy. And let me say in case my ADHD brain forgets, I love all things, Lenny, you're doing a great job, buddy. I'm honored to be here. And there's so many people in the entrepreneur, startup, marketing world who are scam artists, shysters, pieces of shit, idiotic, hustle porn stars, yelling stupidities. There's a lot of idiocy in the world in which you travel and I travel.
And you, sir, stand out. You're making a difference.
The conversations you're driving, the content you're creating, you're fucking awesome, Lenny. And I'm really stoked to be here with you.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:27)
Damn, what an intro to my own podcast. I'm bad at accepting compliments. I'm just gonna accept that and I appreciate that, man.

**Christopher Lochhead** (4:34)
No, you need to get it. You are a beacon in an ocean of crapola.
You are incredible.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:41)
Well, enough about me. I really appreciate it. I was preparing for our conversation and usually what I try to do when I prepare for conversations is I read everything the person has written and it was very challenging with you. You have two podcasts, you have at least six books. There's probably more I missed. You have a newsletter, you tweet a lot.