Are you ready to master the most powerful business skill on the planet? 
Over the past 20 years, Category Creation and Category Design has gone from being a little-known "positioning" secret from advertising legends like David Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, Al Ries, Jack Trout, Gary Halbert, and more, to now becoming the single most in-demand skill among business leaders, Fortune 500 executives, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, marketers, and even the next generation of digital creators. 
Why? 
Because the business world is starting to wake up and realize branding comes second to category design. 
No meaningful category? 
No meaningful company. 
Christopher Lochhead, Eddie Yoon, and Nicolas Cole—otherwise known as the Category Pirates—are the leaders of Category Creation and Category Design thinking in the digital age. And in The Category Design Toolkit, they walk readers through 15 absolutely mind-altering frameworks for how to see business, life, and the way people organize information into "categories" in their minds. Are you a B2B enterprise software company? Do you sell plastic widgets on Amazon? Maybe you're a small business owner, a biotech entrepreneur, or a YouTuber. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do. In order to have a meaningful impact on the world, in order to become known for a niche you own, and in order to dominate your industry in a way that separates you from any and all competition, you must create your own category. 
Which means you must learn the skill of category design. In this book, you will learn: 
✓ How to objectively measure whether you and your company are creating a new category versus competing in someone else's (existing) category.\n✓ How to prosecute The Magic Triangle: product design, company/business model design, and category design.\n✓ How to find your Superconsumers, and leverage Superconsumer data to discover new potential categories.\n✓ How to engineer a category breakthrough (even if you think your industry is "too saturated" or "all the good ideas are taken").\n✓ The importance of being a missionary versus a mercenary—and why mercenary entrepreneurs and executives unknowingly compete over 24% of the market.\n✓ The 8 category differentiation levers, and all the ways you can create a defensible moat around your business.\n✓ How you can apply category creation & category design principles even as a small "e" entrepreneur or local business owner.\n✓ How category design can also be applied to your career (and why you should aim to become known for a niche you own, not "build a personal brand).\n✓ What happens if you neglect your category—and how to rage category violence industry leaders who make this mistake.\n✓ How to write a legendary S-1 and raise hundreds of millions (even billions) of dollars in your company's IPO by making a case for the future growth of your category (which you created & designed).\n✓ Why "Blue Ocean" isn't what you are looking for. And if you want to truly create a category of your own, you should execute a No Ocean Strategy.\nThis book is everything you need to know in order to learn, practice, and master the skill of category design.

The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche

Business & Money

Cole, Nicolas

Pirates, Category

Lochhead, Christopher

Yoon, Eddie

Finance

Category Pirates

A mediocre Category Designer will beat a world-class marketer every day of the week. 
The reason is because all marketing sits within a context. "He or she who frames the problem owns the solution." Without this context—without a category—your marketing becomes nothing but screaming, shouting, and pitching customers with deals, discounts, and other short-term tactics in the hopes of landing a sale. But are you building your business? More importantly, are any of these efforts going to compound over time and establish you as the category leader? 
Christopher Lochhead, Eddie Yoon, and Nicolas Cole—otherwise known as the Category Pirates—are the authorities of Category Creation and Category Design in the digital world. Pirate Christopher is a 3x CMO, Pirate Eddie has driven over $8 billion in annual sales generated for companies, and Pirate Cole is a serial writing entrepreneur, and together they have put together A Marketer's Guide To Category Design. In this book, you will learn: 
✓ There is a new category of "human" in today's world: Native Digitals (people under the age of 35 years old). And if you are a Native Analog, then all of your marketing efforts need to sit in this new context called, "For Native Digitals, the digital world is the real world." 
✓ Why so many marketers, entrepreneurs, executives, and even investors fall for The Big Brand Lie (falsely believing it's the company's "brand" customers care about). 
✓ The "Better" Trap: why comparison marketing never works, and causes comparison-focused companies to fight over only 24% of the market. 
✓ How to successfully execute a Dam The Demand strategy, stopping customers in the "old" world and moving them over to the new & different future you are creating. 
✓ How to launch a Lightning Strike Strategy—and why "Peanut Butter Marketing" (spread out evenly throughout the year) is a guaranteed path to irrelevancy. 
✓ What most marketers don't understand about Black Friday, and why discount campaigns and coupons are a bad way to grow your business. 
✓ And finally, the difference between content marketing that captures people's attention and makes a difference versus content that goes nowhere. 
If you are a marketer, or an entrepreneur/executive who wants to approach marketing through a category lens, this is the book for you.

A Marketer's Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The "Better" Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy

Management & Leadership

To read this “mini-book,” as well as our entire archive of writing on Category Design, subscribe to Category Pirates here: 
categorypirates.substack.com 
If you can save and invest just $30,000 as a teenager, you’re set for life (retirement is taken care of). 
So why wait to start a business until college, or after college, or after your first job, when the world is willing to pay big bucks for your Native Digital expertise today? There has never been a better time to start a (crazy profitable) business as a teenager than right now. And guess what? Making money doesn’t require a college degree anymore. Just an Internet connection and a radical idea (which this mini-book is full of). 
The Category Pirates—Christopher Lochhead, Eddie Yoon, and Nicolas Cole—have created their most forward-leaning mini-book yet, this time speaking directly to teenagers itching to start their entrepreneurial careers. This mini-book is the ultimate guide to starting a business as a Native Digital in a world full of Native Analogs who have no idea how to perform even the most basic digital tasks—like setup their Peloton, sync their Apple Watch, or accept payments via Venmo. In this mini-book, you will learn: 18 actionable and radical ideas to start making money immediately as a teenager. Why you shouldn’t wait for permission to start your first business. How to think about monetizing your unique Native Digital knowledge. Turning other people’s problems into a solution (and your next business). And so much more. 
Short, straight to the point, and a lifetime’s worth of business ideas, if you are a teenage entrepreneur (or a parent who wants to encourage their child’s entrepreneurial tendencies) then this mini-book is the place to start.

How To Build Your First (Crazy Profitable) Business As A Teenager: 18 Radical Ideas For 18-Year-Old Entrepreneurs And Younger

Marketing & Sales

Legendary writers, the ones who stand the test of time, create a category of one. 
They’re snow leopards. 
Snow Leopard is the first writing advice book ever written through a Category Design lens. Inside, what you will not find are a bunch of nose-picky suggestions for how you can make your writing “better.” There will be no talk of comma placement, grammatical correctness, or a recap of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.” 
Instead, you will internalize a completely new way of framing your ideas, stories, and insights to reach and resonate with the most people possible. Written by the world’s first “business writing band,” Category Pirates—made up of Christopher Lochhead, Eddie Yoon, and Nicolas Cole—Snow Leopard shows you how to create a category for yourself, master the art of Obvious & Non-Obvious content, monetize in new ways, and enjoy a lifelong career of independence, creative freedom, and exponential financial upside. 
In decades past, David Ogilvy, Gary Halbert, Leo Burnett, Gary Bencivenga, Al Ries & Jack Trout, and many more master communicators have all written about the psychology behind how messages spread. Snow Leopard builds on their work and, along with dozens of new insights and frameworks, roots this thinking in the Digital Age. 
In this book you will find: The Content Pyramid: A proven framework for becoming a differentiated Creator or Curator Writer Business Models: A comprehensive guide breaking down all the different ways writers & creators can monetize their work in the Digital Age. Content Marketing Opportunities: An insider’s take on why the growing content marketing industry is becoming more and more saturated (and the opportunity this creates for you). The Art Of Fresh Thinking: A timeless framework for ensuring your ideas are original, unique, and highly differentiated. The Power of a POV: A new way of thinking about “scaling yourself” on the Internet–and why you never want to be a “better version” of an existing thing. Quick Guide To Languaging: A never-before-shared model for inventing new language to get ideas to “stick”—and the unfair advantage this creates. How To Write A Book That Scales: And dozens of insights from the world’s largest non-fiction study of business books, reverse-engineering books that grab people’s attention from books that flop.\nWhether you are a writer, creator, entrepreneur, executive, public speaker, investor, or industry thought leader, Snow Leopard is your guide for becoming known for a niche you own. 
And experiencing the life-changing outcomes that come with being completely differentiated.

Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One

This book is for a very small percentage of business people. 
You see, most people in business are not trying to use Category Design to create a new category that changes the future and generates exponential new value. Instead, many people in business are trying to “not get fired.” Many people want to go to work, make a contribution, and go home. 
But Category Design is purpose-built for people who want to make an experiential difference, not an incremental better. 
Category Design is a business discipline that helps companies earn the majority of the value created in a specific new or different category of products or services. (Primary research on Category Design in Play Bigger, the first Category Design book, shows that in technology categories, one company earns 76% of the total market cap value created.) The 22 Laws Of Category Design is a groundbreaking guide for the select few business professionals, entrepreneurs, and innovators who dare to think different. 
It challenges conventional business and marketing wisdom, teaching you how to leverage the power of Category Design to create new markets, dominate existing ones, and build lasting companies. In this book, you will learn: 22 Category Design principles that, when combined together, can help you become a Category King or Queen and make it impossible for someone else to “do what you do” How to create new categories and redefine existing ones using a unique POV, Languaging, and a powerful marketing strategy called a Lightning Strike Detailed, real-life case studies on companies that designed and dominated new categories—from Apple's redefinition of the mobile phone category to Lululemon's reign over athleisure, Liquid Death's rise above bottled water brands, and many more How to immediately begin applying what you learn with 11 practical exercises to help you engage your thinking, defy conventional business strategies, and drive company growth Why marketing your brand, instead of your category, is a faulty and selfish strategy, and how companies like Southwest Airlines, Bombas, and 5-Hour Energy win by putting Superconsumers first Lessons and quotes to help you continually reflect on Category Design so you can transform your thinking, actions, and outcomes forever, instead of for a few months You will start applying these principles through 11 in-book exercises: Start Rejecting the Premise How to Find Your Superconsumers Put Your Category First, and Your Brand Second How to Frame, Name, and Claim a Category Be Different, Not Better Create Net-New Demand For Your Category and Company Build Your DAM the Demand Strategy Create Your Digital Air Offerings Figure Out Your Pricing Innovate Your Business Model Find Your WOM Super-Geos 
The 22 Laws Of Category Design is specifically tailored for entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, business leaders, solopreneurs, and consultants who “think different.” 
Through powerful insights, unconventional wisdom, and practical advice, this book will give you a unique roadmap to defy conventional thinking and create categories of consequence.

The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

Kirsch, Katrina